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It had the basic rules in it, but it also featured a pretty swell map and some cut-outs so that complete rookies could run the first adventure, "Escape From Zanzer's Dungeon", as a sort of board game, along the lines of Hero Quest or DragonStrike. (It also had a bitchin' DM screen that I would reuse for a number of years afterwards).

Maybe this was a sign of things to come, but I instantly started thinking about creating my own adventures instead of running the dungeon out of the box. However, the only friend I could rope into playing with me just couldn't grasp playing without the safety net of a board and character markers. Not to rag on this nameless childhood pal, but perhaps it was asking too much to get an eight year old kid freshly weened off of a Sega controller to actually use their imagination. Regardless, we ended up using the map for our first few adventures.

The first adventure is not where my waves of silky nostalgia really come from when I see an image of the big, black box though. No, what I remember as the most exhilarating experience I've ever had with a roleplaying game was the first thing I ever did with one: I read the rulebook.

I would later figure out that the rules included in this box set were more or less a pastiche version of Moldvay Basic, but I had no idea what the difference was between any of the editions at the time. I didn't care. I was pure. Innocent. A gentle snowflake. Speaking of snow, it was snowing as I read the rulebook for the very first time, perhaps adding to the romance of my memory.

It was Halloween, and I had spent birthday money generously donated by relatives on this game (If only they knew the kind of trash I had spent their money on). There also happened to be quite the snowstorm brewing outside, and while all the stupid kids out there slipped around on the ice and slush for a few extra Three Musketeers bars and peanut butter cups, I was warming myself by the fireplace, drinking hot coffee* and reading the rules to Dungeons & Dragons for the first time.

No wonder it took me so long to get a girlfriend.

I don't know any erudite way to say what I was feeling as I stepped into the D&D world, so I will simply say -- I was fucking amazed. Dwarves and clerics and magic-users and... holy shit, look at all the weapons and armor! And the spells you can choose from! Look at all these monsters you can fight! They even give you advice on crafting your own dungeons! Awesome!

It was like a high no drug I've ever taken has been able to replicate (except for maybe that time I had to take a bunch of Tylenol 4 after a tooth extraction... back off, it was prescribed). I was positively giddy with excitement and wonder. Oh, the things you could do with this game! For a... shall we say, unique, child who was already in love with The Colour of Magic and The Hobbit, and could use his imagination, this was the jackpot. I think I stayed up until the wee hours of the morning, reading and rereading, making phantom dice rolls with my fresh d20, and plotting just what deadly monsters and traps I would use in my epic adventures. To make things sweeter for me, the next day, a Friday, was a snow day home from school, so I had an extra long weekend to bask in the glory of my new favorite game. Of course, I still carried the damn book with me to school the following Monday and read it in between classes. Oh man, the world was never going to be the same to me again.

I often like to joke and say "I hated me as a kid", but this is one instance where, even if it would create some sort of weird temporal anomaly, I would go back in time and give my eight year old self a high five. You did good, kid.

*yes, I was drinking coffee. I started on the stuff at age six... that's normal, isn't it? Eh? Eh?!

Nós que jogamos bastante RPG, MMORPG e outros jogos que interagimos tomando uma forma de um personagem em um mundo fictício normalmente tomamos como padrão o heroísmo como forma de levar os nossos personagens a frente. Salvar o mundo, a donzela e destruir o mal que vem assolando o reinado.

Uma coisa que me intriga sempre e qual é o papel daquele que tem o poder de mudar as coisas, ser diferente de tudo e todos, poder fazer as coisas apenas do seu jeito. Será o papel do Anti-heroi? Ou papel do jogador?

O Anti-herói

Vamos ver uma definição que podemos encontrar pela internet.

“Anti-herói é o termo que se emprega para alguém que protagoniza atitudes referentes às do herói clássico, mas que não possuem vocação heróica ou que realizam as façanhas por motivos egoístas, de vaidade ou de quaisquer gêneros que não sejam altruístas.”

Bom em termos de jogo, como poderíamos colocar isso, séria os nossos personagens que estão buscando resolver seus problemas pessoais de sua forma, fora de uma lei especifica que de vez enquanto ajuda alguém (só que visando os seus interesses ou vai levar ao seu objetivo).

Aquele estereotipo em que tudo que ele faz esta certo na ótica dele e seus meios vão justificar os resultados. Sempre fazendo as coisas de sua forma para conseguir o que quer, quando quer. Nisso aqui podemos classificar bastantes personagens clássicos existentes na TV,filmes e quadrinhos.

