Ah, yes. The thing that
I at least have waited for for quite some time now has finally arrived: D & D 3rd Edition. And was it worth the wait? Oh my, yes. Having read a lot of the other reviews here, I think that most of the rules have been essentially covered, yet I'll do a short round of the stuff that I find cool in this edition:
Firstly, the new class system. Because the level and class system is so fundamental to the D & D game, it would be an atrocity to leave out the system and still call it D & D. Don't get me wrong, I very much prefer non-class systems, like good old Cthulhu, but the D & D game is the D & D game, and that shouldn't be changed. Another thing that hasn't changed either, is the very creative way TSR looks at logic. A lot of the rules make little or no sense if the goal is realism. Fortunately for them, it isn't. I'll get back to that in a moment.
The new combat system is brilliant. When me and my group first tries out new systems, the first few battles always go a little slow, and are quite unexciting. The battles in our first 3rd Edition session were thrilling to say the least. Okay, part of that might come from the fact that I sent a red dragon after them just to give them a scare, but still. If you come from AD&D 2nd, it is extraordinarily easy to go to 3rd edition.
One of the other things that are also rather good in the book is the art. Did I just type rather good? I meant fantastic. The layout is the best I've seen in an RPG, with the possible exception of (what else) the products of White Wolf. The paper is high-quality, it doesn't have the weird smell that the paper Stardrive was printed on had, and it is in hardcover. And what a hardcover? A beautiful one. You really get the sense of fantasy from looking at it. Inside, the illustrations are integrated perfectly in the rest of the layout, except for one glaringly misplaced dragonslayer and his prey, which I truly and utterly hate for taking up nearly a page, and still having text around it. Still, someone gave the layout more than a few second thoughts. One of the first things I noticed was that as you progressed through the first couple of chapters, the illustrations become more advanced as does, hopefully, your character concept.
Speaking about characters; TSR has finally taken a cue from Chaosium and included a step-by-step character designing guide in the start. Also, there is a character sheet, which is utter crap as is usual for TSR, but the inclusion is a step in the right direction. By utter crap I, btw, don't mean that it's useless - far from it. It is just witout a soul. All too efficiently packed together and without any cool design. Just plain, simple bleh and scaringly remniscient of a lot of math tests and bureaucratic formulae. Shiver!
The feats are very popular among my players, even though we are nearly agreed that we drop the whole idea about having feats to create magical items other than scrolls and potions. It just seems like something there shouldn't be a skill for.
Honestly, there is much much more there, and if you rather like the AD&D game, go on and upgrade to 3rd edition. Now, the point that I would return to:
The essence of D & D: Now, anyone who has ever played AD&D knows that the whole idea of the game has always been, basically, kill goblin, take goblin's treasure, repeat until goblin changes to a tougher monster, then kill that monster and so on, and so on. It still is. Don't make any mistakes about it. The game isn't emphasizing role-playing with this new edition. While the potential basically exists, the rules are all geared towards powergaming and dragonslaying. And there needn't be anything wrong with it. Me and my group have accepted it, as have the people in our campaign world, J-World. The main country of this J-World's name is Archetypia, and I tell you that everything lives up to that name. Yet we have fun. Because it is known territory. Everyone
knows elves are prissy, everyone
knows dwarves can't cast magic (and, even though they can in the new D & D game they can't in our world) and everyone
knows that the nice royal wizard in reality is a Jafar-type backstabber, who's sold his soul to the devil or something. We encourage stereotypes for jokes (not in real life, mind you), and therefore we play D & D - the game of stereotypes. It's fun, people. And it is just a game with mediocre rules, that got better in 3rd edition. Now, bring on my DMG, 'cause there's a lot of stuff that I want to know before we start a fullfledged 3rd edition campaign!Style: 4 (Classy and well done)
Substance: 4 (Meaty)
