Dev Imperium

At Gen Con last week Wizards of the Coast announced that they will be releasing the fourth edition of Dungeons and Dragons in the Spring/Summer of 2008. The announcement was, of course, accompanied with the regular complaining about Wizards. They are either ruining the game, demonstrating their avarice, or both. I am cautiously optimistic for the following reasons:

1) Third Edition was a vast improvement on Second Edition. Second Edition was an attempt to consolidate classes and rules into generics that could be easily specialized, but there was not sufficient organization and frameworking to allow this to be an easy or regular process. Third Edition (with all of it’s currently obvious warts) was a massive improvement. The design goal of simplification and standardization dramatically eased starting play and allowed for a framework that helped keep game extensions fairly sane.

2) Some of the recent innovative rules books (not the more generic stuff) have included some very good alternate mechanics that improve the game. This includes the Tome of Battle, Tome of Magic (I really like the mechanics of the Truenamer), and the Star Wars Saga Edition.

3) The deliberate manner in which Wizards has approached the Magic Items Compendium and the Monster Manual V (and seems to be approaching 4E) demonstrates a concern for simplifying management while enhancing playability.

We’ll see as Wizards slowly releases more information about the forthcoming Fourth Edition.