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

[Azzy]

If the posted examples (thanks @dave2008 ) are representative of his work in general, I'd beg to differ.

To be fair, I'll take WAR over Easley... But that's a really low bar.

 

[Hussar]

Not a big WAR fan myself. Just not to my taste. I find it too busy.

This discussion of WAR is how it should go. People simply positing their personal tastes without any actual judgement for those tastes.

 

[Zardnaar]

To be fair, I'll take WAR over Easley... But that's a really low bar.

I'm the other way around. Arts so subjective though.

 

[Lanefan]

This depends on the table. Plenty of GMs will tell you if you have a penalty to the roll. Plus, well, in a roll-under game, if you know you have to roll under a 15, and you roll a 13 and that's a fail, then you also know you had at least a -2 penalty. If that happens enough times, you learn "rain-slick" equals -2. Or -10%; either way.

First off, while plenty of GMs will tell you if you have a penalty to a roll by no means will all those GMs tell you that penalty's specific numbers. "That wall looks slick, climbing it's going to be tougher than usual" is all they'll get, and not just from me.

And, the wall being wet and slick might not necessarily give the same penalty every time, depending on other conditions e.g. a smooth rain-slick wall may well have a bigger penalty than a rough rain-slick wall.

Meh, this is a "your mileage may vary" kind of thing. One could easily say that adventurers become more aware of what to look out for--what that faint rustle in the trees or slight movement of shadow or that look between those people mean--as they level up, so it makes total sense for a perception score to increase

Perhaps. There's arguments either way, for sure. It's easier to see with physical stats - your level doesn't (and shouldn't, really) make a difference to how much you can carry, that's entirely dependent on your Str score. That said, I'm not averse to the idea of some stats slowly increasing with level (in the fiction, that means you've been practising or training in those areas) though I don't like the locked-in "at level x you can increase one stat by one point" and prefer it be much more fluid and-or somewhat randomized.

An expansion of the 1e "percentile increment" system brought in for Cavaliers (in Unearthed Arcana) gets very close to what I want, and the overall rate/frequency of increase is trivially easy to tweak just by changing the increment dice rolled at each level.

Right, but that's your table. You have to realize that your games are apparently quite different than others. I've looked at plenty of OSR games that not only demand 3d6 in order, but if you rolled a sufficiently high number, like a 15 or higher, then your next stat must be rolled on 2d6. So if that's your exposure to roll-under systems, and your character's stats are designed to be very low, then it becomes unfun to fail all the time.

Fair enough. Not to my taste, which is why I've ignored those bits if-when I've seen them.

I personally think that's a dumb way to design the game, because you can very easily just give penalties to certain tasks which do the same thing, while at the same time allowing characters to succeed at less-difficult tasks and therefore feel like they are actually accomplishing something.

Well, yes and no. Giving a flat penalty hurts everyone equally, rather than differentiating between those who have a big number in the relevant stat and those who do not. Yes the 5e stat bonus (-4 to +4) covers some of this, but using the stat itself is more granular and also makes odd-numbered stats much more relevant.

But even if that's an accident of bad luck--like you have a 4d6-drop-lowest-and-assign-as-desired and managed to roll terribly--then for many people it becomes unfun. You may find it great. I may find it great, depending on circumstances. But if you want to know why others don't find it great, well, that's a reason why. I have a player who consistently rolls terribly for damage, and it causes her to check out after a while. She doesn't find it fun to nickle-and-dime her opponents to death.

Sometimes characters just don't work out like you want them to. One of my main ones has the same problem - he can tank it up all day but his damage output is (by the party's standards) pathetic. He's a Cleric, which means his odds to hit aren't great, and his strength is a mighty 9. However, his AC is among the best in the party. So, when in melee he just sees it as his job to glue one or two opponents up by letting them try to beat him up until someone can come and bail him out.

