Playing the 4E

This is going to be a short post...Mostly because I'm done "*making strange" with 4E. (*My grandma used to say that about babies that didn't seem to "like" someone. I've always thought that was such a wonderful colloquialism)

On with the post. The Longmont group held our monthly game of Dungeons and Dragons again last night. I hadn't played in the previous one but HAD been there the time before that. Odd thing is, the map looked exactly the same as it had the last time I left. In other words, it took two sessions to run an encounter.

This is not a new observation. Not too long ago I wrote a very similar posting regarding the same exact thing. Our group has the habit of sitting around and chatting more than we play. I think I know why. The "story" that the DM is weaving is, for the most part, forgotten from session to session. It's just that too much time passes between games for us, and when he attempts to bring us back up to speed, many of us tune out.

This is never done on purpose. Unfortunately we just don't have much invested in the story. If we play once a month (or less) then it's tough to keep any kind of emotional attachment to what's going on. Heck, most of us don't even remember our characters. So a lot of time is spent trying to bring everybody back up to speed with what's currently going on. It's a very involved story and we're a tough audience. (Again though, NOT intentionally.)

One thing that happened last night really opened my eyes to something that I've only just touched upon before. You know how in 4E each character has a slew of powers? Last night my buddy, who was sitting next to me, looks over and observes all of my powers, which are cut into individual "cards", and says "Dude, holy shit! How many powers do you have?!?" I counted through them...22. This didn't include my magic items that I had also cut out and laid out in the same format. Or my Second Wind. Or my Action Points.

I think that you can see where I'm going with this.

We're 13th level characters, so of course we're going to have a plethora of choices open to us. Especially the magic slingers, and I was playing a cleric. I said as much to my buddy. He's playing a sword mage, so he counts through his "cards" and comes up with the same number...and then my friend on the other side counts his up, 22. And he's playing a paladin.

It dawned on me then as I looked around the table. Since many of us had taken our powers and cut them out into cards and placed them in sleeves, it served as a very good physical representation of just how MANY powers each of us had. Therein lay another reason that our games took so darned long. Each of us basically had to relearn our characters each and every time we played.

As I've said above, I'm done banging the anti-4E drum. Many people actually like the fact that they have all of these options spelled out for them. And it's obvious that we've sort of shot ourselves in the collective foot by playing as infrequently as we do. What I've realized from all of this is that 4E is a game that NEEDS to be played much more frequently than pre-3E games. There's just a LOT of stuff to keep track of.

If someone needs to reacquaint themselves with their character, and / or take minutes looking through their options, then the game is stalling. As an example, last night, I was looking through some of the things that I can "do" and wasn't paying one whit of attention to the DM. I looked up while he was 1/2 through and sentence and realized what it is that I had been doing. I put my stuff down and tuned back in.

Maybe it's my fault that I don't have a photographic memory. Let's just chalk it up to that. Shall we?

Until next time, adieu.

4E - Is change possible?

I've been agonizing over this post, but the time is ripe for me to jot down a few observations on what I see as specific weak points in 4E. I say this because our group is going through a possible metamorphosis.

Or more to the point, I'd like to stay with the group, they're playing 4E, so we're collectively (at least the DM and I), thinking about how to make tweaks to the game. The end result that we're trying to achieve is a game that makes everyone happy. But there needs to be a systematic, session by session recap of those things that I think need to be changed.

Unfortunately, and maybe glaringly, this sounds like a completely selfish exercise. Most (if not all) of the guys currently sitting at the table are quite happy with the game. They like the way the game plays. I'm the turd in the punch bowl here. And for the record, I've offered to bow out. But the majority has opted towards changing the game in order to make the whole "happy". In the end though, bowing out might have been the least painful choice.

Anyway, on with the examination.

We played this Tuesday and I've let my thoughts roll around inside my head, like magnets in a jar. I've hopefully let them coalesce into something a bit more cogent and supportive of meaningful change. Overall, I liked the session. We didn't have a single combat encounter, not one. And personally, I liked it a lot. Combat is 4E's glaring weak spot in my mind. But that's a topic for a different day.

Two things leaped to mind though regarding Tuesday's session.

1. We didn't waste time with minis and drawing mats or location pieces.
2. Magic items are now completely mundane.

I'll try and keep my thoughts and opinions on the straight and narrow here, and stick to those two topics. Minis and their supporting pieces are not a new phenomenon in the game of Dungeons and Dragons, and as my current DM often claims, they're a natural extension of the original Chainmail game. It was after all a war game.

I'd have to say that, yes, he's right...And wrong. While the game claims many of its mechanics from the war game Chainmail, it is not at all meant to be played as a war game. This is clearly stated in the earliest of editions. Miniatures are supporting pieces only, the meat and bones of game play is meant to come from your imagination.

