My friends curse of strahd campaign just fell apart to changing schedules and after much discussion we decided I was going to take over and also in an attempt to prevent cancelled game nights due to schedule craziness I was going to run a west marches style hex crawl. It was something I was already working on but the unexpected end has accelerated my time tables so I'm rushing to get some background and the hexes populated. Im looking for some short dungeons to drop into the crawl but Im not nearly as familiar with pre-generated content. Can anyone suggest some good short dungeons or pregen adventures taking place in the wilderness? Im already looking at one-page dungeons.
One thing has become clear after GMing three sessions of Age of Rebellion. I don't know what the fuck I'm doing most of the time, but the players don't know that, and so any random shit I come up with on the fly seems totally normal to them. The system works!
One thing has become clear after GMing three sessions of Age of Rebellion. I don't know what the fuck I'm doing most of the time, but the players don't know that, and so any random shit I come up with on the fly seems totally normal to them. The system works!
Also if your players make up something that sounds plausible just steal it. You get a great free idea that makes sense to the players and the players feel super clever for having “solved” something.
One thing has become clear after GMing three sessions of Age of Rebellion. I don't know what the fuck I'm doing most of the time, but the players don't know that, and so any random shit I come up with on the fly seems totally normal to them. The system works!
Also if your players make up something that sounds plausible just steal it. You get a great free idea that makes sense to the players and the players feel super clever for having “solved” something.
This reminds me of a D&D game where the DM had secretly not had time to come up with anything as the party went through this magical unexplored area. His solution was to basically just riff on whatever folks said around the table as the landscape was malleable to suggestion. It was pretty hilarious how long it took folks to get it.
My friends curse of strahd campaign just fell apart to changing schedules and after much discussion we decided I was going to take over and also in an attempt to prevent cancelled game nights due to schedule craziness I was going to run a west marches style hex crawl. It was something I was already working on but the unexpected end has accelerated my time tables so I'm rushing to get some background and the hexes populated. Im looking for some short dungeons to drop into the crawl but Im not nearly as familiar with pre-generated content. Can anyone suggest some good short dungeons or pregen adventures taking place in the wilderness? Im already looking at one-page dungeons.
Thanks guys.
My own general rule is that I use whatever I have sitting around, and will modify or replace it as necessary.
One that you might not have heard of and that I think is pretty great is the Frandor's Keep mini-setting for Hackmaster Basic. Based on your mention of Curse of Strahd I assume you're running in 5E, but it's a simple enough matter to convert adventures for 5E. Frandor's is largely a re-imagined variant of Keep on the Borderlands, with a living area and multiple adventure hooks that you can just drop in wherever they seem appropriate to you. You don't even need to include the keep.
The fey pranking did not go as planned. A few pranks got off, but then the bard and the wizard got into a dirt fight which caused the fey (and the rest of the party) to crack up so they were tipped off they were there.
A few sweet words and bribes later, and the party made friends. Since one of the bribes was a very nice single malt whiskey, this resulted in the party discovering how fucking adorable drunk faerie dragons are.
Before following any advice, opinions, or thoughts I may have expressed in the above post, be warned: I found Keven Costners "Waterworld" to be a very entertaining film.
Finally getting ready to run Blades. Decided that rather than use Duskvol, I’d just mash in Five Fingers from the IK setting until it works. Why have just gangs when it can be pirate gangs?
"Go down, kick ass, and set yourselves up as gods, that's our Prime Directive!"
So I got into a Star Trek Adventures game recently- set a few years after the end of ENT. I`m playing the ships.XO/Tactical officer (CO is an NPC).
...would it be wrong to inflict my character's love of Andorian Dubstep on the other PCs?
What you need to do is play Andorian Dubstep for an Alien of the Week, causing them to psychically project it into the rest of the crew's minds.
Naw, in that case it'll be Faith of the Heart
I'm assuming that's the Andorian dubstep remix, right?
...
Why did I not think of this?
TO THE INTERNET!
If it turns out that this is actually a thing, can you post it here?
I was just joking around, but now I'm curious.
But that very specific level of curious where I don't want to expend any effort.
