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Message: <blockquote data-quote="bramadan" data-source="post: 4118701" data-attributes="member: 1064">First of all I have to say I find it really odd how people (in this thread for example) are attempting to convince intelligent articulate man who has clearly decided he does not like something that *in fact* he likes it after all <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f61b.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":P" title="Stick out tongue    :P"  data-smilie="7"data-shortname=":P" />Let it go folks - fact that you think you will like DnD4 (and I certainly think I will) does not get diminished by someone else not liking it and for a whole lot of people - Psion for one - there may well be excellent reasons not to like it.That said here is my history with DnD:I started with 1st Ed before UA and *loved it* it is probably rose-tinted glasses now because I did not know better then but early ADnD are some of my most cherished DnD memories. Then UA came and we had a big campaign under it and while it was fun it was such a massive power-creep that it shook our perception of what the DnD is supposed to be like. (It did not help that I have had most idiotic stroke of - witnessed - luck rolling the character for that campaign making me significantly more effective then the rest of the - rather effective - party, memory of which always makes me leery of the roll-up-stats rule)After that campaign we played Rolemaster and some Warhammer (1st ed) for a while as we were not sure if UA made game better or worse. ADnD 2 came about that time and we switched reluctantly though the flavor of it felt very disappointing at the time. I remember feeling very much how they are killing DnD with the 2nd edition. Gone was a quirky Gygaxian world, replaced with bland lawsuit-proof 1980ies fantasy. In particular I remember being offended at the sidelining and renaming of demons and devils. I also very much did not like what they did to the official settings. Gone was Greyhawk which I loved and Forgotten Realms changed from the very sparse but atmospheric "Old Gray Box" to the new overly detailed, hyper powerful, little bit of everything world dominated by the 2-dimensional pulp-fantasy NPCs.Strangely enough, most of what we got from the 2ed turned out to be in the fluff department. We have barely switched over when they came out with the Greyhawk "From the Ashes" which to this day remains one of my favorite RPG products of all times and the excellent line that followed it. While I was primary DM for Greyhawk I ended up a player in likewise amazing Birthright setting. Mixture of politics, adventure and mythology that Birthright offered impressed us quite profoundly and we played it a lot (and still have full set of all the BR published products). Strangely enough I remember very little of the specificities of 2ed rules, they were imperfect for sure but they did not bother me much. We avoided the whole series of "Complete X" splatbooks as they did not really fit either Greyhawk or Birthright and this missed out on the UA-type powercreep in the second edition. By the late 1990ies my big Greyhawk campaign was over and we played RPGs somewhat less alternating between DnD/Birthright, RuneQuest and Rolemaster. Arrival of the DnD3 pulled us back to the "mother-game" and I started a new Birthright campaign this time under DnD3 rules. Our relation to DnD 3 was about the exact opposite to that with ADnD 2. Initially we were full of enthusiasm. I loved the new simplified mechanic and was very happy with combat rules that encouraged miniatures play (I love painting the little buggers and have very many) system looked mathematically sound and robust and I was sure that it will support us much better then 2ed ever will. Turned out it was not really so. I managed conversion of BR to 3ed without too much problems initially (there was some excellent support for that back then) and first 4-5 levels went on without difficulty. However, faster progression of the PCs under DnD 3 coupled with the incredible power-curve of the magic using classes  meant that already by level 7-8 I had to go out of my way to deal with the party wizard. Many standard tropes of pseudo-medieval world such as Castles, armies and intrigue (all integral parts of Birthright setting) were pointless in the face of the wizard with improved invisibility, fly, locate object, clairvoyance and enough fire-power to sink a battleship. Very early in the campaign I had to remove the PCs from the main zone of the Birthright world where I was originally planning to involve them into the high politics, and dump them into much more "classic" DnD wilderness-questing sort of campaign. Even then, wizard (and to lesser extent cleric) vastly overshadowed the rest of the party in their importance. By the time party was level 10-11 I was already experiencing the problem that anything that could survive 1-2 rounds against wizard will be powerful enough to destroy the party. Party has become ultimate glass cannon, or rather, party has become irrelevant addendum to the glass cannon that was their mage. By this point no-one other then the mage player was having too much fun and we decided to scrap that campaign and start with something else. That was the end of my playing 3ed as it was written, making it - as far as I was concerned - least successful edition of DnD. I am sure that in retrospect it was possible to guard against the sort of thing that happened there and that someone with more 3ed experience would be able to modify the setting and enemies and prolong the shelf-life of the party for a bit longer, but I was not really in the mood to be creating the setting that accounted for stealth-flying fireball spewing platforms of death in its basic premisses. The BR 3ed campaign was a great success in a sense of getting together a wonderful gaming group but in terms of the rules and their effect on the game it was a disaster.For the next campaign I created a setting of my own that differed very much from the standard DnD premises. Magic was practically non-existent and the core activities of the PCs were to involve detective work, assassination and espionage, with a generous helping of political intrigue. Originally I intended to use basic core of d20 rules (sans magic using classes of any kind and with more then generous helping of my own house rules etc...) by the time campaign was getting of the ground the rules would have at the most generous have to be considered an entirely separate OGL game. Neu Ungren campaign proved a great success (and great joy in world-building) but it was despite more then because of d20-ish rules. Entire mechanical system felt jerry-rigged and by the time campaign fell apart due to RL reasons (around level 16 or so) I was very much ready to ditch the d20 entirely and make my own rules from scratch. At this point I thought I am done with DnD and its derivatives for good. After the Neu Ungren campaign our RPGs again got reduced somewhat but not for too long. Reprinting of the Warhammer came somewhere arround this time and I was curious as to the applicability of those rules for future Neu Ungren campaigns. I picked them up, liked them and, having remembered our old Warhammer days had the urge to DM in the Empire. I collected the old "Enemy Within" campaign and despite not being particularly fond of pre-written adventures had a blast GMing that to a slightly changed crew for the next year or so. By the end of the Enemy Within I was a bit spent on GMing and wanted to work on the rules for Neu Ungren so I passed on the baton to my old Birthright DM (and best friend) who decided he will run us through Great Pendragon Campaign (which is still current). In the mean time another of our old players was getting ready to move away to England so I hurried up with my Neu Ungren rules so as to be able to GM a farewell mini-campaign in Neu Ungren under the new rules. That campaign ended day before yesterday. People have also picked Dark Heresy and there is interest in giving those a try at some point in the future. In the light of all these things to do vis RP and the fairly bitter taste that DnD last left in my mouth, I was fairly uninterested when I heard DnD4 announcement while at Gen Con last year. However, as the information trickled out I became more and more enthusiastic. Most of my main gripes about DnD seem to be addressed, from overemphasis on magic-users, through degenerate fighter strategies to setting shattering spells at trivially low levels. DnD 4 looked more and more like my sort of heroic fantasy game. What pushed me from curious to interested was the introduction of Warlord - class I wanted to play ever since my 17 intelligence 11 strength, Henry V wannabe 2ed Birthright fighter, prince of Roesone. When I heard about Warlord I decided to buy the books and play at least in RPGA LFR if nowhere else. That lead me back to these boards and more and more information that made game seem ever more appealing. I now intend to run a 4ed campaign with heavy props (I actually plan to assemble the Dwarvenforge Maze to go with my minis for it) in the 1st edition style of heavy monster bashing and sword-and-sorcery plot line. It must have struck some heavy nostalgia chords with my folks as the response so far has been most enthusiastic. We even seem like we will be getting one or even two brand new RPG players into the mix with that new campaign. The game very much goes on.</blockquote>

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