Circle of Dar Janix

I started playing 4e at release. I ran Keep on the Shadowfell and a few adventures of my own before my group moved on. I did not touch it again for a few years until I moved and it was just about the only game in town. I played in the Crystal Caves Encounters campaign and enjoyed it. Recently I was a player in a 4e campaign at my FLGS. I know there are a lot of people out there that hate 4e, I am not one of them. I see each version of D&D as a tool for running different kinds of games. 4e was a decent tool for running a lighter game than 3.x and was easier to introduce new players to. But it isn't the best tool I have for this kind of game. There were several games released in the 2000s that aimed for this same slot in my collection, and quite frankly Savage Worlds fills the slot better than 4e. I would go as far to say that Savage Worlds is better 4e D&D than 4e is. The dilemma I have is that 4e is much more popular than Savage Worlds. It is far easier to find a 4e ...

In a Dungeon Magazine editorial from last year Chris Youngs talks about how Chris Perkins loves to use the coup de grace. He also talks about how it makes the enemies more memorable and satisfying to defeat. I couldn't agree more. In D&D, regardless of the edition, death is the threat that gives the game meaning. The threat of your character dying is what makes the game fun to play, it is the other side of the risk/reward balance. D&D is not Burning Wheel or WoD, the players do not assign soft goals that have mechanical meaning to their characters. The goals of D&D are to find monsters and make their stuff your stuff. Though in recent editions the scope of the goal has been narrowed to killing monsters and making their stuff your stuff. Either way the reward is for putting yourself in physical danger and surviving. If you are never in actual physical danger the reward is meaningless. I often have the monsters stop to kill a KO'd character. Do the players get mad? Y...