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

[Azzy]

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

Dumb, counter-intuitive, inefficient, difficult for some, needless, etc.

 

[Azzy]

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.

Do you remember how they suggested to make NWP roll-over? I know it's been a minute, but I'm just curious.

 

[kayakingpoodle]

too many smiling faces, gay dwarves baking cookies, etc.)

What if they were Discworld dwarfs who were baking war cookies.

Or maybe they were female dwarfs who were properly depicted as being bearded.

Keebler Dwarves?

 

[Hussar]

I always love the false-equivalency that gets brought into these discussions.

A group of gamers feels put upon because of a single NPC in a module that is obviously meant as a joke. Apparently that is all it takes to make someone feel unwelcome in the hobby.

A different group of gamers puts up with constant ridicule, insults, outright harassment, rape jokes, and whatnot for DECADES and they're supposed to just "suck it up" and not be offended because it's too ... difficult? insulting? too something anyway ... to point out this behaviour and change it. To the point where people, years later, are still salty about WotC putting a disclaimer on material that everyone agrees contains problematic material.

Good grief. It's utterly mind boggling that this is even a discussion. Paizo stops doing pin-up art and starts doing more inclusive art and everyone trips over themselves to pat Paizo on the back. Paizo is leading the charge and should get all the accolades. WotC does EXACTLY the same thing and it's insulting to gamers and disrespectful to fans.

:boggle:

 

[dragoner]

Thaco the gatekeeping clown is a slick burn, who wrote that?

 

[Umbran]

Even when that individual or small group has it correct* and the masses do not? Science, for one thing, would not have got far without specific people at different times taking a stand saying "Yes I'm right and all of you are wrong".

Super-weak analogy.
RPGs are not science.

 

[Wofano Wotanto]

My fighter fights with a cloud giant's old enchanted pizza cutter.

I'm fascinated by the implications of this. Had never considered the existence (or lack thereof) of cloud giant pizza restaurants before. Where do they source their ingredients? Do the ovens cause problems with cloud buoyancy, or emit enough heat to evaporate structures built of cloudstuff? What toppings are most popular among cloud-borne cultures? Do they deliver, or is there adventure potential in having to collect take-out? Should we be replacing some percentage of magic scrolls found as loot with gigantic pizza coupons that let you place a delivery order as long as you're under an open sky? What are the game effects of being struck with a hurled giant pizza fresh from the oven instead of the usual boring rock?

 

[Minigiant]

I'm fascinated by the implications of this. Had never considered the existence (or lack thereof) of cloud giant pizza restaurants before. Where do they source their ingredients? Do the ovens cause problems with cloud buoyancy, or emit enough heat to evaporate structures built of cloudstuff? What toppings are most popular among cloud-borne cultures? Do they deliver, or is there adventure potential in having to collect take-out? Should we be replacing some percentage of magic scrolls found as loot with gigantic pizza coupons that let you place a delivery order as long as you're under an open sky? What are the game effects of being struck with a hurled giant pizza fresh from the oven instead of the usual boring rock?

Seeing that giants aren't just conquering nations left and right and mostly sitting at home (except hill giants), it's obvious there is an interplanar pizza delivery services feeding them when a giant is too tired to cook.

It's not like they are teleporting in Chinese.

 

[The Firebird]

A group of gamers feels put upon because of a single NPC in a module that is obviously meant as a joke. Apparently that is all it takes to make someone feel unwelcome in the hobby.

In the last 20 odd pages I've been active in this thread I haven't seen anyone make this argument. If I'm misremembering I'd appreciate a citation.

A different group of gamers puts up with constant ridicule, insults, outright harassment, rape jokes, and whatnot for DECADES and they're supposed to just "suck it up" and not be offended because it's too ... difficult? insulting? too something anyway ... to point out this behaviour and change it.

Nor has anyone suggested that people should "put up" with outright harassment. Am I wrong?

Good grief. It's utterly mind boggling that this is even a discussion. Paizo stops doing pin-up art and starts doing more inclusive art and everyone trips over themselves to pat Paizo on the back. Paizo is leading the charge and should get all the accolades. WotC does EXACTLY the same thing and it's insulting to gamers and disrespectful to fans.

Indeed, as someone on the opposite side of this discussion, I explicitly praised the change in art direction from 3E on inclusivity grounds. Was there a large contingent that I didn't see disagreeing with me?

Do any of these claims correspond to what people have said here or are they all some hazy other? On another forum, perhaps?

 

[Thagdal]

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").

As someone who is currently doing THAC0 and associated early edition mechanics with people who have never played it before, you absolute nailed all the issues with some subsystems having a plus or minus modifier could be good or bad. It takes a while to get used to, and the pay off isn't worth it for many, particularly those without nostalgia.

Though my groups poke fun at some/many of the subsystems (including THAC0, ascending AC is better game design)) or when people get things muddied, we do indeed enjoy that so many of the subsystems being unique to each other, makes the characters feel more distinct from each other in play.

FWIW I've found using better language than the original rules e.g. I always add something like thing ring of protection gives a +1 bonus to AC, or the cursed ring gives a -1 penalty to NWP checks. I tell players as a general rule, generally the word check means roll low, e.g. things like thief abilities and NWPs.
Playing by foundry makes the maths of THAC0 a non issue, but when we have met up in person for games, I have the the two rows section of the character sheet where you can prefill for your thac0, which I think was shown earlier inthread.