Anyone here currently playing D&D 4th Edition?

Gee, I wonder.

Where did you find people willing to play 2nd edition? I ask because back when I was a teenager we started out playing the very end of 1st edition and I can remember all my friends and I getting excited over the release of 2nd edition, we all agreed it was the same basic game but with the rules cleaned up and streamlined. I'd say we played the shit of 2nd edition until we all hit late 16 to early 17 when we all got girlfriends, jobs, etc... and role playing became a thing of the past.

If I ever started playing D&D again it would be 2nd edition because 3, 3.5, and especially 4th look nothing like the old style D&D and instead look like they tried to copy stupid online RPG games like World of Warcraft.

My knife supplier has been GMing games since the 80's, were also running a first edition game

I've played a lot of 1st and 2nd editions and can conclusively say I prefer 2nd. It's the same game just with the rules cleaned up and made consistent, some minor rebalancing of classes, and a cleaned up spell list. Even the first four kit books were pretty good as they didn't unbalance things but as 2nd edition went on they got more and more munchkin which sucks. My only experience with 3rd edition has been playing some video games and I like the skill point system but hated how they changed the class system and how they made it so insufferably munchkin. I have no experience with 4th edition but a quick look at it makes me think it is no longer D&D and instead was an attempt to merge WoWC with D&D and the results look like shit.

Personally, I'd like a 2nd edition with a skill points system like 3rd and would say that would be the ultimate AD&D.

I've only played 3.5 and 4.0 and 3.5 is way, way better, IMO. They nerfed skills in 4.0. In 3.5, you can really customize characters the way you want, and even a basic class like the fighter can vary greatly in terms of how they approach battle.

What does 'munchkin' mean?

We play intricate, intense multi-dimensional campaigns that is mainly storytelling and Zel has a light percentile based process he uses when he needs it.

My character did visit the Tomb of Horrors recently and played with Acererak. She's a decent level character with toys from multiple realities and dealing with him was pretty much a comedy routine. She pissed him off, humiliated him and got him to chase her through a portal to the Demon Web pits, pissing off hordes of Drow and spiders. They joined the chase, and my character opened another portal leading this horde (the portal opening tipping of Lolth to join the party) into the City of Brass, where the Djinn were at war with invading Githyanki. You can imagine the fun little war that was...but my character got away in the melee.

Of course, I just know Acererak and Lolth are now plotting against me and Zel being Zel will patiently wait years until I forget to spring that shit on me. There is absolute no character of high enough level that Zel can't make miserable. I've played Q who suffered from his plots.

But, damn if it isn't a hell of a fun time! And since it's just two of us...the hell with what anyone thinks of it!

Though, frankly, out RPGing friends all envy me and constantly beg Zel to run games like he used to. He ran a game in a shop with over 20 people in it and they all had a great time and still mourn that game 17 years later.

Munchkin is an old AD&D term used to describe the players who are hyper powerful at unreasonably low level. You know, the 2nd level player with a million gold, +5 everything, the private castle, and army of hirelings. The term was popular in Dragon magazine in the early 90's.

Damn, that module has been making players howl for 30 years now. Heck, I just recently reinstalled Troika Games version of Temple of Elemental Evil which keeps pretty close to the original module from 1982 but using the 3.5 rules which I honestly don't really know that well. I might not have played AD&D in 20 years but I still like the video games even if they're just a shadow of the real thing.

How often do you and Zel play? Is it a daily or weekly thing, or is it just whenever you guys want?


For my own campaign, some of the players were itching to try their hand at DMing, and so I am now DMing only 2 or 3 times a month and letting the other two take one week a month. The first Friday of the month we're going to do Empire of the Petal Throne, and the 3rd week, we will be doing a Forgotten Realms campaign. That also means I get to be a player who get to play on a consistent basis for the second time.

I plan to run a male human rogue specializing in disguises and having high ranks in knowledge:nobility for the Forgotten Realms campaign. He's suppose to be a street smart city slicker who doesn't like to go into the wilderness. His name is Baxtor Skarr.

The second character I am making for the EPT campaign is a sorceress specializing in bows. I want her to basically be a heavy hitter with ranged weapons, and be able to enhance her weapons with spells like true strike, and being able to turn her arrows into fire arrows, i.e. a beginner's assassin. Her name is Sinclaire Blackrose.

EPT campaign?

You do know they are making a baldur's gate enhanced edition?

EPT = Empire of Petal Throne

Theres a game out called Legend of Grimrock which is pretty much an early 90's dungeon crawler but with HD graphics, it's worth checking out.

My dad played with Gygax in the Grandmasters tournament back in the early 90s. He wasn't a very good GM.

Though a nice guy. I missed Gen Con one year because of being in a automobile accident, he and the guys that ran the RPGA sent me a signed copy of his new game Cyborg Commado (this is after his ouster at TSR). All the bigwigs had signed it, which was cool. Shitty game, but nice thought.

Fun that Gygax knew who I was back in the day. At the time I was the youngest kid ever to get to the Master level (I think that record lasted a whole 4 months, lol) and was invited to play with the Grandmasters. My dad was #5 in the RPGA at his top level, and I actually beat the #1 player in a game once.

No school like the old school.

Been a long time since I've been in a D&D campaign. Went to a few sessions of one a year ago, funny thing is instead of geeks it was all professionals - a CEO, a CTO, several directors, all guys that played in college. The game I run, everyone is either in tech or the intelligence community.