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Captain Ultralow resolution pictures of birdsRegistered Userregular
I'ma have to decide on whether or not I'd want to GM Pathfinder Society at a convention soon. Probably not since I don't find GMing at a convention as fun as doing it for a local game store. The reason to do it in the past was they gave out special boons, but chances are I probably won't get to use the boons I've got already.
I'ma have to decide on whether or not I'd want to GM Pathfinder Society at a convention soon. Probably not since I don't find GMing at a convention as fun as doing it for a local game store. The reason to do it in the past was they gave out special boons, but chances are I probably won't get to use the boons I've got already.
I'm going to run Starfinder at Anime Detour in April. I'm not sure if I will even use theconvention boon, but you never know.
My book club will be finishing up reading Neuromancer this week so I told them I'd run a one shot of The Sprawl for them. Starting to get all the rules straight in my head.
I think for the sake of the one shot, and most of these players having only played DnD before, I'm going to make pre-gen characters for the one shot (with giving the players options to make tweaks if something jumps out at them as they read over their sheets). Any pointers on making characters or pitfalls I should be aware of?
Be wary of getting stuck on the boat
Ie letting planning the job/legwork go on too long.
Finally getting ready to run Blades. Decided that rather than use Duskvol, I’d just mash in Five Fingers from the IK setting until it works. Why have just gangs when it can be pirate gangs?
Pirate campaign
Yesssssss
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JacobkoshGamble a stamp.I can show you how to be a real man!Moderatormod
One thing has become clear after GMing three sessions of Age of Rebellion. I don't know what the fuck I'm doing most of the time, but the players don't know that, and so any random shit I come up with on the fly seems totally normal to them. The system works!
Just to be clear, this is 100% working as intended.
There is a certain amount that planning can help in FFG Star Wars, like having the stats of ships you're likely to use often written down close at hand, but 85% of running the game can be summed up as "wing it, ask questions, roll with it."
Conventions can be fun for Society.
Players from elsewhere means new characters.
And most of the Specials are rad. (Though 8-00 is apparently a clusterfuck to prep)
The main downsides are the noise and the timestress. Conventions that try to squeeze 3 time slots into a day are rough.
Edit: The GM boons I got this year were pretty underwhelming. The most recent was 'play an aquatic race'
SanderJK on
Steam: SanderJK Origin: SanderJK
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webguy20I spend too much time on the InternetRegistered Userregular
One thing has become clear after GMing three sessions of Age of Rebellion. I don't know what the fuck I'm doing most of the time, but the players don't know that, and so any random shit I come up with on the fly seems totally normal to them. The system works!
Just to be clear, this is 100% working as intended.
There is a certain amount that planning can help in FFG Star Wars, like having the stats of ships you're likely to use often written down close at hand, but 85% of running the game can be summed up as "wing it, ask questions, roll with it."
I learned today that dry wipe markers are one level down from Sharpies when drawing on a vinyl battle mat
Luckily I also learned today that dry wipe marker can be removed from a vinyl battle mat with toothpaste if you don’t mind losing some definition on the grid
I learned today that dry wipe markers are one level down from Sharpies when drawing on a vinyl battle mat
Luckily I also learned today that dry wipe marker can be removed from a vinyl battle mat with toothpaste if you don’t mind losing some definition on the grid
If you have proper wet erase markers around going over the dry will also let you wipe both of them off.
Hey, so all the folk here who often talk about how they quite liked D&D4th Ed: Turns out someone heard you.
I often kinda tire of how a lot of fantasy RPG's get described as 'D&D but...' due to how it centers D&D and kind of lumps everything into one very large, specific basket. However Unity is without a doubt a game to which the description of like 'D&D4e but...' is not only applicable but really obviously what they're chasing. It's a powers driven, combat focused RPG with the same sort of inspirations from MMO's and CRPG's as 4th edition.
On top of that the mechanics draft in good bits from all over the spectrum. Rations and misc equipment are handled using the dungeon world system, character skills are modeled using backgrounds from 13th Age and the Advantage/Disadvantage system from 5th edition is one of the core buffs or debuffs most effects give you. Pretty much nothing has a complicated system attached to it outside of combat. The only major systems that are universal are sparks and ruin. Sparks are granted when players do or describe something cool and are a shared party resource that can be traded in (the book suggests 4:1 but adjusting for player counts) for advantage on a roll. Ruin is gathered for the GM when players commit evil deeds (the game very much presumes you're all good people) or when you rest (which is how every time tracking effect outside of combat is managed thankfully). Ruin can be spent on stuff like triggering monster powers, making a skill check a smidge harder, ensuring the group get attacked when setting up camp or summoning a hell portal from hell to vomit demons on them, yes, that is a literal rule.
