If your gaming group is anything like mine, you can’t stop talking about Fourth Edition.
Every blog post or article at WotC, every entry at EnWorld, and every goofy comment (no offense, boys) at Critical Hits and my guys are chatting it up. It is as if they are a knitting circle that just found out that the pastor’s daughter is pregnant.
Anyways, this whole thing has put us in a bit of a tizzy. Our other DM, Randy, hasn’t run Dungeons and Dragons in over four months, choosing to instead explore Savage Worlds and some other games.
For the most part, we’ve all stopped buying new DnD books. I bought the Wizards Presents books, but none of the other guys did.
The 4E announcement put us into a funk of sorts.
The question is, then, this:
If 4E doesn’t appeal to the group, will we start back up with 3.5? I don’t know about the others, but I’m liking the way 4E looks. In many ways, as goes the DM so goes the group. Still, there is the strong possibility of a peasant uprising if they don’t like 4E as much as I do.
How about your group? Are you all experiencing the 4E malaise?
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Goofy comments, eh?
We’re fortunate enough that most of the players in our groups are either excited about 4e or don’t care that much about the system we use, as long as they’re playing D&D. (It’s an important brand name, I suppose.) So there’s very little chance we’ll have to make the call to go back to 3.5
The malaise (woot French) we have is about 3.5! We’re sick and tired of it and it shows in our games. I’m bored to tears with static iterative attacks and Save or Dies.
So yeah, those of the group who do care are excited about 4e, those who don’t will settle on whatever that I, the DM, decides on (anyway, I’m the one paying for the books…)
Doesn’t affect our groups much at all. I don’t even know widely the coming of fourth edition is known (neither is the death of mister Gygax), aside from me telling them.
There’s not too much D&D played, so we largely go with our roleplaying as usual.
Our group has been exploring Savage Worlds and alternative sytems since well before the 4e announcement. We were just tired of 3.x. As it happens though, nobody in our group is excited about 4e, and I’m the only person in the group at all that plans on buying the 3 corebooks. I like what I saw in the WizardPresents books, but haven’t been able to convince our group to try it. We’ll probably stick with Savage Worlds or some other skill-based, instead of class-based system in the end.
I too am suffering burnout. I feel like every post I make is adding to the WOTC hype machine. I am actually looking into Nightbane as a new/old campaign.
Trask
@ Dave – Honestly, that’s where I’m at. Brand loyalty won’t save the game if it is complete crap, but I haven’t seen any deal-breakers yet myself.
@ The Chatty DM – I’ve been in my malaise since before the announcement. There were just too many supplements and rules to keep track of anymore. Maybe when I was 22 and didn’t have 3 kids and a wife, but at this stage of my life it’s ridiculous to try to keep up. I need a rules reset.
@Tommi – That’s where my group was before 3.0. In fact, we didn’t realize 3.0 was out until several months after release.
@Reaperbryan – I tried Savage Worlds once with Randy, and it was all right. I’m just not a big fan of skill-based systems myself.
@ Trask – I can see that. The hype is, in part, what’s bugging some of my guys. For me, marketing tactics have never bothered (or impressed) me.
Well, you know where I stand with it DM. Honestly haven’t seen anything that impresses me but holding comment till a certain someone runs a couple 1 shots like they said *hint*
As far as the malaise you know that I haven’t played D&D since around Nov or early Dec. Tried moving to Savage Worlds but its not my cup of tea. Joined a band to bide my time till the group(s) decide what they are going to do.
While I’d like to start playing again, I’m not going to play a game I don’t enjoy.
Apis
Yes, I have been significantly affected by the 4e malaise. I feel I am coming out of it now as I plan my next DnD campaign…I have been playing Rippers( via Savage Worlds rules for a bit) ,but am ready to start a new DnD game.
If you’re refering to me as the “retired” player. Not quite true. The campain I was in was prematurely cut and the group moved on to another system which I had tried a couple of times with them and didn’t really care for.
I <3 D&D, I love medieval settings, I like d-20 systems. I suddenly found myself without a D&D game.
Not being the type to dwell I found something to bid the time with. Nice little band but my dreams of being a rock star went away a long time ago. Its just a way to blow off steam and have fun, not to mention a little side money.
Now that being said, I was told that the old group would be “getting the band back together” for some old school dungeon crawling adventures ™.
Unfortunatly this has been put back on the shelf until after Gencon so yet again I find myself without a game for almost 5 more months.
So, retired, no… more like LFG.
Apis
@ shekaka67 – glad to hear it! Maybe I’ll get a bit itchy too.
@ g – Nope, wasn’t you.
The DM’s last blog post..From 3e to 4e and Back Again or a DM’s Journey Through the 5 stages of grief
I’ve been playing DnD since the 3 little brown books, through second edition, 3.0, 3.5, and now 4.0. With each version I was always quite pleased with the improvements that were made. The 3.5 rules were my favorites. I was initially excited about 4.0 because their were still a few kinks in the 3.5 rules which still didn’t work quite right and I had hoped they might work on those. Instead WoTC did a complete retread instead of building on and tuning a working, successful system. I was totally disappointed when I opened the 4E books. We tried them and as a group found them very disappointing. Its almost a different game. We have gone back to 3.5 and will not purchase any more 4E books. Hopefully we’ll be able to keep up our enthusiasm for the game without any fresh blood.