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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Greenfaun" data-source="post: 4096311" data-attributes="member: 55366">I think I fall into this category too. My first exposure to D&D was the cartoon show, and soon afterwards I had a friend who had a bunch of weird cheap plastic D&D toys, and we'd make "Dungeons" out of blocks, fill them with monsters, and send in our G.I. Joes to fight the monsters. Those battles almost always ended in huge explosions levelling the block "dungeons" and killing any monsters left inside. I can still remember posing a toy grell (I think we called it a "brainsquid" at the time) so just one tentacle was pathetically protruding from a the pile of blocks that had crushed its squishy cerebral body. Good times. Then, in summer camp and even more in high school, I got exposed to the real thing. This is also about the time I started reading the novels, first the Dragonlance series and then a whole bunch of Forgotten Realms books, including the Icewind Dale trilogy. I liked D&D fine, but planescape and Darksun were awesome. The mechanics always seemed to be getting in between me and the game, though. Just the word "THAC0" still makes me want to throw miniatures against the wall. When a friend introduced me to Vampire: The Masquerade at my new high school in my junior year, I never looked back. Simple, elegant rules, easy dice resolutions, modern setting, closer-to-realistic violence, I was hooked. Mage and Werewolf were even more fun, and from there I branched out on my own to things like GURPS and HERO. Until recently, I had played 3rd edition once, for a short and unfinished campaign run by a friend at work, and it was a big improvement but still not my game. My other main exposure has been the Giant in the Playground site, because OotS was so great it got me paying attention to the forums. That's what led me to Eberron, which got me back into the game in a serious way. I am an Eberron fanboy, I've played Eberron games, tried and failed to run my own Eberron game, and gotten frustrated with 3e mechanics all over again. Low level play is too fragile and swingy, higher level play is dominated by magic... A sky-pirate just can't get a break. If I were to run an Eberron game now, I'd want to use so many houserules it might not be recognizeable, and almost certainly wouldn't be fun. Still, the shortcomings of 3.5 now annoy me in that irrational way that only applies to something that doesn't matter at all but is supposed to be fun and ISN'T.  I'm not sure I can ever ignore the problems and just enjoy the game, because I'm neurotic that way. 4e, though, looks like the D&D for me. I think it would be easy to use in campaigns styled after planescape, darksun, and eberron without much work. It has (supposedly) balanced character progression, faster combat, and big monster fights. The whole philosophy of the new edition seems better suited to me than the last couple incarnations. Sure, maybe it will get under my skin eventually too, but if it's what people are saying it is then that should take at least a couple years, right? <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /> Either way, I'm going to find a group to play with, and probably start my own game soon after it comes out. Should be fun. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /></blockquote>

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