Ruin Explorer
Legend
I don't often write about my games, but part of my group got together for our first 4E and I was surprised by a few things, so I thought I'd share. It was interesting to contrast their reactions to mine, too.
Roles - I was rather appalled by these at first, but these non-MMORPG players immediately thought that they were a good idea. My brother, working from a vaguely narrativist/Storyteller perspective, even, thought they were a good thing for the game. He compared them to how Trail of Cthulhu suggests players should play characters as stereotypical as possible, for example.
Multiclassing - Munchkin and I appalled, everyone else seemed to think this was reasonable, if potentially a little dull. Whilst to me it looks like a shocking change, most of them have played single classes most of the time, and I think classes like Swordmage may actually interest them more than a conventional Fighter/Mage might have! Shocking to me.
Races - Zero interest in Dragonborn, Eladrin mocked, but pleased with changes/improvements to other races.
Classes & Powers - Some worry about Wizards no longer being what they were, but otherwise the whole new system went down very well (though the Ranger point-blanked refused to call his abilities "exploits" haha), the whole at-will, encounter, daily deal making sense (some commentary on how daily isn't daily, of course) almost immediately (needed some reminding that they REALLY could use at-wills at will).
Chargen - Really noticeably faster. I wonder if it will bog down with future books, of course, but we shall see. I suspect not. Liked this a lot as it was a point we often bogged down in for hours before.
Combat - Ran really fast and with no problems, faster than the test combats I'd run. As expected fights last longer in rounds but take a similar time in real time given an encounter of similar "difficulty". This seems to produce more fun, so kudos to WotC for that.
HPs - The amount of HP monsters had caused some consternation. I can see why WotC is keen for us to mix many monster types together, because there's definate potential for this to get old. Took them a while to realize just how many HPs they effectively had via healing surges, too.
Skill use - Faster and smoother than previous editions due to the reduced number of skills. One thing we noticed is that a lot of actions didn't seem to be covered by any skill, or like maybe they'd be best with a skill + the non-default attribute (throwing a lasso/noose on to an iron spike high on a wall for example - seemed like maybe a Dungeoneering + Dex roll - we did it as a Dex check).
Conditions & Saving Throws - Oh god so much better handled, so much less confusing. People were much more aware of these and it worked very well.
Squares and 1-move diagonals - So much for my dislike of them. Nobody seemed to have much of a problem with this apart from a vague muttering about how moving diagonally was "cheating" (in a positive way). I have to admit that this is part of why combat moved along faster than previous games where we worked in our heads or on paper, though I'm interested to see how it copes with some of the profoundly 3D stuff we did (none of that in this adventure).
Minis - Didn't like, but were fine the idea of moving on a grid, so I think the solution is to use counters, easy enough fix.
Minions - Whilst most of them have played games with "mooks" and loved them, this seemed a little disjointed and they seemed a little disappointed and wierded-out that some skeletons could have 45 hp and the other could have 1 (I described them as being quite distinct in appearance). We'll see how this goes in future games.
Alignments - Much eye-rolling about the "don't be evil" (not like they ever are!), but Unaligned much preferred to "Neutral" and it's variants. Resident Instigator complained that no-one ever lets him be Chaotic Evil, but I suspect he'd be happier with Evil or Unaligned anyway. Chaotic Evil is too demanding!
Play in general - Seems to play a lot less unlike previous editions than I thought, maybe even feels a bit more like 2E than 3E, which is good because that's where our most positive D&D memories are. Certainly with descriptions and so on, this adventure didn't feel like an exercise purely in tactical combat or anything similar to that. We're not finished yet, so I may update this, but overall, I have to say the reaction to 4E so far from my groups has been strongly positive.
It makes me glad that I picked up 4E before this GSL controversy, because I have to admit, had I read the GSL before 4E's release, I'm pretty sure I'd have waited a few months (at least) before picking it up, maybe even gone over to Paizo, and I don't know if that'd actually have been more fun.
The only real big worry for me about 4E remains the quantity and quality of pre-gen adventures. I've always made use of these (though the one I ran here was homebrew), and enjoyed Paizo's slightly edgy stuff particularly. I'll be very sad if we don't get stuff of similar quality (and slightly edgy feel, I have to say, we really dig that) for 4E, from whoever produces adventures for it (I know we won't get it from WotC - in the whole of 3E, I can't think of a single WotC adventure I liked - ignoring Dungeon).
