Another holiday for the roleplayers?
March appears to be Roleplaying Holiday Month. Close on the heels of GM Day (March 4th), last week we were presented with Worldwide D&D Game Day. On the bright side, this second holiday has no confusing origins — it was nothing more than a marketing ploy by Wizards of the Coast for the release of the D&D 4th edition Player’s Handbook 2.
The Player’s Handbook 2 (PHB2) confuses me: what is it? The original Player’s Handbook is a “core rulebook”. Traditionally, it contains everything a (non-DM) player might need in order to play the game, and is part of the “core rulebook” triumverate. In fourth edition, its scope has been expanded, and it is arguably the only book you need.
What of the PHB2? To be truly deserving of the title, it needs to contain the core rules needed to create characters and play the game as a non-GM. To be fair I have only flipped through it, but it is certainly not a Core Rulebook. As it says right near the front of the book, it is a “game supplement”. Roleplaying vitamins, if you will.
The PHB2 consists of new classes and races for the fourth edition of Dungeons and Dragons, along with some new magic items and some rituals (aka non-combat spells). It is not, as such, a Player’s Handbook. It is more akin to the first edition’s Unearthed Arcana — a miscellany of things that just did not make it into the core rulebook.
I do not have many qualms with D&D’s “fourth” incarnation (really the 6th, I believe), but I am beginning to find some of the books names misleading. The Player’s Handbook 2 is not a Player’s Handbook. It is an expansion set.
It serves a purpose. If you missed the chance to be a Druid, Bard or Gnome (popular options purposely left out of the Player’s Handbook so they could sell a PHB2), these options are in the sequel. If you want to play a “striker” style player, but have a divine power source (a legitimate character concept), the class you need is in the PHB2. Sure, this could have been handled differently — I probably would have done so — but what’s done is done. And there is probably a good reason that I am not writing D&D rulebooks.
That said, Unearthed Arcana was my favourite AD&D book, a long, long time ago. I remember being profoundly sad about having lost the magic of that rulebook when I moved on to second edition. There is no reason to believe that a 12-year-old version of myself would not feel similarly about the PHB2.
My adult self, however, cannot help but think that the core rules are enough to create the game he wants.
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