SteveC
Doing the best imitation of myself
I think the biggest issue with the playtest is that there isn't much there to work with.
I've played two sessions, and run two as well, and my group has pretty much gotten what they're going to out of it.
The playtest module, the caves of chaos, is basically an unchanged version of what came out in 1979. I played the adventure in 1979 (as did several of my players) and adventure design has come a long way then. Rooms filled with monsters that are nothing but ever increasing bags of hit points that do ever increasing damage is not that interesting in 2012.
(Now the caves do have a few more interesting encounters, yes, but that's about 80% of the adventure...)
We haven't got the rules for character creation, so we're playing characters without knowing all the hows-and-whys behind them, so we're left with the notion that "WotC is not very good at making pre-gens" (Rogue with 8 wis, I'm looking at you!)
So there are not, to my mind, that many things to do with the playtest itself. Certainly not enough to make a mini campaign out of it that can keep me interested as a player.
With all of that said, it may sound like I'm hatin' on the new edition, but I still have a lot of hope: backgrounds and themes sound very interesting, and the advantage rules have been very popular. What I am looking for is something I can really sink my teeth into. Until then, I'm about done with the playtest unless my group asks for it .... which I doubt they will.
I've played two sessions, and run two as well, and my group has pretty much gotten what they're going to out of it.
The playtest module, the caves of chaos, is basically an unchanged version of what came out in 1979. I played the adventure in 1979 (as did several of my players) and adventure design has come a long way then. Rooms filled with monsters that are nothing but ever increasing bags of hit points that do ever increasing damage is not that interesting in 2012.
(Now the caves do have a few more interesting encounters, yes, but that's about 80% of the adventure...)
We haven't got the rules for character creation, so we're playing characters without knowing all the hows-and-whys behind them, so we're left with the notion that "WotC is not very good at making pre-gens" (Rogue with 8 wis, I'm looking at you!)
So there are not, to my mind, that many things to do with the playtest itself. Certainly not enough to make a mini campaign out of it that can keep me interested as a player.
With all of that said, it may sound like I'm hatin' on the new edition, but I still have a lot of hope: backgrounds and themes sound very interesting, and the advantage rules have been very popular. What I am looking for is something I can really sink my teeth into. Until then, I'm about done with the playtest unless my group asks for it .... which I doubt they will.