TheRPGSite

QuoteHey, old people.

And yes, I'm talking to you.

I've been tooling around on EN World for a long time, now. I've been immersed in gaming culture for far longer than I'd like to admit.

One thing that jumps out at me, from all this talk of the next edition of D&D, is talk about the fiction thatshould inform it. From talk about the kinds of art that should be included, to the stories that should inspire its mechanics - the kinds of stories the players grew up on should be considered, when looking at a game.

That is an entirely understandable sentiment. After all, you want a game that can do Conan, and Elric, and Frodo, right? Those are the kinds of stories you grew up on. The kinds of things that drew you to gaming in the firstplace.

So now I'm going to tell you that you need to go step back, and - in essence - go away.

Your stories aren't relevant anymore. I'm sorry that this has happened, but it has. I have met no one in my age group that has heard of the Dying Earth series, and yet D&D's default casting system is based upon Vance's work. The only reason I'm aware of the guy is because I spend far too much of my time on gaming forums, studying the history of gaming and what-not. I've never read his works, and, honestly, I don't care to.

The same thing can be said for Conan, for Frodo, for the Gray Mouser, for... whatever else traditional sources you can name for D&D. I know there's all kinds of sources, all kinds of books and what-not that no doubt innumerable people that frequent these forums can toss at me.

It doesn't matter anymore.

The old guard needs to start giving way to the new, at some point. Perhaps now is that point. I don't want mechanics steeped in the old, anymore. I want a game that can give me things like what I've seen in the Redwall series, in Last Airbender, in anime like Cowboy Bebop and Samurai Champloo. We've got to be able to follow the style of things like Harry Potter, because that is today's fiction, today's stories, the things my generation is familiar with.

Maybe this post is coming off as harsh, and I'm sorry for that. But I've been thinking about this, and it just seems reasonable to me that gaming needs to understand that the environment in which it was born is changing, and that it needs to change with it to stay relevant. Because if game designers keep talking about Elric and Frodo and Conan... you're going to lose people, and the next generation of would-be gamers aren't going to care. Talking about the old stories and the old lore demonstrates an unwillingness to recognize cultural change, and ifyou aren't willing to accommodate new takes on fantasy, then you risk becoming irrelevant.

If the next edition of D&D can't do Last Airbender or Harry Potter, then what incentive does the next generation of gamers have to pick it up?

It's like AM and TCO had a bratty lovechild on ENWorld.

I really think you should be doing your own trolling. Reposting someone else's bait is lazy and unoriginal. :enworld:

The ENworld dude is right. If D&D 5e does not emulate the fantasy fiction that teens and young adults enjoy in 2012, it probably won't entice that audience.

The new Conan movie and the new John Carter movies tanked. For whatever reason, they had nothing in them that speaks to the dreams of today's youth. And you can't dodge with "they were bad movies" because plenty of bad movies that speak to today's youth make a fuckton of cash.

It's a new generation and D&D needs to speak to them if WotC expects them to support them with piles of money.

Quote from: B.T.;536990It's like AM and TCO had a bratty lovechild on ENWorld.

Heh, pretty much, although while AM might chase the new cool the way fratboys in Mexico chase Tijuana whores, he's still not ignorant of, well just about everything like the OP is.

What he's talking about as his list of cultural touchstones are in most cases derivative and deconstructive, authored by wanna-be iconoclasts, who, for all their terminal case of irony, are also not completely ignorant of the cultural icons they are deriving from.

There should indeed be newer influences on D&D as D&D matures, but going with whatever's dope this week isn't the way to do it.  For all the money they've gathered, Twilight, Harry Potter, Transformers etc... isn't going to be relevant for long.

Even the anime influences he mentions, like Cowboy Bebop are just the same old derivative, deconstructive, ironic ripples (which do happen to be entertaining) made from the splash of Shirow and Atomo (who themselves were influenced by "old white guys" who apparently don't matter).

It's the same kind of ignorance shown by someone coming out of a Shakespeare movie saying "too many cliches", which of course, is now a cliche itself.

Quote from: CRKrueger;536997HeFor all the money they've gathered, Twilight, Harry Potter, Transformers etc... isn't going to be relevant for long.

Only a couple generations.

Twilight and Harry Potter were phenomenons for the childhoods of millions. Many of those children will grow up to be authors, producers and content developers of future entertainment. There is no doubt that their creations will be deeply influenced by what they loved as children and as teens.

Quote from: Spinachcat;536996And you can't dodge with "they were bad movies" because plenty of bad movies that speak to today's youth make a fuckton of cash.

Yeah, you really, really can.  Think of a terrible suckfest movie that made a billion dollars.  Got some, ok they all share at least two of the following things in common.

1. Jaw-dropping special effects that make God wonder how they did that.
2. A massive toy campaign, possibly even preceding the movie.
3. A children TV series they derive from.
4. A new branding of something their parents remember from when they were kids.

If they had preceded the Conan movie with a Conan version of the Batman comic TV series that had a toy market to stand on, it would have made X hundred billion no matter how much it sucks.  Since it didn't have that, the way to "Speak to" anyone is to make a good fucking movie.

"Speaks to today's youth", is a total bullshit phrase that really means "what we've shoved down their throats since they were babies", or "something that speaks to their parents so they buy it for their kids and do the shoving down the throat for us".

Quote from: Spinachcat;536998Only a couple generations.

Twilight and Harry Potter were phenomenons for the childhoods of millions. Many of those children will grow up to be authors, producers and content developers of future entertainment. There is no doubt that their creations will be deeply influenced by what they loved as children and as teens.

Potter, yeah you're probably right, although someone who does go on to be an author or producer is also going to find out about the influences on Twilight itself, and bring those into their work as well.

Twilight, not even close.  Hell the post-Twilight college girl who stops masturbating to fake werewolves and vampires once she gets fucked by a real life bad boy is already a cliche that's popping up in campus creative writing circles according to some lit profs I know.  It has lasting influence as a punchline.

I don't quite get what's supposed to be the connection between D&D and fantasy fiction here anyway. Do you have to have read Voyage of the Space Beagle to think displacer beasts are cool?

I'd have thought a kid picks up the RPG, and they see the concepts in terms of whatever fantasy stories/tropes they're familiar with. If they think "wow I can be a badass fighter dude like _____" it doesn't matter if the first image that comes to their mind is Conan, Samurai Champloo (?Is that a real name?) or whatever.

The LotR movies were a huge success and I fully expect that the Hobbit movie will be a big hit as well.  As far as Anime goes, Lodoss War or Slayers anyone?  D&D works pretty damn well for those.

Here is what I do not get.

Anime has been influenced by D&D since Record of Lodoss War and now people are saying that anime influences gaming too much? They haven't been really seperate for years. There is a huge amount of overlap for those two different forms of media. So what is the complaint?

Talk about tilting at windmills.  The OP already got what they asked for. It was called 4E and it tanked.

Rereading the OP from ENworld, you can do everything in Cowboy Bebop with Traveller. 'Nuff Said.

Quote from: B.T.;536990It's like AM and TCO had a bratty lovechild on ENWorld.

Got a link to the original post?

Quote from: Fiasco;537017Talk about tilting at windmills.  The OP already got what they asked for. It was called 4E and it tanked.

No. 4E was more influenced by tactical skirmish games - World of Warcraft, Guild Wars, Final Fantasy (Tactics especially), Magic: the Purchasing, etc. It works great for telling stories punctuated by regular bouts of extreme (X-T-REEM!!!! ?) violence, where the violence is really the important thing. It's not so good for anything that doesn't involve flipping out and kicking arse.

You couldn't do Harry Potter with it. You couldn't do the Deptford Mice, Twilight, Dresden or Redwall (And that's the limit of my knowledge of even vaguely contemporary kid lit; get back to me when D&D7 is being developed and I'll doubtless know more). I can't actually think of many books it would be very good for.

And that's the sort of thing D&D5 needs to be able to give you the tools to do. Not to the exclusion of all else, obviously, but WotC needs to make it obvious that their game will cater to the younger audience, and the things that influence them. Include the stuff for older influences as well, but that audience (If they buy into the game, which isn't very likely) will be quite happy to dig beyond the obvious stuff. Hell, be sneaky about it; mark the Conan-imitator sneaky/fighty class an "uncommon" or even "rare" class. Kids will leap at the chance to play it. Guaranteed.

So what if not all of the modern influences will last for generations? They're what matters to an audience now, and for the foreseeable future. Back in the 70's, nobody could have been certain that all of Gygax et al's original influences would last this long.

Focussing on the old-school gamers who already have a system that does exactly what they want, and not bothering to consider anything after the things that influenced them, is a mistake (Especially after the rise of the OSR). Those people already have their game that they are perfectly happy with, and have no reason to buy the new thing. They're equally as much of a design trap as the Warcraft crowd were back in 2006 - 8.

Quote from: Bloody Stupid Johnson;537003I don't quite get what's supposed to be the connection between D&D and fantasy fiction here anyway. Do you have to have read Voyage of the Space Beagle to think displacer beasts are cool?

I'd have thought a kid picks up the RPG, and they see the concepts in terms of whatever fantasy stories/tropes they're familiar with. If they think "wow I can be a badass fighter dude like _____" it doesn't matter if the first image that comes to their mind is Conan, Samurai Champloo (?Is that a real name?) or whatever.

The issue is, the "Appendix N" list was not the most popular selection of fantasy in the 1970s or the 1980s either. If D&D had been targeted squarely at what was popular, it would have been a high fantasy game based on LotR, The Belgariad, Shannara and whatever would make the renfaire people interested. Instead, it was a personal selection based on what some guy in Wisconsin thought would best work in his game, a game which was in turn partially based on that same reading list (yeah, it's a bit circular, D&D is its own genre, blah blah blah). You can do Gandalf in D&D, and he is a 5th-level Magic-User, while Conan is a 6th level Fighter.

The renfaire fans weren't happy about it either. Actually, even when I started gaming in the 90s, I would routinely hear arguments about how AD&D sucked because it didn't do Tolkien right (or because it featured spell memorisation, hit points, abstract AC, or classes and levels). Well, it didn't do Tolkien right because it wasn't trying to. It had its own identity, and it did well on that strength, because - and never tell the bitter online people that, because it will drive them up the wall - the D&D formula works if people are willing to accept its basic premises. You are a Fighter and that means a measly hit with a sword won't kill you, you are a Wizard and you have to relearn your spells every day, great; now that this is out of the way, let's have an adventure.

Most newbies get that fairly well, although they will draw on different sorts of inspiration when visualising their characters and adventures. That's cool. The people who have the most problems with the D&D formula are the same disaffected thirty- and fourtysomethings who can't enjoy D&D anymore because it doesn't let them accurately model Cowboy Bebop and My Little Pony and those other cartoons which are so popular with disaffected thirty- and fourtysomethings. Then they write screeds like the OP on ENWorld, SA or RPGNet. Well - it is their problem. The rest of us will be happily playing a D&D (http://www.mobunited.com/mobunitedmedia/2011/08/22/lets-play-a-dd/).

I have to say, I wish Appendix N had not been included in the game. It's caused more useless internet arguments than almost any section of actual rules.

Not to mention some people think fantasy just froze in time at some point during the 1970's.

Quote from: Ladybird;537028You couldn't do Harry Potter with it. You couldn't do the Deptford Mice, Twilight, Dresden or Redwall (And that's the limit of my knowledge of even vaguely contemporary kid lit; get back to me when D&D7 is being developed and I'll doubtless know more). I can't actually think of many books it would be very good for.

And that's the sort of thing D&D5 needs to be able to give you the tools to do. Not to the exclusion of all else, obviously, but WotC needs to make it obvious that their game will cater to the younger audience, and the things that influence them.

Seems reasonable. D&D needs good combat, but combat shouldn't be the be-all end-all of D&D, and 4e did tend way too much that way.  That's true whether the primary inspiration is Fafhrd/Mouser or Harry Potter.

Quote from: danbuter;537037I have to say, I wish Appendix N had not been included in the game. It's caused more useless internet arguments than almost any section of actual rules.

Not to mention some people think fantasy just froze in time at some point during the 1970's.

As Melan indicates, Appendix N was mostly '30s-'60s swords and sorcery, not the doorstop-trilogy sub-Tolkien stuff that actually dominated the mid to late '70s (and '80s).

Here is the thing. You can make an rpg that does harry potter well. It would probably even be awesome because I can see a lot of the harry potter stuff working well in a lot of games. But it wouldn't be D&D. Generally I go to D&D because it is D&D, not because it has a bunch of stuff I really want to change. At the same time I like other style of games as well and play other systems that do those well. I just don't understand the drive to turn D&D into something it never really was. I mean if you don't like it (and I can see why some don't), you have options. There are more games out there today than ever before. Telling other customers to just go away because they wont buy D&D books filled with twilight inspired art and mechanics isn't going to change the fact that these guys still buy books (so wotc has to consider their preferences too).

This is like someone who really hates gurps, sticking around and playing gurps because he is waitin for the day it becomes like D&D (then getting mad at the current gurps fanbase for wrecking his hopes of change). The guy is at the wrong party.

That's funny, since there are books from the 70's in the Appendix. Maybe you should look at it. Unless you think Poul Anderson, Leigh Brackett, de Camp, Carter, Fox, Lanier, Leiber, Moorcock, Norton, Offutt, Pratt, Saberhagen, St. Clair, Vance, Williamson, or Zelazny were writing in the 30's. You know, 75% of the list. As usual, grognards post with an agenda, and his is pretty obvious.

Gygax did list a number of 30's authors as the main influences, but most of his list was contemporary fantasy.

Quote from: Melan, emphasis addedThe issue is, the "Appendix N" list was not the most popular selection of fantasy in the 1970s or the 1980s either.

Quote from: S'mon, emphasis addedAs Melan indicates, Appendix N was mostly '30s-'60s swords and sorcery, not the doorstop-trilogy sub-Tolkien stuff that actually dominated the mid to late '70s (and '80s).

Quote from: danbuter;537041That's funny, since there are books from the 70's in the Appendix. Maybe you should look at it. Unless you think Poul Anderson, Leigh Brackett, de Camp, Carter, Fox, Lanier, Leiber, Moorcock, Norton, Offutt, Pratt, Saberhagen, St. Clair, Vance, Williamson, or Zelazny were writing in the 30's. You know, 75% of the list.