Combat itself has two things that help streamline it and make it less clunky:
1) There's no grid, just abstract range bands.
2) There are no individual turns or initiative order: Instead each side of a conflict takes their go simultaneously. Players can weave their alloted actions in and out of eachother's as they wish. Working together to help get eachother out of danger or set up various combo powers. This also means that, unless a monster's using a power, the DM turn is literally just 'please roll these defense checks' and should be over pretty darn fast.
It also has two smaller mechanical things that are fantastic:
1) The issue of 'unload all encounters first' is mitigated because there are no encounter powers. Instead all your stuff costs from your classes resource pool. You get your resource pool back by either resting or rolling doubles (all dice rolls are 2d10). Which means the question of how to manage your resources is a more fiddly, less solvable one.
2) All basic attacks can be 'forced' on a miss so they still do damage. In return melee attacks make you take a hit back Dungeon World style and ranged attacks root you in place so you can't kite backwards. This carries through to a lot of the actual powers. If you're someone who gets frustrated at missing in D&D style games you can almost certainly make a character that always achieves something no matter the dice.
I dunno, obviously this isn't a super involved write up because I've not played it or 4th ed but figured it'd be up some people's alley and it's coming out in a few weeks.
Oh, also it has power ranger style mech rules where the party all contribute successes towards actions in your big stomp bot.
Now granted, I need to actually read up on the game, but going on your write up it has exactly none of the parts that made 4e interesting to me. Adding a more complex resource system to fix the issue that encounter powers brought is less than ideal.
The no grid thing, i will need to look at the range band stuff, but i never found the grid to be a problem, sure square circles but outside of nitpicks.
Though the idea of power ranger style mech stuff does sound neat.
Now granted, I need to actually read up on the game, but going on your write up it has exactly none of the parts that made 4e interesting to me. Adding a more complex resource system to fix the issue that encounter powers brought is less than ideal.
The no grid thing, i will need to look at the range band stuff, but i never found the grid to be a problem, sure square circles but outside of nitpicks.
Though the idea of power ranger style mech stuff does sound neat.
The resource system isn't really complex.
It's a pool of 10 max and trackable on your sheet. The most complex system is the Primalist which has a secondary resource mechanic to fuel their animal stances.
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StraightziHere we may reign secure, and in my choice,To reign is worth ambition though in HellRegistered Userregular
Removing the grid system really feels like it would hamper some of the neat tactical elements of 4e
Like, I remember doing stuff like having a fighter push an enemy in next to another group of enemies so that the ranger could properly ricochet his arrows between all of them
I feel like stuff like that was the real strength of the combat in 4e - neat little tactical combos that were baked into the combat system, rather than requiring an understanding of an additional ruleset that pretty much nobody else knew or cared about
Removing the grid system really feels like it would hamper some of the neat tactical elements of 4e
Like, I remember doing stuff like having a fighter push an enemy in next to another group of enemies so that the ranger could properly ricochet his arrows between all of them
I feel like stuff like that was the real strength of the combat in 4e - neat little tactical combos that were baked into the combat system, rather than requiring an understanding of an additional ruleset that pretty much nobody else knew or cared about
From what I've read of the powers there's still the potential to do stuff like this. Shoving people into your dreadnaught for him to use his big cleave on all of them is a thing.
It's just more abstract compared to specific grid tiles.
Honestly I'm just not a huge fan of grids because they're usually a pain to set up and don't actually add much to the combat in the average RPG.
Now granted, I need to actually read up on the game, but going on your write up it has exactly none of the parts that made 4e interesting to me. Adding a more complex resource system to fix the issue that encounter powers brought is less than ideal.
The no grid thing, i will need to look at the range band stuff, but i never found the grid to be a problem, sure square circles but outside of nitpicks.
Though the idea of power ranger style mech stuff does sound neat.
The resource system isn't really complex.
It's a pool of 10 max and trackable on your sheet. The most complex system is the Primalist which has a secondary resource mechanic to fuel their animal stances.
that is still more complex than the encounter power system.
