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Message: <blockquote data-quote="delericho" data-source="post: 5472398" data-attributes="member: 22424">Eh, there's some truth in what he says, but not a huge amount (for my group, at least).If I'm honest, we came to 4e predisposed not to like it (due to poor marketing). It read much better than we had expected. It plays better than it reads.But we really tried to give 4e a fair try (indeed, for the first time ever, all the players went out and bought PHBs).What killed 4e for us was the combat grind, which we hit immediately. The first encounter in "Kobold Hall" is the PCs vs half a dozen kobolds. (For a useful comparison, the very first adventure we played in 3e was "The Burning Plague" which featured similar encounters vs small numbers of kobolds.)The difference was very marked. That encounter in 3e would have taken us a few minutes to play through. Even on day 1 with 3e, encounters with kobolds were quick and simple. Under 4e, the encounter took 50 minutes to play out, and ran long after the interesting tactical options had been explored.The remaining encounters were much the same. By the time the adventure ended in a TPK, we had already decided this was not the game for us, and that group has never looked back.I have run 4e exactly once since then (with a different group), which was intended to be a run through of the new "Tomb of Horrors". Again, the adventure starts with what should be a quick, throwaway encounter to set the scene.It lasted more than 2.5 hours, out of out 3 hour session. (And, again, ran long after the interesting options were exhausted.)I cannot tell a story under those conditions. One encounter per session, and one session every two weeks, would mean that the plot would advance more slowly than "Lost".(Sorry, this wasn't supposed to turn into an anti-4e rant. The grind issues are well-known, and 4e is what it is. And, indeed, I'm happy to play 4e, especially if the DM stays away from WotC's awful pregen adventures.)The bottom line (for us at least) is that while using the older format would have reduced the culture shock of coming to the game, it is a fairly minor point. Most of the damage was done before the game even released, and the grind issue sealed the deal. Neither of these would be helped by a different format.</blockquote>

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