My Dance With The Devil...

[mayapuppies]

So earlier this evening (or is it yesterday now?) I was able to play 4th Edition for the World Wide Game Day. I have to say that I had fun for the first couple of hours. I'm not sure if it was the novelty that wore off, the lack of experience of the DM/Players with the system, the poorly designed test characters, or the absolute rebellion against anything non-combat in the mechanics, but I slowly lost interest.

I also have to say, that this resembles no incarnation of D&D that I have ever played. I've heard/read that it has the feel of OD&D and I honestly don't see it. There is nothing here that even remotely feels like D&D. This is a whole new game that is riding the marketing power of Dungeons & Dragons.

I was playing the Elf Mage..erm, sorry, Eladrin Mage and I sat there looking over the charactersheet for about an hour before gameplay. I like it. It's simple, it's elegant. It looks interesting. I'm a Wizard, so that means I'm a Controller...my job is to hit the baddies with AoE spells and such. I get into play and I quickly realize that the only AoE spell I have is a 1x/day use of sleep. the rest of my spells consist of 3 cantrips, a single "Get Away from me" spell called Thunderclap (1x/Encounter), a single "Trip the enemy" spell called Ice somethingorother (1x/Encounter) and two attack spells, Magic Missile (which I can use as often as I like) and Acid Arrow which I can use 1x/day assuming I didn't memorize Sleep.

The three cantrips prove to be absolutely useless in the adventure, as do nearly every single skill the character has...I had a better Religion skill than the Paladin or the Cleric...WTF?

The game devolves (for me at least) into a enter room, oh look monsters, fire off the Ice spell, fire magic missile, fire magic missile, fire magic missile, fire magic missile, fire magic missile, ad nauseum until bad guys were dead.

This is what was encouraged by the mechanics. "Don't think outside of the box. Just fight things." so we did, 4 hours later I left wanting to buy the books.

Why? well, never let a marketing agent control your products release contents. This introductory adventure was poorly written, the DM's had no time to familiarize themselves with the system and the characters were designed as RPG characters within the context of a tactical simulations game. If I had the chance to do it all over again, I'd have my players design 1-2 characters each and run it like a video game similar to Dungeonsiege, NWN or Diablo. This style of play is exactly what the game feels like.

Everything is resolved as an attack, wanna heal someone? hit them. Want to pick a lock? hit it. Want to see if that magic circle is enchanted? hit it?

If you're looking for a set of mechanics that encourages versatility and roleplaying don't pick this up. If you like the rules to encourage meta style powergaming and pure combat, dude, you have got to pick this game up. If you like a beer and pretzel strategy game or just don't have the energy to log in for some World of Warcraft, do what D&D 4e says, hit it!

[Evil Steve]

Played it last night. I feel the best description of 4.0 is "Beer and Pretzels". The game is simple. Simple enough to play while drinking. I played a dwarf warrior.

Neat touches:

1-Healing Surge:Characters can regain hit points by using a "Minor Action" (not sure what all the "Actions" are as I arrived late). Handy self healing when things go badly

2-Exploits:Various combat powers that grant special damage, bonuses, extra damage or extra effects (like shoving someone)

3-Fortitude, Reflex and Will Defence: Armour Class for things that don't just stab you (eg:poison, traps, mind control)

I doubt I'll pick it up. As Mayapuppies described, not a lot of Role in the Role Playing here. Good for total noobs to RPGs, not so much for veteran gamers.

[mayapuppies]

Oh, I forgot a very strange kind of physics in the new and improved D&D world. Apparently ranged weapons completely ignore Armor. It's true. And melee weapons completely ignore whether or not you're agile or clumsy.

So, ranged weapons attack vs. Reflexes so having thick sheets of heavy metal between the attack and yourself is actually hindrance...:ugly:

Meanwhile if someone is not wearing much armor at all, it is actually much easier to smack them with a large heavy chunk of steel..:nonp:

[Shoutybloke]

I played this yesterday. Loved it. Okay, I've been RPG deprived since november, but this still felt really good. The pre- written adventure was a bit linear, but you want that in your first game in a new system. Mechanicly, very simple. I like this, less time looking up rules and more time playing my character. My character didn't feel like a first level D&D goon- he actually felt competent. good range of abilities. on the physics issue, standard attacks target AC, but you can buy exploits that target reflex or will. I'm going to buy the books as soon as I have the cash.

