First Impressions: 4E and Savage Worlds

A month ago or more I got a chance to finally play the 4th edition of Dungeons & Dragons. I was really excited about it. Everything I had read about it made it seem like they had really done a good thing. Sure the skill challenges are wonky and probably need help, but that is a side issue. In some sense, that is not what Dungeons & Dragons is about. I was excited because they had made it much closer to a board game, made the tactics much more interesting. No longer were melee fighters rewarded for running up and then standing still for the rest of combat (so they can get multiple attacks). Movement is always an option, and there's lots of stuff about extra movement for you or others. The powers system seems great. You always have at least two kinds of attacks to make, you always have an option. Powers also mean that everyone gets a chance to do extra cool stuff sometime, not just spell casters. On paper it looks great.

In practice though, it didn't work out that way. There was more movement than 3.5, but it didn't feel that dynamic. I was playing a Kobold Rogue for the movement powers. It wasn't until after the first encounter that I really noticed that all the Rogue movement powers are Encounter or Daily powers, meaning I don't actually get to use them that much. Most of the time I used the same attack because it was better. Calculating all the numbers for my character seemed like a burden too, even though I was only modifying a character created by the GM. That may get better with experience with the rules, but it really felt like a hindrance to having fun now. I'm not really even entirely sure what didn't make it work like I wanted it to. I think it was the weight of the system, there's so much stuff I have to worry about, but when it comes down to it, I still don't have that many choices but it doesn't move as fast as I'd like. It brought me back to just wanting to play Doom (the board game). One thing that was a pleasant surprise was that the game was hard. In our first encounter there was a real possibility of us losing, though we manage to pull through.

Last week I played Savage Worlds for the first time. My perspectives are going to be skewed until I actually have a chance to read the rules and get a handle on them. When we got into combat, I pretty much let the other players help me know what my mechanical options were. My character is not a fighter, so this helped. After the first major combat I felt like this game has a lot of what I've been looking for in D&D. Character creation was simple, the hardest part was buying equipment. The system runs fast and seems to have a reasonable number of options depending on your character, and there was a fair amount of movement in combat. The movement was mostly the party regrouping to keep from getting smashed. I need to rebuild my character now that I kinda know how the game runs and actually have time to read the rules, but my first impressions are very good. I'm excited about playing this more. Combat was fast and fun, even for someone who didn't contribute too much. I'll write more after I've played more.