O Anti-herói de verdade.

As vezes confundimos o herói como o anti-heroi e vice-versa, será que quando jogamos conseguimos ser 100% herói? ou temos aquela pequena recaída para um lado obscuro?

Creio que sim meus caros leitores, porque todos nós temos um lado que deseja algo muito que acaba esquecendo alguns dos valores heróicos. Isto não quer dizer que você esta virando um anti-heroi, mas que você esta correndo atrás de um dos seus objetivos com mais afinco e carisma. Quem nunca aqui desejou aquela arma mágica, ou aquela pedra que esta no fundo daquele poço para poder resolver seus problemas?

Existe uma linha fina entre o herói e o anti-herói, pois ser totalmente certinho às vezes não se consegue, nem o paladino que e tendencioso a isso ele consegue ser. Às vezes ele tem que simplesmente deixar o seu grupo de lado para atender um apelo de um grito aflito mesmo todos avisando que e uma armadilha ou aquele mercenário que só trabalha ou ajuda para conseguir aquelas coisas porque tem dinheiro em volto e uma grande recompensa.

O Anti-herói sempre vai fazer qualquer movimento motivado para atingir os seus objetivos de sua forma, lutando para ter aquilo que deseja para si logo de sua própria forma. Um das mais comuns criações dos personagens por jogador e o que teve sua vida na infância destruída, treina o resto de sua vida para conseguir sua vingança sobre aqueles que destruíram a sua vida. Só um segundo, onde estar o fato do heroísmo aí nesta descrição? Este personagem vai fazer de tudo para chegar ao seu objetivo de se vingar, mesmo que tenha que salvar o mundo antes para que ele tenha chance de levar a cabo a sua vingança.

As vezes ou maioria das vezes não criamos heróis e sim anti-heróis para satisfazer uma determinada necessidade de um background criado ou um estereotipo que queremos desenvolver.

Ser ou não ser um anti-herói, es a questão.

Texto por: Christian Alencar

Blade Cascade:  This level 15 power became somewhat infamous for allowing almost arbitrarily long strings of attacks when the attack roll was boosted enough through bonuses, especially if the character could reroll.  It's now limited to a maximum of 5 attacks.  This is still pretty good damage for a level 15 daily, mitigated by the fact multiple attack rolls are necessary to deal it all.  I was looking at house-ruling it to a cap of 6 attacks, so 5 works for me.

Ranger, Rogue, Warlock:  In order to gain the striker bonus damage dice, the character has to hit the target.  They don't get to add bonus damage to a miss if the power does damage on a miss.

Flaming Sphere:  The sphere occupies a square, so it can't be moved through.

Skills:  DCs mentioning the target's level (eg. Insight) now add half the target's level instead.  That should help scaling.

Shield Push feat:  Replace the text in the special section with “You must be using a shield to benefit from this feat.” I had to mention this one because it's a silly argument.  The printed text says "You must carry a shield to benefit from this feat."  Evidently people were arguing that they would swing a two-handed weapon while a shield was strapped to their back, and use the feat.  Sheesh.  Still, I kind of wish they'd added a similar note for the Rogue Weapon Talent, though; I've seen people try to pull the same thing with holding a shuriken or a dagger in the offhand, while attacking with a more damaging weapon.

Surprised condition:  You can't take free actions while surprised.  No more yelling warnings about the ambush that took you unaware.  I think I like this one -- it makes the "take him out before he can alert the others!" approach a lot more likely.

DMG Page 42:  The DCs all get reduced by 5, basically, and the footnotes to the table are stricken.  This goes a long way toward fixing skill challenges.  The skill check DCs on page 61 also get reduced by 5.

More skill challenge fixes:  All challenges now end at 3 failures, baseline.  It's not dependent on the complexity of the challenge any more.  This makes the more complex challenges actually harder, rather than making them easier after a certain point.  Also, using an "unusual" skill in a skill challenge is no longer automatically a hard DC; now it's "usually moderate or hard."  And of the "Assist Another chain," the following advice is given:  “On checks that aren’t described as group checks, consider limiting the number of characters who can assist another character’s skill check to one or two. The goal of a skill challenge isn’t for the entire party to line up behind one expert but for the entire group to contribute in different and meaningful ways.” Makes sense.

