( continues...) because of character creation choices. I think this is the origin of the notion that 4E is now just a tactical minis wargame. 4E combat sounds like it plays like a tactical minis wargame. (My only hobby that rivals D&D for money spent is board games, so this shift roxors my boxors, so to speak. FTR, rest assured that I never so speak.) But combat occupies exactly the same place within the game as it always did (i.e. pretty much wherever the GM puts it), and other factors of the game are still well supported, so 4E is not simply a tactical minis wargame.

The role-playing experience, to me, looks like it's undergone a similar shift, or if you like a return to 1st Ed sensibilities. There's less accounting and bookkeeping to be done to represent your character's background, personality, all the things that make them more than just numbers on a page. Instead, just as combat now revolves less around your character mechanics choices than what you do, so too role-playing your character revolves less around your character mechanics choices than how you play them.

This is a mixed bag. There are plusses in this approach, but plusses in 3E's approach too. Many people focus better on their PC's personality when there are numerical reminders. For others, that gets in the way. You have limited resources in feats and skill points and such like. Making personality-driven choices compete with PC effectiveness may discourage some people, and make their character feel more like just numbers on a page.

Another drawback: with just three books out so far, character options are still quite limited compared to 3E. That'll improve as more books come out.

However, for me the clinching plus here is the GM support. Let me be clear; I think the single greatest determinant of a game's role-playing fun is the GM. (Second place is the players, third is the game system.) They run a dungeon crawl, you get a dungeon crawl. They run a character-heavy palace intrigue adventure, that's what you get. 4E still has the advice on building worlds, campaigns, adventures and encounters (combat and non-). No real change there.

But for pretty much the first time, it also provides a decent, balanced structure for treating non-combat PC achievements as real accomplishments, i.e. skill challenges. Here's what I like about them:

• They provide a sensible, balanced structure, so it's easier for me to create good situations.
• The structure is very flexible, so I'm actually eager to use them. (I'll be inserting them into my 3.5 campaign.)
• They get all the players involved, so social encounters are less likely to devolve into the 'face' PC waxing lyrical while the other players wait for their turn.
• They encourage players to look for novel ways to use their PC's strengths. To me, that's a strong incentive to role-play.
• They encourage GMs to get justification out of their players, i.e. to role-play their character's approach.
• They define fair rewards, i.e. relate the challenge to the parts of the game that have always been rewarded, i.e. combat challenges. For the first time, it would be theoretically possible to run an entire campaign from 1st to 30th level without a single combat, without house-ruling. (Not that it's hard to house-rule earlier editions to do this, but still.)

Of course, there's a lot more to non-combat play than skill challenges. Lots of role-playing will happen in other situations. I just really like them.

Oh! Maybe the biggest difference that supports a GM running a role-play strong campaign: you don't have to spend ridiculous amounts of time statting out NPCs and customised monsters. More free time for the interesting stuff!

Conclusion: combat has improved greatly. It should be more engaging and exciting. Support for meaningful non-combat play has improved significantly. Direct support for role-playing a PC is a mixed bag, will suit some people but not others. I have a foot in each camp here, so I'm planning a house-rule that PCs in my game will all get a single extra trained skill in one Craft, Profession (continued...)

( continues...) or Perform skill of their choice.

Cui bono?
First and foremost, GMs benefit (especially this GM). So much easier creating NPCs and monsters. I can spend more time on designing the story arc, the world, and worrying about personalities instead of stats. Skill challenges!

Newbies too. It's an easier system to learn, and more forgiving (i.e. system mastery is less of an issue).

Who loses out?
Cheese weasels. Less scope to create an overpowered character by exploiting rules combos that Were Not Meant To Be.

People who loved the massive flexibility of the 3E system. Yeah, this does suck a bit.

You'll note that 'roleplayers' appear on neither list. I think the new system is a net positive, but the ability to represent mechanically your character's quirks and history has been curtailed. Many people will feel that something's been lost here. I think the net impact will depend on the person.

I haven't talked about the changes to fluff (e.g. the new planar cosmology), or to options like race or classes (goodbye gnome, hello dragonborn). I reckon WotC understands their target audience better than I do, so overall the changes will probably appeal to them. But for old-timers such as myself, losing things I'm used to isn't as welcome.

Ultimately this is all a matter of personal taste. I'll give it a mild net positive, because I can still use any old fluff I want and now there are new options too; but there are changes I dislike, and if your favourite race is gone, or you had serious love for the Great Wheel cosmology, then, yeah, fair enough being pissed.

Final word: 3E is a sweet game too, it has its issues, but how streamlined and intuitive it looked to my AD&D-trained eyes when I first saw it, and I had big fun with all the new options. (Feats! Skills! Prestige classes!) 4E, to me, continues the first trend, but at the partial expense of the second.

