Like many members of Dungeons and Dragon’s “old guard” (people that started playing the game in 1st and 2nd edition), I was furious when Wizards of the Coast announced that they were releasing 4th Edition D&D in 2008. I was sitting in front of my computer browsing the web when I found out and actually yelled at my computer (using a lot of language that cannot be repeated here). How could they do this? D&D 3.5 was only released about four or five years ago! It appeared that I was destined to become one of those gamers that refuses to upgrade to the latest version of my beloved Role-playing game (you know one of those old grouchy guys, sitting in the back of your local game shop and telling anyone who’d listen about how great Advanced Dungeon and Dragons is). Then I began to see previews for this new version of the granddaddy of all RPGs and, surprisingly, I actually found myself liking what I saw.
After talking my D&D group into giving the new version of the game a try, we discovered that we love the new version of this classic game. We have been playing D&D more frequently than we have for years and everyone is having a wonderful time. All of my players have bought the player’s handbook and it looks like the group will be playing forth edition exclusively from now on. Here are a few observations that our group has made:
· This game has to be played with miniatures. If your not going to use miniatures stay with 3rd edition. I personally prefer not to use the D&D miniature line. The modals are just too small and in a weird scale that no other line uses. I suggest the following lines, they’re all pretty close to scale and look fine next to each other on the table:
o Classic Ral Partha (if you can find them)
o Reaver (great for Player Character models and affordable)
o Heroscape models (already painted)
o Mageknight (Very cheap on ebay but you may have to do some rebasing)
o Fantasy warhamer (expensive but great models)
o War-machine/Hoards (expensive but some great monster models to round out your collection)
· Get a good battle-mat. Make sure that it has a grid system already on it and that you can write on it with erasable marker. The “Dungeon Tile” sets put out by Wizards of the Coast are also worth looking into (not to mention great values)
· This new system concentrates on strategic combat. However, you can still role-play any situation in 4th that you could in 3rd. Don’t let someone tell you otherwise
· First level characters actually have a tendency to live, not one to die. Players still die but it is usually because the players did something foolish or the party members are not working together and filling the roles assigned to each class.
· Initially, people look at these new characters and go, “My God, these guys are powerful! Nothing should be able to kill these guys”. The monsters are just as powerful as the characters. Everything just got a boost so that a lucky hit or two doesn’t kill low level players and monsters anymore.
· Teamwork among party members is more important in this edition of D&D than it ever has been before.
I would be willing to still play 3rd edition but I’ll never DM it again (forth edition is just so much easier to run). Oh well, looks like Wizards of the Coast will be getting even more of my money than before.
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