@peasantbutcher
Dear lord, I’m so sorry I didn’t catch your comment lass. I promise I’ll be all over my comments next time. And I’m not trying (consciously at least) to make it look bad. However that might be how it’s turning out. The purpose of this series (and by the way, I need to get started on the third article) is to give readers a tour of what goes on in my mind as I read the books (hint: I’m getting rather bored by them) so at the same time I’m trying not to filter any subjectivity out of it.

You are also right on both accounts: I feel like I’ve been playing with un-like minded players for a while, and that has made me a bit touchy on certain issues, and power cards rock. If you’ve read There is a Goblin in my Soup! you know that I’ve been doing this boardgamey D&D where we strip the roleplaying out and basically just play out an encounter like we were playing Risk but with laser clerics. I recently prepared power cards, and everyone involved was really happy with them.

@Chad (apotheon)
Yes yes, I know. I believe that we’ve either touched the topic before (with comments on your site or it was just you saying something like that in one of your posts. When I wrote that down I was mostly thinking about the way that I’ve been playing on-line, which is with MSN. And since the PHB likes to lie to us and tell us that miniatures and battlemaps are optional (yeah, if you don’t want to use them you’re certainly free to play another game) I thought that I would need a sort of tabletop environment to play the combat encounters.

Having said that, I know that there are a number of free programs that can handle that beautifully and I agree with you about your analysis of WOTC’s commercial plan.

Oh, and thanks for commenting everyone =)
Fred.

I’m pretty sure that most of the game design decisions for 4E that resulted in gutting all the more roleplaying oriented (as opposed to roll-playing oriented) stuff from previous editions were made because WotC/Hasbro wanted to make it easier to support the game online and, thus, make money from software and service subscriptions. There’s a reason 4E sounds suspiciously like an attempt to emulate MMORPGs, y’know.

ARGH! The temptation to run to the DMG is too great! But I shall not cave, since that book will be the one next in line… well maybe a sneak peak… NO! I shall not succumb to the temptation!

Speaking from experience, after having read combat rules and non combat rules twice, if all Players print out power cards and the DM has a photocopy of teh conditions, you can play for hours without ever, ever openning a book.

If things are more ‘free-form’ than the average D&D game, the DM should use rule 42 (page 42 of the DMG) near (It’s on the GM screen)

What I can’t stand is the 3 hour combat. I just can’t, it’s like I’m allergic to it or something like that. I’m pretty sure that when I run the game (and I’ll be trying to follow all the rules closely) I’ll do something to speed things up.

@Tommi
Agreed, it certainly breaks the mood for me. If I need to check something mid session, 95% of the times I’ll just make a judgment call and go on with the game… I’ll have to change my habits if I expect to run this game though.

I also think that one quality of good roleplaying books is that the material contained therein is sufficiently intuitive that I don’t need to reference the books in play at all, after learning the game.

To tell you the truth my personal experience has not given me a lot of happy moments with D&D. I’ve had a bit deal of “oh great, another 3 hour combat” or even “oh great, yet another impossibly powerful person who wants us to fetch the ball and if we don’t she will kill our very soul” and sometimes the whimsical “you trip with your own leg and fall to the floor breaking the fire potion vial, the flames engufl you in the blink of an eye and you burn like a log, you stand up screaming and two bandits shoot arrows at you… they hit you in the chest, you’re dead… whose turn is next?”

I think your 2nd and 3rd complaints (fetch quest and setting yourself alight) boil down to the group you’re playing with rather than the system. Perhaps the group’s play style did not match your expectations. Plus critical failures are a rules variant (I’m assuming the setting yourself on fire was a critical failure), which I believe adds no fun to the game. 3 hour combat is predominantly the system’s fault, but both player and GM can speed things up a bit and keep it fun for all throughout.

To be honest, I skipped most of chapter 1 of the PHB and went straight to the meat of the later chapters. I think I may go back and give it a reread.