I am.
Equally indifferent to all the above.
I am looking forward to Warhammer 4e, am I in the right thread?
Quote from: Rincewind1;508700I am looking forward to Warhammer 4e, am I in the right thread?
Dammit man, stop having fun in systems other than d20, you must focus that rage.
Quote from: Kord's Boon;508701Dammit man, stop having fun in systems other than d20, you must focus that rage.
I've never been a big DnD fan, and after a game of OSRIC, I know it's a system which has all that I need from DnD. Especially once I master it enough to houserule to hell out of it.
Quote from: Rincewind1;508700I am looking forward to Warhammer 4e, am I in the right thread?
This is the wrong thread no matter what you like.
Loved 3e. Don't care for 4e. Hope 5e is amazing.
Quote from: beejazz;508707This is the wrong thread no matter what you like.
Flawless Victory.
Don't care really. I am playing and running Barbarians of Lemuria for my fantasy kick and getting that old school role playing feel.
Dungeons and Dragons just doesn't scratch that itch anymore. D20 is a way over complicated system and I hated in the 3.5 and 4ed days wasting time looking up rules. BOL is easy for combat and everything else and games go much smoother (ALA the Red Box Days)
Quote from: Daedalus;508719Don't care really. I am playing and running Barbarians of Lemuria for my fantasy kick and getting that old school role playing feel.
BoL is a gem. The careers and magic system are both flexible and full of character. And of course the advancement rules whereby you gain XP by squandering all the treasure earned the previous adventure is pure awesome.
Quote from: Soylent Green;508697Equally indifferent to all the above.
Same.
Quote from: Soylent Green;508725BoL is a gem. The careers and magic system are both flexible and full of character. And of course the advancement rules whereby you gain XP by squandering all the treasure earned the previous adventure is pure awesome.
Yep. It really feels like gaming did back in the red box days, and those were the days where me gaming was the most fun.
I don't need difficult systems with rules for everything. My group can agree on various things when we need to wing it. And I don't have the time to learn difficult game systems anymore. I used to have the time, but now I would rather spend my limited game time actually playing, not learning large tomes of rules.
The thing is there is no shortage or rules-light games, but often they are just combat engines or leave the character feeling a bit sameish. The trick BoL pulls off is to be rules-light and still produce full fleshed out characters.
I thought 3e was okay, but more trouble to play/GM that it was worth. I though 3.5 moved too far away from TSR D&D (and made combat far too minis-oriented) and therefore had no real interest in it. I did not like 4e at all as it was aimed at players who liked all the stuff I was least interested in in D&D (and stressed combat even more) while removing moast of the stuff I was more interested in.
I'll certainly look at 5e, but I'm not really excited about it as I don't think WOTC is all that likely produce I game that is better for me than the versions of D&D I already own, like, and play. However, I'm hopeful that 5e will be close enough to traditional D&D that adventures and campaign settings for it might interest me and be easily usable with the versions of D&D I most enjoy.
I play Shadowrun.
I like 4th edition and I think it's a fun game. Nevertheless, I'm looking forward to seeing what the next edition will look like. It'll be something new, I hope, or at least a new and interesting spin on something old. If 4th falls by the wayside, that's okay. It's merely one game of many.
1989, you know you don't get 2e back, right? I mean, everybody hates that goddamn revision. Everybody.
Indifferent to 3.x. Not really interested in 4.x but found the 4vengers mighty annoying.
Curious about 5e, since I think it's possible, well, let's say conceivable, that it'll be (a) popular and (b) something I'd enjoy playing/running.
Quote from: thedungeondelver;5087651989, you know you don't get 2e back, right? I mean, everybody hates that goddamn revision. Everybody.
Outta curiosity - why?
I hate everything and look forward to nothing.
Quote from: Rincewind1;508779Outta curiosity - why?
Dungeon Delver has an extremely bad habit to generalize so ignore the jackass. I, on the other hand, have no problem with 2nd edition. I have no problem with 3.0/3.5. I have no problem with 4th edition. I have no problem with 1st edition.
The only problem I have are with those D&D ripoffs/plagerized clones like OSCRAP.
Quote from: thedungeondelver;5087651989, you know you don't get 2e back, right? I mean, everybody hates that goddamn revision. Everybody.
Quote from: Rincewind1;508779Outta curiosity - why?
It was so, so much potential goodness that was totally fucked over by the execution.
Right now? BECMI/RC > OD&D, AD&D 1e > Castles & Crusades (does that count?) > 2e > 3e > 4e for me.
Can't say I "hate" any of them, even 4e got to be fun at times, but I'd definitely run D&D RC over 4e any day of the week.
I'm really curious to see how 5e will turn out, because right now they're promising all things to all people, and that doesn't sound like a winning proposition.
Haven't heard enough about 5E to have any sort of opinion.
Quote from: Rincewind1;508779Outta curiosity - why?
Well, I like 2nd ed.
In answer to your question though:
*quite a few 3E people consider it an antiquated monstrosity for the same reasons as they don't like AD&D 1E; no unified dice roll mechanic, various xp tables, level limits, AC that goes down/THAC0, lots of rules loopholes and GM fiat.
*quite a few 1E people don't like it because of various art and style things, or they just wanted a different 2E with Gary at the helm, or because Lorraine Williams. The system itself isn't that different, compared to the 2E/3E or 3E/4E revision.
*forgies like to poke it as a classic example of "incoherent design".
*the immersion crowd hate the GM advice to railroad and talk of story and suchlike that started with Dragonlance.
4E people usually don't hate it particularly, either because there was less of a caster/noncaster divide back then or because they're distracted by beating up Pathfinder fans. The non-hatred isn't necessarily reciprocated, though.
I've grown to loathe 3e, I've always detested 4e, and I am hesitantly optimistic about 5e. My distinct hope is that the system is something useful to me because having a popular, well-supported RPG is a luxury I have not had for some time.
I zee. Well, I think I'll stick for OSRIC for now - though my buddy has 2e PM.
Quote from: thedungeondelver;5087651989, you know you don't get 2e back, right? I mean, everybody hates that goddamn revision. Everybody.
No, way, man, 2e is the shit.
Great artwork in the corebooks, not the amateur hour that was the 1e PHB (don't get me wrong, I understand that they were on a budget, and they did what they could; has a real made-in-your-garage feel . . . like a bunch of buddies, with each contributing what he could).
Best settings. Al-Qadim. Ravenloft. Planescape. Dark Sun.
Got rid of the lame assassins (who needs evil PCs, come on).
Best Monster Manual.
Best fluff supplements.
2e was the edition that emphasized roleplaying and world exploration for the sake of world exploration.
Anyway, the main thing for me is to lose the miniatures focus of 3e and 4e. I am looking forward to coming back to D&D after being out of it since 1999 (2e). It's been a long, 13-year exodus, and I really am looking forward to coming back home. Hope they don't mess it up. I really want to read the philosophical, designer-type stuff that they will write in the new books, probably in the intro (seeing as we have learned from 4e that RPGs should not be board wargames).
QuoteGot rid of the lame assassins (who needs evil PCs, come on).
(http://farm5.staticflickr.com/4061/4669812732_5407c2534c_z.jpg)
Quote from: Rincewind1;508820(http://farm5.staticflickr.com/4061/4669812732_5407c2534c_z.jpg)
Totally, man. Evil PCs ruin things. I don't want to spend my time imagining to be one. Evil-aligned assassins were a lame idea. Half-orcs were kinda lame, too. Monstrous humanoids. Not for me. But it's not a deal-breaker.
I dunno. About the only way I can think to fix D&D at this point is to copy Fantasy Craft, and I already have that, so . . . here's hoping I'll be pleasantly surprised, I guess.
You know, just because some people used Evil alignment as an excuse for playing a murderhobo, doesn't meant that an idea of Evil PC in the party is bad - just like quite a few people "failed" the paladin class by using it to play Lawful Stupid.
Should we remove the paladin class as well, or teach people how to RP better?
This is basically an argument "Let's destroy all guns in the world, because one dumb kid shot himself in the foot."
I'm sort of optimistic. My beef with Pathfinder is that they named it "Pathfinder," forcing me to search for it as "Paizo" or PFSRD. Stupid.
I really want D&D to be good and for everyone to play it.
Quote from: Rincewind1;508831You know, just because some people used Evil alignment as an excuse for playing a murderhobo, doesn't meant that an idea of Evil PC in the party is bad - just like quite a few people "failed" the paladin class by using it to play Lawful Stupid.
Should we remove the paladin class as well, or teach people how to RP better?
This is basically an argument "Let's destroy all guns in the world, because one dumb kid shot himself in the foot."
I have a Paladin and an Anti-Paladin in the same group together. So funny.
Paladin, "Hey, I just detected evil on that guy."
Anti-Paladin, "Hey bud... my friend here says you evil... so you think you evil?"
Quote from: Rincewind1;508831You know, just because some people used Evil alignment as an excuse for playing a murderhobo, doesn't meant that an idea of Evil PC in the party is bad - just like quite a few people "failed" the paladin class by using it to play Lawful Stupid.
Should we remove the paladin class as well, or teach people how to RP better?
This is basically an argument "Let's destroy all guns in the world, because one dumb kid shot himself in the foot."
Evil people are always evil. Paladins know it, detect it, and they smite that shit down!
Quote from: 1989;508819No, way, man, 2e is the shit.
You've got an extra Definite Article there, son.
QuoteGreat artwork in the corebooks, not the amateur hour that was the 1e PHB (don't get me wrong, I understand that they were on a budget, and they did what they could; has a real made-in-your-garage feel . . . like a bunch of buddies, with each contributing what he could).
What.
No, really, what? that pap? That generic paint-by-numbers Larry Dullmore pap spread across 2e ignites your imagination? Sure there's bad stuff in 1e art, but the good stuff is years better than the best 2e stuff and the bad stuff in 2e art abounds.
QuoteAl-Qadim.
crap
QuoteRavenloft.
railroad crap
QuotePlanescape. Dark Sun.
not D&D, crap
QuoteGot rid of the lame assassins (who needs evil PCs, come on).
Oh god, you are just trolling now. How's the Pulling family doing these days? Do you have a framed copy of TSR's Standards & Practices? Do icky icky half orcs make you all sweaty?
QuoteBest Monster Manual.
Yep, you sure are.
QuoteBest fluff supplements.
Useless shit designed to suck money out of the wallets of the unimaginative.
Quote2e was the edition that emphasized roleplaying and world exploration for the sake of world exploration.
2e was the edition that emphasized the removal of Gygax's influence on the game's design for the sake of fucking him over.
QuoteAnyway, the main thing for me is to lose the miniatures focus of 3e and 4e. I am looking forward to coming back to D&D after being out of it since 1999 (2e). It's been a long, 13-year exodus, and I really am looking forward to coming back home. Hope they don't mess it up. I really want to read the philosophical, designer-type stuff that they will write in the new books, probably in the intro (seeing as we have learned from 4e that RPGs should not be board wargames).
You're still not getting 2e back.
Quote from: thedungeondelver;508846You've got an extra Definite Article there, son.
What.
No, really, what? that pap? That generic paint-by-numbers Larry Dullmore pap spread across 2e ignites your imagination? Sure there's bad stuff in 1e art, but the good stuff is years better than the best 2e stuff and the bad stuff in 2e art abounds.
crap
railroad crap
not D&D, crap
Oh god, you are just trolling now. How's the Pulling family doing these days? Do you have a framed copy of TSR's Standards & Practices? Do icky icky half orcs make you all sweaty?
Yep, you sure are.
Useless shit designed to suck money out of the wallets of the unimaginative.
2e was the edition that emphasized the removal of Gygax's influence on the game's design for the sake of fucking him over.
You're still not getting 2e back.
lol, all I really want is a TSR-era combat system, i.e., sans grids, etc. Since this has been confirmed by WotC, I am really looking forward to 5e. It won't be as good as 2e, but hopefully everyone will get the options they want.
QuoteRavenloft.
railroad crap
Quote:
Planescape. Dark Sun.
not D&D, crap
(http://www.dembot.net/images/facepalm/space_ghost_facepalm.jpg)
I cheer for everything else, DD, but those? That's just full steam ahead into Foolishness Zone. Fuck it, I didn't even read 2e's Player Handbook and I actually read those, so I could use them for my 3e games (well, when I did play 3e games, that is).
Tchoo Tchoo!
Quote from: Rincewind1;508831You know, just because some people used Evil alignment as an excuse for playing a murderhobo, doesn't meant that an idea of Evil PC in the party is bad - just like quite a few people "failed" the paladin class by using it to play Lawful Stupid.
Should we remove the paladin class as well, or teach people how to RP better?
I completely agree with this. I think the comparison between bad Paladin RP and bad Assassin RP is totally apt, and this extends to the whole Evil alignment in fact. Playing Evil is awesome. When done right. You can play Evil and participate to the D&D group meaningfully, being a total buddy of the other gamers at the table while cooperating in-character with selfish goals in mind.
It's not hard. It's just that the advice given about it is usually weak, devoid of actual examples, or corny beyond belief (Book of Vile Darkness, I am looking at you).
Quote from: Benoist;508854I completely agree with this. I think the comparison between bad Paladin RP and bad Assassin RP is totally apt, and this extends to the whole Evil alignment in fact. Playing Evil is awesome. When done right. You can play Evil and participate to the D&D group meaningfully, being a total buddy of the other gamers at the table while cooperating in-character with selfish goals in mind.
It's not hard. It's just that the advice given about it is usually weak, devoid of actual examples, or corny beyond belief (Book of Vile Darkness, I am looking at you).
After all - we all have anecdotes of Evil Characters Blowing Up Party...
But we also all have anecdotes of Paladins Blowing Up Party.
:P
The clue to both classes is simple:
Don't be a retard, and play the character like a 2d cardboard cut out.
I mean hells - when recruiting for my current campaign, one of the guys wanted to play a Paladin. After he started asking me about ideas, and basically understanding the class as "Lawful Stupid", because I told him that torture is still off, I just told him - "No Pally for you." Just because you aren't a Punisher, doesn't mean you can't be a bastard, mean paladin.
Edit: Hm. Perhaps after I am done with my ranting about Tragedy - based Campaign (I hope it doesn't suck too much so far!) I should write a bit about playing Evil Characters in DnD - such I really had done it a lot, and to great success.
Second Edition was a mixed bag.
New Thieves - interesting idea, used both versions.
New Bard, changed to Minstrel and used it, was ok.
Dark Sun and Planescape - awesome settings
Total Horseshit
Kits
Loss of Demons and Devils
Loss of Assassins
Time of Troubles
Art in the Monstrous Compendiums
All the black book shit
For me, Second Edition was basically stuff I mined for 1e.
I6 Ravenloft the module is shit.
Ravenloft the setting is awesome but suffers from the same flaw as Dark Sun: it's not "dungeons" and "dragons". I explained that elsewhere.
Planescape is more redeemable as-is in my mind, but it too could have used more "D" and "D". The whole development of the war of factions and shit was crap, however, no doubt about it.
Quote from: Benoist;508854I completely agree with this. I think the comparison between bad Paladin RP and bad Assassin RP is totally apt, and this extends to the whole Evil alignment in fact. Playing Evil is awesome. When done right. You can play Evil and participate to the D&D group meaningfully, being a total buddy of the other gamers at the table while cooperating in-character with selfish goals in mind.
It's not hard. It's just that the advice given about it is usually weak, devoid of actual examples, or corny beyond belief (Book of Vile Darkness, I am looking at you).
Agreed. I think Uncle Gary intended (small 'e') evil to be more along the lines of 'asshole' or 'selfish prick'. In the case of the Assassin, 'amoral(ish) killer for hire'. The problem gets to be most players who ran with it and wanted to play the embodiment of EVIL with a capital E-V-I-L. As in Rapist Corpse Defiling Hitler for a
starting point. The kind of stuff that would make Ted Bundy step back and ask, "Hey, that's a little over the line, there, don't you think?"
Like most experts will say: such a person isn't evil (wilful choice), they are
insane.
Quote from: Benoist;508859I6 Ravenloft the module is shit.
Ravenloft the setting is awesome but suffers from the same flaw as Dark Sun: it's not "dungeons" and "dragons". I explained that elsewhere.
Planescape is more redeemable as-is in my mind, but it too could have used more "D" and "D". The whole development of the war of factions and shit was crap, however, no doubt about it.
I dunno, I kinda liked the Faction Wars. And the Orcus Skull adventure was epic imo - at least the idea of it. Walking in the skull of a god = win.
Plus, I love gothic horror.
Quote from: CRKrueger;508858Total Horseshit
Kits
This is one of those ideas that was fantastic, but they totally screwed the pooch on execution. The Magic-User can wield a sword, or the fighter can shoot off a couple of spells in an emergency without dual- or multi-classing? Sign me up! What's that you say? The quality is all over the map and most of them make Prestige classes look absolutely well-balanced? Oh... Same with the Monstrous Manuals. A fucking
brilliant idea they failed to implement correctly.
But the settings were pretty much the shit. I am a Forgotten Realms fan myself, but all the settings were high quality, both in ideas and production values.
Quote from: thedungeondelver;5088462e was the edition that emphasized the removal of Gygax's influence on the game's design for the sake of fucking him over.
QUOTE]
The same old GYGAX pity story. LOL
Quote from: Benoist;508859I6 Ravenloft the module is shit.
Ravenloft the setting is awesome but suffers from the same flaw as Dark Sun: it's not "dungeons" and "dragons". I explained that elsewhere.
Planescape is more redeemable as-is in my mind, but it too could have used more "D" and "D". The whole development of the war of factions and shit was crap, however, no doubt about it.
I6 Was AWESOME...
DARKSUN does have dungeons and it does have dragons.
And in all honesty, WHO made you the EXPERT on what is D&D and not??? Friggin K&KA mentality as usual...
Ravenloft has dungeons and it has dragons.
What have you been playing...?????
Quote from: StormBringer;508863This is one of those ideas that was fantastic, but they totally screwed the pooch on execution. The Magic-User can wield a sword, or the fighter can shoot off a couple of spells in an emergency without dual- or multi-classing? Sign me up! What's that you say? The quality is all over the map and most of them make Prestige classes look absolutely well-balanced? Oh... Same with the Monstrous Manuals. A fucking brilliant idea they failed to implement correctly.
But the settings were pretty much the shit. I am a Forgotten Realms fan myself, but all the settings were high quality, both in ideas and production values.
I did with 2e kits what I had to do with all the 3e prestige classes, blow them up and reassemble into something sane and that fit into the setting. That was a hell of a lot easier with 2e. :D
Quote from: StormBringer;508863This is one of those ideas that was fantastic, but they totally screwed the pooch on execution. The Magic-User can wield a sword, or the fighter can shoot off a couple of spells in an emergency without dual- or multi-classing? Sign me up! What's that you say? The quality is all over the map and most of them make Prestige classes look absolutely well-balanced? Oh... Same with the Monstrous Manuals. A fucking brilliant idea they failed to implement correctly.
But the settings were pretty much the shit. I am a Forgotten Realms fan myself, but all the settings were high quality, both in ideas and production values.
There were a few kits that were...dodgy...but the worst of them aren't anywhere near as bad as the most broken 3E stuff.
Militant Mages had to pay (e.g. losing access to some schools) and a fighter would be lucky to get a L1 spell with some major drawbacks (e.g. Savage - Detect Magic, but no armour).
I vastly preferred the kit approach where people got a couple of minor powers (and hindrances) to fit their character concept at the start, to 3.x PrCs where all the PCs want specially arranged quests so they can finally become a real pirate or whatever at 6th level.
Hate D&D 3e, have found peace with D&D 4e being truly D&D Tactics (and I want to leave it at that), and yes, I am sorta interested what WotC will do with 5e. Especially since I think WotC has shit for designers (they fuck up CCG design like nobody's business, but boy! can they make it sell through with chase rares). A mix of morbid curiosity and hope.
And yes, 2e is my favorite edition. It's a big ol' toolbox with oodles of settings, optional rules, and fluff -- exactly everything I want from an RPG. I've yet to be impressed by a module that I could get my hands on, and I'm not a wimpy GM when it comes to preventing broken ass point-buy optimization in my games, so the big 2e negatives never were a thing for me. "Don't railroad your players as if they're your personal bitch, and don't be a doormat letting players tweak out shit you barely understand its ramifications," a very simple rule that has served me well over the years and across systems.
It depends. Honestly, I tried 3E, I tried 4E. Neither were for me. If they produce something for me? Well awesome! If not, and I'm suspecting they won't I'll be disappointed.
My favorite D&D version is BESM/Cyclopedia, with 2E coming close behind and the version I ran the most beloved and long running games with--as a GM.
I played 2nd edition in high school. I played it mainly because that's what my friends wanted to play. After I left high school, I never played it again, but when Planescape came out I began buying those boxed sets and books. I loved Planescape, but I never ran with with any D&d-based system...I used a White Wolf hack initially, tried it using Everway and Risus, and finally settled on a FASERIP hack for it. I at one time also owned the basic D&d rules encyclopedia. It was interesting, a great read and a great model for the presentation of a comprehensive one-book system, but I never played it. When D&D 3E came out I played in one game. It sucked. I hated the art, the feats, the attacks of opportunity...nothing about the game made me want to play it. I skipped 3.5. I read 4e and thought it was a joke. It seemed to be a slap in the face to DMs.
For me to be interested in 5e it would have to be something completely different. Some version of D&d that actually makes me want to play it, makes me view the system itself as something it would be a joy to run. That would not be an easy task. I'm not a D&D fan overall. If they pulled that off, then I would be quite impressed.
It was the height of 2e when RPGs started really catching up around here, and most people were playing AD&D 2e and GURPS, followed by a smattering of others (MSH, Star Wars D6, MERP, CoC, etc.)
I used to only run D&D RC, which features a lot of bits and pieces that are missing from 2e, that I enjoy. But I played a hell of a lot of 2e, and I still hold a certain sentimental attachment to the game and its settings. I had a ton of fun with Dragonlance (much as I dislike the canonwank that surrounds it), and Forgotten Realms, and Ravenloft, and Birthright, and Planescape, and the historical supplements, and of course, with our own homebrew settings.
Only a few years back have I discovered AD&D 1e and found out what was I "missing." Mostly the assassin class, demons and devils, and the grimy, pulpy, in-your-face underground verve of Gygax-era D&D and its attending art. Mostly silly stuff, no dealbreakers. Oh, and FR's Time of Troubles felt really, really stupid, now that I've read the gray box.
Nowadays, my go-to system for 2e-era stuff is Castles & Crusades, properly houseruled. It's got the 1e-era classes, including the Unearthed Arcana ones, and a unified resolution mechanic, and ridiculously simple character generation; no proficiencies or kits or fiddly character building crap, which is how I like my D&D.
As a player, I don't really care what mechanics are being used. I can show up, play my character and have a good time using any system. The people and the non-mechanical content of the game rank worlds above resolution mechanics.
In other words, I would rather play 4E with my friends than play 1E with a bunch of random numbnuts.
DMing is another matter.
As far as D&D is concerned I will run OD&D,BD&D,and 1E (and no fucking UA).
When I have to do the prep and run the show them I'm damn sure only gonna run a system I can enjoy on its own merits.
If I were to play D&D again it would be with a houseruled BECMI. Simple one roll mechanic to determine hit & damage and speed combat up, add constitution to hit points for first level characters and ignore stats, just use the bonus/penalty adjustment only. Use 2d10 instead of d20 and have 'exploding' dice on a double roll. Boost experience for monsters and drop it (or lower it a lot) for treasure, give huge amounts of xp for trying new/fun stuff (leaping off the edge of a cliff to hang onto a branch and hide from the chasing dragon sort of stuff). Make Magic users roll to see if their spell comes off as intended, same with Clerics. Increase Thieves skills. They are shite as is. It would still be Basic D&D, just faster and with a one roll mechanic (2d10, that's it. No d8 or d4 or anything else). I'd call it "KAMATTS"
('Kill all monsters and take their stuff')
I didn't so much hate 3e as hate the sight of it. So much brown, and after a few minutes I had to put it down. The thought of reading it cover to cover made me fall asleep. I've flicked through 4e. Don't what all the hate and fuss is about but I suppose I would have to read it first, and it seems to be quite a departure from what D&D was.
For 5e I hope WOTC take their best shot at uniting more players and selling a pile of books, churn out a zillion adventures and if they can't please all the fans, reprint the old stuff to shut 'em up. They are there to make money, not please fans, and reprinting old stuff (I hope) would do that. Heck, they could put in errata sheets for stats in old modules - play the 'classic' or 5e way!
That's fine, everyone.
You can't have 2e back. 2e is shit.
Quote from: Aos;508781I hate everything and look forward to nothing.
Married and in the military too, eh?
[fistbump, angry & pessimistic bro]
ba-dum-tish!
Quote from: Benoist;508859I6 Ravenloft the module is shit.
Railroady intro/extro aside*, it is a perfectly good dungeon module with an interesting dynamic between the antagonist and the PCs.
___________
* Which, lest we forget, also crops up in the Giants Series.
Quote from: TristramEvans;508920I played 2nd edition in high school. I played it mainly because that's what my friends wanted to play. After I left high school, I never played it again, but when Planescape came out I began buying those boxed sets and books. I loved Planescape, but I never ran with with any D&d-based system...I used a White Wolf hack initially, tried it using Everway and Risus, and finally settled on a FASERIP hack for it. I at one time also owned the basic D&d rules encyclopedia. It was interesting,
I must say using Marvel+Planescape is awesome. I wonder if I could hack it for Darksun.
Quote from: thedungeondelver;5087651989, you know you don't get 2e back, right? I mean, everybody hates that goddamn revision. Everybody.
Actually, 2e is by far the most popular edition among the people I know.
I thought 2e was a great revision overall. Frankly, I don't get most of the complaints about the stuff that got left out. Except for keeping demons and devils out of the MM, that was lame.
Removing the evil PC options like half-orcs and assassins made sense to me. I've found a large number of players simply hate the idea of having evil PCs in a party and its not worth the inevitable in-fighting. However, what 2e should have done is produced a cool "Evil PCs" book that would support evil characters - half-orcs, orcs, hobgoblins, assassins, pirates, necromancers, dark priests, anti-paladins, etc.
I wish they would have kept the fighter's multiple attacks against creatures with less than 1 HD, but that's not necessarily something that comes up a lot.
I rarely see anyone complain about the rather large revision to the ranger class. I think the 2e version works better than 1e, myself.
I do think the game was better to split out the druid spells from the cleric ones, but I appreciate they were trying to come up with a way to better customize clerics.
The bard needed revising. I'm not saying 2e was the best, but the bizarre thing that 1e had was far worse.
The monk was no big loss. It was never a terribly popular class and didn't really fit in with the rest of the game. Much like psionics.
The streamlined combat rules were better in 2e IMO. Up until the whole OSR thing, I'd never met anyone who played AD&D 1e combat by the book (almost without exception, they all ran it like BD&D).
Other than that, 2e jettisoned pretty much all the terrible ideas in UA (which was pretty much the entire book except for weapon specialization).
As to the OP, I hated 3e but liked 4e, so I don't qualify. I also dislike OD&D and 1e, but like BD&D and 2e.
Quote from: jgants;508976Actually, 2e is by far the most popular edition among the people I know.
You know the wrong people.
QuoteAs to the OP, I hated 3e but liked 4e, so I don't qualify. I also dislike OD&D and 1e, but like BD&D and 2e.
Ah, OK, here's the problem right here.
Quote from: jgants;508976I rarely see anyone complain about the rather large revision to the ranger class. I think the 2e version works better than 1e, myself.
:hand:
2E was the beginning of the Drizztification of the ranger class.
Ranger= dual wield is directly attributable to his punk drow ass.
OD&D sans Supplements, Holmes D&D, AD&D > B/X, BECMI > D&D 3rd ed > AD&D2, 4e.
I'm cautiously optimistic regarding 5e. It could provide me another secondary version of the game to add to the toolbox.
Quote from: thedungeondelver;5087651989, you know you don't get 2e back, right? I mean, everybody hates that goddamn revision. Everybody.
We fondly remember the innovative settings (thank Lorraine Williams). We hated the ridiculous rules drift (blame Lorraine Williams).
Quote from: Melan;508972Railroady intro/extro aside*, it is a perfectly good dungeon module with an interesting dynamic between the antagonist and the PCs.
I like the maps of the Castle. These are awesome.
And since I love the setting's ambiance, I'd retool it to make it an actual D&D adventure, given the chance.
Quote from: thedungeondelver;508978Ah, OK, here's the problem right here.
I know, it's terrible, I prefer the editions that have streamlined rules and are easier to read. Note that I use the different editions for different types of campaigns.
The reason I don't care for OD&D is that it uses more simple rules but the organization is a mess. If I want a lighter campaign with simpler rules, I prefer the well-written and well-organized BD&D rules (which is why I chose them for my current Bronze Age campaign).
Similarly, I find AD&D 1e a dense wall of bad writing and organization. AD&D 2e contains pretty much everything I liked about 1e and streamlined a lot of the stuff I didn't. If I want a more advanced, but lower-powered campaign it is my ruleset of choice. Or perhaps C&C - which I liked the streamlined approach of 3e for but I dislike the Siege mechanic.
3e I hate because it is way too fiddly and heavily codified for me. If I want a big build culture and hours of arguing over heavily detailed rules, I'll just play Hero or Gurps. Though like I said, I liked C&C. If you streamlined the skill list of 3e, got rids of feats and prestige classes, and tightened down multi-classing, I'd like it a lot better.
As for 4e, I liked it for what it was - an over-the-top cinematic adventure game with a heavy emphasis on interesting battles with wacky powers. I wouldn't use it for a more low-powered kind of game.
Quote from: Exploderwizard;508995:hand:
2E was the beginning of the Drizztification of the ranger class.
Ranger= dual wield is directly attributable to his punk drow ass.
I'm ambivalent on dual wield. But the +level damage vs. humanoids thing from 1e isn't my favorite rule either.
2e was D&D.
Drizz't and Dragonlance
If I have to deal with Gary's prose, so be it. It's witty, dense, funny and oftentimes just cool to read. I'll take that over INSERT DICE INTO HAND. FLIP HAND OVER. OBSERVE NUMBERS. CALCULATE ATTACK USING THE FOLLOWING FORMULA. REPEAT UNTIL MONSTER DIES. REPEAT UNTIL XP ARE SUFFICIENT TO LEVEL. REPEAT UNTIL FUN IS HAD. HERE IS A BREAK IN THE TEXT FOR A STANDARD LARRY ELMORE DRAWING CONTAINING NO FEWER THAN THREE OF THE FOLLOWING STANDARD FANTASY ELEMENTS: SWORD, DRAGON, FEATHERED HAIR, WIZARD, ELF, DWARF. THIS CONCLUDES YOUR SECOND EDITION D&D EXPERIENCE. any day of the week.
Quote from: thedungeondelver;509055DRAGON, FEATHERED HAIR, WIZARD, ELF, DWARF. THIS CONCLUDES YOUR SECOND EDITION D&D EXPERIENCE. any day of the week.
I hate all of these things, especially feathered hair, but, yet i love fantasy.
Also Dark Sun is not shit. When it was released I thought it was fucking stupid, but now I think it's without question the coolest thing from the 2e era.
Quote from: thedungeondelver;5090552e was D&D.
Drizz't and Dragonlance
If I have to deal with Gary's prose, so be it. It's witty, dense, funny and oftentimes just cool to read. I'll take that over INSERT DICE INTO HAND. FLIP HAND OVER. OBSERVE NUMBERS. CALCULATE ATTACK USING THE FOLLOWING FORMULA. REPEAT UNTIL MONSTER DIES. REPEAT UNTIL XP ARE SUFFICIENT TO LEVEL. REPEAT UNTIL FUN IS HAD. HERE IS A BREAK IN THE TEXT FOR A STANDARD LARRY ELMORE DRAWING CONTAINING NO FEWER THAN THREE OF THE FOLLOWING STANDARD FANTASY ELEMENTS: SWORD, DRAGON, FEATHERED HAIR, WIZARD, ELF, DWARF. THIS CONCLUDES YOUR SECOND EDITION D&D EXPERIENCE. any day of the week.