Those goalposts are moving. Keep railing against those terrible grognards and their agendas, though.

(Also, if a particular example of modern fantasy, or even older fantasy Gygax neglected works well with D&D - why not add it to the list?)

Quote from: S'mon;537039As Melan indicates, Appendix N was mostly '30s-'60s swords and sorcery, not the doorstop-trilogy sub-Tolkien stuff that actually dominated the mid to late '70s (and '80s).

And yet D&D later abandoned its roots for the most part in favor of the doorstop trilogy route, most notably with Dragonlance(itself a doorstop trilogy) and codified in 2E. It was dragged there by D&D's own fans.

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;537040Here is the thing. You can make an rpg that does harry potter well. It would probably even be awesome because I can see a lot of the harry potter stuff working well in a lot of games. But it wouldn't be D&D.

The problem with this is that D&D is synonymous with the concept of RPGs, and somebody without a strong connection to D&D's roots is going to project their own tastes and preferences on it. When I started playing in the mid-90s, I was into Final Fantasy 7 and Vampire Hunter D, and spent my entire time with 2E trying to force those things into the game.

Given its role as the gateway to the hobby, and being synonymous with the term RPG, D&D shouldn't be so dogmatic and inflexible that people can't render their own ideal of fantasy with it.

Quote from: thecasualoblivion;537046The problem with this is that D&D is synonymous with the concept of RPGs, and somebody without a strong connection to D&D's roots is going to project their own tastes and preferences on it. When I started playing in the mid-90s, I was into Final Fantasy 7 and Vampire Hunter D, and spent my entire time with 2E trying to force those things into the game.

Sure. But D&D was never those things. You can make a game that does those things, but it won't be D&D. What you can do is play a D&D version of Vampire Hunter D. It will be D&D with Vampire Hunter D elements layered on top. But it won't perfectly simulate D. My point is regardless of what stuff went into making D&D what it is (and for now lets just say that stuff is Appendix N), even after people stop consuming that stuff they still expect D&D to have that core D&Dness to it. You can always make other games. But when you radically restructure D&D, what do you have? You have a new game, you don't have dungeons and dragons. And that is the fundamental problem with this idea that "the game" needs to progress.

Thinking D&D=RPGs isn't a good reason to alter the game itself in order to make it reflect what other systems in the hobby are doing.

Quote from: thecasualoblivion;537046And yet D&D later abandoned its roots for the most part in favor of the doorstop trilogy route, most notably with Dragonlance(itself a doorstop trilogy) and codified in 2E. It was dragged there by D&D's own fans.
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But the core mechanics were basically the same. The 2E dragonlance stuff was all primarily flavor and advice stuff (or trimming out monsters and classes they thought might be objectionable). There were some important rules changes as well (and a whole slew of options) but you could look at 2E and look at 1E and see the same core shape. Heck you could run a 1E modules using 2E very easily (I did it all the time). Even 3E has pretty much the general shape of D&D. It is only when you get to 4E people suddenly say "wait is this even D&D anymore?" (whereas before people would normally say "wait I don't like this version of D&D")

I'm not really sure why people get mad when pounding a round peg into a square hole doesn't work; it should be obvious from the onset.  I get that some people must do it for themselves even if they know intellectually the outcome, but I still don't why they are mad when it doesn't pan out.

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;537047Thinking D&D=RPGs isn't a good reason to alter the game itself in order to make it reflect what other systems in the hobby are doing.

Very good point.  It's the difference between D&D being a RPG and D&D being a marketable brand.  D&D as an RPG can be the same for grandparents and grandkids.  D&D as a brand has to constantly reinvent itself based on whatever corporate monkey thinks will bring in "sub-demographic B5".

Quote from: thecasualoblivion;537046Given its role as the gateway to the hobby, and being synonymous with the term RPG, D&D shouldn't be so dogmatic and inflexible that people can't render their own ideal of fantasy with it.

You can always add in what flavor you want to D&D. 2E was great for this actually (just look at some of the monster customization rules from the Van Richten guides). But if you had front-loaded that ravenloft stuff into the PHB it would have turned off a more general audience. D&D is its own thing. It isn't meant to reflect what is going on in the fantasy lit genre. It has become its own genre of fantasy and people have expectations about what that means (lots and lots of people, who but lots and lots of books). As we saw with 4E, if you cater too much to a younger audience or an audience less enthralled with the core elements of D&D, you lose a lot of customers. So I am not being rigid or dogmatic here (actually you are the one insisting D&D be something it has never been, and being rather forceful about the need for D&D to convert to your way of thinking). My point is what D&D was doing worked, allowed it to retain the largest possible audience, but the moment they altered that and went down the path of reconfiguring the game to suit a "broader" or "younger" base, the game failed. This is because of product identity. All they did with 4E was make a new game among many new games out there.

Quote from: CRKrueger;537051Very good point.  It's the difference between D&D being a RPG and D&D being a marketable brand.  D&D as an RPG can be the same for grandparents and grandkids.  D&D as a brand has to constantly reinvent itself based on whatever corporate monkey thinks will bring in "sub-demographic B5".

And the issue is, I don't think the constant reinvention helps at all. By all means smooth out some of the wrinkles. But if you change it too much (as they did with 4E), it will fail because people come back to D&D for a reason (and the reason was never because they thought healing surges might one day be invented).

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;537047Sure. But D&D was never those things. You can make a game that does those things, but it won't be D&D. What you can do is play a D&D version of Vampire Hunter D. It will be D&D with Vampire Hunter D elements layered on top. But it won't perfectly simulate D. My point is regardless of what stuff went into making D&D what it is (and for now lets just say that stuff is Appendix N), even after people stop consuming that stuff they still expect D&D to have that core D&Dness to it. You can always make other games. But when you radically restructure D&D, what do you have? You have a new game, you don't have dungeons and dragons. And that is the fundamental problem with this idea that "the game" needs to progress.

Thinking D&D=RPGs isn't a good reason to alter the game itself in order to make it reflect what other systems in the hobby are doing.

It really wasn't, but we made do. Handing out Rings of Jumping and Boots of Flying like they were candy went a long way, as did making healing effectively unlimited and ramping up the violence. I came into this hobby with no attachment to core D&Dness from the very start, and never grew one. I just don't see D&D in those dogmatic terms, and I never have.

Thinking D&D=RPGs is just dealing with the reality of people coming into the hobby with no attachment to what has come before. People who walk up to a table and want to play Legolas like he was in the movie. Its not about reflecting what other systems do so much as reflecting the fantasy people have in their minds prior to playing D&D for the first time.

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;537049But the core mechanics were basically the same. The 2E dragonlance stuff was all primarily flavor and advice stuff (or trimming out monsters and classes they thought might be objectionable). There were some important rules changes as well (and a whole slew of options) but you could look at 2E and look at 1E and see the same core shape. Heck you could run a 1E modules using 2E very easily (I did it all the time). Even 3E has pretty much the general shape of D&D. It is only when you get to 4E people suddenly say "wait is this even D&D anymore?" (whereas before people would normally say "wait I don't like this version of D&D")

Core mechanics were the same, but the tone of the rulebook and the advice they presented made all the difference in the world. OSR people say the same about the advice and presentation of older editions in achieving an "Old School" game.

I disagree with your assessment of 3E, assuming you go past the core 3. Once you get into flying Warlocks shooting laser beams at will, Tome of Battle, and monsters as PCs(including Half-Dragon templated ones) the general shape of traditional shape starts disappearing. A kitchen sink anything goes 3E game goes well past everything 4E did thematically, though 4E's core was much further away than 3E's core.

Its a trade off between keeping the grognards happy and letting the newbie play Legolas like he wants.

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;537052You can always add in what flavor you want to D&D. 2E was great for this actually (just look at some of the monster customization rules from the Van Richten guides). But if you had front-loaded that ravenloft stuff into the PHB it would have turned off a more general audience. D&D is its own thing. It isn't meant to reflect what is going on in the fantasy lit genre. It has become its own genre of fantasy and people have expectations about what that means (lots and lots of people, who but lots and lots of books).

Putting it in yourself is no substitute for it being there in the first place, and we have a sort of pandora's box where 3E and 4E opened a lot of doors that allowed a lot of new things into D&D that just won't get back into the box.

D&D as its own thing only matters to people who have embraced D&D as its own specific thing. It doesn't matter to somebody like me who has been playing D&D for 17 years with utter disregard for the history of D&D, and it doesn't matter to somebody who just walked in the door.

Quote from: thecasualoblivion;537058It really wasn't, but we made do. Handing out Rings of Jumping and Boots of Flying like they were candy went a long way, as did making healing effectively unlimited and ramping up the violence. I came into this hobby with no attachment to core D&Dness from the very start, and never grew one. I just don't see D&D in those dogmatic terms, and I never have.

That is fair, but it also means you have never really been a fan of what D&D is....while most who played the game playe it because of what it was, not what it could be. It sounds like you love the hobby but have never been in love with D&D...so why not play a different game? Or if you a going to play D&D why demand it bend to your tastes, when it really needs to get the biggest cross section of fans possible (incuding lots of old generation gamers). This isn't about being dogmatic (i can happily play new and interesting game like savage worlds). I just understand that changing D&D into another game is a recipe for failure.

Quote from: thecasualoblivion;537058Putting it in yourself is no substitute for it being there in the first place, and we have a sort of pandora's box where 3E and 4E opened a lot of doors that allowed a lot of new things into D&D that just won't get back into the box.

D&D as its own thing only matters to people who have embraced D&D as its own specific thing. It doesn't matter to somebody like me who has been playing D&D for 17 years with utter disregard for the history of D&D, and it doesn't matter to somebody who just walked in the door.

Sure. But again you are left with the fact that they lost half their customers by changing D&D into 4E. It very much satisfied some people but it made the game unrecognizeable to others.

So your model of eliminating the old for the new doesn't work. I am not saying you can't update the game. As you pont out 3e allowed fo some crazy flavor concepts. But if you alter the core game you a taking out the basic things that made it succesful over thirty years.

You can hate vancian casting all you want (andit certainly doesn't work for certain modes of play), but the minute they took it out, they lost people. Because it isnt just the folks who started 30 years ago that see it as essential, it is the people who started in 3e and 3.5 as well.

Wonder if the OP post is thinking along the lines of the 2009 rebooted Star Trek (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Trek_%28film%29) movie.

Quote from: thecasualoblivion;537058I disagree with your assessment of 3E, assuming you go past the core 3. Once you get into flying Warlocks shooting laser beams at will, Tome of Battle, and monsters as PCs(including Half-Dragon templated ones) the general shape of traditional shape starts disappearing. A kitchen sink anything goes 3E game goes well past everything 4E did thematically, though 4E's core was much further away than 3E's core.

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Then you weren't paying attention to my post. All that stuff you mention is outside the core (just ike ravenloft and spelljammer were outside the core). The core is still very much D&D. It gets you the broadest general audience. Stuff like tome of battle and savage species gives you option that can be added in for interesting flavor. That is the key to versatility. I could easily run 3E either way.

Quote from: thecasualoblivion;537058Core mechanics were the same, but the tone of the rulebook and the advice they presented made all the difference in the world. OSR people say the same about the advice and presentation of older editions in achieving an "Old School" game.
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Sure, and I pretty much said in my post that was the key difference between 2e and 1e (advice and tone-----though much of the story heavy advice comes in with later 2e books, not the initial 2e phb). So you and i dont disagree on this point. However you keep mentioning 4e in your posts and suggesting this is more than a flavor issue (that you want mechanicsthat support your flavor vision). Lots of people who liked 1e continued with 2e because the mechanics were at core the same (even if dragonlance irked them). Same with 3e. I personalky disliked the flavor and some mechanicsof 3e, but it had the same core shape so i didn't mind playing. By the time 4e came out not only was it a different game (not D&D) it was a terrible gamist system I had no interest in.

Quote from: danbuter;537037I have to say, I wish Appendix N had not been included in the game. It's caused more useless internet arguments than almost any section of actual rules.

I completely agree. Sad, sad thing.

Quote from: Melan;537033The issue is, the "Appendix N" list was not the most popular selection of fantasy in the 1970s or the 1980s either. If D&D had been targeted squarely at what was popular, it would have been a high fantasy game based on LotR, The Belgariad, Shannara and whatever would make the renfaire people interested. Instead, it was a personal selection based on what some guy in Wisconsin thought would best work in his game, a game which was in turn partially based on that same reading list (yeah, it's a bit circular, D&D is its own genre, blah blah blah). You can do Gandalf in D&D, and he is a 5th-level Magic-User, while Conan is a 6th level Fighter.

The renfaire fans weren't happy about it either. Actually, even when I started gaming in the 90s, I would routinely hear arguments about how AD&D sucked because it didn't do Tolkien right (or because it featured spell memorisation, hit points, abstract AC, or classes and levels). Well, it didn't do Tolkien right because it wasn't trying to. It had its own identity, and it did well on that strength, because - and never tell the bitter online people that, because it will drive them up the wall - the D&D formula works if people are willing to accept its basic premises. You are a Fighter and that means a measly hit with a sword won't kill you, you are a Wizard and you have to relearn your spells every day, great; now that this is out of the way, let's have an adventure.

Most newbies get that fairly well, although they will draw on different sorts of inspiration when visualising their characters and adventures. That's cool. The people who have the most problems with the D&D formula are the same disaffected thirty- and fourtysomethings who can't enjoy D&D anymore because it doesn't let them accurately model Cowboy Bebop and My Little Pony and those other cartoons which are so popular with disaffected thirty- and fourtysomethings. Then they write screeds like the OP on ENWorld, SA or RPGNet. Well - it is their problem. The rest of us will be happily playing a D&D (http://www.mobunited.com/mobunitedmedia/2011/08/22/lets-play-a-dd/).

As usual, you are right.

I think focusing on D&D's past would be as big a mistake as continuing 4e. A large portion of the Current D&D community prefers things how 4E or splat heavy 3E did it, and even Pathfinder is a clear, if less drastic, break from traditional D&D. They tried it in new ways, and while some hated it some loved it, and now both are D&D.

The next edition needs to cater to both old and new school, as well as cater to newbs who arrive with their own preconceived notions of what fantasy looks like, and most importantly shouldn't play favorites.

