Banishing "Sacred Cows"

[ColonelHardisson]

First off, a few points.

• I never heard of 3e being touted as back to the dungeon. That's a rather obscure bit of box text in the DMG.

• 
  
  Then you must not have been online much around the time 3e was being released. I saw this all the time, posted by fans and designers alike. I've also heard it offline, too, and it's seen as a positive by everyone I've spoken to. Anecdotal, sure, but when I here stuff that's common online bleeding over into the real world, it usually means it's a hot topic.

 

[ColonelHardisson]

Y'know, I respect Monte as much as anyone as an industry "expert" if you will. But that's just plain silly, IMO. Dungeons don't make for good gaming, unless your DM isn't any good. They're a crutch, perhaps, for beginner DMs, and a fun occasional retro flash for older gamers. Other than that, I can't see that they serve any purpose whatsoever.

Now, come on, JD. How can you make such a bald statement? You know as well as anyone that each individual's preferred style of gaming isn't the "only" style, or that neither one style or the other is inherently better. Again, this sounds like geeks calling geeks geeks.

 

[Corinth]

Read the guidelines to Dungeon Magazine. There, and nowhere else, is it more explicit that 3e is all about going back to the dungeon.

 

[Celtavian]

Re

What alot of people seem to be mentioning about AC and Hit Points seems to imply they play GURPS. I usually use GURPS when I play a game in modern time like spec ops or spies.I would dislike such a system for D and D unless I intended to run a low magic, gritty, Dragonslayer type campaign.


The abstract hit point/AC system in D and D does allow characters to be heroic. It may not seem realistic at all, but I feel third edition adds in enough extra rules to give it some realism. For example, the coup de gras was a great addition. Now the more rules oriented players can't demand that you hack away at their hit points before they die. You can just strike one nasty killing blow.

The monsters are definitely stronger in 3rd edition. Your level 10 fighter can't kill even 2 Fire Giants at once easily. Your level 20 party will still have great difficulty killing a powerful dragon. You can even makes orcs, kobolds, and goblins into formidable enemies. Third edition is very balanced in my opinion. The best incarnation of D and D to date.

About the only things I would like to see changed is the Ranger. I wish they would eliminate the two weapon style fighting, increase their skills points to 6 per level, and give them some feats or other useful abilities. The favored enemy thing just isn't that great in my opinion or should be more all inclusive.

 

[Thorin Stoutfoot]

Back to the Dungeon!

I've met droves of them. I was one. And yes, "industry consensus" may not amount to a whole heck of a lot. That's why I "" the word: I'm not sure how much value it has. But if anyone has an idea, it's designers of other games during the mid-nineties or so. I trust their opinions on the state of the industry even if

And the "droves" probably needs "" too. I don't know what "droves" means, I just know that lots of folks left D&D. Tons of posters over at rpg.net, for instance. Most of them it seems, sometimes. And some of them are still pissed at 3e even today.

Oh, if you're getting your view of RPG from rpg.net, then you're not in touch with most RPGers. I don't know if you've noticed, but most people who post to RPG.net don't play RPGs of any kind at all! In fact, I remember thread where someone suggested that a review of a RPG should include actually PLAYING the game, and a couple of posters actually said PLAYING a game would be detrimental to doing a review.

I think D&D, by pissing off those folks over at RPG.net, certainly didn't hurt its sales any. Pissing off people who don't play RPGs anyway (or would rather moan on their bulletin board about how they can't find players for their 5th ranked obscure little game than to actually get out and play, even if it was "only" a d20 game) doesn't seem to hurt WoTC's business.

If you've never heard of the "back to the dungeon" focus as part of the 3e campaign, you should go back and check out the original ENworld pages back when d20 was rolled out. It was out there for everyone to see, and part of the core of the marketing campaign.

