( 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.

Well, I agree 3.x might have been strict about magic items. Our DM was not, and I think the new rules would make it more difficult for him to give out overpowered magic candy because they tend to be more clear & direct. i could be totally wrong. Time will tell.

Anyway, here's a very interesting Enworld post from a playtester who has had the advantage of playing 4E for months. It's lengthy but worth reading - [link]