This might be a completely subjective observation, but I find that when someone throws a bunch of minis down on a map of some sort, I wander away from the rich tapestry of the mind. I start paying more attention to what's going on at the tactical level and wander away from the realm of imagination.

And that is one of the root issues I have with 3rd and 4th edition, they've taken a game of imagination and forcefully combined it with a war game. You're constantly asked to move back and forth between idioms. Many people like that...Heck, there are times when I've certainly welcomed the change. But most of the time, I like to keep the pace by maintaining the same medium.

It's tough to maintain the mood when you're adventuring through an alien landscape, you round a corner and WHAM!.... Please break for the DM to set up the minis and draw the map... Tick, tick, tick. Wow, what a buzz-kill. All of the sudden that cool momentum you had is washed down the toilet. And that was one of the strengths of Tuesday's session. We never brought out a map or minis. Cool.

Now, to the second point: Magic Items, and the way that 4E has totally stripped the "magic" from them.

We garnered quite a load of loot during our foray into the slime encrusted demesne beneath Kaldrak Lyres, known affectionately as the sewer. A slew of magic items were won. I understand what our DM is doing, he's balancing the scales. Loot is cool. We all love coming away w/ stuff.

Oh boy, this is going to be a tough one to nail down. But, I'll start with one of the things that I heard that 4E was "fixing" when it was initially announced. A claim that I distinctly remember reading was that they were attempting to pull the characters away from "being" their magic items. Apparently many older addition characters were defined by the items that they carried, and used with regularity. So in essence, a character was just a mobile platform for a powerful item of one type or another.

I can see that as being an issue with some people. I get it. But WotC's answer to that is this sad little plug-and-play methodology. They've taken magic items and cut the usage back to once per encounter, once per day, or something similar. So, you see what's happened is that they've swapped abilities and magic item powers. Now each character has a few abilities that they're able to pull off at-will. Meaning that you can shoot magic missiles (if you're a mage) forever, without stopping. And THAT used to be the realm of a wand...until the charges ran out, and you were forced to either toss it, or refill it. Which could have opened up new adventure opportunities.

The feeling that the new system engenders is quite literally plug-and-play. Your character has a bunch of "slots" that can be filled by the appropriate "level" item. Each of these items has a very specific role to play within the overall structure of the rules. All in the name of balance.

Furthermore, you can "drain" the magic from an item. You come away with some type of "stuff" called residuum...Or something like that. Your character can use this like money, or you can use it as a generalized component in some of your rituals, or magic item creation. Talk about taking an item that was at one time wondrous...something that you pondered over...that opened your eyes and made you go "Oooo! Ahhh!", and turning it into something as mundane as a coin. Phhbbbt.

They've even taken away the wonder by putting all of the magic items in the PHB. You're actually encouraged to go through and take a look as a character, and choose the items that you think might best slot into your current build. "Sigh". Whatever happened to the magic ring that you couldn't quite figure out? That was the impetus of many a journey to witch doctors in deep, primal forests, or crooked, dark wizards in tottering ancient towers. Now, it's just an item under glass at your corner Wal Mart.

How to change this...CAN you change it? Not sure, I'll have to do some thinking.

Lose one, lose them all?

It's been awhile. I've been away from my computer for over two weeks and it's been a wonderful thing. Vacation can really help clear the head. I had a great time if anybody is asking.

Well I've been back only a few days, and have even played once with the main group of guys that I generally game with every other Tuesday. There's been a new "situation" though, and it's this that I would like to speak about if I may.

As some of you are more than aware, I'm not a fan of 4th Edition Dungeons and Dragons. I've given it plenty of chances, it just has not succeeded in winning my allegiance. There are just far too many gulfs to span between the rules as written and the way I envision a game of dungeons and dragons proceeding.

Well, the "situation" is that I've finally spilled the beans to the group. I did not pose it as some type of ultimatum though. I simply stated that I do not prefer 4E and that if the group wishes to play with that system further, then I will gracefully extricate myself. Not happily, but I'd do it since I was the odd man out.

One thing that I certainly do NOT want to do is to break the group up. This is an exemplary group of guys...I'd certainly prefer to stick with them and keep playing. But 4E is just too high a hurdle and, after all, it's a game, aren't I supposed to be deriving some type of fun out of it?

I selfishly mentioned that I'd love to stick around if we chose another system. Not 3E or 4E though. I've had my fill and I'm no longer interested in either of those choices. What does that leave? Our group is strictly interested in Dungeons and Dragons. We're all pretty hard core fantasists. And, for the most part, we all grew up on Dungeons and Dragons. We're loyal to the core.