[ghost-angel]

wow... D&D The Drinking Game.

If you hit it, take a shot.

[Maur]

Oh, I forgot a very strange kind of physics in the new and improved D&D world. Apparently ranged weapons completely ignore Armor. It's true. And melee weapons completely ignore whether or not you're agile or clumsy.

I played this yesterday and I'm not sure what you are talking about here. I played the rogue, and to hit something with a real arrow went against AC. Magic Missile goes against the reflex defense (as opposed to all previous versions where MM was an autohit). Armor has never blunted attacks in D&D. Either it caused the attack to fully miss or you take all the damage rolled.

Melee weapons have always been off the STR of the character. Ranged attacks have always been off the DEX of the character.


So, ranged weapons attack vs. Reflexes so having thick sheets of heavy metal between the attack and yourself is actually hindrance...:ugly:

Meanwhile if someone is not wearing much armor at all, it is actually much easier to smack them with a large heavy chunk of steel..:nonp:

[mayapuppies]

Hmm, me thinks our rogue was cheatin' then and our DM was either in compliance (seriously doubt it) or more inexperienced than I thought.

[Hugh Neilson]

Hmm, me thinks our rogue was cheatin' then and our DM was either in compliance (seriously doubt it) or more inexperienced than I thought.

How experienced can one be on the date of release of the new system?

[mayapuppies]

The DM's had the materials the night before and this particular GM had already played the adventure in the first half of the day. He should have at least known the crossbow hits AC not REF.

Or am I asking too much?

Overall it's irrelevant, the main point being that WotC didn't make a strange design flaw when it came to that, which is a good thing.

[Cancer]

Here's an email from someone in my gaming group who got to play it last weekend. I have edited out names so it's a little confusing, but it's a pretty good game-table narrative. And there's no question the GMs Knew Their Stuff, which helps immensely no matter what system you're playing.

Well, half the folks [on the addressee list] were at Game Day, so this may seem redundant to them, but after playing the system through three or four encounters today with a couple of different characters, here's my take on some things.

The short summary is that I am very happy with the way characters worked. Having seen things work together (or not work), I have some thoughts on how people should try to coordinate and I have seen some things that I need to be aware of as a GM. I saw every character fulfill the role I envisioned for them and change the shape of the battles they were in. And I saw that whether you used your powers or your just a basic attack, the important thing that characters do is *not* roll damage. It is the effects of all their other tricks that matters, from the ability to move around or control other people's movement to the ability to get or give bonuses or do huge amounts of extra damage.

[Four of us] got there around 9:15-9:30 am and they were packed. They clearly had more people than they expected in the early morning. We signed up and wound up waiting for a GM to finish up and open a new table for us. While we were waiting, we walked around, saw a lot of things and met some folks. Along the way I managed to get some questions about things that I was curious about answered. [Another guy we know] got there about 15 minutes after we did and we managed to get him put at our table in a group of 5.

They had some games out to play with while you were not playing D&D so four of us went to a table and played a little Inn Fighting. This is a simple, little beer-and-pretzels game based on the generic "you are all sitting in a tavern" scene where a bar brawl erupts. We'd spent enough time wandering around and looking at things that we really only got through about three rounds of the table before we were called for our D&D game. [One of us] was rolling 1s so I am not sure if he was having fun, but I thought that Inn Fighting was at least a run for Munchkin in the beer-and-pretzels genre.

Around 11:30 we went down and met our GM, Chris Tulach, Head Content Manager for RPGA. We got to ask some fundamental questions about things including whether or not RPGA would be at Dragonflight this year (sounds unlikely, but he said to keep an eye out for Penny Arcade eXpo three weeks later where they would be in full force!). We got started on the first scenario which was a 5-man adventure to rescue some children who had been abducted. We were promptly interrupted (and Chris offered us a break) by a call that all the main developers were upstairs signing books. [Two of us] went up to get signatures and they were kind enough to sign everything that we had so my entire gift set and [Another guy]'s StarWars Saga Edition all got love.

We got back to the table and got down to gaming for most of the rest of the afternoon. The first adventure was a 5-man party with a human cleric, a dwarf warrior, a human warrior, an eladarin wizard and a half-elf rogue (me). As mentioned in the car on the way up there, the rogue had taken Eyebite as his half-elven special and although there were a few times I thought about it (and it would have been useful) I wound up not using it. Our first adventure was two or three or four encounters long (depending on how you counted). The "first" encounter was a puzzle and while I would have given experience I would not have counted it as an encounter (this matters for the distribution of Action Points).

