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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Rel" data-source="post: 4386633" data-attributes="member: 99">A couple things:First up when I got the PHB and paged through it, I was not jazzed in the least.  I find it uninspiring and frankly a bit ugly.  I can't place myself in the mind of a person who has never gamed before but I have a suspicion that if I were, and if I picked up a 4e PHB and paged through it, I'd put it back down and walk away.Having now played the game and gotten more familiar with it, I have a greater understanding of why this is.  The 4e PHB is almost the complete ruleset.  In fact I ran my first couple 4e games using ONLY the PHB and had no difficulties.  It reads more like a textbook than a "portal to adventure!"  Even though I kinda like the game, I don't think the PHB makes a very good first impression.  YMMV.The other first impression that I got was "this is a completely different game!"  Again, having run and played it a bit (though not a lot) I've refined that opinion as well.  I now feel like the stuff that is the same is the same and the stuff that is different is very different.For example, I think that the PC's options in combat are very different.  They feel different than any previous edition and the At Will/Encounter/Daily structure is very different.  But the combat round is structured almost identical to 3.x.  Move/Standard/Free vs. Move/Standard/Minor/Free makes the flow of combat pretty much the same as far as I'm concerned.Skill checks are nearly identical in usage even though you use a different method of getting the total bonus that a PC has in their skills.  Skill Challenges are very different and not really much to my liking but I understand why they are there.  I will probably tend to use something much more free-form than that for my 4e games.Anyway, from somebody who at first glance even said the dreaded words, "This doesn't look like D&D", I now maintain that while it may not LOOK like D&D, I think it plays an awful lot like D&D in a majority of respects.  But the differences are significant and I could see some folks having a tough time swallowing them.</blockquote>

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