Psh.

http://www.angelfire.com/electronic/awaken...1/leonardo.html

Modern airplanes are just more sophisticated, practical flying machines.

On that topic, I'd like artisans to be able to make flying machines that fail half of the time.

>.>

What?

I think xenthos was comming up with a complicated way of saying "magnetic electricity"

I never got FF for 3rd Edition. (I do remember getting the original FF back around 1981 or 1982 I believe).

Even if the race's name was in that book--I don't know how much they'll be the same. They are really doing a full "reboot" of the D&D system. For instance, Halflings are now 4'-4.5' tall, Elves are taller than men, etc. Certain monsters are completely different--dryads look like walking trees, quicklings look more like aliens, Demons are now corrupted "primordials", etc. The Dragonborn represented in the Dragon book is completely different from the 4e one. Just figured I'd give fair warning.

Having done no more than "watch" a D&D game (and, by "watch" I mean, sit there and whine about being bored until they gave me pizza money), I have to ask, why?

I mean, do they want to be more Lord of the Rings Movie-esque what with tall picturesque elves? Or are they offending people with the old stuff? Or is someone justifying their employment by changing things for the sake of it?


...and what the hell is a "primordial"? Something used to seperate demons from any real world religious connotations what so ever?

Wizards of the coast has actually been using more demons recently, not less - they're not worried about the religious fanatics anymore. MTG had several years where it was too scared to put any in, but they reintroduced "grinning demon" in ONS block and then have been printing them every so often since. It's probably a cosmology change - Tully says corrupted "primordials", so it could be the same kind of thing as Lusternia demons from emanations, or something like where each outer plane exerts its influence on primordial beings. After all, if they're removing the good and evil thing and just having lawful and chaotic then the whole demon thing wouldn't make sense anyway.

Removing good/evil personality trait doesn't make sense.

I'm not my character Shiri, please call me Phred.

They didn't remove Good and Evil, they removed Law and Chaos. Alignment is still there but really only used for spiritual beings.

They've defined Demons as being part of what used to be the "Inner Planes", the Abyss is now a place in the Elemental Maelstrom, Primordials seem to be Gods of the Inner Planes. Primordials are physical, Gods spiritual--I don't really know what that means yet. Devils are defined as fallen angels of a corrupted god. Demons are also now not humanoid looking, while Devils are. (Worlds and Monsters will be arriving for me tomorrow). Kashim, they said they wanted to clearly define their roles, Demons are more "I'll crush you", Devils more "I'll tempt you". Succubi have moved to Devils and replaced Erynies, while the "Ice Devils" are described as "Demons on Loan"...

I read that they changed the size of the races in order to make better miniatures--I remember reading that was part of the reason. They also decided to make female Dwarves beardless, for instance.

Rainydays, it's hard to say why. I think in part D&D wants to change to be less "generic", and also to have a stronger unique background like you'd find in other games. I also think in part it's to get new people to reconsider D&D as being "fresh and new". I also think it's a result of new designers wanting to put a specific stamp on the game--some of their comments seem dismissive of the traditions. I also cynically think Hasbro wants changes so they can lock them down a bit--the OGL is not being used for 4e, it's going to be much more strictly controlled and most of the "background" can't be referenced directly.

If anybody wants to see all the changes to date, you can read them here: http://www.enworld.org/index.php?page=4e

I do think the changes are a little sad--there's been a rough tradition going back over 30 years, you can see how D&D influenced Estarra, Matt, and all of IRE to an extent. Now D&D's sort of embarrassed about it's legacy.

WotC is embarrassed by itself. I have interacted with employees that look down on the people who by DnD products as nothing more then the extreme nerds of the Alltel commericals.

Reading some of the information on that link makes me cringe.

This reminds me of when Infograms bought Atari.

WotC bought the rights to D&D for the sake of the name, but they are pushing a new product.

It makes me sad that I have no one to play D&D with at my school Ah well. And Fantasy isn't about originality of overall ideas, it's about original twists on classic ideas And lusternia has that in spades, if you ask me.