Essentially, I may have been too hasty. In fact, I was wrong.

As a kid, I hated cheese. And I mean hated cheese. Cheese looked like some sort of snot, it smelled bad, and I swore that I’d never touch it. This was, of course, without actually trying cheese to make an informed decision.

I didn’t even eat pizza until I was 13 years old. Then I got dragged to a Pizza Hut before the premier of Ghostbusters (which was coincidentally the first time I saw Transformers toys, but I digress) and didn’t have a choice but to eat cheese. And you know what? Cheese tasted pretty damn good. Now I eat cheese all the time.

What I’m getting at here is that all of us – and I mean every single one of us – have our own prejudices towards things. That’s how people are built. And I’m an aging, opinionated gamer who writes before he thinks things through about 90% of the time. When I see something that I don’t like, I explain exactly why (with facts when possible) and don’t consider that I may damage the delicate sensibilities of others on the internet.

I have played every version of D&D since 1978. There are not a lot of people on the interwebs that can say that. D&D has always been very special to me, not only as my introduction to the greater world of roleplaying, but as a very early primer into an ongoing love of fantasy, art and the written word.

With that said, I wasn’t that much of a fan of 2E. And when 4E came out, I was really quite disappointed. Why? In a nutshell:

• I was really down on Wizards for not being more up-front with the fact that 4E was coming.
• I think the game diverged too much from it’s parental source.
• I feel that the concept of damage had changed too much.
• I think the characters were far too balanced.
• Too. Many. Splatbooks.

So after having tried 4E and failing to enjoy it very much, our group switched over to Pathfinder, which for me was a comfort zone – having loved 3.5 edition so much I simply felt “at home”.

So then comes word of D&D Essentials, which I saw as little more than a sneaky way to put a 4.5 Edition into print. Since I didn’t like the original 4E rules, I knew that this wasn’t going to be for me. Then came my birthday about a month ago, and with it the gift of a complete set of the released Essentials products. My group gave it a try the following weekend – and you know what?

I was wrong. I was entirely wrong about D&D Essentials. I am sure that some of you are already bookmarking this article.

It is clearly new and offers a great deal of new ways to do things. Overall, if you’re looking to play “classic-style” D&D with heroes, castles, dragons and treasure, Essentials is the best thing Wizards has done in years. I have no interest in OSRIC or WoW. I want to play D&D, and that is exactly what I can do with Essentials.

If you didn’t like 4E because of any of the following reasons:

• Vague – if not downright questionable math – requiring lots of errata
• Vague rules
• Combat was often quite boring
• Too many expensive books that were often just more of the same you already had

Give Essentials a try. I think you’ll like it.

Wizards of the Coast has done a really fine job with this new side – but fully compatible – line of D&D 4th edition products. It has definately given new players an easier way into D&D and offers plenty of variety for already invested fans of the D&D 4th edition system. And for me, it has stripped away a lot of the stuff that I didn’t find necessary about 4E and given me exactly what I needed to enjoy the game again.