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JacobkoshGamble a stamp.I can show you how to be a real man!Moderatormod
One thing has become clear after GMing three sessions of Age of Rebellion. I don't know what the fuck I'm doing most of the time, but the players don't know that, and so any random shit I come up with on the fly seems totally normal to them. The system works!
Just to be clear, this is 100% working as intended.
There is a certain amount that planning can help in FFG Star Wars, like having the stats of ships you're likely to use often written down close at hand, but 85% of running the game can be summed up as "wing it, ask questions, roll with it."
I'm hoping this goes for Genesys as well.
Genesys needs a lot more prep as you're building the setting, NPCs, extra mechanics, etc yourself but in the moment it should be identical as it's like 99% the same game
Also, "unload all your encounter powers at the front" wasn't so much the issue as what do you do after that? as they were almost always stronger than your at-wills, and really no one used dailies outside of the last fight of the day, the boss fight, or if the perfect moment arrived. this meant that like after the 3rd or 4th turn the battle starts slows to a grind. how much the resource system fixes this would then matter on how fast you can burn through it, and how effective you are after you run out.
Wizards was trying stuff out by having fights that doing stuff would return the use of an encounter power, as they kind of fucked up by not giving high level versions of at-will powers for classes. Which would maybe would have been a good fix. sure the damage goes up at 21 but by that time 2W isn't that great either.
It's definitely weird to say "It's got that tactical RPG flavor you love!" while also saying "But very abstract movement and positioning!"
It could work and if it works I think the fact that all of a "side" take their turn simultaneously will have a big part of that. Just the potential for infinite kibitzing if that involved movement would hurt my head. I'd worry a bit about it with just fully simultaneous turns.
It's definitely weird to say "It's got that tactical RPG flavor you love!" while also saying "But very abstract movement and positioning!"
It could work and if it works I think the fact that all of a "side" take their turn simultaneously will have a big part of that. Just the potential for infinite kibitzing if that involved movement would hurt my head. I'd worry a bit about it with just fully simultaneous turns.
That's a potentially-interesting idea for sure.
It's very not 4E, but it's interesting.
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MsAnthropyThe Lady of Pain Breaks the Rhythm, Breaks the Rhythm, Breaks the RhythmThe City of FlowersRegistered Userregular
Also, "unload all your encounter powers at the front" wasn't so much the issue as what do you do after that? as they were almost always stronger than your at-wills, and really no one used dailies outside of the last fight of the day, the boss fight, or if the perfect moment arrived. this meant that like after the 3rd or 4th turn the battle starts slows to a grind. how much the resource system fixes this would then matter on how fast you can burn through it, and how effective you are after you run out.
Wizards was trying stuff out by having fights that doing stuff would return the use of an encounter power, as they kind of fucked up by not giving high level versions of at-will powers for classes. Which would maybe would have been a good fix. sure the damage goes up at 21 but by that time 2W isn't that great either.
Yeah an extra resource mechanic doesn’t seem to solve this. Especially since 13th Age’s escalation die works pretty well to incentivize players to use their big powers later, while also speeding up the resolution of combat the longer it goes on. It would probably be my choice of fantasy game if they hadn’t thrown clear and explicit combat roles out of their class design.
i am interested to see more, i tried to watch the character creation sample video but after two minutes it felt like someone describing the mouth feel of their fart and i had to bail.
That isn't a quality judgement on the product, i just couldn't stand to listen to him anymore.
Also the game has done the unspeakable and only has modifiers, not traditional D&D stats.
EDIT: For what it's worth the main bit of the sales pitch that got me was 'D&D but making the tactics about resource management primarily and with more abstract positioning'.
Posts
My friends curse of strahd campaign just fell apart to changing schedules and after much discussion we decided I was going to take over and also in an attempt to prevent cancelled game nights due to schedule craziness I was going to run a west marches style hex crawl. It was something I was already working on but the unexpected end has accelerated my time tables so I'm rushing to get some background and the hexes populated. Im looking for some short dungeons to drop into the crawl but Im not nearly as familiar with pre-generated content. Can anyone suggest some good short dungeons or pregen adventures taking place in the wilderness? Im already looking at one-page dungeons.
Thanks guys.
