D&D SHOULD NOT have a defined atmosphere/style *Semi Rant*

[Umbran]

(please note I am not saying that the rules themselves for 1e and 2e were better, IMO they weren't save for the ability to hack them literally to pieces without destroying the system)
[...snip...]

Any thoughts of your own?

Yeah. I think one doesn't worry about playing rough with an already broken toy. You could hack older editions to pieces without destroying anything because the darn thing wasn't a solid or reliable structure to begin with. Nothing really there to destroy. There was no decent concept of "balance" to be had, so you wouldn't worry about losing it.

The thing gamers have to learn is that the limitations in the new edition are in our minds. If you want to play like the old days, where there was really nothing trying to keep various charactrers on an even keel of overall effectiveness, and where only high mastery of the rules allowed the GM to keep challenges reasonable for the PCs, then you can do so quite well with 3.x - just go ahead and break the rules. There ain't no police going to come and arrest you for it.

Maintaining balance is a choice, not a requirement. Some games do well without balance concerns, others don't. You don't care for balance, you can chuck it out the window yourself. You want to maintain it, then there's more work invovled, yes. But that's thermodynamics for you - it takes more work to maintain a more organized system. The question is only whether you find that the work is worth the payoff or not.

 

[Psychic Warrior]

Ah yes pass the buck to the DMs who find that rules harwired for a certain style of gaming make DMing in another style rather difficult. :\

No, I am a very good dungeon master and have been for quite a few years. At leas this is what I have been told by the gaming groups I have run for 19yrs. I just find that the current edition of D&D while having some wonderful qualities is much harder to modify to one's liking than previous editions.


Chris

You have got to be kidding. With the number of varient rules out there (a lot produced by WotC itself) modifying the game is about as simple as one could make it. I just don't think you're trying very hard.

 

[mhacdebhandia]

No but they do provide the baseline that all the forementioned games are drawn. 3E is the stone cast by WotC and the 3rd Party products are the ripples that come from it.

Let me correct that first sentence for you:

"No, but they did provide the baseline that all the forementioned games were drawn [from]."

Just like D&D 3.5 did not affect 3rd Party Publishers or how people played their game? Yes, you can decide to ignore and continue to play whatever or go to something else, but that does not mean that these 3rd Party developers that make these said games will not be affected.

Every single one of the games that we have been discussing in this little conversation of ours is NOT A SUPPLEMENT FOR D&D. They are alternatives to it.

How do you think a revision of D&D is going to affect Castles and Crusades, or True 20, or an OGL licensed product like the World of Warcraft RPG? If people aren't using your products as an add-on to D&D, but instead of it, how does anything Wizards of the Coast do affect you?

(To forestall argument: Arcana Evolved seems to me at least to be a reaction not to the revision of Third Edition D&D but to the maturation and evolution of the d20/OGL market.)

My point is this: people who play any OGL game instead of D&D could never read a single word in print or online about D&D again and it would not affect their gaming experience one iota. Now, most people don't adopt games like Castles and Crusades or Iron Heroes or Grim Tales to the exclusion of D&D; the d20/OGL market is incestuous, and many gamers are happy to play games like D&D they find too complicated to run themselves.

I meant what I said: if they made D&D a game driven by collectible Beanie Baby miniatures and foil-covered cards with embedded audio chips tomorrow, it would not prevent nor even affect the communities of players that have grown up around OGL alternatives to D&D.

Complaining about Wizards of the Coast publishing a version of D&D you don't like is just saying that they should be catering to you - and that comes down to "Maaan, the gaming community as a whole doesn't like what I like! That sucks!" I mean, how pointless is that?

I'm saying you're free of dependence upon the D&D name - why worry about what they're doing if you don't like it?

 

[mhacdebhandia]

Addendum: Any company that produces licensed products is entering into an arrangement by which the success or failure of their products depends upon the owner of the licensed material. Wizards of the Coast is beholden to Lucasfilm when it comes to its Star Wars products; so, too, are companies which product d20 material intended for use with D&D dependent upon Wizards of the Coast.

Arguably, those companies which are successful in the d20/OGL market "pond" are those producing products which are well-insulated from the "ripples" of the tossed-in "stone" of revisions to the game that Wizards may or may not choose to make.

The fact that this ability to survive is strongly correlated with OGL, rather than D&D-supplement d20 products, is not coincidental. I'm sure that Monte Cook, for instance, would have been happier if sales of his Books of Might series hadn't been affected as they must have been by the revision, but at least he has the Arcana Unearthed/Evolved OGL line too. Green Ronin made supplements and adventures by the shelfload for D&D, but it's not all they did, nor is it all they're doing now.

 

[jasper]

I remember that in the days. … You could hack apart the rules as you wished without causing some precious yet nebulous "game balance" to collapse all around you. Yep. Hack apart so much you were handed a huge 3 ring binder of some losers house rules which if you were smart you fled the game table then.

There was Greyhawk, Forgotten Realms, Spelljammer, Dragon lance, Planescape, Birthright, Ravenloft, etc. And so many settings you had fight when some one want to bring his cool pc with his great loot from campaign x to play in campaign y.

.....good, experienced DMs balanced their own games. And got that way by playing with members of Knights of Dinner Table, and then making sure they never did it again.


D&D …anyone else sense a the creeping influence of a pervasive style...a kind of power up, magic toy, You mean the UA 1E book. Spaceship with lasers, blasters, Thundarr the Barbarian Sun Sword., etc You disagree! Mess with my Pc with captain America shield which I can throw and hit up to 5 opponents as one attack, plus his magic missle machine gun, his +4 ring of protection, ac 2 bracers, +2 cloak, etc

Look at the art, .. so you don’t like the artwork. Next.

