4th Edition

Had a chance to play with Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition today. I admit, I was a little apprehensive -- I've been playing D&D since 1st edition (the original AD&D) -- and while I'd liked the changes made for 3rd Ed, 4th Ed looked "too different".

Still, open-mind and all that: got together with a couple of friends, and ran through the adventure in the back of the DMG. Constant referrals to the rulebooks followed through three combat encounters, but that was to be expected. And we thoroughly enjoyed it. There seems to be more emphasis on teamwork now, with powers that smash enemies and heal allies (the paladin's divine judgement was well appreciated).

And it's tougher! Our party of six 1st-level characters (as this was testing the rules, we each had two characters and shared the DMing load -- not something we'd ever think of do if we were playing "for real", as it were) had real trouble with kobolds. Kobolds!

Only gripe really, was that it was sometimes tricky to find where in the rulebook a particular rule was: the index, particularly in the PHB needs overhauling.