Quote from: thecasualoblivion;537080I think focusing on D&D's past would be as big a mistake as continuing 4e. A large portion of the Current D&D community prefers things how 4E or splat heavy 3E did it, and even Pathfinder is a clear, if less drastic, break from traditional D&D. They tried it in new ways, and while some hated it some loved it, and now both are D&D.

The next edition needs to cater to both old and new school, as well as cater to newbs who arrive with their own preconceived notions of what fantasy looks like, and most importantly shouldn't play favorites.

Again it isn't about going back to chainmail or the 1st edition version of the game. It is about recognizing what has been constant in the game up though 3e that you really cant remove without changing the game's nature.

I don't think 4e has as much of a claim to be being D&D as the first three editions. Yes they need to figure out how to make these people happy because they are a large group of customers. But they wont be able to take the 4e approach of changing the core game to do it.

I agree with your last paragraph entirely. But I think we dispute how best to achieve this.

Quote from: jeff37923;537020Got a link to the original post?

If I didn't, I wouldn't be me. (http://www.enworld.org/forum/new-horizons-upcoming-edition-d-d/322659-next-generation.html)

I totally agree that D&D should be inspired by the shows/literature that the kids these days are into... like Game of Thrones.

RPGPundit

Quote from: RPGPundit;537256I totally agree that D&D should be inspired by the shows/literature that the kids these days are into... like Game of Thrones.

RPGPundit

Now that would be cool*. But that's your point, whatever inspiration they use has to resonate with everyone to make the game successful.  Just like the original. :)

*I made my save throw.

Quote from: RPGPundit;537256I totally agree that D&D should be inspired by the shows/literature that the kids these days are into... like Game of Thrones.

RPGPundit

Quote from: Marleycat;537257Now that would be cool. But that's your point, whatever inspiration they use has to resonate with everyone to make the game successful.  Just like the original. :)

I think the problem with trying to resonate with everyone is that fantasy seems to be increasingly splitting.  You've got the fantasy of some anime and computer games which seems to be heading in more of a super hero direction and then on the other hand you have literary fantasy which seems to be increasingly more "gritty" like George R.R Martin or Joe Abercrombie.

You can't really do both, any drift in one direction pretty much invalidates the other.  The former is a bigger audience but may well feel it is pretty well served already by computer games.  The second is smaller, but has the advantage of coinciding more precisely with the core demographic of D&D which is kids that read.  (Because really, if kids don't read, I can't imagine them ever sticking with D&D for very long.)  It may well be counter-productive to chase after the computer game crowd, because the kids there you're liking to capture are pretty likely only going to be the kids that also read fantasy anyway.

Quote from: Dog Quixote;537261I think the problem with trying to resonate with everyone is that fantasy seems to be increasingly splitting.  You've got the fantasy of some anime and computer games which seems to be heading in more of a super hero direction and then on the other hand you have literary fantasy which seems to be increasingly more "gritty" like George R.R Martin or Joe Abercrombie.

You can't really do both, any drift in one direction pretty much invalidates the other.  The former is a bigger audience but may well feel it is pretty well served already by computer games.  The second is smaller, but has the advantage of coinciding more precisely with the core demographic of D&D which is kids that read.  (Because really, if kids don't read, I can't imagine them ever sticking with D&D for very long.)  It may well be counter-productive to chase after the computer game crowd, because the kids there you're liking to capture are pretty likely only going to be the kids that also read fantasy anyway.

I seriously hope today's generation is not as self involved and stupid as this suggests they are. If so,  Everything is done, not just rpg's.

Quote from: Marleycat;537269I seriously hope today's generation is not as self involved and stupid as this suggests they are. If so,  Everything is done, not just rpg's.

I'm not sure what you mean.

Quote from: Dog Quixote;537270I'm not sure what you mean.

If the kids don't read, actually read something beyond say USA Today the world is done, let alone our little hobby. This hobby requires a love of reading and what it leads to to actually understand it.

QuoteHey, old people...Your stories aren't relevant anymore...you need to go step back, and - in essence - go away...I don't want mechanics steeped in the old, anymore. I want [a new game that supports a different approach to play and genre influences]...

No problem, dude, I'm way ahead of you.  I've been off the edition carousel for years.  To me, "D&D" means certain things (i.e., the things that embodied the game from the start, and that you see as outdated and needing to be swept away in a "Next Generation D&D").  I'll probably always see it that way, and see different games as...well, different games.  

But don't let my narrow vision of D&D stop you!  I assure you that I have no investment in "D&D Next."  I leave it entirely in your hands, to form as you will and to take in whatever direction you like.  (Didn't you guys already do that with 4e? Eh, I digress...whatever...)    

WotC keeps trying to lure me to whatever "D&D du jour" they're selling, but it's kind of like being propositioned by an aging transsexual streetwalker squeezed into some 70s-era disco pants: "C'mon baby, it's the same as it ever was, I promise.  I'll give you the real deal, just what you want.  Back to the dungeon, baby.  The game remains the same.  I'm the best of all worlds, you can play me any way you want..."  I'm just not buying it (you might say I'm not in the market).  I assure you that as far as "D&D Next" goes, I have Gone Away.

So spike up your hair, grab your massively oversized sword, and bust loose your Dragon Tail Kick.  Go on with your bad self, brother.  "D&D Next" is your oyster.  Shuck it and slurp it down.  I wish you joy and hope you find a pearl.

Quote from: Philotomy Jurament;537273No problem, dude, I'm way ahead of you.  I've been off the edition carousel for years.  To me, "D&D" means certain things (i.e., the things that embodied the game from the start, and that you see as outdated and needing to be swept away in a "Next Generation D&D").

You are mistaken here. These kind of people don't want people off the edition carousel, they often want them out of the hobby, and have a whole fucked-up little mythology to justify that wish. It's an idea of progress through weeding out non-progressives (and no, I will not take the analogy any further, it's creepy enough within the context of edition wars about roleplaying games). Their idea is this: for gaming to live and prosper, Philotomy Jurament has to quit gaming.

Quote from: Marleycat;537271If the kids don't read, actually read something beyond say USA Today the world is done, let alone our little hobby. This hobby requires a love of reading and what it leads to to actually understand it.

I'm not saying that kids don't read.  Some kids read.  But only some, a minority, although that is going to depend on demographics.  (I used to be an English Teacher.)  Most teenagers only read the books they have to read for school (and often not really them).  It's probably always been the case, although it's often claimed that the number is dropping (but I can't say I've noticed any change from when I was at school.)

Quote from: RPGPundit;537256I totally agree that D&D should be inspired by the shows/literature that the kids these days are into... like Game of Thrones.

Which is why I reckon they need to reboot the setting...

Quote from: RPGPundit;537256I totally agree that D&D should be inspired by the shows/literature that the kids these days are into... like Game of Thrones.

RPGPundit

If anything, GoT mimics D&D ... endless mini-plots with little to no overarching cohesion, including an endless list of main PC's and supporting NPC's which die more often than not, requiring new PCs and NPCs to be generated.

Quote from: Marleycat;537271If the kids don't read, actually read something beyond say USA Today the world is done, let alone our little hobby. This hobby requires a love of reading and what it leads to to actually understand it.

What? D&D is actually an elitist intellectual pursuit then? That's how it all started out, so we've come full circle...

Quote from: GameDaddy;537306What? D&D is actually an elitist intellectual pursuit then? That's how it all started out, so we've come full circle...

Reading novels is an elite intellectual pursuit?

Quote from: Dog Quixote;537261The second is smaller, but has the advantage of coinciding more precisely with the core demographic of D&D which is kids that read.

Manga

Quote from: Philotomy Jurament;537273No problem, dude, I'm way ahead of you.  I've been off the edition carousel for years.  To me, "D&D" means certain things (i.e., the things that embodied the game from the start, and that you see as outdated and needing to be swept away in a "Next Generation D&D").  I'll probably always see it that way, and see different games as...well, different games.  

But don't let my narrow vision of D&D stop you!  I assure you that I have no investment in "D&D Next."  I leave it entirely in your hands, to form as you will and to take in whatever direction you like.  (Didn't you guys already do that with 4e? Eh, I digress...whatever...)    

WotC keeps trying to lure me to whatever "D&D du jour" they're selling, but it's kind of like being propositioned by an aging transsexual streetwalker squeezed into some 70s-era disco pants: "C'mon baby, it's the same as it ever was, I promise.  I'll give you the real deal, just what you want.  Back to the dungeon, baby.  The game remains the same.  I'm the best of all worlds, you can play me any way you want..."  I'm just not buying it (you might say I'm not in the market).  I assure you that as far as "D&D Next" goes, I have Gone Away.

So spike up your hair, grab your massively oversized sword, and bust loose your Dragon Tail Kick.  Go on with your bad self, brother.  "D&D Next" is your oyster.  Shuck it and slurp it down.  I wish you joy and hope you find a pearl.

I read this post, smiled, and thought, 'poetry, man, poetry.'

Quote from: Melan;537277You are mistaken here. These kind of people don't want people off the edition carousel, they often want them out of the hobby, and have a whole fucked-up little mythology to justify that wish. It's an idea of progress through weeding out non-progressives (and no, I will not take the analogy any further, it's creepy enough within the context of edition wars about roleplaying games). Their idea is this: for gaming to live and prosper, Philotomy Jurament has to quit gaming.

Then I read this post and my smile faded immediately and was replaced by a weighted sadness.  Unfortunately, Melan may very well be right.

Quote from: Melan;537277You are mistaken here. These kind of people don't want people off the edition carousel, they often want them out of the hobby, and have a whole fucked-up little mythology to justify that wish. It's an idea of progress through weeding out non-progressives (and no, I will not take the analogy any further, it's creepy enough within the context of edition wars about roleplaying games). Their idea is this: for gaming to live and prosper, Philotomy Jurament has to quit gaming.

More generally, sometimes progress happens in this manner.

For example, some ideas in modern science eventually become accepted due to the old guard dying off, as a quote by Max Planck (http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Max_Planck):


"A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it.[/b]

    Wissenschaftliche Selbstbiographie. Mit einem Bildnis und der von Max von Laue gehaltenen Traueransprache., Johann Ambrosius Barth Verlag, (Leipzig 1948), p. 22, as translated in Scientific Autobiography and Other Papers, trans. F. Gaynor (New York, 1949), pp.33-34 (as cited in T.S. Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions)."

Quote from: GameDaddy;537306What? D&D is actually an elitist intellectual pursuit then? That's how it all started out, so we've come full circle...

I just think a hobby about classic literary tropes kind of requires you actually picked up a book and read about them at some point. I'm not sure about it being intellectual or whatnot.

Quote from: Melan;537277You are mistaken here. These kind of people don't want people off the edition carousel, they often want them out of the hobby, and have a whole fucked-up little mythology to justify that wish. It's an idea of progress through weeding out non-progressives (and no, I will not take the analogy any further, it's creepy enough within the context of edition wars about roleplaying games). Their idea is this: for gaming to live and prosper, Philotomy Jurament has to quit gaming.

Philotomy Jurament doesn't have to quit gaming, he just needs to get out of the way.

In 5E terms, this means that the game doesn't contain so much grognard that it ruins the game for those of us who want a modern D&D.

Quote from: thecasualoblivion;537335Philotomy Jurament doesn't have to quit gaming, he just needs to get out of the way.

In 5E terms, this means that the game doesn't contain so much grognard that it ruins the game for those of us who want a modern D&D.

That worked out real well for you already didn't it? 5e doesn't have to be BEMCI resurrected but it does have to have elements of it for it to be successful. If not, 4e is right there and it won't suddenly disappear. Modern is good but modern for modern's sake....you get the picture.

Quote from: Marleycat;537339That worked out real well for you already didn't it?

For me personally, it worked out great. For the brand, less so. For 5E, they want to go both(all) ways, and the trick will be balancing priorities as to not ruin it for either(any) side.

Quote from: thecasualoblivion;537335Philotomy Jurament doesn't have to quit gaming, he just needs to get out of the way.

In 5E terms, this means that the game doesn't contain so much grognard that it ruins the game for those of us who want a modern D&D.

Well 4E was pretty fucking grognard free IMHO. If you kids had ponied up the cash for the product instead of smugly saying " I don't need to buy books because I have DDI" then we might not be staring 5E in the face.

Quote from: thecasualoblivion;537340For me personally, it worked out great. For the brand, less so. For 5E, they want to go both(all) ways, and the trick will be balancing priorities as to not ruin it for either(any) side.

Yep. I'm interested to see if it can be done.

Quote from: Exploderwizard;537341If you kids had ponied up the cash for the product instead of smugly saying " I don't need to buy books because I have DDI" then we might not be staring 5E in the face.

Bingo! And the same issue is going to make 5e fail.

Quote from: Philotomy Jurament;537273No problem, dude, I'm way ahead of you.  I've been off the edition carousel for years.  To me, "D&D" means certain things (i.e., the things that embodied the game from the start, and that you see as outdated and needing to be swept away in a "Next Generation D&D").  I'll probably always see it that way, and see different games as...well, different games.  

But don't let my narrow vision of D&D stop you!  I assure you that I have no investment in "D&D Next."  I leave it entirely in your hands, to form as you will and to take in whatever direction you like.  (Didn't you guys already do that with 4e? Eh, I digress...whatever...)    

WotC keeps trying to lure me to whatever "D&D du jour" they're selling, but it's kind of like being propositioned by an aging transsexual streetwalker squeezed into some 70s-era disco pants: "C'mon baby, it's the same as it ever was, I promise.  I'll give you the real deal, just what you want.  Back to the dungeon, baby.  The game remains the same.  I'm the best of all worlds, you can play me any way you want..."  I'm just not buying it (you might say I'm not in the market).  I assure you that as far as "D&D Next" goes, I have Gone Away.

So spike up your hair, grab your massively oversized sword, and bust loose your Dragon Tail Kick.  Go on with your bad self, brother.  "D&D Next" is your oyster.  Shuck it and slurp it down.  I wish you joy and hope you find a pearl.

+1 Ah geez, that's the funniest thing I've read in a while. More! More!

Quote from: danbuter;537346Bingo! And the same issue is going to make 5e fail.

In such a scenario of players using DDI instead of buying splatbooks, wonder what WotC will do in regard to the splatbooks treadmill business model.

One strategy is to crank out "system free/lite" supplement books, such as the upcoming "Ed Greenwood Presents Elminster's Forgotten Realms (http://wizards.com/dnd/Product.aspx?x=dnd/products/dndacc/398880000)" and "Menzoberranzan (http://wizards.com/dnd/Product.aspx?x=dnd/products/dndacc/39889000)" books.  Dunno who would buy such system free/lite books, besides the compulsive collectors and maybe some DMs.

