I, too, am a gamer. My group is also running D&D 4e. We've just finished the 7 Pillared Hall. Our DM has reworked the Red Hand of Doom for 4e and we'll see how well he did.
My character is a half-human, half-werewolf (no shifting powers, just tall and hirsute) Cleric (though he's about to take a cross-class feat of Druid so he can do the shapeshifting thing). My take on the new system is that it seems specifically designed to be adapted into a videogame. That is, older versions of D&D were much more complex with the number of options that you could have. Spellcasters had literally dozens of different spells to cast, for example. Melee fighters would have a much more simplified time having to choose which weapon to use and then simply having at it (though strategic placement is important).
In 4e, everybody has the same set of tools: a fixed number of at-will, encounter, and daily powers and the ability to use only a single magic item's power or two in any given encounter, and then only once. This would make it very easy to program into a game: A character can take only one of a dozen actions at most, all of which have been hard-coded.
One possible "benefit" from this is that since all character classes function identically on a large scale, you don't have to worry about certain character classes being unbalanced. Spellcasters are very powerful at high levels, but they're made of balsa wood and tissue paper early on. One good hit with a sword and the mage is literally dead and they don't really have any offensive capabilities since they can only shoot that magic missile once per day. But contrast this to the psionicist (PHB3, out soon). I don't know anybody who managed to play a game with psionics and enjoy it. Given the new system, the powers of the psionicist will be very much like the others though the type of damage will be different (psychic compared to the cleric's radiant, for example) with different side effects.
We've also played Traveller, GURPS, Cthulhu, RuneQuest, and even variations such as a Traveller game with Castle Falkenstein rules.
I think the most interesting game we've had was a one-off, lightning speed Traveller game. A couple of our players couldn't make a session so the remaining ones came up with some Traveller characters (through classic build process...so that took some time) with the idea that we were going to have an entire plot session wrap up by the end of the night. Thus, we were encouraged to develop character backstory on the fly and declare by fiat. My character was an award-winning actor (his stats didn't really put him in any other category), and the other two were his agent, and his lawyer. He got caught up in a false charge of importing ocelots and was suddenly on the run to clear his name.
My character had earned some contacts during character generation which weren't established so when he was dragged off to the police station, I declared that his contact was a mafioso who had muscle and could stage a breakout. We then tried to find out why he would be accused of importing extinct animals to the planet. We eventually learned that the ocelots weren't cats but rather a type of missile and the one who had set me up was apparently an acting rival, angry at me for having landed the part and winning the award he thought was his. After a gala costume ball that involved seven identical yeti costumes, an NPC with an allergic reaction to cotton, and trapping the bad guy in a hollow bull (with the appropriate symbology there), all was well.
When we are missing people for a game session, we'll pull them out to try another instant game done as silly as we can make it.
I've played a mixed Vampire/Mage WoD game and I like the original rules. The new ones and the new campaign setting don't seem quite right.
Rrhain
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