The truth was, story driven modules where players didn't get to do much drove a lot of players away! If you read any of Ryan Dancey's posts of Monte Cook's web-site, you'll see that there was a conscious decision on his part in driving the design of 3e to lean towards designing a game system with a play-style very oriented to dungeons and dungeoneering. Sure, D&D works well for other styles of play too, but the game definitely is most balanced and playable when in a dungeon.

Takje spellcasters, for instance, who become much more powerful when not in a dungeon situation, simply because they have freedom to move anywhere without getting trapped against corners, walls. Dungeons with their limited line of sight definitely constrains a spellcasters a lot more than a standard wilderness or even city encounters.

But never mind. You've made up your mind, and if even the marketing campaign for 3e (and the ludricous behavior of most rpg.net posters) didn't inform you, my feeble attempts won't even begin to change your mind.

 

[Reno]

Hmm depends. "stillettos" were Gunner's knives, specifically useful for permanently blocking the touch holes on cannon that had to be abandoned when positions were over run. "misericrde" (literally: "mercy of god") was a soldiers dagger, carried on the field to kill any poor knight (or other combatant) seriously injured (the alternative to such a mercy killing bing an almost inevitably painful death from gangrene and other secondary infections).

Most daggers used against armour were designed to get through the weak points: the mail gussets at elbow, shoulder, groin and knee. I would certainly choose some form of dagger against a Knight in plate over most blunt weapons... although I'd prefer an English Billhook or a decent yew longbow (mind I never managed to pull a bow over sixty pounds draw, whereas I know exactly what I'm doing with a billhook)...

Well, designed to get through weak points, I'd think the higher critical threat range represents this, and if it doesnt represent it as well as you'd like, you can always house rule it to be higher.

 

[Desdichado]

Now, come on, JD. How can you make such a bald statement? You know as well as anyone that each individual's preferred style of gaming isn't the "only" style, or that neither one style or the other is inherently better. Again, this sounds like geeks calling geeks geeks.

Not at all. I don't have a problem with folks who dungeon-crawl, I just suspect that not that many people really do it much anymore. Especially the "pure" dungeon-crawl of old-timers fame. I've yet to talk to anyone who preferred that kind of game still.

 

[Tiberius]

Well, I dunno. People talk about "people leaving D&D for WW in droves". I've yet to meet a gamer who did so. Some picked up WW games, but didn't stop playing D&D.

Now you have, after a fashion. I dropped AD&D altogether over my disgust with the changes made in 2E, especially the baatezu/tanar'ri thing, the alterations to the planes, removal of the monk and assassin, and the emphasis on the "evil must always lose" line of thought. I then picked up the White Wolf games, and played them exclusively for years.

I ordered the 3E PHB on a lark two years ago to give D&D one final chance to redeem itself. It exceeded all my expectations, so here I am back in the fold two years later.

-Tiberius

 

[Desdichado]

Re: Back to the Dungeon!

Oh, if you're getting your view of RPG from rpg.net, then you're not in touch with most RPGers. I don't know if you've noticed, but most people who post to RPG.net don't play RPGs of any kind at all! In fact, I remember thread where someone suggested that a review of a RPG should include actually PLAYING the game, and a couple of posters actually said PLAYING a game would be detrimental to doing a review.

I think D&D, by pissing off those folks over at RPG.net, certainly didn't hurt its sales any. Pissing off people who don't play RPGs anyway (or would rather moan on their bulletin board about how they can't find players for their 5th ranked obscure little game than to actually get out and play, even if it was "only" a d20 game) doesn't seem to hurt WoTC's business.

If you've never heard of the "back to the dungeon" focus as part of the 3e campaign, you should go back and check out the original ENworld pages back when d20 was rolled out. It was out there for everyone to see, and part of the core of the marketing campaign.

The truth was, story driven modules where players didn't get to do much drove a lot of players away! If you read any of Ryan Dancey's posts of Monte Cook's web-site, you'll see that there was a conscious decision on his part in driving the design of 3e to lean towards designing a game system with a play-style very oriented to dungeons and dungeoneering. Sure, D&D works well for other styles of play too, but the game definitely is most balanced and playable when in a dungeon.

