Even accounting for the slow-downs associated with acclimating to a new system, this was not our experience. PADDED SUMO WRESTLERS: There were also suggestions being made that combat in 4th Edition was going to be considerably faster. We did see a greater ability to run such encounters as 1st level characters, but that has more to do with 1st level characters playing more like 3rd level characters from previous editions than anything about the combat system. But, personally, I’ve been running combats involving large numbers of NPCs for 20 years now. The other major change that was promised was the ability to run combats involving large numbers of NPCs. And once you add marks into the mix, combat had a tendency to become less mobile, not more mobile. Opportunity attacks are still in the game and, predictably, people are still trying to avoid them. Some people claim that full-attacks resulted in 3rd Edition combats where people stood around and beat on each other, but that was never my experience: It was the desire to avoid attacks of opportunity that tended to lock opponents together (although this never stopped people from doing a lot of maneuvering at a small scale). But mobility has not noticeably increased at my gaming table. One of the things promised in the preview material and hype, for example, was greater mobility in combat. Although the mechanics have been thoroughly shuffled, combats still largely play out the same way they did in previous editions. I was surprised, however, at the lack of a paradigm shift. So let’s talk about my first reactions to playing 4th Edition.Ĭombat is the highlight of the game. And I have now run two separate playtests of the module: One for a group of experienced D&D players (my regular group) and another for a group of newbies (some of whom had never played an RPG before). Unfortunately, my first impressions of the module left me fairly disenchanted, and the 12-part series of remix essays should give some idea of the amount of work I had to put into the module before I felt comfortable running it.Įventually, however, I was ready to go.

I had high expectations that, with Mike Mearls and Bruce Cordell writing it, I would be able to just pick up the adventure and run it. My initial intention was to take Keep on the Shadowfell and use the Quick Start Rules to play 4th Edition right out of the box - just as the designers intended it. Ultimately you can talk a game to death, but it lives or dies in the playtest. But I was also determined to approach the new system with an open mind.

If you’ve looked through some of this material, it will be clear that I had some serious reservations about 4th Edition. I was over-hasty in my reading of certain rules, but also far too forgiving in others (check the comment thread attached to that post). These essays were written before 4th Edition was released, but provided a detailed dissection and analysis of what I still believe to be a serious flaw in the design ethos at WotC.Īfter the rulebooks were released, I revisited the subject of Skill Challenges. In May of this year I wrote a series of essays on Dissociated Mechanics. (3) I wasn’t going to draw any conclusions until I actually had the rules in my hands.

(2) The design ethos being espoused at WotC did not fill me with confidence. These primarily consisted of three points: (1) What WotC says about a new edition and what a new edition actually does are frequently two completely different things. When 4th Edition was first announced in August 2007, I posted some Thoughts on 4th Edition. Understanding these comments may require a little bit of context, however. This essay is going to be about my playtesting of 4th Edition. But, of course, a lot of this time has also been spent reading, analyzing, playing, and talking about the 4th Edition ruleset. That’s a lot of time to dedicate to a single adventure. It seems crazy to say this, but I’ve been talking about Keep on the Shadowfell since May. COLLECTED EDITION OF AN ESSAY BY JUSTIN ALEXANDER

1999 stratego instructions