I'll have to try these new skill challenge rules, but offhand, they seem to address the problems of the published system.  Again, they're pretty similar to what I'd already house-ruled, so I'm happy in that respect.

Resistance:  If you hit with a combined-damage-type attack, resistance only reduces the damage if the monster has resistance to both damage types, and then only by the lower amount.  So if you hit for 15 fire and acid damage against something with 10 fire resistance but no acid resistance, you do 15 damage.  If it had 10 fire resistance and 5 acid resistance, you'd do 10 damage.  This makes "blended" damage a lot better.

There are also a couple of monster changes, mostly corrections to hit points or damage.

This errata addresses most of the problems I've run into with 4e.  There are a few that didn't get touched upon yet, though:

* Seal of Binding:  This cleric power allows for easily taking out any monster that can be hit with a single Wisdom vs. Will attack, provided the party has some means of healing the cleric.  My fix for this:  The cleric is unable to be affected by any effect other than Seal of Binding while sustaining the power.  Also, the target is immune to damage (other than Seal of Binding), not simply to attacks; that addresses some issues such as Arcane Gate/Slashing Wake combination being used to inflict damage without technically making an attack.

* Divine Miracle:  People have posited various bits of brokenness involving this Demigod power, all of which rely on it being able to restore an unlimited number of encounter powers per turn -- because as soon as one is used, another can be recalled, as written.  My fix:  It works once per round.  The Demigod still never runs out of encounter powers, but he can't do things like retrieve Elven Accuracy unlimited times until a critical hit is scored.

* Stealth:  On various forums I visit, people seem to have some trouble applying the stealth rules.  I think this probably goes beyond the scope of errata, though -- I'm not convinced that it's a problem with the rules, per se, just a certain amount of confusion.  I suspect there could be a Dragon article in this.  Perhaps I'll pitch one.

* Rerolls:  Mostly this involved Blade Cascade (which the errata addressed) and Divine Miracle/Elven Accuracy, and I'm not sure it's necessary any more.  I've been using the following house rule though:  A given die can only be rerolled once.  If you're an elf and an Epic Trickster, you don't get to reroll an attack four times -- just once.  You can pick whether to use Elven Accuracy or your Trickster rerolls.  It might not be broken any more to allow for more, but I'm keeping it for now because it limits the amount of time one character gets to spend making his attack, and keeps things moving.

On that last one, I should note that I separate abilities that allow "roll twice" from ones that allow a reroll.  So a Divine Oracle making a Will-targeted attack would roll two dice for the class feature, and could then reroll one of those dice (the higher one in this case, since that's the one the class feature specifies is used) if he wishes to.

All the same, I'm pleased that WotC managed to get errata out so quickly, and also that there's so little of it.  I'm sure there will be more; it's the nature of the beast.  But it's a good start.

• Twenty-First Session - Sins of the Saviors Part IV

Existe um arquivo de atualizações para cada um dos 3 livros e outro para o escudo do mestre (baixe aqui):

1. Livro do Jogador: com 7 páginas de texto, a errata abrange principalmente poderes que permaneceram confusos e adiciona algumas poucas linhas faltantes. Entre as principais correções: o Hunter's Quarry do patrulheiro e o Sneak Attack do ladino só permitem causar bônus de dano uma vez por turno;
2. Livro e Escudo do Mestre: a principal revisão foi feita na tabela de dificuldades (os valores foram reduzidos em 5 pontos) e com isto as regras para doenças e desafios de perícias. Estes desafios em especial chegaram a ter parágrafos removidos do texto original;
3. Livro dos Monstros: a menor errata, com somente 3 páginas, atualiza alguns dos poderes dos monstros, mas nada definitivamente vital.

Não se pode simplesmente clicar com o botão direito sobre a capa do livro (em papel) e selecionar a opção update. Para se manter atualizado, o mestre que já possui os livros deve imprimir agora estas 15 páginas de Erratas e carregar consigo?

Só na minha mesa de jogo a errata já atingiu a patrulheira, que na última sessão de jogo derrubou uma múmia com duas flechas certeiras (com Hunter's Quarry, lógico); a maga com sua Esfera Flamejante; e a própria múmia que eu citei acima, que teve os testes de Endurance para a doença revisados.

Finalizo assegurando que muitas das mudanças são necessárias (algumas até esperadas) e espero que o jogo seja atualizado constantemente, mas em forma de implementos e novidades para as regras existentes, mantendo o núcleo de regras (Core Rules) intacto.