If you ever get a chance to go to a good LARP, do it - it's fun to play with 100-200 people at the same time. But it's hard to find a good group - those things are a LOT of work. Best way is to play one with predesigned characters with story backgrounds. You'll know the GMs spent some thought in it then. They are heavy story based for a good one - not a combat game like D&D so often is.

I was voted 'Most Evil' at a 100 player LARP down in Blacksburg on year. Kind of proud of that one.

Anyway, glad to hear there's so many people still having fun at it! My Star Wars campaign has gone multi-media - the tech changes has made lots of fun stuff available now!

Yeah, and it actually looks like it will be pretty damn good for $10. They're upgrading all the graphics to high definition, they're adding multiplayer, they're putting in a new user interface, they're adding new classes & kits, they're removing the level caps, and they're adding in a ton of new content. This will mean they'll have to rebalance the whole game to make sure it stays tough to beat but replay should be high since they're increasing mod support and including a built in adventure editor so that modders can create their own new content.

They're doing this to both BG 1 & 2 so talk about breathing new life into an old game. (Oh, they're also making it so it works on Ipad OS and MAC OS.)

The web site looked interesting though the game looks like a cross between the old Dungeon Hack game and the original DOOM.

If they were smart they would have remade it using the DAO engine.

Hey, remember the lil map I made for my campaign two years ago?
http://www.wordforge.net/showpost.php?p=1991115&postcount=35

Well, I've expanded it since then. Here it is:
(note: it will stretch your screen)

Link: http://img193.imageshack.us/img193/6570/caitoniamapii.gif

They've so far, only explored about 25% of it.

I love a newer build of the infinity engine with an editor though. Someone will have to do a wordforge mod for the game.

In one of the interviews the BGEE team (many of whom where originally on the BG development team back in the day) said that if sales are good for the enhanced edition then they'd try to make a BG3. BG3 got canceled back in 2004 but there is still enough there to make a go of it especially with the improvements to the game engine which they're making for the enhanced edition games.

Have any of you been following the news about the next edition of D&D? Tentatively called D&D Next, I've been trying to find tidbits here and there where I can. Some of the rumors coming out:

- this edition would combine ALL the previous editions, and would basically be a book about making it so the characters from each edition can play in a single world. It would just be an add-on, where you take your character from a previous edition, add on a few new things to it, and it would be ready to go to play version 5.

- Monte Cook was one of the star designers of D&D Next, and he quit halfway through. Rampant speculation all over the internet was happening as to what caused him to leave. The only thing he said was there were differences of opinion between him and Wizards of the Coast. Rumor has it that he wanted to make an SRD for this, but WotC kiboshed the idea because Pathfinder took their SRD and became the #1 tabletop RPG game last year.

Jesus, it seems like 4th edition just came out so it's like they're admitting they fucked the whole thing up.

I did a quick google search and I'm more convinced than ever that Hasbro/WotC has royally screwed the pooch. They have simply been chasing after what ever is the current best seller (like turning 4th edition into WoW's retarded step brother) instead of trying to build up D&D's own uniqueness as a brand. The further away they get from D&D's origins the worse this is going to get and the lower sales will get because each major change of edition just makes it clear D&D is now just something generic instead of something unique and special.

Wow, I just looked it up and 4th edition didn't even last 3.5 years. D&D came out in 1974 and AD&D came out in 1978, 2nd edition ~1990, 3rd edition ~2001-2002 (I'm not sure as I had stopped playing by then) and 3.5 came out very quickly after 3rd with 4th coming at the end of 2008. That means 1st edition lasted 12 years, 2nd edition 10-11 years, and it's been down hill ever since with 4th only lasting 3.5 years.

I bet 5th edition lasts only about 3 years before they once again admit they fucked everything up. The more they change it the more they lose the people who actually are fans of D&D instead of some generic here today, gone tomorrow game.

Preeettty much. It did a few neat things, like turn fighters into something more than just hack and slash. They at least now have spell-like abilities that can add offense to the party or give them bonuses. All of that could've been added to 3rd edition without much problem.

3.0 and 3.5 are pretty much the same. They rebalanced a few things and got rid of certain un-needed things, but I don't think you can say they are actually 2 separate editions.

With WotC, it seems the adage of the more tightly you grip something the more it slips out of your fingers holds true. They been losing more and more people to Pathfinder every month. I think D&D Next is their attempt to try and stop that.

I say again, if a book doesn't say "By Gary Gygax" on the cover, it isn't D&D.

What about David Arneson?

3.5 was the best version of D&D. Gygax had stopped contributing long before that point.

He was forced out of the company after his drinking problem became a major issue.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/TSR-s-Warri...omain_0&hash=item484538f0e7&fb_source=message

David Arneson's copy of Warriors of Mars sold on Ebay for more than $500. The old professor who games with us on Friday nights has one of these original copies. Not sure if he has it signed or not.

Just for giggles, my Star Wars campaign map:


Uploaded with ImageShack.us

Sorry, not much detail - it's a huge jpg, neither WF nor Image Shack can really do it justice. When I open it in MS Picture Viewer, it comes up at a setting of 12% - its 8 times bigger than the screen, with each of the hexes individually numbered.

And the opening scrawl:
[YT="Episode X"]fwunOC7Wylw[/YT]

Unfortunately Youtube doesn't allow the music, but it worked when I presented it to the players on the big screen.