Takje spellcasters, for instance, who become much more powerful when not in a dungeon situation, simply because they have freedom to move anywhere without getting trapped against corners, walls. Dungeons with their limited line of sight definitely constrains a spellcasters a lot more than a standard wilderness or even city encounters.

But never mind. You've made up your mind, and if even the marketing campaign for 3e (and the ludricous behavior of most rpg.net posters) didn't inform you, my feeble attempts won't even begin to change your mind.

No offense, but feeble is right. You say that everyone over at RPG.net are non-players, which is a ludicrous claim, and then you proceed to build a case on that fallacious assumption. rpg.net was just one data point I used, in part because it is really the center of non-D&D RPGing online, and because it is frequented by many games designers from various companies who chime in with their expert opinions, which arguably carry as much weight as the opinion of someone like Monte Cook.

That's why I use a guarded "industry consensus" opinion here. Outside of the occasionally somewhat myopic D&D world, there's a lot of other stuff going on, and much of it is in direct response to what folks don't like about D&D, especially past editions. Now I know Ryan Dancey claims that besides D&D the market share of the rest of the guys put together is insignificant (and I don't know what he means by insignificant -- 2%? 20%?) I don't believe that to literally be true. There are a lot of people I know of, both personally and online (yes, some of them via rpg.net) who play lots of games but who won't touch D&D with a ten-foot pole. Despite what Dancey says, GURPS and the Storyteller system, for instance, have a lot of adherents. Things like hack-n-slash, dungeon-crawls, tightly proscribed character classes, HP, levelling: these are often their complaints. That's why I say it was foolish for WotC to not offer these as alternatives in the DMG. It could have been done relatively easily (for those of you who complain about playtesting: you think WotC playtested things like the witch spell list? All the monster PCs available in the DMG? All the alternate chargen and experience systems? I really doubt it.) They could have really brought more people "back into the fold" than they did, and they could have really kept them as well. They could have really made d20 into the universal system, easily customizable into any genre imaginable, yet they somewhat dropped the ball. They decided that most people really wanted D&D so they weren't even going to worry about making the mechanics useful to someone who wasn't going to play something very much like D&D. Only with the release of d20 CoC did I really believe that the d20 mechanics were tweakable into anything that wasn't heroic, two-fisted, pulpy action tales. Now, I just lament the fact that although the window's been opened and we can see what the system can do if it stretches a little, nobody much has made an effort to stretch it.

Instead, we get pages and pages on dungeons, which *in my experience, which is not a scientifically valid sample, but which is pretty broad* few people really want or use anyway.

And yes, I wasn't heavily involved in the marketing campaign or the D&D internet sites as 3e was gearing up: I moved to ENWorld right as it was being released. So, I guess I'm wrong about the "back to the dungeon" focus. Still, I think the reason 3e is so popular relative to early editions is not because of this focus, rather its because the game is now so flexible that it doesn't have to be a back to the dungeon game, and it still is miles ahead of 2e or other systems.

 

[Desdichado]

Now you have, after a fashion. I dropped AD&D altogether over my disgust with the changes made in 2E, especially the baatezu/tanar'ri thing, the alterations to the planes, removal of the monk and assassin, and the emphasis on the "evil must always lose" line of thought. I then picked up the White Wolf games, and played them exclusively for years.

I ordered the 3E PHB on a lark two years ago to give D&D one final chance to redeem itself. It exceeded all my expectations, so here I am back in the fold two years later.
-Tiberius

Oddly enough as he was responding to my post, in which I said that I was also one such gamer he said that he didn't know of one.

Don't get me wrong: I'm a full-fledged 3e convert, and I doubt I'd play anything much that wasn't d20 of some form or another ever again, just because I don't want to be bothered learning another system, and because the system works very well. But at least I got to see the RPG world outside of D&D and get exposed to all kinds of other types of games. It's actually been the best experience for me as a gamer that I could have had, I suppose.