Still, back on topic, surprised at how positive the reaction was, and we had a lot of fun. So, yay for 4E, I guess
Roles - I was rather appalled by these at first, but these non-MMORPG players immediately thought that they were a good idea. My brother, working from a vaguely narrativist/Storyteller perspective, even, thought they were a good thing for the game. He compared them to how Trail of Cthulhu suggests players should play characters as stereotypical as possible, for example.
Multiclassing - Munchkin and I appalled, everyone else seemed to think this was reasonable, if potentially a little dull. Whilst to me it looks like a shocking change, most of them have played single classes most of the time, and I think classes like Swordmage may actually interest them more than a conventional Fighter/Mage might have! Shocking to me.
Races - Zero interest in Dragonborn, Eladrin mocked, but pleased with changes/improvements to other races.
Classes & Powers - Some worry about Wizards no longer being what they were, but otherwise the whole new system went down very well (though the Ranger point-blanked refused to call his abilities "exploits" haha), the whole at-will, encounter, daily deal making sense (some commentary on how daily isn't daily, of course) almost immediately (needed some reminding that they REALLY could use at-wills at will).
Chargen - Really noticeably faster. I wonder if it will bog down with future books, of course, but we shall see. I suspect not. Liked this a lot as it was a point we often bogged down in for hours before.
Combat - Ran really fast and with no problems, faster than the test combats I'd run. As expected fights last longer in rounds but take a similar time in real time given an encounter of similar "difficulty". This seems to produce more fun, so kudos to WotC for that.
HPs - The amount of HP monsters had caused some consternation. I can see why WotC is keen for us to mix many monster types together, because there's definate potential for this to get old. Took them a while to realize just how many HPs they effectively had via healing surges, too.
Skill use - Faster and smoother than previous editions due to the reduced number of skills. One thing we noticed is that a lot of actions didn't seem to be covered by any skill, or like maybe they'd be best with a skill + the non-default attribute (throwing a lasso/noose on to an iron spike high on a wall for example - seemed like maybe a Dungeoneering + Dex roll - we did it as a Dex check).
Conditions & Saving Throws - Oh god so much better handled, so much less confusing. People were much more aware of these and it worked very well.
Squares and 1-move diagonals - So much for my dislike of them. Nobody seemed to have much of a problem with this apart from a vague muttering about how moving diagonally was "cheating" (in a positive way). I have to admit that this is part of why combat moved along faster than previous games where we worked in our heads or on paper, though I'm interested to see how it copes with some of the profoundly 3D stuff we did (none of that in this adventure).
Minis - Didn't like, but were fine the idea of moving on a grid, so I think the solution is to use counters, easy enough fix.
Minions - Whilst most of them have played games with "mooks" and loved them, this seemed a little disjointed and they seemed a little disappointed and wierded-out that some skeletons could have 45 hp and the other could have 1 (I described them as being quite distinct in appearance). We'll see how this goes in future games.
Alignments - Much eye-rolling about the "don't be evil" (not like they ever are!), but Unaligned much preferred to "Neutral" and it's variants. Resident Instigator complained that no-one ever lets him be Chaotic Evil, but I suspect he'd be happier with Evil or Unaligned anyway. Chaotic Evil is too demanding!
Play in general - Seems to play a lot less unlike previous editions than I thought, maybe even feels a bit more like 2E than 3E, which is good because that's where our most positive D&D memories are. Certainly with descriptions and so on, this adventure didn't feel like an exercise purely in tactical combat or anything similar to that. We're not finished yet, so I may update this, but overall, I have to say the reaction to 4E so far from my groups has been strongly positive.
It makes me glad that I picked up 4E before this GSL controversy, because I have to admit, had I read the GSL before 4E's release, I'm pretty sure I'd have waited a few months (at least) before picking it up, maybe even gone over to Paizo, and I don't know if that'd actually have been more fun.
The only real big worry for me about 4E remains the quantity and quality of pre-gen adventures. I've always made use of these (though the one I ran here was homebrew), and enjoyed Paizo's slightly edgy stuff particularly. I'll be very sad if we don't get stuff of similar quality (and slightly edgy feel, I have to say, we really dig that) for 4E, from whoever produces adventures for it (I know we won't get it from WotC - in the whole of 3E, I can't think of a single WotC adventure I liked - ignoring Dungeon).
Still, back on topic, surprised at how positive the reaction was, and we had a lot of fun. So, yay for 4E, I guess
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