D&D General D&D Editions: Anybody Else Feel Like They Don't Fit In?

[Lanefan]

Because you're a good among men??

I'm only kidding a little. How? How did you do that in this day and age? I was really proud that I held a group together long enough to run all of the Curse of the Crimson Throne adventure path, which took about two years. I'm still proud, but 2 is a lot less than 17. Or 10 or 12. I'm deeply impressed.

Thanks for that.

The trick is to have a stable group of friends who aren't planning on moving away, and to stay in one place yourself.

I'm glad Keep on the Shadowfell worked out for you. What's maybe unfortunate is that the best part of the adventure, as I remember, was the epic fight with the boss at the very end -- and I'm not sure that battle would be nearly as good outside of 4e. It made great use of terrain in the way that was uniquely exploitable in 4e. I still remember that fight almost two decades later, so that was a doozy. Hope it was as good for you!

I remember that fight as well, but not nearly as fondly as you. My players tried every obvious "what if" that the module doesn't answer:

--- they tried attacking the tentacled thingy coming in through the portal in hopes of slowing its progress; it's given no write-up of any kind (the module just blithely assumes the PCs will ignore it) so I had to make up some stats on the fly
--- one PC tried going through the portal to attack the tentacled thingy from behind (!); the words don't say anything about this but the picture shows the tentacles completely blocking the opening, so based on that I told him he was out of luck
--- some of the PCs wanted to shut the gate down while others wanted to open it up and let the tentacled thingy in (either naively thinking they could kill it or hoping to gain a stupidly-powerful friend, I'm still not sure which to this day); the module gives no mechanism for controlling the gate either before or after the BBEG is killed, so I had to invent one on the fly

There was some other headache came up during that combat as well but - perhaps mercifully - I've forgotten the details now.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Truth be told, I don't mind weeding out those players.

Do you understand, then, that this specific sentiment is why you will--always--get pushback?

"I don't mind those people being excluded from the hobby" becomes "I don't mind you being excluded from the hobby" when the preference you're talking about is widespread and more common than your own preference.

That's the problem here. You don't care whether a preference opposite your own is allowed on the playground or not. And that will absolutely guaranteed ALWAYS get pushback.

It's one of the reasons why I make such a priority, even when I stridently argue against something, to listen in order to understand, rather than to listen merely in order to reply. I don't do the best job. Hell, I probably do an outright poop job of it. But I am trying, because that's how we build legitimately better systems--better not because way A is superior to way B, but because it is possible in many (perhaps most!) cases to build a system that truly does support both way A and way B fairly and effectively.

Trial and error while consistently using the same system can help immensely here through increased familiarity with a) what various monsters and foes can dish out and b) how resilient (or not) adventuring parties can be. Even then, the dice can throw things for a loop but IMO that's exactly why we use them.

And this is the second thing that will get you a ton of pushback.

Why should a brand-new person stick through that trial-and-error?

That's the thing you're not explaining here. Why should they bother with something that requires literal years of trial-and-error before they develop the gut-instinct required to make a system work properly? What value are they getting during those years, apart from "very slow accretion of intuition", that makes this process worthwhile?

Because from where I'm sitting, this is like telling someone, "Well it gets good once you've played for 500 hours" when they complain that the beginning isn't fun. Their reply, in nearly all cases, is going to be, "Why should I do this, then, when I can get 500 hours of actually having fun doing something else?"

Note that I'm not defending the ridiculous, risible notion that games should be instantly 100% amaze-balls fun from the first instant. It's okay for a game to require some time to grow and develop. I'm instead putting forward the rather more modest assertion that this lead-up, grow-and-develop period should be not just temporary, it should be as short as the designers can reasonably make it.

 

[Aldarc]

Because from where I'm sitting, this is like telling someone, "Well it gets good once you've played for 500 hours" when they complain that the beginning isn't fun. Their reply, in nearly all cases, is going to be, "Why should I do this, then, when I can get 500 hours of actually having fun doing something else?"