What is the biggest change in 4E? It’s not really the rules per se, its that there is no longer any place for a lone wolf character anymore. You see a little of that in the default party becoming one larger (it was 4 from 2nd - 3.5) now it is 5. The tactical aspect HEAVILY encourages teamwork and balance above all other considerations.

This was a revelation to me.  I hadn't put the thought together in quite that way, in spite of stumbling around the edges of it pretty consistently.  Donny's absolutely right:  4e puts emphasis on a group of characters that is a party of adventureres, rather than on a group of adventurers that happens to have formed a party.  Teamwork is much more central to 4e than to earlier editions.

Donny suggests that this is part of what's behind the "edition war":  a rift between those whose players preferred team play to begin with (the group I'm among, for the record) and those whose players preferred individual heroics and moments of glory.

I think there's some truth to that; one of the most frequent pieces of criticism and praise (depending on the writer's camp) I've often seen regarding 4e is the change in the wizard class from "weak early on, godlike later" to more balanced across all levels.  Even in my own overview, I touched on that.  But it's not just wizards -- everyone's more dependent on the team now.  The rogue or ranger can still be sneaky, but when it comes to a fight, they'll want backup.

I like that idea.  But of course, teamwork is my style of game.  I'm not heavily invested in my character being powerful in and of himself when I play, and when I GM, I very much prefer my party to stick together and share the spotlight.  4e makes this easier.

That's not to say it's bad to play the lone wolf.  I've done it.  It's just not my preference.  But those who do prefer it will find it more difficult with 4e.  It's obvious, once it's pointed out.  And from that perspective, the animosity toward balance is easier to understand, even if I still don't sympathize.

That's not small changes there. I was just expecting "knock off the +5 to Skills at the bottom of the chart on pg. 42" but here there's massive revisions. I'm glad this happened before I actually started up my campaign. I'm also glad they didn't just leave it as I figured it'd be the biggest diverging point of play for 4E groups.

It'd be nice if there was a little design discussion about this change, though, since we got so much design theory behind everything else. It's not as bad as AEG's "What TN Chart?" gaffe with 3rd edition Legend of the 5 Rings, but still. With changes that big, something, somewhere, went really wrong between "things we design, things we playtest, things we revise, and here's what ends up in the book"...

I really hope they fix this in the next printing of the books.

ETA: Of course, I also started thinking, "Gee, I hope we don't go down the road of software, where games are being sent out half done needing patches" but then I remember that this kind of makes up most of the history of the hobby, along with the assumption that people were supposed to fix the rules themselves. (I remember someone berating me for actually following the rules in a trad game- "But you should have known they wouldn't work" as the defense for me criticizing the game...)

So in light of that, a month turnaround for errata is improvement!

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Tonight's topic will be religion within the Empire.  I don't want to give away too much of the campaign story-line, but there is some significance to it.  I think most of it will be basic knowledge to most of the players (more details will need a successful religion check) so everybody gets to read it.

The following quote by James Wyatt was brought up:  "In past editions, we'd describe things like cave slime as if the DC of the Acrobatics check to avoid slipping in it were an objective, scientific measurement of its physical properties. "How slippery is cave slime? It's DC 30 slippery."  Bur setting a fixed number like that limits its usefulness -- cave slime would be too challenging for low-level characters and irrelevant for high-level characters. In 4th Edition, we tell you to set the DC to avoid slipping based on the level of the characters, using the Difficulty Class and Damage by Level table. So when 5th-level characters encounter cave slime, they'll be making a check against DC 22, but 25th-level characters have to make a DC 33 check."

A poster by the handle Jackalope, in reply, wrote:  "This is the most absolutely idiotic thing I've ever read. So basically, no matter how good a character gets, everything should remain an identical challenge? Nobody gets better, the numbers just get bigger. I just don't get it." (Note, this poster has not read the 4e rules, nor played the game -- he's going by the description, which is fair enough.)

To which a third poster replied, in part (the full post can be read on his blog or on the previously-linked thread), "Jackalope, its based on the absurd and utterly idiotic idea that the PCs have to be ABSOLUTELY AWESOME at all times or else the world ends. [...] FUN MUST BE HAD AT ALL TIMES! [...] They're idiots. [...] the domination of Jargon in 4e is part of a conscious attempt to try to destroy (exterminate, if you will) the very possibility of experiencing "immersion" in D&D." This poster later used the "Tyranny of Fun" phrase to refer to this... idea.

