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

[Storm Raven]

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.

Except that most of the commonly suggested changes made by people nostalgic for 1e/2e simply make the game run more like 1e/2e did. The "unintended consequence" is that play has similar problems to the 1e/2e rule set. If you are nostalgic for 1e/2e, why is this a problem?

More to the point, if you are nostalgic for 1e/2e, why do you care about "unintended consequences"? The 1e/2e system was a mess with respect to things like balance and consistency. If that is the sort of system you like, why are you worrying that tweaking 3e will unbalance the rules or cause odd unintended consequences? It will be just like 1e/2e then. If that's what you wanted, why is there a problem?

 

[Storm Raven]

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.

No, they did. They just didn't explicitly tell you what the assumptions were. What do you think the "Treasure Type" system was supposed to accomplish? It was an opaque way of getting to the "right" amount of treasure.

Of course, by making the rule opaque, they were able to sell you dozens of Dragon magazine articles that fumbled around trying to tell you what was an appropriate level of treasure.

 

[Piratecat]

Right here...You also referred to a poster as a "jackhole" and an "idiot," which I personally find offensive but which apparently the moderators are willing to accept since punching the triangle on three of your posts has brought no response.

In fact, no; we've been at GenCon for the most part and are catching up.

Quas, being insulting is absolutely not allowed here. Please tone it down immediately, because doing your best to pick a fight isn't something that we're going to tolerate.

If this is somehow unclear or you'd like to discuss it, please email me.

That goes for everyone, folks! Please have this discussion without vitriol and nasty comments.

 

[Kanegrundar]

I remember that in the days of 1e and then 2e D&D didn't really have a FEEL.

Come on. You can't really believe that do you? D&D has always had that ultra-heroic feel from the 1E Paladin in Hell to the 2E Warrior bashing in a door. D&D has always been about heroics, magic items, powerful wizards, and powerful BBEG's.

D&D was a rules set that more or less was supposed to allow the DM to create the king of homebrew setting/adventures he or she wanted to. You could hack apart the rules as you wished without causing some precious yet nebulous "game balance" to collapse all around you.

I do this all the time. I've added defense bonuses to classes, made armor totally DR, removed races and classes and added others. I use the EQ spell point system on top of all that! There may be a spell or power here or there I have to tone down, but not once did the game balance "collapse all around me."

D&D 3.X is a good game in my opinion but does anyone else sense a the creeping influence of a pervasive style...a kind of power up, magic toy, EXTREME/KEWL/IN YOUR FACE/RADICAL fantasy that is what D&D is now supposed to be?

The level of power is assumed and stated more in the current edition that others. That much is true. However, earlier editions had assumptions built into them just as 3E does, they just didn't advertise it. Plus, if you don't like the KEWL POWERZ style of play, take the stuff out you don't like. Heck, try out the Conan OGL game if you don't want radical in your face fantasy. Believe it or not, it likely won't break the system. The DM still has just as much control over the direction, feel, and flow of the game as he/she did back in the day.

Look at the art, the style of dress, the poses of characters and monsters who seem more about how "kick ass" they are with their cool feat trees, dragonblooded/fiend/god touched/knight/monk multiclasses, and a general idea that combat effectiveness and kewl/extreme powers is the defining quality of value in the context of a role playing game.

The defining quality of value of any RPG is if it's fun for you and your group. If not, then it's time for a change whether it's tinkering with the base D&D system, trying out an OGL variant, or another system entirely.

God, and look at level advancement.....one year, if played as expected, to reach 20th level.

The DMG states that the XP needed to level can be changed as needed per DM's desires.

Overall, if you dn't like the feel of the system and don't feel comfortable with tinkering with it to achieve the level at which you want to play, then it's time to try something new. Like I said, that could be a D20/OGL variant like Conan, Black Company, or THieves World or an entirely different system altogether. You got to ask yourself if playing D&D more important than having fun? Sure, the current edition has the most readily available pool of players, but you could still find players to play in just about any game going.

