Iron Sky
Procedurally Generated
Thornir Alekeg said:I think what they wrote back makes a ton of sense. On a night where they weren't going to be able to play what they were hoping for, they end up with pre-gen characters in which they have no investment, to play a game that only a portion of the rules are available for in an adventure designed around those partial rules.
Honestly, I think it would be hard to get most people to really enjoy that, unless they were doing it specifically because they wanted to playtest 4e.
Once 4e is out in full, people have a chance to digest the rules a little, and more importantly have a chance to make their own PCs, imagining the things they will be able to do with them as they grow and play in a campaign where what they do might matter beyond the end of the next fight, there will probably be a little more enthusiasm.
This was the same experience I had. My characters saw trying out 4e not from a "another system to try out, interesting" perspective, but from a "wait, this means we have to wait another week before we play your game again? Our characters are pre-made? *sigh*"
They were polite enough to give it a try, but two of them quit early...
I chose to take it as a compliment about my current campaign - as the OP probably should - even if it was hard to have so much enthusiasm for running 4e and have them not mirror it.