God, and look at level advancement.....one year, if played as expected, to reach 20th level. ….
A character of that level in D&D 1e or 2e could regale listeners for hours and hours, probably days, about the adventures they've had. “And then I kill Lolth (the second time), Thor, and Captain America getting to 11 th level. Boring us to tears. I like the advancement. Why? Because I can get to level 20 before life breaks up the group again.

.., I am instead talking about the style, presentation and feel of the core books … which I don’t like.

…
Akrasia However, there was no built-in assumption about the number of magic items per level in earlier editions. You never read any modules which was how most of us learned to play. Most modules assumed you had NO magic items and then two rooms before a new monster or dr/x monster you would find a +x weapon to help defeat the monster. Most of time on opening the module the number 1 pencil came out a line was drawn thru every third magic item. And you still had pc coming out with a golf bag of magic swords.
… Of course, if this is based on a poll conducted here at Enworld, it is useless. Message board polls should never be taken as 'evidence' of anything…. Buzz. Survey says. You are wrong. It call knowing your audience.

Molonel …2nd Edition? Supplement after supplement after blessed supplement that we thumbed through eagerly searching for kits, items, combos, whatever….. Which is why I started the core books or the player buys me the book. Now I just do core books only.

Sammael .. My house rules document has over 50 pages… jasper runs away screaming like he did in 83.

Oh yeah....and for all you greybeards who agree with me in this little rant o' mine....nothing like really chiming in to fend off the hoary hosts as I struggled to stand upon my shaky, largely emotional, ground and was battered left and right by the power of true believers…. That because us grey beards are laughing at you because we know you just step into and it smells.


.. my greybeard reference is a JOKE! … And like some people you can dish it but can’t take it.
Any thoughts of your own?
Bad players ruin any game. And I have played on both coasts, in the South, with people from other nations. It does not matter the game system you will have power gamers, munchkins, roll players, role players and a few good players. You just have shift thru a lot of dross unless you got really lucky.
House rules. Hmmm. I can’t list my house rules for 1E but they numbered around 31 not to include the normal throwing out the weapons vs ac chart. My 3e house rules. Ignore squeezing and pole weapons can be used at five feet also.

 

[Storm Raven]

Perhaps it was more how I played 1e and 2e than what the feel really was.

I think it is more you are looking back through nostalgic rose-colored glasses at what you think the 1e/2e experience was, and with the distance created by time glossing over the elements you didn't like back then.

 

[Storm Raven]

That wasn't my point. My point had to do with the consequences of removing AoOs, not the reason for doing so (with respect to which I agree with you)

The consequence of removing AoOs is that 3e combat will play much more like 1e/2e combat with respect to positioning. Given that many people here are all nostalgic for 1e/2e, I'm not seeing why this would be a problem for them. I prefer AoOs, but I'm not that interested in returning to 1e/2e style combat.

 

[Grazzt]

The consequence of removing AoOs is that 3e combat will play much more like 1e/2e combat with respect to positioning. Given that many people here are all nostalgic for 1e/2e, I'm not seeing why this would be a problem for them. I prefer AoOs, but I'm not that interested in returning to 1e/2e style combat.

We removed AoO quite a while ago IMC. No problem. Hell, about half the time we play we dont even bother using miniatures for anything other than marching order. As for the 1E feel/nostalgia thing..we do it just fine (we all cut our teeth on 1e and have been playing off and on as a group for the last 20 years give or take). And we currently use the 3e/3.5 rules.

(Fine for some 1e nostalgia guys may not be for others...it works for us...and it plays like we remember 1e, only without the "bumps" in the rule system/subsystems....but hey each to their own. Play what works for you.)

 

[Akrasia]

The consequence of removing AoOs is that 3e combat will play much more like 1e/2e combat with respect to positioning. Given that many people here are all nostalgic for 1e/2e, I'm not seeing why this would be a problem for them. I prefer AoOs, but I'm not that interested in returning to 1e/2e style combat.

Well it was just one example. My overall point was that the rules for 3e are many and interdependent: changing one can have unintended consequences elsewhere. Again, that doesn't mean that changes cannot be made. I had no interest in getting bogged down in a debate over the impact of eliminated AoOs from the game -- I simply mentioned it to illustrate my point (and it may not have been the best example, whatever).

 

[Akrasia]

…
Akrasia However, there was no built-in assumption about the number of magic items per level in earlier editions. You never read any modules which was how most of us learned to play. Most modules assumed you had NO magic items and then two rooms before a new monster or dr/x monster you would find a +x weapon to help defeat the monster. Most of time on opening the module the number 1 pencil came out a line was drawn thru every third magic item. And you still had pc coming out with a golf bag of magic swords.
… Of course, if this is based on a poll conducted here at Enworld, it is useless. Message board polls should never be taken as 'evidence' of anything…. Buzz. Survey says. You are wrong. It call knowing your audience. ....

Umm, what? This is rather unclear.

Anyway, I stand by my claim that the rules for 1e AD&D (and RC D&D) did not build into them any assumptions concerning the 'standard' amount of magic items for PCs per level. As for any problems with the published modules, that is another topic.

With respect to your comment concerning message board polls, no, I am not wrong. They are indeed meaningless. Sorry to disappoing you, but this is not my opinion -- it is a simple fact concerning the nature of polls.