A
amerigoV
Guest
I signed up for a D&DNext play test at Origins, the session is tomorrow afternoon. Now, I am a Savage Worlds guy but I wanted to give it a try - I have found that SW gets me back to the "fun" back when I used to play 1e but with a much better system. So I have hope that D&DNext might be able to achieve it since a system with radically different mechanics could give me that "warm and fuzzy", surely the grand olde game could recapture that feel as well.
But then I played d20 version of Star Wars today (which a lot of people around here seemed to praise and thought that is what 4e was going to be). I had a good GM and a very interesting plot - basically, Han and Luke's breakout/escape of Leia allowed our group of felons to escape at the same time. Nice cameo use of scenes from that segment of SW Eps IV. It was clever and it kept my attention to see what scene from the movie he would weave in next.
The bad was the system. I was running a Scoundrel (there were no Jedi in the group) - the one time he really could have done something cool (lift a blaster off a guard) was easily foiled even though I rolled a 19 with a nice bonus (including a feat for +10 on a L4 PC)) on top of that. So a low level guard countered one of my best skills by far - sucky. The rest of the time was "I shoot" for the most part as, based on my idea, we had one of us dress up in storm trooper armor - so he became the "scout" of the party (my guy could not use heavy powered armor). I'll admit the d20 was against me, probably due to lack of use - I rolled so many <10's without any real recourse it was frustrating (versus having a bennie in Savage Worlds to have the dice really betray me
). It really brought back why I GM'd so much in 3.x - I was just plumb bored as a player. In combat, had little interest in the fight until it was my turn - nothing really exciting happened or could happen.
A side nitpick: the GM was good overall, but he never really allowed my PC's skills to be of use (balance, climb, pickpocket etc). Nearly everything was in the standard 10' corridor or 30x30 room (a dungeon in a space - like the old KotD skit). Repeated asking if there was any useful environmental features yielded little. After awhile, I just shot stuff.
So now, I go into tomorrow a bit less enthused about the playtest. I'll give it a fair shake, but probably with a more critical eye to "feel".
But then I played d20 version of Star Wars today (which a lot of people around here seemed to praise and thought that is what 4e was going to be). I had a good GM and a very interesting plot - basically, Han and Luke's breakout/escape of Leia allowed our group of felons to escape at the same time. Nice cameo use of scenes from that segment of SW Eps IV. It was clever and it kept my attention to see what scene from the movie he would weave in next.
The bad was the system. I was running a Scoundrel (there were no Jedi in the group) - the one time he really could have done something cool (lift a blaster off a guard) was easily foiled even though I rolled a 19 with a nice bonus (including a feat for +10 on a L4 PC)) on top of that. So a low level guard countered one of my best skills by far - sucky. The rest of the time was "I shoot" for the most part as, based on my idea, we had one of us dress up in storm trooper armor - so he became the "scout" of the party (my guy could not use heavy powered armor). I'll admit the d20 was against me, probably due to lack of use - I rolled so many <10's without any real recourse it was frustrating (versus having a bennie in Savage Worlds to have the dice really betray me
). It really brought back why I GM'd so much in 3.x - I was just plumb bored as a player. In combat, had little interest in the fight until it was my turn - nothing really exciting happened or could happen.A side nitpick: the GM was good overall, but he never really allowed my PC's skills to be of use (balance, climb, pickpocket etc). Nearly everything was in the standard 10' corridor or 30x30 room (a dungeon in a space - like the old KotD skit). Repeated asking if there was any useful environmental features yielded little. After awhile, I just shot stuff.
So now, I go into tomorrow a bit less enthused about the playtest. I'll give it a fair shake, but probably with a more critical eye to "feel".