This is me when someone tells me that the first 100-200 episodes of some anime is not as good as the 300+ episodes that follow. This is also why my rule of thumb with anime was generally "you have fifty-two or less episodes to tell me your story."

 

[payn]

This is me when someone tells me that the first 100-200 episodes of some anime is not as good as the 300+ episodes that follow. This is also why my rule of thumb with anime was generally "you have fifty-two or less episodes to tell me your story."

Wheel of Time fans definitely scared me away. "14 books and only half of them are bad!"

 

[Aldarc]

Wheel of Time fans definitely scared me away. "14 books and only half of them are bad!"

I have a similar policy with fantasy books as a result of my experiences with the WoT and ASoIaF style "epic fantasy" of the '90s and '00s. I came to appreciate an author who knows how to write a well-written story that is memorable and succinct. IMHO, some of the best fantasy prose comes from authors who know how to do more with less using language.

FWIW, Lord of the Rings is 481,103 words total. Ursula K. Le Guin's six-book Earthsea series is 480,503 words total. George RR Martin's Storm of Swords alone has 424,000 words, and who knows when he will ever be finished with the series.

While I enjoyed reading of the antics of Mat Cauthon in WoT or Tyrion in ASoIaF and ruminating over fan theories and predictions, I don't feel any desire to re-read these books. However, I am forever drawn back to the prose of Ursula K. LeGuin in A Wizard of Earthsea, the prose of JRR Tolkien in Lord of the Rings, the prose of Peter S. Beagle in The Last Unicorn, or the prose of Gene Wolfe in Book of the New Sun. Such artful prose is transformative and enduring. It's writing that makes me feel as if I am scamming the author, who divulges the arcane secrets and richness of the English language to me through their wordcraft.

 

[Mannahnin]

Along related lines, one factor which just sold me on ordering a copy of Poul Anderson's There Will be Time is that it's under 200 pages. I miss when SF&F was full of good cheap paperbacks around that length.

 

[Willie the Duck]

I have a similar policy with fantasy books as a result of my experiences with the WoT and ASoIaF style "epic fantasy" of the '90s and '00s. I came to appreciate an author who knows how to write a well-written story that is memorable and succinct. IMHO, some of the best fantasy prose comes from authors who know how to do more with less using language.

FWIW, Lord of the Rings is 481,103 words total. Ursula K. Le Guin's six-book Earthsea series is 480,503 words total. George RR Martin's Storm of Swords alone has 424,000 words, and who knows when he will ever be finished with the series.

Or heck, look at folklore and mythology. From the Epic of Gilgamesh to the Norse Eddas, each discrete narrative is usually no more than 20-50,000 words. Some epic collections like Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur or Wu Cheng'en's Journey to the West end up in the half-million to million wordcount range, but they are collections of stories.

 

[Voadam]

Though I could be wrong on this, I don't think it's supposed to be specifically a Dark Sun adventure - I didn't get that vibe from it anyway and I'm pretty sure it doesn't say Dark Sun on the cover - which might explain some or all of the not-Dark-Sun-suitable bits you found. I thought it was intended as stock 4e.

Not on the front cover but on the back cover and the intro it is explicitly for Dark Sun and it begins in the Dark Sun city-state of Tyr.

Of course they then screw up the Dark Sun flavor with stock D&D non-Dark Sun horse- and ox-drawn mounts on the map instead of kanks and crodlu ones.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Along related lines, one factor which just sold me on ordering a copy of Poul Anderson's There Will be Time is that it's under 200 pages. I miss when SF&F was full of good cheap paperbacks around that length.

They still exist. They're just not published as physical books as much , and they're often considered novella's these days. Current examples include the first several Murderbot books, or Lois McMasters Bujold's Penric and Desdemona books.

But you're right that for someone who grew up on older SF and fantasy novels, modern ones can often feel oddly bloated even when they're good.

 

[Arilyn]

T. Kingfisher writes really good stand alone fantasy and horror novels and novellas. And her horror stories are the kind I like, atmospheric and creepy. Her fantasy is dark and whimsical takes on fairy tales.