I was invited by Dave, one of the employees at Games To Die For, to play in his 4th edition D&D game. Originally, I wasn’t too sure about it as all the opinions I’d heard about this edition so far have said it’s like World of Warcraft: The RPG; basically, it’s a video game on paper. I have so far watched a session and played in one and it seems like good ol’ D&D with a few enhancements. Granted, the whole “powers” thing can feel like the action bar in WoW, but D&D has had “once per encounter” and “at will” powers for a while, they just weren’t called that. “Marking” felt like WoW at first, but the difference is really plain when you look at it.

Now I will say I think the game has been simplified to a degree and has a clear attempt at drawing in the video game crowd. One thing that does kind of irritate me is that the “basic” races and classes are not included in the Player’s Handbook (PHB). I feel like Gnome is one of the “basic” races and the Dragonblooded are not. Personally, I think the Dragonblooded should have been in the PHB2 and Gnomes put in the PHB. Same with the Bard class. There are other examples, but those are the ones I can think of right now. There’s also the same syndrome with the Monster Manuals. It’s like they intentionally saved things for the second version of these books just so you’d have to buy them.

All in all, I think it will be a fun game. We have from 8-10 people as PCs in the group now, but I expect that will dwindle over time, just like my Star Wars Saga Edition game has.

Speaking of which, there are a couple of books for that game I need to pick up, but $35 each is a little steep, especially for the thin “Jedi Academy Training Guide”.