LOL!
Quote from: thedungeondelver;5090552e was D&D.
Drizz't and Dragonlance
If I have to deal with Gary's prose, so be it. It's witty, dense, funny and oftentimes just cool to read. I'll take that over INSERT DICE INTO HAND. FLIP HAND OVER. OBSERVE NUMBERS. CALCULATE ATTACK USING THE FOLLOWING FORMULA. REPEAT UNTIL MONSTER DIES. REPEAT UNTIL XP ARE SUFFICIENT TO LEVEL. REPEAT UNTIL FUN IS HAD. HERE IS A BREAK IN THE TEXT FOR A STANDARD LARRY ELMORE DRAWING CONTAINING NO FEWER THAN THREE OF THE FOLLOWING STANDARD FANTASY ELEMENTS: SWORD, DRAGON, FEATHERED HAIR, WIZARD, ELF, DWARF. THIS CONCLUDES YOUR SECOND EDITION D&D EXPERIENCE. any day of the week.
Give Elmore a break. He had a Stevi Nicks obsession, whats a horny artist to do? ;)
Quote from: Exploderwizard;509069Give Elmore a break. He had a Stevi Nicks obsession, whats a horny artist to do? ;)
1) Cold shower
or
2) Driving stick, if you catch my drift.
Quote from: Exploderwizard;508995:hand:
2E was the beginning of the Drizztification of the ranger class.
Ranger= dual wield is directly attributable to his punk drow ass.
Yep, and now you see stupid shit like making the ranger a subclass of rogue.
Funny, I never read any Dragonlance until a month ago. The most I know about Drizzt is that he's "the good drow Mary Sue." Flipping through the "Leaves of Last Home Inn" or whatever, the world cosmology seems pretty and entertaining, albeit littered with Mary Sues in the background (edit: scratch that, foreground). But ignoring shit that didn't seem fun was never hard for me.
And about the "evil classes" of Half-Orc and Assassin being "lost" I just consider that design liberation. Basically I just reintroduce Half-Orc as a race, Assassin as a Rogue kit, and let everyone tinker with their Alignment. (Yes, I even let Paladins select any alignment. Paladins' big issue I assign is unlike others who may be flexible, they get the unpleasant duty to be "anal retentive and/or evangelistic" about their alignment. Works fine in practice.)
And that last bit about rolling dice and nothing else? Sad I guess if you want more. But with called shots and descriptives -- and me throwing modifiers upon attribute checks on the fly -- combat was as creative as my players wanted it. If they want Might and Magic "melee attacks down the list" then whatever they want. If they want to reenact Errol Flynn movies in their mind's eye, they can have that too.
Hmm, what a sour experience some people had, a pity. But, oh well! I and my friends had fun! It's such an easy system to play with what you like, adding only the options you care about. What can I say?, I like easy toolkits.
PS: Feathered hair is bad-retro-awesome. And Stevie Nicks is merely on loan from a fantasy realm anyway.
Wow, a 1e/2e edition warrior. Haven't come across one of those in a while.
Having read both, I still prefer 2e, minus the handbooks and "Player's Option" stuff that came later. Sure it wasn't a joy to read, but this was back when RPGs were still trying to be reference manuals for play not soapboxes or gamefic by the author, so I didn't miss any Gygaxian conversational tones myself. I liked Thac0 and never understood why people had such a hard time with it. It's a very simple method of getting rid of the to-hit chart, IIRC originating a houserule for convention games. The art in 2E was far superior and way more evocative. In fact, I think 2e was the pinnacle of fantasy RPG art, overall...with 3rd edition onwards getting increasingly bizarre and video-game influenced.
2e was also, I would say, just as customizable as 1E, it just didn't come with the implication that you had to houserule to make it playable.
But then, when I started playing, my group still used a mix of 2e and 1e manuals, in fact no one really played the game the same way. One Gm would use the 2e Players HB with the 1E DM's guide and a bunch of Roleaids, another was 2E + stuff from Unearthed Arcana, and another pused an adaption of BD&D with elements from 1e &2e advanced and stuff from old Arduin Grimoires.
As delightfully easy to reference as the 2e DMG is, the 1e DMG is filled with gooey nougat and caramelized heroin in a milk chocolate-y shell. Best retro RPG used media $5 I've spent so far.
Quote from: TristramEvans;509106Wow, a 1e/2e edition warrior. Haven't come across one of those in a while.
Having read both, I still prefer 2e, minus the handbooks and "Player's Option" stuff that came later. Sure it wasn't a joy to read, but this was back when RPGs were still trying to be reference manuals for play not soapboxes or gamefic by the author, so I didn't miss any Gygaxian conversational tones myself. I liked Thac0 and never understood why people had such a hard time with it. It's a very simple method of getting rid of the to-hit chart, IIRC originating a houserule for convention games. The art in 2E was far superior and way more evocative. In fact, I think 2e was the pinnacle of fantasy RPG art, overall...with 3rd edition onwards getting increasingly bizarre and video-game influenced.
2e was also, I would say, just as customizable as 1E, it just didn't come with the implication that you had to houserule to make it playable.
But then, when I started playing, my group still used a mix of 2e and 1e manuals, in fact no one really played the game the same way. One Gm would use the 2e Players HB with the 1E DM's guide and a bunch of Roleaids, another was 2E + stuff from Unearthed Arcana, and another pused an adaption of BD&D with elements from 1e &2e advanced and stuff from old Arduin Grimoires.
2e art is the pinnacle, agreed. It's been all downhill since then.
Quote from: Opaopajr;509104The most I know about Drizzt is that he's "the good drow Mary Sue."
The only good thing I can say about Drizzt(or most other uber Forgotten Realms characters) is that at least he's not Elminster. Elminster is just the worst. Possible. Thing. [/rarity]
2e is my favorite edition, if it's limited to the core 3 books and setting books. I did not like the class splats.
When I go to pick up my AD&D reprints, I'm hoping the occasional 2e group that games at Sci-Fi City is there, 'cause then I'll be all
Quote from: Opaopajr;509104PS: Feathered hair is bad-retro-awesome. And Stevie Nicks is merely on loan from a fantasy realm anyway.
The magical land of Cocainetopia!
Yes.
Quote from: thedungeondelver;509123The magical land of Cocainetopia!
And don't you ever say it like it's a bad thing! :p
"I could've danced all night! I could've danced all night! And still have begged for more..."
:cheerleader:
Quote from: TristramEvans;509106But then, when I started playing, my group still used a mix of 2e and 1e manuals, in fact no one really played the game the same way.
I think this was very common. For example, I used the 1E
Monster Manual with my 2nd Edition core rulebooks for years.
Mechanically, there really isn't much difference between 1E and 2E unless you really look into the dusty corners of 1E and rummage around in the rules that virtually nobody ever used.
If you were going to force me to play AD&D (please don't, it's a terrible game), I would pick the 2E rulebooks in a heartbeat because the rulebooks are actually functional in terms of organization and presentation.
OTOH, I haven't touched my 2E rulebooks in years, but I've recently been using the 1E DMG as an adjunct to my OD&D campaign because they're filled with so much useful material (in terms of random generators and the like).
The other major difference between 1E and 2E was one of tone. It wasn't just yanking demons and devils: 2E turned everything into vanilla (http://thealexandrian.net/wordpress/3959/roleplaying-games/thought-of-the-day-the-shock-of-polymorph).
I don't hate 3e or 4e, I'm just uninterested. For 5e, I wouldn't say I'm looking forward to it, because I don't have high expectations, but I'm mildly curious and willing to give it a chance.
Quote from: jgants;508976I wish they would have kept the fighter's multiple attacks against creatures with less than 1 HD, but that's not necessarily something that comes up a lot.
I rarely see anyone complain about the rather large revision to the ranger class. I think the 2e version works better than 1e, myself.
I do think the game was better to split out the druid spells from the cleric ones, but I appreciate they were trying to come up with a way to better customize clerics.
The bard needed revising. I'm not saying 2e was the best, but the bizarre thing that 1e had was far worse.
The monk was no big loss. It was never a terribly popular class and didn't really fit in with the rest of the game. Much like psionics.
The streamlined combat rules were better in 2e IMO. Up until the whole OSR thing, I'd never met anyone who played AD&D 1e combat by the book (almost without exception, they all ran it like BD&D).
Other than that, 2e jettisoned pretty much all the terrible ideas in UA (which was pretty much the entire book except for weapon specialization).
Amen to most of this. Though I did really like alot of unearthed arcana; wizard cantrips, weapon specialization, some of the weird weapons. We used Oriental Adventures monks with our 2E with no probs.
Mostly posted just to mention that the fighter multiple attacks vs. 1-1 HD creatures rule
is still in there; 2E DMG pg 57, blue bit at the end of the section on "multiple attacks and initiative".
Quote from: thedungeondelver;5087651989, you know you don't get 2e back, right? I mean, everybody hates that goddamn revision. Everybody.
Speak for yourself, chief. I happen to like 2e. :pundit:
I don't "hate" 2e, though I often joke that it's shit from start to finish.
It's just that to me, it's like playing 1e minus all the cool stuff that made it 1e, plus a bunch of stuff that's either useless to me (kits) or runs contrary to the game's core design (skills v. classes as archetypes). And don't get me started on the modules and all that bullshit. So in the end it is just a big "meh" on my part. I'd play it with the right people, sure. But if I have to choose between using 2e and 1e, I'll take 1e every single time.
I guess there's one redeeming quality to 2e though, in that some of the ideas (as opposed to their treatment) are awesome. Some of the stuff is good to pillage for 1e games - not just the settings mind you, but some of the class books too, as loose toolboxes/inspirations, or the historical era books too. Not a complete waste of time.
Whereas 4e, though I'd again play it too with the right people... I really don't see anything redeeming about it, in any possible way. It's just a waste of time and money, to me. Maybe there's something to be said in that it spawned D&D 4e Gamma World which I like, and that I could stomach Essentials, but the base game itself? Oops. Sorry. Threw up a little bit in my mouth, here.
Kits to me are a cultural role thing--not a class role thing. You build a bunch of Elves, who ride lets say wolves. Who fight Goblins on giant spiders for control of the forest? Beastrider Kit.
You want an oriental campaign using the AD&D2E rules? Add in Samurai, Ninja, and Monk, along with flavoring of other kits. Kits were a topping to the class structure, a way to add a slightly different flavor without needing whole new classes.
Some of them were obscene in effectiveness, but worked in the right circumstances. I played an Elf Bladedancer who teamed with an Elf Bard/Blade and we fought a liches forces through time....sure we were working to undo what his past self had wrought through his future self's manipulations, and we were both a bit powerful at 1st level, but we faced enemies equal or greater than us.
Upon looking through 2e, I can safely say that it did a number of things wrong.
• Weapon damage based on the size of your target.
• Most of the quirky stat things (immunity to illusion based on Int, reaction modifiers based on Cha, etc.).
• THAC0 (especially the description of how the process worked).
• Non-weapon proficiencies (what a mess).
• Organization of material in the book.
• Rolling for HP at first level and automatic death at 0 HP (cruelty).
• Clerics and wizards have alternate
Things that 2e got right.
• Stat caps.
• Skills as class features.
• Static saving throw DC (much simpler than 3e's system).
• Rolling for stats (die, point buy, die).
• Stats mattering less to your success or failure.
• No hit point bloat.
• Lots of weaknesses to spellcasters.
Quote from: Bloody Stupid Johnson;509148Mostly posted just to mention that the fighter multiple attacks vs. 1-1 HD creatures rule is still in there; 2E DMG pg 57, blue bit at the end of the section on "multiple attacks and initiative".
Huh, never noticed that. Though, to be honest, I
still can't figure out where in the AD&D 1e books it actually details how the rule works either. I only learned about the rule years later in OSRIC. Which is not an isolated incident - there's a lot of the rules minutia I didn't really get until OSRIC because of the cleaned up organization. Like I said, I like clean, easy to read rulebooks that look like reference manuals. Walls of dense or even purple prose (whether Gygaxian or White Wolfian) end up with me glossing over large sections.
Quote from: TristramEvans;509106Having read both, I still prefer 2e, minus the handbooks and "Player's Option" stuff that came later. Sure it wasn't a joy to read, but this was back when RPGs were still trying to be reference manuals for play not soapboxes or gamefic by the author, so I didn't miss any Gygaxian conversational tones myself. I liked Thac0 and never understood why people had such a hard time with it. It's a very simple method of getting rid of the to-hit chart, IIRC originating a houserule for convention games. The art in 2E was far superior and way more evocative. In fact, I think 2e was the pinnacle of fantasy RPG art, overall...with 3rd edition onwards getting increasingly bizarre and video-game influenced.
2e was also, I would say, just as customizable as 1E, it just didn't come with the implication that you had to houserule to make it playable.
Totally agree on the art (I prefer Elmore style fantasy art by far) and having rulebooks read like rule manuals.
2e arguably had some of the most customizations of any edition.
Quote from: Opaopajr;509113As delightfully easy to reference as the 2e DMG is, the 1e DMG is filled with gooey nougat and caramelized heroin in a milk chocolate-y shell. Best retro RPG used media $5 I've spent so far.
I totally agree about the 2e DMG being way too dull and thin. It is easily the weakest DMG of any edition and the weakest part of 2e. I don't know why they skimped so much on it, really, when there was tons more they could have put in it.
To answer the original poster...
....I like 3e, though it has its flaws. On the other hand, 4e is probably the most tedious and boring game I've ever played. As for 5e...?
I'm indifferent. I want to love or hate the idea of it, but I just don't give a shit. The only thing that concerns me now is how its arrival will change the online discourse of roleplaying games. I no longer have faith in WoTC's ability to properly manage the D&D brand. WoTC will be forced to sacrifice some of its player base, unless they're willing to publish multiple editions at the same time (in the long-term), and wholeheartedly embrace the OGL. Here's the thing. The gaming community is so utterly fragmented at this point (due to WoTC's own obnoxious stupidity), that WoTC may very well be screwed no matter what they do now. The largest groups for them to cater to are these:
* OSR Gamers: People keep underestimating the size of this group, as well as its purchasing power and influence. There are more OSR guys than people think, and they represent mostly pre-3e D&D.
* Legacy Gamers: This is, by far....the largest group. This crowd roughly represents everything prior to 4e. OD&D, Basic D&D, 1e, 2e, 3e, 3.5, Castles & Crusades, OSRIC, and Pathfinder. Fans of these various games sometimes battle with each other on the Internet, but if WoTC really wanted to clean house, they'd design some form of 1e/3e hybrid. Doing this is difficult, but possible...if done right. The problem is that doing so might possibly leave the 4e crowd out in the cold.
* 3.x Gamers: This is the second largest group, comprised of 3e, 3.5, Pathfinder, and other OGL games. This group is is more popular than 4e, much to the chagrin (and denial) of some of the 4e crowd.
* 4.x Gamers: This group represents 4e, errata'd 4e, Essentials, Gamma World, and the like. This is still a very large group, and cannot be completely ignored. However, the longer 4e operates under the D&D trademark, the more that will harm WoTC's bottom line. If WoTC can devote the resources to it, they should create a separate non-D&D fantasy line for 4e. I don't have faith that they'll actually do that, though it would be the wisest course for them to take.
* Saga Gamers: This group is comprised of people that wanted a sizable "update" to 3e, but not a complete overhaul. They might have been more easily appeased with some form of 3e/4e hybrid, akin to Star Wars Saga, except in this case, they wanted a fantasy version of the game. They never got that, but a "Saga"-like game could perform very well in the market place. Should such a game possess the D&D trademark? I don't know. Probably not.
The safest course for WoTC is to cater to the "Legacy Gamers", and provide a quality product in a shiny, new package. It would irritate a large portion of the 4e crowd, but that simply cannot be helped. 4e has no future as the primary game bearing the Dungeons & Dragons trademark.
Take note that no single game line can placate all these groups at the same time. WoTC is trying to sell us on the idea that they can magically unify D&D gamers, and create a game that will simultaneously make most of the AD&D/OD&D/3e/4e gamers happy and satisfied.
That's not possible. :cool:
WoTC has lost a tremendous amount of good will. They embrace the "Planned Obsolescence Model" [POM], and I don't believe that will ever change. It's hard to devote mental resources to a game that will likely be deemed "obsolete" at any minute, with "fair weather" gamers suddenly shitting all over you and the game that you love.
WoTC is fucking desperate now. They're just throwing shit at the wall, in the vain hope that something will stick. This is why they're reprinting 1e. People want stability and good will from a game company, and not all this erratic, condescending bullshit. Yes, you'll get people to pick up the 1e core books, but that's only a short-term solution (a band-aid) for their current woes. They have a ton of work to do if they're gonna save the sinking ship that they're currently on, and 5e alone will not do it. :pundit:
On a sidenote, one of the things that 4e did right was making the monk psionic. They did a shitty job at it, just like everything else in 4e, but turning the class from "unarmed fighter" to "psionic combatant" was a massive improvement. It also allows me to say "no psionics" and ban the monk along with a slew of other dumb classes.
Quote from: Sacrificial Lamb;509184* Legacy Gamers: This is, by far....the largest group. This crowd roughly represents everything prior to 4e. OD&D, Basic D&D, 1e, 2e, 3e, 3.5, Castles & Crusades, OSRIC, and Pathfinder. Fans of these various games sometimes battle with each other on the Internet, but if WoTC really wanted to clean house, they'd design some form of 1e/3e hybrid. Doing this is difficult, but possible...if done right. The problem is that doing so might possibly leave the 4e crowd out in the cold.
Is "Legacy Gamers" meant to be a superset of OSR and 3.x gamers, or is it just people who aren't particularly loyal to any particular edition (while your OSR and 3.x gamer groups are comprised of loyalists)?
I still think there is some overlap among the groups you delineate. I mean, I guess I would qualify as both a "Legacy gamer" and a "Saga gamer"? I am not sure. I agree with the overall analysis of the situation though.
Quote from: B.T.;509189On a sidenote, one of the things that 4e did right was making the monk psionic. They did a shitty job at it, just like everything else in 4e, but turning the class from "unarmed fighter" to "psionic combatant" was a massive improvement. It also allows me to say "no psionics" and ban the monk along with a slew of other dumb classes.
Psionics never belonged in a fantasy game to begin with. It's a niche already more than covered by magic and with indistinguishable effects. The only genre that I could see the necessity for rules distinguishing between psionics and magic would be
superheroes(Professor X =/=Dr. Strange).
Quote from: CRKrueger;508897I did with 2e kits what I had to do with all the 3e prestige classes, blow them up and reassemble into something sane and that fit into the setting. That was a hell of a lot easier with 2e. :D
Agreed, 2e wasn't nearly as tightly integrated as 3e. Creating your own re-mixes was not only easier, it was less likely to completely break the game, and tweaking on the fly was less volatile as well.
Quote from: Bloody Stupid Johnson;508900There were a few kits that were...dodgy...but the worst of them aren't anywhere near as bad as the most broken 3E stuff.
Militant Mages had to pay (e.g. losing access to some schools) and a fighter would be lucky to get a L1 spell with some major drawbacks (e.g. Savage - Detect Magic, but no armour).
I vastly preferred the kit approach where people got a couple of minor powers (and hindrances) to fit their character concept at the start, to 3.x PrCs where all the PCs want specially arranged quests so they can finally become a real pirate or whatever at 6th level.
Exactly right.
Quote from: danbuter;5091212e is my favorite edition, if it's limited to the core 3 books and setting books. I did not like the class splats.
Yeah, I still have my 2e setting books. I like the 3e crunch a lot better, besides how they ruined wizards and magic items (;
But i still run 2e fluff. I've been thinking of running dragon lance again. I never ran ravenloft because of all the terrible trapped in a place games I was in, but maybe I'll pull it out.
Quote from: TristramEvans;509233Psionics never belonged in a fantasy game to begin with. It's a niche already more than covered by magic and with indistinguishable effects. The only genre that I could see the necessity for rules distinguishing between psionics and magic would be superheroes(Professor X =/=Dr. Strange).
There are certain parties--not on this board, thankfully--who would emphatically disagree with you. Psionics, they say, is just another magic system, and if you don't want it in your game, you are a terrible person with wrong opinions.
1. "Psionics fluff doesn't fit in my game."EXCUSE ME WE HAVE A WHOLE THREAD CALLED TRUENAMING PSIONICS TO REFLUFF PSIONICS, PLEASE READ IT AND CHANGE YOUR OPINION
2. "I don't want to learn the rules."YOU'RE SO LAZY AND BESIDES IT'S NOT THAT MUCH WORK THE PLAYER SHOULD KNOW THE RULES WHY ARE YOU SO SELFISH
3. "I don't like psionics."THIS IS ILLOGICAL, YOU ARE A BAD GM
Quote from: Imp;509197Is "Legacy Gamers" meant to be a superset of OSR and 3.x gamers, or is it just people who aren't particularly loyal to any particular edition (while your OSR and 3.x gamer groups are comprised of loyalists)?
"Legacy Gamers" are a subset of the OSR and 3.x Gamers, though that group is not something normally talked about. Legacy Gamers have their edition preferences (just like everyone else), but are at least initially open to a game that actually acknowledges the
legacy of D&D, in the form of both fluff and game mechanics. Here's an example from a post I wrote on ENWorld a while back. I repeat this post from time to time, but it's relevant:
http://www.enworld.org/forum/general-rpg-discussion/308141-rebutting-fallacy-why-i-await-5e-without-holding-my-breath-13.html
Quote from: Sacrificial Lamb on ENWorldWell, I almost never post, but I'll give my two bits. For a hypothetical 5e, I'd like to see a more streamlined version of 3e, especially in regards to generating stat blocks for NPCs. That would make my life easier as a DM.
I also feel compelled to mention that I don't really know what to do with 4e. It's a weird game, and I can't truthfully classify it as D&D. That's troubling to me. The reason I say this, is that D&D players normally expect a shared experience when discussing D&D. Whether you started playing D&D in 1977 or 2007, you could expect the following:
* There was a planar cosmology with Prime Material Planes, Inner Planes, Outer Planes, the Ethereal Plane, and the Astral Plane.
* As PCs went up in level, they rolled a die for Hit Points (d4, d6, d8, etc.).
* There were mooks that had approximately 1 Hit Dice (Orcs, Goblins, etc.).
* Ogres were huge brutes with approximately 4 Hit Dice.
* The magical fabric of the universe was very precise, with 9 levels of spells.
* Magic Missile was a 1st-level spell, and it automatically hit, unless countered by a Shield spell.
* Charm Person was a 1st-level spell, and it transformed the victim into a buddy or a slave.
* Fireball and Lightning Bolt were both 3rd-level spells that inflicted d6 damage per level.
* Teleport was a 5th-level spell...with a chance of mishap.
* Non-combat magic was as prevalent as combat magic.
* If you were badly injured, you needed to either rest for many days or procure magical healing.
* Clerics are healbots.
* Rogues or Thieves probably steal things.
* Saving Throws improved as you went up in level.
* For better or for worse, level draining existed.
* Your character's Alignment could influence what he did for a living. After all, Paladins do not grow on trees...
* A character could (in game mechanics) be as defined by his flaws as by his strengths.
There are many more details the various editions have in common, but I figured that I'd just throw a few of them out there. Individually, these details might seem to mean very little on the surface, but collectively....these little details create an implied meta-setting, and add up to a shared experience that D&D gamers have come to expect for decades.
Now....the problem many people have with 4e, is that it took that shared experience of the other editions, and chucked it clean out the window. As a result, the D&D fan base is far more fragmented than ever before. It's so completely fragmented now, that three years after the release of 4e, the 3.x fan base remains as large as the 4.x fan base, and in fact might be considerably larger. Before anyone scoffs at that statement, let's remember that Pathfinder alone is challenging 4e in the marketplace. If we compare the two fan bases...
* 3.x (3.0, 3.5, Pathfinder, d20/OGL games [like Castles & Crusades, Trailblazer, and Fantasycraft], D&D Online, Neverwinter Nights 1 and 2, playing online via some type of MapTools program, etc.)
* 4.x (original 4e, "errata'd" 4e, Essentials, Gamma World/D&D, playing 4.x online with some form of MapTools program, etc.)
...then we see that that the 3.x group is probably a larger gaming segment. What that means in the long term though, is anyone's guess, as I don't really believe that WoTC can simultaneously placate both the 3.x and 4.x groups. But who knows? Maybe WoTC could surprise us all, and create a design that could "wow" all of us. Stranger things have happened...
Many regards,
the Sacrificial Lamb
That post from ENWorld provides us with examples of "D&D Legacy" fluff and game mechanics.
Quote from: ImpI still think there is some overlap among the groups you delineate. I mean, I guess I would qualify as both a "Legacy gamer" and a "Saga gamer"? I am not sure. I agree with the overall analysis of the situation though.
You're right. The groups do have overlap, though certain groups predominate. It would be safe to say though....that OSR Gamers, Legacy Gamers, 3.x Gamers, 4.x Gamers, and Saga Gamers are the
five largest D&D "factions" at the moment. :pundit:
Quote from: B.T.;509249There are certain parties--not on this board, thankfully--who would emphatically disagree with you. Psionics, they say, is just another magic system, and if you don't want it in your game, you are a terrible person with wrong opinions.
1. "Psionics fluff doesn't fit in my game."
EXCUSE ME WE HAVE A WHOLE THREAD CALLED TRUENAMING PSIONICS TO REFLUFF PSIONICS, PLEASE READ IT AND CHANGE YOUR OPINION
2. "I don't want to learn the rules."
YOU'RE SO LAZY AND BESIDES IT'S NOT THAT MUCH WORK THE PLAYER SHOULD KNOW THE RULES WHY ARE YOU SO SELFISH
3. "I don't like psionics."
THIS IS ILLOGICAL, YOU ARE A BAD GM
Actually, I think psionics
do belong in D&D, though I personally treat psionics as being far less prevalent in the game than magic. It
has been around since the '70's, after all. But hey, it's your game. If you feel that psionics don't belong in your campaign setting, then just excise it from the rules. It's really not a problem. :pundit:
QuoteOriginally Posted by TristramEvans
Psionics never belonged in a fantasy game to begin with. It's a niche already more than covered by magic and with indistinguishable effects. The only genre that I could see the necessity for rules distinguishing between psionics and magic would be superheroes(Professor X =/=Dr. Strange).
This is why I have JACKWAGONS like this on IGNORE. He/She is inflexible and is living inside a small gaming box...
There are certain parties--not on this board, thankfully--who would emphatically disagree with you. Psionics, they say, is just another magic system, and if you don't want it in your game, you are a terrible person with wrong opinions.
Quote1. "Psionics fluff doesn't fit in my game."
EXCUSE ME WE HAVE A WHOLE THREAD CALLED TRUENAMING PSIONICS TO REFLUFF PSIONICS, PLEASE READ IT AND CHANGE YOUR OPINION
2. "I don't want to learn the rules."
YOU'RE SO LAZY AND BESIDES IT'S NOT THAT MUCH WORK THE PLAYER SHOULD KNOW THE RULES WHY ARE YOU SO SELFISH
3. "I don't like psionics."
THIS IS ILLOGICAL, YOU ARE A BAD GM
Thank you. As a long time gamer of 36+ years, PSIONICS will always be integrated into my D&D games despite the opposition of BAD GM'S and people with the K&KA singular mentality.
Quote from: Ancientgamer1970;509288Thank you. As a long time gamer of 36+ years, PSIONICS will always be integrated into my D&D games despite the opposition of BAD GM'S and people with the K&KA singular mentality.
You and Kent should start an anti-KnK club. :p
I've always liked the idea of psionics better than than I like the various D&D implementations. I really like the flavor of the OD&D/AD&D psionics. Just the names of the attack/defense modes are full of awesome: Tower of Iron Will, Ego Whip, Psychic Crush, Id Insinuation, Intellect Fortress, et cetera. I've never had D&D psionics integrate and work out like I'd like, though.
I didn't have the same issues with psionics in Rolemaster (i.e., Mentalism). But there, it's treated as one of the three approaches to magic (Essence, Channeling, and Mentalism).
QuoteThank you. As a long time gamer of 36+ years, PSIONICS will always be integrated into my D&D games despite the opposition of BAD GM'S and people with the K&KA singular mentality.
You do realize I was
mocking the people who are over-zealous with their support of psionics, don't you? No, I don't suppose you did. I would run a psionics-only game, but I would not run a psionics-and-magic game unless I had a really good reason to.
Quote from: Sacrificial Lamb;509258Actually, I think psionics do belong in D&D, though I personally treat psionics as being far less prevalent in the game than magic. It has been around since the '70's, after all. But hey, it's your game. If you feel that psionics don't belong in your campaign setting, then just excise it from the rules. It's really not a problem. :pundit:
Psionics is one of those science fantasy elements, like the Astral Planes, the Illithid and the Gith that are part of what makes D&D more than just a generic fantasy system.
Which is not to say I won't ban it from certain games of course (sometimes I want to use D&D for Tolkienish high fantasy), but I'm very much for keeping it as an optional element for D&D.
Plus you need Psionics for Dark Sun!
Quote from: Justin Alexander;509131I think this was very common. For example, I used the 1E Monster Manual with my 2nd Edition core rulebooks for years.
Mechanically, there really isn't much difference between 1E and 2E unless you really look into the dusty corners of 1E and rummage around in the rules that virtually nobody ever used.
If you were going to force me to play AD&D (please don't, it's a terrible game), I would pick the 2E rulebooks in a heartbeat because the rulebooks are actually functional in terms of organization and presentation.
OTOH, I haven't touched my 2E rulebooks in years, but I've recently been using the 1E DMG as an adjunct to my OD&D campaign because they're filled with so much useful material (in terms of random generators and the like).
The other major difference between 1E and 2E was one of tone. It wasn't just yanking demons and devils: 2E turned everything into vanilla (http://thealexandrian.net/wordpress/3959/roleplaying-games/thought-of-the-day-the-shock-of-polymorph).
You think AD&D is 'terrible' but run OD&D? What are the 'good' TSR versions, if any, and (if you're inclined) why do you consider them so?
Quote from: Peregrin;509312You think AD&D is 'terrible' but run OD&D? What are the 'good' TSR versions, if any, and (if you're inclined) why do you consider them so?
My current OD&D campaign started as a one-shot run out of historical curiosity: I wanted to see what playing a megadungeon strictly using the dungeoncrawling procedures laid out by Arneson and Gygax would play like; I was also curious to see what the "roads less traveled" from interpreting OD&D's muddied ur-text would look like from the inside. My players thought it would be a great little lark.
It became more than a one-shot because people enjoyed it so much. It turned into a long-term campaign largely because it became the test-bed for my thinking on open game tables (http://thealexandrian.net/wordpress/1223/roleplaying-games/opening-your-game-table) and then, later, a test-bed for my development of an advanced game structure for hexcrawling.
Things I enjoy about OD&D:
- The historical curiosity.
- Interpreting the text.
- The simplicity of character creation.
- The simple rules that are largely bereft of byzantine bizarrity.
Almost none of this applies to AD&D.
- There's considerably less historical curiosity for me (since I grew up playing AD&D).
- By AD&D, the rules have already been locked down into familiar forms. (For example, I greatly enjoyed the process of interpretation and experimentation that resulted in my current house rules for combat (http://thealexandrian.net/wordpress/7842/roleplaying-games/justins-house-rules-for-odd). None of that would have been happening in AD&D without abandoning the text entirely.)
- The choices of character creation are beginning to multiply and the complexity of those choices is becoming an issue. (It's not just that there are more character classes to choose from, for example. It's that there's now minimum ability scores that have to be met; weapons that you can't wield; and yada yada yada.)
- The rules are no longer simple by any stretch of the imagination. AD&D is almost certainly the most complicated version of the game in terms of grasping the core essentials necessary to run or play it. And the rules are being locked down into "official interpretations" which make the game a lot less free-wheeling in practice.
