Still trying to figure out how I'll be running my 4e game when I move away from my gaming group in July.
PS
Welcome to that unhappy club. Skype and Roll20 are your friends.
I was impressed with how many things I didn't like about my previous gaming that didn't bother me until 4e showed me a different way of playing.
PS
Very true.
Bears repeating! While I admire other games (and other e's) for a lot of things, things they may do better than 4e out-of-the-box, I'd almost always rather steal ideas from them and add them onto my 4e chassis than the other way around.
Exactly. WotC got the framework right. If I was going to create a fantasy heartbreaker I would build it on the 4E framework... and I wouldn't touch monster creation at all. They nailed that once they got the maths right post-MMIII.
I'd have loved to see what 4e could have looked like with a better development cycle and a lot more cooks throwing out recipes.
It's a damn shame, really.
I would have loved to have seen it without Mike Mearls and Rob Schwalb being in positions of influence. It's clear they didn't like 4E - Mike didn't grok it judging from two of the worst D&D adventures of all time that he wrote and Rob posted on his blog about wanting a simpler game - and I'm sure it would have lasted longer and received more attention if it had been in the hands of those who really liked the system.
Heck, read Chris Perkins's DM columns and you can see how he made the ruleset sing!
Whether you liked essentials or hated it, it fractured and split the customer base. Just look at all the rage about whether or not Essentials is 4e--how many times have we seen that argument hammered out? And for what? And many of the rules from essentials that were retroactively rolled into existing classes greatly changed they way the game played.
One of the most seriously retarded decisions WotC made with Essentials was dropping the PHB. For decades now, D&D has been about driving sales of the PHB - and Ryan Dancey basically put this strategy in words but it was there all along - and then with Essentials the player books were no longer the PHB. That was seriously retarded particularly when coupled with a Red Box that had slightly different rules to Essentials.
Dumb.
But to end on a positive note, 4E rocks. It's a dream for DMs and if you have halfway decent organisational skills, you can develop techiniques for managing conditions that are still infinitely easier than running a 3.xE game where ability damage or drain is being thrown around.
Finally, monsters have crunch that matches their fluff. Arguably, for the first time in the history of D&D, monsters actually play differently and in a manner consistent with their description. Sure, you can throw in descriptions in other editions but in 4E it's part of the mechanics.
I love that.
