D&D 4e Play Report: Lots of Fun, Not Lots of RP

This past week (while I was fastidiously failing to post anything here) I had the opportunity for the first time ever to break out my gaming stuff twice in one week. Well, to break out my gaming stuff twice in one week with other people. I'm going to be giving each of these an article separately (as I can't manage a short post to save my life) but I think that it bears mentioning the second game simply because it will contrast so much with the first. I played a mostly core-fantasy D&D 4e game in person with my hometown group and then a couple days later played made a steampunk kind of world using Dawn of Worlds through G-hangout with some members of the new group.

Character Generation and Setup

My first gaming experience was with the 3.5 rules of Dungeons and Dragons and from the beginning I found most of that pretty intuitive.  Sure, there can be some weird things with grappling and character building can be something of an enjoyable challenge, but it more or less makes sense the majority of the time.  If there's a build that doesn't work out well I feel like I can look at the sheet and quickly know where the problem is.  When 4e came out I assumed that my previous experience would carry over in a meaningful way.  Unfortunately, it really hasn't.