For example, here's the
invisibility spell from OD&D:
Quote from: OD&DInvisibility: A spell which lasts until it is broken by the user or by some outside force (remember that as in CHAINMAIL, a character cannot remain invisible and attack). It affects only the person or thing upon whom or which it is cast. Range: 24"
And here's the
invisibility spell from AD&D:
Quote from: AD&D1Invisibility (Illusion/Phantasm)
Level: 2 Components: V, S, M
Range: Touch Casting Time: 2 segments
Duration: Special Saving Throw: None
Area of Effect: Creature touched
Explanation/Description: This spell causes the recipient to vanish from sight and not be detectable by normal vision or even infravision. Of course, the invisible creature is not magically silenced with respect to noises normal to it. The spell remains in effect until it is magically broken or dispelled, or the magic-user or the other recipient cancels it or until he, she or it attacks any creature. Thus, the spell caster or recipient could open doors, talk, eat, climb stairs, etc., but if any form of attack is made, the invisible creature immediately becomes visible, although this will allow the first attack by the creature because of the former invisibility. Even the allies of the spell recipient cannot see the invisible creature, or his, he or its gear, unless these allies can normally see invisible things or employ magic to do so. Note that all highly intelligent creatures with 10 or more hit dice, or levels of experience, or the equivalent in intelligence/dice/levels have a chance to automatically detect invisible objects. The material components of the invisibility spell are an eyelash and a bit of gum arabic, the former encased in the latter.
In addition, AD&D is riddled with all the stupid rules and limitations that drove me away from the game in the mid-'90s. (A surprisingly huge number of these are not to be found in OD&D.)
Basically, OD&D gives me a unique experience with the core D&D gameplay. AD&D just gives me a broken and annoying version of 3E.
Among other TSR versions of the game, I'm a fan of BECMI. Particularly the clean and well-organized presentation of the
Rule Cyclopedia. But I don't like race-as-class.
Quote from: Justin Alexander;509318Among other TSR versions of the game, I'm a fan of BECMI. Particularly the clean and well-organized presentation of the Rule Cyclopedia. But I don't like race-as-class.
Reading Thunder Rift stuff, I came up with a simple solution for that. See, I think they intended Thunder Rift for 2E--but some editing for it when they transferred it to BECM missed the old references. Leaving several races with classes.
Now this made me hit upon a solution: You can take a class for any race, but it is sub-optimum for your race. In this case you get racial abilities. However, you use the worst saving throws, and worst experience table of the two. The end. Problem solved. Fair? No. Yet it works and is simple. The end result is you still get your special racial abilities--and often better class abilities. Adventurers usually come from certain types of Elves/Dwarves/Halvings--those that make the best use of their natural talents. Of course others exist, they're just not pushing them towards their natural talents and so have a bit of an uphill battle.
Quote from: Justin Alexander;509318It became more than a one-shot because people enjoyed it so much. It turned into a long-term campaign largely because it became the test-bed for my thinking on open game tables (http://thealexandrian.net/wordpress/1223/roleplaying-games/opening-your-game-table) and then, later, a test-bed for my development of an advanced game structure for hexcrawling.
I just want to say your blog entry on open game tables is inspiring. I've recently got hold of a copy of Stonehell Dungeon, and now I'm all fired up to try and play it as you describe. Thanks!
At the risk of turning this into the 'Just Ask Justin' thread, have you done a similar blog about the game structure you use for hexcrawling?
Quote from: Glazer;509344At the risk of turning this into the 'Just Ask Justin' thread, have you done a similar blog about the game structure you use for hexcrawling?
Funny you should ask that. I just came here on a break from writing a future blog post on hexcrawling. It's part of a longer series talking about game structures in RPGs (an attempt to make visible something that is very rarely talked or even thought about in RPG circles), so it might be awhile before it actually gets posted. But, yes, you can expect something on this at the Alexandrian in the near-ish future.
My feeling regarding OD&D and 1e are virtually identical to yours. I'm using a clone (S&W WB) but I do enjoy the open free wheeling nature of it, and the lack of anything extra. It's also extremely easy to make shit for.
I liked 3e, and I liked 4, and I am looking forward to 5e.
I loved 3e when it first came out, then started to progressively hate it more and more, until I basically hated it entirely when 3.5 came out. I hated 4e from the moment (and due to the way) it was announced.
And yes, I'm looking forward to 5e.
RPGPundit
IMO 3e is still perfectly fine if you avoid the system bloat all of the additional books provided. I still only use (and allow) the 3 core books when I run a game, with possible exceptions on a case-for-case basis. NEver did get into 3.5 but I imagine I'd have the same proscription.
Quote from: Justin Alexander;509318*snip good post*
Thanks, Justin. I will say that your open game-table articles inspired me to start running Basic the way I do now, which has resulted in some really good gaming with different folks who I never thought would give RPGs a shot.
The AD&D spell is in most ways a record of the rulings the DMs made in response to specific situations that came up when using the OD&D spell. I think the rulings in AD&D are mostly pretty good. I could probably find a few I disagree with.
For that matter, AD&D is pretty much an expression of what you get with OD&D after years of messing with it, keeping track of rulings, and so adding stuff.
So - in 5e, I want a recapitulation and clarification of the process that created AD&D.
I'd like 5E to be the result of looking at OD&D, all the changes made to it over the last 40 years or so, and then formatting the best of those changes into optional rules to sit on top of a clarified/simplified OD&D, ala S&W White Box.
It'd be like what many OSR players do now, taking some form of OD&D and adding options based on what elements of AD&D and later versions they prefer.
Quote from: RPGPundit;509797I loved 3e when it first came out, then started to progressively hate it more and more, until I basically hated it entirely when 3.5 came out. I hated 4e from the moment (and due to the way) it was announced.
And yes, I'm looking forward to 5e.
RPGPundit
I had a similar experience with 3E (though I continued to play through the run of 3e). A lot of things went into me progressively liking it less and less but I think the thing that really did it was all the amorphous character concepts that arose from the multiclass system (i liked that they made it atraight forward and simple, but two many of the characters started resembling anime for me).
I don't have high hopes for 5E.
The design goals are intriguing and laudable, but the designers seem to have the wrong idea about how to implement them.
What I WANT is a core that looks like Basic D&D with a few modern mechanical innovations. What I'm reasonably sure that I will GET, is yet another 3rd edition rehash.
For instance, the class design. You can apparently choose between a simple "core" class with out a lot of customization, or swap out feats and junk for more complex options. Yeah. That's from the class design seminar at DDXP.
I really hope that someone informs Mike & Monte that there is a whole fucking multiverse of difference between playing a Basic D&D, or 1e style fighter and a pre-generated 3rd edition fighter.
Quote from: RPGPundit;509797I loved 3e when it first came out, then started to progressively hate it more and more, until I basically hated it entirely when 3.5 came out. I hated 4e from the moment (and due to the way) it was announced.
Pretty much my experience, except that I really was turned off by 3E immediately by the art and the crunchiness. But I was caught up in the enthusiasm surrounded the release, and I signed up to play in a game at my LGS concurrent (basically the next week after) the release. The GM ran the original "Keep at the Borderlands" modified to fit 3E. It was one of those games I wanted to love, but the more I got to know the system, the more it impeded my enjoyment. When that campaign fizzled, I sold off my books and never looked back. Completely ignored 3.5. I looked over 4th a little after it came out, and realized quickly it was not a type of game I had any interest in ever playing or running.
QuoteAnd yes, I'm looking forward to 5e.
You're more optimistic than I. I await it with blasé curiosity.
I really loved 3e, and it's easily my favorite official D&D, but over time I just got burnt out on it. I felt like I'd pretty well exhausted all the options in the core, I just couldn't be bothered to play yet another Cleric. 3.5 didn't bother me but that's because I could barely tell the difference save for nerfing stat buffs, and my main rules source was the d20SRD site so I sorta converted by accident over time.
And group-wise, well, my last group was legendarily shitty so that really kinda put the nail in the coffin. By the time 4e arrived with all it's MMOtastic suckage, it basically was just an excuse to bow out of the game (which wound up being what everyone else did too.)
Now? I'm not entirely closed to the idea that 5e could be good, but I'd just as soon run Monsters & Mazes or Drums of War if I want some hack-and-slashy fantasy, and anything more serious I'd rather run in GURPS.
I think it's likely that 5e will either be 1) more or less 4.75, because of the user feedback they'll get, or 2) a complete fucking mess, if all this "be all things to all people" stuff is even half-true. The problems in the D&D culture really got their start in mid to late 3e, when they started picking up mainstream interest from video gamers, and WoW started to take off, and the game soon became enslaved to the cult of balance and the splatbook lovers and the char-op people.
D&D 4e looks like an MMO because the people who play D&D now treat it like an MMO. And I've seen nothing to indicate that will stop being the case with 5e.
Quote from: J Arcane;510203I really loved 3e, and it's easily my favorite official D&D, but over time I just got burnt out on it.
(...) The problems in the D&D culture really got their start in mid to late 3e, when they started picking up mainstream interest from video gamers, and WoW started to take off, and the game soon became enslaved to the cult of balance and the splatbook lovers and the char-op people.
D&D 4e looks like an MMO because the people who play D&D now treat it like an MMO.
I so agree with this.
I really loved 3e too. I still love it in fact. That's the shift you describe here about the D&D culture that gradually turned me off, and now, I just can't stand it anymore. The char-op armchair theorist bullshit that keeps going on and on and on, you can't open your mouth about 3rd ed without having some asshole come in and spam in neener-neener mode "Wizards are brooooken, WIZARDS ARE BROOOOOKEN."
And the guys aren't even playing the game! They ditch half the rules and bitch about the game being broken then!
It's become so fucking ridiculous. It's impossible to enjoy the game for what it is. Instead it's about the fucking overpowered this and broken that, fixing this and balancing that. It's about fantasies about the GM that raped your childhood and childish spying over your buddy's shoulder to see if he's got one more point than you have on his character sheet. OMG! OMG! His character might be more powerful than yours! The agony!
It's so fucking annoying.
I don't know if I would blame video-gamers. I started playing 3e a year after its launch, and I almost walked away because of the obsession with charop and system twinking from mostly long-time players. People were more interested in talking mechanics divorced from actual play rather than talking about adventures and fantasy, which is exactly the opposite of what I joined the hobby for.
If it wasn't for a close friend of mine running a long 3e game where we largely ignored charop in favor of just doing cool shit in the game (and shitting all over the Dragonlance setting), I may not have kept playing.
Quote from: Peregrin;510228I don't know if I would blame video-gamers.
You're right. I'm not sure there's that clear a correlation either. The situation and type of culture J describes that really turned me off 3rd ed is spot on, though. That's what I can't stand about it anymore. I love the game, and I would play it with the right friends in a heartbeat. The culture that embraced it, however, whatever spawned it, wherever it came from, I could totally do without at this point.
Quote from: Benoist;510229You're right. I'm not sure there's that clear a correlation either. The situation and type of culture J describes that really turned me off 3rd ed is spot on, though. That's what I can't stand about it anymore. I love the game, and I would play it with the right friends in a heartbeat. The culture that embraced it, however, whatever spawned it, wherever it came from, I could totally do without at this point.
I think one of the issues with tabletop is that a large amount of nerds are obsessed with details and the cold mechanics of how things work as systems. You see it in video-games a lot, too (although less-so now that video-games are popular in the mainstream). A friend of mine who's an engineer is going through this type of phase with Pathfinder, where the mechanics are literally the physics of the world, and so she tries to break them in ways that would make most GMs groan because at that point it's just ludicrous.
As someone who's studied some engineering, and is going for a computer-related degree, I can
sort of understand the appeal of studying systems, but when you consider that RPGs are largely a creative social activity, it just can't hold together as the driving factor for your play. But it still boggles my mind, because a large part of engineering is applied theory, not theory-in-abstract. And so to divorce systems from actual-play seems counter-intuitive to me, at least in terms of how you're disciplined to look at them from an engineering perspective.
Quote from: Peregrin;510231As someone who's studied some engineering, and is going for a computer-related degree, I can sort of understand the appeal of studying systems, but when you consider that RPGs are largely a creative social activity, it just can't hold together as the driving factor for your play. But it still boggles my mind, because a large part of engineering is applied theory, not theory-in-abstract. And so to divorce systems from actual-play seems counter-intuitive to me, at least in terms of how you're disciplined to look at them from an engineering perspective.
I'm the son of an engineer. My wife's the daughter of one. Trust me. I know exactly what you are talking about, and I completely agree, down to your bewilderment at the ultimate lack of logic of this kind of theoretical obsession, when you take a step back and consider the play activity itself, instead of the system as an end in and of itself.
Quote from: Benoist;510227I really loved 3e too. I still love it in fact. That's the shift you describe here about the D&D culture that gradually turned me off, and now, I just can't stand it anymore.
The problem is that this culture isn't really system-specific. It's really got its roots in the power game traditions and "you can balance everything on a single numeric value!" nonsense cultures of pure point-buy systems (like GURPS and Hero), and something about the open multiclassing rules (on the player side) and the encounter building guidelines (on the GM side) in 3E just caused it to go cancerous.
(It may have been nothing more than inserting those memes into the D&D player base. Which is, of course, huge.)
And now you find that culture extending its tendrils out into all sorts of different games.
Of course, then the industry started building systems that were specifically designed to cater to this "strategy bad, the encounter is all" style of play. And they just make me want to poke my eyes out.
I never understood the whole "15 minutes of fun in 3 hours" meme... until I played D&D Gamma World (which mechanically forces you into these endless sequences of meaningless, cut-and-paste combat encounters that all play the same way and have no dynamic interaction whatsoever because they're all balanced on a razor's edge). Apparently there are people who play all their RPGs like that. I can't imagine why.
Quote from: Justin Alexander;510235The problem is that this culture isn't really system-specific. It's really got its roots in the power game traditions and "you can balance everything on a single numeric value!" nonsense cultures of pure point-buy systems (like GURPS and Hero), and something about the open multiclassing rules (on the player side) and the encounter building guidelines (on the GM side) in 3E just caused it to go cancerous.
(It may have been nothing more than inserting those memes into the D&D player base. Which is, of course, huge.)
And now you find that culture extending its tendrils out into all sorts of different games.
Of course, then the industry started building systems that were specifically designed to cater to this "strategy bad, the encounter is all" style of play. And they just make me want to poke my eyes out.
Could it be just the memes, like the 15 minutes day, the encounter is all, the 'spherical cows' too, those things gone awry that just compounded into the 3rd ed culture to just grow like a tumor on the fanbase?
Is the feedback system the problem, then? Can you blame the internet, and places like ENWorld (if it hadn't been this site it would have been another like it) for the importance given to some people's rants about how having an EL at APL + 6 is SUPER WRONG AND SHOULDN'T EXIST EVER? Who's the culprit, and how can we avoid that in the future?
I'm telling you guys, this shit is all about the World of Warcraft forums. Sure, the idea of "balance" existed before then, but it was always just a vague and nebulous way of saying "more or less fair," or at worse "roughly equal." Rifts was not a balanced game, most games on the other hand made at least some effort to keep things on an even keel.
But then you have WoW come along, and the mindset is very different. WoW is an MMO, of course, and one with a completely atrophied RP community from the start. It's player base is mostly culled from other Blizzard games, especially the Diablo games. Everything is about the numbers, and about getting the loot as efficiently as possible.
WoW also has PvP, and not the open-world sort of PvP of older games, but arena-focused, almost FPS-like PvP. And with it, a ruleset mostly built for co-op PvE play, suddenly has to be expected to perform double duty, and this forces "balance" to go from casual consideration to front and center, as every motherfucker who loses a game runs screaming to the forums if it looks like another class did more damage than him or somehow managed to kill him. It's never that you suck at the game, it's that the class is broken/overpowered/underpowered/etc.
Then you bring in guys like ElitistJerks, with their fucking spreadsheets, and suddenly the scope of the problem expands. Now you have a legion of people dedicated to mathematically calculating exactly the most efficient means to kill shit in your game, as well as what works and what doesn't on a provable mathematical scale, and this only further provides ammo to the "balance" whiners on the forums because now they have hard numbers to point to along with their usual "I should never lose, the game must be broken" attitude.
And the thing is? WoW has over 12 million players at the time of this writing. Within a year of it's launch it already had something like 8 million. That's a lot of goddamn people, and a lot of goddamn influence on gaming as a whole, because a lot of those players crosspollinate as WoW becomes a replacement for the FLGS game for some RPGers, and this massive thing comes out right as 3.5 is getting released, and commercials and TV movies about D&D are hitting the airwaves, and D&D is suddenly getting more shelf space at booksellers like B&N and Borders.
So now you've got new players being pulled in, many of whom are guys like Gabe at Penny Arcade, guys who've grown up on video games and whose idea of an RPG is informed more by Final Fantasy and World of Warcraft than it ever will be by D&D or Tolkien. And with them, they bring their WoW-influenced ideas of "balance" and "optimization" and "broken" and all the other memes and ideas that are fucking standard in that culture, but were only ever sidelines before, and before long they're driving the bus while all the original drivers are being laid off by Wizards of the Coast to be replaced by a new wave of guys who'll do what corporate says and suck up to the forumites that are telling them all about how "broken" and "unbalanced" 3.5 is.
And so we get 4e. A game so obviously designed to ape MMOs and MMO design culture that literally, when designing a project to actually convert WoW to tabletop, I inadvertently wind up repeating a lot of the same design ideas, especially vis a vis power design. Making Drums of War was the biggest eye opener for me about 4e design I ever encountered, because in trying to emulate the same source I found myself basically doing a lot of similar things because I'm working straight from the sources, the raw mechanics of the WoW video game.
I absolutely think there are a few other sources of some of this, I think Mearls smoked a little too much of the Forge's stash, and I think, yeah, there was enough sympathy to these ideas in the traditional player base to prop them up and make them bigger than ever, you can see this just reading RPGnet talk about D&D sometimes. And hell, even WoW's ideas owe some inspiration to the much smaller culture of Everquest before it.
But while WoW may not have started the fire exactly, it absolutely fueled the bonfire that followed and deserves the lion's share of the blame for it's influence not just on D&D, but on the broader culture of game design in general. Even single player video games are getting "balance patches" now for fuck's sake, and it's only been by the crying of the OSR and other regressive movements that any other voice has even been heard on the subject in the last half decade or so.
Games have changed, and it's WoW that made it happen.
When did WoW become really popular?
Does it match the timeline when 3rd ed's fan culture started to suck?
Quote from: Benoist;510256When did WoW become really popular?
Does it match the timeline when 3rd ed's fan culture started to suck?
They are pretty darn close. D&D 3.5 hits in July of 2003, World of Warcraft hits the next year, officially launching November of 2004, with an open beta before hand.
Quote from: Benoist;510237Who's the culprit, and how can we avoid that in the future?
Well, D&D can start by severing their fanbase.
Seriously, tabletop gamers have to be one of the shittiest fanbases any market could ever hope for. We're a bunch of clique-ish, entitled, venomous, infantile narcissists that have done more to drive people away from the hobby then we ever did to expand it. And that's especially true of D&D, the first game that many potential gamers will ever try. You think that we'll be able to entice people to take up the dice if their first experience is listening to a room full of autistics circle jerking eachother over character builds?
Furthermore, we don't have any actual rationale for our tastes. I mean, we can defend our gaming preferences when called upon to do so...we tend to be very good at rhetoric and filibustering...but honestly my real reason for preferring BECMI to 3E or 4E is the visceral feeling of wanting to punch someone in the mouth when I hear them blathering about prestige classes or epic destinies rather than any tangible justification. Mostly these things have more to do with ideology than actual rationale.
If it were up to me, I would put out an edition that was aimed squarely at 8 - 12 year olds, rather than a dwindling market of increasingly partisan middle-aged men.
I'd change the resolution mechanic to d6's, get rid of all the fiddly character build bull shit, get rid of the grids and minis, and just make it a nice, easy game that kids can pick up and play in a half an hour. I would shop it around to toy fairs and childrens product trade shows and market it as a game of imagination and learning. I would support the game with premade adventure modules and monster books, maybe campaign settings, and nothing else. No splatbooks, No "Races of X", or "Ultimate Jive Turkey", or whatever. I would try to have the game sold in book chains, toy stores, Class E. Professor stores, department stores...anywhere but hobbie shops.
I wouldn't even bother showing up at gencon. I would make it explicitly clear to existing players of all editions that: "they are free to buy the game if they MUST, but it's not made for them and I really don't care about their business anymore. At all. In fact, I changed my mind. Don't buy the game. stay as far away from it as possible. Now go fuck off to Pathfinder or whatever."
But that's just what I would do.
In the long term, I suspect Declan is right. :pundit:
I don't. I think that was exactly the point going forward with 4e.
It failed.
Kids like weird dice, though. Because they're weird and they say "this isn't one of your regular old games."
Quote from: Declan MacManus;510264Well, D&D can start by severing their fanbase.
They did that with 4e. It backfired.
Quote from: Declan MacManusSeriously, tabletop gamers have to be one of the shittiest fanbases any market could ever hope for. We're a bunch of clique-ish, entitled, venomous, infantile narcissists that have done more to drive people away from the hobby then we ever did to expand it. And that's especially true of D&D, the first game that many potential gamers will ever try. You think that we'll be able to entice people to take up the dice if their first experience is listening to a room full of autistics circle jerking eachother over character builds?
Furthermore, we don't have any actual rationale for our tastes. I mean, we can defend our gaming preferences when called upon to do so...we tend to be very good at rhetoric and filibustering...but honestly my real reason for preferring BECMI to 3E or 4E is the visceral feeling of wanting to punch someone in the mouth when I hear them blathering about prestige classes or epic destinies rather than any tangible justification. Mostly these things have more to do with ideology than actual rationale.
Well, that sounds pretty fucking vicious. I'm really not even sure how to respond to this.
Quote from: Declan MacManusIf it were up to me, I would put out an edition that was aimed squarely at 8 - 12 year olds, rather than a dwindling market of increasingly partisan middle-aged men.
I'd change the resolution mechanic to d6's, get rid of all the fiddly character build bull shit, get rid of the grids and minis, and just make it a nice, easy game that kids can pick up and play in a half an hour. I would shop it around to toy fairs and childrens product trade shows and market it as a game of imagination and learning. I would support the game with premade adventure modules and monster books, maybe campaign settings, and nothing else. No splatbooks, No "Races of X", or "Ultimate Jive Turkey", or whatever. I would try to have the game sold in book chains, toy stores, Class E. Professor stores, department stores...anywhere but hobbie shops.
I wouldn't even bother showing up at gencon. I would make it explicitly clear to existing players of all editions that: "they are free to buy the game if they MUST, but it's not made for them and I really don't care about their business anymore. At all. In fact, I changed my mind. Don't buy the game. stay as far away from it as possible. Now go fuck off to Pathfinder or whatever."
But that's just what I would do.
That's what you'd do because you're selfish and retarded. That approach would pretty much bury D&D. If you want to publish your own fantasy heartbreaker, while simultaneously insulting the entire D&D fan base, then knock yourself out. But please don't piss in everyone else's cheerios, and ruin their fun. :pundit:
I don't agree about 4e deliberately severing the fanbase or trying to cater to non-gamers/other gamers. The only way it even got mentioned outside of tabletop hangouts is because they pimped it through things like Penny-Arcade, but the marketing itself was still aimed at D&D players.
Seriously. All of the cartoon ads were full of inside jokes only tabletoppers would get. I remember showing them to a couple of friends, one of whom didn't play, and only the D&D players chuckled. The other guy was like "What the fuck did I just watch?"
And the "Intro to 4e" videos they eventually posted on the home-page? It addressed issues that D&D players who liked previous editions would have. It didn't tell me anything about role-playing or why I'd want to play an RPG if I had never tried one.
I've thought about this for a while now. And in the end, as uncannily common in my life, the answer lied with Spider-man.
D&D was not my first RPG. I don't think I can say it was at any point my favourite RPG. Regardless of that it holds a special place in my would-be grognardian heart.
It was the first RPG, the "Big Name", the company with the most products, the best art, the Mayor McCheese with extra-large fries, the scary devilish dangerous game of cultish seduction, the one that all the "movie stars" (read: Tom Hanks & the kids from E.T.) were playing.
And it was the child of the godfather of gaming himself, whose name was only whispered in alcoves of the junior high hallways and under bleachers: Gygax. Okay, maybe not quite that, but there was a sort of almost-reverence for Gary in those days perceptible in what I was exposed to in my corner of the "hobby community". Almost punctuated by the few guys who hated on him loudly and obnoxiously. It would be a long time before I'd ever hear the names "Arneson" or "Blackmoor".
The Dungeons & Dragons Cartoon, on the other hand, was a favourite from the first time it aired on an 80's Saturday morning lineup. .. Heck there'd been a preview show (an 30 minute cartoon advertising the cartoons that were going to be on Saturdays starting in the fall - the 80s was a weird time). At a tender age I was enraptured by that show and watched it's reruns and hunted down it's merchandise for years. My love for D&D began with the cartoon, as disjointed an entry-point as that was.
when it came to role-playing, I started with Warhammer Fantasy, and gaming become almost an addiction after that. Honestly, I can say now I think I was intimidated by D&D. I didn't DM it until late into my adolescence. I played in a few games, but our friend DMed when we really probably needed someone older and we knew it, and we knew he was doing something "wrong" as a DM, but we gave it a shot until we grew bored with the novelty. At that point Lone Wolf books were giving me a better fantasy adventure, and I'd just found these books for a game called Dragon Warriors, and somebody got a hold of Star Frontiers and Moldvay got stuffed on the top shelf of the closet.
Almost two years later I got my chance to get into my First Real D&D Game...with older teens who I tended to get a long with because I was very...well "old" at a young age, if that makes any sense. My friend's older sister was the DM, and HOLY CRAP did I have a crush on her. She looked kinda like a cross between a young Annette O'Toole and Daria. She spoke with a mona-lisa-ish half smile that that did strange things to my head. It made the games terrifying. I played an elf for the first time, and looking back I think she went easy on me, but I managed to (or they let me) survive for six games until I died (i.e. their tolerance for hanging out with a "kid" obviously twitterpated by the DM ran out).
The little flame dedicated to D&D's name in my heart, interlinked forever with the name and fading images of an early crush, was lit in the memories of those few weeks.
But sadly, to a certain extent, remained there.
After that experience, I felt I was ready to DM a game myself. And I knew exactly what I wanted it to be...exactly like the cartoon. I don't think it's necessary to describe how well that worked out. When we'd played the game as kids, none of us ever got to see inside the rulebooks except Andrew, our DM. and it appeared to be a game about graphing, and there were monsters who arbitrarily appeared in Dungeon rooms when you made a bad roll for "walking around and shit".
My First Real D&D Game had been a dungeon grinder, full on pc commando tactical dungeon squad, with a mix of gothic-satanic horror. Kinda like low-tech game of Quake I guess. Also, they were basically using what I recognize now as a homebrew OD&D/Arduin Grimoire and/or other assorted fanzines- blend, and I wasn't really told the system, just told what to roll when I wanted to do something.
I was convinced for reasons that baffle me now that the D&D cartoon I'd loved so much was a instruction manual of what the game was meant to be like. And it wasn't. And it felt like a betrayal. In the fickleness of youth, D&D was out of my good graces.
Anyways, I was to play in many AD&D 2e games over the years to follow. I didn't particularly like AD&D 2E, but liked my gamer friends at the time well enough, and that made up for any ways the system happened to rub me the wrong way. Up until I left for higher education, and I ceased to play D&D at all through my 20s, (not counting one brief game when 3rd edition was released).
On the other hand, what I did begin to do, starting with the time I was playing AD&D2Ein high school, was read about D&D. About all RPGs really, about the history of our hobby. Access of information of that nature before the internet existed was pretty scarce. A few random old issues of Alarums & Excursions at the thrift store, far-to-short nostalgia pieces here and there in Dragon back-issues, and Dicing With Dragons, the only book in any library I'd been to up until that point in my life to come up on the Dewey Decimal card searches under "Dungeons & Dragons" or "Role-Playing Games" that wasn't a YA novel.
Ah but then came the world wide web. And I devoured all I could get on the history of the hobby, and I read reviews, and I found out about game "theory", and all that crap and I greeted it all with naive innocence and wonder.
Paul Mason was the first person who laid out a "true picture" of the early days, the "dawn of roleplaying" as it were, he was the first grognard I ever met (well, online. And read, not actually conversed). He got me started on what was for a long time, a minor archaeological dig as to what was really going on. As most of you have no doubt similarly found out, there's no real way to say, now. I have a better idea, and some corroborated accounts, but some of it will be lost in the mists of time. And even if you were there, people who weren't will still argue with and disbelieve any of your claims.
The point of all that is this...my fondness for D&D exists as a triumvirate - the cartoon, that First Real D&D Game, and the astounding roll D&D plays in the foundation of this hobby that continues to fascinate me.
When I encountered 3E I was disappointed, for reasons I've gone on at lengths about many times before, and I skipped 3.5 altogether (by that point running from any product that mentioned a D20 in any way), and then there was 4th edition. 4th goddamn Edition. You know, to be diplomatic online, I say things like "everybody has their own tastes" and "As long as you;'re having fun, you're doing it right", and I believe that. Or, I want to believe that. but there's still that other voice that says
(http://files.sharenator.com/wtf_is_this_shit_Its_Another_New_Post_D_s400x297_128601_580_RE_Red_pancake-s400x297-129289.jpg)
And so, what does all this have to do with Spider-man? Well, long before I was a fan of D&D in any form, I was a Spider-man fan. We're talking since near-infancy. Spidey was my obsession as a young child, and my ASM comic collection and sheer number of things I've read about him, with him, starring him, or about the people who write about or draw him, is rather staggering.
But I don't read Spider-man comics anymore. We parted ways a long time ago. The character that I read, the Spider-man I grew up with, doesn't exist anymore. It was painful, his death in the 90s. I railed against it and may friends and I wailed in silent nerdlike rage at the atrocities that were "the clone saga" and other horrors of the Image Age of Comics.
It was when I heard about "One More Day" that I realized what was going on. I was no longer the target audience for Spider-man. Not by a longshot. comics are aimed at a certain group, and to be relevant on the market place it has to aim its stories and its viduals at that demographic - one far younger than I've been for a long time.
And I accept that. I don't like it, but there are rays of hope from time to time. I currently have the essential "phonebooks", so that I no longer have to carefully and nervously risk destroying my collection ever few years. And I find it's a very entertaining way to do a marathon read, a habit I picked up reading the Cerebus trades in University. I still pull them out and read them and what trades I have of the Bronze Age stuff a few times a year. I still geek out on "retro-Spidey "merchandise from time to time. The movies weren't all that bad, and the The Spectacular Spider-man cartoon, which trumped even The Batman animated series for pure adaption distillation. It was all that was best about Ditko/Romita/Sterne -era Spidey.
ANYways, the point is, I feel that way about D&D now. I am no longer a part of its demographic. Everything I dislike about what it's become is everything that's been added in the hopes of attracting it's current target audience.
I don't like it, and I think it shows the difference between how a business like WoTC publishes RPGs vs a handful of friends renting an office for a part-time mail order hobby publishing imprint. But I accept it.
And should probably, finally, shut the hell up about it.
Cheers to 5th Edition. I'm sure it will be as good as the new Spider-man film.
Quote from: Declan MacManus;510264But that's just what I would do.
Get the license to MLP:FiM and make it into a game that meets all the criteria you just listed and you have yourself a sale!
Quote from: GeekEclectic;510301Get the license to MLP:FiM and make it into a game that meets all the criteria you just listed and you have yourself a sale!
Yeah, the Savage Worlds (http://giftkrieg23.deviantart.com/art/Savage-World-of-MLP-FiM-202882708) adaptation may not be to all tastes.
(Also, wasn't the "official" MLP RPG an april fool's joke from Wizards before Hasbro rebooted the cartoon?)
Quote from: Peregrin;510302Yeah, the Savage Worlds (http://giftkrieg23.deviantart.com/art/Savage-World-of-MLP-FiM-202882708) adaptation may not be to all tastes.
Whoa, thanks!
Quote(Also, wasn't the "official" MLP RPG an april fool's joke from Wizards before Hasbro rebooted the cartoon?)
