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After running the playtest packet instead of my usual game last night I pretty much lost all of my excitement over the idea of Next. I know this is a beta version but this system feel so bare bones that Savage Worlds looks like a comprehensive game next to it. Also if I had wanted to need to make rulings on every little thing I would already be playing that system.

I honestly want to know what Wizards think they are trying to pull. All of this talk of modularity feels extremely cheap to me because from what I saw last night this game cannot hold my players interest with just the core mechanics. It is basically telling me that I will NEED to purchase modules to even approach the level of tactical depth 4e is already giving my group for our Dungeon Crawler needs. Adventures in confined environments* is all I need the mechanics to be good at and 4e already does this brilliantly. 

As it stands the combat in Next is entirely lacklustre. If I had not told the players they were in caves and tunnels they wouldn't have known, it had no effect on people's manoeuvres other than the wall outlines. Movement and positioning were entirely pointless as everything had complete freedom of movement. The traps were nothing but static resource drainers that didn't add anything other than giving the Rogue an opportunity to pass or fail at disarming it. A few were worked into encounters but not in any interesting ways, mostly once again a debuff/HP reduction at the start of a battle. 

I am not one of those people who need D&D to be and to do everything so so that you know. I am not afraid of or to lazy to learn multiple systems like many people in the RPG hobby are prone to and when I play D&D it is because I want a Dungeon Crawler. If I wanted to run a Political campaign I would play Reign and if I wanted to run an Urban Fantasy campaign I would use the Dresden Files RPG. Next doesn't do this in my eyes, it is so loose with the way actions work I have to make rulings on everything. That tells me that the system was not designed for what I have in mind but that if I do the developer's job for them it can be used for, then eventually I can pay more money to possibly add the modules I need to it to give it any kind of tactical depth. Why would I ever pay money for that when I already have a codified system my group knows built from the ground up specifically for Dungeon Crawling with the Tactical Depth to keep it interesting for more than 2 hours at a time (4e)? My group does not have attention issues when I comes to getting down to playing tabletop games and all 4 of them were so bored by the time they had cleaned out the Kobolds we stopped playing and went out for drinks. 


 *Confined environments doesn't automatically mean underground or claustrophobic, just that the adventure site itself is all I care about. It may be sprawling in and of itself.

Yet another person fails to understand the word "playtest." Yay for reading comprehension!

You do know that they'll have more modules than these core rules in the PHB right? If you want a system more complex than this you'll get it with core. (Or at least that's the impression I've been given.)

If you're more so asking "Why not play systems geared towards the play style I want instead of patching together modules?" Then I say that's a good question. Look at those systems, are they perfect for you or do you want something a bit different? If they're perfect for you, then use them. If you want something a little different to fit the campaign you have in your mind, you might be able to put to together with modules.

I already have an idea for a story in my head. I would rather have a system I can sew together to fit that story than try and cram it into a system that's not quite made for it.