Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

I wonder how it would have fared if marketed as a miniatures game instead of a RPG.

I think it'd be a fun skirmish game - pick an XP level, fill your roster with creatures, traps and hazards til you're done. Take a good sized battle map (the old Fantastic Locations maps are perfect) and deploy your dudes and traps.

Then fight it out!

Well the entire Edition and rules were based around combat. So as a separate miniature game it could have some potential. As a D&D game however it failed mostly due to the fact it ignore a lot of the other stuff people played D&D for.

My gaming group certainly has quite a few memorable fights but most the the stuff we remember was the RP things that happened outside of combat. Something the game lacked (rules wise at least)

I enjoyed it at the time but the game felt less like D&D and more like I was playing an MMO.

If people want to (stupidly) argue about systems we should make a separate thread about that (for the 50th time).

Ah come on Ahtman. It's pretty civil. I don't think there's much of an edition war feel to what we're saying.

But certainly, it's not helpful to the OP if there is.

 Da Boss wrote:
Ah come on Ahtman. It's pretty civil. I don't think there's much of an edition war feel to what we're saying.

Admittedly it isn't here quite yet but if we aren't careful we are heading down that road. 4E, probably Essentials, is a great introduction to RPGs for people coming from Warhammer/Warmachine/ect.

I agree, 4th edition is an excellent and detailed Skirmish game. Nice tactical combat and obviously great freedom in battle group composition. I also liked the grid based combat. Really made you built those dungeon tiles .

I don't see why one could not have the same with 5th edition. Depends all what you emphasise. It is ture that battles could take ages in 4th edition, but if this is the point of the evenign to fight one encounter then it is indeed very well suited.

Well, along those lines, I think that the Warhammer FRPG that FFG did was fairly well done. The "3rd edition" they did, with all the cards, standees and the like was, to me, what 4E D&D should have been. It is heavy on combat and combat abilities, but also still also feels like a RPG. I think the system is out of print (OOP), but should be pretty cheap on line. I can't remember if a starter set was made for the line.

I will agree with others on 4E - it has the strong "boardgame" element the OP is looking for, as it seems to have drawn a lot from the DDM miniature side with some RP elements thrown in. Last I saw, though the books were OOP, they were very cheap to acquire.

If using 4e stuff I recommend the later publications as the monsters and so on were better balanced for fun encounters. MM1 especially had some monsters that were a bit of a slog.

That said, I think that 5e is a simpler game to get into and the Starter Set is a great product for beginners.