Is D&D 4th REALLY the MMORPG based game?

[roseembolism]

 A slow enough day that I'm even talking D&D.  Next week I'll get back to my own game projects.

Anyway, one of the common things I've been is that D&D 4th edition reminds people of an MMORPG.  Evidently the assigned roles, the at-will, encounter and daily powers, and the emphasis on combat powers, strikes people as MMORPG-ish.  A lot of that is arguable- I don't find the power splits very MMORPG-like at all, though the way armor is described seems very much like something out of World of Warcraft.  Likewise, the roles seem to pretty much harken back to classic D&D tactics.  But, I'm not here to argue that.

All that aside, do you know what really screams "MMORPG" to me? It's not any particular version of a game themself; it's actually the optimization debates where numbers are crunched to show that character A is less effcient at dealing damage per round than Character B. So in this regard, it's actually D&D 3.X that reminded me of an MMORPG, whenever people got into massive threads proving mathematically that two-weapon finesse fighters did something like 2.35 points less damage a turn than a two-handed fighter. If they simply used terms like Damage Per Round (DPR) to mimic the MMORPG term DPS, the comparasion with similar debates on the MMORPG boards would be complete.

So right now, 3.X feels the most MMORPG-ish to me, simply because there were so many people obsessed with optimization, juggling numbers, and claiming that any character that wasn't optimized was a drag on the team. I don't really remember quite that attitude with AD&D; sure there were twinks munchkins, and people argued that certain class features from some of the dodgier supplements were over-or-underpowered.   But it all didn'tget so much into the algebra, and claims that any character that wasn't optimized according to rigid math was worthless.

So far D&D-4th doesn't feel so MMORPG-ish to me, simply because I haven't seen the extensive number crunching 3.X spawned. Sure there's already people trying to optimize characters, but the combination of At-will, Encounter and Daily effects may make trying to do number crunching problematic, especially when considering that the effectiveness of those powers will depend heavily on circumstances and fellow players. 

So, whether the algebra fans show up later will affect how I feel about the MMORPG feel.

Comments

[roseembolism.livejournal.com]

I would characterize the powers as very much tactical and combat oriented, by and large. It also seems oriented toward using a battlemat, since many powers involve pushing enemies a square or more in a given direction. On the other hand, the powers seem much more cooperative and dynamic than the 3.X ones.

As far as skills go, 4.0 is like a step back- the system doesn't quite work like 3.x, in that skills are basically "trained", or "untrained". Skills are also concentrated on "useful" skills for an adventurer- no craft skills for example. For RP-ing, Bluff, Diplomacy and Insight are the main social skills. There IS a quite nice skill challenge system, which can be used to make social combat flow nicely.

It should be noted of course that I can take or leave intensive skill systems, especially in games where some skills are mainly a place to waste points (who really took "profession" in D&D?). So I don't see the limited powers or skill system as much of a limitation to roleplaying.

If I really, really needed professional skills in a game, it would be trivial to do something like say, "All characters get one free trained skill called "Profession" which is what you do when you're not an adventurer.

[rhylar.livejournal.com]

thing is, I *want* places to sink points. If I'm spending all this time learning to swing a sword, it feels better to have the option of getting really good at a hobby as well. Rather than just "I have a hobby"

And I really dislike battlemat gaming. It's way too limiting. Some darn fool is always counting squares & will tell me that I'm one square short of being able to swing on that chandelier...

[roseembolism.livejournal.com]

I have mixed feelings, about skill systems; on the one hand, I like systems such as Mutants and Masterminds, where I can be a total skill monkey. On the other hand, I also like streamlined trait systems like Risus and Wushu that describe "who you are" rather than the skills you have.

The interesting thing is that for all that the skills are focused on "adventuring", the skill resolution system is robust, and is possibly the best version of such in a D&D game. At the least it might be worth it to consider adapting it to D&D 3.X.

It would be nice and easy to add a system of "side skills" to D&D, much the same way that minor traits were handled in the James Bond RPG. Give the characters 1+Int in side skills, or handle them as feats that give +2 to major skills in certain situations. D&D is modular enough that it would be easy to add them in.