Also if your players make up something that sounds plausible just steal it. You get a great free idea that makes sense to the players and the players feel super clever for having “solved” something.
This reminds me of a D&D game where the DM had secretly not had time to come up with anything as the party went through this magical unexplored area. His solution was to basically just riff on whatever folks said around the table as the landscape was malleable to suggestion. It was pretty hilarious how long it took folks to get it.
...would it be wrong to inflict my character's love of Andorian Dubstep on the other PCs?
PSN: L00nyEclip
Steam: Loony Eclipse
Twitter: @Loonyeclipse
What you need to do is play Andorian Dubstep for an Alien of the Week, causing them to psychically project it into the rest of the crew's minds.
Naw, in that case it'll be Faith of the Heart
PSN: L00nyEclip
Steam: Loony Eclipse
Twitter: @Loonyeclipse
My own general rule is that I use whatever I have sitting around, and will modify or replace it as necessary.
One that you might not have heard of and that I think is pretty great is the Frandor's Keep mini-setting for Hackmaster Basic. Based on your mention of Curse of Strahd I assume you're running in 5E, but it's a simple enough matter to convert adventures for 5E. Frandor's is largely a re-imagined variant of Keep on the Borderlands, with a living area and multiple adventure hooks that you can just drop in wherever they seem appropriate to you. You don't even need to include the keep.
DIESEL
Against the Fall of Night Playtest
Nasty, Brutish, and Short
A few sweet words and bribes later, and the party made friends. Since one of the bribes was a very nice single malt whiskey, this resulted in the party discovering how fucking adorable drunk faerie dragons are.
I'm assuming that's the Andorian dubstep remix, right?
...
Why did I not think of this?
TO THE INTERNET!
PSN: L00nyEclip
Steam: Loony Eclipse
Twitter: @Loonyeclipse
Feat. Or'tan, Son of J'kol on additional vocals no doubt.
If it turns out that this is actually a thing, can you post it here?
I was just joking around, but now I'm curious.
But that very specific level of curious where I don't want to expend any effort.
I'm going to run Starfinder at Anime Detour in April. I'm not sure if I will even use theconvention boon, but you never know.
Be wary of getting stuck on the boat
Ie letting planning the job/legwork go on too long.
Pirate campaign
Yesssssss
Star Trek is all about the virtues of cultural exchange. It would be wrong not to.
Also, make it a Value so you get bonus dice for sharing your love.
Just to be clear, this is 100% working as intended.
There is a certain amount that planning can help in FFG Star Wars, like having the stats of ships you're likely to use often written down close at hand, but 85% of running the game can be summed up as "wing it, ask questions, roll with it."
Players from elsewhere means new characters.
And most of the Specials are rad. (Though 8-00 is apparently a clusterfuck to prep)
The main downsides are the noise and the timestress. Conventions that try to squeeze 3 time slots into a day are rough.
Edit: The GM boons I got this year were pretty underwhelming. The most recent was 'play an aquatic race'
I'm hoping this goes for Genesys as well.
Origin ID: Discgolfer27
Untappd ID: Discgolfer1981
Luckily I also learned today that dry wipe marker can be removed from a vinyl battle mat with toothpaste if you don’t mind losing some definition on the grid
If you have proper wet erase markers around going over the dry will also let you wipe both of them off.
I often kinda tire of how a lot of fantasy RPG's get described as 'D&D but...' due to how it centers D&D and kind of lumps everything into one very large, specific basket. However Unity is without a doubt a game to which the description of like 'D&D4e but...' is not only applicable but really obviously what they're chasing. It's a powers driven, combat focused RPG with the same sort of inspirations from MMO's and CRPG's as 4th edition.
On top of that the mechanics draft in good bits from all over the spectrum. Rations and misc equipment are handled using the dungeon world system, character skills are modeled using backgrounds from 13th Age and the Advantage/Disadvantage system from 5th edition is one of the core buffs or debuffs most effects give you. Pretty much nothing has a complicated system attached to it outside of combat. The only major systems that are universal are sparks and ruin. Sparks are granted when players do or describe something cool and are a shared party resource that can be traded in (the book suggests 4:1 but adjusting for player counts) for advantage on a roll. Ruin is gathered for the GM when players commit evil deeds (the game very much presumes you're all good people) or when you rest (which is how every time tracking effect outside of combat is managed thankfully). Ruin can be spent on stuff like triggering monster powers, making a skill check a smidge harder, ensuring the group get attacked when setting up camp or summoning a hell portal from hell to vomit demons on them, yes, that is a literal rule.
