[Travire]

Sorry for the delay in replying, finally back on line after some technical difficulties !

Thank you to everyone for your comments, it's always useful to read other peoples views on the game and explanations of rules which I may have completely misinterpreted for all I know.

In answer to some of the criticisms - no I have not been stuck in a time capsule ! The reason I decided not to review the game straight away was because after its initial release there was such an outburst of emotion any review got caught up in the flame war and the basic point of writing the review was lost. My own gaming group were influenced by a lot of the chatter on line about what the game was like and they formed their own opinions before they have even opened a copy of the PHB. So, I left it a while and thought I'd give the game a try after the flames had died down a bit.

The reason I decided to review the PHB was because I had read quite a few other reviews before buying the book but I felt that none of them had really explained exactly how different this edition was. I wanted to write a review which explained some of the basic rules changes for experienced players thinking of updating.

Unfortunately I was not able to provide a play tested review even after all this time for two reasons. Firstly as I already mentioned my players were completely jaded with the whole affair. And secondly because I was not at all happy with the rules myself. In the end I settled for trying to make up a few characters and run some simulations of the games combat system on my own. It's far from ideal I know, but if I wasn't 100% satisfied the rules worked I certainly wasn't going to be able to sell it to my players.

Overall I know my review was fairly negative but I want to stress that I do want to like these rules ! I've looked at peoples responses hoping to find something I had missed which would redress the balance in some of the areas I had raised. In the end though it might just be a matter of taste when I say these rules are not for me. There are plenty of other options out there though so I'm determined not to get worked up that I don't happen to like the current edition of D&D. Hopefully though my review ( along with the others already on RPG.Net ) will help some people decide whether they are at least interested enough to buy a copy of the PHB and try it for themselves.