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

[Zardnaar]

Popular stuff often are half heartedly designed if they don't line up with the conservative view in D&D and many RPGs.

If you are lucky, it's accidentally good like druid. Or accidentally mid like artificer.

But most of the time you get monkified or sorcererized. Something non-traditional designed bad or boring that takes almost a decade to be fixed.

Had a similar thought low. Often they design for previous edition metrics. But that changes.

Eg 3.0 rogue is great in 2E.

Monk in old D&D with abundance of loot wasn't t bad. High rolled stats.

I also suspect late cycle stuff has smaller print runs. Secondary market book prices can be high d say UA or Xanathars.

So online people think Bo9S for example is great. In reality very few people comparatively saw it let alone used it.

Fizbabs. Bought it never had a player consider a Dragonborn from it. Theros Ravnica etc barely used it.

Complete Mage. Psion, PHB2. Barely used.

Most of my 2E material....... Barely used.

I could probably cut my 3E books down to 10 or so vs 50 or 60. 5E could be cut back to 5.

I've commented on thoughts I had 2002 about how forums talked about 3.0 vs what I saw at RPG groups.

So what we the hard core enjoy nit picking about here has virtually no relevance out in the real world.

It's one reason why I think 3.X survived longer than 4E. It fixed 3E in ways the vast majority weren't experiencing anyway.

So basically I think the majority of the player base edition in and out are casuals level 1-7 mostly after generic fantasy tropes familiar from myth and legends.

So new conservatism may be 5.0. I suspect 5.5 will have 2E trajectory. Could be wrong

So I have to hats I would where if I made a genies wish. There's what I would command them to make for me personally vs what I would command them to make the most money.

 

[Azzy]

Thac0 just was never hard. Ever. If you played D&D then negative AC was the norm. Nobody i knew had a problem with this.

I maintained a 4.0 in my college maths, and I still think that descending AC and Thac0 was dumb.

 

[AnotherGuy]

I maintained a 4.0 in my college maths, and I still think that descending AC and Thac0 was dumb.

Dumb and hard are different though.
I agree it wasn't practical.

 

[AlViking]

Dumb and hard are different though.
I agree it wasn't practical.

Do you accept that it was more difficult for some people even if you personally didn't have a problem? Because I do. If we agree on that we're just quibbling about percentage of players.

 

[Zardnaar]

I prefer not to use THAC0 but not to the extent of not playing of a DM liked it and was running an interesting game.

Even in OSR circles I think THAC0 purists are few and far between. I woukd only use it briefly to give players a taste of it "as played back then".
I dumped it 1999 or 2000 after Dragon articles 10 ways to play 3E now.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Ask the poster I was replying to as they used it first.

Who made Ruin Explorer the data metric by which one measures the difficulty or complexity of Thaco.

Who? The government, pretty much so. Read what I said.

 

[AnotherGuy]

So online people think Bo9S for example is great. In reality very few people comparatively saw it let alone used it.
Fizbabs. Bought it never had a player consider a Dragonborn from it. Theros Ravnica etc barely used it.
Complete Mage. Psion, PHB2. Barely used.
Most of my 2E material....... Barely used.
I could probably cut my 3E books down to 10 or so vs 50 or 60. 5E could be cut back to 5.

I think for our table I'm the 4ever DM and secondly we do not play frequently enough to cover engage with all the material that is being released. And now that we are playing 5e which has the slowest release of the editions, our campaign is still deep in the APs ToD, SKT and parts of WDDH and WD: DotMM and BGDiA
We've covered 3 DMsGuild adventures, MiBG, LotCS, a location in 3.x Complete Undead, 1/2 a 2e Planescape module (Doors to the Unknown), only 2 x AL campaigns, as well as my own stuff and player background storylines.

Which means I've missed a bucket load of 5e APs and setting books - we are just not going to get to it before I close out the campaign at 20TH level.
It suspect it is because we play in person, it feels like groups online get through more material in a shorter space of time.

 

[AnotherGuy]

Who? The government, pretty much so. Read what I said.

I did. You do not agree with my assessment of your post, that is fine.
According to your post, I would have excelled in Britain's schooling system at the age of 13.
I appreciate the compliment.

 

[AnotherGuy]

Do you accept that it was more difficult for some people even if you personally didn't have a problem? Because I do. If we agree on that we're just quibbling about percentage of players.

We weren't quibbling.
Also refer to the end of my post #779

 

[ezo]

Ah.. THAC0... I've missed you. But, alas, you live on in 5E with the "number needed to hit the AC".

I still calculate the number I need to roll to hit an AC. For example, the Fire Giant is AC 18, and the PC has +11, so if they roll a 7 or higher they hit.

Traditional d20 Player: AC 18? Ok.
I rolled a 7...+11... is 18. So, I hit.
I rolled a 12... +11... is 23. So, I hit.
I rolled a 3... +11... is 14. So, I miss.

THAC0-based Player: AC 18? So, I need a 7.
I rolled a 7. Hit.
I rolled a 12. Hit.
I rolled a 3. Miss!

It is easier to do the math once than every time you roll the d20.