Quote from: Melan;537277You are mistaken here. These kind of people don't want people off the edition carousel, they often want them out of the hobby, and have a whole fucked-up little mythology to justify that wish. It's an idea of progress through weeding out non-progressives (and no, I will not take the analogy any further, it's creepy enough within the context of edition wars about roleplaying games). Their idea is this: for gaming to live and prosper, Philotomy Jurament has to quit gaming.

You got some chosen pieces of evidence to show us? No problem if you don't have the time, it's just that this seems to be far beyond the pale and knowing how meticulous you can be when asked, well... let's just say I'm a curious SOB. :D

At times I wonder if the market for WotC produced crunch heavy player splatbooks, has already been "dead" over the last several years due to the DDI.

(It seems to be largely a dead market for 3PP 4E books since mid-2009).

Quote from: mhensley;537014The LotR movies were a huge success and I fully expect that the Hobbit movie will be a big hit as well.  As far as Anime goes, Lodoss War or Slayers anyone?  D&D works pretty damn well for those.

Most of the players of the current generation who watch anime would not think of Lodoss or Slayers at all if they were told that D&D could handle the shows they watch.  They would be more likely to think of slice-of-life shows, over-the-top shounen, moe fetishism, or, at best, modern fantasy.  The D&D-style fantasy that Lodoss and Slayers engaged in is a source of parody now.

I wonder if the popularity of teen-angsty vampire franchises like Twilight and True Blood had any impact on sales of White Wolf's Vampire.

Quote from: Dodger;537418I wonder if the popularity of teen-angsty vampire franchises like Twilight and True Blood had any impact on sales of White Wolf's Vampire.

I don't know but Vampire the Masquerade definitely got a boost from angsty stuff like Interview with a Vampire (film) and the 1992 Dracula movie.

I dont see D&D absorbing potter or twilight well. But someone could eaily make a new game geared for that audience.

Also, one has to question (regarding anime) how many gamers want anime in tyeir rpgs. I mean their are anime style rpgs out there, but they a not terribly popular. It is possible lots of people who like anie and like D&D, dont want those things to intermingle much.

Newest edition of D&D = anime has been a laughably dumb complaint for years now. When 3e came out it was compared to Diablo. I didn't play D&D until 3e came out, and before then I'd already identified D&D as a game with characters who had a versatile array of comic-book-level powers, without much to do with Vance or Howard other than the fire-and-forget setup of the spells. Couldn't high level fighters get some crazy number of attacks and Smash enemies for quite a lot of damage...in Basic D&D?

Quote from: Exploderwizard;537341Well 4E was pretty fucking grognard free IMHO. If you kids had ponied up the cash for the product instead of smugly saying " I don't need to buy books because I have DDI" then we might not be staring 5E in the face.

Hmm when I resubbed to the DDI last Wednesday there was 72,524 people signed up for the DDI, as of today there is now 72,670 people now signed up.  At 7$ per month that would be....508,690$ per month WotC is making on the DDI. To make the same amount using dead tree materials they would need to sell about 50,000+ books per month.

Quote from: Fiasco;537017Talk about tilting at windmills.  The OP already got what they asked for. It was called 4E and it tanked.

Fucking sick of the retards at EN World touting that line, and it's fucking stupid, and not at all a reasonable response to my "troll."

Equating 4e with new takes on fantasy is fucking stupid. AED powers and skill challenges and all that other idiotic shit is not at all equatable to trying to bring in new sources of fiction to draw inspiration from. Bad design is just fucking bad design.

Quote from: GnomeWorks;537464Fucking sick of the retards at EN World touting that line, and it's fucking stupid, and not at all a reasonable response to my "troll."

Equating 4e with new takes on fantasy is fucking stupid. AED powers and skill challenges and all that other idiotic shit is not at all equatable to trying to bring in new sources of fiction to draw inspiration from. Bad design is just fucking bad design.

You wrote the OP?

Well I guess, in that case... you can go fuck yourself. I'm not going anywhere.

Cheers,
Benoist

Quote from: GnomeWorks;537464Fucking sick of the retards at EN World touting that line, and it's fucking stupid, and not at all a reasonable response to my "troll."

Equating 4e with new takes on fantasy is fucking stupid. AED powers and skill challenges and all that other idiotic shit is not at all equatable to trying to bring in new sources of fiction to draw inspiration from. Bad design is just fucking bad design.

Your avatar sucks.

Take your anime and beat it.

Quote from: GnomeWorks;537464Fucking sick of the retards at EN World touting that line, and it's fucking stupid, and not at all a reasonable response to my "troll."

Equating 4e with new takes on fantasy is fucking stupid. AED powers and skill challenges and all that other idiotic shit is not at all equatable to trying to bring in new sources of fiction to draw inspiration from. Bad design is just fucking bad design.

I think people had stuff like Dragonborn, Tieflings, and Eladrin in mind when they made that comparison (I was one of the people who made this suggestion (due to the overall flavor of 4e) and I think it is a valid point about the mechanics. Unless you were suggesting what D&D really needs is to be a modern setting about vampires and werewolves in love or schoolboy wizards. But when most people argue about modern fantasy tropes and D&D they seem to be talking about stuff like what races and classes should be in the PHB.

Quote from: Sommerjon;537462Hmm when I resubbed to the DDI last Wednesday there was 72,524 people signed up for the DDI, as of today there is now 72,670 people now signed up.  At 7$ per month that would be....508,690$ per month WotC is making on the DDI. To make the same amount using dead tree materials they would need to sell about 50,000+ books per month.

The big question here is how much it cost them to make and maintain DDI. So far I haven't seen any reliable estimates on that (I have just seen a huge range of numbers from people online who say they have expertise in the field). My guess is this is certainly a reliable regular source of income once you make back your initial investment and if the cost of updating and maintaining it isn't too high. The downside is it probably eats into their book sales (most 4e players I know say they don't really buy the books anymore and just use DDI instead).

Quote from: Benoist;537465You wrote the OP?

Well I guess, in that case... you can go fuck yourself. I'm not going anywhere.

Cheers,
Benoist

Yeah it was GnomeWorks who posted it. Morrus pretty much told him the same thing you just did.

GW was railing against a fantasy anyways. I have been gaming for a long time and have never read a lot of stuff like Vance. I have always drawn on whatever fantasy happens to be of interest to me at the time. What GW fails to understand is D&D may have acquired much of its shape from those early infuences, and this is what makes its mechanics unique, but the core system is capable of supporting all kinds of flavor (and there are a whole slew of mechanical options out there to work with). When i think of spell memorization and fireball I don't equate that with vance, I equate it with D&D (because that is what it has become). People who only started the hobby during 3e also tend to equate it to the game. So it doesn't matter if the mechanic is thirty years old, because it has been in every edition of D&D (except the least succesful version) it is an essential part of its identity.

One only has to look at the flavor D&D has drawn on over the years to see how wrong GW's complaints are. The stuff coming out in the 90s campaign settings was pretty experimental. Eberron during 3e was also quite different. 3E in general got very manga-like with some of the prestige classes and builds. And through this entire time stuff like conan and lord of the rings remained relevant (i believe GW when he says his friends never read vance, but arguing that frodo and conan are equally obscure is just silly)--- so much so that we had a massively succesful film based on it ten years ago and we have an upcoming film based on the hobbit.

Quote from: Dodger;537418I wonder if the popularity of teen-angsty vampire franchises like Twilight and True Blood had any impact on sales of White Wolf's Vampire.

The current popularity of paranormal romance at least spurred them to publish that little supplement for VtR, Strange Dead Love.

(It always feels a little jarring to see True Blood described as a teen drama or some such, though, even if the TV show did add a teenage character who's not present in the original books.)

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;537472Yeah it was GnomeWorks who posted it. Morrus pretty much told him the same thing you just did.

GW was railing against a fantasy anyways. I have been gaming for a long time and have never read a lot of stuff like Vance. I have always drawn on whatever fantasy happens to be of interest to me at the time. What GW fails to understand is D&D may have acquired much of its shape from those early infuences, and this is what makes its mechanics unique, but the core system is capable of supporting all kinds of flavor (and there are a whole slew of mechanical options out there to work with). When i think of spell memorization and fireball I don't equate that with vance, I equate it with D&D (because that is what it has become). People who only started the hobby during 3e also tend to equate it to the game. So it doesn't matter if the mechanic is thirty years old, because it has been in every edition of D&D (except the least succesful version) it is an essential part of its identity.

One only has to look at the flavor D&D has drawn on over the years to see how wrong GW's complaints are. The stuff coming out in the 90s campaign settings was pretty experimental. Eberron during 3e was also quite different. 3E in general got very manga-like with some of the prestige classes and builds. And through this entire time stuff like conan and lord of the rings remained relevant (i believe GW when he says his friends never read vance, but arguing that frodo and conan are equally obscure is just silly)--- so much so that we had a massively succesful film based on it ten years ago and we have an upcoming film based on the hobbit.

Damn fine post! :)

Quote from: GnomeWorks;537464Fucking sick of the retards at EN World touting that line, and it's fucking stupid, and not at all a reasonable response to my "troll."

Equating 4e with new takes on fantasy is fucking stupid. AED powers and skill challenges and all that other idiotic shit is not at all equatable to trying to bring in new sources of fiction to draw inspiration from. Bad design is just fucking bad design.

Oh petulant youth...

Quote from: GnomeWorks;537464Fucking sick of the retards at EN World touting that line, and it's fucking stupid, and not at all a reasonable response to my "troll."

Equating 4e with new takes on fantasy is fucking stupid. AED powers and skill challenges and all that other idiotic shit is not at all equatable to trying to bring in new sources of fiction to draw inspiration from. Bad design is just fucking bad design.

Well, here is my reply, without the "Yeah? Fuck you too!" bit: stop trying to fit the square peg of your preferences into the round hole of D&D. If you try to force it, one of the two pieces will break, or the results will still not work well. There are other games (like maybe FATE or Wushu) that do the job easier and far, far better. They don't come with a huge fan base like D&D, but you should be able to find enough people to get a group started.

You know what would be great from a business standpoint?

DDI, full OGL, and digital-only crunch treadmill.

Your gearheads get what they want with no print costs.
3PP can't into the splat gut 'cause they're not in the character builder.
3PP handles your adventures output for you and strengthens your brand (the way the OGL could have been).

As for dead-tree supplements, they should stick with Ghostwalk size/scale settings. Not 2e style incompatible worlds, but cities that can be dragged and dropped into home campaigns, with a good bit of specific mapping, statted NPCs, and relatively open ended sample adventures.

Quote from: Melan;537480Well, here is my reply, without the "Yeah? Fuck you too!" bit: stop trying to fit the square peg of your preferences into the round hole of D&D. If you try to force it, one of the two pieces will break, or the results will still not work well. There are other games (like maybe FATE or Wushu) that do the job easier and far, far better. They don't come with a huge fan base like D&D, but you should be able to find enough people to get a group started.

Yeah, I don't get that, either.

I mean, check out his sig: "Mechanics should reflect flavor. Always."  So instead of playing a game that is designed to work with the flavor he prefers, he wants some sort of iconoclastic re-invention of an existing game.  Why?  

The most common answer to that question seems to be about the D&D "brand" rather than about playing and enjoying a game.  "For the brand to succeed in a new age..." kind of thing.

Another common answer boils down to "D&D is the most popular game with the most players; I want the rules and approach that I like to be the one that is the most popular and has the most players."  However, D&D has been the most popular RPG for a long time for a reason.  If you change D&D into something else, with new mechanics reflecting an entirely new flavor, there's a very real chance that you'll undermine that reason, the masses won't flock to "New D&D's" banner, and D&D will lose that popularity and definitive, preeminent status.  (I suspect that the direction WotC is trying to take with 5e is the result of learning this lesson the hard way.)

Unless you happen to be a WotC brand manager or something, my advice is to stop worrying about re-creating the latest official D&D in your own image.  Just find a game you like (or create a game you like), play it, and enjoy it.  You'll have fun and people will be less likely to tell you to fuck off.

Last time i checked Cowboy bebop was a late ninties scifi noir show not a D&d style fantasy series so i think the OP got his games mixed up, also there are plenty of japanese rpg's that emulate those shows one of which (Tenra Basho Zero) should hopefully be out later this year in english so maybe instead of trying to force anime/manga tropes into D&D(which other than the artwork wouldnt really benefit anyway) you could go find another game that is better suited to that stuff(sword world does jrpg style fantasy well though isnt currently available in english) or learn japanese and get the rights to an rpg from japan that does.

QuoteFucking sick of the retards at EN World touting that line, and it's fucking stupid, and not at all a reasonable response to my "troll."

Equating 4e with new takes on fantasy is fucking stupid. AED powers and skill challenges and all that other idiotic shit is not at all equatable to trying to bring in new sources of fiction to draw inspiration from. Bad design is just fucking bad design.

Lol, you weeaboo faggot.  I had no idea you posted here, but I'm amused that you do.  Go suck a Japanese micro while writing your Harry Potter fanfic.  You're an arrogant, petulant child who has no concept of taste.  J.K. Rowling's writing is mediocre, and your anime shows are poorly-drawn, poorly-plotted, poorly-written turds that only have a Western following because anti-social nerds like yourself masturbate to GRORIOUS NIPPON.

If you want an RPG that specifically emulates one of your shit-tier choices, then you're welcome to write one.  However, D&D cannot accommodate what you want because D&D is based around those "old-school" stories about Conan and Aragorn and all those boring characters (unlike all those well-rounded Bleach guys :rolleyes:).  It's not about adolescent wand-wavers stopping the Dark Lord through the Power of Love.  It's not about your Japfag sci-fi adventures.  It's about wizards with magic missile and fighters in plate armor and rogues disarming traps.

What you want is so far from what D&D is that you'd be turning it into not-D&D.  If you want not-D&D, go play 4e or 13th Age or True20 or any of the number of other systems out there that will do a better job of simulating your idiotic fapfests than the game that's about dungeon and dragons.  Don't shit up our game in the process, you entitled little cunt.

P.S. Blow me.

