Keldryn
Adventurer
... and it was AWESOME. Everyone had a lot of fun and miraculously only one PC died. 
I've been running a 4e game every other Saturday night for the past few weeks, and some of my players were getting frustrated with it. Two weeks ago, we finished off The Slaying Stone after three 4-5 hour sessions, and I asked for some feedback. The overall consensus was:
My wife and my sister's boyfriend both said they had way more fun with last night's game. I certainly had more fun DMing it, as it was almost like it hadn't been 20+ years since I'd run it. My sister and her friend both had fun and said they could go either way with continuing the Basic game or continuing with the 4e game. It looked to me like everybody had more fun last night and were more into the game. Everybody was laughing a lot.
And it didn't take long for the players to look away from their character sheets and starting thinking a bit more creatively. There was a 5' square pit trap in a hallway that was triggered, and instead of looking to make a Jump or Athletics skill check, they instinctively decided that they might have trouble making the jump wearing their heavy armor, so my wife's fighter (she rolled an 18 for Strength) threw my sister's halfling across the pit. I ruled that the thief could use his climb walls ability to Spider-Man it across. The door on the other side was locked and the thief failed to pick it, so they were going to try using some rope to pull the others across when the elf's player decided to go back to one of the other rooms and drag the dining table over to use as a bridge. It wasn't necessarily the epitome of creative thinking, but it was so refreshing to me as the DM to see the players do something other than look over their powers, feats, and skills when confronted with an obstacle.
On the other hand, it surprised me how quickly even the novice players got into the routine of listening for noises, checking for traps, and taking turns opening while everybody else stands around the corner every time they encountered a door. There weren't even any traps on any of the doors. Of course, that's what wandering monsters are for, but I had decided not to do that as I thought that some of the players may need to ease into old-school play.
My wife said last night after everyone left that she actually felt like she was role-playing her character, whereas in the 4e game she felt like she was moving a chess piece around and interacting with numbers. She said that she actually understands now why people find these games fun and want to play them (and not so much with the 4e game, which she is starting to find tedious). She had seen a few 3.5 sessions about 3 years back and more or less made her own "20 minutes of fun in 4 hours" observation.
I wasn't as prepared for the game as I would have liked to have been (heh, when are DMs ever?), and I would put more effort into story elements and hooks to motivate characters in a longer-term game, but I have to say that it was a rousing success. After talking to the players before they left last night, it looks like we may be putting the 4e game on indefinite hold and sticking with the Basic game for a while. Now I need to decide which flavor of that game to go with if we're going to be playing it regularly. Labyrinth Lord with some elements of its Advanced Edition Companion might be the best fit.
Anyone else had this same experience? I read a comment on a forum recently (it could have been here, but I think it might have been on DF) to the effect that "3rd Edition D&D gave me what I thought I wanted" and it's resonating with me quite strongly right now. After years of complaining about D&D/AD&D with its arbitrary restrictions, lack of character customization, and non-unified mechanics (do I want to roll high or low on d6/d20/d100?), it is just so refreshing and downright liberating to come back to it and rediscover just how easy it is for novice players to pick up, how smoothly the game runs, and how much awesome fun it is to play.
I've been running a 4e game every other Saturday night for the past few weeks, and some of my players were getting frustrated with it. Two weeks ago, we finished off The Slaying Stone after three 4-5 hour sessions, and I asked for some feedback. The overall consensus was:
- combats take way too long (60-90 min on average)
- during combat, it takes too long for a individual player's turn to come up again
- most of the players felt that they had too many options each round of combat: 2 at-will powers, 1 encounter power, 1 daily power, a second wind (encounter power), usually a racial encounter power, an action point, and often an additional power granted by a feat or class feature. Novice players said it made them more afraid to make the wrong choice.
