D&D 4E How is the 4e announcement affecting your game groups?

[Hunter In Darkness]

well i really wanted to be pro-4e but thats not gonna happen it seems. and with the newer stuff that come out the fre in my group who didnt care have come over to the anti-4e side[FR im looking at u] so as more stuff comes out the more anti-4e the ones who didnt care become .

 

[Steely Dan]

As I'm the DM they will play (gladly) whatever edition of the game I am implementing in our current campaign.

 

[Wolfspider]

No one in my regular six-person gaming group is even remotely interested in the new edition. In fact, it would be fair to say that most of them are disgusted with most of the changes that they have read about.

I will pick up the three corebooks and see if there is anything I can use in 3.5, such as a reduced skill list (which I already use in d20 modern) and perhaps better grappling rules. I might even adopt something like the "bloodied" rules.

I think it's rather amusing that of all my group, I am the most open-minded about the new edition--and I really don't like what I've heard much at all.

 

[jolt]

We've wrapped up our 3.5 campaign and will not be switching to 4E. Likely, we will not be playing D&D for our fantasy needs anymore. None one in our group has been impressed enough by 4E to consider a switch but since we were thinking of moving away from D&D anyway, 4E just hastened the inevitable I think.

jolt

 

[Steely Dan]

The new edition can't come fast enough for us. We were experiencing edition fatigue for at least a year before we had a name for it.

Us too, that's why we've ported over many changes form Saga, implemented some variants from UA, and a few house-rules to make 3.5 less clunky/more fun/better math.

3.5 looked great on paper, but we found it broke down after playing solidly for over a year, especially at the higher levels.

The math of 3rd Ed is completely out of whack (ACs vs. Attacks, spell DCs etc).

 

[Greg K]

We are not planning on switching.

1) The changes we wanted (i.e., getting rid of vancian, adding combat maneuvers) are not implemented in a way we like. We think the third party sources that we use are better mechanically.

2) We don't like many of the other mechanical changes and feel they were unneccesary and ruin the game for us: the skill consolidation, the Star Wars skill system, MMV bleeding, the monster design philosophy and over simplification of monsters, assigning racial disadvantages (corruptible, greedy, etc.)

3) disagree with leaving out several current classes for future products while making the warlock and Warlord core.

4) disagree with removing gnomes and halflings core and adding dragonborn and tieflings to core (we think dragonborn and tieflings are fine to introduce as player races in the MM or in a seperate campaign setting book).

5) Having to buy new books without backwards compatability

6) Talent trees, splitting the elves, and the Feywild are good changes, but don't outweigh the above negatives. Splitting the elves and the Feywild are easy to implement quicky as housefules. As for talent trees, we have not seen how they will be implemented for DND (we no longer have confidence in WOTC's R&D)

7. We hope one of the third party companies will just put out a pdf with a talent tree system for 3.x.

8) We may just switch to True20 and Rolemaster for our fantasy gaming as we are concerned about future availability of the 3.x products (both WOTC and third party) that we do like and use.

 

[Dragonblade]

4e can't come fast enough for me. I am DMing Pathfinder right now. I will finish the current Pathfinder game and then am dropping my Pathfinder subscription until Pathfinder goes to 4e.

I have 4 players, they are either upgrading, or won't be playing in my game anymore because I'm not DMing 3.5 once 4e comes out. All of them except one are fence sitters, this will be the nudge they need to switch.

I play in two other groups, one running AoW, and the other running Savage Tide. We will finish both of those games and then switch to 4e. The DM for the Savage Tide game plays in my Pathfinder game, I know he is switching because he already confirmed that he was.

The DM for AoW is also interested in 4e and plans to switch. We only have one player that is anti-4e. And he will switch because the rest of us will chip in and buy him a PHB as a surprise present. He'll grumble but will turn to the darkside considering he is getting the book for free.

Out of 9 total players in our circle of gaming friends (3 of which also DM), we have 1 anti-4e, 4 pro-4e (including all the DMs), and 5 people who don't care as long as they get to play something.

 

[Ashrem Bayle]

I've got two groups. Group one has dropped D&D entirely in favor of GURPS 4th edition and Mage: the Awakening.
They/We have a wait and see attitude about D&D4e and that will determine whether or not we want to give it a try or write D&D off for good.

Group 2 is in the middle of a 3.5 game now. They/We will either start using GURPS as well, or use 4e if we like it well enough.

 

[Sleeping Dragon]

Friday tabletop group, playing Warhammer:

There are four of us in this group, and we've all burned out on 3.0/3.5 (our last D&D campaign with this group was in 2005 and that was a very heavily house ruled, low magic, low powered group.) Me, my wife, and our GM are all sort of pro-4e, insofar as it seems to sound more interesting than 3rd Edition. The other player seems to have a quite negative impression of 4e, but I expect he'd give it a go if we decided to switch. That seems unlikely for this group though - there's a new Warhammer adventure path coming out around the same time as 4e and we'll probably try that instead.

Saturday OpenRPG group, playing 3.5:

We're playing 3.5 in this group primarily because our DM wanted to - previously I'd run an eighteen month long Iron Heroes campaign but that was my fourth straight long term campaign and I wanted a break. There are six of us in this group (me, my wife, and four players not in the Friday group) and we're all vaguely pro-4e. Our DM's said he'd consider converting his campaign if it wasn't too much trouble but as it's got quite a lot of house rules I expect it'll remain a 3.5 campaign. I want to run Dark Harbour (an IH module) for this group at some point, and my wife is working on converting her Iron Heroes setting to use the Warhammer rules, so we're fairly set for things to run for this group and if we run a long term 4th Ed campaign it won't be soon. We're likely to end up running a few 4th Edition one-offs though to test the new edition and give us a change of pace.

 

[Desdichado]

I wonder. If, and I don't mean to be anti-4e or anything but if 4e flops. What will happen to the brand.

Scary thought.

I need someone to hold me.