(http://www.toonpool.com/user/3343/files/fuck_anime_399595.jpg)

Quote from: GnomeWorks;537464Fucking sick of the retards at EN World touting that line, and it's fucking stupid, and not at all a reasonable response to my "troll."

Equating 4e with new takes on fantasy is fucking stupid. AED powers and skill challenges and all that other idiotic shit is not at all equatable to trying to bring in new sources of fiction to draw inspiration from. Bad design is just fucking bad design.

Fuck off with your kiddie cartoon horseshit otaku.

Quote from: thecasualoblivion;537335Philotomy Jurament doesn't have to quit gaming, he just needs to get out of the way.

In 5E terms, this means that the game doesn't contain so much grognard that it ruins the game for those of us who want a modern D&D.

In 4e terms, your ideas and your edition meant the crowning of Paizo as the #1 D&D company.  Now you want WotC to look to you for the encore huh?

Hmm what are chances of that happening?
(http://preview.images.memegenerator.net/Instance/Preview?imageID=480642&generatorTypeID=&panels=&text0=Could%20it%20be&text1=Less%20than%20zero%3F&text2=&text3=)

Quote from: thecasualoblivion;537335Philotomy Jurament doesn't have to quit gaming, he just needs to get out of the way.

In 5E terms, this means that the game doesn't contain so much grognard that it ruins the game for those of us who want a modern D&D.

At the risk of being trolled, what is a "modern D&D"?

Quote from: B.T.;537503At the risk of being trolled, what is a "modern D&D"?

Apparently it's one where the iconics look like this...
(http://img190.imageshack.us/img190/3514/demotivationjapan.jpg)

(http://www.toonpool.com/user/3343/files/fuck_anime_399595.jpg)

Quote from: Spinachcat;536996The new Conan movie and the new John Carter movies tanked.

The Conan movie tanked because it sucked, not because it was about Conan.

John Carter didn't do stellar (not quite tanked... it's still in the top 10 movies of the year thus far) because it was shittily under-promoted.

So I'm not sure either has anything to do with the characters involved.

By the same token, Last Airbender tanked as bad as Conan and quite a bit worse than John Carter. And I won't blame that on the character either. The movie sucked.

Quote from: Punch and Pie;537286If anything, GoT mimics D&D ... endless mini-plots with little to no overarching cohesion, including an endless list of main PC's and supporting NPC's which die more often than not, requiring new PCs and NPCs to be generated.

Heh... that quotable enough it may spend a while in my sig...

Quote from: Caesar Slaad;537508By the same token, Last Airbender tanked as bad as Conan and quite a bit worse than John Carter. And I won't blame that on the character either. The movie sucked.

But, but, Last Airbender is current, it speaks to the youth!  It should have been stellar!  Anime!  Cartoon Show! Graphic Novels!

Quote from: CRKrueger;537512But, but, Last Airbender is current, it speaks to the youth!  It should have been stellar!  Anime!  Cartoon Show! Graphic Novels!

Clearly all the vancian magic Shyamalan included in the film is to blame. That and Conan probably.

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;537513Clearly all the vancian magic Shyamalan included in the film is to blame. That and Conan probably.

You saw the cameo of Conan in the Last Airbender? Me too. Lame...

Quote from: Dodger;537418I wonder if the popularity of teen-angsty vampire franchises like Twilight and True Blood had any impact on sales of White Wolf's Vampire.

Probably not, because they really dropped the ball on it.

Their "Monster romance" book shouldn't have been an obscure web-only supplement to an obscure game line, released half a decade after the phenomenon got popular.

There's possibly a reasonable market for someone to just steal right out from under WW's nose. Evil Hat are digging away at it, true, but I don't think they have gone far enough.

Just because...

(http://home.md.metrocast.net/~adkohler/pics/anime-douche.jpg)

Quote from: Caesar Slaad;537531Just because...

Yet how many posts have there been where that position - the reasonable one in the middle, willing to include newer styles of fiction while still holding onto the old - is the one being held?

Instead it's all "fuckity fuck you're a fuck" horseshit and ad hominem upon ad hominem. The nerdrage is epic, but also frustrating in that regard. Probably my own fault given the rather aggressive nature of the initial post... but still.

Quote from: GnomeWorks;537568Yet how many posts have there been where that position - the reasonable one in the middle, willing to include newer styles of fiction while still holding onto the old - is the one being held?

Instead it's all "fuckity fuck you're a fuck" horseshit and ad hominem upon ad hominem. The nerdrage is epic, but also frustrating in that regard. Probably my own fault given the rather aggressive nature of the initial post... but still.

You are whining about us being unreasonable when you told us to piss off so you could jerk it to anime.

Quote from: GnomeWorks;537568Yet how many posts have there been where that position - the reasonable one in the middle, willing to include newer styles of fiction while still holding onto the old - is the one being held?

Instead it's all "fuckity fuck you're a fuck" horseshit and ad hominem upon ad hominem. The nerdrage is epic, but also frustrating in that regard. Probably my own fault given the rather aggressive nature of the initial post... but still.

Fuck that noise man. And fuck you.

Quote from: GnomeWorks;537568Yet how many posts have there been where that position - the reasonable one in the middle, willing to include newer styles of fiction while still holding onto the old - is the one being held?

Instead it's all "fuckity fuck you're a fuck" horseshit and ad hominem upon ad hominem. The nerdrage is epic, but also frustrating in that regard. Probably my own fault given the rather aggressive nature of the initial post... but still.

Man are you ever in the wrong place if you think pointing out ad hominem arguments will do you any good.

What I like is that you're pretending that GnomeWorks made an argument that we're supposed to refute.  His post said, "Bawww, stop influencing D&D because I want to play Harry Potter!"  What is there to say other than, "Fuck off, you entitled little shit"?

Quote from: Ladybird;537520Their "Monster romance" book shouldn't have been an obscure web-only supplement to an obscure game line, released half a decade after the phenomenon got popular.

Eh, I wouldn't call Requiem more obscure now than it was half a decade ago. For better or worse, Vampire's always been seen as the flagship line for White Wolf. But granted, that supplement wasn't ever going to reach people who weren't already playing the game.

Quote from: B.T.;537569You are whining about us being unreasonable when you told us to piss off so you could jerk it to anime.

As I wrote in a later post in the thread you quoted from originally, my initial post was unnecessarily harsh, and the primary point being made by its detractors - that excising the old influences is too extreme - was a good one.

But given the tone of the responses, an apology for the initial dickishness isn't going to get me anything but a bunch more "fuck you's," hence why I haven't bothered.

Quote from: BenoistFuck that noise man. And fuck you.

Oh for fuck's sake, calm down. Getting all bent out of shape because of one post that was mildly aggressive is ridiculous.

Quote from: B.T.;537578What I like is that you're pretending that GnomeWorks made an argument that we're supposed to refute.  His post said, "Bawww, stop influencing D&D because I want to play Harry Potter!"  What is there to say other than, "Fuck off, you entitled little shit"?

We are at the point where the original D&D fanbase have started to die of old age. This is a fact; it is a thing that is occurring.

There does need to be a compromise state between the older and newer influences, because neither audience is enough alone to sustain the game line. Bunker down, insist that D&D should only reflect the things you like (Regardless of if you're in the "old" or "new" camp), and those nasty other people with their other interests should go away... and eventually they will, and you won't get any D&D.

And in five years time, the best case scenario is that we have this argument all over again, only a bit slower because arthritis will have set in. The worst case scenario is that there won't be a D&D6 to argue over.

Quote from: GrimGent;537611Eh, I wouldn't call Requiem more obscure now than it was half a decade ago. For better or worse, Vampire's always been seen as the flagship line for White Wolf. But granted, that supplement wasn't ever going to reach people who weren't already playing the game.

I was unclear, I had meant the "paranormal romance" genre really blew up five years ago (As a rough estimate). Requiem is still just as obscure, outside of "gamers", as it was then...

I still say WW really, really missed an opportunity. What they've done has evidently worked out okay for them (The entire "not releasing books" strategy must have really helped them keep costs down :) ), but a repeat of the early 90's Vampire / Goth crossover audience could have been really good for them and for roleplaying.

At some point we get back to the "this is my game, it is only about the things that I like, because the things you like are rubbish" argument again, though. Without someone at WW significantly pushing for it, it just wouldn't (And didn't) happen; to a gamer audience, adapting the game to do paranormal romance is relatively simple, but it's non-gamers that the book is for (And, three books is a hefty buy-in for a non-gamer...).

Then go play your Fucked up ANIME games.

Quote from: B.T.;537497However, D&D cannot accommodate what you want because D&D is based around those "old-school" stories about Conan and Aragorn and all those boring characters (unlike all those well-rounded Bleach guys :rolleyes:).  It's not about adolescent wand-wavers stopping the Dark Lord through the Power of Love.  It's not about your Japfag sci-fi adventures.  It's about wizards with magic missile and fighters in plate armor and rogues disarming traps.

Didn't even The Pundit say that RPGs (and D&D in particular) need to get closer to the anime aesthetic in order to cater to modern kids?
His initial plan for FtA! was an anime-themed release.

Quote from: RPGPundit;58543For my part, I've already said that if RPGs want to HAVE a future, they have to simplify product and cheapen prices, to try to appeal to the kids.  And likewise, if the kids get into RPGs these days, the influences they will bring with them will be different.  Less Robert E. Howard and more Hayao Miyazaki.

I think Anime is going to be a major influence in the future, I think the next really big RPG is going to be connected to anime/manga in some form (though not BeSM, we aren't talking "the Anime RPG", we're talking about RPGs influenced by themes from Anime), and I also think that the next version of D&D is going to have much more Anime influence.  Frankly, I think D&D seriously missed the boat with all the "dungeonpunk" nonsense this time around. If D&D had looked more like Lodoss Wars or Final Fantasy, it would have captured far many more young players, even if it might have lost some of the old geezers who don't like anime because its "childish".

Quote from: RPGPundit;58856The next generation of gamers will have to come into the hobby with their own set of youthful influences; and one major one that exists now that didn't exist when I was a kid is Anime.  Just like D&D is full of stuff ripped off of Moorcock or Howard, both in terms of setting, "memes" and even artwork; if future RPGs want to appeal to teens they will have to switch to having an Anime influence in both setting, rules, and artwork.

There are probably other new influences out there too, that I'm too old and out of touch to even notice.

In any case, I was also stating that in retrospect it was probably a mistake to have intentionlly made 3.x anti-anime in style and feeling; if D&D had been Anime-influenced instead of already-passe "dungeonpunk" it would have appealed to 14 year olds more than guys in their late 20s. And I for one would rather it appealed more to those 14 year olds, because they're the future of this hobby.

Quote from: RPGPundit;231844KIDS (...) love anime, the X-men, Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, and all that jazz. Both love Nintendo and Playstation, both want to be Warriors or Wizards fighting the Orcs and saving the world.
(...)
Oh, and just for the record, those homebrew Brazilian RPGs, like Tormenta and 3D&T? Hardcore adventure-fantasy with Wizards, Warriors, Dragons, Dungeons, etc etc etc. and heavy-duty Anime themed.

Eh. No D&D game I've ever played has emulated Tolkien or Howard or Leiber or Dunsany... & etc.

D&D is it's own thing. It's generic high fantasy with necessary mechanical elements mixed in to ensure genre emulation without requiring the emulation of any author or set of authors. If I want to play Tolkien, I go play MERP. I want to play Conan I play Riddle of Steel, GURPS, or CoC. I want generic fantasy, I play D&D (unless I'm using a built-for-D&D gaming world).

It'd be good for D&D authors to be versant with the current standing of the fantasy genres available on the market, just like I'd expect them to be familiar with the roots of fantasy in the weird and fantastic genres of the 1800s and early 1900s. This includes some anime (but not Cowboy Bebop - an sf noir western is not part of the fantasy genres). But I wouldn't expect the D&D authors to craft D&D into something that emulates particular authors.

And, frankly, anime trends towards being distinct from the literary fantasy genres anyway. If I wanted to play a game with strong anime genre emulation, I'd play BESM. And use its supplements to emulate particular works, if needed.

Edit: Also, I find the whole "they're trying to force us out of the hobby!" line of thinking to be pretty paranoid. How could anyone make anyone stop gaming? Especially someone who by their own admission avoids evolving product lines?

Quote from: GnomeWorks;537617Oh for fuck's sake, calm down.

Dude you need to get out and stop arguing on forums. Typing four letters in the form of the word FUCK doesn't make me "enraged". So I will repeat myself for your own pleasure: fuck that noise. And fuck you. :)

Quote from: Géza Echs;537639Edit: Also, I find the whole "they're trying to force us out of the hobby!" line of thinking to be pretty paranoid. How could anyone make anyone stop gaming? Especially someone who by their own admission avoids evolving product lines?

I don't understand it. If a guy plays LBB D&D (and more power to him!) how could he get any more marginalized?

Y'know, arguments about "anime" are pretty silly anyway, as that doesn't mean anything by itself. There are lots of anime about a high school team winning the big game.

Quote from: GnomeWorks;537617Getting all bent out of shape because of one post that was mildly aggressive is ridiculous.

You're new here, aren't you?

Quote from: Dirk Remmecke;537628Didn't even The Pundit say that RPGs (and D&D in particular) need to get closer to the anime aesthetic in order to cater to modern kids?
His initial plan for FtA! was an anime-themed release.

The fuck do I care what Pundit thinks?

Quote from: B.T.;537503At the risk of being trolled, what is a "modern D&D"?

For the sake of this discussion, focusing on the aesthetics side of things, I'd call modern D&D 4E, non-core-only 3.5E, Eberron, and to a lesser extent Pathfinder as Pathfinder is more of a halfway compromise between traditional D&D and splat heavy 3.5E.

I know I heard Appendix N in this thread somewhere, just thought I'd mention there's an Appendix N Torrent out there.

Quote from: thecasualoblivion;537795For the sake of this discussion, focusing on the aesthetics side of things, I'd call modern D&D 4E, non-core-only 3.5E, Eberron, and to a lesser extent Pathfinder as Pathfinder is more of a halfway compromise between traditional D&D and splat heavy 3.5E.

"Modern", for the purposes of this conversation, translating to "supar extreem with powarz and stuff".

Quote from: GnomeWorks;537617As I wrote in a later post in the thread you quoted from originally, my initial post was unnecessarily harsh, and the primary point being made by its detractors - that excising the old influences is too extreme - was a good one.