So that's the background.

I'd initially come across it, shrugged, and moved on.  But then I came across it again, while reading The Chatty DM's rant on the subject.

Needless to say, I broadly agree with Chatty on the matter.  I'm reproducing below my comments in response to his blog post:

I find the argument boils down to two things, really:

1. “Change is bad.” These are the arguments that are recycled from previous edition changes. (Seriously, I remember reading some of these posts almost word for word when 3e came out… and when 2e came out.) This is, arguably, the biggest change to the game yet, but these arguments still boil down to liking the old system better.

There’s nothing stopping anyone from playing the old system. True, there won’t be any first-party support, and probably there’ll be a lot less third-party support. That never stopped the die-hard 1e players, though. If the desire’s still there, the rulebooks (and modules, and whatever else) are still there.

2. “I wanted a different style of game.” Over the years, the focus has changed. 1e was really a low-fantasy, swords-and-sorcery style game, until you got to high levels. There was a real chance that a character wouldn’t have so much as a +1 weapon at level 6, or maybe even at level 9. At the higher levels, this broke down some, and if you got into some third-party stuff (like Primal elements), it could be as epic-high-fantasy as anything in 4e, but the root game was more pulp-style. And it was designed with the expectation that very few would reach those high levels, anyway — in fact, most PC races simply couldn’t, if you applied the rules as written. Half-elf cleric? Level 5 maximum, thanks.

2e was much the same, though it relaxed level restrictions, and allowed for a bit more flexibility on the part of the players. Thief skills, for instance, were no longer set quantities.

3e shifted more toward the high-fantasy aspect, with ‘expected wealth.’ Wizards were still broken, at even earlier levels. Noncasters were still increasingly useless at higher levels, but now “higher levels” started as early as level 7 or so. But one thing 3e did, even more so than earlier editions, was to simulate a world.

4e is high fantasy, unabashedly. It’s not as wizard-slanted as earlier editions, and the overall power level is a bit lower because of it, but the game’s slanted toward providing an epic-fantasy feel. And it doesn’t simulate a world. PCs aren’t the same as NPCs, even in theory. PCs are different and special.

Some people don’t like that. Some people just want lower fantasy, which is reasonable. Some just don’t like PCs being special, which I don’t get. But fair enough.

But 4e doesn’t cater to them.

In a nutshell, 1e would be a comfortable setting for Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser. 3e would be a comfortable setting for Elric or Conan in his more over-the-top appearances. 4e would be a comfortable setting for the more mystical Arthurian tales, like Gawain and the Green Knight or the more fantastic Merlin stories, and for epics along the lines of most Lord of the Rings imitators. (As for the Rings themselves, I’m not so sure… that’s hard to classify.)

4e does that sort of game very well, mind you.

What I can’t understand are the people complaining about the “loss” of such mechanics as save-or-die and level draining. Just goes to show you, I guess.

But now it's been on my mind, and I feel the need to go further into the matter.  Because it really is an absurd argument, from where I stand.

Now, I'll want to be clear on this:  Reasonable people can enjoy different styles of game.  Some people like a game where they're average joes bootstrapping themselves and (assuming they survive the whims of fate) becoming great heroes.  Some people like a game where they're hapless saps caught up in a word beyond their control, where every day is a struggle to survive, and where there's little glory to be won and victory means living to fight some more tomorrow.  I've enjoyed games like that.

Fourth edition is not that game.  That's not the kind of world it assumes.  This is not a design flaw, it's a conscious design decision.  Even the "Tyranny of Fun" bandwagon seems to mostly acknowledge that; they just feel that it was the wrong decision and it's not true to the history of the game.  Additionally, many feel that it'd responsible for the erosion of roleplay.  One or two seem to feel it's responsible for the decline of Western civilization, but they're not representative.

Thing is, they're wrong, on just about every count.

On the original poster's comment, and as noted by many other replies in the thread:  4e doesn't cause the use of jargon.  I've been in games in 3e, 2e, 1e, and OD&D where mechanics intervened to the detriment of narrative, too.  No shifts, of course, but plenty of "I make a full attack" in 3e or "I start casting my spell.  It'll go off on segment 6" in 1e.  Narrative is entirely the responsibility of the players and GM.  Insofar as 4e is a "crunchy," rules-emphasizing system, it does encourage the use of some jargon, whereas a diceless game such as Amber or Nobilis doesn't -- but even in those systems, there are times when the mechanics intervene.  ("I spend 2 miracle points on a Lesser Creation of Strength.")

