On Mon, Mar 23, 2009 at 2:48 PM, Dale Sheldon
<dales@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
I heartily endorse the 4th edition.
I've played a bit at cons, and the impression I got (albeit, from VERY
combat-heavy scenarios) was "I'd rather play Mage Knight."
I've been in the "Indie" game scene for quite a while, and it's kind of
opened my eyes as to how a game system can really enable the type of
play one wants... how one can choose a system to shape a play experience.
As such, I find 4E to be VERY good at enabling tactical play and a bit
good at enabling situation resolution, but it gives nothing (beyond
some advice) about actually stimulating role playing (i.e. acting) or creating challenges of problem solving or driving any sort of thematic "high drama"
sort of experience.
As such, I find it to be (again) a good mini game system, but a poor
RPG, and does not in the least enable the "high fantasy" stories it
purportedly takes as inspiration. But, then again, neither did
Chainmail. :)
If you like High Fantasy RPGs, I can HIGHLY recommend Burning Wheel and
its supplements (Monster Burner, Magic Burner, Paths of Spite). It has your
tactical crunch (but needs no minis), and yet it also has effective
tools for driving narrative play and building meaningful stories around
characters which, otherwise, are bundles of stats. Check it out at a local con (someone is ALWAYS running BW, these days).