But given the tone of the responses, an apology for the initial dickishness isn't going to get me anything but a bunch more "fuck you's," hence why I haven't bothered.



Oh for fuck's sake, calm down. Getting all bent out of shape because of one post that was mildly aggressive is ridiculous.

Leave The Hall...

...and take your doe-eyed angst ridden child protagonists with you.

Quote from: thecasualoblivion;537795For the sake of this discussion, focusing on the aesthetics side of things, I'd call modern D&D 4E, non-core-only 3.5E, Eberron, and to a lesser extent Pathfinder as Pathfinder is more of a halfway compromise between traditional D&D and splat heavy 3.5E.

But what makes them modern?

Quote from: B.T.;537856But what makes them modern?

Unified core mechanic, exception based design so the core is simple and you only need to know the details of how your bit of it works but your bit might be a million miles from the core so long as it's integrated, highly optimisable, action centric, replace 'common sense' with 'codified rule' so the game plays the same everywhere, unusualy descriptors and names to tie into IP (you can't copywrite elf you can Triefling), removal of resource management where it slows up play.
Oh and pictures of 12 years olds in spikey armour with fucking huge swords.

Quote from: jibbajibba;537869Unified core mechanic, exception based design so the core is simple and you only need to know the details of how your bit of it works but your bit might be a million miles from the core so long as it's integrated, highly optimisable, action centric, replace 'common sense' with 'codified rule' so the game plays the same everywhere, unusualy descriptors and names to tie into IP (you can't copywrite elf you can Triefling), removal of resource management where it slows up play.
Oh and pictures of 12 years olds in spikey armour with fucking huge swords.

(http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_mJ4lc_Q9Q6k/SgzPRVt2V0I/AAAAAAAAecE/4b5VBTLNcjY/s400/13Stimpyhold+in+puke.jpg)

Quote from: Benoist;537871(http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_mJ4lc_Q9Q6k/SgzPRVt2V0I/AAAAAAAAecE/4b5VBTLNcjY/s400/13Stimpyhold+in+puke.jpg)

Yeah but he did ask :)

Quote from: jibbajibba;537869Unified core mechanic, exception based design so the core is simple and you only need to know the details of how your bit of it works but your bit might be a million miles from the core so long as it's integrated, highly optimisable, action centric, replace 'common sense' with 'codified rule' so the game plays the same everywhere, unusualy descriptors and names to tie into IP (you can't copywrite elf you can Triefling), removal of resource management where it slows up play.
Oh and pictures of 12 years olds in spikey armour with fucking huge swords.

I hope not. Blech.

Quote from: B.T.;537856But what makes them modern?

The date, most of all. These are, for what its worth, recent additions to D&D.

Mostly though its the fact that they break from traditional D&D aesthetics and take D&D in new directions, often in a more cinematic or anime direction.

Quote from: thecasualoblivion;537882The date, most of all. These are, for what its worth, recent additions to D&D.

Mostly though its the fact that they break from traditional D&D aesthetics and take D&D in new directions, often in a more cinematic or anime direction.

The problem is I am not alone in thinking 4e has no resemblence to Dnd. It may even be a good game but it just isn't Dnd. At least with Pathfinder or even Fantasy Craft you can do exactly the same things you do in a 1e/2e/3e game.

Quote from: thecasualoblivion;537882The date, most of all. These are, for what its worth, recent additions to D&D.

What is the date?  2005?  You mentioned non-core 3.5 D&D so I assume you mean sometime after the 3.5 D&D release.

Quote from: Marleycat;537883The problem is I am not alone in thinking 4e has no resemblence to Dnd. It may even be a good game but it just isn't Dnd. At least with Pathfinder or even Fantasy Craft you can do exactly the same things you do in a 1e/2e/3e game.

And on the flip side I am not alone in being unimpressed with D&D's traditions. 4E bore more resemblance to the D&D in my mind's eye than any previous edition.

Quote from: thecasualoblivion;537885And on the flip side I am not alone in being unimpressed with D&D's traditions. 4E bore more resemblance to the D&D in my mind's eye than any previous edition.

It's cool you like it but it's not Dnd.

Quote from: thecasualoblivion;537885And on the flip side I am not alone in being unimpressed with D&D's traditions. 4E bore more resemblance to the D&D in my mind's eye than any previous edition.

Sure, or course you are not. But you guys were not enough to carry 4e.

Quote from: thecasualoblivion;537885And on the flip side I am not alone in being unimpressed with D&D's traditions. 4E bore more resemblance to the D&D in my mind's eye than any previous edition.

4E: D&D for people who hate the guts of D&D. Awesome.

Quote from: Drohem;537884What is the date?  2005?  You mentioned non-core 3.5 D&D so I assume you mean sometime after the 3.5 D&D release.

Its a relative date, as it predated 3.5E in my experience. Groups I gamed with during the 3.0 era(when I played D&D that is, the 3.0 years were my White Wolf period) were using 3E mutliclassing, Prestige Classes, and in particular monsters as PCs rules(Half Dragons especially) to play games almost completely unrecognizable compared to the traditional D&D experience.

I single out 3.5E supplements as they were where this was really codified.

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;537888Sure, or course you are not. But you guys were not enough to carry 4e.

But 4E converted a large section of the D&D community, and there isn't enough to carry D&D without us either.

Quote from: Benoist;5378894E: D&D for people who hate the guts of D&D. Awesome.

I don't hate it, I just don't put it on a pedestal to be worshipped.

Quote from: thecasualoblivion;537892But 4E converted a large section of the D&D community, and there isn't enough to carry D&D without us either.

I don't dispute that te 4e crowd could be quite large. But if they cater to the 4e crowd they definitely won't achieve their goal of getting everyone back onboard. The core problem is both sides preferences are the others sides' dealbreakers so the modular approach is going to have to cleverly seperate these things put so all sides can play the D&D they want without having to deal with the stuff they don't like.

Quote from: thecasualoblivion;537893I don't hate it, I just don't put it on a pedestal to be worshipped.

The point is the made 4e for the guys who reluctantly played D&D despite not being satisfied by it.

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;537897The point is the made 4e for the guys who reluctantly played D&D despite not being satisfied by it.

It had less to do with not being satisfied with it, and more to do with not seeing D&D as this dogmatic entity not subject to change.

Quote from: thecasualoblivion;537898It had less to do with not being satisfied with it, and more to do with not seeing D&D as this dogmatic entity not subject to change.

Yes, but why change it if you are satisfied with the mehanics? You yourself spoke of 4e as the D&D you had evisioned all along. You can call it dogmatic but it is really just a matter of going to D&D because we expect certain things from it (realy this is just more empty rhetoric and a non argument---right up there with "fear of the new", "progress or die" and "people who don't
Ike 4e are haters who can't read or never tried it"). I play all kinds of rpgs, rarely play D&D these days, but when I play Dungeons and Dragons I go to that system because it has stuff I expect and like. It is the same reason I go to cthulu or any other system. Not only were the changes 4e introduced counter to my expectations of D&D, they were the opposite of what i want in any rpg. So I don't see how my dislike of it is related to dogma at all.

3E was a big success. Taking a succesful product and completely revamping its core elements doesn't seem smart for an rpg company. Clearly in this case it was a bad idea.

Quote from: thecasualoblivion;537892But 4E converted a large section of the D&D community, and there isn't enough to carry D&D without us either.

Paizo doesn't need or want you, the guys busting out OSR kickstarters left and right don't need you either.  WotC dumped you like a hot potato.  That's the problem with being the New thing, very soon you're not, and unfortunately, being new was all 4e or you had going.

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;537897The point is the made 4e for the guys who reluctantly played D&D despite not being satisfied by it.

And with his answer, he basically acknowledged the validity of that point.

I would like to point out that I believe, that as long as the participants all had some degree of creativity and imagination, you could do ANIME! with LBB OD&D.

The 1d6 for all weapon damage would help facilitate that, for example.

"I wish the Rolling Stones would incorporate rap into their sound so that they would remain relevant to today's music consumers"

Quote from: thecasualoblivion;537882The date, most of all. These are, for what its worth, recent additions to D&D.

Stop this half-troll shit.

QuoteMostly though its the fact that they break from traditional D&D aesthetics and take D&D in new directions, often in a more cinematic or anime direction.

Why do you think it is a positive for D&D to be more like movies?  Better yet, what was wrong with 4e that you feel compelled to care about 5e?

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;537901Yes, but why change it if you are satisfied with the mehanics? You yourself spoke of 4e as the D&D you had evisioned all along. You can call it dogmatic but it is really just a matter of going to D&D because we expect certain things from it (realy this is just more empty rhetoric and a non argument---right up there with "fear of the new", "progress or die" and "people who don't
Ike 4e are haters who can't read or never tried it"). I play all kinds of rpgs, rarely play D&D these days, but when I play Dungeons and Dragons I go to that system because it has stuff I expect and like. It is the same reason I go to cthulu or any other system. Not only were the changes 4e introduced counter to my expectations of D&D, they were the opposite of what i want in any rpg. So I don't see how my dislike of it is related to dogma at all.

3E was a big success. Taking a succesful product and completely revamping its core elements doesn't seem smart for an rpg company. Clearly in this case it was a bad idea.

I was speaking more in regards to my days as a 2E and 3E player and DM. I didn't play/run those games reluctantly, and I woudn't say I was unsatisfied with them(not even at the height of my frustrations with 3E, as it took the announcement of a new edition for me to give up on 3E). I did however, modify both 2E and 3E heavily(both in the opposite direction from "traditional" D&D) when I ran them as did the other DMs when I was on the players' side. I never held "traditional" D&D sacred.

As for you and 3E, from what I've seen you take a very narrow view of 3E focusing almost exclusively on either the core books alone or viewing 3E specifically through a traditional lens while ignoring all of 3E's divergence from that tradition, all of which bears no resemblance whatsoever with my experience of 3E.

Quote from: thecasualoblivion;537908I

As for you and 3E, from what I've seen you take a very narrow view of 3E focusing almost exclusively on either the core books alone or viewing 3E specifically through a traditional lens while ignoring all of 3E's divergence from that tradition, all of which bears no resemblance whatsoever with my experience of 3E.

i don't think you have been paying much attention then. My point is the core books of D&D have traditional been the default, standard D&D flavor, but the supplements and ad ons are where these alternative flavors get layered on. And regarding 3e I have said many,many times it got too anime at times for me due to all the multi classing and prestige classes (though mostly from splat book material being added in). In the end I paired down our 3e game to only the core books.

I get that 3e can handle some newer ideas. And 2e at the time was doing all kinds of crazy stuff too (some of it very good imo). Even 1e had some wild elements if you read the original dmg. This is why I said the OP is railing against a fantasy, D&D has always absorbed current trends in fantasy. It just tends to absorb them through its supplemental material, leaving the core generic D&D style fantasy.

Quote from: thecasualoblivion;537908I was speaking more in regards to my days as a 2E and 3E player and DM. I didn't play/run those games reluctantly, and I woudn't say I was unsatisfied with them(not even at the height of my frustrations with 3E, as it took the announcement of a new edition for me to give up on 3E). I did however, modify both 2E and 3E heavily(both in the opposite direction from "traditional" D&D) when I ran them as did the other DMs when I was on the players' side. I never held "traditional" D&D sacred.
 3E.

Again though, if you were running it differently to suit your tastes, clearly you weren't satisfied with the core game. You had to modify it to enjoy it.

But we are speaking in very general terms so lets get concrete. How did you alter 2e and 3e, what specific flavor and mechanic elements did you add to bring the game up to your taste?

Quote from: Planet Algol;537906"I wish the Rolling Stones would incorporate rap into their sound so that they would remain relevant to today's music consumers"

If the Rolling Stones could go disco (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q0tQPodGgeM) and Aerosmith could rap with Run-DMC (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4B_UYYPb-Gk), why not?  Or how about the Rolling Stones doing regae? (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OQ-yDL7XxeE).  Of course Kiss also tried their hands at disco (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kNGNLo8K6Fk).

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;537909i don't think you have been paying much attention then. My point is the core books of D&D have traditional been the default, standard D&D flavor, but the supplements and ad ons are where these alternative flavors get layered on. And regarding 3e I have said many,many times it got too anime at times for me due to all the multi classing and prestige classes (though mostly from splat book material being added in). In the end I paired down our 3e game to only the core books.

I get that 3e can handle some newer ideas. And 2e at the time was doing all kinds of crazy stuff too (some of it very good imo). Even 1e had some wild elements if you read the original dmg. This is why I said the OP is railing against a fantasy, D&D has always absorbed current trends in fantasy. It just tends to absorb them through its supplemental material, leaving the core generic D&D style fantasy.

Its better if its built into the game. Our cinematic anime 2E was primarily supported by giving everybody rings of jumping or boots of flying while making healing effectively infinite(it wasn't infinite, but we never ran out) while running the game in the style of draining 50-75% of the party's HP every battle. It was fun(more fun than what we ran in 3E to be honest), but it was a bit half-assed, especially compared to 4E. We mostly stuck with it because the other options were worse.

Quote from: thecasualoblivion;537795For the sake of this discussion, focusing on the aesthetics side of things, I'd call modern D&D 4E, non-core-only 3.5E, Eberron, and to a lesser extent Pathfinder as Pathfinder is more of a halfway compromise between traditional D&D and splat heavy 3.5E.

Quote from: B.T.;537856But what makes them modern?

Quote from: thecasualoblivion;537882The date, most of all. These are, for what its worth, recent additions to D&D.

Mostly though its the fact that they break from traditional D&D aesthetics and take D&D in new directions, often in a more cinematic or anime direction.

Quote from: Drohem;537884What is the date?  2005?  You mentioned non-core 3.5 D&D so I assume you mean sometime after the 3.5 D&D release.

Quote from: thecasualoblivion;537890Its a relative date, as it predated 3.5E in my experience. Groups I gamed with during the 3.0 era(when I played D&D that is, the 3.0 years were my White Wolf period) were using 3E mutliclassing, Prestige Classes, and in particular monsters as PCs rules(Half Dragons especially) to play games almost completely unrecognizable compared to the traditional D&D experience.

I single out 3.5E supplements as they were where this was really codified.