- there is way too much of this +1/+2/-1/-2 to ally's/enemy's attack/defense until the end of somebody's next turn, which most players found very hard to remember (I have this problem too)
- keeping track of hit points, a separate pool of temporary hit points, healing surges and failed death saves is confusing
- my wife, who had never played D&D before but is a voracious reader of fantasy novels. She loves the 2D JRPGs and Zelda-type games and has played many of the ones on the SNES, Playstation, and DS, so she is familiar with many of the concepts, despite not having played pencil & paper games. She's primarily playing because I would like her to, and because we have a 9 month-old baby and she wants to socialize with adults. She plays a two-weapon Ranger in the 4e game.
- my sister, who started playing D&D about the same time that I did (1987), with the Mentzer Basic Set. She'd played every edition through 3.5 and actually has more experience playing 3.x than I do. She's a Bard in the 4e game.
- my sister's boyfriend, who played D&D a couple of times in high school (probably AD&D 2e). He's only playing because my sister wants him to, and he gets antsy after sitting at the table past the 4 hour mark. He was playing a Slayer in the 4e game and still found that he had too many options to consider each round.
- a friend of my sister's, who started with 3rd Edition and is a walking encyclopedia of 3.x knowledge (and is getting there with 4e as well). He's a Druid in the 4e game.
My wife and my sister's boyfriend both said they had way more fun with last night's game. I certainly had more fun DMing it, as it was almost like it hadn't been 20+ years since I'd run it. My sister and her friend both had fun and said they could go either way with continuing the Basic game or continuing with the 4e game. It looked to me like everybody had more fun last night and were more into the game. Everybody was laughing a lot.
And it didn't take long for the players to look away from their character sheets and starting thinking a bit more creatively. There was a 5' square pit trap in a hallway that was triggered, and instead of looking to make a Jump or Athletics skill check, they instinctively decided that they might have trouble making the jump wearing their heavy armor, so my wife's fighter (she rolled an 18 for Strength) threw my sister's halfling across the pit. I ruled that the thief could use his climb walls ability to Spider-Man it across. The door on the other side was locked and the thief failed to pick it, so they were going to try using some rope to pull the others across when the elf's player decided to go back to one of the other rooms and drag the dining table over to use as a bridge. It wasn't necessarily the epitome of creative thinking, but it was so refreshing to me as the DM to see the players do something other than look over their powers, feats, and skills when confronted with an obstacle.
On the other hand, it surprised me how quickly even the novice players got into the routine of listening for noises, checking for traps, and taking turns opening while everybody else stands around the corner every time they encountered a door. There weren't even any traps on any of the doors.
Of course, that's what wandering monsters are for, but I had decided not to do that as I thought that some of the players may need to ease into old-school play.My wife said last night after everyone left that she actually felt like she was role-playing her character, whereas in the 4e game she felt like she was moving a chess piece around and interacting with numbers. She said that she actually understands now why people find these games fun and want to play them (and not so much with the 4e game, which she is starting to find tedious). She had seen a few 3.5 sessions about 3 years back and more or less made her own "20 minutes of fun in 4 hours" observation.
I wasn't as prepared for the game as I would have liked to have been (heh, when are DMs ever?), and I would put more effort into story elements and hooks to motivate characters in a longer-term game, but I have to say that it was a rousing success. After talking to the players before they left last night, it looks like we may be putting the 4e game on indefinite hold and sticking with the Basic game for a while. Now I need to decide which flavor of that game to go with if we're going to be playing it regularly. Labyrinth Lord with some elements of its Advanced Edition Companion might be the best fit.
Anyone else had this same experience? I read a comment on a forum recently (it could have been here, but I think it might have been on DF) to the effect that "3rd Edition D&D gave me what I thought I wanted" and it's resonating with me quite strongly right now. After years of complaining about D&D/AD&D with its arbitrary restrictions, lack of character customization, and non-unified mechanics (do I want to roll high or low on d6/d20/d100?), it is just so refreshing and downright liberating to come back to it and rediscover just how easy it is for novice players to pick up, how smoothly the game runs, and how much awesome fun it is to play.
