D&D 4E D&D 4E fans: what do you like about 4E?

I'd take it! Sure, I'd love to get VTT support, new printings that incorporated errata, the return of D&D Insider's tools, and maybe even some new 3PP material.
There is a 4e Foundry module. Fantasy Grounds supports 4e natively. Roll20 also does 4e. None of them are perfect. All of them require extra work on the set up.

The 4e discord channel has some great resources for getting all of these up and running.
 

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Yes. It's shocking it took 4 editions to get a DMG that actually addressed this.

(Well, in fairness, D&D for Dummies taught you how to run D&D during the 3e era -- but is not a core book.)
I would say that Moldvay taught how to run the Moldvay edition of the game. So did the Mentzer version. The Rules Cyclopedia…eh.

I have the pdf of AD&D (1st edition), and I can’t tell you if it explains how to run D&D, because it is a challenging read, and I don’t care enough, at present, about running 1e to plow through it all. Questing Beast has a series of videos where he reads through the 1e DMG, adding his own comments here and there.

The 2e DMG isn’t any help; it doesn’t even have guidelines for building your first dungeon. There is a separate book, something about catacombs, that supposedly does this important job. 2e is a different game than Moldvay, though, from what I can tell; it is a set of rules for telling amazing stories rather than rules for running a dungeon crawl.
I don’t have the 3e books, and I only have the 5e starter set and the free “basic” rules, which I can’t really speak to.

The 4e Essentials DM Book doesn’t do a good job, in my opinion, because it doesn’t have guidelines for creating a dungeon. The Essentials Red Box DM book has a little bit (it advises to refold the map that came with it to create different dungeons).

So; 4e core DMG is my favorite, so far.
 



Kannik

Hero
This thread has made me starting thinking about running 4e again. May have to dig out the Chaos Scar.

One of my gaming white whales is to run Scales of War levels 1-30 with the same party (well, the same ship-of-theseus-party* at least)

Go for it! Our group just started up a new 4e game, starting with the first Scales of War module...

(As a fun backstory, the current DM had never played 4e, having avoided it upon the 'advice' of his gaming groups at the time. But with the passage of time and growth they became interested, so I ran a 4e one-shot about a year ago, and they enjoyed it. Fast forward to this year, and through some scheduling kerfuffles we all showed up for our game but with no one ready to run something. So I snagged a 4e adventure with some pregens, quickly set up an Owlbear Rodeo room for it (we're all remote these days), and went through the module in a couple of sessions. It really piqued their interest to see what it was like to DM 4e and so... here we are! They're the one that picked Scales of War almost at random; not sure how far we'll go with it or if we'll pivot to something else (he prefers to run his own adventures vs prebuilt). I'm playing a kendrii (a foxtaur, using the Tauric Races supplement I epublished) bard with a fey mist fox companion, and it's just as fun as can be. :) )
 

I would say that Moldvay taught how to run the Moldvay edition of the game. So did the Mentzer version. The Rules Cyclopedia…eh.

I have the pdf of AD&D (1st edition), and I can’t tell you if it explains how to run D&D, because it is a challenging read, and I don’t care enough, at present, about running 1e to plow through it all. Questing Beast has a series of videos where he reads through the 1e DMG, adding his own comments here and there.

The 2e DMG isn’t any help; it doesn’t even have guidelines for building your first dungeon. There is a separate book, something about catacombs, that supposedly does this important job. 2e is a different game than Moldvay, though, from what I can tell; it is a set of rules for telling amazing stories rather than rules for running a dungeon crawl.
I don’t have the 3e books, and I only have the 5e starter set and the free “basic” rules, which I can’t really speak to.

The 4e Essentials DM Book doesn’t do a good job, in my opinion, because it doesn’t have guidelines for creating a dungeon. The Essentials Red Box DM book has a little bit (it advises to refold the map that came with it to create different dungeons).

So; 4e core DMG is my favorite, so far.
I’d say the 2e observation is accurate. It’s the edition that strobe hardwares to provide an experience like novels.
 

Retreater

Legend
One of my gaming white whales is to run Scales of War levels 1-30 with the same party (well, the same ship-of-theseus-party* at least)
Wouldn't it be cool if WotC released a Scales of War compilation of those adventures from those issues of Dungeon magazine? It's spread across 19 issues, and at $4.99 each, that amounts to around $95 to legally acquire the PDFs.
 

Wouldn't it be cool if WotC released a Scales of War compilation of those adventures from those issues of Dungeon magazine? It's spread across 19 issues, and at $4.99 each, that amounts to around $95 to legally acquire the PDFs.
I made sure to grab them all before the online tools sub died. There’s a couple of decent heroic tier modules in there but it’s start to get more coherent at paragon and epic. The opening scene in the first module is an all timer.
 


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