That was back in the dark days of MLP G3. We . . . don't talk about that.
Quote from: TristramEvans;510297And so, what does all this have to do with Spider-man? Well, long before I was a fan of D&D in any form, I was a Spider-man fan. We're talking since near-infancy. Spidey was my obsession as a young child, and my ASM comic collection and sheer number of things I've read about him, with him, starring him, or about the people who write about or draw him, is rather staggering.
But I don't read Spider-man comics anymore.
This is a total tangent, but you should check out the stuff Paul Tobin is writing in the
Spider-Man Adventures line. The titles of the collections are:
Thwip!
Peter Parker vs. the X-Men
Amazing
Spectacular
Sensational
Friendly Neighborhood
It's the most fun I've had reading a Spider-Man comic in about 20 years. And it's not tied up with any of the nonsense which is current mainstream Spider-Man continuity.
Nope.
Quote from: Peregrin;510292I don't agree about 4e deliberately severing the fanbase or trying to cater to non-gamers/other gamers. The only way it even got mentioned outside of tabletop hangouts is because they pimped it through things like Penny-Arcade, but the marketing itself was still aimed at D&D players.
Seriously. All of the cartoon ads were full of inside jokes only tabletoppers would get. I remember showing them to a couple of friends, one of whom didn't play, and only the D&D players chuckled. The other guy was like "What the fuck did I just watch?"
And the "Intro to 4e" videos they eventually posted on the home-page? It addressed issues that D&D players who liked previous editions would have. It didn't tell me anything about role-playing or why I'd want to play an RPG if I had never tried one.
During TSR they had commercials that marketed D&D through Tv ads and they were pretty mainstream in presentation (kind of like family board game ads). I seem to recall seeing some later on as well (late 80s or early 90s) but I could be wrong about those ones.
I think 4e wasn't shooting for mass appeal but was trying to appeal to other Gamer segments ( board gamers, video gamers etc). I think the rules were also an attempt to apply some GNS concepts, as it is clearly built around a "gamist agenda". And I think they went with Gamist because they thought that would have the most appeal among MMO players and board game fans.
Just remembered either TSR or WOTC ( I think the later) had magazine adds aimed at people who played online videomgames. Basically showed a strung out guy in front of a computer and said something to the effect of "if your going to pretend to be an elf, play with some friends". It was somewhat wittier and may have said something slightly different, but definitely recall seeing it in either the late 90s or early 00s
Quote from: Justin Alexander;510317This is a total tangent, but you should check out the stuff Paul Tobin is writing in the Spider-Man Adventures line.
Tobin's "Doctor Doom and the Masters of Evil" and "Black Widow and the Marvel Girls" are also tremendous fun. The guy knows how to keep things fun and light without being shallow and the dialogue is so very sharp.
Quote from: BedrockBrendan;510326Just remembered either TSR or WOTC ( I think the later) had magazine adds aimed at people who played online videomgames. Basically showed a strung out guy in front of a computer and said something to the effect of "if your going to pretend to be an elf, play with some friends". It was somewhat wittier and may have said something slightly different, but definitely recall seeing it in either the late 90s or early 00s
If you're going to sit in your basement pretending to be an elf, ... (http://interactive.usc.edu/membersmedia/jhall/pix/wowdanddad-lg.jpg)
Quote from: Ram;510339If you're going to sit in your basement pretending to be an elf, ... (http://interactive.usc.edu/membersmedia/jhall/pix/wowdanddad-lg.jpg)
That's the one. Thanks. It looks like that is from the 3E era so it probably was in the early 00s.
You know, 3E and 3.5E still work for me just like Pathfinder still works for me. 4E never gave me what I want out of a game and I think that the attitude of 4vengers chased people away from RPGs as a hobby.
5E? I don't know. I've stopped reading speculation threads and am waiting for the publication of it so that I can see what happens.
Quote from: jeff37923;510346You know, 3E and 3.5E still work for me just like Pathfinder still works for me. 4E never gave me what I want out of a game and I think that the attitude of 4vengers chased people away from RPGs as a hobby.
5E? I don't know. I've stopped reading speculation threads and am waiting for the publication of it so that I can see what happens.
I do think the 4E avenger thing became a big problem in converting people. Most 4E fans were not like this, but the handful who challenged my points of disagreement with the system (to the point of just not letting it go so we could actually play the darn thing) made me shrug and not want to bother.
Quote from: Justin Alexander;510317...
It's the most fun I've had reading a Spider-Man comic in about 20 years. And it's not tied up with any of the nonsense which is current mainstream Spider-Man continuity.
Intriguing. Thanks, I'll look into that one.
Quote from: Imp;510275Kids like weird dice, though. Because they're weird and they say "this isn't one of your regular old games."
Yeah, that's correct. I have gotten people interested in gaming through the dice on multiple occasions. They are interesting; they make folks stop and ask what they are for. A set is cheap to purchase and makes for an easy buy-in to the hobby. You do not even have to have a rulebook yet, but by Gawd, you have a set of weird dice!
Quote from: Benoist;510237Is the feedback system the problem, then? Can you blame the internet, and places like ENWorld (if it hadn't been this site it would have been another like it) for the importance given to some people's rants about how having an EL at APL + 6 is SUPER WRONG AND SHOULDN'T EXIST EVER? Who's the culprit, and how can we avoid that in the future?
We (places like this) are culprits. Internet has this vicious echo-chamber efect that amplifies its own perceived importance and makes a bunch of vocal whiners look like representative of the whole population of gamers.
Simply put, I'm growing convinced that a game designer should read and play a lot of games and avoid like plague gaming boards.
Quote from: Declan MacManus;510264Seriously, tabletop gamers have to be one of the shittiest fanbases any market could ever hope for.
Though I agree with the general idea, this can be said of any hobby.
Quote from: Melan;510404A set is cheap to purchase and makes for an easy buy-in to the hobby. You do not even have to have a rulebook yet, but by Gawd, you have a set of weird dice!
Yeah, absolutely. My eldest son runs a game for a bunch of his high-school buddies. He's the only one with a rulebook, but a bunch of the players have their own sets of dice.
(He's running Labyrinth Lord with the Advanced Edition Companion.)
Quote from: Imperator;510414We (places like this) are culprits. Internet has this vicious echo-chamber efect that amplifies its own perceived importance and makes a bunch of vocal whiners look like representative of the whole population of gamers.
Absolutely.
Over the past year I have gamed with somewhere in the neighborhood of 30-40 people, ranging from the purely casual players to hardcore people running their own games. Of all those people, I am the only one who frequently posts on various forums. One other guy follows some indie RPG blogs and one guy occasionally lurks on messageboards.
In my entire gaming life, I have never seen anything to convince me that the people yakking online are anything more than a very tiny, very extreme subset of gamers.
And then there's organized play. Which I think is an absolutely vital organ of the RPG industry, but which should never ever ever ever ever have any input on how you're designing your game.
OP: Nope. I've liked all editions of D&D - admittedly, some more than others - and I hope 5e will be amazing. I've had enough fun with D&D to give 5e a shot. If it's not for me I'll be disappointed, but I still have my old books.
What I found was that, when a new addition came out, everyone (people I know), just jumped on board, assuming that newer was better.
Throughout 3e and 4e, I hoped that WotC would release an optional combat module that allowed gridless combat a la TSR-era D&D. Would have been an easy thing to do (could have put it in Unearthed Arcana or something), but nope. It's like my style of play didn't exist anymore. It was grids or fuck you; get out of the tent. You are no longer part of the hobby.
I thought to myself, do people really like this grid bullshit? Is that what everyone likes? Am I alone, here? Is everyone playing 3e and now 3.5 and now 4e, and they are all fine with it? I was like, wait, I thought we were all enjoying the same hobby, the theatre of the imagination, but, it turned out, most people seemingly liked playing an RPG/wargame with grids and miniatures. WTF.
Hey, would you like to trade a hobby where you seamlessly imagine whole worlds, down to the leaves on the trees, the smell of the air, and the shape of the clouds, in your mind and replace it with a hobby where you think about how you want to move your miniature around on a 1x1" grid, where your world is represented by some shitty terrain and molds? Oh, yeah, sure! Sign me up, they all said! And I'm like WTF. I never knew thee.
Not only did they kill my hobby and ruin my life (!) by replacing D&D with a crappy grid wargame, but they also took the great art and replaced it with dungeonpunk, comicbook bullshit.
Are you listening, WotC?
This is BAD (Wayne Reynolds, the face of 3e and Pathfinder):
(http://images.wikia.com/pathfinder/images/0/0b/Amiri.jpg)
This is GOOD:
(http://komarckart.com/cov_20.jpg)
FOR FUCK SAKE, WOTC, CAN YOU NOT TELL GOOD ART FROM BAD???? The art director should be drawn and quartered. Fucking clueless.
Give us art that looks like something close to real life, to help our imaginations and draw us in by using real world things that we are familiar with, not a comic book world with bright colours, solid lines, and five-foot-tall, 60-lb stone swords.
I cannot, for the life of me, understand how anyone would choose ex. 1 over ex. 2. Just blows my mind. Bad taste.
Michael Komarck is awesome.
Quote from: 1989;510691This is BAD (Wayne Reynolds, the face of 3e and Pathfinder):
(http://images.wikia.com/pathfinder/images/0/0b/Amiri.jpg)
Well, it's not technically bad, so much as just plain ridiculous. First thing I wondered when I saw that picture: does Pathfinder not have encumbrance rules?
And that ...uh "sword-thing" really looks like a horribly ineffective and clumsy weapon, that the character looks in no way strong enough to even wield.
Quote from: TristramEvans;510693Well, it's not technically bad, so much as just plain ridiculous. First thing I wondered when I saw that picture: does Pathfinder not have encumbrance rules?
And that ...uh "sword-thing" really looks like a horribly ineffective and clumsy weapon, that the character looks in no way strong enough to even wield.
It's not technically bad . . . for hack, comicbook drawings with no feet (cuz feet are hard to draw). It just has no place in a hobby where the whole point is to imagine things. Why try to imagine a comic book world? How does that help anything? How does that draw you in? But hey, when you're busy pushing around miniatures on a grid, who cares about imagining a plausible world. Comic book drawings for the win!
After 2e, the quality of art just fell into the abyss, in general.
And you know damn well she's strong enough to wield it. She'll just use her Wotc-D&D superpower feats.
Quote from: 1989;510691Not only did they kill my hobby and ruin my life (!) by replacing D&D with a crappy grid wargame, but they also took the great art and replaced it with dungeonpunk, comicbook bullshit.
For the most part, I agree with you, particularly with respect to the dungeonpunk, but I this piece of art (http://www.wizards.com/dnd/images/ph2_gallery/97180.jpg) from the 3.5 Players Handbook II rivals the cover of the original Player's Handbook as capturing the spirit of role-playing for me. Personally, I'd love to see a return to clean black-and-white interiors using black and white line art such as the stuff by Jeff Dee and others that was once the standard for role-playing books.
That's Michael Komarck again, John. Same guy who painted Mordenkainen above.
Again - you had not seen truly bad art until you had seen colour plates from Shadowrun 2e.
Quote from: 1989;510686Throughout 3e and 4e, I hoped that WotC would release an optional combat module that allowed gridless combat a la TSR-era D&D. Would have been an easy thing to do (could have put it in Unearthed Arcana or something), but nope. It's like my style of play didn't exist anymore.
My group played the majority of our time using 3.X without grids and miniatures. Not a problem, really.
That is not the biggest issue with 3.X - feats and multiclassing were.
Quote from: Rum Cove;510703My group played the majority of our time using 3.X without grids and miniatures. Not a problem, really.
That is not the biggest issue with 3.X - feats and multiclassing were.
For me, the only two issues were grids and art.
Everything else, I could care less. I don't care if you have multiclassing, no multiclassing, 3e multiclassing, or whatever.
I don't care if you have 0 feats, 1000 feats, or whatever.
As long as a) everything stays in the imagination (no grids) and b) the art depicts something I'd want to imagine (no stylized art).
WotC has heard the feedback on grids loud and clear. Grids are now optional in the core system.
Quote from: Benoist;510700That's Michael Komarck again, John. Same guy who painted Mordenkainen above.
Thanks. Just did a Google search on his stuff. Yeah, they need art like that that looks like it's painted by adults for adults, not drawn by kids for kids.
Quote from: Rincewind1;510701Again - you had not seen truly bad art until you had seen colour plates from Shadowrun 2e.
Oh, that's nothing in comparison to Icons. Or Blood of Heroes (groan). Shadowrun 2E's colour plates just look like animation cels from an 80s Bakshi cartoon.
Quote from: J Arcane;510203D&D 4e looks like an MMO because the people who play D&D now treat it like an MMO. And I've seen nothing to indicate that will stop being the case with 5e.
I don't know about that, much of the late 4e material has been old school flavored. Some of the Essentials player books + Mordenkainen's + Monster Vault
have been rather retro. Monte coming in also helps I suppose.
The more I see the more I believe 5e will be like 2e Redux, a simple essential core that has a plethora of knobs to turn. If you look at the info coming out, the similarities are striking.
In Wayne Reynolds defense, Pathfinder is usually way more Dungeonpunk then 4e I think.
He's more then capable of doing very nice realistic work (which he does for Osprey), but yeah he has a strong anime influence.
Michael Komarck is just on a whole nother level.
I thought core-book 3.0 was good, but later I got sick of the whole 3.x culture. Hated 4e. Looking forward to 5e, but apart from being a good lure for me to recruit new players before I pitch a game I really like, it's not going to change my gaming that much even if it hits all its notes perfectly.
Quote from: TristramEvans;510708Oh, that's nothing in comparison to Icons. Or Blood of Heroes (groan). Shadowrun 2E's colour plates just look like animation cels from an 80s Bakshi cartoon.
I hereby proclaim that the art in the 3055 Technical Readout trumps all game supplement bad art, ever.
Dear god that stuff was terrible. The stylized mecha they had the Japanese animation studio do weren't bad, but the rest of the book stank up the joint.
Quote from: Justin Alexander;510550Absolutely.
Over the past year I have gamed with somewhere in the neighborhood of 30-40 people, ranging from the purely casual players to hardcore people running their own games. Of all those people, I am the only one who frequently posts on various forums. One other guy follows some indie RPG blogs and one guy occasionally lurks on messageboards.
In my entire gaming life, I have never seen anything to convince me that the people yakking online are anything more than a very tiny, very extreme subset of gamers.
And then there's organized play. Which I think is an absolutely vital organ of the RPG industry, but which should never ever ever ever ever have any input on how you're designing your game.
Across all the groups I've played with over the last 7 years (since 2004, when I joined RPG.net and started reading gaming messageboards), I've always been the only one who took part in online discussions. Fuck, usually I'm the only one who reads the books, anyway.
Quote from: TristramEvans;510693Well, it's not technically bad, so much as just plain ridiculous. First thing I wondered when I saw that picture: does Pathfinder not have encumbrance rules?
And that ...uh "sword-thing" really looks like a horribly ineffective and clumsy weapon, that the character looks in no way strong enough to even wield.
Sharpened car bumpers have been "tray sheik" weapons since Final Fantasy VII. Get with modern gamer culture (as in video gamer culture), ol' man!
:p
Quote from: TristramEvans;510708Oh, that's nothing in comparison to Icons. Or Blood of Heroes (groan). Shadowrun 2E's colour plates just look like animation cels from an 80s Bakshi cartoon.
I happen to like the artwork in Icons. Not every picture of course, but the general style has character and it's get's me in the mood for playing.
I'll take it one step further. My screensaver at home is made of a collection of illustrations from the various Icon's books and adventures.
Quote from: Soylent Green;510752I happen to like the artwork in Icons. Not every picture of course, but the general style has character and it's get's me in the mood for playing.
I'll take it one step further. My screensaver at home is made of a collection of illustrations from the various Icon's books and adventures.
I'm guessing you and I have very different aesthetic tastes. But I suppose there's some value to the illustrations if they are "working" for some people.
I really love the Pathfinder art (in the core book and Beastiary at least, don't have anything else). It's not quite as "realistic" as some might like, but it is uniformly colorful and EXOTIC (the picture the cleric still just blows me away - it's not a straight-up European dark-ages knockoff for a change). Pathfinder art makes me wanna PLAY.
Quote from: TristramEvans;510693Well, it's not technically bad, so much as just plain ridiculous. First thing I wondered when I saw that picture: does Pathfinder not have encumbrance rules?
And that ...uh "sword-thing" really looks like a horribly ineffective and clumsy weapon, that the character looks in no way strong enough to even wield.
That's Miri, one of the Pathfinder iconics. Her background specifies that her parents got killed by frost giants. Years later, Miri took revenge on the giants, and for her trophy took one of their swords. She's wielding it to this day.
I don't like the picture too, and I've always resented the intrusion of Final Fantasy in Pathfinder art.
http://images.wikia.com/pathfinder/images/c/cd/Seltyiel.jpg
http://fc03.deviantart.net/fs29/f/2008/111/1/3/_Final_Fantasy_Rock_On__by_K46.jpg
It's only when you look around that you notice that that art for some people defines Pathfinder - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AXYpBcc0WdI
Not my cup of tea at all.
Quote from: Werekoala;510774I really love the Pathfinder art (in the core book and Beastiary at least, don't have anything else). It's not quite as "realistic" as some might like, but it is uniformly colorful and EXOTIC (the picture the cleric still just blows me away - it's not a straight-up European dark-ages knockoff for a change). Pathfinder art makes me wanna PLAY.
Ditto. I can think of other games with much worse art than this.
And the miniature of the above mentioned iconic cleric is absolutely badass.
Quote from: Werekoala;510774I really love the Pathfinder art (in the core book and Beastiary at least, don't have anything else). It's not quite as "realistic" as some might like, but it is uniformly colorful and EXOTIC (the picture the cleric still just blows me away - it's not a straight-up European dark-ages knockoff for a change). Pathfinder art makes me wanna PLAY.
Pathfinder/3e/Wayne Reynolds art makes me wanna PUKE.
Quote from: John Morrow;510706Yeah, they need art like that that looks like it's painted by adults for adults, not drawn by kids for kids.
Said it better than I could.
Quote from: Benoist;510692Michael Komarck is awesome.
Michael Komarck is so good that it hurts.
Quote from: CRKrueger;510714Michael Komarck is just on a whole nother level.
Indeed.
Quote from: Imperator;510739Across all the groups I've played with over the last 7 years (since 2004, when I joined RPG.net and started reading gaming messageboards), I've always been the only one who took part in online discussions. Fuck, usually I'm the only one who reads the books, anyway.
Same here. Well, actually it's me and one other guy (Bland Joe Dwarf in these forums, who mostly lurks), but it's the two of us to a pool of 4-5 regular players, and 12-15 irregular players. The latter include the kind of people who sat down to play
4e, a year back, and went, "AC goes up now? WTF?" :D
Quote from: 1989;510791Pathfinder/3e/Wayne Reynolds art makes me wanna PUKE.
Yay personal tastes! :)
I like and dislike a lot of different D&D art over the years. I still maintain the most iconic D&D artwork for me is from the 1st Edition PHB, the pen-and-ink drawing of three guys greedily hunched over a chest (You just saw it, didn't ya? That's what I mean.). Not the best art, not the most representative of the game as a whole, but that's what I remember whenever I think of D&D. I always prefered it to be about grubby men doing grubby jobs nobody else could/would do in search of treasure - when 50gp gems were remarked upon instead of slung into the wagon with the rest, when +2 swords meant something, when skeletons and orcs were fearsome enemies.
But Pathfinder artwork is clearly a result of the evolution of D&D (like it or not) - you don't like colorful semi-anime, that's fine. But I like the fact that it seems to present an actual world with an actual variety of cultures. Again, the cleric pic just blew me away when I saw it, and now when you say "Pathfinder", that's what I see. An Egyptian-inspired competent woman instead of more of the same dark-ages Templar we've all come to know and love.
So, whatever. Opinions, I haz them.
Quote from: Werekoala;510802Yay personal tastes! :)
I like and dislike a lot of different D&D art over the years. I still maintain the most iconic D&D artwork for me is from the 1st Edition PHB, the pen-and-ink drawing of three guys greedily hunched over a chest (You just saw it, didn't ya? That's what I mean.). Not the best art, not the most representative of the game as a whole, but that's what I remember whenever I think of D&D. I always prefered it to be about grubby men doing grubby jobs nobody else could/would do in search of treasure - when 50gp gems were remarked upon instead of slung into the wagon with the rest, when +2 swords meant something, when skeletons and orcs were fearsome enemies.
But Pathfinder artwork is clearly a result of the evolution of D&D (like it or not) - you don't like colorful semi-anime, that's fine. But I like the fact that it seems to present an actual world with an actual variety of cultures. Again, the cleric pic just blew me away when I saw it, and now when you say "Pathfinder", that's what I see. An Egyptian-inspired competent woman instead of more of the same dark-ages Templar we've all come to know and love.
So, whatever. Opinions, I haz them.
I hope that add a lot of that Anime art into 5th edition so all these people WILL NOT PLAY because of the art. LOL
What is the backstory/history on this ancientgamer fellow? Anyone?
Real troll, he is.
Quote from: 1989;510832What is the backstory/history on this ancientgamer fellow? Anyone?
Real troll, he is.
Not at all am I a troll. I am just tired of the constant complaining and whining.
SO, when I do not agree with someone, I am a troll???
Whatever lets you sleep better at night...
Quote from: Ancientgamer1970;510834Not at all am I a troll. I am just tired of the constant complaining and whining.
SO, when I do not agree with someone, I am a troll???
Whatever lets you sleep better at night...
We are talking about what kind of art we'd like to see in 5e. What is wrong with you?
People are going to complain about D&D until the end of time. Get used to it.
Quote from: 1989;510832What is the backstory/history on this ancientgamer fellow? Anyone?
Real troll, he is.
He's known as Tholianweb on K&KA and KewlMarine32 on Dragonsfoot. He got permabanned from both places, and now he just has this hate for everything he blames for getting him there (Old School grognards, retroclones, people who don't play the RAW or who think RPGs simulate anything about the real world at all, etc.), except his own behaviour, of course.
Quote from: Benoist;510841He's known as Tholianweb on K&KA and KewlMarine32 on Dragonsfoot. He got permabanned from both places, and now he just has this hate for everything he blames for getting him there (Old School grognards, retroclones, people who don't play the RAW or who think RPGs simulate anything about the real world at all, etc.), except his own behaviour, of course.
If that is the extent of your knowledge on me, you are certainly lacking... I certainly have no hate for anyone since that is such a harsh word. I prefer dislike moreso than hate.
A wider range of saves looks good. Only having 3 primary saves really borked a lot of classes early on in 3.X and 4E. I also like the idea of Themes/Kits being applied to a basic class to flavor it.
Quote from: Ancientgamer1970;510834Not at all am I a troll. I am just tired of the constant complaining and whining.
And combat that...by complaining and whining. Lulz.
Quote from: Ancientgamer1970;510849If that is the extent of your knowledge on me, you are certainly lacking...
In any event, that's what people are seeing of you: a pathetic loser who can't let go and just keeps on derailing threads and borderline stalks people because he just can't help himself. I suggest you drop that attitude, and fast.
Quote from: Benoist;510859In any event, that's what people are seeing of you: a pathetic loser who can't let go and just keeps on derailing threads and borderline stalks people because he just can't help himself. I suggest you drop that attitude, and fast.
I am not stalking anyone and you want to use that word so I can be banned. Threads are constantly being derailed on this forum but you target me ALONE. Now that you are a MOD, you are going to use your newfound powers to ban me because I constantly call you FAT and you act on other peoples erred thoughts on me.
I cannot help what people feel about me because people are going to do what they want, they will just listen to their online buddies, and go with the flow.
I am set in my ways and it will never change. I am always being constantly baited BUT DO YOU SEE ME BITCHING ABOUT IT???
You already chose your side and it is certainly not on mine.
This is rapidly becoming a Jackalope situation.
Quote from: 1989;510832What is the backstory/history on this ancientgamer fellow? Anyone?
Real troll, he is.
Very much an atypical troll. He complains about things while he's engaged in them at the same time, his rhetoric is strictly grade school insults, and he makes statements that are such obviously BS that it's almost unbelievable he seems to expect anyone to take them seriously. He claims to have played AD&D with Gygax (but disliked it because Gary "didn't follow the rules"), claims that he always plays "by the book" with no houserules - including OD&D, and he says there are no steps in his games' character creation process (yes, that statement contradicts the claim immediately before it, besides simply being ridiculous), and bizarrely, has a hate-on for retro-clones of games he claims to like (hipster pretentiousness).
So, typical troll - inconsistent, dishonest, and hypocritical. But very, very obvious.
On the good side, he's made me appreciate B.T. a bit more.
Quote from: Ancientgamer1970;510864I am not stalking anyone and you want to use that word so I can be banned. Threads are constantly being derailed on this forum but you target me ALONE. Now that you are a MOD, you are going to use your newfound powers to ban me because I constantly call you FAT and you act on other peoples erred thoughts on me.
I cannot help what people feel about me because people are going to do what they want, they will just listen to their online buddies, and go with the flow.
I am set in my ways and it will never change. I am always being constantly baited BUT DO YOU SEE ME BITCHING ABOUT IT???
You already chose your side and it is certainly not on mine.
Insulting people left and right and derailing threads once in a while is not a bannable offense no. If being an asshole was reason enough to get banned, B.T. would have been banned a long time ago.
When you are following people in whatever threads they are and just wait for them to say anything that you wouldn't like to bring it back on the subject of Knights and Knaves, OSRIC, and how Grognards are terrible people you dislike, targeting particular people with known ties with these sites and games, you are flirting with stalking. When you consistently derail threads to bring it back on the subject of how much you dislike these people and "OSCRAP", you are flirting with site disruption.
You're not there yet, but you are heading towards it, IMO.
Both of these things are bannable offenses. You have not been banned yet for several reasons. One of them being that I actually spared you, and decided to not escalate this
before being a mod. OHT can attest to that. The reason is simple: because I won't make it a personal matter. If you get banned, I won't be the one pushing the button for this very reason.
I'm just giving you a heads up, so you can be conscious of where you are heading with that obsession of yours and modify your course of actions from there. If you can't understand that, and persist in that direction, I'm sorry. I will have tried to make you see reason.
QuoteInsulting people left and right and derailing threads once in a while is not a bannable offense no. If being an asshole was reason enough to get banned, B.T. would have been banned a long time ago
.
The definition of "asshole" is very abstract. As I see it, there are a lot on here but you single me out specifically because i keep calling you on your huge weight issue.
QuoteWhen you are following people in whatever threads they are and just wait for them to say anything that you wouldn't like to bring it back on the subject of Knights and Knaves, OSRIC, and how Grognards are terrible people you dislike, targeting particular people with known ties with these sites and games, you are flirting with stalking. When you consistently derail threads to bring it back on the subject of how much you dislike these people and "OSCRAP", you are flirting with site disruption.
WHat is the big crime in using the word OSCRAP??? Is it not the same as threetard, 3tard, 4thvenger, 4tard, and so on???
QuoteBoth of these things are bannable offenses. You have not been banned yet for several reasons. One of them being that I actually spared you, and decided to not escalate this before being a mod. OHT can attest to that. The reason is simple: because I won't make it a personal matter. If you get banned, I won't be the one pushing the button for this very reason.
I have made nothing personal with you but seeing that you place this post on here for the whole board to read just tells me that you CANNOT DO THIS ON A PROFESSIONAL LEVEL LIKE PM's. You just proud to show off your new MOD ABILITIES.
QuoteI'm just giving you a heads up, so you can be conscious of where you are heading with that obsession of yours and modify your course of actions from there. If you can't understand that, and persist in that direction, I'm sorry. I will have tried to make you see reason.
I have no obsession whatsoever. That is something made up in your head and your weak excuse to ban me.
If you have anything else to say, be professional enough as a MOD to take to the PMs.
Back to the topic at hand, I really don't like the trend towards anime-style art in RPGs these days. I understand that it's what appeals to the younger generation, but at the same time, it robs RPGs of their identity as they all begin to look like every videogame on the market. I also happen to suspect that even people who are really into anime would have a harder time associating with a character or piece of art that's so stylized - I see it as a barrier to roleplaying, to be honest. While I can appreciate highly stylized art, in an RPG the art's primary function is not to simply "look cool", but to evoke the themes and tones of the game's setting. Anime art doesn't suggest pseudo-medieval epic fantasy, it suggests "superhero" cartoon powergaming. Anime is a style of art that doesn't take itself seriously. That's not a criticism, at least under other circumstances, but when it comes to RPGs, D&D/Pathfinder in particular, it seems to me one more artificial and unnecessary barrier between the audience and immersion in the gameworld.
Quote from: TristramEvans;510879Back to the topic at hand, I really don't like the trend towards anime-style art in RPGs these days. I understand that it's what appeals to the younger generation, but at the same time, it robs RPGs of their identity as they all begin to look like every videogame on the market. I also happen to suspect that even people who are really into anime would have a harder time associating with a character or piece of art that's so stylized - I see it as a barrier to roleplaying, to be honest. While I can appreciate highly stylized art, in an RPG the art's primary function is not to simply "look cool", but to evoke the themes and tones of the game's setting. Anime art doesn't suggest pseudo-medieval epic fantasy, it suggests "superhero" cartoon powergaming. Anime is a style of art that doesn't take itself seriously. That's not a criticism, at least under other circumstances, but when it comes to RPGs, D&D/Pathfinder in particular, it seems to me one more artificial and unnecessary barrier between the audience and immersion in the gameworld.
I really cannot understand how you people look at ART as being the BE ALL, END ALL when it comes to role-playing games. It is just art.
Art has zero impact on rules.
Art has zero impact on roleplaying. Please explain how this is a barrier to roleplaying.
Art has zero impact on the fun scale.
Art has zero impact as far as ME purchasing books or whatnot. I say this because I have seen comments where old schoolers claim they will not play a game if the art is NOT that of old school fame.
And again, you claim that art in roleplying books are a barrier. As far as I am concerned, that is good for me because the last person I would want at my table is one who constantly complains about things that have ZERO impact on the rules of a game. Let them dislike the art. Let them not play the game. I tmakes for a smaller gaming pool of people who just want to play the game for what it is, a ROLEPLAYING GAME.
Quote from: TristramEvans;510879Back to the topic at hand, I really don't like the trend towards anime-style art in RPGs these days.
I don't like it either. At all. I won't claim it's badwrongfun, I guess somebody somewhere likes that kind of art, but it's not for me, not at all. It's one of the reasons why I didn't touch Anima.
Quote from: Ancientgamer1970;510882I really cannot understand how you people look at ART as being the BE ALL, END ALL when it comes to role-playing games.
I've never met anyone whose held that opinion, nor seen anyone express it on these forums. So I don't have any idea who "you people" are.
QuoteIt is just art.
"art is just art, yes. How very zen.
QuoteArt has zero impact on rules.Art has zero impact on roleplaying. Please explain how this is a barrier to roleplaying.
Well, I already did explain that hypothesis in the post you've quoted.
QuoteArt has zero impact on the fun scale.
Completely depends upon the person, and their aesthetic sensibilities.
QuoteArt has zero impact as far as ME purchasing books or whatnot.
Obviously.
QuoteI say this because I have seen comments where old schoolers claim they will not play a game if the art is NOT that of old school fame.
I haven't seen any such comments, so...no comment.
QuoteAnd again, you claim that art in roleplying books are a barrier.
Again? Nope. First time I've written those words.
QuoteAs far as I am concerned, that is good for me because the last person I would want at my table is one who constantly complains about things that have ZERO impact on the rules of a game.
LOL, Trust me, there is no danger of you ever being allowed to play in the same game as myself.
QuoteLet them dislike the art. Let them not play the game. I tmakes for a smaller gaming pool of people who just want to play the game for what it is, a ROLEPLAYING GAME.
Sure.
http://pathfinder.wikia.com/wiki/Cleric
How is that "anime", exactly? It's just colorful, and exotic, and not middle-ages grunge. Oh, so the eyes might be a tad large, but seriously - that's just a cool looking character.
