4e Extreme Basic or 4e Very Fast Play
July 2, 2009 by shent_lodge
Filed under 4e, Game Design
4e is fun to play, but it seems that you need a computer to set up your character well. I am totally fine with this, but say you are camping and you have a bunch of new players that you want to introduce to the game and no computer for miles. What do you do? Pull out the PHB and go step by step… This is a race; this is a class. If they are anything like the people I tried to get to play, they all get glossy eyed real fast and start asking if they can do something more fun like watch a golf tournament on Tivo. What I say you should do is pull out the Monster Manual (MM1 or MM2 as of this writing) and tell your players to pick one and play it.
I don’t see this as a bad thing and I really did not give it serious thought until my MM2 arrived. After reading through the book, I got to thinking why not use the monster version of the player class instead of trying to build a character from the Players Handbook. Granted, the monster version is far less superior to the PC version, but if you are just running a quick game, I see pulling player characters from the Monster Manual as a extremely fast way to get the game going and more importantly draw in interest.
I figure pick a 7th level or lower monster that represents a legal race from the PHB (PHB1 & PHB2 as of this writing) and keep all the stats like for the dwarf bolter on page 97 of the Monster Manual, or the eladrin arcane archer on page 96 of the Monster Manual 2 and there you have a PC for a player with out all the hassle and confusion of the PHB. I suppose as DM you can craft encounters the same as normal or be too tougher, either way if a PC dies, she can just pick a new monster class and try again.
I understand it totally breaks the system, but after the intro game the players that are interested can convert to the correct way to run a PC from the PHB or PHB2 or PHB3…
I am actually going to play test this with a group over the 4th of July weekend. I tried a quick test run with the wife; she ran a gnome mistwalker page 127 MM2 and a goliath sunspeaker page 136 MM2. She was quite happy with having a couple potions of healing for each character and finding a magic sword and some gold in the dungeon. The game was not that complicated and action points were earned as she adventured (typical milestones and what not), initially she had no action points. She also thought rolling to see when she could use her power next made the combats fun. For instance her goliath gets a sun ray attack that has a recharge rate of 3d6; we converted to 1d6 roll and if it were a recharge rate of 1d6 or less, we rolled a 1d4 instead.
We decided that the experience and gold gained could be used to build a PC the right way but it had to be the same race and we would play again the more conventional way.
I was just wondering if anyone else had tried this out there? Either way, we call this 4e Extreme Basic Play around here.
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This is similar to a one-shot idea I had that I wanted to run for my group, where we could take a break from the regular campaign and put 4e through its paces with both high-level gaming and experiment roleplaying some evil characters.
The trick was that running a high-level pre-generated character is pretty tricky even for an experienced player, so turning to the MM seemed like an obvious solution: I threw together an Underdarkish plot about the local portal to the Shadowfell being taken over by nothingness and the PCs were a “confederacy of villains” gathered together to try to solve the problem.
So there was your typical Drow priestess, an assassin, an undead death knight, an Illithid wizard, etc.
Sadly I never got to run it – the scheduled session ended up being much shorter, but it’s still sitting on the back-burner.
I think that’s a great idea, and one I will be using. Even for experienced players, if a couple people can’t show up for the regular session, this could be a fun one shot.
Hah! My wife just pointed out she calls the method 4e extreme fast play not 4e Extreme Basic Play. Heh errata already, I should work for WotC.
Interesting idea! My brother in law has become interested in playing so I may set up a one shot using the monster manual. Thanks for the post.