4E is a sweet little RPG. I think, coming at both of them cold, it probably has the advantage over 3E. But ultimately, it'll still be what the GM and players make it.

Three posts long! I win at Verbiage!

I have a text message on my phone from Wallybee, from when we were dating, that says simply "So wordy! Shut up Penguin!" Is that when I knew she was a keeper? No, that was when I was off to run a D&D game and she sent me a message saying "Have a nice game! My thoughts are with you. Kill them all." But similar vintage.

Blimey.

Thanks BT. I'm now even more curious about social skill challenges.

"Have a nice game! My thoughts are with you. Kill them all."

A true gamer wife.

Awesome verbiage, BT. Thanks!

Excellent review, bt, thank you! Our books have shipped, so hopefully this weekend we will give it a shot (since the GM is still suffering a creative block about our ongoing campaign, and all our boardgames are now packed in boxes).

I read a bunch more reviews last night, and I think it's just one of those things I'm going to have to try for myself. Seems that most of the reviews on the internets are written by folks who play to beat the GM. PvP rather than co-op, if you will. They are the Cheese Weasels, and they seem to be thrilled with the shift from character build to party build. Because hey! It's still about your build.

I like to get more immersive than that. I'm a narrativist, rather than a gamist. So we'll see. I've played the Saga system and wasn't whelmed.

One thing I like is that they recognized the problems with magic items. I'm hoping that they also recognized that after about 12th level, it's not you it's your stuff (in 3E). And I would argue that 3E plays best from 3-7th level...but in any case, we shall see.

Now, back to Rock Band.

One thing I like is that they recognized the problems with magic items. I'm hoping that they also recognized that after about 12th level, it's not you it's your stuff (in 3E). And I would argue that 3E plays best from 3-7th level...but in any case, we shall see.

Actually, they've been saying for awhile that the dependancy on magic items to keep up with the group was something they wanted to change. I'm not 100% sure how effective they've been as I haven't been able to play, but it seems to me that the significant plusses to your character and powers come from the character build and only a little from the magic items. They're also quite strict with how powerful your magic items should be at a given level.

Okay, my friend Manny's thoughts on the new edition:

He likes the rules for social encounters, and he likes that prep time has been drastically reduced.

That's about it for his likes.

For his dislikes, he starts right in by saying that a lot of the work that has been removed from the DM has been transfered to the players.

He also felt that, while a lot of things in 3.5 were overpowered, he's found 4e to be seriously underpowered, in contrast to a lot of fears and initial reactions.

After defending the new system (blind) for months and months that it's not going to like World of Warcraft, he read the book and came away saying that it is exactly like World of Warcraft, except that in WoW, the computer keeps track of all the math and everything for everybody.

He said the game is very well balanced for the most part across the board. However, he's now reversed his position on game balance, and has decided that, at least as far as the form it took in 4e, game balance is actually a crappy way to make an RPG. Everything comes across as SAME. The amount of variation and flavor between characters (or lack thereof) he found to be very off putting.

He was also very WTF??? about the one primary exception to game balance (as far as base classes go) -- the rogue. In 3.5 it was the CODzilla, in 4e it seems to be the roguezilla.

More importantly, he (and I) always had some big problems with the ridiculous and extremely unlikely combat options that wound up becoming commonplace in 3.5 rules because of quirks in the system mechanics. Now, with the bizarrely overpowered rogue combat tricks, the problem has just shifted to different, silly combat maneuvers, now even more comic book-like, and more improbable.

He said he'd really placed a lot of trust in WotC to deliver a new system worthy of supplanting 3.5, and they really let him down.

There's no longer a lot of talk in my regular D&D group of all of us switching to 4e. Instead, there is a lot more openness to some other system, or taking our own crack at some version of a d20 system. (I'm now more encouraged than ever to take a run at some sort of home-brewed, funky d20/GURPS hybrid, and see how it plays.)

They're also quite strict with how powerful your magic items should be at a given level.

You know, when put exactly this way, it sounds like exactly how you had to treat magic items in 3.x, just with a difference of style or flavor. I'm sure mechanically, it's completely different, but you must agree that the sentence "They're also quite strict with how powerful your magic items should be at a given level," taken just on it's own, is just as applicable to 3.x as you say it is to 4e.

Now, all of that having been said, I'm still thinking heavily about running out an buying a copy right now, though I should order online, since you can still get the PHB for $20 on Amazon. It's really clear at this point that it's not a system I can use to implement some of the ideas I have for my own fantasy worlds, but I'm tired of only knowing second hand.