WTF? :confused:

Quote from: thecasualoblivion;537914Its better if its built into the game. Our cinematic anime 2E was primarily supported by giving everybody rings of jumping or boots of flying while making healing effectively infinite(it wasn't infinite, but we never ran out) while running the game in the style of draining 50-75% of the party's HP every battle. It was fun(more fun than what we ran in 3E to be honest), but it was a bit half-assed, especially compared to 4E. We mostly stuck with it because the other options were worse.

The problem with that approach is it forces every D&D game to be run as an anime cinematic game (and not every table runs d&d that way or wants it to be run that way). Much better to have a supplemental book for cinematic anime D&D (especially that combo because while Cinematic D&D is somewhat popular, anime D&D isn't.

Quote from: Planet Algol;537905I would like to point out that I believe, that as long as the participants all had some degree of creativity and imagination, you could do ANIME! with LBB OD&D.

In the late 1980s, I ran a short Aura Battler Dunbine campaign using AD&D with the Aura Battlers basically giant "semi-intelligent magic powered armor". It worked just fine. Of course, I doubt Aura Battler Dunbine qualifies as "real anime" these days since it was a circa 1983 TV series.

Quote from: thecasualoblivion;537914Its better if its built into the game. Our cinematic anime 2E was primarily supported by giving everybody rings of jumping or boots of flying while making healing effectively infinite(it wasn't infinite, but we never ran out) while running the game in the style of draining 50-75% of the party's HP every battle. It was fun(more fun than what we ran in 3E to be honest), but it was a bit half-assed, especially compared to 4E. We mostly stuck with it because the other options were worse.

Cinematic anime 2e.

Loser.

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;537897The point is the made 4e for the guys who reluctantly played D&D despite not being satisfied by it.

That's been my conclusion, combined with the flaws of 3.x namely balance issues because they removed all the limits on magic users which were in place in every iteration previous and the result is 4e.

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;537911Again though, if you were running it differently to suit your tastes, clearly you weren't satisfied with the core game. You had to modify it to enjoy it.

But we are speaking in very general terms so lets get concrete. How did you alter 2e and 3e, what specific flavor and mechanic elements did you add to bring the game up to your taste?

I wouldn't call that unsatisfied. It was more a case of "game is ok, but if we add X it'll be better". I and pretty much everyone I gamed with during the 2E era fully embraced the story/campaign aspects of 2E and the 2E embrace of trilogy-style High Fantasy. We wanted anime on top of that, not necessarily in place of it.

As I've said before, with 2E the biggest thing we did was to make healing effectively infinite and ramp up the violence to extreme levels. The end result bore a striking resemblance to what 4E accomplished with healing surges. We added some flavor with the jumping and flying items, and did some small things with the magic system, but otherwise the game wasn't as different as you'd expect.

3E was completely different. The effectiveness of save or die, battlefield control magic, and all around "I win" buttons combined with monster HP inflation made the epic HP grinding we did in 2E almost impossible to achieve. Its hard to explain what we did to change 3E, since I was never satisfied with the changes we made and scrapped them and started over every time we started a new campaign. The other DM's kind of focused on what we called "DM candy", where the DM and player would work together to add some sort of superpowers on top of the high powered nuclear by the book 3E we were running. Ignoring level adjustments, giving permanent 240ft fly speed, Half-Celestials with full Sorcerer casting, ect. It was high powered progress into gods style 3E, ramped up to 11. A lot of my criticisms of 3E's unbalance comes from these games, as I wasn't a fan of "DM Candy" and tended to run CharOp quality "DM Candy"-free Wizard/Cleric/Druids who were more or less legal in Living Greyhawk and curbstomp the game with them despite their lack of free templates and superpowers.

I was actually more by the book(more so than any 3E DM I was involved with) and tried to run a much lower powered game(with mixed results), and focused on cutting out what I didn't agree with while taking unrelated existing 3E rules and bolting them onto different classes for a different purpose. Mostly cut and paste stuff using existing rules, with the goal of reducing rocket tag and "I win" button dominance, while elevating the lower powered(non-spellcasting) side of the game. As I said before, I was never happy with the results and rewrote the game with every fresh campaign.

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;537917The problem with that approach is it forces every D&D game to be run as an anime cinematic game (and not every table runs d&d that way or wants it to be run that way). Much better to have a supplemental book for cinematic anime D&D (especially that combo because while Cinematic D&D is somewhat popular, anime D&D isn't.

It is true that there was no non-cinematic option for 4E(I would say that anime influences could be removed/ignored).

I'd also say that 3E really didn't do cinematic well, though not for a lack of trying. I'm all about the cinematic action, and I was able to do a vastly better job of it running 2E than I ever managed with 3E.

Quote from: Planet Algol;537905I would like to point out that I believe, that as long as the participants all had some degree of creativity and imagination, you could do ANIME! with LBB OD&D.

The 1d6 for all weapon damage would help facilitate that, for example.

Yes. I can see it. It could work.

These arguments are why crowd sourcing is a bad idea.

There's simply too many versions of the game.  They need to either decide what game they want to make and just do that, with lowered expectations, or use the brand as a header and make separate games under the umbrella.

RPGS are played by people that read books. Its a common axiom and it's propably got a grain of truth to it.

From Amzon's top Scifi / Fantasy novels

1.45 days in the top 100
Deadlocked: A Sookie Stackhouse Novel

2.803 days in the top 100
A Game of Thrones: A Song of Ice and Fire: Book One

3.109 days in the top 100
Deadlocked (Sookie Stackhouse, Book 12)
 
4.404 days in the top 100
George R. R. Martin's A Game of Thrones 4-Book Bundle: A Song of Ice and Fire Series: A Game of Thrones, A Clash of Kings,...
 
5.423 days in the top 100
A Song of Ice and Fire, Books 1-4 (A Game of Thrones / A Feast for Crows / A Storm of Swords / Clash of Kings)

6.403 days in the top 100
A Dance with Dragons: A Song of Ice and Fire: Book Five
 
7.690 days in the top 100
A Clash of Kings: A Song of Ice and Fire: Book Two

8.80 days in the top 100
The Wind Through the Keyhole (Dark Tower)
Stephen King

9.322 days in the top 100
Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter

10.792 days in the top 100
A Storm of Swords: A Song of Ice and Fire: Book Three

If you look at top graphic novels and comics the first Anime comes in at number 11 and it's The Last Airbender. Avengers, JLA: Origins and others are all above it.

If you look at Computer games Max Payne 3, CoD, Diablo, all above any Anime style title

So if the argument is follow the trend of what's popular then anime not so much....
Time for a White Wolf rennaissance...maybe.

Quote from: thecasualoblivion;537928It is true that there was no non-cinematic option for 4E(I would say that anime influences could be removed/ignored).

I'd also say that 3E really didn't do cinematic well, though not for a lack of trying. I'm all about the cinematic action, and I was able to do a vastly better job of it running 2E than I ever managed with 3E.

Except that 4e isn't even very good at being cinematic. It's a flashy combat engine... and not much else.

It falls into the same hyperdetailed simulation design trap that the complex simulation-based systems of the 80's and 90's fall into; it involves more work than the thing being simulated, and focussing so much on the minutia of the simulation means that you can't get the actual fun bits of the real thing, when something horribly random occurs and throws everything for a loop.

Quote from: Ladybird;538000Except that 4e isn't even very good at being cinematic. It's a flashy combat engine... and not much else.

Keep in mind, that's what a lot of people think cinematic IS.  Just 300 with dice, with endless slow-mo action shots.

(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v713/Zeb_Carter/300shieldPH.gif)

Quote from: Dog Quixote;537981There's simply too many versions of the game.  They need to either decide what game they want to make and just do that, with lowered expectations, or use the brand as a header and make separate games under the umbrella.

I reckon that this is what they should be doing if they want D&D to be a $50m brand - a series of different standalone games (boardgame, "basic" D&D, AD&D, CCG, skirmish, wargame), with compatibility that makes it easy to switch rulesets for crossover play so that, for example, you have the option of using the skirmish rules to play out a goblin ambush, or the CCG to resolve a magical duel.

In addition, they need a setting (not necessarily the default one) that features rivalry between rulers/nations, politics and intrigue, to support Game of Thrones-style campaigns, in addition to bog-standard adventuring.

Quote from: Dodger;538029I reckon that this is what they should be doing if they want D&D to be a $50m brand - a series of different standalone games (boardgame, "basic" D&D, AD&D, CCG, skirmish, wargame), with compatibility that makes it easy to switch rulesets for crossover play so that, for example, you have the option of using the skirmish rules to play out a goblin ambush, or the CCG to resolve a magical duel.

In addition, they need a setting (not necessarily the default one) that features rivalry between rulers/nations, politics and intrigue, to support Game of Thrones-style campaigns, in addition to bog-standard adventuring.

That would require intelligence so it will never happen.:D

Good god has TCO stepped up his game.  Are you guys actually reading what he's describing?  The style he's telling us he played in is the most ridiculous, over the top, childish wish-fulfillment you can imagine.  It's the shit you might put together if you were drunk, high, and bored.  Anime cinematic?  His shit makes Dragonball-Z look like Name of the Rose, and this is what he wants in the Core of 5e and you guys are talking about it like he's not making fun of you.

Sigh.

BT, have you been giving him lessons?

Quote from: CRKrueger;538034Good god has TCO stepped up his game.  Are you guys actually reading what he's describing?  The style he's telling us he played in is the most ridiculous, over the top, childish wish-fulfillment you can imagine.  It's the shit you might put together if you were drunk, high, and bored.  Anime cinematic?  His shit makes Dragonball-Z look like Name of the Rose, and this is what he wants in the Core of 5e and you guys are talking about it like he's not making fun of you.

Sigh.

BT, have you been giving him lessons?

Yeah. He's making this shit up.

Quote from: CRKrueger;538034Good god has TCO stepped up his game.  Are you guys actually reading what he's describing?

I tried, but it didn't make any sense.  *shrug*

Quote from: Drohem;538038I tried, but it didn't make any sense.  *shrug*

I stand by my assessment that whatever game he's playing isn't Dnd. So the rest is irrelevant to me.

um ... TCO is just saying have a more rapid healing model and give everyone rings of jumping and boots of speed and spend 90% of the time in combat.

I think its still D&D.

Quote from: jibbajibba;538051um ... TCO is just saying have a more rapid healing model and give everyone rings of jumping and boots of speed and spend 90% of the time in combat.

I think its still D&D.

I don't think anyone is suggesting it isn't. But it certainly isn't standard either. The closest I came to this style of play is when I first started and the GM just let us pick magic items out of the DMG to keep us happy (this got boring very fast). If he found a style of play that worked for him and his group excellent (sometimes I like to mix things up and take a different approach to the game myself---everything from the all halfling party to having the players be deathknights on an evil quest)...that kind of stuff can be a fun change of pace. Where I take issue with TCO is the suggestion that his approach is where the core system needs to be (as I said optional ad-ons are great for that sort of thing and I think a much better business model than endless splat books).

Quote from: Planet Algol;537905I would like to point out that I believe, that as long as the participants all had some degree of creativity and imagination, you could do ANIME! with LBB OD&D.

The 1d6 for all weapon damage would help facilitate that, for example.

That.

Quote from: Melan;537033Actually, even when I started gaming in the 90s, I would routinely hear arguments about how AD&D sucked because it didn't do Tolkien right (or because it featured spell memorisation, hit points, abstract AC, or classes and levels). Well, it didn't do Tolkien right because it wasn't trying to.

And even though I heard that complaint a lot of times my current extremely Tolkienesque S&W game works just fine.
OD&D is so open and versatile that I needed only very few houserules, e.g. I renamed the Cleric as Elf (yes, complete with "turn Sauron-tainted minion" instead of "turn undead") , and the Thief as Ranger, and reskinned their special abilities and spells as outdoors/wilderness/nature themed.

Quote from: CRKrueger;538034His shit makes Dragonball-Z look like Name of the Rose . . .

:rotfl:

Again, I don't know why anyone replies to that pile of pigshit.

Quote from: jibbajibba;538051um ... TCO is just saying have a more rapid healing model and give everyone rings of jumping and boots of speed and spend 90% of the time in combat.

I think its still D&D.

The more rapid healing model I used was simply to hand out piles of healing potions, making them cheap and easy to buy and having monsters drop them in vast quantities. It was also more like spending 50-60% of our time in combat, not 90% but combat was a lot more violent, as in starting every battle at full HP and taking damage equal to 50-90% of the party's combined HP total each battle. I just gave them the healing to deal with that.

This, as opposed to the more attrition based game described in the rules. I was aiming not only at the cinematic slugfests you see in Anime, but the rate of action in video games, either action or RPG of the 90s. AD&D wasn't a good fit for that as written, but it really didn't take much tweaking to get it there, and there was already a model for it in the SSI Gold Box AD&D games like Curse of the Azure Bonds. Those games were basically endless streams of battles, most of which were more challenging than attrition-based tabletop AD&D. In the Gold Box computer RPGs, they really didn't do attrition since they made resting trivially easy, and whenever HP got low or your Fireballs ran out you could pretty much rest anywhere with little risk. I played those games to death before I ever started playing tabletop D&D, and I knew AD&D could do the sort of game I had in mind with some tweaking.

My 3E experiences were more of a mess, as the game was more of a mess. It wasn't necessarily as drastic as CRKrueger makes it out to be. Lets put it this way:

One of the extremes of 3E is putting godlike absolute power in the hands of PCs. Its a part of the game and written into its DNA, though many people downplay this. The other DMs I gamed with really liked that aspect of 3E, it was their favorite part of the game(and most of them rejected 4E for removing it). They simply took that aspect of the game to the next level, extended it to areas RAW CharOp couldn't take it, and used it to overcome their own and their players' own limitations in system mastery. They wanted the power of batman Wizards and CoDzilla, but didn't have the system mastery to actually do it using the actual rules and wanted to have that sort of power on different character concepts than 3E spellcasters, which often couldn't be done using the actual rules. It sounds crazier than it was in practice, as thematically it really wasn't any crazier than kitchen sink Mos Eisley Cantina style 3E and it wasn't more overpowered than me using "Rules As Written" CharOp bullshit(which is how I played in those campaigns, as those particular houserules left a bad taste in my mouth).

When I ran 3E, I houseruled it attempting to achieve a game that looked like 4E(and never really succeeded to be honest). Tone down the overpowered magic, make nonspellcasters more effective and less mundane, and ramp up the action like I did with 2E.

Quote from: 1989;537919Cinematic anime 2e.

Loser.

