I am fully aware of all the current controversy going on between tabletop roleplayers and the new 4th Edition of Dungeons and Dragons. Most of the folks complaining simply look like old men complaining about “the good old days”. They are told if they don’t like it, then they should just stick to 3rd or even 2nd Edition. Meanwhile, on the other side of the argument, all the people that do enjoy 4th Edition are looked upon as the World of Warcraft players that are ruining gaming.

Ultimately, there are three groups of tabletop roleplayers. The Gamists, the Simulationists and the Narrativists (those familiar with the GNS Theory will already be familiar with the idea). These three sectors often enough cross over, similarly to a Venn Diagram, but most often the goals of the Narrativist and Simulationist collide with that of the Gamist. The Narrativist and Simulationist goals are to experience a world and story that cannot be provided through other mediums, such as video games or novels. The Gamist, on the other hand, has the ultimate goal of simply winning, especially if they can maximize their character for any situation (see Pete from Darths and Droids).

When 3rd Edition Dungeons and Dragons released, it began to have a new series of benefits and detriments to the Narrativist and Simulationist. The introduction of all the skills and feats allowed players to customize characters to be whatever they wanted. You didn’t just have a Fighter. You could have a dexterity based fighter that only wore medium armor and could avoid damage just as well as they dealt it. The Rogue was no longer merely the typical “thief”, but could be an acrobat, a military trained scout, or even an archeologist (not all smart people have to know magic, after all).

At the same time, however, the sourcebooks for Dungeons and Dragons became lacking compared to the material provided with 2nd Edition books. Each new release came with more classes, feats, items, spells, you name it. But amongst the toys and pretty pictures, setting information was ultimately scarce. The books for the Forgotten Realms from 2nd Edition were thinner, yet due to the lack of pictures and focus on content, they provided more information for the Game Master to use, modify and play with. All for a cheaper cost than books these days, I might add.

Still, converting second edition material to third wasn’t that troublesome, and could still be done. It just made those who played for Narrative and Simulation afraid of what would be coming next.

4th Edition Dungeons and Dragons has completely abandoned the Narrativist and Simulationist, choosing to focus strictly on making the Gamist happy. Several character classes were removed, the customizability of skills and feats is gone, and settings have been reduced to mere skeletons in favor of making all material cross-compatible. This way Eberron elements can be used in the Forgotten Realms and vice versa. This is nothing to say of the simplification of monsters, removing the idea that they can have varying and interesting cultures and are simply there to drop experience and treasure.

In short, they are returning to 4th Edition, only more simple, and giving an experience that is only slightly more social than playing World of Warcraft or Diablo online.

While it is true that the “magic” of roleplaying games is you can customize and create things on your own. Yes, a Game Master can create all the cultures of the monsters and add as much material to a game’s setting as they wish. However, the purpose of all that setting information was to save time. Not all of us are in high school, and not all of us restrict our hobbies to just Dungeons and Dragons. Some of us do want all the information for a city in a sourcebook, readily available, covering not only prices and primary locations, but how the nobles treat the peasants, how the people view foreigners and other races, what the seedy underbelly is, their local myths, etc., all at our fingertips to access and reference at any time.

It has been tough for me to become interested in roleplaying games for some time now, and I find it sad that the best setting to be released for third edition went out of print pretty quickly.

It is often at these times that Palladium tends to pull me back in, and they have once more. I was stumbling over their website only to find that they’ve renewed and released a brand new sourcebook for the Robotech universe. I watched the cartoon as a child, read the novelizations, and have purchased the box set of the Macross anime that the show originated from. I’ve noted on this site that the game Robotech: Battlecry is deserving of a sequel. So as soon as I saw this was released, I immediately went out to acquire it.

The book is a breath of fresh air to the endless amounts of 3rd Edition books I’ve been reading for the past half decade. I had forgotten what had made Palladium books so amazing. Sure, there is no color, and the pictures are very few. The layout design is nothing noteworthy, looking as if they easily used nothing more complex than Microsoft Word.

Yet the book is 220+ pages of information. It opens up by giving all the backstory to the current Robotech setting, details about the races, and even makes sure that you understand the psychology behind the alien invaders so you don’t merely think of them as heartless, horrific monsters. Each Mech variant has at least two pages (plus a page for the image) that details not only its rules information, but function and uses in the setting. There is a whole chapter devoted to letting new players and Game Masters know what a roleplaying game is and how it plays. In fact, the book itself is written well for introducing new players to RPG’s.

In the end, I bought the book for $30 hardcover, but a soft cover was also released for a mere $18. I could have purchased more information in one sourcebook for $18 than I would have gotten in a $45 3rd Edition book, let alone 4th Edition.

The funny thing is, Palladium has always done plenty of the things Wizards of the Coast has been guilty of and is even attempting. The Palladium Universe is built so that you can move any character from one setting into another. Sure, it may be ridiculous and even stupid to pull a character from Palladium Fantasy into Robotech, but it can be done. Palladium has also had problems of releasing new toys with each book, particularly with their Rifts setting, making all the original classes and equipment from the sourcebook obsolete.

Nonetheless, I feel absolutely no guilt over the purchase of this sourcebook. It is an entertaining read, covers all the rules I need to know (and for anyone that has complained about the complexities of a grapple check, do give the Palladium rules a good read), and gives more than enough information on setting. I had expected to need to read some Wikipedia articles to catch up on what the third season, New Generation, and new movie Shadow Chronicles, have brought in, but all I need to know is listed in the sourcebook.

Of course, next week will see the release of the Macross Sourcebook for $16, so it’s not like I need to catch up anyway. I get two books for the price of one 3rd or 4th edition sourcebook, and with thrice the information.

Face it, if you are a Gamist, 4th Edition is perfect and you are welcome to play it. The simple fact of the matter is, though, you aren’t getting your money’s worth, and the system is weeding Narrativists and Simulationists out in favor of other cheaper and more detailed systems.