Saturday, August 16, 2008

Purchases, Made and Unmade...

Well, as my previous post indicated, I've been spending a lot of time recently with the 4e rules. And, despite my earlier misgivings, finding a lot to like. In fact, I'm starting to get quite excited about running some 4e. Today I bought a 4e DM's screen--not because I care so much about screening die rolls, but more for the handy collected information printed on the back. Screens can save a lot of page flipping. I also gave serious thought, serious thought, to purchasing the 4e Forgotten Realms book. Apparently they've made a lot of changes to the Realms --and, consequently, pissed off a lot of setting loyalists in the process--but I've never played a FR game and aside from the Icewind Dale trilogy and a several early 90's issues of the DC FR comic, I haven't read that much in it either. In short, I'm not invested in the setting, and any changes they've made aren't going to tick me off. Besides, I was planning on running 4e homebrew so the FR book would just be a handy resource for extra creatures, settings, and magic items. In the end I didn't get it though, mainly because it is a campaign setting, and I've been planning on making my own. But, like all D&D books it was a beautiful volume and hard to turn down ($39.99 made it easier to turn down). It might still find its way into my library in the future, we'll see. I have the first two 4e modules to run in a homebrew campaign-- we'll see how that works out before making any further campaign setting decisions.

In other exciting news, Pathfinder is now in Beta release, so waste no time in heading over to Paizo and downloading your free, that's right-- free .pdf. One year of play testing of the rules before the final edition is released in August of 09. Check it out and see what you think of version 3.75. (which, as I'm sure I mentioned before is the likely rules set for our future Ptolus campaign). Also new from the folks at Paizo is the Pathfinder Chronicles campaign setting, which I can't wait to get my hands on. Ok, I may wait to get my hands on it since I'm investing myself in 4e for the moment, but I really like the world of Golarion (I think of it as "the new Greyhawk"), and am looking forward to reading the book.

Wow, I really need to get a life.

2 comments:

scott said...

An added note. I'm not sure how many Tabletop loyalists are still out there, but they're soon only going to be stocking 4e stuff. No Paizo. :(

I was in there the other day, and Phil got me really pumped to 4e, so I'm hoping I can play.

FR, I can take or leave. I like the idea of Golarion as the new Greyhawk. I'd like to merge the worlds, but if I'm not DM, then I can't expect Eric the Cleric to do it.

Hadrian said...

Why aren't they going to stock any Paizo stuff? That seems odd. I'm all for playing some Golarian/Greyhawk too--no matter who is DM (I envision an ongoing world where we rotate DM's on a campaign by campaign basis).