D&D 4th Edition — particularly the Player’s Handbook — taken a lot of criticism for being 99% crunch, and 1% fluff. It’s also taken hits for the gutting of many of the role-playing aspects from earlier editions, including skills like craft, profession, and perform. All of this is true, but 4E’s saving grace is the … Read more
After a week’s hiatus so I could play with the kids on an island, our Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition playtest campaign gets back underway tonight. The campaign’s officially moved to “active” status, and now has its own campaign home page in the GriffWiki. For those late to the show, we’re using Planetorn as a … Read more
Today’s the official start of our Dungeons & Dragons 4th mini-campaign, Planetorn. It’s our testbed for 4th edition, and I expect the campaign to run about five to eight sessions, or until the end of the summer, which ever comes first. Since this is the first night of the campaign I don’t have time for … Read more
My gaming group held our first 4th edition playtest this week, pitting a group of first-level characters against a wandering band of goblins. The battle took place among a couple of low hills, with the adventurers surprising a band of goblins eating roasted dog around a guttering campfire. There was no role-playing component to the … Read more
Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition is upon us. I’ve spent last two weeks or so readying through the Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition core rule books, and my gaming group had our first character creation session two weeks ago. We’d hoped to jump into the game sooner, but alas I had a business trip to … Read more
Ok, maybe “love” isn’t the right word. “Tolerate” might be better, but the sentiment is the same: for the first time in months, I’m looking forward to my gaming group’s playtest of Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition. First, some background. My gaming group’s been together for 12 years and we’ve played in the World of … Read more
Martin Rayla and the gang at Gnome Stew offer their impressions of D&D 4E. Martin starts off with his thoughts on the new edition from the game master’s perspective, and then offers D&D 4e: Answers to Gnome Stew Readers’ Questions where he runs through specific questions from readers.
D&D 4E is upon us … and I’ve created my first character for the game. If I’ve learned one thing about the game in doing this, it’s that the 4E’s mechanics don’t fit easily into the old fantasy molds. To that end, I’ve been building out my own 4E campaign setting called Planetorn (detailed in … Read more
Wizards of the Coast has announced the D&D 4th Edition Game System License. This license replaces the old d20 license, and appears to take a different tact from D&D 3.x’s Open Gaming License. Exactly how different is hard to tell from the announcement; if nothing else what used to be separate procedures and policies for … Read more
Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition is coming, slashing and burning all that has come before to create a new game that ignores the tropes of classic sword-and-sorcery in order to embrace the always-on, always-cool mechanics of digital fantasy. We see it at every turn. The lack of a 3.x-to-4.x conversion guide. The admonishment to wrap-up … Read more