This of course has started a conversation surrounding what system we would like to play. It's likely confined to either a retro-clone or to an earlier version of D&D. I'm not sure how it's going to shake out. We have 4 fairly vocal members, out of 7.

But what I'm circuitously coming around to is that IF we decide to change systems, and this is by no means a foregone conclusion, then it'll be 7 guys changing from one system to another. What does this mean? Well, in my humble opinion, that if you value group over game, and we all know how hard it is to find a good group these days compared to finding a "game" (online, your local brick and mortar, etc.), then you're likely more willing to change games.

Now I know that no game or company can please everyone. But imagine if WotC decided to support two editions of the game. They'd still have 7 guys playing "their" game.

I'll keep you up to date with how this shakes out. I'm keeping my fingers crossed. Like I said above, it's hell trying to find a decent group of guys to game with.

Exactly!

This is a point that I read on Alex Schroeder's blog (link):

"Rare Healing: Players need to avoid wandering monsters and avoid unnecessary fighting. This makes strategic decisions (when to fight) more important than tactical decisions (how to fight)."

I've never been able to put my finger on the thing in 4E that troublels me so much. But Alex hit the nail on the head: "Healing"

In 4E you get a bunch of "surges" which are in essence a mechanic that allows characters to "recharge" from encounter to encounter in order to keep the pace. Now, while this might not sound bad, it is a distinct deviation from older editions of play.

It is MUCH more tactical in play than strategic. Due to this difference, the focus of the game shifts from adventuring (older strategic based game) and trying to get from point A to point B without using up your super vital resources, to encounter to encounter type play and worrying about resources that "refresh".

I know I've read this before and that this is certainly not a new observation. But for some reason Alex's post just suddenly jumped out at me and I hit the "Ah Ha!" moment.

Once more...into the breach.

So, I'm not going to go on and on endlessly about what I find "missing" in 4E, but...

I had another experience last night that opened my eyes (yet again...will he never learn?). It was a game that I've been playing off and on for nearly two decades. The group that I grew up with (4 of us from Jr. High School through University) morphed into the group that I get together with to play about once a month, sometimes less, unfortunately.

The thing about these guys is that we've been playing D&D together since AD&D first edition. I mean we've gone through all the iterations, so we're no strangers to how these games work. We loved AD&D, played the shit out of 2E, tolerated 3E and are just now trying our hand at 4E.

So I've mentioned that we get together very rarely. Once a month if we're lucky. And it's not always exactly the same group of guys, but we always have at least 5 players there. The DM has been in his position for quite some time. Every once in awhile one of the others steps in and runs a short little adventure or three...but it almost always comes back to Bart.

Now, Bart likes a sweeping, epic story. He should be an author. He thinks on a hugely grand scale and his games are run that way. There's always a reason for things. A reason that always somehow ties into the larger story. But herein lies the issue.

We just don't get together often enough to follow the complex story, and I'm sure he get's a little frustrated when we can't put the pieces (clues) together. So, every time we gather, he has to carefully set the stage.

I'll preface my next comment with: I love his stories. They're very colorful and imaginative. But (again with the "but), I think that they're lost on us due to a bunch of factors over which no one has much control.

1. We don't get together very often
2. We're gossipy and chatty (due to the long periods between seeing one another)
3. We are pretty strongly oriented to slaying and gathering (i.e. Not a lot of mindshare dedicated in-game towards our PC's role in the "story")

And what's the net? Or rather, what does this have to do with 4E? This:

1. 4E, by nature, is not a "fast" game
2. 4E is not a game where you can "chat and play" (due to the inter-dependencies between classes, and the tactical nature you'd better be paying attention.)
3. 4E does not resemble D&D of old (We ALL have to read the rules now...NOT just the DM)
4. There are now "states" that you have to log if you don't find a good stopping point. (e.g. If you're stopping the game before an "extended rest" then you'd better remember if you've spent your action point, your dailies, how many surges you have left, etc....It's no longer just HPs you have to record.)
5. There are many more "options" available for your PCs (DDI releases, new splat books, etc.) that if, as the DM, you don't say "PHB only", then you're behind. (3E was similar...)

A fantastic example of how slowly 4E moves: I missed a session and when I came back for this session it had appeared that everyone else had missed a session as well. That is, when our DM gave us the recap and told us where we were standing, I said to myself "Yeah, I remember this." But in all actuality there HAD been a session that I missed. A battle had taken place where we had emerged from the underearth. But that's it... One melee. In 6 hours of game time!

Like I had stated above, there are a lot of factors causing this. We're old time gamers. We remember wizards casting magic missiles and the rules associated with that...Not things like if you spend a "Catch you Breath" (or whatever it's called) action, you get HPs back for a surge and a +2 for your defensive bonuses. So we spend a lot of time "learning"...forgetting by the time the next session roles around and then relearning again.

