Love, Life and DnD

It is a horrible RPG.

Don’t get me wrong it is mathematically superior to previous editions and far more balanced. It makes for an awesome small scale high fantasy miniature battle game.

What I like.

• Class balance is far better then previous editions. Gone are the days where a party would sit around watching a batman wizard solve all there problems for them.
• Class mechanic individuality. None of the classes feel like small variations of each other like in early editions.
• Heroic tier. The first tier of the game was dynamic, different and fast paced fun.

What I don’t like.

• PC near immortality. If played by the book the chance of a semi intelligent pc dying is next to none and even if they do die resurrection is so cheap and common it is such a minor issue.
• Non weapon/armour magical items are boring. There all so bland and powerless in these editions I often wonder if they are worth putting in.
• Paragon Tier is slow and boring. Monsters damage out put in paragon tier is not much different from heroic they just have twice the hp and armour and that makes for slow drawn out fights. As the Pc’s gain more abilities, bonus’s and powers combat just seems to get painfully tedious and drawn out and I actually dread having to put in a random encounter due to the effort it will require from me and the time it will waste.
• 4e makes players stupid. There no rules to stop players thinking outside the box in 4e, it is in fact easier to do then any edition but the fact that this edition has so many big shiny powers for players they tend to turn into drooling zombies focused purely on getting off there biggest bang in the best possible way.
• Magic is no longer magical. It just seems so passé in this edition and I know there must be some sacrifices in the name of balance but what’s the point if you lose all the flavour!

I really enjoyed the first 10 levels of the game. It was a lot of fun and I felt that the changes in this edition had made the game fast paced and action packed.

With every session since hitting paragon tier things seem to get slower and less interesting.

I have all so noticed that as a group you lot seem to have taken less interest in the world and game in general.
You guys seem to be progressively less and less interested in interacting with NPCs or exploring the world you are in. You generally seem irritated when NPC’s wont divulge all valuable information/assistance to the group after the first and most basic inquiries.

You seem to look for the fastest way to move the plot to the next story centric combat so you have a chance to use you’re new big powers on what ever enemy I have thrown at you that week.

I am not sure weather this is my fault because my game is no longer interesting.

Your fault because you have fallen into a generally mindless state that 4e encourages and are now happy playing it more like an mmo just fast scrolling though any text and hoping if you hit accept on the quest you can get back to killing stuff and getting horse points.

Or a combination of both and a general level of disinterest caused by us all falling into a repetitive and boring state.

Honestly I don’t know.

I can put my nose to the grind stone and hope I can come up with something so fantastic that it will put the electrodes to this sleeping giant and wake it from its idle slumber.

I could put a bullet in it, release it from its pain and remember to good times over a quiet ale or two.

Or I can embrace its current state and try to make the best of it.

I was thinking about this last option during the weekend and I came with this idea;

Convert the campaign to a Diablo style game.

Rather then coming up with too much of a story what I will do is design 3 or so combat encounters for each session.

Between each encounter I will give you a brief bit of flavour text to loosely tie them together.

Then we can just hack and slash our way through each session as the game encourages, I will start playing the monsters rolls and bonus’s open on the table so the dice will take 100% president over what happens.

After each fight I will award random treasure which can be used or traded at a mega magic mart between sessions.

It is just the beginnings of an idea and one I thought was maybe worth voicing.

Give them too me.

Before you start typing tho don’t even think of giving me some sort of pussy fence sitting crap opinion as there is nothing more irritating in this world then responses like;

“Just do what ever you like, if you don’t want to run it any more then we don’t have to play.”
Or

“I am not fussed I am happy to do what every one else wants to do!”

The above answers or anything similar I will take as meaning the following:

“I don’t care and I don’t want to be invited to role play anymore!”

Lord knows I am not an easy man to offend but I will be a hell of a lot more offended by useless half assed comments then by thought out and honest constructive criticism or your actual points of view.

If you don’t like something I am doing or some one else is doing please voice it.

If you have ideas for change add them to the conversation.

But for Buddas sake say something! If you like everything so far then tell me your favourite bits.

Granted i haven't looked into the monsters and their abilities, but... I like it. For pretty much all the good points you mentioned.
Immortal PCs, honestly not an issue for me at all. The idea of having a character death and the player having to reroll doesn't interest me at all.
And don't say it makes you care less about the well-being of your character. Character death is always a bad thing. Save from the 50,000xp you get for experiencing death, there are no points in its favor.
4e makes players stupid? yeah, but so does weed, and i love that. So... ? yeah.

As I've stated before, I'm having a great time. Heroic tier WAS fast paced and there were always doins a' transpiring. We always had something to do, something to get, something to kill. The party was driven to finding and stopping an evil cult in their attempts to destroy the world as we knew it. With our few contacts and trusty clerical quest giver we were never at a loss for adventure.

Now, things have slowed down a lot. While this may have something to do with the change from heroic to paragon teir, lets not overlook the change of scenery. Paragon tier started (if i remember goodly enough) in the shadow fell, which was awesome. It was a step up from Harril, a good solid transition from heroic to paragon. For lack of a better analogy it was like going from frankston shopping centre to chadstone. Frankston is fine, but i honestly still get lost at chadston. That place is huge and confusing.

So... after learning about the possibility of planar travel and experiencing first hand the massive scale of things outside our own little circle of earth, we went home. In my opinion this is where it slowed down. Home, as it turned out had become very very boring since we left, because as it turned out everyone else had left too. So we followed them. across an ocean to a small port on a distant isle. Here is where it changed from driven to dawdling.

Maybe i'm looking at things the wrong way, but i think things here simply took too long (side note, this is where we had a party of six). Everything was a grind. well, not everything, individually the bits were good. The dungeon crawl to reclaim the native's shrine, awesome. The floating zigurat thing was cool, if a little underwhelming. ( since half the party wasn't there and we pretty much waltzed though it in a night) The following battle with Childer was huge. But as a whole nothing felt like it flowed. its almost like we were stuck in a perpetual 'what now?' period. where we all sat around looking at each other, waiting for someone to have an idea. Maybe because really, there were only a couple of characters we had any accord with, maybe because people wanted to do things that simply couldn't be done while on an island, maybe people were just sick of frog demons, but i think everyone wanted to get off that island. This is why, for me at least, it was so easy to say " just jam the stupid thing in those three portals so we can get out of here".

On to where we are now... Still undecided. I'm hoping this mystic / wise man / whatever, that Fatty Mc Fatfat frequents, can give us some kind of idea as to where / when we are, and who / what brought us back. There is alot of potential here, it could be fun.

While the diablo idea sounds like it would be fun for a couple of sessions, I don't really fancy the idea of getting the guild together to raid once a fortnight. Although i do like the idea of a mega magic mart.
I like a good story. I like twists and intrigue. I like a plot. Without a good plot roleplay for me, is just see the boys time. Sure i'll throw my two cents in where relevant, but really i'll just play along with whatever everyone else is doing. I know some of you like the idea of playing in a sandbox, where you can do anything, an open world with unlimited options. Not me. I live in a sandbox, and I spend most of my free time in a small room in my house trying to escape said sandbox, through drugs, movies or games.
So, take a break. Recharge. Do what you have to do. Then see what inspiration strikes.