Mods, please change my name to Cinematic Anime 2e.  TCO, even though you're trolling harder than ever, I want to know what you would change in 4e to make it more like your gay sex version of d20?

Quote from: thecasualoblivion;538108The more rapid healing model I used was simply to hand out piles of healing potions, making them cheap and easy to buy and having monsters drop them in vast quantities. It was also more like spending 50-60% of our time in combat, not 90% but combat was a lot more violent, as in starting every battle at full HP and taking damage equal to 50-90% of the party's combined HP total each battle. I just gave them the healing to deal with that.

Then your combats were more violent, but less meaningful; success only matters if you could have failed.

Frankly, I think you should have just dropped even the pretence of using rule systems and played entirely freeform. It's obviously what you wanted your sessions to play like; the rules systems were getting in your way. But no, you had to have the precious initials "D&D" on your character sheets.

Quote from: B.T.;538119Mods, please change my name to Cinematic Anime 2e.  TCO, even though you're trolling harder than ever, I want to know what you would change in 4e to make it more like your gay sex version of d20?

I don't want to name drop, but I did hear that TCO was lead author for The Book Of Pointless Dorkiness.

Quote from: B.T.;538119Mods, please change my name to Cinematic Anime 2e.  TCO, even though you're trolling harder than ever, I want to know what you would change in 4e to make it more like your gay sex version of d20?

I don't want to name drop, but I did hear that TCO was lead author for The Book Of Pointless Dorkiness.

Why are we feeding the troll?

Quote from: Ladybird;538139Then your combats were more violent, but less meaningful; success only matters if you could have failed.

Success or failure wasn't really the point. It was more "combat as sport" than "combat as war". Also, the 2E generally played in my area really wasn't that lethal to begin with, and that was true before I arrived. It was more story based in the Dragonlance/High Fantasy trilogy style, where DM's fudged die rolls to keep people alive 90% of the time.

This was the mid-nineties, and "Old School" D&D was long dead among the people I gamed with.

Quote from: Ladybird;538139Frankly, I think you should have just dropped even the pretence of using rule systems and played entirely freeform. It's obviously what you wanted your sessions to play like; the rules systems were getting in your way. But no, you had to have the precious initials "D&D" on your character sheets.

It was very freeform, we barely used the game rules at all outside of combat. 2E did freeform very well.

Quote from: thecasualoblivion;538152It was very freeform, we barely used the game rules at all outside of combat. 2E did freeform very well.

No. Freeform does freeform very well. It doesn't really matter what you write on your character sheets after that.

Quote from: Marleycat;538144Why are we feeding the troll?

I'm a masochist.

TCO, you going to answer my question or not?  I figure it might induce cognitive dissonance because you would be forced to admit 4e was flawed.

Quote from: B.T.;538154I'm a masochist.

TCO, you going to answer my question or not?  I figure it might induce cognitive dissonance because you would be forced to admit 4e was flawed.

As someone already said, this site really does need a bag of popcorn smiley.:)

Quote from: B.T.;538119TCO, even though you're trolling harder than ever, I want to know what you would change in 4e to make it more like your gay sex version of d20?

This question?

The answer is simple, and that is to make it faster. 4E is slow. Its not something easy to fix or change however, and something I simply put up with.

Quote from: Marleycat;538144Why are we feeding the troll?

Beats me.  I'm enjoying the non-spectacle of two people on my ignore list arguing with each other.

Quote from: thecasualoblivion;537892But 4E converted a large section of the D&D community, and there isn't enough to carry D&D without us either.

Yes, there is.. :)

Quote from: Dog Quixote;538180Beats me.  I'm enjoying the non-spectacle of two people on my ignore list arguing with each other.

I keep forgetting that I do have that feature. For some reason I have rarely used it in any forum I have been on. Not even TBP.:eek:

Quote from: Marleycat;538192I keep forgetting that I do have that feature. For some reason I have rarely used it in any forum I have been on. Not even TBP.:eek:

Here it is really useful. You should try it.

Quote from: Benoist;538227Here it is really useful. You should try it.

But I like you Ben even when you get onery, oh you mean ignore other people.  No one has gotten me mad enough yet. TCO and BT get close but I mostly ignore them anyway.

Fuck 'Anime'.

Its not D&D.

(Its also NOT GURPS)





- Ed C.

Exalted is anime, right?

Quote from: Koltar;538235Fuck 'Anime'.

Its not D&D.

(Its also NOT GURPS)





- Ed C.

Also not Fantasy Craft or Pathfinder.

(Just being helpful).:)

Quote from: Dodger;538236Exalted is anime, right?

Never ever say that at TBP.:D

I have always considered it so. Or maybe high powered Wuxia.

Quote from: Koltar;538235Fuck 'Anime'.

Its not D&D.

- Ed C.

Record of Lodoss Wars begs to differ.

Quote from: Dodger;538236Exalted is anime, right?

Exalted is super sentai. Like the Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers.

No, Exalted is shit.

Quote from: jeff37923;538246Exalted is super sentai. Like the Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers.

I concede anime is in Dnd's bloodline just like everything else but I digress.  My question is what's Sentai and what's its difference from Wuxia? Two questions I guess.

Quote from: Marleycat;538252I concede anime is in Dnd's bloodline just like everything else but I digress.  My question is what's Sentai and what's its difference from Wuxia? Two questions I guess.

Sentai is a word for a military unit and may be literally translated as "squadron", "task force", "group" or "wing". It often is used to refer to television dramas that uses the word sentai to describe a group of three or more costumed superheroes (whose core team generally consists of five members) who often pilot mecha. Think Power Rangers or Kamen Rider.

Wuxia (literally "martial hero") is a broad genre of Chinese fiction concerning the adventures of martial artists. Although wuxia is traditionally a form of literature, its popularity has caused it to spread to diverse art forms like Chinese opera, manhua (Chinese comics), films, television series, and video games. In the US, the term is often used to refer to movies that use wires to simulate incredible martial arts maneuvers (aka: wire-fu). Think almost any Tsui Hark movie.

Quote from: nightwind1;538253Sentai is a word for a military unit and may be literally translated as "squadron", "task force", "group" or "wing". It often is used to refer to television dramas that uses the word sentai to describe a group of three or more costumed superheroes (whose core team generally consists of five members) who often pilot mecha. Think Power Rangers or Kamen Rider.

Wuxia (literally "martial hero") is a broad genre of Chinese fiction concerning the adventures of martial artists. Although wuxia is traditionally a form of literature, its popularity has caused it to spread to diverse art forms like Chinese opera, manhua (Chinese comics), films, television series, and video games. In the US, the term is often used to refer to movies that use wires to simulate incredible martial arts maneuvers (aka: wire-fu). Think almost any Tsui Hark movie.

Thank you sir. I even know the context Jeff was using the term in now. I agree btw.:)

4e is classic sentai TCO even admits it. Hence I am correct 4e isn't Dnd.:)

Quote from: CRKrueger;537505Apparently it's one where the iconics look like this...
(http://img190.imageshack.us/img190/3514/demotivationjapan.jpg)

Please do not use imageshack images here, Krueger; people in a number of countries can't actually see them.

RPGPundit

Quote from: Dirk Remmecke;537628Didn't even The Pundit say that RPGs (and D&D in particular) need to get closer to the anime aesthetic in order to cater to modern kids?
His initial plan for FtA! was an anime-themed release.

It might be a slight exaggeration saying that it was my initial plan, but sure, I said those things you quoted.  

That was also about what, 5 years ago now?

I think the problem a lot of people have is that they're always playing catch-up with "what the kids are into".


RPGPundit

I seriously wish I couldn't.  Ouchie Momma!

Quote from: jeff37923;538245Record of Lodoss Wars begs to differ.

A bit of an aside for this thread, but I could never get why that stuff was so highly regarded. A few years ago it came up in a discussion on another RPG forum and I thought "What the hell, I have enjoyed some anime in the past, let's check it out.", so I watched the first episode of some "Lodoss War OVA" on youtube. It was thoroughly unimpressive and contained absolutely nothing that would stand out as interesting or noteworthy. "Well, that was just the first episode; maybe it needs some time to get into high gear. I should give it a fair chance." - I thought, and watched another 4 or 5 episodes.

Man, I'm never getting those couple of wasted hours back. It failed to get into any sort of high gear by episode 6 or so and remained thorougly unimpressive and un-noteworthy. It had a dour dwarf who was so unoriginal they couldn't even bother coming up with a name for him other than "it's a shorter version of Gimli", an elf whose ears and shoulder plates were locked in a ridiculously epic struggle for width who was the worst representative of the sort of utter brainlessness some genres of anime seem to find cute and endearing ("We're in the middle of a dangerous place on a world-saving mission, so maybe we shouldn't screw up. Look, there's a shiny item completely unrelated to our world-saving quest! Let's grab it, it can't possibly be an obvious trap! Yes, I have the mental capacity of a 6 year old!"), and some human characters who were so utterly devoid of interest I can't even remember anything about them.

And I don't care if "it was groundbreaking at the time, all that stuff in it that's considered passé today was totally innovative!". It may be true, but it was boring originally, too. It was breaking ground not worth breaking.

Ahh, I needed to vent that. Much better now.

Quote from: Premier;538284A bit of an aside for this thread, but I could never get why that stuff was so highly regarded. A few years ago it came up in a discussion on another RPG forum and I thought "What the hell, I have enjoyed some anime in the past, let's check it out.", so I watched the first episode of some "Lodoss War OVA" on youtube. It was thoroughly unimpressive and contained absolutely nothing that would stand out as interesting or noteworthy. "Well, that was just the first episode; maybe it needs some time to get into high gear. I should give it a fair chance." - I thought, and watched another 4 or 5 episodes.

Man, I'm never getting those couple of wasted hours back. It failed to get into any sort of high gear by episode 6 or so and remained thorougly unimpressive and un-noteworthy. It had a dour dwarf who was so unoriginal they couldn't even bother coming up with a name for him other than "it's a shorter version of Gimli", an elf whose ears and shoulder plates were locked in a ridiculously epic struggle for width who was the worst representative of the sort of utter brainlessness some genres of anime seem to find cute and endearing ("We're in the middle of a dangerous place on a world-saving mission, so maybe we shouldn't screw up. Look, there's a shiny item completely unrelated to our world-saving quest! Let's grab it, it can't possibly be an obvious trap! Yes, I have the mental capacity of a 6 year old!"), and some human characters who were so utterly devoid of interest I can't even remember anything about them.

And I don't care if "it was groundbreaking at the time, all that stuff in it that's considered passé today was totally innovative!". It may be true, but it was boring originally, too. It was breaking ground not worth breaking.

Ahh, I needed to vent that. Much better now.

Your vent is cool and all, but the reason why I mentioned Record of Lodoss War is because the whole story was based off of the creator's D&D campaign. So, yes, that particular anime is D&D.

Quote from: Marleycat;538252I concede anime is in Dnd's bloodline just like everything else but I digress.  My question is what's Sentai and what's its difference from Wuxia? Two questions I guess.

Actually D&D is in Anime's bloodline, there's a difference.  When WotC put out a D&D structured on anime and to appeal in part to anime fans, it failed.  It's just Corpdrone 101think.  "Anime people like D&D, videogamers like D&D, mmogers like D&D, we'll make D&D like those..."



(http://www.troll.me/images/mendoza/paizos-sales-are-how-much-dancey.jpg)


Sorry about the Imageshack earlier, just grabbed off of Google Images.

Quote from: CRKrueger;538311"mmogers like D&D, we'll make D&D like those.."

They did, its called 4th edition. An edition more MMO WoW-style than the actual rpg line based on said property. Roleplayers that MMO don't want to tabletop MMO (mostly), and MMO'ers that have never tabletopped and actually know about the practice, think it's the past time of an older pre-video game era generation

I am an 'old' gamer that loves Cowboy Beebop as much as I love John Carter.

How is this POSSIBLE!!!??!!

Quote from: Bill;538375I am an 'old' gamer that loves Cowboy Beebop as much as I love John Carter.

How is this POSSIBLE!!!??!!

You are a mistake of nature. Go awayyy! :D

Quote from: Bill;538375I am an 'old' gamer that loves Cowboy Beebop as much as I love John Carter.

How is this POSSIBLE!!!??!!

Genetic manipulation by the alien overlords! ;) :)

It could be both. Maybe the alien overlords altered my genetics?

Quote from: deMonica;538335They did, its called 4th edition. An edition more MMO WoW-style than the actual rpg line based on said property. Roleplayers that MMO don't want to tabletop MMO (mostly), and MMO'ers that have never tabletopped and actually know about the practice, think it's the past time of an older pre-video game era generation

I know, that was exactly my point -  if it was obscure, sorry.  4e chased videogamers, chased anime kids, chased mmogers simply due to someone (probably a marketing intern) who didn't know the hobby reading a demographics chart they did not understand.  

As a result, since the OGL cannot be revoked, WotC was not able to "force" people to put aside other forms of D&D.  They actively chose to step aside as the marketer of 30 years of D&D products.  Only afterward once they found their sales less then Paizo's did they realize the truth of their situation, leading to the "Mendoza" meme picture from the Simpsons. :D

Hasbro's problem is they have traditional IP people, they needed someone from the pharmaceutical industry to explain things to them.  You can't stop someone from making aspirin, so you might as well make sure someone buys it from you.

Quote from: Bill;538420It could be both. Maybe the alien overlords altered my genetics?

No, that's multi-generational inbreeding  ;)

Quote from: deMonica;538466No, that's multi-generational inbreeding  ;)

There had to be a good reason :)

Quote from: CRKrueger;538422You can't stop someone from making aspirin, so you might as well make sure someone buys it from you.

. . . say, by making it addictive.


;)

Quote from: Black Vulmea;538650. . . say, by making it addictive.


;)

That or just making it better.

Quote from: Black Vulmea;538650. . . say, by making it addictive.


;)

Quote from: Marleycat;538652That or just making it better.

or in this case realizing that since you can't force someone to take the aspirin replacement, you may as well just sell your own aspirin without investing additional time or money into making yours the best or the most addictive (heh), just guaranteeing yourself a perpetual market share due to historical brand loyalty.

WotC was the premier seller of all things D&D.  They tried to manage D&D as a product, not a brand.  I'm sure as far as Hasbro/WotC is concerned, D&D gets the absolute low end of the business talent pool, corporately speaking, and it shows.