On to immersion, then.  To a small extent, they're correct here:  3e was more simulationist in nature; it modeled a fantasy world with more verisimilitude.  DC 30 cave slime is "realistic" in that it's always slippery to a certain extent.  4e is more narrativist in nature; it models a fantasy epic, where the story matters more than the "realism" of the world.  Cave slime is more slippery at higher levels in order to pose an appropriate challenge, because if it wasn't more slippery, then it might as well no longer be there at high levels.

Does it break immersion more to have higher-level characters encounter slime that's more slippery, or to effectively no longer encounter it at all?

But leaving that aside... another comment was that you're supposed to work up to the dragon.  This is based on a misunderstanding of 4e:  not every monster will automatically be an appropriate challenge.  The DMG doesn't even come close to suggesting such a thing.  If your first-level characters go dragon hunting, you won't run into a first-level dragon.

Furthermore, an interesting comparison:  In 4e, the weakest dragon is the white wyrmling (a level 3 Solo monster).  In 3e, the white wyrmling was... 3 HD.  In the D&D basic set, the white dragon was 6 HD, and a note in the dragon description suggested that younger dragons might have about 3 fewer HD, which would make a white wyrmling... you guessed it, 3 HD.  That's not a lot to "work up to."  Bigger dragons?  Well, the ancient red in 4e is a level 30 Solo monster... maximum level seems like some "working up" might be involved.

And third, there's the implication that previous editions encouraged immersion, where 4e does not.  This is untrue on both counts.  For the latter, the 4e DMG does talk a good deal about encouraging immersion -- because it's part of the fun.  It simply recognizes that there are times when game jargon should be used for clarity.  For the former, in any D&D game I've ever played, in any edition, there were times when the rules and mechanics simply killed immersion.  Why, exactly, can't half-elves reach level 6, or level 60, as a cleric?  The DM could come up with a reason, but the real reason was:  The rules said so.

(Of course, like most groups I've ever heard of, mine house-ruled away the level restrictions.  We also allowed humans to multiclass.)

And for that matter, "cave slime is DC 30 slippery" doesn't sound very immersive to me, either.  I prefer "the blue-tinged slime that coats the rocks underfoot makes every step potentially treacherous as you face down the illithid band."  Who cares if my party is level 29?  The slime makes every step potentially treacherous.  Because that leads to a more interesting combat than "Slime?  That won't bother anyone above level 5.  We'll just treat it as a level, dry floor."

PCs have to be ABSOLUTELY AWESOME at all times?  Damn straight, I say.  And their opponents should be ABSOLUTELY AWESOME too.  Maybe not at all times -- the walk-over or the "way out of our league" keeps things fun and varied too (and the rules encourage this, explicitly -- another thing the Tyranny crowd seems to have overlooked in its complaining about balance).  But in 4e, yes, each and every fight should have the PCs doing awesome things, and most of them should have the NPCs doing awesome things right back.  They should largely take place in awesome settings, with awesome scene elements making for a more awesome fight.

I can't see this as a bad thing.

Finally, the Tyranny crowd is wrong to equate "4e should be fun" with "the players always get whatever it is they want without effort."  The effort's fun, too.  Hell, losing can be fun -- just as long as it's not arbitrary.  And that's right there in the rules, too.

Me? I get excited. Dungeons & Dragons has been a part of my social repertoire since I was in high school. My first experience was with 2^nd edition AD&D, a horrid age of unnecessarily complex rules, presided over by the dark and tyrannical THAC0 (To Hit Armor Class 0). That didn't last so long. In high school, a friend convinced me to give it another shot, during the 3.5^th edition era, a time when negative modifiers were no longer good (ever), and feats were as important a part of character creation as classes and skills.

Having bought, to date, over $400 worth of 3^rd and 3.5^th edition, I was understandably bitter when 4^th edition was announced, though optimistic that particularly annoying rules might be changed (I hated grappling, it never made sense). A part of me yearned for a system that was more balanced and player-friendly, while my wallet vehemently rejected the idea. As details leaked out, I grew excited by the changes; maybe this would be fun after all.

As it turns out, it is.

