My D&D career, specifically as a DM, started years ago with Basic D&D, then AD&D, including 2nd edition, but then I strayed away largely during 3.0/3.5 although I played a bit. Since 4e has been released I have become very familiar with the whole "4e sucks, Pathfinder, etc. is better" debate. Honestly I would like to give 4e a try and make my own call as to whether it is better or worse than "Mathfinder" as one of my friends calls it.
So next month I am thinking about DMing a small adventure for a small group, but I am undecided between reverting back to AD&D, which still feels the most familiar to me, or a retroclone, or to move on ahead with the newest incarnation that is 4e. Should I just embrace 4e?
Does anyone have any tips or advice for DMing a 4e adventure for the first time? For instance, is it easier to DM with 4e?
Thanks in advance.
Well, you will get a lot of different opinions for sure. 4e breaks somewhat from earlier editions. How much that bothers your group is really hard to say.
4e is really not a LOT less complex than PF (which is pretty much just 3.5 with some tweaks). It is a bit more straightforward and designed to be clearer and easier to understand. OTOH it has its own sorts of complexities, though I think they are less intrusive in play. NEITHER system is as simple and lightweight as Basic or even AD&D. The retro-clones in general are probably much closer to AD&D in that sense. OTOH 4e has much more polished generalized rules, so if a player decided to have his character run up the log and leap on the ogre, well in 4e there's a simple mechanic for that (based on skills, usually dubbed 'page 42' in 4e parlance because it is on page 42 of the DMG).
PERSONALLY, I think 4e works better than PF. It is a more carefully crafted game.
1) Monsters are much simpler and more straightforward, much like AD&D monsters, they have a stat block and powers. In PF/3.5 monsters are more like PCs and if they have special abilities they get complex and time consuming to design pretty quickly. For example a spell-caster in 4e is just a monster with some powers that are its 'spells', you can make up whatever you want, and don't need to include stuff that won't actually matter in combat. A PF spell casting monster is a full PC-style spell caster with levels and a spell selection just like a PC.
2) Encounter design in 4e is very 'packaged'. XP budget specifies what numbers and levels of monsters to assemble into a balanced encounter. This works pretty well, give or take a bit. PF uses the same 'CR' system as 3.5 basically, which is totally wonky and gives you only a very vague idea of the actual difficulty of the encounter.
3) Many tedious aspects of 3.5/PF just don't come up in 4e. You don't have things like 'ability score damage' or 'level drain' which require vast amounts of time to totally recalculate all the numbers on the PC in the middle of a fight. 4e would just plop a condition on the PC like 'weakened' that reduces all damage done by half until you get rid of it.
4) Other things like traps, terrain, hazards, etc are pretty straightforward in 4e. Combat has only a few situations that create modifiers and the modifiers are easy to use. Things CAN get complicated with the monsters and the PCs stacking on numerous effects on each other, but they are all still designed to be easier to handle.
OVERALL 4e is not a super simple game, but it is easier to handle than PF in play. Most things are designed to be 'back loaded' complexity-wise, so once you have your character sheet set up complexity doesn't tend to show up so much at the table during play.
So, if the primary desire is for a very simple game, then the best you can do with 4e is to use Essentials, which does reduce the complexity of setup for some classes of characters (wizards are still pretty much the same as ever though). Even so rolling up a 4e character is never going to be anything near as simple as doing a Basic character. OTOH it isn't like the math is overwhelming. You can still do up a level 1 PC in 10 minutes if you know the system.
You can also get DDI and use the character builder, which does all the 'fill in the modifiers' stuff for you and makes a nice character sheet. Of course it is not free, you pay $7-10 a month depending on length of subscription (1 year is $72). On the flip side you get all of Dragon and Dungeon and a Compendium that lists every power, class, monster, item, etc in a searchable database. This can save you a lot in buying books you won't use much and is vastly better than flipping through books all the time. CB puts a lot of rules text on the character sheet too, so that really helps in play.
Realistically it is all a matter of taste. If the group is totally happy with Basic/AD&D and that's what they want, then you may be perfectly happy with that. If you want a game with more sophisticated rules and classes that are all pretty close to equally capable in and out of combat then 4e may be a good choice.
You can buy a Red Box for something under $20 and try it. That only gives you a couple levels, but there's an adventure and enough stuff to test out the game and see how it works for you. Worst case you're not out a huge chunk of money. The other Essentials products have nice counters and maps and some adventures too if you go that way. It isn't a cheap game exactly, but you do get a lot of good stuff for your money, and it isn't really more expensive than other similar games.