When i first played pathfinder, the art struck me as anime-like as well. Good anime, but still stylized in an anime kind of way. I don't think that is a bad thing. It isn't my favorite gaming art, but they could have done a lot worse.
Quote from: Werekoala;510885http://pathfinder.wikia.com/wiki/Cleric
How is that "anime", exactly? It's just colorful, and exotic, and not middle-ages grunge. Oh, so the eyes might be a tad large, but seriously - that's just a cool looking character.
It's way too busy, and I don't know how the hell you could stand to walk around with that much shit draped off of you, but I like that it's a cleric with a style not taken straight from old paintings of Templars.
I suppose we can agree to disagree. The main thing I note about what people call "anime" style art (at least vis' Pathfinder) is that, to me, it's just very bright, well-defined, colorful art as opposed to the more "atmospheric" pieces I think many of you are talking about (or just pen-and-inks of course). Srsly, that Cleric does NOT look anime at all - she's just wearing a colorful outfit, and is clean (maybe that's it) and that's about all I see.
Am I wrong?
Quote from: J Arcane;510890It's way too busy, and I don't know how the hell you could stand to walk around with that much shit draped off of you, but I like that it's a cleric with a style not taken straight from old paintings of Templars.
It's not so bad - long sword and short sword, big pouch for items and potions, silk robe, possibly linen or padded armor underneath, helmet - not much more burdened than most D&D characters. ;) Besides, clerics/priests typically dress a bit more elaboratly than most people, even in the modern age - at least their ceremonial stuff I suppose.
Quote from: Werekoala;510885http://pathfinder.wikia.com/wiki/Cleric
How is that "anime", exactly? It's just colorful, and exotic, and not middle-ages grunge. Oh, so the eyes might be a tad large, but seriously - that's just a cool looking character.
I like that picture. But yes, it's very anime style. Anime/manga is defined by very simplistic, exaggerated physical features, often juxtaposed against an incredibly detailed background or style of dress. In that case, only the face can be seen, but it clearly using anime proportions - the exaggerated eyes, nose, mouth, and eyebrows. There is also the matter of the "feet".
Quote from: Werekoala;510891I suppose we can agree to disagree. The main thing I note about what people call "anime" style art (at least vis' Pathfinder) is that, to me, it's just very bright, well-defined, colorful art as opposed to the more "atmospheric" pieces I think many of you are talking about (or just pen-and-inks of course). Srsly, that Cleric does NOT look anime at all - she's just wearing a colorful outfit, and is clean (maybe that's it) and that's about all I see.
Am I wrong?
Well it is a pretty subjective call. In the case of the cleric, to me the eyes, the pose and the color all say anime. Not ranma 1/2 anime but looks like some of the better rendered anime i have seen. For pathfinder as a whole, for me it is the eyes, poses, colors and weapon sizes/styles
I can see that - I'm old-school so when you say "anime" to me I think Robotech or Yamato. That said, the oversized weapons are definitely anime/CRPG inspired. Of course, such things wouldn't exist in my game (and I'm not sure they "mechanically" exist in PF anyway?), to my way of thinking magic weapons typically are the same size as their normal counterparts.
This discussion is retarded. Pathfinder's art is not anime.
Anime:
(http://www.hemmy.net/images/tvmovies/simpsonzu01.jpg)
(http://images5.fanpop.com/image/photos/27600000/Anime-random-27681871-360-354.jpg)
(http://doorq.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/devil-may-cry-anime.jpg)
(http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_PTVmICmgsa8/THIipLYgVMI/AAAAAAAAASs/Ih6oW0lf4_4/s1600/itazura-na-kiss.jpg)
(http://www.sweetslyrics.com/images/img_gal/2987_digimon.jpg)
Not fucking anime:
(http://paizo.com/image/content/CrimsonThrone/PZO9011-OrcsAtTheGates.jpg)
(http://www.deviantart.com/download/140925920/Lich_for_Paizo_Pathfinder_by_MichaelJaecks.jpg)
(http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-ge1zshnXM-Y/TVxGlTIO6lI/AAAAAAAAAns/wVeuVdoPc0s/s1600/zombie.jpg)
(http://paizo.com/image/product/secondary/Pathfinder/Pathfinder1_Fighter.jpg)
(http://paizo.com/image/content/RiseOfTheRunelords/Pathfinder4_Cleric02.jpg)
QuotePathfinder's art is not anime.
I know that but there are some who think it is for some reason.
Thanks for the bigger pic of the cleric, BT - upon closer inspection it appears to be a chainmail hauberk and not padded armor. Still, not really overencumbered by RPG standards.
Also, that's a scabbard I see, not another sword. It's facing the wrong way though, for the sword to be in her hand like that. Bad artist!
It's a cleric in typical Saracen attire.
So far, only that ranger and barbarian girl look really bad.
Quote from: Werekoala;510913Thanks for the bigger pic of the cleric, BT - upon closer inspection it appears to be a chainmail hauberk and not padded armor. Still, not really overencumbered by RPG standards.
Also, that's a scabbard I see, not another sword. It's facing the wrong way though, for the sword to be in her hand like that. Bad artist!
The scabbard is NOT necessarily facing the wrong way. You are just assuming she just pulled the sword out and I am assuming she pulled it out and switched it to her other hand right before an encounter.
Think outside the box a little. A picture does not always paint the whole scenario...
In another form of reasoning, it is just POSES.
...........
I WAS wondering at a left-handed swordsman..........
...........derp.
Wayne Reynolds CAN do more historical/realistic stuff.
(http://enrill.net/images/play-by-posts/pictures/Reynolds-carolingian.jpg)
Cool - I was thinking the style kinda reminded me of those "Arms and Armor" books next to the mini's and paints that I used to drool over. Now I know why.
I don't hate what I've seen of his work; I mean he's working within the guidelines of a corporate machine that makes certain demands on his art (seriously, I can imagine a suit from Hasbro strolling through a WIP meeting and saying "Can we FinalFantasy VII-ize that by...say...another 12.22%? Our demo is trending in that direction again."), and it's certainly better than the bland stuff by Elmore...
but with that said I wish his feet - even those in the historical drawing above - didn't look so much like they're tapering into hooves :P
Yes. That's really my point: Wayne Reynolds is a really good artist. He can do amazing work. The problem comes from the art specification he receives, and therefore, from the orders themselves, not from the artist in particular.
Quote from: Benoist;510924Yes. That's really my point: Wayne Reynolds is a really good artist. He can do amazing work. The problem comes from the art specification he receives, and therefore, from the orders themselves, not from the artist in particular.
Interesting to see that side of him.
Now, if we could just get something more that style for 5e. WAR can keep the food on his table and the natives can be happy.
God I would LOVE for 5e to feel more historically inspired.
Quote from: Benoist;510927God I would LOVE for 5e to feel more historically inspired.
I would love for 5e to be filled with illustrations from David Sutherland, honestly :(
That's not just nostalgia talking, I realize that yes the cover to the Monster Manual is ridiculously bad but when he was on he was
on. Look at some of his illos in the back of MMII and the Fiend Folio.
Not all AD&D art was great art, but most of it was good art.
(I'd like to see Tramp's work too but that's just as likely as Mr. Sutherland coming back from the beyond.)
Who did the art in the Dragon Age RPG? It was actually very pretty, some of it. Not too Reynolds, not too Elmore...(watch, it'll have been Wayne Reynolds).
Quote from: TristramEvans;510894There is also the matter of the "feet".
Yikes, no kidding...
You won't hear me bitch about Dave, TDD. I think he was a great artist.
Let me put it this way: I prefer to have the art of the game thematically accurate, with a great ambiance to it and an emphasis on the real themes of the game itself (i.e. exploration of the unknown, the group of adventurers standing in front of the Caves of Chaos or facing some threat, the magic mouth illo from the AD&D PH, Paladin in Hell, that sort of thing), rather than it being flashy in all sorts of ways just for the sake of it.
Two of the most iconic (god, 3,3.5 and 4e have ruined that word for me) images of D&D for me were done by the late Jim Roslof. When I saw these I thought "Man I don't know who that guy with the viking-rune lookin' signature is but that art speaks to me."
(http://www.wizards.com/dnd/images/roslof_borderlands.jpg)
Look at that. The heroes are truly faceless. They're engaged in mortal combat, no time for heroic poses!. Is the dwarf about to receive a death-blow from the hobgoblin in front of him? Will the elven archer who has dispatched his foe get a second shot off in time to help? What of the evenly-matched man-at-arms over to his right? And the background...a foreboding, dismal place. A grey sky. A gnarled tree, bare hills. Utter brilliance.
And this one:
(http://dave.monkeymartian.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/roslofthekeepontheborderlands.jpg)
Just drink that in for a minute. Look at that. The glee of combat on the face of the halfling striking from the rear. The two pinning it in the front, the incredible amounts of shading, lighting and cross-hatching...! Man should've put out his own fantasy comic book, I tell you.
Finally, a picture of the artist himself:
(http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/5/5c/Jimroslof_clip.jpg)
He looks like one of his own illustrations!
Hey...wait a minute...look at his right foot...OMG, IT LOOKS LIKE A HOOF! DAMN YOU WAYNE REYNOLDS!!!
Second one is decent, but not that great. The first one is too bizarre for me.
The elf looks like Asterix with that colour of clothes.
Quote from: thedungeondelver;510946Two of the most iconic (god, 3,3.5 and 4e have ruined that word for me) images of D&D for me were done by the late Jim Roslof. When I saw these I thought "Man I don't know who that guy with the viking-rune lookin' signature is but that art speaks to me."
(http://www.wizards.com/dnd/images/roslof_borderlands.jpg)
Look at that. The heroes are truly faceless. They're engaged in mortal combat, no time for heroic poses!. Is the dwarf about to receive a death-blow from the hobgoblin in front of him? Will the elven archer who has dispatched his foe get a second shot off in time to help? What of the evenly-matched man-at-arms over to his right? And the background...a foreboding, dismal place. A grey sky. A gnarled tree, bare hills. Utter brilliance.
And this one:
(http://dave.monkeymartian.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/roslofthekeepontheborderlands.jpg)
Just drink that in for a minute. Look at that. The glee of combat on the face of the halfling striking from the rear. The two pinning it in the front, the incredible amounts of shading, lighting and cross-hatching...! Man should've put out his own fantasy comic book, I tell you.
Finally, a picture of the artist himself:
(http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/5/5c/Jimroslof_clip.jpg)
He looks like one of his own illustrations!
Hey...wait a minute...look at his right foot...OMG, IT LOOKS LIKE A HOOF! DAMN YOU WAYNE REYNOLDS!!!
I think you nailed it yourself when you said he should have his own "comic book."
Belongs in comic books, dude. Looks like stuff drawn by kids for kids.
Quote from: 1989;510950I think you nailed it yourself when you said he should have his own "comic book."
Belongs in comic books, dude. Looks like stuff drawn by kids for kids.
Aww, still butthurt because 2e is the island of misfit toys for D&D? The edition nobody loves?
Face it, the feathered hair brigade lost out. People either like the really old school or the new shiny. Your brand...is forgotten.
You are dismissed.
Quote from: 1989;510950Looks like stuff drawn by kids for kids.
No kidding! Gygax forbid D&D be marketed towards children.
WotC needs to shore up all the plump, winded, 'childfree' winners out there so they don't defect to Pathfinder.
--- That said, yeah, Roslof = not good enough for 5e.
As for stuff that belongs in comic books.....
I don't think anyone here will honestly argue that if Uderzo made some stuff for DnD, it'd not be epic. Or Rosiński, or Delaby (the guy who draws current Complainte des Landes Perdues)
Example of Rosiński (hard to find better resolution):
New stuff
(http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_IZHTFYBHEos/TRubcpGz85I/AAAAAAAADEI/ePSoOGJxITg/s1600/thorgal_bitwa_kadr.jpg)
Old stuff
(http://www.relax.nast.pl/graf/roskarbek1.jpg)
RPGs illustrations could learn a lot from comics.
See. That's exactly what I mean. I prefer for the illo to be thematically tasteful than grandiose in terms of composition. In other words, I'm going to love Jim Roslof's stuff because well, he's picturing D&D. It's not gnomes and lutins and chicks with feathers in their hair, it's not anime guys wielding Sexcalibur swords and all, no. It's fucking D&D. That's what I like about it.
See also:
(http://enrill.net/images/play-by-posts/pictures/D1-2.jpg)
That's D&D, man.
Quote from: Benoist;510957See. That's exactly what I mean. I prefer for the illo to be thematically tasteful than grandiose in terms of composition. In other words, I'm going to love Jim Roslof's stuff because well, he's picturing D&D. It's not gnomes and lutins and chicks with feathers in their hair, it's not anime guys wielding Sexcalibur swords and all, no. It's fucking D&D. That's what I like about it.
See also:
(http://enrill.net/images/play-by-posts/pictures/D1-2.jpg)
That's D&D, man.
Part of DnD, I'd say - the parts based on 30s pulp fantasy of Clark A. Smith, Howard and later Fritz Leiber and Vance. Important part, but IMO not all of it ;).
I'd say that with countless planes of DnD, the illustrations should also be not tied to any specific period in the genre.
Quote from: Benoist;510957See. That's exactly what I mean. I prefer for the illo to be thematically tasteful than grandiose in terms of composition. In other words, I'm going to love Jim Roslof's stuff because well, he's picturing D&D. It's not gnomes and lutins and chicks with feathers in their hair, it's not anime guys wielding Sexcalibur swords and all, no. It's fucking D&D. That's what I like about it.
See also:
That's D&D, man.
He has a very nice eye for colour. It's got that 70's science/fantasy book cover feel to it. And his art does have a sort of frenetic energy. But his figures, perspective, shading (as in respecting where light sources are and using shading to create form), and textures are, well, they're shit. Really, "incredible amounts of shading, lighting and cross-hatching"? Take a look without the rose-coloured glasses.
Quote from: Rincewind1;510960Part of DnD, I'd say - the parts based on 30s pulp fantasy of Clark A. Smith, Howard and later Fritz Leiber and Vance. Important part, but IMO not all of it ;).
I'd say that with countless planes of DnD, the illustrations should also be not tied to any specific period in the genre.
No. That's D&D. You are DISMISSED, mister. :D
Quote from: thedungeondelver;510954Aww, still butthurt because 2e is the island of misfit toys for D&D? The edition nobody loves?
Face it, the feathered hair brigade lost out. People either like the really old school or the new shiny. Your brand...is forgotten.
You are dismissed.
2e is the best ever. Late 1e a close second. I will say that maybe Elmore should have went for straight hair over 80s style hair. Would have given a more timeless result. Still, he rocks, along with the other painters from that era.
1e replaced the original nasty covers with good Easley covers. That was a good call.
Quote from: 1989;5109652e is the b
I said you may go.
(http://enrill.net/images/play-by-posts/pictures/Rules-cyclopedia.jpg)
Quote from: two_fishes;510962Take a look without the rose-coloured glasses.
Could be worse.
Bandwagon Benny could be pushing Dave Sutherland to do 5e.
(http://larryelmore.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/BLUE_DRA.jpg)
I seriously love this image. It shows really mastery of composition. I love the way the canvas is divided up. Look at that beautiful wavy line that draws the eye down the dragon's head, through the fighter's shoulders, and tosses it back into the painting through the horse's tail.
Quote from: Benoist;510963No. That's D&D. You are DISMISSED, mister. :D
You are letting your grog show, Benoist ;).
I'm kidding, but really - I think DnD can be used not just for the classic dungeoncrawling tales of Conan & Fafhrd (I honestly have no idea how he spells) and Grey Mouser. Perhaps I am mistaken, and to be honest - I will agree that this is what the DnD is best fit for. But I dunno, I think Planescape & Ravenloft are good as well, and great fits for DnD, if you houserule it well enough.
But still - those illustrations are waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay too 30s pulp for me.
Edit: Now that RC stuff - that's the way to go!
Quote from: two_fishes;510962He has a very nice eye for colour. It's got that 70's science/fantasy book cover feel to it. And his art does have a sort of frenetic energy. But his figures, perspective, shading (as in respecting where light sources are and using shading to create form), and textures are, well, they're shit. Really, "incredible amounts of shading, lighting and cross-hatching"? Take a look without the rose-coloured glasses.
Way to miss the point. I said I take thematic accuracy over composition.
Quote from: Benoist;510967(http://enrill.net/images/play-by-posts/pictures/Rules-cyclopedia.jpg)
Easley for the win, man. Would love to see Easley do 5e.
Quote from: two_fishes;510969(http://larryelmore.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/BLUE_DRA.jpg)
I seriously love this image. It shows really mastery of composition. I love the way the canvas is divided up. Look at that beautiful wavy line that draws the eye down the dragon's head, through the fighter's shoulders, and tosses it back into the painting through the horse's tail.
Elmore for the win.
Actually all kidding aside I like Easley's work. I had the image of a "sleeping" Drelzna from S4 blown up to about 2x size on my office wall at work years ago (HR knew we IT guys were nerds, they didn't give a fig, besides it was on the back of the door).
Quote from: Rincewind1;510970I think DnD can be used not just for the classic dungeoncrawling tales of Conan & Fafhrd (I honestly have no idea how he spells) and Grey Mouser.
It can, and has been from the very beginning. But to me the base game should be about D&D, and the winning recipe about it: dungeons, and dragons. If you don't like Dungeons & Dragons, you are free to house rule the game, play another game, create your own game, whatever. But wishing for it to be "something else" in its core expression is a deal-breaker to me. D&D should be about D&D. Period.
One nice thing about art from the early 1e-period is that so many different styles were used. They weren't worried about the art having a unified style as part of the "brand." If you didn't like one style, it was no big deal, because there were others out there. Dee to comic book and bell-bottoms for you? Plenty of Tramp and Sutherland. Tramp and Sutherland too pedestrian? Check out the opium-dream style of Otus. Want a little bit edgy comic book style? Check out Willingham. Et cetera. Roslof. Holloway. There were lots of great pieces of art in a variety of styles. Personally, I like that.
Quote from: thedungeondelver;510975Actually all kidding aside I like Easley's work. I had the image of a "sleeping" Drelzna from S4 blown up to about 2x size on my office wall at work years ago (HR knew we IT guys were nerds, they didn't give a fig, besides it was on the back of the door).
He also did the rotting zombie face in Mentzer Basic, the only memorable piece in the whole book.
Quote from: 1989;510973Easley for the win, man. Would love to see Easley do 5e.
The cover of the
Rules Cyclopedia is pretty awesome. (Wish I could say the same for the interior art, though -- I can't stand it.)
Quote from: Benoist;510977It can, and has been from the very beginning. But to me the base game should be about D&D, and the winning recipe about it: dungeons, and dragons. If you don't like Dungeons & Dragons, you are free to house rule the game, play another game, create your own game, whatever. But wishing for it to be "something else" in its core expression is a deal-breaker to me. D&D should be about D&D. Period.
I can agree with that sentiment - still doesn't change fact, that the illustration you posted felt too 30s for me. Matter of taste, really. I prefer darker (both in light and theme) illustrations & paintings generally.
I guess my point is - evoke the same feeling, but in a better form. And the more styles/artists, the better imo - you can have grimdark illustrations, you can have 30s pulp illustrations, you can have the 80s stuff...just all of them point to the fact that you are an adventurer, facing dangers in the Unknown.
Quote from: 1989;510974Elmore for the win.
My favorite Elmore piece is the one with the knight riding up on some orcs. That one captured my imagination. I like Elmore's earlier stuff for TSR a lot better than his later pieces. Some of it may be "Elmore fatigue" (similar to the W.A.R. fatigue one can get from WotC D&D and Pathfinder art), but mostly I think his later pieces tended to be stiff and posed (and Stevie Nicks'd up).
I'm going to get stoned, but I love the Easley covers of 1st ed AD&D.
(http://enrill.net/images/play-by-posts/pictures/ADD-Elmore-covers.jpg)
Quote from: Benoist;510992I'm going to get stoned, but I love the Elmore covers of 1st ed AD&D.
It's the one with the demon, or the one with the wizard?
Both aren't that bad, really. I prefer the wizard though.
Edit - nevermind. Hey - they aren't that bad. Classic 70ish fantasy book illustrations.
Easley, not Elmore. Edited.
Thematic accuracy?
(http://i.imgur.com/LsuCo.jpg)
Notice that neither of these characters is airborne, or wearing nine feet of tattered cloak in front of a wind machine, or looking badass in any way. I doubt any dice, or rules, or character sheets are being consulted in this image, but something very important and very bad is happening. OK, there was probably a wandering monster roll.
I miss this feeling.
Easley's cool for the epic stuff.
Quote from: Benoist;510992I'm going to get stoned, but I love the Easley covers of 1st ed AD&D.
(http://enrill.net/images/play-by-posts/pictures/ADD-Elmore-covers.jpg)
Big mother load of win, right there.
Quote from: TAFMSV;510997I miss this feeling.
Ahh that's what I'm talking about. :)
I love this.
The adventurer looks rather meh.
But the rest - now this is good. The eyes, or the lack of them, though...I can sense nightmares already.
You know, a good RPG has room for a lot of different art styles in its depiction.
Yup, heresy. Let the stoning begin. :cool:
Quote from: B.T.;510907This discussion is retarded. Pathfinder's art is not anime.
No, but it is very obviously anime-influenced in the same way as World of Warcraft. Additionally, your examples of anime art are very limited to s pecific cartoony style - consider the following anime/manga pieces -
(http://download.minitokyo.net/Blade.of.the.Immortal.336963.jpg)
(http://download.minitokyo.net/Vampire.Hunter.D.92176.jpg)
(http://static.desktopnexus.com/thumbnails/489342-bigthumbnail.jpg)
(http://www.mmogoldservice.com/contentImg/GuildWars2-1.jpg)
(http://www.over-drive-inc.com/shop/images/large/00301-00400/FG-AOW-BRS-001_LRG.jpg)
It's the specific elements of this style that are borrowed heavily by modern gaming culture -mostly videogame but it's been bleeding over into TTRPGs for a while - that cause the biggest consternation, namely the exaggerated features, implausible dress and armour, and impractical and sometimes frankly ridiculous weaponry. It's not that it looks bad, but it's such an obvious departure from reality that it destroys (for me anyways) the suspension of disbelief. I like my fantasy, at least the kind I'm trying to "live temporarily inside", to be internally consistent, to create a sense of reality. What Tolkien called "subcreation". There are accepted caveats playing in a fantasy world - magic, illusionary non-transitive, historically-based societies, an element of the supernatural, but it's through the parts of life that we can identify and relate to as players that a fantasy world gets it's definition.
Human beings relate to the world around them by seeing it through the lens of themselves and their own lives. This is why we anthropomorphize everything - animals, machines, even Gods. We can accept the fantastic, but only be applying or correlating it to the real world. the further art goes from that ideal, the less useful it is as a means for conveying that shared imaginary space.
YMMV, obviously.
As far as Pathfinder specifically, I don't mind the art. In fact I quite like quite a bit of it. But it doesn't inspire me, it doesn't present an image of an imaginary world, so much as cut scenes from a videogame or frames from a cartoon. Part of this, however, admittedly, is a barrier created by my age, I'm sure. The newest generation of gamers have been raised on anime, and thus maybe none of what I'm saying applies to them. It's an inherent part of their culture at this point. Still, by aping the aesthetics of videogames, RPGs are missing out on the chance to distinguish themselves from that hobby. I think that a game should, as much as possible, focus on how RPGs are unique and distinct from videogames and related hobbies, instead of trying to look just like them.
(http://www.mmogoldservice.com/contentImg/GuildWars2-1.jpg)
This one looks like something out of MtG, and I actually like MtG and it's flavour art - the whole epic "War of Magic" feel.
Quote from: Rincewind1;511024(http://www.mmogoldservice.com/contentImg/GuildWars2-1.jpg)
This one looks like something out of MtG, and I actually like MtG and it's flavour art - the whole epic "War of Magic" feel.
I think it's aweome, and could even see it as a nifty design for a chaos Warrior...but it doesn't scream "PC" to me in any way. It doesn't look like someone who could hold down a regular job in a medieval town or village, that has to eat three squares a day and crap over the bridge. I don't see this guy experiencing any "wonder" in encountering a Jabberwock for the first time, or feeling the fear and adrenaline of first stepping into that long, dark hallway of a dungeon.
(http://www.tsrinfo.net/archive/dd1/planes.jpg)
Quote from: TristramEvans;511028I think it's aweome, and could even see it as a nifty design for a chaos Warrior...but it doesn't scream "PC" to me in any way. It doesn't look like someone who could hold down a regular job in a medieval town or village, that has to eat three squares a day and crap over the bridge. I don't see this guy experiencing any "wonder" in encountering a Jabberwock for the first time, or feeling the fear and adrenaline of first stepping into that long, dark hallway of a dungeon.
Ah, tis I can agree with. But for monster manual? Great stuff.
Quote from: TAFMSV;510997Thematic accuracy?
(http://i.imgur.com/LsuCo.jpg)
Notice that neither of these characters is airborne,
Are you sure about that? There does NOT appear to be a floor underneath that adventurer.
Edit: fixed glaring typo.
Quote from: two_fishes;511035Are you sure about that? There does appear to be a floor underneath that adventurer.
Now that you mention it, the troll may be ROFL at the guy who just fell into the pit trap.
QuoteNow that you mention it, the troll may be ROFL at the guy who just fell into the pit trap.
It puts the lotion on its skin.
Quote from: Benoist;510992I'm going to get stoned, but I love the Easley covers of 1st ed AD&D.
You don't have to be stoned to appreciate those. Even a sober man can see their merits.
I know this is real late to respond to the OP given the thread drift. But vancian seems to be back I'm hoping they give Monte free reign with the magic system to give some kind of fun spin not seen yet as baseline not a varient in this game's version of Unearthed Arcana.
I'd be fine with something like MCAU. I doubt that's going to happen though. What is interesting is that notion that the wizard can use some sort of feat to keep using his magical powers apart of the Vancian casting. If you know Monte's stuff, that totally sounds like the disciplines of the Book of Experimental Might, doesn't it?
BTW welcome to the board. :)
Quote from: Benoist;511067I'd be fine with something like MCAU. I doubt that's going to happen though. What is interesting is that notion that the wizard can use some sort of feat to keep using to magical powers apart of the Vancian casting. If you know Monte's stuff, that totally sounds like the disciplines of the Book of Experimental Might, doesn't it?
BTW welcome to the board. :)
It does, personally I hope he sneaks in Arcana Evolved as baseline (pigs will fly) but a girl can hope.
Thanks for the welcome Benoist.
yep, but i was really hopeful for 3e and 4e too... :o
Quote from: mhensley;511076yep, but i was really hopeful for 3e and 4e too... :o
I'm really not a hater of 3e it's a little too fiddlely for me. I mostly played 2e so know that well and played 1e 2 or 3 times. My fantasy DnD would an unholy mix of 2e/3e with dash of 1e just for some good old fashioned home cookin'.
*Incredibly though I love FantasyCraft which is basically 3.0/3.5 turned to 11. I think I give it a pass because of the magic system and the flatter power curve.
More deliciousness from RPG.net. (http://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?612648-5e-rant-About-the-flavour-text/) Now that 5e has been announced, 4e has lost its shine, and people are starting to grumble that their unblemished edition was not, in fact, as great as they once thought. (Note that, as some of us expected, it was not until WotC told them that their edition sucked that they were enlightened as to the fact that 4e is shit.) In this particular case, the fluff text being a concern for people--the dissociated and metagame mechanics not making sense within the game world.
Also note that some of us were complaining about this for years and were brushed off with "JUST REFLUFF IT" and "4E IS FOR PLAYERS WITH IMAGINATIONS." (Speaking of which, where
is Darwinism?)
Topher, resident 4venger and LGBT identity politician snarks:
QuoteConversely, tying stuff down to flavor text and fluff that I didn't come up with and probably won't like, relentlessly pursuing the sort of simulation D&D has never been about, and arbitrarily anchoring mechanical effects to specific in-fiction effects "just because" is a great way to get me not to buy your game.
Topher
QuoteFor clarity, Pedantic's posting in this thread shows him to be my mirror universe counterpart, complete with eyepatch and Beard of Evil. The game system should not give a shit about someone's fragile, vulnerable, starving orphan-like sense of immersion.
Topher
QuoteQuoteHm, that doesn't answer my questions but it serves to draw lines in the sand. Everything Pedantic said sounded perfectly reasonable to me.
Whereas to me it sounds like the same sort of nonsense that gives us people complaining about the Prone condition on gelatinous cubes.
Topher
UGH WHY DO THINGS HAVE TO MAKE SENSE IT'S JUST A [VIDEO]GAME
QuoteQuoteWhat, in my mind's eye, is the fighter actually doing in the game world when he/she marks?
Here's my problem, guy: why does he always need to be doing the same thing? Fighting doesn't work like that.
It's like, what is the fighter actually doing when he attacks? That attack roll could represent anything from a beat in sixte, a disengage, and a thrust in quatre, to a screaming charge, to throwing a flaming torch end-over-end at someone.
LogicNinja appears to deliberately obfuscate the question.
QuoteThe idea that pretend elfgame rules can somehow be expected to provide such a model is mindboggling.
Then the derail.
QuoteSorry, if you don't track ammunition, food, water, encumbrance, or risk of getting dysentery based on hygiene, that violates verisimilitudationism.
Now the snark. 4vengers 4ssemble, nuke TBP now, etc.
You guys realize you are looking into the mirror of yourselves over the last 4 years, though, right?
QuoteAlso note that some of us were complaining about this for years and were brushed off with "JUST REFLUFF IT" and "4E IS FOR PLAYERS WITH IMAGINATIONS." (Speaking of which, where is Darwinism?)
Bleeding in the gutter after someone tried to persuade him for GURPS game.
Quote from: Abyssal Maw;511093You guys realize you are looking into the mirror of yourselves over the last 4 years, though, right?
Except that unlike Galileo, they lived to taste the bitter tears of the Church.
And yes, they - in RL, I know exactly one GM who GMs 4e, and we all pretty much have a solid opinion that it's a miniature board game. So I really have no horse in this race, and I am free to enjoy the butthurt.
Mmm.
The sweet, sweet tears of butthurt.
Quote from: B.T.;511092More deliciousness from RPG.net. (http://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?612648-5e-rant-About-the-flavour-text/) Now that 5e has been announced, 4e has lost its shine, and people are starting to grumble that their unblemished edition was not, in fact, as great as they once thought. (Note that, as some of us expected, it was not until WotC told them that their edition sucked that they were enlightened as to the fact that 4e is shit.) In this particular case, the fluff text being a concern for people--the dissociated and metagame mechanics not making sense within the game world.
Also note that some of us were complaining about this for years and were brushed off with "JUST REFLUFF IT" and "4E IS FOR PLAYERS WITH IMAGINATIONS." (Speaking of which, where is Darwinism?)
Topher, resident 4venger and LGBT identity politician snarks:
UGH WHY DO THINGS HAVE TO MAKE SENSE IT'S JUST A [VIDEO]GAME
LogicNinja appears to deliberately obfuscate the question.
Then the derail.
Now the snark. 4vengers 4ssemble, nuke TBP now, etc.
Does Topher post here? That guy needs to be put in a burlap sack.
Quote from: Abyssal Maw;511093You guys realize you are looking into the mirror of yourselves over the last 4 years, though, right?
No, it did happen to me for month or two in 2008 until I remembered I still had my books and something 4e will.never. have.OGL.
Quote from: 1989;511098Does Topher post here? That guy needs to put in a burlap sack.
I don't think he could take the heat, to be honest. Though it'd amusing for a time, in a twisted Darwinian way...
Quote from: Benoist;511100I don't think he could take the heat, to be honest. Though it'd amusing for a time, in a twisted Darwinian way...
I see what you did there.
Quote from: Benoist;511100I don't think he could take the heat, to be honest. Though it'd amusing for a time, in a twisted Darwinian way...
*Rimshot*
Quote from: Abyssal Maw;511093You guys realize you are looking into the mirror of yourselves over the last 4 years, though, right?