The second encounter was a combination of two kobolds and some traps. [Dwarf Warrior] did exactly what he was supposed to do as a dwarven fighter and jumped up on the crypt being used as cover where he promptly discovered the first trap and got a lucky save to avoid problems. The next action he had, the Kobold [Dwarf Warrior] was attacking tried to knock him into the trap and [Dwarf Warrior] got lucky again and the trap was "destroyed" by failed use. Seeing this, Wizard promptly used his (normally unused) minor action and a telekinesis power to disarm the other likely trap. Important note: Minor action which could be mistaken for flavor text on the wizard sheet is wisely used to eliminate a trap that caused 20+ damage to a fighter at another table.

Dwarf Warrior's Kobold runs away around the back of a pillar and moves to join the other behind the other barricade that Human Warrior and I are assaulting. I try to show off and burn some of my larger powers as the rogue. First, I run past the two Kobolds to get a flanking bonus with Human Warrior (making use of Artful Dodger to avoid some of the Opportunity damage). Then I try one Encounter attack intending to push a Kobold into Human Warrior's Cleave (this fails), then I spend my Action Point to get a second attack and cripple the other Kobold so that Human Warrior is in a position to smash things.

Every time Human Warrior gets a chance, he dives onto the blade of any Kobold attacking him and as Dwarf Warrior comes running up behind the second Kobold to get flanking Human Warrior hits zero hit points and we get to see the death and dying rules. It's pretty simple and, like everything else in the system, favors the heroes. Cleric tosses Human Warrior a heal before he's even been down for a full turn and Human Warrior is conscious if not back on his feet while the rest of us finish the encounter.

The next encounter is probably supposed to be a single encounter but we kinda diffused it. There's a locked door with the abducted boys behind it and a second chamber further along the "hall". Dwarf Warrior and Human Warrior take point and examine the door and then I draw lock-pick duty. While I am baffled repeatedly by the lock Human Warrior moves on to see what he can see. All hell breaks loose at the same time... Human Warrior see's the evil necromancer who grabbed the boys who activates some statues in the room with the boys (stone golems?) and then sends his skeletal minions to make trouble from the next room. Seeing the trouble showing up all the way around, I finally figure out how to roll and unlock the room and the boys (who are close on my heals in initiative) come running out and away from the combat. Human Warrior charges the skeletons and Cleric and Wizard move to back him up while Dwarf Warrior and I look at each other and the golems in confusion.

The combat shows a couple more nice tricks about the system... The golems move but don't reach us (I think that Chris took pity on Dwarf Warrior and I to be honest) so I slam the door in their faces and lock it back. Then I run off toward the other fight and holler at Dwarf Warrior to spike the door. The golems bang on the door and fail to break it down. Now we're down to a one-front fight. On that front, Wizard says he was a bit frustrated because he never had a clear line of fire to use his controller powers. (Fighters and leaders take note... Getting surrounded causes issues because the controller cannot handle the group of targets to provide you advantages.) Wizard finally took his encounter teleport to a far corner of the room and unleashed his Thunderwave power (another we have talked about) and turned the fight completely. He knocked the unreachable necromancer into the middle of the party where Dwarf Warrior, Cleric and I were able to make short work of him while Human Warrior threw himself onto the skeletons' swords some more. This was the end of the scenario save wrap-up and teaser for the other con scenario.

In later conversation with [the guy who played the Wizard], I saw another thing that has not been mentioned... Some stuff that is hidden in the DMG which most of you probably don't know about... The system has very clear instructions for GMs. LET THE PLAYERS DO WHAT THEY WANT! There is a table which shows for every level what the DC and damage equivalents are for easy, normal and hard combat actions. Their example is "if a player decides to grab the chandelier and swing across the room into the troll to knock it into the brazier then LET THEM!" The difficulty should probably be medium since this is a typical cinematic stunt. The damage should also be low or moderate for the level since it will burn the troll but he can get out of it. The player has not asked to knock the Troll prone so probably make it medium." Then you look in the table, get the DC, call for it and allow the player to do damage. Alternatively, if the player had wanted to knock the Troll prone, you could instead make it a DEX vs. Reflex challenge and provide low damage but also knock the Troll prone. The ideal behind the table is to give a GM a clear idea what the character should be capable of with his normal powers and make this an equivalent alternative... Not more or less attractive, but a viable story-telling alternative...

