Unpopular opinions go here

[mamba]

If you've tried several different retro-clones and still haven't recaptured the magic and nostalgia of "old school D&D," you should just re-play your favorite old-school edition. BECM, AD&D 2E, B/X...all the original books that you know and love are available on DriveThruRPG, in electronic or hardcopy format, for a lot less than the cost of a new retroclone. (And with less of a learning curve.) Play the game you remember! Play the game you love!

Sometimes nostalgia is just that, and revisiting what you liked back then just does not recapture the original feeling.

 

[MGibster]

The Wild Cards series grew out of a supers campaign.

Forget the Red Wedding, I'm still pissed off at J.R.R. Martin for what he did to Kid Dinosaur.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Forget the Red Wedding, I'm still pissed off at J.R.R. Martin for what he did to Kid Dinosaur.

Not the last time in that series he did something like that, either.

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

I think the act of optimization is the primary enjoyment a lot of optimizers get out of it. The fact that they have squeezed every bit of oomph out of a character is probably more important than actually getting to do so. The Giant in the Playground boards are full of builds that clearly never actually saw use in an actual game, for instance.

I completely agree. I'm an "optimizer", in the sense that I love gaining mastery over a system and finding all of the things that stack together that could theoretically be explotied by a character. But that's all just theorycrafting. I would never play a double-smiting Hexblade/Paladin multiclass at the table. I just love brainstorming ideas for characters that I'll never actually play.

Oh, and I'm a forever DM. So even if I wanted to play an OP multiclass character, I'll probably never get the opportunity to. The few characters I have played were a Variant Human Illusionist Wizard, a Satyr Undead Warlock, and Gnome Battle Smith Artificer.

 

[MGibster]

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.

Yup. I think this is one of the reasons D&D is so popular. It doesn't require a lot of effort on the part of players to figure out the world and have fun.

 

[overgeeked]

If you've tried several different retro-clones and still haven't recaptured the magic and nostalgia of "old school D&D," you should just re-play your favorite old-school edition. BECM, AD&D 2E, B/X...all the original books that you know and love are available on DriveThruRPG, in electronic or hardcopy format, for a lot less than the cost of a new retroclone. (And with less of a learning curve.) Play the game you remember! Play the game you love!

Some of them are POD, some of them are not. OD&D, B/X, and the BECMI boxes are not. I can play the game I love (B/X) with freshly printed OSE books that are hardback and will likely last longer than I will.

 

[J.Quondam]

Oh, and I'm a forever DM. So even if I wanted to play an OP multiclass character, I'll probably never get the opportunity to.

Let me introduce you to my buddy, the DMPC....

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

Let me introduce you to my buddy, the DMPC....

Ha. Because I just love draining the fun from the game for my players.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

I completely agree. I'm an "optimizer", in the sense that I love gaining mastery over a system and finding all of the things that stack together that could theoretically be explotied by a character. But that's all just theorycrafting. I would never play a double-smiting Hexblade/Paladin multiclass at the table. I just love brainstorming ideas for characters that I'll never actually play.

Oh, and I'm a forever DM. So even if I wanted to play an OP multiclass character, I'll probably never get the opportunity to. The few characters I have played were a Variant Human Illusionist Wizard, a Satyr Undead Warlock, and Gnome Battle Smith Artificer.

As a fellow forever DM, every time I get to make a character for a GenCon Online game, I feel (a little) sorry for said DM, because I am putting in a lot of energy into building a fun character. (Hey, my group survived a Ravenloft one-shot deathtrap that way one year, so it's not all bad.)

 

[cwallach]

Spending time talking to a shop keeper with a funny voice in order to purchase a mundane item is not roleplaying.