It's a whole lot easier if we can run a game off of things that have been ingrained in our systems (20+ years of playing tends to do that). We just don't have time in our personal lives for all of these new rules. When it says Dungeons and Dragons we all assumed that it would be something recognizable. Like it has always been.

In our most recent session (again from 7 pm till after 1 am: 6 hours) we moved from the ledge, briefly checked out the old temple, moved into town and got into a fight w/ 5 dragon born warriors. That took us about 4.5 hours.... The battle was supposed to only take 5 minutes (according to the DM) but ended up taking a lion's share of the evening. So much so that the DM had to fudge a cool overland journey in order for us to get to another "critical" encounter. We had to break right in the middle of the last encounter, we just plain ran out of time.

I've said this before and I'll say it again, 4E plays very much like Advanced Squad Leader for me. You're very focused on the minutiae of the tactical situation and you make very deliberate, planned out moves. It's not built for adventure and speed.

The main reason that I get together with this group is that I totally dig the people. These guys are friends that I've known for most of my life (2 of them since I was 13...over 30 years.) and I just love getting together with them. Gaming is an excuse. And this is not strictly isolated to me...Everyone (except maybe the DM) thinks this way.

So, in the end I'll have to say, I don't think that 4E is a good fit for our kind of group. I can see how it might be an awesome game for those folks who have the time to read all the rules and the energy to keep up with all of the new stuff. But for our group, no, not a good fit at all.

Make mine insivible please.

Well, interesting things afoot at the Circle-K these days boys and girls. Within the last month, I've had two 4E sessions that I actually enjoyed more than agonized over. And here's why: We stayed away from the RAW (rules as written) and just gamed. Yes that's right, the "rules" were transparent, or invisible if you will.

The first session was w/ a group of guys that I infrequently game with, many that I've known since I was 12 (and that's a long long time). We've gone through all the versions since AD@D together and are now playing 4E. We don't meet all that often, maybe once-a-month, if we're lucky. And we're not much into continuity, story, plot, character development, etc. We just don't meet often enough to care.

Escape was the major premise of the scenario and the DM wasn't interested in utilizing 4E's skill challenge mechanic. Traps and obstacles were encountered the entire way and the navigation of each was laid at the player's feet. There was only one combat the entire session, and that happened at the very end. The memorable part was the escape though. We rolled dice only a few times and rarely relied upon PC skills or feats. It was refreshing to say the least.

Well, last night was a replay of the experience, and again, it was refreshing. Granted, I'm a big fan of puzzles and scenarios that make the player think. Falling back on using the mechanics to escape fate is a cop-out in my opinion. I love it when a group of people put their heads together to figure something out and the DM never once rolls dice. Don't get me wrong, I like combat as much as the next guy. But a game that's completely focussed on combat eventually dulls the excitement of the encounter due to repetition.

Anyway, last night's scenario (only 4 of 6 players could make it) had the players enter a town at the end of an adventure. Once there, the PCs were immediately identified as "adventurers" and as such, were invited to take part in a competition put on by the local "Adventurer's Guild".

Consisting of 10 separate challenges, the competition was scored on a points basis, with the highest scoring team taking the pot. (which was a load of gold and access to some of the Guild's maps and resources) So we started the thing and to be honest, it turned out to be a gas. I loved it. I realize that you can't run a campaign simply on puzzles and cerebral challenges, but they sure help as contrast to those nitty-gritty combat sequences.

Our DM has said that he's going to attempt to subsume the rules in order to focus more on the adventure itself. This is a superb idea and in truth, is one that I've secretly wished for all along. I'll be interested to see how the rest of the game proceeds. I might be a bit skeptical to start out with, due to my 7 month tenure with the game, but I'm hopeful. I'd like nothing more than to really get into a game that's running 4E under the hood.

I'll keep you up to date w/ the progress. Stay tuned...

Differences in versions

Well this is going to be an odd post. It was inspired by a post over at Grognardia where James was talking about his Dwimmermount Session. He was mentioning how quickly combat between nearly 30 different individuals progressed and one of the comments to that post stated that, while 4E has a fairly streamlined combat system, they would be hard pressed to pull off a combat that included 30 different combatants in 30 minutes.

I have some experience with 4E, I've been playing it for about 7 months now in a 3x / month campaign. The DM is incredibly knowledgeable in the game, in fact you could say that it's sort of his religion. He takes it very seriously, keeps up with all of the current click-clack, and knows the rules inside out.

It occurred to me that one of the new features talked about extensively at 4E's release was that the combat was very streamlined and therefore it could run very quickly. So, I got to thinking, could our DM run the same combat that James described in his post as quickly and smoothly under 4E as James had under Swords and Wizardry?

