D&D 4

My conclusions about 4th ed D&D are pretty much the same as Steve's to be honest.

I suspect that giving players an 11th level character wasn't the greatest idea in the world (particularly as an introduction to the game) as it meant you had to read 3 pages of abilities & spells that you could use.

As I played the same scenario at Wayland's it was very interesting to see the difference in gaming styles that 2nd ed players (like us) & 4th ed players (that were at Wayland's) use. In Wayland's the party effectively charged in full tilt & killed everything straight off. At Stourbridge there were far more questions asked & a bit more nous used (which of course didn't help!). In fairness to the rules I don't know if this is a truthful indication of how they work, or whether the get stuck in & kill stuff mentality was just the introductory scenario? Perhaps someone with knowledge of 4th ed could tell us? It would be a shame if the subtleties of 2nd ed were lost.

Overall I did enjoy myself immensely (it had lots to do about being a female Gnome bard with boots of dancing!). In both games the mill exploded in a huge fireball (well done Phil & Antony!!).

As Steve points out there are better systems & I think it best to stick with 2nd ed (Antony will probably be pleased to know with all the 2nd ed stuff he has!).

I have the 4E PHB but found it pretty much unreadable - so everything I've picked up about 4E is all second-hand from the web. What I have read suggests it isn't really for me - seems like a poor attempt to do a "manual" version of World of Warcraft and not really what I hold to be D&D. If anybody wants the PHB I'll bring it along on Friday and you can have it for free.

Personally, I printed out a PDF of the 1974 "White Box" last week and have ordered Swords and Wizardry from lulu.

Owen

Some observations on Friday's 4th Ed. D&D (Star Wars Miniatures meets Monsters) game:

The game did seem a little compartmentalised by the 'encounter' system and, at times, it felt like working through different levels in the old Heroquest game. I also found myself thinking more about the timing of using special abilities - when to use the once-a-day ones, particularly - which struck me as being more reminiscent of the constraints of a board game instead of a free-flowing adventure. But that may just have been the nature of the introductory scenario.

Using 11th level characters was probably not the best of ideas. There was a lot to remember (and forget) in terms of special abilities and I'm sure that we all made mistakes at one point or another. Playing and developing your own character would be very different and (probably) wouldn't cause quite so much head-scratching in that respect.

Having sauntered into combat and scored a resounding critical hit in the first round of combat in the first encounter, I then became a dragon-kind quintain until the encounter was almost over through an abject failure to roll more than 10 on a d20. So, yes, from my point of view, the use of d20 could be described as somewhat arbitrary. Some Paladin!

The combat system did seem long-winded, due in no small part to the initiative system and the use of standard, minor and 'free' actions - all of which I had to keep constantly referring to - although equally as constantly missing helped speed up the process. And, the whole scenario seemed combat-orientated. Even the 'encounter' with the small child required a set number of successful dice rolls to interact with her, which left Antony little to do in terms of being the DM apart from rolling dice and keeping track of hit points.

And movement on a map divided into squares! Don't get me started.....