Of course, my wedding and honeymoon this summer have left me broker than I have ever been as an adult person, and my student loans are in repayment, and I have so far resisted the urge to buy all the booster packs. Because I have to confess, I am not one of those people who got all aghast about the use of cards and the inclusion of extra cards in booster packs.
I love cards. I used to play and collect Magic the Gathering back in high school, and while I haven't played that game in years I still get a kick out of the cards. All that glorious art... I could run many an awesome session of D&D using nothing but a bunch of Magic cards randomly dealt to me as a DM to give me inspiration. Come to think of it, I should do some Magic the Gathering inspired monster and magic posts over on my other blog. But anyway...
In a rare display of doing something other than sticking their collective heads farther into their collective arseholes, the good folks at Wizards have given us this.
http://wizards.com/dnd/article.aspx?x=dnd/4news/20101221
Follow the link and read the brief article if you want a discussion of how to use the character builder. It is free, totally awesome and I love it. It does not include the tech cards or the Alpha Mutations (the mutation that changes randomly with a card deal at the start of each session, if my sketchy understanding of 4e Gamma World is correct) that would be dealt to you at the game table and which are not permanent parts of the character.
Here is the link straight to the Character Builder for those of you who are American by gum and don't read instructions:
http://www.wizards.com/dnd/blank.aspx?x=dnd/4dnd/gwsheet
I am going to stop typing so I can go play around on this now.
Merry Christmas!
If I remember correctly, you dig 4e in general, correct?
ReplyDeleteYes, in a very broad sense. I don't like 4e char gen and leveling up from a player's perspective (or rather, I like it just fine as a mini-game in itself, but my tastes run toward simpler or randomer char gen).
ReplyDeleteI really like the four defenses instead of saves, I like attacks that target the defenses, I like starting HP = Constitution score + class HP, I like the standard, move, minor turn division, I like the precision in the language that allows powers and spells to be expressed simply. I think 4e skills are executed nicely.
4e is easy to DM for me (compared with 3e which I actively came to loathe as the game approached mid to high levels), but scratches an itch for my players who come from a MMORPG background.
I'd say that you named several ideas that I also thought were meritorious of the new game, but I am less thrilled with combat and its dramatically slowed pace, as well as the exceptionally mechanistic feel it brings.
ReplyDeleteI think I'd like it better as its own thing, rather than the idea that it is somehow a version of D&D.
That all said, GW for 4e is not at all what I think of when I want to game post-ruin, not even Gamma World which has classically been portrayed as, 'wild and wahoo' (it pains me when I read that).
Still, I thank you guys who have reviewed it to the degrees that it has been. I think all of my curiosities have been addressed without having purchased it. ;D
All the best to you, :)
I've only played Gamma World once, but I quite liked the random cards that would cause my mutations to flare up in new and interesting ways. Very fun!
ReplyDeleteGot this for X-mas. Read the rulebook from cover to cover and I really like it. I almost want to run 4e more like Gamma World in all honesty though...
ReplyDeleteTechnicaly it's Gamma World 7E. 4E came out in 92.
ReplyDelete