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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Siran Dunmorgan" data-source="post: 4451015" data-attributes="member: 39268">This… confuses me.  I'm willing—as others providing positive feedback concerning the 4th Edition Player's Handbook have been—to describe the things that I do and do not like about the book. But those of you providing negative feedback simply say "terrible" and move on, as if the things that are terrible about it should be self-evident.  They're not.  I'd like to know, before recommending this game to my friends and relatives, what it is that people don't actually like about it.  I have my own attitudes and perspectives: sometimes, these are different from those of other people.  It's not helpful to say that something is flawed, and then not describe the flaws.  For myself, I know what it is that I don't like about the 4th Edition Player's Handbook, and it's the same thing I don't like about the 4th Edition core books in general: it isn't entertaining to read.  There are a lot of facts, and everything is clearly spelled out, but it's not entertainment in its own right.  Yes, the game it describes is a lot of fun to play, but the decision to move all but the minimum necessary flavor text—I'm not saying there isn't any flavor text in the book at all—to the online services and campaign setting books leaves the Player's Handbook feeling vaguely empty, for all the details and rules that it provides.  For me, this is a potential problem because circumstances dictate that I build a gaming group ex nihilo, starting with people who have only the most vague notions of what paper-and-pencil role playing games are about: I can't simply send them home with the Player's Handbook and expect them to be engaged in the reading of it, as I might have been able to do with certain earlier editions.  I'll not, however, second-guess the designers: I suspect that many of them would have preferred a more entertaining text, but I believe that this would have been difficult to accomplish given the constraints and design goals.  —Siran Dunmorgan   P. S.  That said, this isn't a comment about 4th Edition Dungeons & Dragons in general: the game itself, I like quite a lot.  When actually running or playing, aye, the system really shines.</blockquote>

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