Keep on the Shadowfell, part 1

I really don't want to be awake at 4 am... but that's what happens when you get a midnight shift at work. :P

Anyway, today we started playing the new Dungeons & Dragons 4th edition adventure, Keep on the Shadowfell. The adventure is designed to show off 4e's new combat systems and player character abilities, as well as some of the new setting fluff for the game.

Overall, I'm impressed. Combat is a lot more fun, compared to the 3.5e Greyhawk campaign we've been playing. There's a lot more maneuvering, a lot less "spend a turn healing and do nothing else" for the druid/cleric, and everyone just has a lot more options. The Paladin was actually very useful, and kept everyone alive through the first half of the night. Later, we added a 5th player who picked up the cleric (which saved our butts later on). Even my wizard was useful the whole time, usually dropping lots of fire on the enemies.

Unfortunately, our dice hated us. Lots of poor rolls all around, but even then we only came close to having characters die on the last big encounter we ran. The game is much more survivable, but still takes a lot of tactical consideration.

As to the role-playing, we didn't get much chance to run that, but what we did was fun. Mostly, we just focused on learning the new rules and just having fun.

If you're trying to decide whether or not to buy 4e, this adventure's a good way to test the waters.