Oh Well

Okay, as I was afraid, things got slowed down significantly. I had a few things that I needed to "deal with" and the kids are blowing off the last day of school. This means that our celebration of the end of school was a day earlier than planned. My wife's call schedule has been a bit brutal lately too. I don't have the magic 5 products completed yet. I might be able to recruit some free help tomorrow though, maybe it'll still work out.

Anyway, I had another chance to look at the 4e books on the weekend. I was mostly looking over monsters and monster creation. Material on monsters is cleverly split between the MM and the DMG, you'll need both if you are planning to DM. I have seen some message board comments questioning the need for the DMG, but in my opinion, you'll need it. I am NOT all that impressed with some of the monsters. Some of the changes to things like the Dryad are, well, stupid really. A few monsters are much cooler, so I suppose in the long-run that will balance out. Fortunately, with the new edition it is much easier to make your own adjustments to monsters and/or simply create new ones.

Will I want to write for 4e? Yes, but I am not sure when I will find the time.

Conversions from older editions? Okay, here is the thing, in general I think it'll be easier to convert old 1e and 2e material than some 3e material. The problem is going to be with maps, 4e combat is highly dependent on movement and abilities that allow you to shift before or after striking. Without running an encounter in a tight space yet (I might run one today with my boys) I can't see if this is really a big deal. A lot of Monster abilities also involve pushing, pulling, or otherwise moving characters too.

I have the Keep on the Shadowfell adventure and some notes on things to add/subtract from the books and I plan to try the boys on it with 2 of the pre-gens each. I expect we'll all be running characters as more of a mini-combat trial at first than a real role-playing game.