Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="keterys" data-source="post: 5046436" data-attributes="member: 43019">Honestly, I think the best trick is to play some very different games, to get a feel for things. Something not at all D&D, so you can see what's good or bad about things, and what you liked or didn't like, and different ways people approach things.Piratecat's where I'd go next - take it all a bit less seriously and stretch the system out a little bit. I had an interesting experience with a 4e group I just started running for the other day, for a group I've run lots before - GURPS, White Wolf, Shadowrun, 3e, etc - but first time 4e. The group had been playing 4e for a year or so before that and were pretty 'eh' on it, but I just wanted to give a shot at it for them before they dropped it.First session, I've got a villain whose dangling a child over shark-infested water via a chain. Sadly, he lacked a moustache to twirl, but stock movie stuff. And the bard who fancies herself a throwing knife specialist goes 'I wish I had a power to throw a knife in between links of the chain to stop her falling' and I go 'Sounds good, make your attack'. And she was baffled. Didn't have that specific power on the sheet, so how could she do it? Well, I said 'What, it's D&D, you can do whatever you think about if it sounds good. But if you really care, there's a chart in the DMG page 42, all for improvised stunts and such'. So she did, and it went well.After that, it's time for treasure. These guys are thinking 4e items suck, cause it's all "Once per day, you can shift 1 square. And like it". Well one of the items they get are gauntlets with a line:Power (Limited): Free Action. Use this power when you hit with a melee attack. Add a +5 bonus to the damage roll and push the target 1 square.Limited? What's that? "Okay, here's the deal. You can use 1 limited item power per tier per encounter. So... now, just one per encounter. One item, can use it every encounter. Five items, only one. When you guys hit 11th, hopefully some day, it'll bump up to two per encounter." "Cool!" It's not hard to give out custom items - you can even type things into the character builder or print out cards with all the details (that's what we do, one of the players prints up cards with the stats on 'em)After the session, one of the players goes. "Err, sorry earlier when we were trying to gather information, and you were asking what I wanted to know when I made Streetwise checks. Umm, I just got used to doing skill challenges and we'd just roll some stuff and stuff would happen, without really thinking about, y'know, talking to people"So, yeah, I think a lot of people have got the blinders on for 4e. Some of that is certainly the character builder. I mean, I remember when 3e came out, I was making new classes, making variant d20 systems, right in day 1. But people don't talk about doing that for 4e often. It's interesting.What I really want is a 4e Unearthed Arcana. Whole book of 'change the whole damn game' to really let people feel a bit more free. The DMG2's everyone get enhancement bonuses was a good start. That even got in the character builder <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" />Anyhow, tangented enough. Go nuts, play games, have fun til you're having more fun. Good luck <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>

Verification