Blow me, you contemptible cunt.
QuoteDoes Topher post here? That guy needs to put in a burlap sack.
Matthew Shepard is so ten minutes ago. Better to give him the Tyler Clementi treatment.
Quote from: B.T.;511105Blow me, you contemptible cunt.
I guess AM touched a nerve there. Truth hurts, don't it?
Quote from: two_fishes;511106I guess AM touched a nerve there. Truth hurts, don't it?
:rolleyes:
u mad?
Quote from: Benoist;510992I'm going to get stoned, but I love the Easley covers of 1st ed AD&D.
I'll back you up on this one. They're either the best or second-best covers every produced for the core rules of the game. (For me, it's a tight competition between those covers and the original BECMI covers.)
Lol at the repartee with B and AncientGamer1970. AG is a cohost of the 1e podcast Roll for Initiative which is really interesting in that he is a hardcore Pathfinder lover. There was much chagrin in the RFI podcast community when he was added to the show, but he has since proven his Old School chops.
As for his "trollishness," he is a retired Marine (Army?) Sargeant which may explain his method of discourse and its effect on some.
As for the art of 5e, I do hope they do not go total anime/dungeonpunk. Like the AD&D stuff, a little bit of this, a little bit of that would be perfect. I suspect some the edition neutral books that are coming out over the next year will have hints of the direction of the art, they seem to be pre-edition releases. A good business idea, they can sell them to everyone in the D&D market, not just the 4e crew.
Quote from: Teazia;511122Lol at the repartee with B and AncientGamer1970. AG is a cohost of the 1e podcast Roll for Initiative which is really interesting in that he is a hardcore Pathfinder lover. There was much chagrin in the RFI podcast community when he was added to the show, but he has since proven his Old School chops.
As for his "trollishness," he is a retired Marine (Army?) Sargeant which may explain his method of discourse and its effect on some.
As for the art of 5e, I do hope they do not go total anime/dungeonpunk. Like the AD&D stuff, a little bit of this, a little bit of that would be perfect. I suspect some the edition neutral books that are coming out over the next year will have hints of the direction of the art, they seem to be pre-edition releases. A good business idea, they can sell them to everyone in the D&D market, not just the 4e crew.
It is what it is. The problem was settled in PM's.
Eh, I'd like to apologize for my "dumbass/GED" remarks earlier today. I was over the line. Don't know what got into me, there.
Quote from: Benoist;510992I'm going to get stoned, but I love the Easley covers of 1st ed AD&D.
I like that DMG cover better than the original Efreet cover but Trampier's PHB cover is far superior to that one. For all it's flaws, I also actually like the original MM cover because I think it captures what it is.
As for Easley in general, I always preferred the art of Easley (http://www.greggmrowka.com/gallery_web/jeffeasley/coGlry01.htm) and Parkinson (http://www.keithparkinson.com/main.php) to Elmore (http://larryelmore.com/) and Caldwell (http://www.clydecaldwell.com/pages/gallery.html). While they are all quite talented and both Elmore and Caldwell have certainly done some nice stuff, their characters usually looked heavily dated to the 1980s, with women who looked like they'd just spend a few hours with a blow-dryer and hair spray to get that perfect 80s hair look. I suspect that a lot of the dungeonpunk and video game inspired art is going to soon look just as dated.
Quote from: 1989;511133Eh, I'd like to apologize for my "dumbass/GED" remarks earlier today. I was over the line. Don't know what got into me, there.
LOL, it is all good... rest assured, I am a kewl guy in person even though I come off brusque online sometimes...
Quote from: 1989;511133Eh, I'd like to apologize for my "dumbass/GED" remarks earlier today. I was over the line. Don't know what got into me, there.
This isn't RPG.net.
Quote from: Abyssal Maw;511093You guys realize you are looking into the mirror of yourselves over the last 4 years, though, right?
What really happened was the people here were mostly arguing against the mechanics of the actual game, you know, all that stuff you said was in our heads and has been proven 100% right?
Topher and Logicninja haven't seen 5e, they have not even a beta version to rail against, they're just crying because they spent the last 4 years being 4vengers and although everyone already knew they were laughingstocks now WotC has joined in the laughter.
Quote from: CRKrueger;511138What really happened was the people here were mostly arguing against the mechanics of the actual game, you know, all that stuff you said was in our heads and has been proven 100% right?
Topher and Logicninja haven't seen 5e, they have not even a beta version to rail against, they're just crying because they spent the last 4 years being 4vengers and although everyone already knew they were laughingstocks now WotC has joined in the laughter.
And to not relish this long, drawn-out agonized howl of "my gods have forsaken me" from 4vengers is to deny yourself one of the simple pleasures in life.
Quote from: John Morrow;511134I
As for Easley in general, I always preferred the art of Easley (http://www.greggmrowka.com/gallery_web/jeffeasley/coGlry01.htm) and Parkinson (http://www.keithparkinson.com/main.php) to Elmore (http://larryelmore.com/) and Caldwell (http://www.clydecaldwell.com/pages/gallery.html). While they are all quite talented and both Elmore and Caldwell have certainly done some nice stuff, their characters usually looked heavily dated to the 1980s, with women who looked like they'd just spend a few hours with a blow-dryer and hair spray to get that perfect 80s hair look. I suspect that a lot of the dungeonpunk and video game inspired art is going to soon look just as dated.
For me this is part of te charm of Caldwell and Elmore. Especially with Caldwell it can be fun to play "guess the actress/model" for any of his cover art.
My favorite illustrator remains Stephen Fabian. His black and whites made the ravenloft line IMO. They also inspired countless adventures and villains for me. For cover art, I liked the guy who did the Dark Sun stuff (i believe it was Brom but I could be wrong).
Quote from: jeff37923;511162And to not relish this long, drawn-out agonized howl of "my gods have forsaken me" from 4vengers is to deny yourself one of the simple pleasures in life.
Schadenfreude. Tastes like chicken!
Those Elmore and and Caldwell galleries reminds me to put in my next 2e game the ancient Charisma enhancing relic called The Aqua Net. Tends to be readily available to adventurers who are willing to dig in the bowels of the Lost Warehouses of Kmart & Gemco.
Quote from: B.T.;511137This isn't RPG.net.
That's why I'm sure his apologies were sincere.
Quote from: Claudius;511179That's why I'm sure his apologies were sincere.
I agree. It loojed to me like he honetly regretted his post and offered an apology.
Quote from: B.T.;511137This isn't RPG.net.
NO shit - instead of being able to come to their senses, apologize, and get back to talking about games, one or both would have been banned.
Infinitely better than RPG.net.
Quote from: jeff37923;511162And to not relish this long, drawn-out agonized howl of "my gods have forsaken me" from 4vengers is to deny yourself one of the simple pleasures in life.
Amen, it may be in slightly bad taste, but keep it coming. I feel all warm and fuzzy inside.
Quote from: StormBringer;511170Schadenfreude. Tastes like chicken!
To take the joke further - KFC: Like Tastes Great?
Quote from: Rincewind1;511213To take the joke further - KFC: Like Tastes Great?
"I'll have a 12pc bucket of Shadenfreude, and for the sides I will take Sturm und Drang."
They probably serve real chicken in the KFCs over there, too. :)
Quote from: StormBringer;511377"I'll have a 12pc bucket of Shadenfreude, and for the sides I will take Sturm und Drang."
Wasn't that Elric's sword?
Quote from: 1989;5109651e replaced the original nasty covers with good Easley covers. That was a good call.
I really like Jeff Easley as an artist. The pencil sketch of the frost giant attacking in CM1 is one of my all time favorite D&D pics.
That being said, did this guy buy a fuckton of ochre paint and had to use it up before it all dried out?
Look at most of the classic Easley paintings. They are dominated by this color. It would have been nice to see a bit more color variation.
Quote from: thedungeondelver;511383Wasn't that Elric's sword?
Almost. :)
I'm waiting for the fireworks of full-on meltdown mode when WotC announces descending AC is back in 5e.
Quote from: StormBringer;511390Almost. :)
I'm waiting for the fireworks of full-on meltdown mode when WotC announces descending AC is back in 5e.
I should start a petition to bring back Thac0.
If I were you guys, I'd rather go around looking for Herbert West/Victor Frankenstein, to bring back Gygax, then do a big "I AM BACK TO MAKE 5e, BITCHES" marketing campaign.
Quote from: TristramEvans;511394I should start a petition to bring back Thac0.
I will sign it!
Quote from: Rincewind1;511404If I were you guys, I'd rather go around looking for Herbert West/Victor Frankenstein, to bring back Gygax, then do a big "I AM BACK TO MAKE 5e, BITCHES" marketing campaign.
The shambling undead corpse of Uncle Gary is here to kick ass and roll 20s, and he's all out of ass.
Gary wouldn't give much of a crap about 5e. He'd be busy running OD&D and Lejendary Adventures on his porch, and he'd have a blast at it.
Quote from: Benoist;511416Gary wouldn't give much of a crap about 5e. He'd be busy running OD&D and Lejendary Adventures on his porch, and he'd have a blast at it.
True dat.
And smokin' cigars and drinkin' wine the whole time!
Quote from: Benoist;511416Gary wouldn't give much of a crap about 5e. He'd be busy running OD&D and Lejendary Adventures on his porch, and he'd have a blast at it.
Oh, I dunno. He'd probably let WotC pay him to write an introduction addressed to the "perspicacious reader." He didn't seem averse to lending his name, if there was incentive. C&C is a good example. Everything Gary wrote for C&C was done in AD&D terms (or even Lejendary Adventure terms, in some cases), and converted to C&C by TLG prior to publication. I could've see him doing the same kind of thing for WotC, if the price was right.
But even if that had gone down, I expect you're right that he'd keep right on running
Lejendary Adventure and the occasional game of original D&D, even if a "5e Castle Greyhawk" came out.
True. He'd take the check and just get on with his gaming.
Damn. Makes me want to read LA tonight.
Quote from: StormBringer;511390Almost. :)
I'm waiting for the fireworks of full-on meltdown mode when WotC announces descending AC is back in 5e.
There is a "what is your favorite edition poll" on enworld now and 1E is far in the lead. So I will not be surprised if we see a lot of classic elements back in the game. However I have advocated going back to to a non d20 + modifier vs target number aporoach and people were pretty clear they like d20 with ascending AC. I suspect that is a widespread opinion.
Quote from: BedrockBrendan;511459There is a "what is your favorite edition poll" on enworld now and 1E is far in the lead.
You sonofabitch, you got me posting on Enworld now. :D
Quote from: BedrockBrendan;511459There is a "what is your favorite edition poll" on enworld now and 1E is far in the lead. So I will not be surprised if we see a lot of classic elements back in the game. However I have advocated going back to to a non d20 + modifier vs target number aporoach and people were pretty clear they like d20 with ascending AC. I suspect that is a widespread opinion.
Yeah, I know. Blech. :)
I understand that descending AC has a number of conceptual problems, especially for beginners, but getting rid of it is one part of my problem with recent editions. For starters, they haven't really gotten rid of it, they are just masking the numbers and getting rid of the chart. If your 10th level AD&D fighter needs an 18 to hit AC -6, how is that really different than gathering up 20pts of bonuses so you can hit AC 38 with that same 18 in 3.x? 10th level Fighter has a BaB of +10 on the first attack, they should have been able to wrangle an 18 Strength for another +4 by that time, and I am sure getting six more points together isn't really difficult, I just don't feel like scouring feats and expected magic items in a quasi-charop exercise at the moment. :)
Plus, the AC chart just makes for a really nice delimited game mechanics element. Leaving AC completely open ended like that means you will reach a point where the bonuses overwhelm the die roll.
Quote from: CRKrueger;511603You sonofabitch, you got me posting on Enworld now. :D
I had to stop even reading over there. Morrus and his fucking white on black colour scheme makes it impossible to look at other web pages for about ten minutes afterward. :)
Quote from: BedrockBrendan;511459There is a "what is your favorite edition poll" on enworld now and 1E is far in the lead. So I will not be surprised if we see a lot of classic elements back in the game. However I have advocated going back to to a non d20 + modifier vs target number aporoach and people were pretty clear they like d20 with ascending AC. I suspect that is a widespread opinion.
I am for ascending AC in the next incarnation of the game. I do not understand why blood pressures go up on this simple topic.
I prefer the descending scheme, but I'm kinda mystified by the importance that seems to be put on the ascending vs. descending question. I understand favoring one or the other, but it's pretty much the same damn thing. It would never be a make-or-break issue, as far as I'm concerned.
Quote from: BedrockBrendan;511459However I have advocated going back to to a non d20 + modifier vs target number aporoach and people were pretty clear they like d20 with ascending AC. I suspect that is a widespread opinion.
Are you thinking THAC0 or a chart look-up? Because, of course, there's nothing stopping you from doing a chart look-up with ascending AC and the difference between
THAC0 - d20 = AC you hit
d20 + modifier = AC you hit
is basically nonexistent, except most people find addition easier than subtraction, consider "bigger number = better" more intuitive, and don't like dealing with negative numbers. (Also, an ascending system makes it considerably easier to keep the attack roll mechanic unified with other resolution mechanics in the system.)
What's the advantage you're perceiving in a non-ascending AC, exactly?
Quote from: Justin Alexander;511723THAC0 - d20 = AC you hit
Wait...what? That's not how Thac0 worked.
Thac0 - AC = TN
Quote from: TristramEvans;511729Wait...what? That's not how Thac0 worked.
Thac0 - AC = TN
You realize that's the exact same equation with a little algebra done to it, right?
And you can only do that calculation if your DM tells you the AC you're trying to hit. You can do the same thing with ascending AC, of course:
AC - modifiers = TN
There really is no advantage to THAC0 and descending AC unless you've got a real fetish for negative numbers.
The problem with THAC0 was mainly how it was explained. According to the rules, you subtract the target's AC from your THAC0. Now you have your d20 roll--meet or exceed this number, and you hit. But wait, you need to add your bonuses to hit to your attack roll, so you're rolling 1d20 + modifiers vs. THAC0 - AC. This system is ridiculously complicated because it requires math on two ends of the equation and thus an extra step (and an extra headache for everyone playing). 3e's system of ascending AC was the best innovation that the edition brought.
QuotePlus, the AC chart just makes for a really nice delimited game mechanics element. Leaving AC completely open ended like that means you will reach a point where the bonuses overwhelm the die roll.
I'm not sure that this has to do with THAC0. Isn't AC in 2e just capped at -10? You could just stop 3e's AC at 30 if you wanted to.
I don't really get the obsession with charts, though. It seems like it just serves to obfuscate the math and make things harder on everyone. In 3e, I know how the system works, which means I can more quickly navigate the rules and take my actions. I can't imagine having to consult a chart every time I wanted to know if I could hit a certain AC.
Quote from: Ancientgamer1970;511716I am for ascending AC in the next incarnation of the game. I do not understand why blood pressures go up on this simple topic.
I can live with either approach but I find the d20 approach gets out of hand with the modifiers.
Quote from: Justin Alexander;511723Are you thinking THAC0 or a chart look-up? Because, of course, there's nothing stopping you from doing a chart look-up with ascending AC and the difference between
THAC0 - d20 = AC you hit
d20 + modifier = AC you hit
is basically nonexistent, except most people find addition easier than subtraction, consider "bigger number = better" more intuitive, and don't like dealing with negative numbers. (Also, an ascending system makes it considerably easier to keep the attack roll mechanic unified with other resolution mechanics in the system.)
What's the advantage you're perceiving in a non-ascending AC, exactly?
(was thinking mainly of THAC0)
Actually i have no problem with inverting thaco somehow so AC isn't descending. It isnt the ascending aspect that bothers me about d20. I would prefer a system where there is no or minimal calculations on the spot. Addition is easier but i have dfinitely seen guys slow the game down when adding their whopping modifiers to a d20 roll. I also dont like the escalating effect d20 produces (skill challenges with enormous DR to handle the 15+crowd). Not sure going back to pure THAC0 is the way to go. Just something more like it, where i am not adding to my roll in play, but focusing on the number i need to reach on 1-20 to hit or succeed. I would even be happy with a roll under on a d20 with your attribute plus rank/x number levels) to hit or succeed---though this would impact other aspects of the game like AC.
Quote from: StormBringer;511714Plus, the AC chart just makes for a really nice delimited game mechanics element. Leaving AC completely open ended like that means you will reach a point where the bonuses overwhelm the die roll.
I solved the open-ended bit in Microlite74 by simply closing it off the way it was in TSR D&D. (There was nothing except convention stopping descending AC style rolls from being just as open-ended in TSR D&D.)
Physcial combat bonus for fighters comes from Level divided by 2 (+1 to +10), up to +5 in Fighter Class bonuses, and you could get a bonus from a magic weapon of up to +5. Bonuses from circumstances are generally going to be +1 to +5,. That means the hit bonus is going to max out at +25 or so -- and that one needs to be a 20th level fighter with a +5 weapon.
Quote from: StormBringer;511714Plus, the AC chart just makes for a really nice delimited game mechanics element. Leaving AC completely open ended like that means you will reach a point where the bonuses overwhelm the die roll.
This is important for me. Knowing that AC capped at -10 was important because it was no longer a game facing the open ended issue of power inflation eventually overwhelming the die. In turn such inflation also made char-op an important factor. Power creep becomes a bigger issue with an inflation factor; such games rapidly fall upon a power treadmill. And then you'll get Feats debates and Prestige Classes debates and the like soon after... and then the whining, oh the whining!
:nono:
Now how you write it doesn't bother me. Whether it's AC -10 as a cap, or Def +20 as a cap, either is fine. But if people do like counting up (and people get confused with Armor Class's non-intuitive abstraction) then use the latter Defense+ system.
Quote from: BedrockBrendan;511739I can live with either approach but I find the d20 approach gets out of hand with the modifiers.
Oh hell yes. When the d20 becomes an afterthought modifier to the bonus something has gone wrong.
Another part that gets lost using THAC0 or the d20 method is the concept of the repeated 20 representing the limitation of high defense benefits.
AC 20 through 26 would have to be treated the same in d20 to simulate this.
Quote from: StormBringer;511714For starters, they haven't really gotten rid of it, they are just masking the numbers and getting rid of the chart.
This makes no sense to me. By making the descending AC into ascending AC, they didn't "get rid" of descending AC, but they just "masked" it with ascending numbers? Is that what you are saying?
QuoteIf your 10th level AD&D fighter needs an 18 to hit AC -6, how is that really different than gathering up 20pts of bonuses so you can hit AC 38 with that same 18 in 3.x?
Mathematically they are they are the same. They whole point is that mathematically ascending and descending AC are the same, but ascending AC is more intuitive and the mathe is easier and faster at the table for the majority of people, especially once you get into negative ACs. These really are a pain at the table. This may not be true for you, but don't pretend it's not true for many people. Many, many people aren't great at math and bungle even simple calculations, if they have to do them quickly, especially if they are excited.
QuotePlus, the AC chart just makes for a really nice delimited game mechanics element. Leaving AC completely open ended like that means you will reach a point where the bonuses overwhelm the die roll.
As someone else pointed out this is really no different from capping ascending AC at 30.
Quote from: Justin Alexander;511723What's the advantage you're perceiving in a non-ascending AC, exactly?
Already lots of good things said: it's a self-contained scale that tops at -10. It's a single digit scale that I can make instantly sense of. 1-9 is natural, -something means there's something supernatural or magical happening. It's a scale spread on 20 numbers, so it meshes well with the d20 as a randomizer.
Now as for THAC0, I actually don't use it. It's a reference number in the Appendix E of the DMG to me. Nothing more. THAC0 does not appear on my D&D character sheets at all. This is not what the game is about.
What I have is the charts on my side of the DM screen. When players attack a creature, they add what few modifiers they got and know about:
maybe a Strength or Dexterity single digit number to
maybe a single digit bonus for a weapon they are familiar with (magical and/or spec, if they have access to them at all), (with
maybe a single digit circumstancial modifier from spells, terrain whatnot that I will usually add myself once the player declares the outcome). The reality is that 99% of the time, the total modifier will be either non-existent, or a very low, clear single-digit number to deal with.
That's it.
That's all the player has to worry about.
Then, I just check my charts on my side of the screen and indicate whether the attack or maneuver succeeds, or not, describing what happens in the process.
This beats THAC0, this beats Ascending ACs calculations, everything. It makes the game be about the game, not the numbers. It frees some thinking space for the players to think tactically, by which I mean of course, really tactically, not by gaming the numbers, but by (role) playing the situation their characters are in.
It works. Period.
Spot on, Ben. that's exactly how I handle it.
Quote from: Benoist;511762It works. Period.
And no functional difference with the equivalent Ascending AC system. It boils down to what you like better, looking it up on a cross-indexed chart or using a to hit bonus and the AC as a target number to hit.
The only place where there is a mathematical difference in any edition of older D&D is the six repeated 20s on the AD&D charts. And you could handle that with ascending AC if you wanted too by remembering a second rule, if you roll a natural 20 add +5 to your roll in addition to your to hit bonus.
Quote from: Benoist;511762Already lots of good things said: it's a self-contained scale that tops at -10. It's a single digit scale that I can make instantly sense of. 1-9 is natural, -something means there's something supernatural or magical happening. It's a scale spread on 20 numbers, so it meshes well with the d20 as a randomizer.
Now as for THAC0, I actually don't use it. It's a reference number in the Appendix E of the DMG to me. Nothing more. THAC0 does not appear on my D&D character sheets at all. This is not what the game is about.
What I have is the charts on my side of the DM screen. When players attack a creature, they add what few modifiers they got and know about: maybe a Strength or Dexterity single digit number to maybe a single digit bonus for a weapon they are familiar with (magical and/or spec, if they have access to them at all), (with maybe a single digit circumstancial modifier from spells, terrain whatnot that I will usually add myself once the player declares the outcome). The reality is that 99% of the time, the total modifier will be either non-existent, or a very low, clear single-digit number to deal with.
That's it.
That's all the player has to worry about.
Then, I just check my charts on my side of the screen and indicate whether the attack or maneuver succeeds, or not, describing what happens in the process.
This beats THAC0, this beats Ascending ACs calculations, everything. It makes the game be about the game, not the numbers. It frees some thinking space for the players to think tactically, by which I mean of course, really tactically, not by gaming the numbers, but by (role) playing the situation their characters are in.
It works. Period.
Well said but s you said, whatever works for that particular group. I do not have the time and inclination to worry about what is better or whatever. In any case, both work and both are successful in the D&D game.
Quote from: StormBringer;511714I had to stop even reading over there. Morrus and his fucking white on black colour scheme makes it impossible to look at other web pages for about ten minutes afterward. :)
Didn't take me long to get banned out of a thread. :D
Quote from: Benoist;511762What I have is the charts on my side of the DM screen. [. . .] Then, I just check my charts on my side of the screen and indicate whether the attack or maneuver succeeds, or not, describing what happens in the process.
Relying on charts is just as bad as relying on grids and minis.
Quote from: CRKrueger;511802Didn't take me long to get banned out of a thread. :D
What thread? i got to see what went down.
Quote from: Rum Cove;511809Relying on charts is just as bad as relying on grids and minis.
Not if you have them right in front of you on the gm screen. It actually does makes things move faster than waiting for players to add his d20 modifier IMO. I didn't use the matrices but I used THAcO on my own plotted out chart for ease of reference. This was after of ten years of 3E. Just a couple of sessions back into 2e and I was sold that ascending AC wasn't an objective advancement. It was just another way to do things, and had flaws of its own.
Quote from: Benoist;511762THAC0 does not appear on my D&D character sheets at all. This is not what the game is about.
What I have is the charts on my side of the DM screen. When players attack a creature, they add what few modifiers they got and know about: maybe a Strength or Dexterity single digit number to maybe a single digit bonus for a weapon they are familiar with (magical and/or spec, if they have access to them at all), (with maybe a single digit circumstancial modifier from spells, terrain whatnot that I will usually add myself once the player declares the outcome). The reality is that 99% of the time, the total modifier will be either non-existent, or a very low, clear single-digit number to deal with.
That's it.
That's all the player has to worry about.
Then, I just check my charts on my side of the screen and indicate whether the attack or maneuver succeeds, or not, describing what happens in the process.
This beats THAC0, this beats Ascending ACs calculations, everything. It makes the game be about the game, not the numbers. It frees some thinking space for the players to think tactically, by which I mean of course, really tactically, not by gaming the numbers, but by (role) playing the situation their characters are in.
It works. Period.
Obscuring the math and deliberately keeping the players in the dark about their capabilities is not what "the game is about." I'm not one of the maladjusted My Little Pony viewers who shits himself at the thought of the DM having more power than the players, but I expect to have an idea of what my character can and cannot do.
The system that you described also sounds like an enormous amount of work. Perhaps it works for you, but I can't imagine trying to run a game where a character rolls and I consult a chart, cross-index it with the monster's AC, and then try to determine if the attack hits.
Quote from: Rum Cove;511809Relying on charts is just as bad as relying on grids and minis.
No way. Grids/minis change the game from an imaginative exercise/shared daydream to a board game.
Quote from: Rum Cove;511809Relying on charts is just as bad as relying on grids and minis.
LOL Whatever dude. :D
Quote from: B.T.;511812Obscuring the math and deliberately keeping the players in the dark about their capabilities is not what "the game is about." I'm not one of the maladjusted My Little Pony viewers who shits himself at the thought of the DM having more power than the players, but I expect to have an idea of what my character can and cannot do.
You can do anything a character in your situation could do.
Just visualize the environment, imagine what's happening, and tell me how you react.
You're going to love it. It's called "role playing".
Quote from: B.T.;511812The system that you described also sounds like an enormous amount of work. Perhaps it works for you, but I can't imagine trying to run a game where a character rolls and I consult a chart, cross-index it with the monster's AC, and then try to determine if the attack hits.
I'm sorry you are mentally crippled and can't look at a line on a table. I feel for you.
Quote from: 1989;511819No way. Grids/minis change the game from an imaginative exercise/shared daydream to a board game.
No they don't? >.>
Quote from: Rincewind1;511821No they don't? >.>
Well, wargame, at least.
Miniatures = wargame.
Quote from: 1989;511822Well, wargame, at least.
Miniatures = wargame.
So Talisman is a wargame as well, 'cos they are miniatures in it? Or Call of Cthulhu becomes wargame too if you use minis? (I never ever did, but I heard a guy who did so - just 'cos it was cool).
Say, what's the colour of the sky on planet Dosn'tmkaesnsee.
If your suspension of disbelief is under such hard attack because of bunch of miniatures, or descending/ascending AC (pick your side!), I think you may need a fucking RP Spirit Injection. Contact your local gaming club for that.
It's funny, all I really did was disagree with Umbran.
In here. (http://www.enworld.org/forum/new-horizons-upcoming-edition-d-d/317714-return-player-man-beneath-mask.html)
Quote from: CRKrueger;511824It's funny, all I really did was disagree with Umbran.
In here. (http://www.enworld.org/forum/new-horizons-upcoming-edition-d-d/317714-return-player-man-beneath-mask.html)
Troublesome lout as always, eh? Punk.
;)
LoL, I see your posts now, and the response to it. "ZOMG THE GMS HABIT NOOOOOOOOOOOO I WANT THE GAME THE SAEM FOR EVERYONE"
Quote from: Rincewind1;511823So Talisman is a wargame as well, 'cos they are miniatures in it? Or Call of Cthulhu becomes wargame too if you use minis? (I never ever did, but I heard a guy who did so - just 'cos it was cool).
Say, what's the colour of the sky on planet Dosn'tmkaesnsee.
If your suspension of disbelief is under such hard attack because of bunch of miniatures, or descending/ascending AC (pick your side!), I think you may need a fucking RP Spirit Injection. Contact your local gaming club for that.
Damn right, I don't want to play Call of Cthulhu Tactics.
Quote from: 1989;511826Damn right, I don't want to play Call of Cthulhu Tactics.
If you think that using minis turns RPG into a Wargame, rather then just help visualize the situation (and with proper minis - help visualize the chracter), then as I said, send me a postcard from Outer Space, because that's where you are floating about now.
Honestly, I never thought I'd be defending use of minis in an RPG game, but this is just as retarded argument as 4e mechanics.
Quote from: 1989;511826Damn right, I don't want to play Call of Cthulhu Tactics.
Um.... hrmmm....
I might?
Quote from: Benoist;511820You can do anything a character in your situation could do.
Just visualize the environment, imagine what's happening, and tell me how you react.
You're going to love it. It's called "role playing".
Because you're not deliberately misunderstanding what I'm saying or anything like that.
Quote from: Werekoala;511830Um.... hrmmm....
I might?
Buy Arkham Horror then :P
Quote from: CRKrueger;511824It's funny, all I really did was disagree with Umbran.
In here. (http://www.enworld.org/forum/new-horizons-upcoming-edition-d-d/317714-return-player-man-beneath-mask.html)
You made the fatal mistake of not singing the all-editions kumbaya along with everybody else.
Don't do that again.
Quote from: CRKrueger;511824It's funny, all I really did was disagree with Umbran.
In here. (http://www.enworld.org/forum/new-horizons-upcoming-edition-d-d/317714-return-player-man-beneath-mask.html)
Wow, that is seriously cowardly. So you say you got booted from the thread?
And all silent like, nothing to the casual reader to indicate anything other than you'd simply stopped replying?
Even RPGnet isn't that fucking low.
Quote from: Rincewind1;511828If you think that using minis turns RPG into a Wargame, rather then just help visualize the situation (and with proper minis - help visualize the chracter), then as I said, send me a postcard from Outer Space, because that's where you are floating about now.
Honestly, I never thought I'd be defending use of minis in an RPG game, but this is just as retarded argument as 4e mechanics.
Draw a quick sketch on scrap paper and be done with it.
Quote from: CRKrueger;511824It's funny, all I really did was disagree with Umbran.
In here. (http://www.enworld.org/forum/new-horizons-upcoming-edition-d-d/317714-return-player-man-beneath-mask.html)
Papers & Paychecks made this joke about ENW moderation. You might find it amusing.
Quote from: PapersAndPaychecksPosting on ENWorld may lead to mod replies in a funny colour font. These replies will be opinion statements by individual mods who have a strictly limited allocation of clue, but they will nevertheless constitute the absolute last word on pain of banning. Feel free to PM me if there's anything about this that you don't understand, in which case I will be delighted to give you an arrogant, ignorant brushoff that demonstrates I never had the faintest clue what you were talking about in the first place.
Quote from: Rincewind1;511828If you think that using minis turns RPG into a Wargame, rather then just help visualize the situation (and with proper minis - help visualize the chracter), then as I said, send me a postcard from Outer Space, because that's where you are floating about now.
Honestly, I never thought I'd be defending use of minis in an RPG game, but this is just as retarded argument as 4e mechanics.
LOL, that is too funny but I do agree with that statement...
Quote from: 1989;511822Well, wargame, at least.
Miniatures = wargame.
LOL, you are beyond the definiton of LAME. This is one of the most ignorant comments I have seen in a long time.
Quote from: Rincewind1;511823So Talisman is a wargame as well, 'cos they are miniatures in it? Or Call of Cthulhu becomes wargame too if you use minis? (I never ever did, but I heard a guy who did so - just 'cos it was cool).
Say, what's the colour of the sky on planet Dosn'tmkaesnsee.
If your suspension of disbelief is under such hard attack because of bunch of miniatures, or descending/ascending AC (pick your side!), I think you may need a fucking RP Spirit Injection. Contact your local gaming club for that.
I use minis for CoC. I like some of the monster minis even though they are to scale with the description in the main book...
Quote from: B.T.;511812Obscuring the math and deliberately keeping the players in the dark about their capabilities is not what "the game is about." I'm not one of the maladjusted My Little Pony viewers who shits himself at the thought of the DM having more power than the players, but I expect to have an idea of what my character can and cannot do.
The system that you described also sounds like an enormous amount of work. Perhaps it works for you, but I can't imagine trying to run a game where a character rolls and I consult a chart, cross-index it with the monster's AC, and then try to determine if the attack hits.
