When my group playtested D&D 4th Edition, I immediately thought that that the new rules could work well in Eberron, particular in its pulpish, high-adventure incarnation. The lost continent, the dinosaur-riding halflings, the magical technology -- it all seemed like it would mesh well with 4E's default power setting, but unfortunately, Wizards decided to destroy, err, remake the Forgotten Realms instead.
Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition is seeing a nice publicity bump from its second round of major book releases as PHB 2, Arcane Power, Monster Manual 2, Eberron Campaign Setting and DMG 2 all hit the stands over the next few months.
Right now the focus is on the just-released Monster Manual 2, which a few sites have managed to get advanced copies of. Living Dice and Critical Hits both have reviews, and the sentiment from both blogs is every game master needs more monsters ... and these are these are good monsters. Critical Hits laments that there isn't a monster theme built into Monster Manual 2; while Demogorgon is the big bad who graces the book's cover, there aren't many monsters that fit it thematically.
I tend to agree with Critical HIts; while there are dangers to having a book being too strongly themed (particularly if most people aren't going to buy into that theme) having a handful of Demogorgon-inspired monsters scattered through the book would have been a good thing.
I don't know if it's an awareness thing because my group started playing Star Wars, but there seem to be a lot of science fiction games being released over the last year or so, and particularly the last few months. Case in point: over the last two weeks there have been reviews of Slipstream, Imperium Chronicles, Helix, All Tomorrow's Zombies and Shock.
But first, a look back. Greywulf offers his rundown of the best games of 2008, including some you might expect -- Pathfinder, D&D 4E -- as well as others that you might not, like 3:16 Carnage Among the Stars and D&D 3rd Edition.
Some of the second-stage books for D&D 4th Edition are hitting book stores, which has ignited a new wave of reviews among bloggers. I don't think any of these new books are going to change hearts and minds among those who dislike 4E -- that will have to wait for 2009's Player's Handbook II -- but I do think they serve to fill holes in 4E's lineup.
Interestingly, there are also a bunch of reviews out for Alpha Omega, a science fiction RPG that's been out for a year, but suddenly seems to have grabbed the interest of a number of people in the blogosphere.
4E overhauled/ravaged the traditional D&D cosmology, ditching the concept of aligned planes, merging the elemental ones into a single megaplane, and spawning the "Shadowfell" out of the intellectual ruins of Ravenloft. Living Dice reviews the new Manual of the Planes, which chronicles the new cosmology.
Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition has been getting some more reviewer love the last few weeks as another wave of third-party products hits the shelves. The two notable books are Advanced Player's Guide (Expeditious Retreat Press) and Forgotten Heroes: Fang, Fist and Song (Goodman Games), and both are looking to fill the void left in D&D 4E by the omission of barbarians, druids and bards.
Meanwhile, Wizards is whetting people's appetites with a free playtest version of its upcoming barbarian class for Player's Handbook II.
It's been a while since I looked at any 4E stuff, as my attention's turned almost entirely to Star Wars: Saga Edition. Coming back to it now with these reviews, it occurs to me that if I hadn't done the 4E playtest or played WoW, I don't think I'd have half a clue what they were talking about.
Strikers. Defenders. Healing surge. Primal power source. Daily powers. Encounter powers. It's all a testament to just how much new jargon 4E's generated, and how different a game it is from 3rd Edition.
Last week's surge of Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition reviews has abated, but there's a few new ones out there. What I find interesting about the reviews that are coming out now is that folks have had a chance to digest and (more importantly) play the game. As a result, people are getting past the surface reactions to 4E ("oh my god! it's a paper MMORPG!", "oh my god, it's so much better than sliced bread it's like it went back in time, and became sliced bread!!!") and starting to get into actual play issues.
<!-- break--> Venger Satanis's review at RPG Net expresses an unexpected weariness with 4E, as things begin to settle into an all-too-familiar routine. I'm not surprised to see such sentiments popping up; while 4E does have a certain degree of customization available to it, the game's in desperate need of a supplemental rulebook or three.
My own review of D&D 4th Edition on Nuketown tries to pull together the results of our summer-long 4E playtest campaign. It's a long one, but I think it does a good job of capturing our summer-long playtest, and talking about the issues we encountered, both at the table, and in contemplating a possible conversion of our regular campaign.
Since I mentioned last week that I thought the RPG blogging community should do more reviews, I thought it might be a good idea to follow-up on that and see what's available this week. It turns out it's a good week for reviews, with a slew having been posted for the new D&D 4th Edition Forgotten Realms campaign book. There are also reviews of the new 4E DM screen, a Legend of the Five Rings source book, and the Battlestar Galactica RPG.
I also came across the blog post "Where To Get You Some RPG Reviews", which runs down the best places to find role-playing game reviews on the web.