TRS Plays D&D Encounters

I got this link from a friend who is about my age and is a fellow MST3K enthusiast. This friend also grew-up in the heady days of RPG's heyday and was a big RPGer back then. Like many our age, he no longer has the time to invest in RPG, but that is part of what Dungeons & Dragons Encounters is all about. As the Totally Rad Show explains, Wizards of the Coast (WotC) is releasing one encounter per week, most of which can be played in about an hour, and requires little to no setup.

For what it's worth, these guys lost me from the moment they started talking about the "good ol' days" of 3.5 which... I mean, that was like five years ago, right? I still remember the big to-do over 2E. I don't want to be one of those, "You call this D&D? This ain't D&D; when we were kids, now that was D&D!" But there's a lot of truth to that. And though I applaud the attempt at making it easier for those of us with time constraints to get in a little gaming, and I have not played D&D Encounters for myself (nor even read much about it), few gamers below the age of even 30 know the difference between a roleplaying game and a wargame, and the industry has been blurring that line to their own ends almost from the beginning.

While I could spend whole days posting the differences, when it comes to D&D Encounters, I'll point-out just one: Miniatures are not essential to roleplaying games (RPG). Now, it truly is all "fun and games," but if miniatures are an essential element, then it is most likely a wargame. And, having read a lot on the new 4E, I can safely say -- without having actually played it, without having actually read it -- that 4E is basically a wargame designed to compete with online "RPG" like "World of Warcraft."

Also, these guys have a fit of the Nerdgiggles, which tells me they've never actually roleplayed. I don't doubt they had the books, or at least hung-out with a guy who did, nor do I doubt they took a stab at generating characters and maybe even actually playing once or twice, but I don't think they were ever gamers. I've nothing against them, mind you, but this little demo tells me next to nothing about the game, and more experienced [former, even] players could have shone a light on the differences between this and older incarnations, other RPG systems, and so on. Still, these guys should have at least compared it to videogames, MMORPG, and similar fare with which you know they are familiar.

© C Harris Lynn, 2010