Search results

No, they didn't. For the most part, fantasy miniatures did not exist back then. They only put the word "miniatures" on the cover because the term "roleplaying game" hadn't been coined yet, and they had no idea how else to differentiate it as a game for hobbyists. It was not assumed you'd use...

It can't even be summarised in a paragraph as to what it's about (some designer's observation as to what was wrong with it compared to other settings). It tries to be all things to all people. Concurrent invention happens all the time, so quit with the sarcasm - I'm not implying they stole the...

It had a stab at representing a mish mash of swords and sorcery worlds and tropes originally. D&D always had D&Disms in the PC races and classes (eg. clerics), but these D&Disms should IMO be reduced to make it more relevant to other fantasy, not increasing them to make it more irrelevant to...

Why not indeed!? Dungeon Squad! for everybody! Dagnabbit, no leveling...but hey, rules don't matter apparently! Anybody want to play a Monopoly Mystara campaign? Birthright Bingo? Roulette Ravenloft? Texas Horde-em Poker? Reductio ad absurdum...for great justice!

No, I'll accept a novel menagerie when there's a strong theme to the setting so that the selection of PC races doesn't come across as an incoherent mess. e.g. Dark Sun (menagerie) and Al Qadim (humanocentric) have strong themes, whereas Eberron and 4E strike me as incoherent messes with races...

Not impressed. Nothing interesting here yet. And nostalgia aside, Eberron is aesthetically unappealing to me, from the art direction to the anachronisms to the "attitude" to the wannabe-another-genreisms to the kitchen sinking to the wahoo PC races to the dragon-everything to the thematic...

Monsters with a lifetime measured in rounds != crazy wacky PC races assumed to be socially accepted and present all campaign long. This is why Greyhawk is nowhere near as wahoo as Eberron or 4E.

Which is completely bass-ackward. The simulation defining what is simulated. Thank you for making my case for me, because IMO this design goal is an exhibit A in not understanding D&D or what makes it's fantastic side tick. It's how to make magic unmagical, and speaks volumes of just who's in...

We'll have to call an amnesty on your use of the "nostalgia" word. Look, half D&D's spells are named after Greyhawk magic-users and it happens to be the setting by the guy who wrote the game, emphasising the same tropes he liked enough to put into it; Mystara is the setting of BECMI, and molded...

If by that you mean 4E D&Dish, then I'd agree. It's pretty ridiculous to claim it's more D&Dish in the classic sense than settings like Greyhawk, Blackmoor or Mystara, though. Kitchen sinking in everything in 3E doesn't offer a one-way ticket to D&D quintessence (in fact, arguably it leads to...

I think that this is the feeling that keeps people buying the bright shinies. That keeps us "keeping up." The promise of new toys....even when few have played out the old ones. For example, hands up who's played all their Dungeon magazine back issues? Thought so. Also, the joy of spending...

Basically splat. Seemingly, the lion's share of in-house creativity and scope was saved for AD&D, as were contributions to the magazines. D&D and Mystara seems to have been mostly Frank Mentzer's rules, plus freelancers making the supplements. With regard to raiding AD&D, I think the...

As an addendum, it's often overlooked that there's optional rules in the RC for removing level limits entirely, hidden away in Chapter 19, "Variant Rules". So your halfling, elf, dwarf or mystic can truly proceed to level 36 under the RAW if the DM so chooses.

Not really, because that only addresses retroclones, and earlier editions of D&D are part of the resurgence as well, and it doesn't explain that. Were retroclones all created in response to 4E? No. Did the advent of 4E affect the level of interest in retroclones and earlier editions to a large...

I don't think the boom refers to the publishing date of these games, but rather the surge of interest in them.

If 4E split the fanbase as much as it appears to have, I'm not sure that an insignificant impact even seems possible, let alone likely. Those people turned off by 4E clearly aren't all still playing 3E, and they surely they haven't all given up on D&D for the foreseeable future just because 4E...

Indeed - you simply can't practically run certain kinds of campaign if every combat runs to 3/4 of an hour or more. There are also numerous aesthetic and stylistic differences, from the emphasis on purple prose to the "pose for the camera" choices in art direction through to the content of the...

Why not? The timing is an extraordinary coincidence if they're not actually connected. There's certainly enough potentially objectionable material in 4E to trigger such a backlash in existing fans of D&D. Because you're weighing in on a side of the argument suggesting that blogs and nostalgia...

No-one was claiming the audience was new. Of course it isn't, there's no marketing to push older editions and clones and they aren't even on shelves at stores. WOTC holds nearly all the cards here, except for word-of-mouth and grognards directly introducing new players to their games. I...

I think there's a fundamental disconnect here. Arcane and eldritch, esoteric and mythologically resonant was a large part of AD&D's charm. Ripping out all those mythological obscurities in favour of contrived replacements misses that detail, IMO.