[First Wizard] left after our first adventure and the rest of us signed up for the other campaign with one open slot. We got assigned pretty quickly (they had more GMs show up around noon so things got lots busier). The second adventure was a single encounter with a solo monster. The same characters... This time, I am the human warrior, [1st Human Warrior] is the half-elf rogue, Dwarf Warrior and Cleric stay with their characters and we had a kid and his father playing the wizard. I dunno what the others took away from this, but I learned a lot. First, I had high initiative so I ran into the lead and father-son followed right behind me. Then the dragon moves and charges me. That was the only damage the dragon did to me the whole fight. Cleric followed up right after and healed me and then Dwarf Warrior and Rogue stepped up to short or medium range and unloaded.

Because we knew this was a single fight encounter with a single monster, I approached it in a way that I would not normally approach a fight. I opened by burning my daily and my action point. My daily missed but provided me bonuses for the duration of the encounter anyway and my action point allowed me to hit and do damage (and mark the dragon) before it could go after anyone else. I kept the dragon marked the whole fight and while it never seemed to help Dwarf Warrior, it made the difference between being hit and not for Cleric at least twice. Other folks followed suit and the Action Points and Daily Powers rained down on the dragon quickly. Lesson to GM reinforces something I read before... Try not to open a day of adventuring with a solo monster encounter, especially not a hard one, because as cool as it sounds, your solo will be crippled, slowed, stunned and giving combat advantage before the end of the first full round of combat. Lesson to players... If the fight is dire enough to need your daily powers, spend it early since it will save you other resources over the course of the fight. You'll have bonuses for more rolls or have less opposition for the remainder of the fight. You may not always see it early, but when you do, don't hesitate.

A solo encounter is a single beast designed to be equivalent to 5 normal monsters. Since they took the lid off and showed us how to make anything into an elite or solo in the monster manual, I can give a brief summary about how the monsters work... Normal monsters are what you are used to from 3.0 or 3.5... They also introduced minions, which are equivalent to a normal monster in most ways but they have 1 hit-point, never take damage unless they are hit, but never survive being hit. Four minions equals a single normal monster for exchanges. Elites are the next addition and they have twice the hit points of a normal monster plus a "package" which gives them some special abilities (usually related to a class or theme). For example, one package is the Lich package. A gnome illusionist can become an elite gnome illusionist lich with some necromantic bonuses, a susceptibility to radiant damage and twice as many hit points and one new recharging power. A single elite exchanges for two normal monsters. Finally, if you take an elite, add another package and double its hit points again you are close to a solo monster. You also add some Action Points and there you are... A single monster which swaps for 5 normals and is intended to be a complete encounter for a first level party all by itself.


More than anything else, the thing today brought home to me is that position is mucho important in this system. The ability to move people and know when and how to move is a huge advantage. The first scenario was most changed by my rogue moving and avoiding attacks of opportunity, [First Wizard] moving and then pushing the necromancer into a bad spot and then my rogue moving the necromancer into a worse spot... Would we have won without out that? Yes, but not as fast or as handily. On the flip side, the dragon tried to run away from us a couple of times and both times the warriors had abilities to punish or prevent the move. As a rogue, never try to move away from a warrior... You'll pay. Dearly...

In addition to the fun day, there was also loads of schwag. [...] This has just served to whet my appetite for more in-depth play and I hope others had as much fun as I did.

[mayapuppies]

hehe, he said "...in-depth play." at the end. This is certainly exactly the reasons that I want this as a dungeonsiege replacement. Of course, our kobolds were hobgoblins and our rogue apparently didn't know about the Artful dodger. :)

Turn Undead was a fun power as well on those skellies.

[Cancer]

Well, another piece of context: the writer is planning on running a D&D 4th campaign with our group. We do play lots of different systems ... at least 8 different ones a year ... and we're all more into roleplaying and storytelling than just bashing on stuff. That distinction has more to do with GM than strict system, though I admit that different mechanics make for different effectiveness at letting that happen.

Obviously I have not played it yet; I have only been able to read a bootleg PDF of the PHB for a couple days, so I barely know enough to parse some of the labels ("at-will", "minor action", and so on).