My conclusion: No way in hell. I don't have any empirical data with which to back this statement up. But I do have experience. And I have participated in combats in 4E, with far fewer combatants that have run much much longer. I began to think about why that may be, why does 4E, with it's new and improved melee system run slower than OD&D's system? After all, isn't newer better? Wasn't the intent to get back to D&D's roots?

I'm sure many of you are saying to yourselves, this guy's a hater. He's just one of those head-in-the-sand grognards that is stubborn and tries, with every blog post, to discredit 4E. Let me state for the record that I actually liked 4E when it first came out. I honestly wanted to keep liking it and to continue using the rules. I mean after all, my group wanted to use it, and the DM was VERY impressed and spoke volumes about the improvements to the game.

At the same time, I was trying out all sorts of the retro-clone rules. I ran a short campaign of Castles and Crusades, I played a game of microlite20, a few one shots of Sword and Wizardry and am still running my home campaign on Labyrinth Lord. So I could do some "on the ground" compare and contrast tests.

Back to the combat and why it's slower in 4E than its predecessor versions. I've included a few illustrations to help make my point. Now I'm not claiming to be a deep thinker when it comes to things like this. But, I certainly know what I've experienced, and that experience logically draws me to the following point.

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Older editions allowed that the source of the "effect" (or result) came from the DM. And how did it do this? Well, the rules were very broad in scope and weren't at all focussed on the minutia, but rather on allowing for interpretation.

The PC (player character) took a broad action that was roughly described in the rules (e.g. attack) and further defined what they were doing as it was taking place (e.g. "I duck under the edge of the table for a bit of cover and thrust out with my sword towards the orc's midsection...").

The DM in turn would take this situation and dictate the effect. It was pretty straight forward and therefore "fast".

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Now we move on to the 4E example. In the 4E rules it gives each of the players a selection of abilities that they can attempt at any given time during a confrontation. Now of course you could ignore any of these abilities and just plain ol swing that sword and make a basic melee attack. But you would be missing out on all of the nifty effects that each of these powers produces.

Teamwork and the inter-relationships of the powers themselves plays a VERY big part of 4E combat, and therefore it is incumbent upon the players to be very tactically minded, know their powers intimately, and know their party member's power effects as well. You must keep a close eye on spacing, distances, terrain, time, opposing conditions (action points, surges, bloodied, etc.), your condition (HPs, bloodied, etc.), resources (action points, surges, potions, etc.) among a few other things.

Let me explain the illustration. (I don't suppose I really NEED to explain the illustration given for the older version do I?)

1. Represents the tight interaction between the PC's powers. What I do will affect much of what other PCs will do. EXAMPLE: Let's say you're a fighter and will be utilizing a simple at-will power called 'Tide of Iron': "1[W] + Strength modifier damage, and you push the target 1 square if it is your size, smaller than you, or one size category larger. You can shift into the space that the target occupied." Now all of these things have an affect upon the battle field and your compatriot's actions. So now there are rules that do not depend upon the DM interdiction. They do require pretty detailed knowledge of the rules though.


2. Represents the interaction between the opponent's (monster, NPC, etc.) powers, condition, etc. and the player's actions (power effects). These are tightly woven and balanced. The outcome between these powers' effects is what determines the DM's options, and therefore his / her reaction to what's going on.


3. Represents the DM's response to the situation. Which in turn affects how the players again respond. It's all very well balanced and constructed to work smoothly within the given parameters.

Does this look and sound a little more involved than the above example? I think it is, and therefore it's the reason that combats don't run as quickly under the 4E rules as they do under older (pre-2E at least.) rule sets.

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This is obviously a simplified example. There are facets of each that are not illustrated or explained fully. But overall, it is no fallacy to say that there are MANY more rules surrounding player options in a 4E combat.

When I was young I played a lot of Napoleonic war games with a group of older gentlemen. As I stood above the table the other night, looking down on the tableau unfolding in front of me, running through the options in my head, and all of the previously listed elements of battle, I had a deja-vue moment. I felt just like I did as a kid standing above the war game table. I was playing a war game. Or something that's very similar in makeup once you enter into combat.

Now of course OD&D was derived from a war game's rule set. But I don't ever recall feeling like I was playing a war game when I either played in or ran combats under those earlier rule's systems.

Brains!

Ever sit down to a movie or television show...or even a book, and after you've delved into it a bit you find out it's not at all what you initially thought? Most of those surprises aren't all that welcome. Most are utter shite.

Last night though was an exception. Our Tuesday night 4E group met with the understanding that we'd be starting up a new group of characters. If you've been following at all you'd be well aware that the previous band of dastardly do-gooders had bit the proverbial bullet in a knock down drag out fight with some...wait for it, ghouls! "Ah" you say to yourself, there's the undead reference.