Pros: The game has been simplified. A lot. Rather than fighters getting bonus feats, wizards getting spells, and rogues getting "special features," everyone now gets powers. All of the powers are very simple to read and understand, and since everything is largely the same, new gamers won't feel overwhelmed by a barrage of choices.

The basic game mechanic of roll a d20, add a number, and compare it to a Difficulty Class (DC) hasn't changed, but the numbers you add have. No more are you bothered by base attack bonuses, skill ranks, and base saves complicating your class: almost everything is simply a d20 plus one-half your level plus an ability modifier. Saves have been done away with altogether, replacing them with Fortitude, Reflex, and Will defenses, an AC-like score which enemy casters try to beat with an attack roll. This allows casters to critical with anything, not just "weaponlike" spells anymore.

The addition of at-will powers means that no one, not even the spell-slinging wizard, is at a loss for action in combat. It also adds more variety; now, rather than simply having a fighter swing a sword around mindlessly, he can make a basic attack or use one of his at-will powers with a variety of interesting (though not game-breaking) effects.

Death effects have been entirely removed, meaning that an unlucky roll will never lead to your character's untimely demise. Likewise, critical hits have been made less lethal; no longer does a natural 20 multiply damage, now it just maximizes the damage dice you would have otherwise rolled. Still very cool when some powers let you do three times weapon damage. Also, confirmation rolls have been removed, because what's more disappointing than rolling a natural 20, only to fail the confirmation roll?

Separation of power levels into ten-level "tiers" (heroic, paragon, and epic) makes the game simply for the DM and player alike. Feats are likewise separated, with heroic, paragon, and epic tier feats becoming available at the appropriate level, thus doing away with the complicated base attack bonus prerequisites of 3.5^th edition.

The book layouts have been improved, significantly. Every topic has a simple bullet-list style of presentation, and has been worded such that it's very easy to understand. A single chart covers all classes' progression through the levels, and each class has a very standardized layout that's simple for new players to digest. Terminology has also been standardized; "shift" always means movement that doesn't provoke opportunity attacks, "push" always means moving an enemy directly away from you, etc.

The game has been, overall, been made more accessible to those without any sort of roleplaying experience whatsoever. The Dungeon Master's Guide (DMG) even has really good advice for new DMs... mostly. Monster encounters have been made easier to set up, experience has been simplified, and play has been streamlined. Even character creation is a little easier. As much as I personally dislike the official inclusion of character "roles" in the system, it does make it easier for new players to figure out their character's job.

But not everything is chocolate body frosting and edible underwear. Every silver lining has its cloud, so let's look at the negatives.

Cons: Class roles have been strongly emphasized; fighters are defenders, clerics are leaders, and rogues are strikers. It's harder to play a social rogue, or a dual-wielding, damage-dealing fighter. Actually, that second one is completely impossible by the current ruleset, where dual-wielding is impractical for anyone but rangers. Though power and feat selection still allow for a fairly versatile character, all of the powers point in one direction for each class.

The Monster Manual (MM) has skipped out on metallic dragons. Other than a short blurb about the other varieties of dragons, only chromatic dragons got any page-time. Admittedly, this isn't that big a deal. The game assumes that players are playing a good party, and as such should only meet chromatic dragons as adversaries, but as a true dragon-lover, I find myself disappointed by the lack of play that metallic dragons have received thus far.

The game's core rulebooks assume you'll be playing a good or unaligned party. As such, only the good and unaligned deities received a significant amount of attention. All paladin and cleric powers deal "radiant damage" and are described as shining lights from the gods themselves. The DMG, fortunately, gives slightly more information on the evil deities and suggestions on how to make player classes more evil-themed. Still, the fact that the typical stance is goody-two-shoes is troublesome. Some of us have darker urges.

Gnomes are a monster race. Wizards of the Coast was kind enough to put a small blurb on playing gnomes, drow, and such in the back of the MM, but gnomes are no longer the bright-eyed, tiny illusionists they once were. Now they are squat, ugly, grey things with sharp teeth, twisted by the alien realm of the Feywild. Gnome bards are a thing of the past.

Come to think of it, bards are a thing of the past, as are monks, sorcerers, barbarians, and druids. At least, they're history until more supplements come out, detailing the archetypal classes that are so far missing from our rulebooks. This is enough to be annoying, though there may be a good reason for this. We'll have to wait for the supplements to come out before a sterner judgment can be passed.