[Markdoc]

Hmm, me thinks our rogue was cheatin' then and our DM was either in compliance (seriously doubt it) or more inexperienced than I thought.


The DM's had the materials the night before and this particular GM had already played the adventure in the first half of the day. He should have at least known the crossbow hits AC not REF.

Or am I asking too much?

Overall it's irrelevant, the main point being that WotC didn't make a strange design flaw when it came to that, which is a good thing.

Not necessarily. A fair number of rogue exploits target reflex, not AC with the special effect of "shoot/stab in the unarmoured bit" That looks unbalanced (and it may be: I was looking at combining those attacks with feats or other exploits that increase damage) but at baseline, those attacks all seem to do less damage than ones that go against AC. There are a few Ranger exploits that are similar. So, in fact, they could have been "doin' it rite" :D

Don't judge 4E by earlier D&D versions: combat is quite, quite different.

cheers, Mark

[Maur]

Here's my take on that day:
http://daemonstorm.com/role-playing/d20/First-impressions-of-D-and-D-4th-Edition

[ngross]

I was playing the Elf Mage..erm, sorry, Eladrin Mage and I sat there looking over the charactersheet for about an hour before gameplay. I like it. It's simple, it's elegant. It looks interesting. I'm a Wizard, so that means I'm a Controller...my job is to hit the baddies with AoE spells and such. I get into play and I quickly realize that the only AoE spell I have is a 1x/day use of sleep. the rest of my spells consist of 3 cantrips, a single "Get Away from me" spell called Thunderclap (1x/Encounter), a single "Trip the enemy" spell called Ice somethingorother (1x/Encounter) and two attack spells, Magic Missile (which I can use as often as I like) and Acid Arrow which I can use 1x/day assuming I didn't memorize Sleep.

I also played the Mage on game day and found the character to be quite useful in combat. The Icy Terrain and Thunderclap are both AoE spells. I was able to actually turn the tide of the final combat (from my viewpoint) by using them and an Action point in one round.



The three cantrips prove to be absolutely useless in the adventure, as do nearly every single skill the character has...I had a better Religion skill than the Paladin or the Cleric...WTF?

Can't say much about the religion thing, but I was able to use one of the cantrips to disable the lantern/oil traps in the beginning. After the first trap was triggered, I used Mage Hand (telekinesis) pull the lanterns off of the other coffins filled with oil. The goblins/orcs/whatever were not able to trip a second oil explosion.



The game devolves (for me at least) into a enter room, oh look monsters, fire off the Ice spell, fire magic missile, fire magic missile, fire magic missile, fire magic missile, fire magic missile, ad nauseum until bad guys were dead.

This I definately agree with. My big problem was that the old standard tactics of combat in D&D cannot be used. It took a while for me to be able to use my AoE powers because the fighters just ran into the middle of the skeletons.



This is what was encouraged by the mechanics. "Don't think outside of the box. Just fight things." so we did, 4 hours later I left wanting to buy the books.

Why? well, never let a marketing agent control your products release contents. This introductory adventure was poorly written, the DM's had no time to familiarize themselves with the system and the characters were designed as RPG characters within the context of a tactical simulations game. If I had the chance to do it all over again, I'd have my players design 1-2 characters each and run it like a video game similar to Dungeonsiege, NWN or Diablo. This style of play is exactly what the game feels like.


Our group was actually lucky in that our GM was a person pretty high up in the RPGA and had been part of the playtesters. Therefore, he had been playing it for the past 6 months or so. I think that made a big difference. He also narrated things happening in combat. It was not simple "the skeleton was hit for 5 points of damage", it was something like "the skeleton received a solid hit from your fighter, shattering a rib". It made the game a lot more fun.



Everything is resolved as an attack, wanna heal someone? hit them. Want to pick a lock? hit it. Want to see if that magic circle is enchanted? hit it?

If you're looking for a set of mechanics that encourages versatility and roleplaying don't pick this up. If you like the rules to encourage meta style powergaming and pure combat, dude, you have got to pick this game up. If you like a beer and pretzel strategy game or just don't have the energy to log in for some World of Warcraft, do what D&D 4e says, hit it!

My group is picking it up. Basically for the reason that you mentioned above. Every once in a while we just want to smash things and the new D&D is a good game for that.

Norm.

