The pro-4e bias in this post is so thick you can cut it with a knife. It’s clear that you’re just a Wizards of the Coast shill; you even have a couple “kind of negative but not completely vitriolic” responses, to make it look legit, like the white guy’s black friend that makes it okay to laugh at off-color jokes.

Just kidding! I already knew many of these peoples’ thoughts on 4e, but it was interesting seeing them all compiled. It’s also interesting, in my mind, to see how overwhelmingly positive it all is.

Anyways, I’d better end this comment because I’m having to bite my tongue to avoid arguing with some of the things that were said.

“The Tarrasque has 1420 hp and can still eat your house, that’s all there is to say about that.”

Awesome! Quote of the day.

One of my players said awhile ago when 4E was announced: “It’s D&D. I’ll play it. Any version, anywhere, anytime. It’s D&D!”

The comments on the lack of roleplaying seem to be valid, but that can be fixed by the DM.
I am less than pleased so far. I do NOT like the healing in this game. I am playing a 2d level dragonborn ranger in Keep on the Shadowfell and find I only use one power (twin strike) 90% of the time.
The jury is out as far as I am concerned, but I prefer 3.5 to 4.

I’m of mixed feelings. Part of me is in love with the stream lined system. The other part of me hates the fact that the game has become table top WoW.

Use an at-will power. Rinse. Repeat.

4E plays like a slightly expanded version of the D&D miniatures game. It seems to have gathered a small but vocal fanbase from newbie gamers who were never able to comprehend the full game, and prefer this simplified “boardgame” version.

Yeah, the most popular and respected D&D bloggers are “newbie gamers”. That statement makes sense.

I’m split on 4e. Many of the changes to streamline the game came at the expense of what I enjoy the most about D&D–depth. I can’t embrace the healing surge and powers system, not when I could have dozens of spells, animal companions, familiars, and varied feats to choose from. Choices are important to me, and I want to feel like I’m making choices when I build my characters, not just progressing through the viable options in my talent “tree.” If you want to play WoW you fire up the compy, right?

Despite that, I really enjoyed the short time I’ve spent DMing and designing 4e stuff. Should I ask for more than that?

I don’t get all these complaints about roleplaying. How do you codify your players in-character interaction with each other or with npc’s outside of combat. I don’t see what changed between 4E and 3.x that suddenly hampers roleplaying, is it just that they didn’t add a lot of content about the generic world? Someone help me understand this.

4e is kindof a mixed bag, IMO. It has some great ideas, some bad ones, but it mixes them all very poorly.

Combat is simplified, a bit… you still have tons of modifiers and lingering effects to keep track of. Character creation is also simplified in a minimal way, although many of the choices players make will be shallower, they’ll be picking from many more “balanced”, seemingly-equal options. This might make the act of choosing more difficult. For a heavy RPer who likes a balanced system, 4e is a dream come true. For those who despise rules for mechanics’ sake, this game is hogwash.

That said, I don’t like 4e, almost entirely because it numbs the whole experience a bit. WoW-clone discussions aside, it does have that “game” feel to it, as opposed to a truly organic RPG. Good role-playing will prevail in any system, but I think 4e lends itself best to “superhero” fantasy, where characters have a fantastic array of powers and are mighty right out of the gate. One look at the flashy, sleek artwork would give you a clue. This is simply not to my taste… I need my fantasy a little campier and grittier, and you’d have to bend 4e much harder than previous iterations of the game to fit that mold.

Those are all little things, though. A good DM and like-minded players could have a blast, simply ignoring Hasbro-Brand Fantasy(R) and using the mechanics as springboard for some clever roleplaying opportunities. My main complaint is the system still encourages (to the point of practically requiring) the use of miniature figures to resolve the tactical combat. I know some people enjoy this aspect of the game, but I find it unnecessary. There are other games designed to better handle this style of play. Too bad that unless you have a razor-sharp DM, a loose interpretation of the rules, and all the players on the same wavelength, playing D&D still means everyone is huddled around the battlemat and their character sheets, instead of off in a collective imaginary realm.