But you'd be mistaken. Back to the point, we sat down around the table last night and started introducing our characters to one another. As you might imagine we started in a tavern; Staid but nearly necessary in a game of Dungeons and Dragons. Around the table we went, first the dragon born paladin, then the eladrin ranger, then me... Oops, nope.

That's right when our DM Wes, piped up and said, "The front doors crash open and a man stumbles in holding his hands to a gaping wound on his neck. Screaming at the top of his lungs, 'You've got to help me'." The doors swing shut, and then Boom! back open again. Another human comes hurtling towards the wounded citizen, knocks him to the ground and starts munching. Uh oh!

This is accompanied with screams and madness from out in the streets. What's happening? Bet you guessed by now. Yeah, zombie apocalypse. Soon we're absolutely over run w/ the rutters. They're everywhere; Coming in through the windows, the doors, everywhere. We're surrounded and are forced to make a stand.

We end up doing pretty well. Laying the initial wave of flesh eating monsters low is quickly accomplished. But that's just the beginning. Our paladin crawls out on the roof after our fight in order to recon the situation. The light of dusk reveals that the entire city seems to be over run. They walk the streets now like stately Sunday strollers...unless they see live bait, then they double time it like a drunken sailor on speed. It's pretty grotesque.

Well it's obvious, we can't stay here long. The whole party gathers on the roof to survey the damage and plan how we're going to get out of this mess alive. Not too far off lies the temple to the Raven Queen, it's burning. Drats! To the east of us lies another large church and it looks like there's a bit of resistance going on there. That's our target we decide. And about this time, more screaming erupts from down below in the bar.

Looking down through the chimney reveals that a few of those "dead" bodies have stood back up and are briskly chasing their meals around. The paladin acts in accordance with his creed and leaps down to save the innocent, while the rest of us stand up there scratching our asses and mumbling about getting the hell to safety. It doesn't take long and the paladin's in a bit of a spot.

Our warlord leaps down to aid him and get the three survivors out of there. They're successful but not before the paladin takes a nasty wound to his arm. (more on that later) With their emergence back on the roof it's decided that we'll use the eladrin's teleport ability and go from rooftop to rooftop and see if we can't possibly make sanctuary at that large church.

We're pretty careful as a group and we seem to work well together. Not everyone agrees all the time, which is natural in a large group (6), but we act in concert for the better of the whole. Not a bad way to get things done. Eventually we make our goal and are standing on a roof top across from a boarded up church.

The eladrin sends an arrow wrapped with a message through the stained glass window facing us. Soon a face appears in the hole and waves. We signal back and send another shaft with a rope attached. It gets tied down and off we go. Soon we're standing in the church with about 40 - 50 survivors.

Long story short, there's enough food for about a week, maybe a week and a half if they really ration. There's plenty of water though, as there's a well in the church proper. The clergy is as confused as we as to what's caused this odd outbreak. Oh, there's a star in the sky too...something we certainly noticed way back when we first emerged upon the roof of the tavern. The mage seemed to know something about a reference to some old story of the coming of a star and the end of the world. Great.

Well if it has happened before there has to be some way to turn it back. That wound on the paladin's arm is pretty nasty. Can't be healed with the normal means and even low level magical seems to be ineffective. There's got to be a way to heal it though, so now we've got a couple of quests ahead of us.

First: Get some food for the refugees in the church so that we can make our escape and head for the capital city for help. I'm not sure that they've faired much better but the attempt has to be made.

Second: Find some kind of cure for this disease that these nasty zombies carry. A library or a sage maybe? Not sure...but we have to try, otherwise the paladin's a goner.

By the end of the session I was a grinning fool. I love this kind of thing and personally I think 4e will work well with it. I'm not going to get into it here, but I think that 4e lends itself better to a strong story-type game, and not well to the looser aspects of a sandbox campaign. Anyway, I'm excited. This is going to be a hoot. Kudos to our DM for surprising us like that. Being old and jaded is more of a burden sometimes than it should be, and things like this make me feel young again.

A TPK?

This is going to be short, but I thought I'd write down a few thoughts I had about last night's game.

I've been playing in a 4E game with some guys, cause, well frankly, because that's what's available. Anyway, our DM Wes, had set us on a mission to rescue some villagers from the Valley. They had been captured by some hobgoblins and taken into this old abandoned minotaur city. Well, we went after them. Duh.

Turns out that it's not REALLY the hobgoblins that are to blame for this, but rather it seems a crooked group of powerful mages have swiped them in order to use them as blackmail leverage to get us to do some dirty work for them. Some items had been heisted and they wanted them found with as little fuss as possible. We didn't really have much of a choice; Fight the mages, or work for them. Hmmm, option two seemed reasonable.

