Freedom, truth, love, beauty.

Turns Out Having Fun is Hard Work

I’m getting ready to run some friends through a small Dungeons and Dragons, 4th edition, adventure next weekend.

It’s a little overwhelming. There are many new rules and tweaks to the rules to learn. I’m also getting the sense that the players are a little overwhelmed by creating characters. There are just too many options.

A giant chunk of the Player’s Handbook is the chapter on classes (fighter, wizards, etc.). It’s very long and packed with the new “powers”. It really makes my eyes bleed. I haven’t even gotten into studying combat yet because I’m still figuring out what the lower levels (1-5) of PCs are capable of doing.

Right now my gut is telling me that if you want to play this with people new to role-playing or even just 4E you need to have preconstructed, low-level characters and a very basic adventure with only 4 or so encounters (combat, non-combat, trap, puzzle, whatever). It is also very tempting to just strip the game down to ability scores, races, classes, and the core mechanic and essentially free-form it. Getting rid of skills, feats, and powers makes it much easier to get into the game (yes, I realize I just reinvented basic D&D).

Like I said, I haven’t even really gotten into figuring out combat yet. If my eyes are already bleeding what will go next? It looks like as soon as you step into a combat encounter you begin playing an entirely different game.

Basically, I am getting the sense the Wizards failed at reinvigorating the game and making it new-player friendly. I just can’t see that many new players joing the hobby because of this 4th Edition. I can see many existing players, especially those that are not fans of board games (which is basically what combat has become) or computer role playing games, leaving “official” D&D for different pastures. Paizo’s Pathfinder will do well, I think. So will the open game movement games.