I agree with you. I love AD&D, but descending Armor Class was the one aspect that I absolutely
loathed about the system. Using it always slowed down the combats in my game. I just don't need the headache, so now it's ascending Armor Class for me.
Quote from: Ancientgamer1970;511861LOL, you are beyond the definiton of LAME. This is one of the most ignorant comments I have seen in a long time.
Where would one find miniatures? Just wargames.
Mixing wargames into the RPGs.
Don't get me wrong, I have hundreds of miniatures and play some wargames, myself, but get the miniatures out of my RPGs.
Some people just feel that RPGs never evolved much from a wargame. They see an RPG as wargame where you control one man. Give him a bit of story and voila . . . an RPG!
THE TEARS. THE TEARS.!!!!
A MUST-READ:
http://www.enworld.org/forum/new-horizons-upcoming-edition-d-d/317796-has-5e-restored-diminished-your-faith-wizards-coast.html (http://www.enworld.org/forum/new-horizons-upcoming-edition-d-d/317796-has-5e-restored-diminished-your-faith-wizards-coast.html)
Quote from: J Arcane;511834Wow, that is seriously cowardly. So you say you got booted from the thread?
And all silent like, nothing to the casual reader to indicate anything other than you'd simply stopped replying?
Even RPGnet isn't that fucking low.
You got it, a direct e-mail from a no-reply address telling me I got banned from the thread, no mention of it in the thread itself. A stealth ban for the guy that was disagreeing with him, basically.
Quote from: CRKrueger;511869You got it, a direct e-mail from a no-reply address telling me I got banned from the thread, no mention of it in the thread itself. A stealth ban for the guy that was disagreeing with him, basically.
Wait a sec, it was the mod?
LoL
Quote from: B.T.;511738I don't really get the obsession with charts, though. It seems like it just serves to obfuscate the math and make things harder on everyone.
In running OD&D, I have found the to-hit chart to be a useful adjunct in the very specific scenario in which I'm DMing an encounter featuring a large number of heterogeneous monsters.
Quote from: BedrockBrendan;511740Not sure going back to pure THAC0 is the way to go. Just something more like it, where i am not adding to my roll in play, but focusing on the number i need to reach on 1-20 to hit or succeed.
Unless you know the AC you're trying to hit, you're still having to apply your modifier (THAC0 or your attack bonus) to the die roll. If you do know the AC you're trying to hit, then you can calculate the die roll you need.
There's literally no difference between the two systems in this regard (except that one requires negative numbers).
Quote from: Opaopajr;511753This is important for me. Knowing that AC capped at -10 was important because it was no longer a game facing the open ended issue of power inflation eventually overwhelming the die.
But that's the exact opposite of what happens when you cap AC. The THAC0 limit was 1. Drop a +5 sword on there and +5 from a Girdle of Giant Strength and you've universally dwarfed the d20 roll (you hit -10 AC on anything except a natural 1).
In a non-capped system, there is always a range of 18 armor classes for which the d20 roll remains relevant.
Quote from: Benoist;511762Already lots of good things said: it's a self-contained scale that tops at -10.
There's nothing about descending AC that mandates a cap. There's nothing about ascending AC which prevents a cap.
QuoteIt's a single digit scale that I can make instantly sense of. 1-9 is natural, -something means there's something supernatural or magical happening.
Could be interesting to implement it that way. I'm fairly certain that's not how it works in AD&D, though. Plate + Shield = AC 2. Dex of 17 gives you a -3 adjustment for an AC -1 with nothing supernatural or magical in the neighborhood.
(I don't remember the Dex adjustment to AC being capped by armor type like it was in 3rd Edition. But it's been awhile and that rule may be tucked away somewhere I'm not spotting it.)
QuoteThen, I just check my charts on my side of the screen and indicate whether the attack or maneuver succeeds, or not, describing what happens in the process. This beats THAC0, this beats Ascending ACs calculations, everything.
Kill me now. I have enough stuff to handle as DM without managing duplicate copies of the players' character sheets behind my screen.
But if you prefer that method, there is, of course, nothing about ascending AC which prevents you from creating a reference chart for it.
What the fuck is wrong with people and the whole mentality of "I won't be able to play when support ends"??? Do those people never make their own adventures, or what? It's not like Fahrenheit's 451 Word Police will arrive and burn the books.
Quote from: CRKrueger;511824It's funny, all I really did was disagree with Umbran.
In here. (http://www.enworld.org/forum/new-horizons-upcoming-edition-d-d/317714-return-player-man-beneath-mask.html)
Well, see, disagreeing with Umbran was your first mistake. The guy's mentally deficient, laughably ignorant, and has a very long track record of using his mod powers to ban people who disagree with him.
I'll see if I can dig up the thread where he banned someone for using the term "pixel-bitch" because he thought they were calling another poster a bitch.
I had quite a few "entertaining" exchanges with Umbran myself, on the board and backstage.
Yeah, I vaguely remember from my time over there that most of the mods seemed like reasonably bright and reasonable people, but one of them was just stone stupid. Was it Umbran or were there two stone stupid mods? Two is possible.
Quote from: Benoist;511876I had quite a few "entertaining" exchanges with Umbran myself, on the board and backstage.
Post on Wikileaks imo.
Quote from: Justin Alexander;511873But that's the exact opposite of what happens when you cap AC. The THAC0 limit was 1. Drop a +5 sword on there and +5 from a Girdle of Giant Strength and you've universally dwarfed the d20 roll (you hit -10 AC on anything except a natural 1).
In a non-capped system, there is always a range of 18 armor classes for which the d20 roll remains relevant.
It can happen, but I find this wrong in actual experience. It is far easier for me to handle distribution of magical items and explain the apex of system probability than it is for me to manage player desperation from feeling they can never get a grasp of the world's limits. What you just described is towards the apex of the games limits. So what? There's nothing wrong about this because not only is it mostly unattainable, it is further impractical to run at a non-pageant level (essentially it becomes a non-simulative mock up of avatars doing battle).
If you are THAC0 1
and have +5 weapon whatever
and +5 accessory whatever, you aren't in the same game tier as "adventurers" in a dungeon epic; you're a demigod off killing other demigods. And at that point there's plane shifting, save v. death flying all over the place, and whole church organizations throwing religious champions at you all day -- and that's before you fight any of the other real gods who are out destroying your support base. In other words: this example has no real bearing on actual D&D level play because at that point it becomes a silly arena game where people completely neglect the ramifications of such a powered tier. In other words, a pageant play. And I don't play D&D to really secretly play Nobilis.
All game system break by sheer expansion of numbers into infinity. Period. This is a maxim of design. Infinity cannot be contained and managed in such finite systems. We must learn to deal with this and prioritize either a) power inflation and expect eventual collapse
or b) embracing game limits. These are our choices; it's time we own up to these facts.
Quote from: Justin Alexander;511873Unless you know the AC you're trying to hit, you're still having to apply your modifier (THAC0 or your attack bonus) to the die roll. If you do know the AC you're trying to hit, then you can calculate the die roll you need.
Generally how i play is the gm tells you the AC or you tell the gm your d20 roll and your thac0 which he compares to the monsters AC. In either case this stuff (including your modifiers for str or magic items) can all be calculated before hand. I used the THAC0 calculator off the ravenloft character sheet from feast of goblyns and had a copy of esch players thaco chart in front of me. This made things pretty easy for me (this chart plots out your to hit number for every AC). So most of the calculations were made prior to play, whereas with d20 you always add the modifier to the d20 roll during.
Going back to 2E after nearly ten years of not playing it, i thought thac0 was going to suck. But i found I prefered it a lot to the d20 system, and tge NWP system of rolling umder stat with rank i reslly liked a lot more than the d20 skills.
Quote from: Opaopajr;511887It can happen, but I find this wrong in actual experience. It is far easier for me to handle distribution of magical items and explain the apex of system probability than it is for me to manage player desperation from feeling they can never get a grasp of the world's limits.
Well, see, that's different than what you said the first time. What you're saying now (albeit through a lot of superfluous language) is that you like caps because you like caps.
Can't really argue with that.
QuoteAll game system break by sheer expansion of numbers into infinity. Period. This is a maxim of design.
Which, I suppose, would theoretically be a problem if anybody was seriously suggesting creatures be given AC ∞. But outside of absurd slippery slope arguments, that's not what an open-ended system looks like in actual practice.
CHaRTs, cHArts, chARtz! You will bow to my CHARTZ!
I could see them useful as a supplement in some corner cases, but for general adjudication purposes, THAC0 or even better BAB work better fo me. In reality though, they are much the same, just structured a different way.
Quote from: Justin Alexander;511905Which, I suppose, would theoretically be a problem if anybody was seriously suggesting creatures be given AC ∞. But outside of absurd slippery slope arguments, that's not what an open-ended system looks like in actual practice.
I just found ACs and target numbers got too high for my tastes in d20. i would have prefered a hard cap on the modifer.
Quote from: Ancientgamer1970;511861LOL, you are beyond the definiton of LAME. This is one of the most ignorant comments I have seen in a long time.
Sorry AG, his statement has some merit, and I can point you to many many far far more ignorant things on these here interwebs.
IMO Minis = MAGEKNIGHT and MAUSOLEUMS! Not really D&D.
Cheers
Quote from: Ancientgamer1970;510818I hope that add a lot of that Anime art into 5th edition so all these people WILL NOT PLAY because of the art. LOL
You should really consider having an orthopedist take a look at your knee - that constant jerking can't possibly be good for it.
Quote from: Rincewind1;510956RPGs illustrations could learn a lot from comics.
Wow, you finally said something with which I agree.
Quote from: thedungeondelver;510929I would love for 5e to be filled with illustrations from David Sutherland, honestly :(
If we're going to bring back artists from the dead, I vote for this guy (http://black-vulmea.blogspot.com/2012/02/wednesday-wyeth.html).
Quote from: 1989;510965Still, [Elmore] rocks, along with the other painters from that era.
"The Otus/Elmore rule: When adding something new to the campaign, try and imagine how Erol Otus would depict it. If you can, that's far enough...it's a good idea. If you can picture a Larry Elmore version...it's far too mundane and boring, excise immediately." - #Kellri
Quote from: Benoist;511820Just visualize the environment, imagine what's happening, and tell me how you react.
That's the ultralight players handbook right there.
Quote from: Black Vulmea;511917That's the ultralight players handbook right there.
And that's all we need.
Let the DM handle the rest.
WotC has been saying that, for 5e, they want to move more towards a plain-language approach, removing much of the metagame jargon.
There are artists. Good artists. And then... there's Frank Frazetta.
THAT is what I want for 5e.
Sorry dude, but I'm just not that into gay porn.
Quote from: J Arcane;511926Sorry dude, but I'm just not that into gay porn.
That word, I do not think it means what you think it means.
NSFW Frazetta Painting for the Cisgendered Male
Not Gay Porn (http://frankfrazetta.org/images/f42.jpg)
Nope (http://frankfrazetta.org/images/frank_frazetta_familiars.jpg)
Not even close (http://frankfrazetta.org/images/frank_frazetta_primitivebeauty.jpg)
Ok, well maybe just a tad (http://frankfrazetta.org/images/frank_frazetta_atlantis.jpg)
Wow! Look at the size of those pussies!
Quote from: jeff37923;511934Wow! Look at the size of those pussies!
But she's wearing underpants. :huhsign:
Pish. Dude is trying way too hard, that's a beard if ever I saw one.
Also, that is not underwear. That is the ghost of underwear. Brought back to life solely to provide just enough fabric to generate massive cameltoe.
Quote from: Black Vulmea;511910You should really consider having an orthopedist take a look at your knee - that constant jerking can't possibly be good for it.
Whatever lets you sleep better at night, SHAMAN...
Not to sound like a moral guardian, but could we avoid the NSFW titty pics (or at least spoiler them or something)?
Quote from: CRKrueger;511802Didn't take me long to get banned out of a thread. :D
Nice! :hatsoff:
They must be taking a cue from tBP these days. I imagine it wasn't terribly difficult to get kicked off a while back, I just never gave enough of a shit to see where the envelope lies.
Quote from: Opaopajr;511887It can happen, but I find this wrong in actual experience. It is far easier for me to handle distribution of magical items and explain the apex of system probability than it is for me to manage player desperation from feeling they can never get a grasp of the world's limits. What you just described is towards the apex of the games limits. So what? There's nothing wrong about this because not only is it mostly unattainable, it is further impractical to run at a non-pageant level (essentially it becomes a non-simulative mock up of avatars doing battle).
If you are THAC0 1 and have +5 weapon whatever and +5 accessory whatever, you aren't in the same game tier as "adventurers" in a dungeon epic; you're a demigod off killing other demigods. And at that point there's plane shifting, save v. death flying all over the place, and whole church organizations throwing religious champions at you all day -- and that's before you fight any of the other real gods who are out destroying your support base. In other words: this example has no real bearing on actual D&D level play because at that point it becomes a silly arena game where people completely neglect the ramifications of such a powered tier. In other words, a pageant play. And I don't play D&D to really secretly play Nobilis.
All game system break by sheer expansion of numbers into infinity. Period. This is a maxim of design. Infinity cannot be contained and managed in such finite systems. We must learn to deal with this and prioritize either a) power inflation and expect eventual collapse or b) embracing game limits. These are our choices; it's time we own up to these facts.
This not only epitomizes my views, it is now the mantra for all my future game designs. :)
Quote from: StormBringer;511951This not only epitomizes my views, it is now the mantra for all my future game designs. :)
Grand, as if we needed more retroclones.
;)
Quote from: Black Vulmea;511913If we're going to bring back artists from the dead, I vote for this guy (http://black-vulmea.blogspot.com/2012/02/wednesday-wyeth.html).
I would have sworn Wyeth was in the public domain. I browsed through a ton of Franklin Booth stuff to grab some very evocative imagery. That is an artist that should have been doing RPG stuff all along.
Quote from: Black Vulmea;511915"The Otus/Elmore rule: When adding something new to the campaign, try and imagine how Erol Otus would depict it. If you can, that's far enough...it's a good idea. If you can picture a Larry Elmore version...it's far too mundane and boring, excise immediately." - #Kellri
Meh. I dig a bunch of Otus' work, but like anything, moderation is best. All dripping-slime-skeleton-thin-gonzo-magic-users all the time is just as bad as too much 80s feathered-and-blow-dried Elmore or Parkinson.
Quote from: Rincewind1;511953Grand, as if we needed more retroclones.
;)
You will only need the one, as soon as I am done writing it. :D
Quote from: StormBringer;511957You will only need the one, as soon as I am done writing it. :D
Do I sense 30 years of grudging but loving labour, that will be released after your death, only to be marked "Not quite as good as Sorcerer", then forgotten for 50 years, until re - discovered and hailed The Legendary Old School RPG?
Quote from: Ancientgamer1970;511937Whatever lets you sleep better at night, SHAMAN...
Ohmigawd, you've outed me as possessing another screen name . . . or you would have, if I hadn't done it myself in my second post (http://www.therpgsite.com/showthread.php?p=505473#post505473).
Quote from: Ancientgamer1970;511937Whatever lets you sleep better at night, SHAMAN...
Black Vulmea is William Shatner?
Quote from: TristramEvans;511970Black Vulmea is William Shatner?
There's . . . no . . . way . . . to be sure!
Quote from: Ancientgamer1970;511937Whatever lets you sleep better at night, SHAMAN...
It's hilarious when you reveal a poster's other names. Kinda like you did with DungeonDelver's real name. Tell you what, why don't you try that with Pundit next and see where that gets you? ;)
Quote from: Black Vulmea;512000There's . . . no . . . way . . . to be sure!
Khaaan! (http://khaaan.com/)
Quote from: B.T.;511940Not to sound like a moral guardian, but could we avoid the NSFW titty pics (or at least spoiler them or something)?
Fixed it up for ya.
Quote from: CRKrueger;511932That word, I do not think it means what you think it means.
NSFW Frazetta Painting for the Cisgendered Male
Not Gay Porn (http://frankfrazetta.org/images/f42.jpg)
Nope (http://frankfrazetta.org/images/frank_frazetta_familiars.jpg)
Not even close (http://frankfrazetta.org/images/frank_frazetta_primitivebeauty.jpg)
Ok, well maybe just a tad (http://frankfrazetta.org/images/frank_frazetta_atlantis.jpg)
Quote from: CRKrueger;512084Fixed it up for ya.
Thanks. I surf the site at work, and while I have no problem with artistic nudes, my boss might.
Quote from: B.T.;512105Thanks. I surf the site at work, and while I have no problem with artistic nudes, my boss might.
Lucky bastard. The filter at my work removes anything relating to "games".
Quote from: CRKrueger;511932Ok, well maybe just a tad (http://frankfrazetta.org/images/frank_frazetta_atlantis.jpg)
:rotfl:
That's one of my favorite works by Mr Frazetta, cisgendered or no.
I really like his Flashman at the Charge (http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-zzZ7CDToQkU/TtZ8JP8Os6I/AAAAAAAAAsY/Oxx2DekuYqk/s1600/FrankFrazetta-Flashman-on-the-Charge-1974.jpg) pic (note: pic includes a women's plump breast and round apple of a booty - plan your clicks accordingly) - makes me wish he'd done some paintings of cavaliers and musketeers at some point.
Quote from: Black Vulmea;512114That's one of my favorite works by Mr Frazetta, cisgendered or no.
I finally had to look this "cisgendered" thing up to see what the hell it means.
Same here. It seems a remarkably useless and unnecessary term outside a very specific form of specialist academic discourse.
Quote from: Dog Quixote;512132Same here. It seems a remarkably useless and unnecessary term outside a very specific form of specialist academic discourse.
It kinda reminds me of how self diagnosed internet aspies* throw the term "neurotypical" around to describe people who aren't interested in writing (or reading) 9000 (OVER 9000!) word articles about Final Fantasy VIII on Wikipedia.
...
*=not clinically diagnosed people who genuinely fall into the part of the Autism spectrum classified as Aspergers, who deal with it as such. We all know the difference.
Quote from: thedungeondelver;512134*=not clinically diagnosed people who genuinely fall into the part of the Autism spectrum classified as Aspergers, who deal with it as such. We all know the difference.
Hate those fucking morons. Like, really hate with a seething passion.
There's nothing "cool" about being on the Autistic spectrum, it makes for an extremely hard life as the person is trapped in a society that they have no hope of understanding nor ever properly communicating with. Some dumbass geek who thinks because he was teased in High School and never developed any social skills trying to latch onto AS as an excuse for never bothering to better themselves or take any responsibility for their own self-absorption deserves to be lynched.
The worste part being that those arses make life for diagnosed "high-functioning" autistics that much harder because suddenly now everyone online associates that diagnosis with a particularly virulent form of subhuman internet jackass.
Quote from: Dog Quixote;512132Same here. It seems a remarkably useless and unnecessary term outside a very specific form of specialist academic discourse.
Your privilege is showing.
Quote from: TristramEvans;512139Hate those fucking morons. Like, really hate with a seething passion.
There's nothing "cool" about being on the Autistic spectrum, it makes for an extremely hard life as the person is trapped in a society that they have no hope of understanding nor ever properly communicating with. Some dumbass geek who thinks because he was teased in High School and never developed any social skills trying to latch onto AS as an excuse for never bothering to better themselves or take any responsibility for their own self-absorption deserves to be lynched.
The worste part being that those arses make life for diagnosed "high-functioning" autistics that much harder because suddenly now everyone online associates that diagnosis with a particularly virulent form of subhuman internet jackass.
This kind outrage usually stems from some kind of identity politics. I'm guessing you or someone you know is autistic.
Quote from: B.T.;512140This kind outrage usually stems from some kind of identity politics.
Blar, another fake term. Everyone is making up new words and combining others with made up definitions these days. After spam, probably the worst thing to come out of the internet age (or pseudo-academia). You hate Tangency, right? Don't play their games.
Reject fake English!
Quote from: TristramEvans;512147Blar, another fake term. Everyone is making up new words and combining others with made up definitions these days. After spam, probably the worst thing to come out of the internet age (or pseudo-academia). You hate Tangency, right? Don't play their games.
Reject fake English!
"Identity politics" is not a new term.
QuoteI'm guessing you or someone you know is autistic.
Quote from: B.T.;512149"Identity politics" is not a new term.
It was created in the '70s and really only makes sense in any way as a part of the entitlement/self-interest social movement.
Quote from: Dog Quixote;512132Same here. It seems a remarkably useless and unnecessary term outside a very specific form of specialist academic discourse.
Conceptually, it seems useful in the same way that the term "straight" has become useful as homosexuality and bisexuality have become common and accepted parts of daily life.
OTOH, it seems like there's not a lot of need for it. Of course, I'd probably say the same thing about a word that means "a guy who like to have sex with girls" if I was living in the 1950s.
"Gender-normative" is more likely to be the term that goes mainstream, though.
Quote from: TristramEvans;512151It was created in the '70s and really only makes sense in any way as a part of the entitlement/self-interest social movement.
Still, tell me who you know that is autistic.
Quote from: B.T.;512182Still, tell me who you know that is autistic.
Got a bit of an OCD thing going on there, huh?
I've known many people who are on the autistic spectrum.
Autistic as in somebody who was diagnosed an autistic, by a licensed doctor?
Or "autistic" as in somebody who is self-diagnosed?
Quote from: ggroy;512193Autistic as in somebody who was diagnosed an autistic, by a licensed doctor? Or "autistic" as in somebody who is self-diagnosed?
I've never encountered anyone claiming to be "self-diagnosed" offline.
Hence no quotes.
Quote from: TristramEvans;512195I've never encountered anyone claiming to be "self-diagnosed" offline.
Hence no quotes.
I've only ever came across one person offline who claims to be autistic, via "self diagnosis" and not from a doctor. (This person did not play rpg games).
This particular individual was a complete flake and extreme hypochondriac. Hardly anybody took this person seriously about anything. In my local social circles, we would joke about what "disease of the week/month" this person was fretting about. :rolleyes:
It's the ADHD of the late "aughts," it is!
Quote from: Opaopajr;512208It's the ADHD of the late "aughts," it is!
I'm entirely convinced that ADHD was just the natural effect of a generation raised by television. Attention spans last as long as the time between commercial breaks.
Quote from: TristramEvans;512210I'm entirely convinced that ADHD was just the natural effect of a generation raised by television. Attention spans last as long as the time between commercial breaks.
tl;dr
Quote from: misterguignol;512011It's hilarious when you reveal a poster's other names. Kinda like you did with DungeonDelver's real name. Tell you what, why don't you try that with Pundit next and see where that gets you? ;)
I have not outed anyone who has NOT already done so before me posting...
Quote from: Ancientgamer1970;512223I have not outed anyone who has NOT already done so before me posting...
Yeah, right.
Pull the other one. It has got bells on it.
Quote from: Ancientgamer1970;512223I have not outed anyone who has NOT already done so before me posting...
Well, you can't really "out" someone who's already out.
But it does beg the question, what was the point of bringing up my old screen name?
Quote from: Black Vulmea;512231Well, you can't really "out" someone who's already out.
But it does beg the question, what was the point of bringing up my old screen name?
Hiding behind a new screen name does not hide the fact you still post like SHAMAN...;D
Quote from: Ancientgamer1970;512233Hiding behind a new screen name does not hide the fact you still post like SHAMAN...;D
The idea that anyone is "hiding" anything on this forum is pretty ridiculous. The best part about therpgsite is you can state your mind without censoring it to protect the feelings of the feeble-minded and emotionally stunted.
This whole "outing" thing you've got going on is only in your own head, and not making you look any less pathetic.
Quote from: TristramEvans;512239The idea that anyone is "hiding" anything on this forum is pretty ridiculous. The best part about therpgsite is you can state your mind without censoring it to protect the feelings of the feeble-minded and emotionally stunted.
This whole "outing" thing you've got going on is only in your own head, and not making you look any less pathetic.
Whatever lets you sleep better...:boohoo:
Quote from: Ancientgamer1970;512233Hiding . . .
I do not think it means what you think it means.
Quote from: Ancientgamer1970;512240Whatever lets you sleep better
:teehee:
If forum posts are affecting your sleep habits, you've got some serious issues that you may want to seek out professional help for.
Quote from: TristramEvans;512210I'm entirely convinced that ADHD was just the natural effect of a generation raised by television. Attention spans last as long as the time between commercial breaks.
My take is there have always been some folks who have a harder time focusing than others. This isn't neccessarily a bad thing. People are different. And some people take longer to develop in that area. But giving kids a drug with a chemical structure similar to cocaine doesn't seem like a good way to deal with it. When I was a kid the school said i had ADD. They put me on ritalin, which helped. But i think coffee would have been just as effective. Eventually I grew out of it and stopped taking the medication.
I think what happened is doctors starting labelling personality traits as disorders and i am sure whoever made ritalin realized the profit potential of a drug that treats kids with focus and/or hyperactivity issues. And I am sure tv and video games contributed to kids focusing less well.
So it's all those darn kids fault, right?
Quote from: Rincewind1;512300So it's all those darn kids fault, right?
That isn't what I am saying at all. I am saying alot of these kids might be better off being left as is and not being given stimulants. I guess what I am trying to say ( and I say it as someone who was treated for ADD as a kid) is we might be putting too much value on getting everyone to be so focused at that age.
Quote from: TristramEvans;512244:teehee:
If forum posts are affecting your sleep habits, you've got some serious issues that you may want to seek out professional help for.
My sleep habits are never affected by non-issues to include posting on a forum. This comment was directed at you hence the word "you".
Quote from: Rincewind1;512300So it's all those darn kids fault, right?
It's not the kids' fault. We just need to make our teaching methods more meme-based.
(http://i.imgur.com/mFXMH.jpg)
(That said, and more in response to Tristram, every generation has had slackers and people who won't read or whatever. It's not TV's fault. It's a cultural thing. US culture is kind of shitty in places. If it were because of flashy media or super-aggressive advertising, the Japanese would be well behind us in international rankings.)
Quote from: Ancientgamer1970;512313My sleep habits are never affected by non-issues to include posting on a forum. This comment was directed at you hence the word "you".
You write a lot of nonsensical stuff.
Talk about hating 3e/4e and looking forward to 5e (did i just write that?) or go jump off a cliff - preferably with weights tied to your feet.
Clear enough?
Quote from: Ancientgamer1970;511937Whatever lets you sleep better at night, SHAMAN...
Hey kewlMarine. Do you remember me? I made you cry on Dragonsfoot a while back for making foolish comments. Ahh, those were golden days for me, days of excellent restful sleep.
Quote from: _kent_;512352Hey kewlMarine. Do you remember me? I made you cry on Dragonsfoot a while back for making foolish comments. Ahh, those were golden days for me, days of excellent restful sleep.
Next off-topic post gets the thread closed.
Is
that clear enough?
This is like some bad episode of
Soap.
No-one cares what Fred did at Unicorn.com, no-one cares about ADD. No-one cares about fucking sleep patterns.
4e is a shit-tier WoW clone on paper desperately to attract a younger generation in the same way that a nipped-and-tucked cougar attempts to attract men in their 20s.
Honestly, the worste I can say about 4E is there's nothing about the game that's made me want to play or run it, from what I've seen. I played the Gamma World version of the system and it felt like I was playing an elaborate tactical board game. But I have friends who play it, and enjoy it, so bully for them. There are tons of RPG systems I don't like or care for, but it warms the cockles of my heart whenever anyone is enjoying any part of this hobby, even if it's not the same way I would play.
OTOH, what I will say about 4th is that, while I didn't care for any of the changes to the system in 3/3.5 E, the rules still resembled D&D. There was an obvious "progression" (not quite the word I'd use but whatever) from the TSR system to 3rd edition D&D. 4E seems like an entirely different game that just uses the name Dungeons & Dragons. Like New Coke.
I'm looking forward to 5e out of curiosity and the hope that whatever form it takes, the material for it is more easily converted to use with older editions. That intercompatibility is the main selling point for me.
Quote from: VectorSigma;512439I'm looking forward to 5e out of curiosity and the hope that whatever form it takes, the material for it is more easily converted to use with older editions. That intercompatibility is the main selling point for me.
That would definitely get me back on board as well. While I don't particularly care for 2e, it can't be accused of lacking in backward compatibility while still introducing new ideas into the D&D gamespace.
Rereading the 2E Player's Handbook I have to say that there are a few things I really like.
The organization is wonderful. Everything is very clearly explained, easy to access, and there is a sense that this was a refinement and collation of the earlier game, rather than the approach nowadays where every new edition of a gameline gets a completely different system. It was obviously designed to be a reference manual for easy use in play, which is something I think RPGs have gotten away from overall, to their detriment.
I really like the unarmed combat rules in this edition better than any other edition of D&D. The punching & Wrestling results chart is a simple, effective, and flavourful method of managing it without adding any extraneous complexity to the combat system.
There's a lot of information and subjects touched on in this book that are simply omitted, ignored, or missed in later editions.
Additionally, though I don't necessarily care for the way some of them are implemented, I think this version of D&D has the best Class structure of all the D&D editions, with the 4 basic classic and then the sub-classes within them.
Quote from: Rincewind1;508700I am looking forward to Warhammer 4e, am I in the right thread?
OMG! Warhammer 3rd is the worst evar, they threw out the game and replaced it with boardgame pices!
also, I liked 3.x enough to play it long enough to remind me why I hated D&D in the first place, and 4th ed is just EVILE, 5th ed is an obvious cashgrab to appease their Hasboronian overlords! (Spawn moar!)
Quote from: RobMuadib;512504OMG! Warhammer 3rd is the worst evar, they threw out the game and replaced it with boardgame pices!
also, I liked 3.x enough to play it long enough to remind me why I hated D&D in the first place, and 4th ed is just EVILE, 5th ed is an obvious cashgrab to appease their Hasboronian overlords! (Spawn moar!)
The Arkham Horror boardgame creature models are the game's only redeeming grace, though ;).
After the news about diceless DC resolution, I am actually interested in 5e.
Quote from: TristramEvans;512449Rereading the 2E Player's Handbook I have to say that there are a few things I really like.
The organization is wonderful. Everything is very clearly explained, easy to access, and there is a sense that this was a refinement and collation of the earlier game, rather than the approach nowadays where every new edition of a gameline gets a completely different system. It was obviously designed to be a reference manual for easy use in play, which is something I think RPGs have gotten away from overall, to their detriment.
I really like the unarmed combat rules in this edition better than any other edition of D&D. The punching & Wrestling results chart is a simple, effective, and flavourful method of managing it without adding any extraneous complexity to the combat system.
There's a lot of information and subjects touched on in this book that are simply omitted, ignored, or missed in later editions.
Additionally, though I don't necessarily care for the way some of them are implemented, I think this version of D&D has the best Class structure of all the D&D editions, with the 4 basic classic and then the sub-classes within them.
Yep, 100% in agreement with you here Tristram. Usually the focus re 2e is on stuff that was cut out ("where's my half-orc assassin? GAH they renamed the demons!") -- most folks gloss over the stuff that was actually improved vis-a-vis 1e. There were some improvements, and they don't get the credit they deserve. Plus better backwards compatibility than any other hop.
Quote from: B.T.;5124124e is a shit-tier WoW clone on paper desperately to attract a younger generation in the same way that a nipped-and-tucked cougar attempts to attract men in their 20s.
Quote from: Cranewings;508832I'm sort of optimistic. My beef with Pathfinder is that they named it "Pathfinder," forcing me to search for it as "Paizo" or PFSRD. Stupid.
I really want D&D to be good and for everyone to play it.
umm D&D was never good, it was just the market leader. seriously. It's whole play style is a suck on the RPG hobby. Runequest/Traveller Forevah!
Quote from: RobMuadib;512514umm D&D was never good, it was just the market leader. seriously. It's whole play style is a suck on the RPG hobby. Runequest/Traveller Forevah!
He's right! The hobby would have been better off if D&D had never wait a minute.
I prefer the 5 years of silence.
Over on rpgnet there's a thread (quoting from) someone claiming to have broken an NDA to disclose some extra details.
http://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?614825-D-amp-DN-playtest-report-warlord-vs-cleric-healing-elven-sword-wizard-martial-dailies
Questionable credibility but I does make my hopes for the new edition sink decidedly lower. Even if its entirely made up, it does make sense, of course having warlords as a class (which they have confirmed) means it'll probably have 4Es healing surge crap.
