Unpopular opinions go here

[deganawida]

Agreed. The recent D&D movie was definitely not inspired by or in any way in the same genre as Tolkien's or Howard's glimpse back into a more ancient world.

There are almost no elements of "swords and sorcery" left in D&D except for the tendency to continue to eschew firearms. But aside from that, there is barely anything in modern D&D older than Dickens, and even that is fading as D&D's default setting moves more and more into the 20th century.

The fundamental problem is I think the inability to imagine anything distant enough into the past, along with the utter collapse of the contemporary readership of the sort of historical fiction source material that inspired all the "swords and sorcery" authors. No one (well almost no one) actually reads Ivanhoe, Robin Hood, Morte D'Arthur, or Doyle's "The White Company" or anything of the sort anymore much less writes fan fiction about it.

Haven't read "The White Company", but have read the others (various versions of Robin Hood. Love medieval romance.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

You are allowed to like poor quality works. But you liking them does not magically make them good. Probably all of us unironically like bad things. It's not a personal attack on you if someone says a thing you enjoy is bad.

 

[billd91]

You are allowed to like poor quality works. But you liking them does not magically make them good. Probably all of us unironically like bad things. It's not a personal attack on you if someone says a thing you enjoy is bad.

Untrue! Why, everything I like is clearly of the highest objective quality! Now let me expound on why Hawk: the Slayer is the best D&D movie prior to 2023...

 

[Pedantic]

You are allowed to like poor quality works. But you liking them does not magically make them good. Probably all of us unironically like bad things. It's not a personal attack on you if someone says a thing you enjoy is bad.

I read a lot of garbage.

 

[Voadam]

 

[Thomas Shey]

That is pretty much the same issue as novaing and the adventure day in general.

To a point. But the issue with normal spell slots has been that when lower level spells are useless, so are their spell slots.

If you have one fight a day the incentive is to super nova everything.

If you have multiple encounters then a boss fight the incentive is to use minor resources along the way and then nova everything you have left against the boss.

If you are in a dungeon crawl where you can pull back the incentive is to continue until your resources are gone then pull back. Generally this incentivizes more novaing.

If you are in a dynamic area with no expectations about the flow of encounters or the safety of camping it pays to hold big expendable guns back unless you are in a fight for your life.

I've often said that spell point systems in many games are more like managing D&D-adjacent sorcerers; you don't necessary pack away spell points for later, but it may not be, in practice, possible to use everything you have on one fight. (This is also true of PF2e; there are only so many buffs that will matter, and fights don't last long enough that you can burn through all your offensive spells even if you want to).

Historically, especially since D&D3e, novaing worked because there were so many useful buffs you could put up and you could burn through all your top level slots in one fight.

Of course in some of those games, blowing through your resources in a given fight is a matter of course, because they don't assume you're going to set up things so you get in multiple fights a day anyway. If you do, its because an unexpected one comes along (and often the systems are such that even magic wouldn't have let you avoid that).

 

[CleverNickName]

Except, not really. The fact that a game may use a spell point system or a spell slot system says nothing about what what the decision points for those systems entail or their relative complexity. The argument that spell points are an added layer of complexity compared to spell slots is an an argument built on a house of unsupported assumptions.

I'm not a game developer, so I can only say this much about it:

Spell points work for me. I think they're fun to use, and I would recommend them to anyone who plays 5E D&D and wants their spellcaster to have an "old psionics" feel to them. If I'm rolling up a sorcerer, I am going to ask my DM to let me use spell points and if she says "no," I'm changing to Warlock instead.

 

[CleverNickName]

D&D has had a bigger effect on fantasy literature over the last 40 years than fantasy literature has had on D&D.

 

[CleverNickName]

Oh, DPR calculations and nova potential aren’t actually useful metrics of the value of a class or other option. At least 80% of optimization is a waste of time.

This. SO MUCH THIS. I'd even go so far as to strike "At least 80% of" from your last sentence.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Feist's 'Riftwar Saga' certainly is known to be and is one of the early examples.
As is Moon's 'The Deed of Paksenarrion'.
The whole 'Expanse' Saga by Abraham and Franck.
I can't prove it but Wood's 'Tales of the Ketty Jay' reads just like an Indy RPG.
Probably also Martin's 'Saga of Ice and Fire' (RPG meets 'War of the Roses')
Malazan Book of the Fallen started out as a GURPS campaign.
The Gentleman Bastard series started out as a homebrew WEG D6 game.
The aforementioned 'Craft Cycle'.

Probably more if I think about it or do some research.

The Wild Cards series grew out of a supers campaign.