Fourth edition will always be D&D meets WoW and Earthdawn, gets jealous, and tries to emulate both to me. It seems to work alright at first level but glancing ahead I’m seeing myself largely doing the same things all the way through to level 30. Overall a lot of great upgrades and fixes to problems from earlier editions but a heavily mechanistic approach like this that’s pretty much divorced from any flavor or style will never be my system of choice.

I like a few things about 4ed but have several reservations:
1) Players start off as superheroes. There’s no opportunity for playing the weak character. Two of my favourite RPG’s are Call of Cthulhu and Paranoia. In both games you might not survive your first encounter, (and that might be the briefing room!)
2) Too much concentration on miniatures. In fact the rules of out of their way to invent combat mechanics for monsters that fit in with miniatures. e.g. Kobolds get a free slide; you could just say that they’re fast and don’t provoke attacks of oppportunity.
3) I have to disagree about compact monster descriptions. Fewer monsters per page in this edition of MM compared to v1.

The stat blocks are handy if you’re a DM pressed for time, and your players are foaming-at-the-mouth animals that they simply can’t wait 30 seconds while you read a paragraph. RPGs are simply not a type of game that can be rushed, regardless of how “simple” or “streamlined” one might claim their game to otherwise be. If all your players care about is having meat in front of them to swing their at-will-powers at, well, I’m sorry but I could never see that as using the game to its potential.

Come to think of it, some of these stat blocks aren’t that small either. They take up a small amount of physical space, yes, but there’s still usually a bit to digest there. This game looks like it still has the same problem as 3e, where getting the monster to ACTUALLY behave like the monster (as opposed to being a mindless meatsack that has a monster’s powers) still requires a bit of reading. Playing a single monster is still as consuming as running a whole character, as they are equally complicated.

Of course, this is all just a result of an OMGAWESOME-arms race. If players are slinging all these goofy powers around every turn, the monsters should be too! For some reason, everyone decided that having to make an *attack roll* (Oh ho hum, my character is in a fight to the death with an undead monster, how boring! Swing!) wasn’t exciting enough anymore. Do we really need a pre-determined list of “cool moves I can do” before we actually start role-playing? Will we refuse to play the game beyond a skirmish wargame because there’s no statistical advantage to doing so?

4e is an attempt to bridge the gap between to disparaging mentalities… by stretching D&D hard enough to make the distance. The question is, how badly is the play experience distorted as a result?

The solution to 4e is the same as the solution to 3.x: limit combat encounters. 4e is certainly better when it comes to combat than 3.x, but it comes to the same problem, in that it gets tedious. You swing, hit or don’t hit, do or don’t do damage, wait till your next turn. The best way to alleviate this is to allow for one to two combats (maybe three) per session, with an emphasis on roleplaying and storytelling. That way, the GM is allowed to spend more time on each combat, and make each memorable. Having the players plow through combats in their “dungeon crawl” is boring, because, really, only one or two combats get to be cool, and, maybe, one gets to be really cool. The rest are “room of goblins; kill goblins; loot goblins; next room.” No book is entertaining where all that happens is the characters move from room to room killing stuff. The danger gets old. Look at tv shows - they have one combat sequence per episode, usually as a climactic point, unless it’s the finale, in which case the whole thing is the climax, and plays out like one big, long, exciting combat.

So do one combat per session, make it exciting, make it cool, make it important. Characters should never draw their swords unless they’ve got a lot to lose and a lot to gain. Gaining access to the next room is just retarded. Saving a PCs family or the legendary artifact - that’s good gaming.

Thanks again for polling me, Maikl — it was a challenge to squeeze what I wanted to say into three sentences.

Having played an incredibly fun first session of Keep on the Shadowfell this past weekend, I stand by everything I said — it was a blast.

I ran the first two encounters in “The Scales of War” Thursday night and was pleasantly surprised at how smoothly things went. It was definitely like running a completely new system. In fact I would almost be a “grognard” (i’m almost old enough) and say that 4.0 is NOT D&D, but in fact a close facsimile. The combat encounters in published modules have been almost overly scripted. In fact it seems a bit daunting to build an adventure of your own considering how much detail went into the published stuff.

I’ll have a hopefully detailed account (with spoiler warnings) on my new blog “Tipping the scales of war” at http://tipscales.blogspot.com/