D&D General [rant]The conservatism of D&D fans is exhausting.

[Ruin Explorer]

a group called HISS who perform dressed up as Yuan Ti

Oh damn I actually laughed out loud at that one, that is funnier than I expected Wild to be.

 

[Zardnaar]

Oh damn I actually laughed out loud at that one, that is funnier than I expected Wild to be.

They have a selection of hits such as I Was Made for Breeding You, God of Thunder.

Some of the acts will have monsters hiding in plain sight. The carnival of souls is exactly that. The performers some are devils farming souls. You can hire them for private performances you can guess the price.

 

[Mournblade94]

But presumably because those Twitter and forum posts were, in their opinion, GATEKEEPING, because I'm reading that the key point of Thaco the Clown is that he was a gatekeeper.

So let's not play-pretend that they were insulting THAC0, they were using it to mock people they felt were gatekeeping, which is very different.

You're assumptions are only correct in they were not making fun of a game mechanic. You're assumption is very misplaced as to how it used.

You said you didn't get it originally and now you've made an incorrect assumption.

 

[Morrus]

People have plenty of games to acomodate them. I think it is actually worst to come into a game you weren't part of and demand change.

Especially now. No need to stay with it if Demons and Evil Orcs offend you. Go play whatever games cater to your taste. Don't demand others change because your tastes don't match the community you entered into.

That ship has sailed. Dungeons and Dragons has become Legends and Lattes. But since I am playing the game with the person I love most (my daughter and wife) I would love to drop the Latte and go back to the Dungeons and Dragons.

I'm just glad my daughter got into gaming through reading books.

Read rules. Follow rules. Such an experienced gamer as you should be better at that. You won’t be posting in this thread again.

 

[SkidAce]

On Thac0: something about the way my brain works constantly trips me up with descending AC. The PHB didn't do a very good job of teaching me it, and even now that I've learned the trick (subtract to-hit roll from Thac0 to get target AC) it still feels counter-intuitive.

And it's not just me. Some time ago, the idea of running a 2e game came up, since I have a friend who waxes nostalgic for it, and is always going on about how superior it was to modern D&D.

But the other players we roped into it were very confused about the rather arbitrary decisions made with the rules set, and the whole AC system felt strange to them.

Like how a +1 armor lowers your AC, but 17 Dexterity has a -3 defensive adjustment. "Why," one player asked, "aren't these things more consistent? Why do some rules elements expressed as positive integers and others negative?".

Like a +1 sword made sense, even though it effectively lowers your Thac0, it's easy to grasp that it's doing that by adding to your attack roll. But then one guy had a Swashbuckler and he was really hung up on the fact that his Dexterity adjustment was a negative integer and his Kit gave him a +2 to AC at the same time. "This doesn't make any sense!", was the gist of what he was saying.

And I think this is really the point to drive home, I think. If everything worked in the same direction, it wouldn't matter if we used ascending or descending AC. Have low rolls be good on the d20* and have all modifiers subtract- just as easy as it is today.

But rolling high to arrive at a low number seems like this needless step, as does having both positive and negative "bonuses". Now I get, to a lot of gamers who played earlier forms of D&D, this makes perfect sense to them, because they're used to it, but from an outside perspective, it just adds to the arcane, sometimes byzantine nature of AD&D's rules.

*And when we got to NWP's where low rolls are good and high rolls are bad, I watched a player throw a d20 off the table in disgust, lol, as it rolled low when he needed it to roll high and vice versa.

I know that someone is going to instantly take umbrage with my entire post and repeat to me the whole "Thac0 is easy/it's just math/neither me or anyone I ever played D&D with ever had these issues" conga line- it's great that you think this way and it works for you.

But there are people who it doesn't work for. Plus, I mean, has anyone heard a new player complain about ascending AC being hard to grok?**

**(sighs, knowing someone will likely immediately post "yes").

This is how I rember the cosmos at large back then also.

We used THAC0, we debated it, we laughed at it, we had fun.
When a dragon article(?) came out explaining how to flip it to ascending, we adopted it, and then when Ascending AC became standard, we praised it.*


*granted as 3.0 exploded with +1 for everything, we grumbled, but at least it was consistent.

 

[SkidAce]

We played D&D from 1989 to 1998 or so with THAC0, played it a ton, and it was still tripping us up, and we're well-educated A/A* in maths players for the most part. When we read "10 ways you can play 3E right now!" (I think in 1998 or 1999) and it explained how to flip THAC0 into a primitive form of BAB, and how to make proficiencies roll-over (less necessary but still), that actually noticeably improved our D&D experience! If you can play a lot, for that long, and still have issues, I don't think its the players that are the problem.

Truth.

 

[Morrus]

Then you get the (and I hate this term) the "Woke" factor. Species instead of race. Male mariliths, hag's, dryads, banshees...etc. Vistani are apparently racist despite being an archetype within a game setting (I never saw the old WoD Gypsies book as racist either for the same reason). Concepts that don't always sit right with those of us from an older generation. Society is changing for the better but does it need to impact D&D? In some places yes, and in others no. Despite what is in the Monster Manual, my games will continue to showcase things as we always have done but then my games are not public so it has no effect on others. But again, I can see where the more conservative players might feel these changes being forced unnecessarily out there.

You must be really bad at role playing games because following simple, clear rules is apparently not in your skill set. You will not be posting in this thread again.

 

[Morrus]

Who’s the next ‘gamer’ who wants to demonstrate how rubbish they are at all understanding simple rules? Let’s up the stakes. Next volunteer gets much more than a threadboot.

 

[SkidAce]

Thaco was most definitely not perfect, and I understand not liking it, but that doesn't excuse mockery and ridicule IMO.

Everything that is funny, is mockery or ridicule.

The difference is if you are laughing together (good) or laughing at someone (bad). Or if you are "punching down" (bad).

Where the bigger problem arises is when we think we are good natured laughing, and it unknowingly hurts other folks.

Personally, I used THAC0 and played all the editions. I think the jokes so far have been funny, and well-intentioned*
"Rawr"


*of course we know where good intentions lead us...sigh

 

[mamba]

I'm saying companies that need to maximize their customer base. Disney's put themselves in quite the position now. I don't think it's good business.

and I disagree, there are more important things than the maximum profit possible

That's why Troll Lord Games stays Apolitical.

apart from retweeting Elon Musk’s upset posts about how the WotC book was mistreating poor old Gary… not a good take