This is especially true if it prevents the player from running their PC the way they want to. Like, in the 5e game I'm in, Int is my rogue's dump stat (it's a 10, which actually isn't bad, but it means no stat bonus). I didn't put my Expertise in any Int-based skills--such as Investigation, which is needed to find traps and thus is important for a typical thief. But I'm using the swashbuckler archetype, so it doesn't upset me if I fail a roll to find traps (or to know something about history or arcana or religion or nature); I'm only a rogue because swashbuckler is a rogue archetype (and for that sweet, sweet sneak attack damage). Actually, one of the most fun moments in the game was due to a failed roll to find traps.

But for someone who wanted to play more traditional thief-type rogue who was good at finding traps, then in a roll-under game where finding traps was based on Int, and the rules made them put a bad roll in Int, it wouldn't be fun.

I'm used to games where finding traps is a skill mostly independent of stats. That said, for any Thief or Rugoe I play it's dump stat would always be Wisdom if only because a wise character probably wouldn't take up that profession in the first place.

 

[Lanefan]

To be fair, I'll take WAR over Easley... But that's a really low bar.

Flip side for me. Easley's images often look a bit too "clean and perfect" but I'll take the style over Reynolds all day long.

 

[ezo]

If you’re happy with it, knock yourself out.

If I play AD&D, I will.

If I play 3E or 5E, I won't.

 

[FrozenNorth]

This little sidebar about THAC0 is such a perfect encapsulation of the OP’s rant.

Argument: Ascending or descending AC isn’t better or worse, just different.

Argument for descending AC: people played with have no problem with it.

Argument for ascending AC: multiple studies showing that adding is easier for people than subtraction.

• the fact that no other rpg at the time used descending AC. Every other game designer abandoned it.
• the fact that no game published in the last twenty years uses descending AC.
• the fact that even the OSR, the stewards of old school play have universally rejected descending AC.

The fact that even the people defending descending AC refer to it as « esoteric ».

But yes, apparently these two things are equal.

And people wonder why gaming discussions with conservative gamers is so infuriating?

 

[FrozenNorth]

I appreciate the engagement, I really do, but the context of the discussion with Frozen North was whether or not anyone had raised additional arguments in the thread. The claim was about the existence of other arguments, not whether everyone found them convincing.

I agree with @Swarmkeeper. I don’t think you can divorce « arguments have been made » from the weight of those arguments. Elsewise, you end up with journalists reporting « some people believe the Earth is flat. »

So, it is insufficient to simply repeat the claim « some grognards believe that WotC treats them poorly ».

@Willie the Duck has provided the context for the Jason Todoro’s quote, i.e. that he was responding to people attacking him for acknowledging Gary Gygax’s misogyny. From the context, it is clear that he is not attacking all players of previous editions, rather he is pushing back against those attacking him.

Likewise, the goblin video. I encourage you to view it if you have a chance. It baffles me that anyone would view the video as mocking grognards. Moreover, if you view the comments on the video, they are overwhelmingly positive, and most of find the gnome charming.

Finally, THAC0 the clown. Again, THAC0 was abandoned after 2nd ed, that seems like more of an Easter Egg than an insult, since only older gamers would get the joke.

And again, that has to be weighed against the frequent and numerous attempts of WotC to appeal to older gamers, from bringing back older settings, to referencing older adventures, to commissioning new art of the characters from the D&D cartoon.

As for the rest, you are quoting yourself making the claim. That isn’t really evidence of the underlying claim.

 

[AnotherGuy]

Likewise, the goblin video. I encourage you to view it if you have a chance. It baffles me that anyone would view the video as mocking grognards. Moreover, if you view the comments on the video, they are overwhelmingly positive, and most of find the gnome charming.

Sorry, I've been drifting in and out of this thread, what is this goblin video you are referring to?

 

[AlViking]

Descending AC, by itself, is a little bad, but not a disaster. Descending AC when there are +X bonuses in the game that make your AC better by lowering it is pretty bad, but something one can deal with. Descending AC when there are both +X bonuses and -Y bonuses that both improve your AC by lowering it, now that's a disaster.

There have been several studies that have shown that people are better at adding than subtracting. Same with negative numbers. They aren't "real" in the same sense that positive numbers are so they're more difficult conceptually for most people.

So it doesn't really matter if some people claim they had no difficulties, for the majority of people it is more difficult even before the extra steps and the extra complexity of knowing when "+" really means "-".