Search results

For a one-shot? Probably. I'll even play Risk if I'm hanging out with decent folk. For a long-term campaign? Nah. Life's too short. And I don't suffer under the fallacy that my friends and I need to do everything together. Spending hundreds of hours playing a game I don't like doesn't sound...

Do you know what they've changed? I was significantly underwhelmed by the early instantiations of GUMSHOE (since they didn't fix the problem they claimed to fix and had hard-coded limitations on scenario design that they didn't provide decent guidelines for).

A few things to consider: (1) Adventures are likely to be less successful in games which don't feature a unified, default scenario hook. Games like D&D and Shadowrun have this, but a lot of others don't. (Transhuman Space, for example, goes all the way to other extreme and people routinely...

You're right. It's shocking how cheap RPG rulebooks are these days when adjusted for inflation. With that being said, I'll be interested to see what the new cover art looks like. Given that you can trivially find used copies of these books in good condition for $10-15, I doubt there'll be much...

My feeling is that, as long as the quality and utility of the monsters remains high, there's always room for more monsters. With that being said, if you look back over the history of the game one trend does appear: The best and most memorable monsters almost universally seem to have their...

Targeted at existing gamers. They weren't able to keep it on Target shelves for more than a few weeks and their ads were, again, targeted at existing gamers. Advertising to gamers. More existing gamers. Everything you've said here just ends up supporting what I said originally: The...

Although Encounters doesn't reach out to new players in any appreciable fashion, it does serve a few valuable functions: (1) It gives players a chance to play who would otherwise drop out of the hobby due to lack of a group. (2) It allows players to meet other players, which may allow...

Is there a reason why we're assuming this is WotC-related news?

While it's true that D&D continues to occupy that position by virtue of public awareness, I'm not sure we'd actually notice anything if it went away. The products aren't available in mainstream markets. WotC isn't advertising to non-gamers. There's no value-add happening here in terms of...

Is there any rational reason why we should care about that? If Coke starts selling licorice water in their Coke cans, my nostalgia for what Coke used to taste like isn't going to make me keep buying the brand because otherwise there will be "NO COKE SODA". Hasbro didn't buy D&D. They bought...

Are you sure? I could have sworn you said it was a heck of a lot of heavy lifting that will never see play. Guess you're right. I must be mistaking you with the guy who hacked your account and has been posting messages under your name. My bad. :angel: Here's the thing: We've done that...

Well, as you said yourself, it's incredibly difficult to prep the branching structure necessary to deal with divergent player choices if you're trying to pregenerate those plots. This leaves you with two options: (1) Don't pregenerate plot. (2) Negate player choices. Negating player choices...

And that, right there, is the difference: Are you generating the plot? Or are you pregenerating the plot? Everything in life generates a plot. Everything becomes a sequence of events. The question being discussed here is whether or not those events are being predetermined. That's only because...

Seconding Ptolus. Massive detail, but it's all written and organized for play. Best city supplement ever published.

Note that the Player's Guide and NoD were only included if you pre-ordered. In addition to the CD (which included PDFs of Chaositech, Night of Dissolution, and Banewarrens, among other things), the book did include an envelope containing hardcopies of many of the handouts.

This is a really important point, too: 4E not only changed a bunch of stuff, it also intensely focused itself on a narrow band of D&D's former gameplay. This, BTW, isn't a secret: It was an explicit design goal. The designers referred to that narrow band as "the sweet spot". If it actually was...

You can take a module written for any edition of D&D from 1974 to 2008, run it in any edition of D&D from 1974 to 2008, and have a nearly identical playing experience. (There are a handful of exceptions: Sleep. Giants. Dragons. A handful of other spells and monsters that had their effects or...

Well, that's not strictly true and-- (looks at user name) Ah. Right. Well, carry on. Which, in a nutshell, is WotC's current predicament. 3E was a hit because there was a large population of dissatisfied gamers. It succeeded by largely implementing a bunch of stuff that AD&D players had been...

That's not actually what I said. In fact, I said the exact opposite of what you're claiming. I didn't say that, either. Using that logic, a blank sheet of notebook paper constitutes a fully-playable RPG with enough mainstream appeal that Hasbro/WotC would be interested in publishing it...

I'm not a fan of Descent because I'd rather just play an actual RPG. (The complexity is the same. The set-up is the same. The player roles are the same. So why play within the limitations of Descent?) The D&D boardgames are nice, but occasionally poor in balance. I also wish there was a greater...