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I think the opposite is true. I think the satanic hoopla in the 1980s made the game more popular and made it sell better.

It is cool. Unfortunately one thing 4E doesn't do well is having fast combats (and I'm comparing that to AD&D1E/B/X/BECMI/OD&D rather than long 3.x combats). So if you end up wanting to speed that up, the easiest way to do that is to consciously or unconsciously stop translating these...

It's not really just a useful guide, but a prescription. A monsters role + level is what you plug into the system math to get the monsters stats. There are certain damage levels and effects and abilities that are appropriate for each role and monsters of that role have them. Soldiers have...

I do hope you are right. Any sign that 4E roles in the way they are hard coded into the encounter system won't be present in D&D Next is a good sign for me. Other people love them and think they make the game so much better. I'm starting to have serious doubts about this whole "unity" goal.

When I think of verisimilitude in terms of experiencing fiction (be it a book, a movie or the fiction in an RPG session) I don't think of it in terms of realism. I think of it in terms of "getting it right" in terms of genre, theme, plot, colour, etc.,.

I like this direction of thought. If I didn't have to wait to give out more XP, I totally would. Anyone want to help me out? My main issue is this: I don't want what category a given monster fits into to be so definitive and informative about the monster that one of the game's designers...

Definitley. The system has strengths. It produces a certain type of tactical encounter focused play that I have enjoyed in the past. It works great at that.

If only that was the case. Knowing a monster is a brute or an artillery or whatever gives so much more information than just a handy tool for the DMs would. And it's so easy for the players to figure out what the monster roles are. They get combat advantage and do extra damage? Skirmisher...

If mixed means that monsters aren't more defined by their role than by their fictional details, then yes. One of the things that burned me out of DMing D&D was the sameness of monsters. One of my players asked me why I was the one who got burned out when I had all sort of opportunities to...

You don't think monster roles and how they function in the system math of 4E is a real thing?

While it was cool to see scans of 4E content at previous DDXPs, all I'm looking for is the word of mouth experiences of people who actually get to try the game out. If DDXP goes by and regular attendees say the same nothing about the game itself that all the bloggers and news people who went to...

I was a pretty ardent defender of 4E online until I finally hit my own wall with it and all the glaring stuff I had been defending just added up. And I have the exact same feeling about 3.x I played that for a couple years until the glaring stuff added up and I was done. Now I'm discovering...

I wish it was just a general and broad guideline to give an idea of how it operates in its behavior. But it's not. It's a specific game building block that determines damage potential, movement, defenses and the type of things that are appropriate as far as damage riders go. The fictional...

When I talk about categories being bad I'm talking about when the categories become so definitive of what the monster does that it is more important in game terms than the actual attributes, description, etc., of the monster. Like in 4E. You can have an orc with a bow that is a skirmisher...

I hope you are right. Were there lurkers in the original version of that module? Any clue that he's talking about a specific monster and not a category?

Monte Cook commented about playtesting (see the D&D 5E Info red link above): "Playtesting in the Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth. My dwarf just slew a lurker with a well-timed crit to save the swallowed paladin." - Monte Cook. Ugh. I'm not happy to see "lurker" unless it's actually a monster called...

Monte Cook commented about playtesting: "Playtesting in the Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth. My dwarf just slew a lurker with a well-timed crit to save the swallowed paladin." - Monte Cook. Ugh. I'm not happy to see "lurker" unless it's actually a monster called a lurker he's talking about. I...

In every edition I've played in so far, I've never played in or ran a game where PCs could buy or create items at will. I've always maintained the creation and distribution of magic items as being part of the DM's job. I'll continue to do so in future editions. Though it would be nice if the...

If DDXP happens and no one at all can talk about what they experienced with the new game and we get nothing about what WotC is thinking so far, I'll be a bit pissed. The way to create momentum in terms of interest and discussion is not to lock it all down with NDAs. Hopefully internet...

My main problem with rituals is that their casting times mean that they very rarely could be used in a fight. They took elements of pre 4E spells and made them into rituals which restricted how you used them. In previous editions, it was left up to the players to decide how and when to use...