In many ways, I suppose D&D represents the ‘mass-market’ face of tabletop roleplaying.  It was the first big hit, the one that started the ball rolling, so it always got the benefit of the doubt.  It was also good at adapting to its audience.

At first, it was a dungeon crawling Lord of the Rings game; it was (well, inspired really) the EssexMUD of its day.  Soon it opened up to let you play around a little more with who you were and the world you played in.  AD&D came out, adding more rules and letting you tweak your character even more; we are either looking at the Meridian 59 or perhaps even Ultima Online level here.

Once it hit Third Edition and later 3.5, D&D went from a geeky pastime to mainstream.  Many complained that it was dumbed down (look, thAC0 had its place, but I for one will not weep for it) and you could say that legitimately, but it would be more accurate to say that it was simplified.  At last, D&D had reached its Everquest stage - it was mass-market, it was no longer a niche geeky thing to do, people played it who were not ready to call themselves roleplayers.  It was smooth, it was accessible and the core mechanics were abstract enough that it could challenge GURPS as a generic ‘base’ system.

And then there was Fourth Edition…  For decades, MMORPGs had borrowed from D&D and then the Fourth Edition seemed to take its tithe from them all.  Everything is there, it makes sense and you can almost put the tables away.  As a dungeon master, I can read off some tables and then leave the books to one side.  This is the World of Warcraft of the tabletop scene.  There is no more Vancian spellcasting or thAC0.  There are no long lists of spells to pick from each day or different systems for every player’s basic attacks.  This is as close as a tabletop game will ever get to World of Warcraft.

But I leave it to you to decide if this is a good or a bad thing; some people like a little complexity, some people don’t, so find your own truth…