Finnegan Begin Again

I am not what you'd call a 4e "early adopter". My group is a fairly archetypal set of the modern adult gamer - jobs, family, and other hobbies and interests often get in the way of scheduling gaming sessions. The sessions we do have need to count a lot, in both the social sense of getting friends together and in the gaming sense of getting things done that feel like fun. The end result is a group that isn't highly motivated to spend time learning a new system, as for most of them, the actual system-learning is not, in and of itself, a whole lot of fun.

Since they weren't pushing me to learn a new system, I didn't leap on it, either. Like many gamers, I have a small system collection habit, so eventually, when I had $60 of found money, I got a set of the core books. I skimmed over them at the time, but since then they've just sat on the shelf, while I did other things.

Now, my group has finally gotten around to the idea of actually trying the system out, so I'll be dragging the books off the shelf and reading them in more depth. I'll be keeping a set of impressions here, as I go through that process over the next couple of weeks, and through our playtests.

My impressions from the initial skim:

I'm a fairly old hand at RPGs, and I've worked with a bunch of systems, and read even more than I've worked with. So, aside from game design, I have a few thoughts on book-design as well. The 4e books don't impress me in that regard. Say what you will for or against the actual mechanics, the rulebooks themselves are... opaque.

With most systems, an experienced gamer can pick up a book for another system, and rather quickly ascertain what characters can do. A skim will reveal the basics of combat, races, class choices (if any) some idea of what the skills in the game do, and so on. The 4e books are, in my opinion, horrible at communicating this quickly.

I think that perhaps the idea was to organize the book for quick reference for those who have developed some expertise with the system, but they sacrificed learning in the process. A 4e character is largely defined by powers, and they are all in one big list. Until you familiarize yourself with the entire list (for all the classes) in detail, it is extremely difficult to tell what one character can do that others cannot.

There is no way I can pass my books around and have everyone digest them well enough to play on a reasonable timescale. I'll have to absorb the rules myself, and pre-generate some example characters, with their powers detailed out for the players in their sheets. This way, I can divorce the learning of the base play mechanics from learning all the different choices to be made in character creation. I'll probably start with a group of the old standbys - fighter, cleric, rogue, and wizard.

I'll give it my best shot, but I'm not expecting my players to prefer 4e. After the playtesting, I'll figure out what I want to do for my next campaign...