Kane

 

[jasper]

Storm Raven said clear that me. The Treasure Type in the monster manual and dmg was a way for standard amount of magic items for PCs per level.
The modules were a factor in understanding the standard amount wealth per level. They and d&d books did not just put the wealth in a neat chart.
A internet poll taken by the users of a website gives you the results for that web site. So the poll applies to this audience (En World) not to the world in general.

 

[Remathilis]

I remember that in the days of 1e and then 2e D&D didn't really have a FEEL. D&D was a rules set that more or less was supposed to allow the DM to create the king of homebrew setting/adventures he or she wanted to. You could hack apart the rules as you wished without causing some precious yet nebulous "game balance" to collapse all around you.

Ugh... yes they did. First; there were LOTS of implied feel: rangers who cast magic, LG paladins, dwarves that didn't cast magic, wizards having d4 hd and no armor proficiency, etc. The 2e DMG even spoke about the destruction of game balance in a famous sidebar entitled: "Why level limits?"

There was Greyhawk, Forgotten Realms, Spelljammer, Dragonlance, Planescape, Birthright, Ravenloft, etc. All of these settings where in 1e and 2e respectively and all used the same rule set with necessary modifications to suit the setting.

True, as does Eberron, Kalamar, Oathbound, Scarred Lands, etc...

One could run around in senseless dungeons, could have coherent settings, etc. without difficulty. The setting was supposed to provide the flavor while D&D post Gygax had no particular flavor. The system was a generic, mathematical, dice rolling system that was the hum in the background but didn't need to be carefully balanced.....good, experienced DMs balanced their own games.

First, I'm not having any problems with coherent settings and senseless dungeons right now, thanks. D&D had plenty of flavor post Gygax, but it was more akin to Ramen; pick a flavor packet, but your still eating noodles.

(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)

Might I suggest leading you to Unearthed Arcana to show how flexible D&D is. If you want to go wider, check out the plethroa of great d20 OGL games to see how flexible d20 is. 1e and 2e were flexible because it could care less the a thief was useless after 10th level and that a FR cleric could wieldREAL, ULTIMATE POWER!

D&D 3.X is a good game in my opinion but does anyone else sense a the creeping influence of a pervasive style...a kind of power up, magic toy, EXTREME/KEWL/IN YOUR FACE/RADICAL fantasy that is what D&D is now supposed to be?

Huh, I used to play 2e and basic with power ups, magic toys, and "xtreme" dungeon crawling. But then again, I'm dense: what IS EXTREME/KEWL/IN YOUR FACE/RADICAL fantasy?

Look at the art, the style of dress, the poses of characters and monsters who seem more about how "kick ass" they are with their cool feat trees, dragonblooded/fiend/god touched/knight/monk multiclasses, and a general idea that combat effectiveness and kewl/extreme powers is the defining quality of value in the context of a role playing game.

Sigh... I don't know about you, but medieval woodcuts don't inspire me to be heroic. Bigby's Backscratcher didn't make me take my game seriously, and some of the monsters never got used because I couldn't visualize something that stupid looking as a threat. And as for dragonblooded/etc, we were doing that in 2e without any rules. Lastly, I don't need a feat to role-play my drunken dwarf, I need a feat to give me a +1 to hit when I'm fighting OTHER drunken dwarves. Mechanics influence combat because the don't need to influence RP.

God, and look at level advancement.....one year, if played as expected, to reach 20th level. Gimme a break. 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. Compared to those characters, modern PCs haven't done squat to get where they are.

Then again, some of us don't HAVE 3-5 years to sink into one PC. A turn around of 2 years allows me, as a player, to try new character concepts and material (I'll be a wizard this time) and as a DM to create NEW storys and villians to challenge a new generation.

and (Show of Hands) who WANTS to listen to hours and hours of Storm Crow the Half-elf? My girlfriend sure doesn't.

Now I am not denigrating combat effectiveness or maximizing a character, I am instead talking about the style, presentation and feel of the core books and the supposition that D&D is supposed to be this or that.

