Search results

This is just a restatement of the "12 year olds are uncreative, impatient and low brow" argument, an assumption we're well used to and continues to be nought but ageism IMO. True, when learning the game you need a bog standard elf, and a dungeon to sack. But I guarantee you that once the game...

The "burn bridges with the grognards" approach is fine in theory - but if you axe your player base then you need replacements. Given the content of essentials, and the red box cover, if I'm reading the tea leaves right they succeeded in the raspberry towards existing players' expectations bit...

Yep, even the name is poorly chosen, given that no healing is involved so far as the explanations to explain it are concerned. The whole thing just comes across as a half-baked design convenience with only awkward mapping to real world concepts. And unlike movies, we can see the rules, which...

Flavour, for me. I won't wilfully suspend disbelief for an implied setting that specific, quirky and lame for use in my own worlds, or even see get retconned into established D&D worlds. I've mentally quarantined 4E to the same place in my mind as Eberron - not part of the "canon" D&D...

Hackmaster 4E has quirks and flaws, and crits and fumbles. Proves that the 4E WOTC&D way is just one possible direction among many.

The extent to which that matters is the extent to which My Precious Encounter (TM) is the focus of the game. In a campaign where combat is incidental to getting on with the campaign arc and exploring the dungeon or wilderness, the fact that Joe and Bob only differ in dual wielding versus use of...

I disagree. Gygax pushed Greyhawk in AD&D. Mentzer was built assuming Mystara. 3E and 4E came with built in gods. And 2E had some nice stuff like the Campaign & Catacomb Guide or Villains Handbook, but not much built into the core, plus a setting deluge spearheaded by the Forgotten Realms...

It's not that simple, although I agree that WOTC's stone soup world is the wrong answer (and the equivalent of doing all the fun stuff like naming empires, whilst leaving all the hard yards of fleshing out to the players, which sounds more like a reaction to complaints about FR than anything...

No, that this is the first time it's coexisting with MMORPGs, Facebook, Wii, Kinect, a Games Workshop that seems to have a refined playbook, and so on. TSR didn't even have to compete with M:tG until the nineties, and few doubt it was probably a factor in their being eventually needing to be...

But that's the point, I'm not sure there are any experts. For instance, Dancey's insistence that D&D's success is nothing but network externalities probably informed 4E design - that the name was the important bit - and it hasn't exactly panned out like that. RPGs aren't an old industry, and...

That doesn't even make sense. Teenagers aren't likely to know more about how to best run D&D, nor are senior citizens. Someone said something you don't like, so you're trying on ageism as a counterattack? And there's only one D&D, and this is the first time it's in this environment. No-one I...

Mearls said it was to stop RPGs going the way of tabletop wargaming. This suggests an attempt to make D&D more relevant to a different audience. This goal can be opposed to improving things for it's current audience. And what is an improvement is extremely subjective. The OP wants fast play...

I disagree - what are class archetypes but cliches to hang your roleplaying on? And I find the idea that D&D doesn't default to a western Europe pseudo-medieval setting with it's implied setting, therefore DIY because every setting is a blank slate culturally kind of ridiculous. Here's a...

Spells and thief abilities alone put the lie to this, don't they? Basic didn't hive off everything non-combat into "rituals". Oh and guys, despite game design fashion, you simply aren't likely to be going to encounter as many wandering prostitutes in a game which lacks a wandering prostitute...

As was pointed out on Grognardia recently, designers of new RPGs tend to chuck out things that they can't see the point of and misidentify as weaknesses. It's the "I don't care if you like rolling on random tables, they are so two decades ago" kind of game design fashion syndrome that is just...

That's the thing. I don't think they're being very smart in the method of introduction here. Kenzer IMO had the right idea - put them in the back of books as a freebie, and then after people got used to them, sell coupon books seperately for "completing the collection". Much more...

Less is more, IMO. If CRPGs suggest one thing, it's that you don't need a world - in fact, your campaign will probably be better for it if you focus on a single tiny valley, rift or island, or a single city and immediate surrounds. People have trouble caring or noticing the real world, and...

Which still makes no sense in terms of archetype. Why have classes at all if you're going to pull stunts like this? I'm sorry, but if this is supposed to be D&D then IMO this design decision is thematically completely out to lunch, and worthy of chucking out the whole game over. It's just...

It is also, IMO, absolutely abyssmal design in terms of suspension of disbelief and maintenance of archetypes. Anybody can cast spells, for balance reasons?No thank you, that's not part of the fantasy worlds I want, nor part of D&D's universe as I accept it as legimately being. And if 4E cannot...

...which would be a good argument if not for the existence and ridiculously overpowered antics of Gord the Rogue, which proves that Mary Sues aren't always wizards, nor do they need to be to go round slaying gods.