A Single Step

1st post.

Greetings readers. Today is the first day in a three year journey for me. The appearance and location of the blog may change over time, but it is assured that I will post in it everyday. And what will I post? Something related to gaming for sure.

June 6th, 2008. I chose this date to start writing because it happens to be the first day I have looked upon the core rulebooks of the 4th Edition of Dungeons and Dragons. I also chose this date as it is a perfect opportunity to log my first impressions of only reading the first two chapters in the brand new PHB.

Overall? It looks great. However, I'm not here to say what I think personally of the content, but would rather relay some of the more interesting themes that I could see developing from the character creation chapter alone.

First off: Changes Made to Alignment
There was a huge overhaul made to alignment in this edition. My favorite part is that they broke off from the "there's an alignment for everyone" idea, and went with a more deliberate approach. If you do not think you belong to the forces of Good or Evil, then you simply remain unaligned. I can already see this becoming a powerful storytelling tool for DM's especially. The characters can be presented with a wide assortment of moral decisions that they will have to make throughout a campaign, without having to worry about how it will effect their alignment. There are no more potential consequences for acting against your pigeon-holed alignment. I will be expanding on this further in a later article.

Second: Deities
This goes hand in hand with the changes to alignment. The gods are given a more Greco/Roman feel in their description. The D&D Pantheon already feels more versatile than before. As a DM, I already feel much less compelled to put certain deities into the stereotypical roles they fit into so well. Remember when every druid was more or less compelled to worship one of maybe two different suitable gods? 4th Edition dissuades those ideas in the very first chapter on character creation. Deities feel like they can mean something now.

Third: Class Roles
Obviously reaped from well known video gaming genres, the class roles will do amazing things for keeping groups together, and involved in compelling storylines. I can already imagine an adventuring company fearing a split due to the loss of their recently fallen defender, only to find the newcomer to the group, a recently retired campaigner from a war in a far off land. She turns out to be one of the more qualified Paladins for the position, and group morale and interest skyrockets with all of the new things they learn from adventuring with a Paladin as opposed to their recently deceased Fighter.


4th Edition has some really cool stuff, tomorrow (now today officially) is game day. You can be sure that I'll be taking notes at my local game store.

-Lance of the Hill People