I'm playing a thief named Thoth Amon (heh...yeah, I love REH and the names he comes up with.), who's this Babylonian looking dude from the darker side of a port town. He's a rough customer who doesn't hold much faith in human nature, but he's willing to give most a chance at "redemption". The first thing that Thoth wants to do is run this mage (The Arcanis) through for forcing him into this situation. But he's convinced by his party members that this isn't a "prudent" course of action.

Well fast forward: There were a couple of quests that were levied upon us; The pay out was of course the villager's freedom. Hrmph... The first quest was completed without much adieu and 1/2 of the villagers were released.

It was the second quest that proved a bit more interesting, to say the least. I'm not going to go into a play by play, but simply put, we were tasked with finding the second set of these stolen artifacts (I'm having trouble believing that all of these things were stolen and spread out amongst all these different factions, but hey, I'm just the messenger right?) which were to be found with a group of gnolls taking refuge in an old abandoned temple to Baphomet.

Sounds kinda shaky to me. Turns out I wasn't too far off. We get through this portal that takes us to the temple and we emerge into this large room with 3 archways leading off of it. (including the one we were currently in.) 5 huge pillars, carved to look like minotaurs stood at random places in the room and in the far corner was a low, square well.

First thing, the paladin steps into the room and sets off these magic mouths, which deliver some type of message to the faithful. We ignore them and he proceeds to the well, looks down, and WHAM! A huge set of tentacles reaches up and nabs him. Boom! We're in a fight for our lives.

Add in a couple of ghouls hiding in the shadows and a few chokers scrambling in from overhead, and you've got a big ol passle of trouble with a capital "T". Can you see any kind of a theme in the above mentioned adversaries? They can all grab, immobilize and / or stun. This was a bit of an issue and turned out to be our undoing.

It didn't take long. 5 PCs bit the dust in quick succession. We made a few tactical blunders, which in 4E can spell doom in a quick way. You really do have to be decent with tactics in this newest iteration of the game. Oh, and I forgot to mention, but we were short a "defender", or rather a fighter, and that my friend was probably the largest contributor to our demise.

So in the end, we got the ass end chewed out and wrapped the evening up rolling up new characters.

My take on this whole debacle? I LOVED it! Seriously. One of the largest complaints I've had regarding 4E is that there's a huge safety net, which sort of fuzzies the distinct edges of danger. And I don't like that. I want my game to be decidedly nasty. I want to know that there's a very real chance that I won't succeed and that if I do, I've done something above and beyond the norm. 

That was one of the huge differences between the earlier games and today's version: Back then there was absolutely no preconceived notion that you were going to make it. In fact it was quite the opposite. IF you made it you knew that it was because you were either VERY lucky or VERY cunning. Or both.

Why NOT 4e?

I'm a self professed fan of what many have come to call "old school" gaming. I LOVE the older versions of some games. They were amazingly well suited for the type of gaming that I fell in love with.

It was 1976 (I was 12 or 13 at the time) and I had been painting Napoleonic miniatures for a guy named Jim, a work-mate of my mom's. This guy played wargames...and I was entranced. He knew I was a big fantasy fan, we had spoken many times of the Hobbit and how I adored that book. One day he lent me his Lord of the Rings trilogy.

I returned it soon afterwards and just gushed about it to him. He laughed, knowing that I'd be drawn in. About a week or so later he delivered my next box of minis to paint via my mother. I opened it and "What?!?"... I was staring at 4 lizard men. I had NO idea what they were at the time, and I couldn't for the life of me, imagine what they could be for.

But man, they were soooooo cool! I can remember them as if they were lying in front of me today: Each was carrying a round shield and curved scimitar, standing splayed-legged with their swords over their heads, long tails trailing out behind. I immediately phoned Jim to ask what they were. He told me that they were miniatures to a new game he was trying out with his buddies called Chainmail. He invited me to come over and check it out the next weekend.

Well I don't remember exactly what happened after that, but I do remember that I started playing after being introduced to a super brainy group of guys in 7th grade; Fish, Dave and Wayne. We hit it off immediately.

Now, this all took place in a pretty small cow-town, I knew Wayne via his father, who was a basketball referee and baseball coach. I had played against Wayne in baseball for years. You have to remember that back in the 70's there wasn't really a stigma attached to Dungeons and Dragons yet. EVERYONE played...Or at least wanted to play. It was a "cool" thing to do.

We four (Fish, Dave, Wayne and I) played every chance we could get. We even played in the stairwell at school once during a fire drill. We were very much entranced by the game.