Combat itself has two things that help streamline it and make it less clunky:
1) There's no grid, just abstract range bands.
2) There are no individual turns or initiative order: Instead each side of a conflict takes their go simultaneously. Players can weave their alloted actions in and out of eachother's as they wish. Working together to help get eachother out of danger or set up various combo powers. This also means that, unless a monster's using a power, the DM turn is literally just 'please roll these defense checks' and should be over pretty darn fast.
It also has two smaller mechanical things that are fantastic:
1) The issue of 'unload all encounters first' is mitigated because there are no encounter powers. Instead all your stuff costs from your classes resource pool. You get your resource pool back by either resting or rolling doubles (all dice rolls are 2d10). Which means the question of how to manage your resources is a more fiddly, less solvable one.
2) All basic attacks can be 'forced' on a miss so they still do damage. In return melee attacks make you take a hit back Dungeon World style and ranged attacks root you in place so you can't kite backwards. This carries through to a lot of the actual powers. If you're someone who gets frustrated at missing in D&D style games you can almost certainly make a character that always achieves something no matter the dice.
I dunno, obviously this isn't a super involved write up because I've not played it or 4th ed but figured it'd be up some people's alley and it's coming out in a few weeks.
Oh, also it has power ranger style mech rules where the party all contribute successes towards actions in your big stomp bot.
The no grid thing, i will need to look at the range band stuff, but i never found the grid to be a problem, sure square circles but outside of nitpicks.
Though the idea of power ranger style mech stuff does sound neat.
The resource system isn't really complex.
It's a pool of 10 max and trackable on your sheet. The most complex system is the Primalist which has a secondary resource mechanic to fuel their animal stances.
Like, I remember doing stuff like having a fighter push an enemy in next to another group of enemies so that the ranger could properly ricochet his arrows between all of them
I feel like stuff like that was the real strength of the combat in 4e - neat little tactical combos that were baked into the combat system, rather than requiring an understanding of an additional ruleset that pretty much nobody else knew or cared about
yeah that sounds useful.
From what I've read of the powers there's still the potential to do stuff like this. Shoving people into your dreadnaught for him to use his big cleave on all of them is a thing.
It's just more abstract compared to specific grid tiles.
Honestly I'm just not a huge fan of grids because they're usually a pain to set up and don't actually add much to the combat in the average RPG.
that is still more complex than the encounter power system.
Genesys needs a lot more prep as you're building the setting, NPCs, extra mechanics, etc yourself but in the moment it should be identical as it's like 99% the same game
Wizards was trying stuff out by having fights that doing stuff would return the use of an encounter power, as they kind of fucked up by not giving high level versions of at-will powers for classes. Which would maybe would have been a good fix. sure the damage goes up at 21 but by that time 2W isn't that great either.
It could work and if it works I think the fact that all of a "side" take their turn simultaneously will have a big part of that. Just the potential for infinite kibitzing if that involved movement would hurt my head. I'd worry a bit about it with just fully simultaneous turns.
That's a potentially-interesting idea for sure.
It's very not 4E, but it's interesting.
Yeah an extra resource mechanic doesn’t seem to solve this. Especially since 13th Age’s escalation die works pretty well to incentivize players to use their big powers later, while also speeding up the resolution of combat the longer it goes on. It would probably be my choice of fantasy game if they hadn’t thrown clear and explicit combat roles out of their class design.
"The only real politics I knew was that if a guy liked Hitler, I’d beat the stuffing out of him and that would be it." -- Jack Kirby
The system doesn't let you bounce around everywhere and ignore positioning at all. It just doesn't use a grid to track that positioning.
That isn't a quality judgement on the product, i just couldn't stand to listen to him anymore.
The combat preview on their website is pretty nice though as a 6 page example of a fight.
Also the game has done the unspeakable and only has modifiers, not traditional D&D stats.
EDIT: For what it's worth the main bit of the sales pitch that got me was 'D&D but making the tactics about resource management primarily and with more abstract positioning'.