Quote from: Bloody Stupid Johnson;514623Over on rpgnet there's a thread (quoting from) someone claiming to have broken an NDA to disclose some extra details.
http://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?614825-D-amp-DN-playtest-report-warlord-vs-cleric-healing-elven-sword-wizard-martial-dailies
Questionable credibility but I does make my hopes for the new edition sink decidedly lower. Even if its entirely made up, it does make sense, of course having warlords as a class (which they have confirmed) means it'll probably have 4Es healing surge crap.
I sense marketing scam somewhat. Well, you knew that the most Freudian of classes, the Oedip- Warlord, had to stay.
Quote from: Bloody Stupid Johnson;514623Over on rpgnet there's a thread (quoting from) someone claiming to have broken an NDA to disclose some extra details.
http://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?614825-D-amp-DN-playtest-report-warlord-vs-cleric-healing-elven-sword-wizard-martial-dailies
Questionable credibility but I does make my hopes for the new edition sink decidedly lower. Even if its entirely made up, it does make sense, of course having warlords as a class (which they have confirmed) means it'll probably have 4Es healing surge crap.
I hope this isn't accurate. Looks like a lot of the dealbreakers for pathfinder, 3e and Ad&d folk are there (healing surges,4e powers, etc). If these things are part of core, i definitely wont be spending any money on the latest edition.
IMO either marketing scam, or another 4venger/idiot trying to stir shit needlessly.
Quote from: Rincewind1;514639IMO either marketing scam, or another 4venger/idiot trying to stir shit needlessly.
I tend to think somewhat just reporting innacurate third hand knowledge. But you never know. However WOTC has probably knows how much of a turn off these elements are for the people they want to win back. Would be a stupid move to repackage them and try to include as core.
Quote from: BedrockBrendan;514641I tend to think somewhat just reporting innacurate third hand knowledge. But you never know. However WOTC has probably knows how much of a turn off these elements are for the people they want to win back. Would be a stupid move to repackage them and try to include as core.
Especially as a core for the first beta playtests, after announcing AD&D reprints and the whole "Pliz come back, you old guys. Pretty please?"
Quote from: BedrockBrendan;514638I hope this isn't accurate. Looks like a lot of the dealbreakers for pathfinder, 3e and Ad&d folk are there (healing surges,4e powers, etc). If these things are part of core, i definitely wont be spending any money on the latest edition.
Agreed. If the core game looks anything like this, I really doubt I (and other TSR D&D fans I know) will bother to buy it and I doubt they will pick up many 3.x/Pathfinder players either. These types of things are some of the main turnoffs for people who did not like 4e.
It's fake, playtesters at ENworld said so. And Wotc tweeted that it was not any of their playtest materials. Basically it's an elaborate troll.
The poster said he had playtest material in December before DNDx and there is NO way they would have written the 4e module that fast. It is too big to do so.
Yes, and while I have not yet seen the actual rules package yet; from everything that I've been told, I don't think its NDA-breaking for me to say that it really sounds like the Core is going to be kept to a level of ultra-simplicity, that this is the design goal. There's going to be stuff in it, but not any of the stuff like warlords or healing surges that would make pre-4e fans run for the hills.
Again, though, that's not yet based on actually having seen the material. Just on what I've surmised through some high-level conversations.
RPGPundit
While I understand the issues with healing surges, I'm not sure what the fuss is about stuff like Tieflings and Warlords. Both fall in to the category of really simple shit to house rule away. The first thing I do with any fantsy or SF game is torpedo Races and classes that don't fit my campaign concept.
P.S. Tieflings are a cool idea with a shit name.
Quote from: Aos;514814While I understand the issues with healing surges, I'm not sure what the fuss is about stuff like Tieflings and Warlords. Both fall in to the category of really simple shit to house rule away. The first thing I do with any fantsy or SF game is torpedo Races and classes that don't fit my campaign concept.
P.S. Tieflings are a cool idea with a shit name.
Call them cambions if you like...I don't mind tieflings, apart from the horns, though I don't think they should be numerous/important enough to be a "core" race.
I dislike warlords in particular for the same reason as healing surges: the yelling at people to make them feel better. I suppose this could be a built-in power with X/day use rather than spending surges and I can just kick them to the curb. That would be OK.
Quote from: Bloody Stupid Johnson;514843I dislike warlords in particular for the same reason as healing surges: the yelling at people to make them feel better. .
Warlords would really bother me. They are the one class that 4E critics point to as an example of 4E silliness. Including it would just be a bad idea, basically showing that WOTC hadn't listened to lapsed customers. As an optional class that is fine. But dont want it as part of core.
Tieglings i can live with, though i really dislike them (along with dragonborne and eladrin). My hope is they go back to the standard races, if only for the sake of setting continuity with previous editions.
I'll take the warlords as long as they each come with tower shields and martinis...
Quote from: Daedalus;508719Don't care really. I am playing and running Barbarians of Lemuria for my fantasy kick and getting that old school role playing feel.
Dungeons and Dragons just doesn't scratch that itch anymore. D20 is a way over complicated system and I hated in the 3.5 and 4ed days wasting time looking up rules. BOL is easy for combat and everything else and games go much smoother (ALA the Red Box Days)
The thing about BoL I can't get over is that for all it talks about being a S&S game about adventuring warriors where magic is rare, I notice that it has a rules setup where wizards and alchemists have these subsystems and resource management to play with, while warriors make to-hit rolls over and over and maybe narrate swinging from a rope or flipping over a table. That just doesn't look any different or better from playing OD&D. But I'm thinking that most of what I want from a simpler game with the basic D&D setup can be met by Old School Hack or Savage Worlds.
Quote from: Bloody Stupid Johnson;514843Call them cambions if you like...I don't mind tieflings, apart from the horns, though I don't think they should be numerous/important enough to be a "core" race.
I dislike warlords in particular for the same reason as healing surges: the yelling at people to make them feel better. I suppose this could be a built-in power with X/day use rather than spending surges and I can just kick them to the curb. That would be OK.
The horns are my favorite part.
Quote from: BedrockBrendan;514860Warlords would really bother me. They are the one class that 4E critics point to as an example of 4E silliness. Including it would just be a bad idea, basically showing that WOTC hadn't listened to lapsed customers. As an optional class that is fine. But dont want it as part of core.
Tieglings i can live with, though i really dislike them (along with dragonborne and eladrin). My hope is they go back to the standard races, if only for the sake of setting continuity with previous editions.
I actually like all those races, and stuff like the Thri Keen and the Mul from Dark Sun far more than I like the original core races. how anyone can dislike dragonborn more than Halflings or Dwarves is beyond me, really. That said the inclusion of such races doesn't bother me at all. I can just ban them from my game. I've gone dwarf free since the early 90's, for example. However, when it comes down to it I think that races are so simple to add/ban from one's game that what gets included in the core shouldn't even be an issue. Maybe they should just have humans in the core and have the races in modules that way nobody gets their sensibilities offended.
Quote from: Aos;514900I actually like all those races, and stuff like the Thri Keen and the Mul from Dark Sun far more than I like the original core races. how anyone can dislike dragonborn more than Halflings or Dwarves is beyond me, really. That said the inclusion of such races doesn't bother me at all. I can just ban them from my game. I've gone dwarf free since the early 90's, for example. However, when it comes down to it I think that races are so simple to add/ban from one's game that what gets included in the core shouldn't even be an issue. Maybe they should just have humans in the core and have the races in modules that way nobody gets their sensibilities offended.
I like thri keen and muls as well, but they work in darksun, not standard d&d cAmpaigns. Dragonborn and tieflings i actively dislike. But the problem with including strange races in the phb, is it makes it harder for the gm to keep out that material if it isnt part of his setting.
Only if said DM is without a spine.
Not to be a dick, but I find that attitude to be the same kind of thinking that led to the WoTC era attempts create rules that insulate gameplay from bad GMs. The rules will not, can not protect us from whiny players. If a DM can't make a stand about what races will be in the campaign, he should probably move over to the other side of the screen.
Quote from: Aos;514905Only if said DM is without a spine.
Not to be a dick, but I find that attitude to be the same kind of thinking that led to the WoTC era attempts create rules that insulate gameplay from bad GMs. The rules will not, can not protect us from whiny players. If a DM can't make a stand about what races will be in the campaign, he should probably move over to the other side of the screen.
I guess I see it more as coming from an attempt to put power into the players' court when it comes to character choice. Overall 4e felt to me like it was trying to protect players from "bad GMs"
It is a question of having a spine. It doesnt take much to ban core classes, but there is going to be more fallout from banning a core class or race than non core classes and races in many instances. I dont think my players would have a problem with it personally.
Including them in core also leads to setting and flavor changes I simply didn't like. Not my cup of tea at all. The new races in the 4e PHB I actively disliked, particularly stuff like dragonborne.
Quote from: BedrockBrendan;514911I guess I see it more as coming from an attempt to put power into the players' court when it comes to character choice. Overall 4e felt to me like it was trying to protect players from "bad GMs"
I agree that many choices in both 3e and 4e were made to protect players from bad GMs, that was part of my point, really. The other thing I was trying to get at is that the rules cannot protect a DM from bad/ uncooperative players either. Dealing with that shit is the DM's motherfucking job. The DM who cannot make rulings is fucked fucked fucked fucked no matter what races are in the book. Using all the races because they are in the book and you wish to avoid conflict with the players will allow one to avoid said conflict for precisely as long as character generation takes. After that the DM is fucked and so is the campaign. Truthfully I think they should put like 20 races in the core and explicitly say, "don't use all of these, just pick the ones you like and fit with your campaign concept."
I think cutting races from the core is s solution in search of problem and that problem is spineless weak ass DMs who can't say no to their players, and really, fuck them, because they are already doomed.
Quote from: Aos;514905Only if said DM is without a spine.
Not to be a dick, but I find that attitude to be the same kind of thinking that led to the WoTC era attempts create rules that insulate gameplay from bad GMs. The rules will not, can not protect us from whiny players. If a DM can't make a stand about what races will be in the campaign, he should probably move over to the other side of the screen.
I agree, and I think this is where the books themselves, in their advice sections, in their methodologies, heck, the rules themselves, the way they are designed by edges and on/off switches rather than center, for instance, are not helping. There's been a very noticeable shift in these terms in the game culture where the basic attitude is "if the GM doesn't allow this or that he's a dick". It didn't come out of nowhere, and if the rules books themselves are not the sole culprits, they are part of this picture, without a doubt in my mind.
Thri-Kreen are just Phraints from Arduin but nowhere near as cool. :D
If I wanted Dragonborn, I'd just use Draconians, which actually make sense.
Tieflings were better as the Cockney Gutter-children of Planescape where, you know, they won't be burned at the stake on sight like they would be ANYWHERE ELSE IN THE MULTIVERSE.
Oh and, Deodanths FTW!
Quote from: Aos;514913I agree that many choices in both 3e and 4e were made to protect players from bad GMs, that was part of my point, really. The other thing I was trying to get at is that the rules cannot protect a DM from bad/ uncooperative players either. Dealing with that shit is the DM's motherfucking job. The DM who cannot make rulings is fucked fucked fucked fucked no matter what races are in the book. Using all the races because they are in the book and you wish to avoid conflict with the players will allow one to avoid said conflict for precisely as long as character generation takes. After that the DM is fucked and so is the campaign. Truthfully I think they should put like 20 races in the core and explicitly say, "don't use all of these, just pick the ones you like and fit with your campaign concept."
I think cutting races from the core is s solution in search of problem and that problem is spineless weak ass DMs who can't say no to their players, and really, fuck them, because they are already doomed.
You know if they put twenty or more races in the phb, then I wouldn't mind (though I still think dragonborne suck as a race). But what they did in the 4E PHB kind of ticked me off. They put in new classes and races I had no interest in and took out ones I either wanted or needed for setting purposes.
Quote from: BedrockBrendan;514860Warlords would really bother me. They are the one class that 4E critics point to as an example of 4E silliness. Including it would just be a bad idea, basically showing that WOTC hadn't listened to lapsed customers. As an optional class that is fine. But dont want it as part of core.
FACT: All classes are optional.
Quote from: BedrockBrendan;514918You know if they put twenty or more races in the phb, then I wouldn't mind (though I still think dragonborne suck as a race). But what they did in the 4E PHB kind of ticked me off. They put in new classes and races I had no interest in and took out ones I either wanted or needed for setting purposes.
Now that's a fair point, and I think one that 5e is going to address by virtue of its supposedly modular nature.
However:
Dragonborn> Halflings, Elves and Dwarves
And I don't even like dragonborn; but I have Lizardmen, Sasquatch and Minotaurs as playable races in my game so what the fuck do I know?.
Quote from: Benoist;514915I agree, and I think this is where the books themselves, in their advice sections, in their methodologies, heck, the rules themselves, the way they are designed by edges and on/off switches rather than center, for instance, are not helping. There's been a very noticeable shift in these terms in the game culture where the basic attitude is "if the GM doesn't allow this or that he's a dick". It didn't come out of nowhere, and if the rules books themselves are not the sole culprits, they are part of this picture, without a doubt in my mind.
When's the last time you sat down to play Magic and your opponent said "Oh, you can't use the Shivan Dragon card" or you booted up your computer, loaded WoW and Trolls were greyed out as a racial choice? This is the culture we're talking about.
Quote from: CRKrueger;514922When's the last time you sat down to play Magic and your opponent said "Oh, you can't use the Shivan Dragon card" or you booted up your computer, loaded WoW and Trolls were greyed out as a racial choice? This is the culture we're talking about.
Actually, Wizards bans magic cards all the time. Tournament rules keep a list of legal and banned cards and sets, and many players follow tourney rules even in casual play so as to test their skills for future competitions.
And, you know, fuck those guys.
Quote from: Aos;514929And, you know, fuck those guys.
Well that'd be my attitude too, but what if most gamers are themselves playing with gamers? What if they play through some sort of gaming outlet, like a brick and mortar store, an association of some type, or answer ads from gamers to gamers in the LGS, online or whatnot?
Then you might end up playing with some of those guys. Do you tell them to fuck off to start the process all over again?
That's part of the picture too.
I'll play with people I like, some are gamers, some are not, but I don't make a habit of going for "I ought to find gamers in my area" instead of just introducing people to my games if they show some interest. I find my gaming is way better that way, but I'm not everyone on that score. Far from it, it seems.
I think that convoluted games don't help in that regard either, btw. There's a whole series of different gaming topics interconnected on that score, IMO.
I'm of the firm belief that if it isn't a problem at your table, it isn't a problem. Otherwise you end up sliding into "what about the children."
So, yeah, to sum up: fuck those guys.
Now, WoTC's perspective is probably different than mine, and although I bear no ill will towards Wizards and wish them all the success in the world, fuck them too.
Quote from: J Arcane;514927Actually, Wizards bans magic cards all the time. Tournament rules keep a list of legal and banned cards and sets, and many players follow tourney rules even in casual play so as to test their skills for future competitions.
WotC constantly nerfs, just like
Blizzard does, but if your
opponent said "No, I just don't play against Shivan Dragons." You'd call him an asshole and you'd be right, but the problem is that this attitude applied to a tabletop game leads to "nutless and braindead GM syndrome", where it's not just assumed that the GM is going to have races and classes he doesn't allow, and that's it.
Quote from: Aos;514940I'm of the firm belief that if it isn't a problem at your table, it isn't a problem. Otherwise you end up sliding into "what about the children." So, yeah, to sum up: fuck those guys.
As rude as it probably sounds, I agree with you. I tell people up front that my campaigns are set in specific world and only the races, classes, spells, magic items, etc. found on those worlds will be allowed. Just because you bought supplement X for game Y and really like Z from it does not mean Z will suddenly appear in the campaign setting. While I might add it if it fits into the world well and does not require much work on my part it integrate it, don't count on that happening as you are setting yourself up for disappointment.
QuoteNow, WoTC's perspective is probably different than mine, and although I bear no ill will towards Wizards and wish them all the success in the world, fuck them too.
I don't give a damn that WOTC (or any other company on the edition/supplement treadmill) needs GMs like me to modify their campaigns to allow all the new material they publish because if GMs don't that will mean that players will not buy all the new releases and if all players don't buy all new releases their company will not make its profit goals. The only companies whose profit goals I care about are those paying me a nice salary with good benefits -- so if you want me to allow everything you print in my campaigns, you need to hire me and pay me a nice salary and benefits so I have some reason to put your company's needs over the needs of my campaign. Expecting me to do so without the $$$$ is just silly.
Magic is competitive, and in fact, rampant and unfriendly at times competition is a part of it's culture.
Since when RPGs are supposed to be like that?
Competitive games don't work well with houserules interfering with the baseline vernacular, a.k.a. tournament play.
You can have them and enjoy it, but it messes with the cultural exchange between groups. In example, chess did evolve with new rules, i.e. En Passant, but over the years for the most part the game has held its "language" relatively the same. And even then these new rules were incorporated into official play and altered the face of community play. The same applies as to why tournaments will have an "official style of play."
RPGs I contend are not competitive games.
Cooperative hobbies/games actually work better with houserules because hobbies are all about tailoring the experience to the needs of the immediate users. Because of this premium on tailoring towards the nucleic group versus the overarching community, using tools from a competitive game framework is completely missing the point. This is where I feel Benoist point about using wrong design tools is relevant (but he'll correct me if it's otherwise).
This is where I have issues with RPGA and its attempts to standardize the roleplaying experience. This is where the Cult of Balance and RAW seeps in and creates conflict. Their solutions end up creating more "unforeseen" problems because they are applying their hammers to everything they perceive as a nail.
My thesis: Cooperative games are not competitive games and their toolsets are not mutually applicable across each other.
Quote from: Opaopajr;515162lots of good stuff
This sounds all pretty reasonable. I guess I'd theorize that much of the drive toward "RAW only" and reducing the power of the GM is by the people who perceive D&D as being an adversarial game, rather than cooperative.
Quote from: Bloody Stupid Johnson;515195This sounds all pretty reasonable. I guess I'd theorize that much of the drive toward "RAW only" and reducing the power of the GM is by the people who perceive D&D as being an adversarial game, rather than cooperative.
Replace D&D in that with RPG, and you'd have it right on the spot.
Quote from: Bloody Stupid Johnson;515195This sounds all pretty reasonable. I guess I'd theorize that much of the drive toward "RAW only" and reducing the power of the GM is by the people who perceive D&D as being an adversarial game, rather than cooperative.
Or just by people who hate RPGs in general and want to create a new type of game that only steals the term and recognition of "RPG" while in fact being nothing of the sort.
RPGPundit
Quote from: RPGPundit;515267Or just by people who hate RPGs in general and want to create a new type of game that only steals the term and recognition of "RPG" while in fact being nothing of the sort.
RPGPundit
I wonder why is that? Why RPGs? Why not miniature wargaming, hex and counter games, or block wargames. Heck why not collectible card games? And why doesn't the industry ignore this stuff.
Quote from: estar;515272I wonder why is that? Why RPGs? Why not miniature wargaming, hex and counter games, or block wargames. Heck why not collectible card games? And why doesn't the industry ignore this stuff.
Because:
(1) STGs are about mechanically resolving control over narrative. Characters are elements of the narrative. And, therefore, you can play RPGs as if they were clunky STGs (mechanically resolving control over very small slices of the narrative).
(2) Most of the STG crowd were, in fact, trying to use RPGs to satisfy their interest in narrative control and storytelling.
Contrary to RPGPundit's conspiracy theories, these people aren't actually Machiavellian villains trying to steal RPGs from him. They're just confused people who picked up a screwdriver; used it to hammer nails; concluded it wasn't very good at that; and then proceeded to design a hammer... which they then called a screwdriver because they thought that's what screwdrivers were for.
You can see some similar confusion in the '74 to '75 timeframe where people were trying to understand D&D as a wargame. Fortunately, Gygax and the other early pioneers of the form understood that they had something different; trumpeted that fact in every forum they could; and by no later than April 1976 had coined the term "roleplaying game" to describe the new games.
The difference here is that the early STG proponents generally didn't understand that they were creating something new and different, so they kept referring to their hammer as screwdrivers.
Ultimately, this isn't just a matter of terminology, either: If you think RPGs are just some kind of specialized wargame, you'll keep trying to design them like wargames (which is inefficient and ineffective). Similarly, if you think STGs are RPGs, you'll keep trying to design them like RPGs (which is similarly inefficient and ineffective).
Worse yet is when you get people who think all wargames should look like RPGs (because they think RPGs are the newest and bestest wargames); or that all RPGs should look like STGs. That's when you end up with ultimately destructive philosophies instead of creative ones.
More on the distinction between roleplaying games and storytelling games (http://thealexandrian.net/wordpress/6517/roleplaying-games/roleplaying-games-vs-storytelling-games).
Quote from: Justin Alexander;515293More on the distinction between roleplaying games and storytelling games (http://thealexandrian.net/wordpress/6517/roleplaying-games/roleplaying-games-vs-storytelling-games).
This is pretty much everything the Pundit says, minus the vitriol and the shit-flinging.
I rather like it.
Quote from: RPGPundit;515267Or just by people who hate RPGs in general and want to create a new type of game that only steals the term and recognition of "RPG" while in fact being nothing of the sort.
RPGPundit
I blame the rules lawyers rather than the storygamers, at least for D&D; looking at say the Gaming Den or such types on rpg.net I think the underlying drive for them is a desire to "win" the game, which they can't do if the GM starts re-writing the rules mid-game. 3E and by extension 4E being designed to enable and encourage rules lawyering seems to have led to an explosion in the numbers of these guys.
Thinking on it further apart from the competitive munchkinry there's often also a perception that the GM is out to get you. Skip Williams' grognardia interview is perhaps interesting -where he talks about how he tried to "nail down as many boards as possible" when designing 3E so GMs couldn't "make off the wall rulings" when characters were in peril.
http://grognardia.blogspot.com.au/2009/06/interview-skip-williams.html
Quote from: Justin Alexander;515293They're just confused people who picked up a screwdriver; used it to hammer nails; concluded it wasn't very good at that; and then proceeded to design a hammer... which they then called a screwdriver because they thought that's what screwdrivers were for.
You forgot the part where they assume that
everyone really wants to hammer nails and that anyone who claims that they happily use their screwdrivers to turns screws and has no interest in hammering nails is either delusional, brain damaged, or doesn't really understand what they are doing or want.
Quote from: Bloody Stupid Johnson;515319Thinking on it further apart from the competitive munchkinry there's often also a perception that the GM is out to get you. Skip Williams' grognardia interview is perhaps interesting -where he talks about how he tried to "nail down as many boards as possible" when designing 3E so GMs couldn't "make off the wall rulings" when characters were in peril.
http://grognardia.blogspot.com.au/2009/06/interview-skip-williams.html
The ultimate extreme form of this style of thinking, would be reduce a system down to a set of precise mathematical formulas and/or random tables.
Though this would be difficult to do in practice, if stuff cannot be precisely defined.
Quote from: RPGPundit;515267Or just by people who hate RPGs in general and want to create a new type of game that only steals the term and recognition of "RPG" while in fact being nothing of the sort.
RPGPundit
Holy crap! Stop the presses! The Pundit and I *agree* on something. I better sit down...
Quote from: Justin Alexander;515293More on the distinction between roleplaying games and storytelling games (http://thealexandrian.net/wordpress/6517/roleplaying-games/roleplaying-games-vs-storytelling-games).
Interesting breakdown. Unfortunately I think the term role playing game (and role playing) has been radically redefined in recent years to the point that classic definitions like yours (and mine) are on the defensive. I just participated in one of those 'what is role playing' threads on another forum and my take home was (on that forum at least) my assumptions about the word were becoming fringe (and even viewed with some hostility). Ten or fifteen years ago this wasn't the case.
Quote from: BedrockBrendan;515383Interesting breakdown. Unfortunately I think the term role playing game (and role playing) has been radically redefined in recent years to the point that classic definitions like yours (and mine) are on the defensive. I just participated in one of those 'what is role playing' threads on another forum and my take home was (on that forum at least) my assumptions about the word were becoming fringe (and even viewed with some hostility). Ten or fifteen years ago this wasn't the case.
Don't make the mistake that just because that perspective have become "fringe" on some message boards means that it's actually "fringe" in the hobby. If you assessed the reality of the hobby from many of the message boards out there, you'd believe that games like Spirit of the Century and Dogs in the Vineyard are wildly more popular than D&D, but sales figures tell a very different story, do they not? Do games that don't follow that classic definition really sell and get played by large numbers of people?
Quote from: John Morrow;515401Don't make the mistake that just because that perspective have become "fringe" on some message boards means that it's actually "fringe" in the hobby. If you assessed the reality of the hobby from many of the message boards out there, you'd believe that games like Spirit of the Century and Dogs in the Vineyard are wildly more popular than D&D, but sales figures tell a very different story, do they not? Do games that don't follow that classic definition really sell and get played by large numbers of people?
I was thinking less about the story game versus role playing divide (though that was a part of the conversation) and more about resistance to the notion of role playing versus roll playing. With the exception of a handful of min/maxers I gamed with in the past, this used to be a relatively uncontroversial dichotomy. In the discussion in question (which was on ENworld---which I consider a mainstream forum) this split was met with a lot of resistance, as was any attempt to connect speaking in character and interacting with the game world in the first person to role playing (not role playing in the general sense but in the specific sense of a role playing your character). How wide spread it is beyond forums I can't say. The people I game with are all pretty heavy role players. But I am in my mid thirties. I do have to wonder if younger gamers have a different sense of the term.
Quote from: BedrockBrendan;515402But I am in my mid thirties. I do have to wonder if younger gamers have a different sense of the term.
My young daughters have no problem role-playing, both in freeform play (where each one pretends to be a character) or with their dolls and other toys (having them talk to each other in character), but I keep hearing about children who don't know how to engage in such play and need to be taught it because they never learned how. See this article (http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=76838288), for example:
QuoteNow, the reason that the Tools of the Mind curriculum asks kids like Zee and Emmy to fill out paperwork before they pick up the Play-Doh lies in the fact that today's play is very different from the play of past eras.
For most of human history, children played by roaming near or far in packs large and small. Younger children were supervised by older children and engaged in freewheeling imaginative play. They were pirates and princesses, aristocrats and heroes.
[...]
Unfortunately, play has changed dramatically during the past half-century, and according to many psychological researchers, the play that kids engage in today does not help them build executive function skills. Kids spend more time in front of televisions and video games. When they aren't in front of a screen, they often spend their time in leagues and lessons — activities parents invest in because they believe that they will help their children to excel and achieve.
And while it's true that leagues and lessons are helpful to children in many ways, researcher Deborah Leong says they have one unfortunate drawback. Leong is professor emerita of psychology and director of the Tools of the Mind Project at Metropolitan State College of Denver. She says when kids are in leagues and lessons, they are usually being regulated by adults. That means they are not able to practice regulating themselves.
I'm not entirely sold on the theories behind Tools of the Mind (my school district uses it, but my daughters have not yet attended the public schools), but there are a frightening number of articles out there about children who don't really know how to play make-believe games. What specifically gets blamed for this depends on the political agenda of those discussing the problem, but there seems to be something going on where children just aren't role-playing the same way kids used to, and the old analogy between role-playing games and a game of cops and robbers may not have any real meaning to younger people who never played cops and robbers.
Quote from: John Morrow;515410What specifically gets blamed for this depends on the political agenda of those discussing the problem, but there seems to be something going on where children just aren't role-playing the same way kids used to, and the old analogy between role-playing games and a game of cops and robbers may not have any real meaning to younger people who never played cops and robbers.
That's terrifying.
Quote from: John Morrow;515401Don't make the mistake that just because that perspective have become "fringe" on some message boards means that it's actually "fringe" in the hobby.
Yes. That's exactly what I was going to point out. Careful with the intarwebz echo chambers.
Quote from: Justin Alexander;515293Because:
(1) STGs are about mechanically resolving control over narrative. Characters are elements of the narrative. And, therefore, you can play RPGs as if they were clunky STGs (mechanically resolving control over very small slices of the narrative).
(2) Most of the STG crowd were, in fact, trying to use RPGs to satisfy their interest in narrative control and storytelling.
Contrary to RPGPundit's conspiracy theories, these people aren't actually Machiavellian villains trying to steal RPGs from him. They're just confused people who picked up a screwdriver; used it to hammer nails; concluded it wasn't very good at that; and then proceeded to design a hammer... which they then called a screwdriver because they thought that's what screwdrivers were for.
You can see some similar confusion in the '74 to '75 timeframe where people were trying to understand D&D as a wargame. Fortunately, Gygax and the other early pioneers of the form understood that they had something different; trumpeted that fact in every forum they could; and by no later than April 1976 had coined the term "roleplaying game" to describe the new games.
The difference here is that the early STG proponents generally didn't understand that they were creating something new and different, so they kept referring to their hammer as screwdrivers.
Ultimately, this isn't just a matter of terminology, either: If you think RPGs are just some kind of specialized wargame, you'll keep trying to design them like wargames (which is inefficient and ineffective). Similarly, if you think STGs are RPGs, you'll keep trying to design them like RPGs (which is similarly inefficient and ineffective).
Worse yet is when you get people who think all wargames should look like RPGs (because they think RPGs are the newest and bestest wargames); or that all RPGs should look like STGs. That's when you end up with ultimately destructive philosophies instead of creative ones.
More on the distinction between roleplaying games and storytelling games (http://thealexandrian.net/wordpress/6517/roleplaying-games/roleplaying-games-vs-storytelling-games).
Whether or not the intention was originally innocent (and given the people involved from early on in the storygames swinedom I would suggest not), that wouldn't change the fact that at this point its blatantly clear that RPGs and Storygames are two utterly different hobbies with different purposes, and yet the Story Swine continue to act in a cowardly way by trying to subvert the name and recognition of RPGs rather than striking out on their own as their own hobby.
They're way past any stage where they could claim innocence or naiveté about it.
RPGPundit
Quote from: BedrockBrendan;515402I was thinking less about the story game versus role playing divide (though that was a part of the conversation) and more about resistance to the notion of role playing versus roll playing.
I actually think this distinction -- that roleplaying is something that happens "outside the mechanics" -- is actually a significant part of why it can be difficult for some people to identify the defining quality of an RPG: Because if the roleplaying in an RPG is entirely non-mechanical, then it must mean that all of these mechanics must be doing something other than roleplaying.
Whereas I've come to believe/realize that the definitional property of an RPG is that the mechanical decisions
are roleplaying decisions; that when you use the mechanics of an RPG you are, in fact, roleplaying.
Now, with that being said, I don't think roleplaying in an RPG should be
limited to mechanical interactions. I'm just saying that, in an RPG, there isn't a hard line between "mechanics" on one side and "roleplaying" on the other.
IME, most new players follow a fairly predictable bell-curve: They start out with a lot of extra-mechanical roleplaying (because they don't know the rules), then they become "trapped" by the rules to one degree or another (as they learn them), and then they break out the other side and use the mechanics as a springboard for even more roleplaying.
(One of the interesting consequences of dissociated systems like 4E, however, is that it completely lops off the first part of that bell-curve: New players are immediately forced to interact with the mechanics because they're not associated.)
Quote from: RPGPundit;515488Whether or not the intention was originally innocent (and given the people involved from early on in the storygames swinedom I would suggest not), that wouldn't change the fact that at this point its blatantly clear that RPGs and Storygames are two utterly different hobbies with different purposes, and yet the Story Swine continue to act in a cowardly way by trying to subvert the name and recognition of RPGs rather than striking out on their own as their own hobby.
Probably true. But since this hobby has so often used "YOU'RE NOT
REALLY ROLEPLAYING!" (and the roleplayer vs. rollplayer thing is part of that dubious tradition) as a club that they can hit people with who they disagree with, it doesn't surprise me that there's a natural impulse to feel that people saying "that's not a roleplaying game" are just trying to disenfranchise you and belittle you.
Particularly when some people really
are trying to simultaneously paint them as nefarious villains.