Initially we played with the Holmes set with a bunch of rules thrown in out of the LBB's, which Fish owned. In fact, the game was introduced to Fish via a girl he was infatuated with who had family in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin. She had heard of this game during her summer break and she brought it home, to Loveland. Where she showed Fish. And then viola! Viral marketing at its best.

So anyway, we played and played and played. Most of my Jr. High and Highschool experiences were with AD&D, we had left Holmes behind because of the level restrictions. On into university we played this crazy game.

It's now the 80's and our group of friends in Boulder is ALL about Dungeons and Dragons. We often had 10 to 12 people at the table. It is with great fondness that I remember those insane nights and weekends, playing AD&D until we couldn't keep our eyes open any longer. We even went so far as to take the game with us on Spring Break.

So there you have a brief history. I started with an amalgamation of Holmes and the LBB version of the game and very soon afterwards moved naturally into AD&D. We completely skipped the Mentzer editions...and I sometimes regret that. I'd be willing to bet that we would have loved that version. But in all honesty, Fish, our DM, was a very detail and rules oriented kind of guy. Not that he was a rules lawyer, what he said was law. And we all knew that sometimes you couldn't find those "laws" in the book. That's just the way it went.

Flash foward to modern times. I've played nearly every version of the game (Not Mentzer), and have had fun with each and every one. But one of the things that I noticed over the years is that the game had somehow changed. Now of course the long tread of years have also left their indellible mark on me as well. I've changed too.

But the game, it seemed to bog. And the DM just wasn't a DM any longer. How can I explain this? The rules had been codified to the point where there was an entry in the books for nearly anything you could think of doing. And unfortunately I wasn't playing with my best friends anymore. I had moved on to play with different people. And some of them were REALLY into the rules as written.

Turns out that since there was a rule for nearly everything, the DM wasn't really needed. He / she was there strictly to read out of the module and roll for the monsters. And even then, the players dictated nearly everything. That fine balance that was responsible for so much of the experience of yesteryear was completely missing.  It was all player driven now.

Don't get me wrong, I undersand what part the players take in a game. But the game was now all "plot" driven, rules spelled out, souless muckery. 3.0 and 3.5, while initially shiny and pretty, soon lost their lustre. I played them the entire time, I didn't really have much choice in the matter due to my compatriots, but the game grew boring. This was a first.

I had played the game for over 20 years and I don't ever recall growing bored with the game. What was going on? Had I just grown jaded? Enter my daughters.

My two little girls were just getting to the age that they were asking to play "Dungeons and Dragons". My eldest had read nearly all of the fantasy (appropriate for her age of 9) that she could get her hands on, and the youngest always wanted to play as long as it was a game.

So I thought, I can't introduce them to Dungeons and Dragons in it's current incarnation. It's just not made for people of that age. So I went out and looked around. And I came up with Castles and Crusades, a game from Troll Lord Games. (Troll Lord) It was just what I was looking for. A game who's main guide included both player and DM rules, was hardbound and cost less than $20. Oh, and the serious selling point? It was compatible with ALL of my older stuff.

I sat down with the rules and had them basically down pat in the span of 2 hours. The girls and I rolled up characters and within an hour we were playing. It was honestly THAT simple. And guess what. That feeling of joy had returned. The game was fast, free-flowing, and simple. That was all it took.

Now, there was the problem of my regular group. We had invited a new guy into the fold (6 of us) and he was now DMing. He is in all honesty and EXCELLENT DM. Very creative and quick with rules adjucation. He was also a very big fan of WotC and the newest and greatest iteration of Dungeons and Dragons: 4th Edition.

We we tried it. And frankly, I liked it. Initially. It was, and continues to be (after roughly 10 or so sessions) a miniatures based tactical war game. There is a little bit of story and plot in there somewhere, but it's nearly all centered on encounters, powers and squad-based, coordinated combat.

I won't malign our DM. I think that he's still getting into the swing of things and the game has the potential of changing once we all have a decent grasp on the new rules. (They are NOT at all similar to the old rules. It's a different game completely.)

My enjoyment of the game now stems from playing with a group of contemporaries. But in all honesty, I really like the game with my daughters a little more....It's much more free-spirited and less "heavy". No huge plot lines. No constant battles that run on and on. I'm at a loss here, I don't know what to say. The game that I'm playing with my daughters seems to embody what "old school" means to me.

Why NOT 4E? Well, to be truthful, it's not nearly as fun as other systems out there. Mainly Castles and Crusades. I'd be willing to bet though that I could insert Mentzer or Holmes and we'd have just as much fun.

I wish I could get our group to try it out. But unfortunately I don't think that would be at all possible. Well, that's OK, my daughters are turning into fantastic little players...and their best years are still in front of them. ;-)