[mayapuppies]

I also played the Mage on game day and found the character to be quite useful in combat. The Icy Terrain and Thunderclap are both AoE spells. I was able to actually turn the tide of the final combat (from my viewpoint) by using them and an Action point in one round.
What are these Action Points you speak of?

Can't say much about the religion thing, but I was able to use one of the cantrips to disable the lantern/oil traps in the beginning. After the first trap was triggered, I used Mage Hand (telekinesis) pull the lanterns off of the other coffins filled with oil. The goblins/orcs/whatever were not able to trip a second oil explosion.
My interpretation of that spell says that the object you're going to pick up must be next to you at the start of teh turn. As a mage, I wasn't about to wander that close to the combat.

This I definately agree with. My big problem was that the old standard tactics of combat in D&D cannot be used. It took a while for me to be able to use my AoE powers because the fighters just ran into the middle of the skeletons.
Yup, so true. My initiative rolls were too low and then everyone was in the AoE

Our group was actually lucky in that our GM was a person pretty high up in the RPGA and had been part of the playtesters. Therefore, he had been playing it for the past 6 months or so. I think that made a big difference. He also narrated things happening in combat. It was not simple "the skeleton was hit for 5 points of damage", it was something like "the skeleton received a solid hit from your fighter, shattering a rib". It made the game a lot more fun.
That always makes a big difference. We were lucky to get anything but the "Read this to the players" stuff out of ours.

[ngross]

Everyone started the mission with 1 action point. It basically lets you take another turn right away. You earn them while adventuring and can only spend one per encounter. I would not have been able to do the following without being able to use my action point.

In our scenario, we had the 4 skeletons surrounding the fighters, with the evil necromancer up on a 10 feet high column (10 feet diameter) directing the combat.

So here is what I did when my initiative came up (somewhere around round 3 of the combat)....
1st action
Movement action - move to a point where I was 5 squares withing the necromancer.
Standard action - Magic missile a skeleton.
Spend an action point to go again.

2nd action
Movement action - Use Fey walk (teleport) to move directly behind the necromancer.
Standard action - use Thunderclap to catch the necromancer and 2 skeletons in the blast. Thunderclap also allowed me to move everything caught in the blast 2 spaces. It allowed by to clear some of the skeletons away from our fighters while blasting the necromancer to the middle of our party.

I was left standing on the pillar by myself raining down magic missiles on the skeletons, who could not climb the column, while the rest of the party made short work of the necromancer.

Other party members where able to use their action points to do some neat things also (since you get to go twice in a row).

Personally, I think that the GM took it a little easy on us. We were there to have fun and so was he. As far as all of the AoE attacks, I was only able to use it to catch people on the edge of combat. Did not get the chance to really catch a lot of people in one attack.


What are these Action Points you speak of?

My interpretation of that spell says that the object you're going to pick up must be next to you at the start of teh turn. As a mage, I wasn't about to wander that close to the combat.

Yup, so true. My initiative rolls were too low and then everyone was in the AoE

That always makes a big difference. We were lucky to get anything but the "Read this to the players" stuff out of ours.

[Old Man]

I've noticed that every description in here sounds like it's about a wargame, not a roleplaying game.

[mayapuppies]

I've noticed that every description in here sounds like it's about a wargame, not a roleplaying game.
Wait, isn't that what we're talking about? D&D 4e right? :cheers:

[aylwin13]

Wait, isn't that what we're talking about? D&D 4e right? :cheers:I'm just here to watch the flames. :eg:

[mayapuppies]

I am honestly surprised they haven't happened yet.

[Maur]

I've noticed that every description in here sounds like it's about a wargame, not a roleplaying game.

Funny, that is what any combat looks like in any RPG that I've played, including HERO. I think we spent only about half the time slot on combat. The rest was some roleplaying with puzzle solving and what not. This scenario was designed to quickly get players into the thick of the action and did just that to show off how combat and such works in the new system. Roleplaying didn't change because the system did. You still have interaction skills and such.

[Old Man]

Funny, that is what any combat looks like in any RPG that I've played, including HERO. I think we spent only about half the time slot on combat. The rest was some roleplaying with puzzle solving and what not. This scenario was designed to quickly get players into the thick of the action and did just that to show off how combat and such works in the new system. Roleplaying didn't change because the system did. You still have interaction skills and such.

