Adapt or Perish!
- Thread starter MerricB
- Start date
Alnag said:
Ditto.
It's also worth noting that these changes don't just extend to story elements, but also to rules elements. I've had a few friends who have delighted in the idea of D&D, but have been seriously disappointed by the magic rules. So, they can get picked up by the recasting of how magic functions.
Also: game mechanics have really come a long way since 1974.
Will there be people who prefer the old Vancian system? Surely there will be. However, I suspect they will be a smaller number than those who will prefer the new system.
Cheers!
Falling Icicle
Adventurer
MerricB said:
I have no problem with them changing the mechanics. In fact, I have liked most of what I've heard so far in that regard. It's all the (imo unnecessary) fluff changes that turn me off. What is wrong with the Elves we have had since the game came out, for example? Last I checked, they were perhaps the most popular fantasy race. You can have new rules without radically changing the setting and races in the game. I fail to see how having Eladrins is going to make anyone's game run smoother. It's purely fluff. You can improve the rules and gameplay and still keep the game true to itself.
Imagine if in the next edition of Exalted, they decided to totally change the story and get rid of the Solar exalted or radically change them. You don't think people would have cause to be upset? The story in many ways defines the game. I recently tried the online Lord of the Rings game. I was reading a review of it, and they actually mocked the game for having elves, dwarves and hobits and not any new races. Those are the same races we've seen in fantasy for years, they said. Well duh. That's because that's what Tolkiens world is, and it would be disgraceful to butcher it with new races. That's how I feel about D&D. Maybe some people don't like the old D&D races, but I do. And I feel just as defensive about WotC butchering Elves in D&D as I do about Tolkien's world.
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Falling Icicle said:
Well, we haven't exactly had them all the way through. There have been several takes on elves throughout the life of the game. And some times the fluff and rules elements haven't really meshed so well.
Consider that in 1e, your standard Elf would be a Fighter/Magic-User. In 3e, Wizard, despite being the elf's "favoured class", really wasn't that good for them. Fighter/Wizard? Forget it. (3.5 made it more playable).
Then, you have the question of how many people actually were using the elvish background as written, and how many were inserting their own backstories?
One really odd thing about elves in AD&D, certainly, is that you have this "elves live in forests", but there really wasn't any game element that related to that! (They couldn't even be druids, IIRC, although that probably changed in UA).
Cheers!
Falling Icicle
Adventurer
MerricB said:
That's purely a rules change. It had little effect on what an Elf is, it just gave elf players more options in class. That's a far cry from changing them to Eladrin.
MerricB said:
People can do whatever they want in their games. But I strongly feel that the core books should be true to its heritage, and if people want to modify that, well than fine.
MerricB said:
I'm not sure what you're getting at here. Elves in every edition of D&D I have seen do commonly live in forests, as I'm sure the Eladrin also will. The difference between wood and high elves was mostly cultural. Wood elves preferred a more simple, natural life and preferred exclusion from other races.
Jhamin
First Post
Hussar said:
Now you see I have a theory that this has less to do with the attitudes of young people and more with the accessability of the game.
And I don't mean vancian vs. per encounter mechanics. Right now, if you don't play D&D, or know someone who does, you probably don't have any way to start. There is no real introductory product.
I mean that back in the day, you could buy a red box with everything you needed for a group of 3-4 kids to sit down and play.
Now, you look at 2-3 shelves of $30 books at Borders and have to figure out which ones you need. Then you have to find the dice these books refer too.
A couple years ago I picked up the 3.0 D&D basic box. It provided you with characters (no creating your guy), had a series of battles on a grid (little to no story), no rules for creating an adventure (aspiring DMs need not apply). Furthermore, I had to buy it at a dedicated hobby shop. The kind you go to after you start playing. You mainly mooved some minis around the board and rolled dice. A better intorduction to the Minis game than the RPG.
It seemed to me that if you didn't already know what D&D was about, this product was not going to tell you. I know it didn't display any of the things that attracted me to the game.
WOTC is owned by Hasbro. If D&D wants to bring in 13 year olds, it needs to leverage that by bringing back something comparable to the classic Red Box and it needs to put it in Target and Wallmart.
An oppertunity for people who don't go to hobby stores to happen across D&D will bring 10x more people to the game than adding Warlord ever will.
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YourSwordIsMine
First Post
Scarbonac said:
Unless you're the Avatar you can't multiclass or gestalt Bending classes and unfortunately Avatar is an NPC class...
Plant bending is a sub style of Water Bending as you're bending the water in the plants not the plant itself.
Just thought you'd like to know
I wish there was an Avatar RPG, I'd buy it and everything for it... I am such an Avatard....
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YourSwordIsMine
First Post
Scribble said:Why do I suddenly have an image of Monte Cook tossing a Pokeball and Mike Mearls popping out...
I choose you mearls!
So Monte Cook is a Paladin?