Multiclassing has been butchered. No more can a wizard dabble in a few levels of rogue to get some sneak attack dice and a few ranks in Hide and Move Silently. Multiclassing is handled entirely through feats; if you take four separate feats to gain powers from another class, you may then select that class in place of your 11^th level "paragon path" to gain even more powers from that class. It is impossible to gain a class' features without having selected that class.

Overall, the feel of the game is different; it feels a little more like playing an MMORPG on paper, rather than MMORPGs being a bit like D&D on your computer. The increased standardization of magic items, the uniformity of level progression, the strictness of class roles, the increased focus on combat, and especially the lumping of all special abilities under the "powers" banner have the appearance of making the game easier for new players (which is true, to an extent) but also suck dry the original soul of the game. No longer is a group of adventurers quite as different from one another as they once were under 3.5^th edition's rule. Uniqueness was sacrificed for simplicity's sake, and those of us with the intelligence and patience to learn older systems have to wonder if it's worth it.

Overall: Though my heart weeps at some of the changes this system has seen, the switch to 4^th edition has been a worthwhile one. The game is simpler, quicker-moving, easier to teach to new players, and as much (perhaps more) fun as older systems. As with any game, further releases only serve to deepen the game, hopefully returning some conspicuously missing classes to us and giving us unique perspectives on existing classes (rangers are rumored to have a third combat style on the way). As it stands, an incomplete system, it could use improvement. Hopefully, that's on its way.

For now, a mutable four out of five stars.

Making a long story short... I mistakenly booted up my laptop with an eSATA drive attached that contained an old exact mirror of my Windows install.  Something seemed wrong about the files on the desktop, so I shut down and rebooted without the drive... to discover that the Windows boot now hung at the blue 'Welcome to Windows XP' screen.  (The MacOS boot was fine.)

During a rescue install, I noticed that Windows now seemed to think that the MacOS partition was the C drive, and the Windows partition was the D drive.

I eventually fixed this by adapting instructions from http://winhlp.com/node/66 to modify the registry on the Windows partition.  I booted into Puppy Linux to access the windows files, then copied the registry 'hive' to another windows machine to edit it.  I tried deleting the entries for \DosDevices\C: and \DosDevices\D: as suggested, but what finally worked was to *swap* the values associated with these entries.

The first thing I did on seeing the problem was to use Puppy Linux and dd to make an image of the problem partition.  So I was able to backtrack from the various failed rescue installs I tried, by restoring the image, but each step took hours.

Fourth edition gives most classes a whole host of newfangled powers that they need to be savvy with from first level.

However, the D&D fourth edition character sheet gives players almost no space to note down these powers and there stats. You’re only given one tiny line to fill in all the details.

Wizards suggest that all the powers should be noted down on index cards, but it seems impractical for players to be flicking through a series of cards in the middle of combat. It’d be much easier just to refer to your character sheet.

However, help is at hand. A fellow DM in my group came across a website where someone had put together their own character sheets and a separate sheet for powers.

The character sheet here gives you two pages to note down all the vital details and a separate powers sheet here (which runs to two pages) to detail all your character’s powers.

This seems a much better solution so thankyou Dragon Avenue.

I have recently discovered the allure of OD&D, the original incarnation of the Dungeons & Dragons franchise.  OD&D focuses on 3 Little Brown Books [colloquially called the 3 LBBs], which contain an odd assortment of tables, explanations, and rules hemstitched together into the entity that launched a new hobby in the 1970s.

I am revisiting some classic AD&D adventures that got their start as OD&D campaigns to see how they might be retconned back under the older rules.

I am finding some of the original rules to be clunky and desperately in need of the revisions made in later versions of the game.  But, in general, I find the nascent game to be rather elegant in its simplicity.  It's also wide open to all the jiggery-pokery almost mandated by the fanzines of their day (especially The Dragon and White Dwarf).

To test out my newfound love, I even played in a cool Play-by-Post based on some classic Judges Guild modules using a version of the OD&D rules.  It was fun!  But then the referee wanted to try something new...and it tanked.  Just like face-to-face games often do for me.

Nice to see my luck holds with being [un-]able to maintain a satisfying RPG hobby.

*Sigh*

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If you found those funny, consider checking the main comic. It has allot of D&D and RPG references, so if you are not a gamer these may be lost upon your little witless brain, but if you are, you will undoubtedly find this comic hilarious! Check it out here: www.darthsanddroids.net