The big difference I note is that every action noted here sounds like it's off a very limited list of potential moves presented to the player. I'm not sure how other people's FH games go, but mine sound like "I block with my shield," "I try to stab him in the face," "I drop my sword and try to grab him," etc. In other words, it seems like FH has a much more natural combat model, presenting many more options to the player, than does D&D4, which sounds like a board game:"I opened by burning my daily and my action point. My daily missed but provided me bonuses for the duration of the encounter anyway and my action point allowed me to hit and do damage (and mark the dragon) before it could go after anyone else. I kept the dragon marked the whole fight and while it never seemed to help Dwarf Warrior, it made the difference between being hit and not for Cleric at least twice. Other folks followed suit and the Action Points and Daily Powers rained down on the dragon quickly."

And this is still staying within the respective systems; obviously the function of the GM is to allow for creative interactions on the part of the players. But once you go outside the system, or into an area where the system is extremely vague, then it's not helping very much.

[Dr. Anomaly]

I've played this, too. And something I noticed right off the bat:

1) You can get penalized for not accomplishing the stated Tasks/Quests/whatever they were called.

2) You do NOT get penalized for doing things that would have people cringing at their callousness, because there's no Task/Quest/whatever that says "don't do that".

Example:

In a fight in a tavern with some bandits that had been holding the town more or less hostage, one of the tasks was "Not the good stuff!": 3 large barrels of expensive drink were set fire to during the fight; one of the tasks you were supposed to accomplish in the fight was to save the brew. There was no task about saving the townsfolk, just the brew.

So we do save the brew, but:

One of the bandits takes cover in the middle of a bunch of townsfolk. "Is there anything that says we take a penalty if we kill innocent bystanders?" "Um... no." "Okay, then. Area of effect blast the bandit in the crowd, because that's the most powerful attack I have. Too bad for the townsfolk."

It plays like a paper version of an MMO like World of Warcraft.

If I wanted to play WoW, I'd pay Blizzard to play WoW.

[jtelson]

I've played this, too. And something I noticed right off the bat:

1) You can get penalized for not accomplishing the stated Tasks/Quests/whatever they were called.

2) You do NOT get penalized for doing things that would have people cringing at their callousness, because there's no Task/Quest/whatever that says "don't do that".

Example:

In a fight in a tavern with some bandits that had been holding the town more or less hostage, one of the tasks was "Not the good stuff!": 3 large barrels of expensive drink were set fire to during the fight; one of the tasks you were supposed to accomplish in the fight was to save the brew. There was no task about saving the townsfolk, just the brew.

So we do save the brew, but:

One of the bandits takes cover in the middle of a bunch of townsfolk. "Is there anything that says we take a penalty if we kill innocent bystanders?" "Um... no." "Okay, then. Area of effect blast the bandit in the crowd, because that's the most powerful attack I have. Too bad for the townsfolk."

It plays like a paper version of an MMO like World of Warcraft.

If I wanted to play WoW, I'd pay Blizzard to play WoW.

That sounds like you have an issue with scenario design rather than system design.

I'll occasionally set goals in a scenario that will net the characters additional rewards. That saving the townsfolk isn't one doesn't mean it's ok to kill them. I expect the players to be willing to save the townsfolk for free :)

[Hugh Neilson]

I'll occasionally set goals in a scenario that will net the characters additional rewards. That saving the townsfolk isn't one doesn't mean it's ok to kill them. I expect the players to be willing to save the townsfolk for free :)

Taking that one step further, I might apply a "poor role playing" penalty for callous disregard for the safety of the townsfolk. I might even apply a penalty (RP or in-game attention from the authorities) for using lethal damage in a bar fight. How long do you stay in lockup for a brawl at the ol' watering hole? Now how long if you pull a knife or a firearm?

[ghost-angel]

That sounds like you have an issue with scenario design rather than system design.

I'll occasionally set goals in a scenario that will net the characters additional rewards. That saving the townsfolk isn't one doesn't mean it's ok to kill them. I expect the players to be willing to save the townsfolk for free :)

On the other hand, the ones designing the scenario are also designing the system.

And of course, it may not be explicitly stated that saving the towns folk is a goal because, er, that's what Heroes do - so it may also just have been a bad GM and not bad scenario or system design.

Everyone KNOWS you save the townsfolk. Not everyone knows that saving the brew is also a key element.
But then, if it's aimed at entry level you should never assume anything so we're back to bad scenario design. Or at least oversight.