Its called product recognition. Would you deliver the same rant about how Storyteller evokes a particular feel (modern horror) when CLEARLY White Wolf is trying to elicit that feel for its 900 settings. D&D isn't just a generic Fantasy RPG; its got assumptions built in: (the sacred bovines) that make D&D different than Gurps Fantasy. AC and HP. Fire and Forget Magic, LG paladins, and, of course, its namesakes. These are D&D feel, and they are still there.

Just my thoughts and a semi rant.
Any thoughts of your own?
Chris

People need to remove the rose-colored glasses of nostalgia: D&D as you played, I wager, was not according to any RAW. I bet people today do not play RAW D&D, and this assumption your must is a bogus straw-man. If balance didn't bother you in 2e, why now? Cuz someone pointed out a 15th level PC should have more than a +1 longsword and a cloak +2? Because you'll be flogged if you remove a clerics turn ability? Because you'll be banned from ENWORLD.ORG if you remove gnomes from your world and refuse to allow half-breed dragons?

There is this attitude that since 3.X didn't cater to thier every whim and desire, that its the worst thing to happen to D&D. 3.X has its worts (no man-made thing is perfect) but I'd rather have what we have now than the 27 pages of house rules needed to make 2e playable.

Sigh, to each his own, but I think griping about the artwork and the Greyhawk gods in the PH is fruitless endeavor; They don't break my game and they don't invoke ire from my players (most of whom ignore it). When we do find something we don't like (such as your problem with advancement) we slow it down and begin to compensate (no adamantine swords? don't use golems)

Course, thats my opinion, I could be wrong.

 

[Aldarc]

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

Actually, you did do a good job of correcting this sentence.

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?

Again you are right. It does seem pointless. I think it is primarily a fear on my part on the amount of supported material that a 3rd Party Publisher can provide for their game system vs. the amount of material that WotC can dish out.

 

[Akrasia]

More to the point, if you are nostalgic for 1e/2e, why do you care about "unintended consequences"? The 1e/2e system was a mess with respect to things like balance and consistency. If that is the sort of system you like, why are you worrying that tweaking 3e will unbalance the rules or cause odd unintended consequences? It will be just like 1e/2e then. If that's what you wanted, why is there a problem?

I disagree with your understanding and characterization of 1e AD&D or RC D&D, which was IME very easy to tweak. It was also easy to predict the likely consequences of such tweaks. This is because those systems were relatively modular, whereas 3e is highly interdependent (and this feature of 3e is often touted as one of its main virtues).

I also disagree with you about the potential impact of unintended consequences on the long-term running of a 3e campaign. However, as I have repeatedly said already in this thread, if you have good players willing to alter things later on in a campaign (in light of such 'unintended consequences'), then this is not a problem.

No, they did. They just didn't explicitly tell you what the assumptions were. What do you think the "Treasure Type" system was supposed to accomplish? It was an opaque way of getting to the "right" amount of treasure....

Well I disagree with you again about that. Those were merely guidelines, and there was no CR system or expectation that PCs would get so many magic items per level. The classes were not designed in such a way that fighters needed 'x g.p' worth of magic items in order to 'keep up' with magic-users.

However, I do think that worries about maintaining the appropriate level of magic items in 3e are usually exaggerated.

 

[Akrasia]

.... A internet poll taken by the users of a website gives you the results for that web site. So the poll applies to this audience (En World) not to the world in general.

Um, no: an internet poll taken by the users of a website does not give you 'the results for that web site'. An Enworld poll does not apply to 'this audience' as a whole.

The reason is simple: the people who participate in polls on message boards are not an accurate representation of the overall posting population. This is because the people who participate in polls do so voluntarily -- they 'self-select' with reference to the polling question. Consequently, the poll results are meaningless.

Also in news: objects fall when dropped.

 

[Storm Raven]

I disagree with your understanding and characterization of 1e AD&D or RC D&D, which was IME very easy to tweak. It was also easy to predict the likely consequences of such tweaks. This is because those systems were relatively modular, whereas 3e is highly interdependent (and this feature of 3e is often touted as one of its main virtues).

I didn't say you couldn't tweak 1e/2e, but the system was such a mess of different subsystems that it was sometimes hard to predict what effect a change would have. You are looking back and saying "man that was easy to tweak" when in reality, it is more likely that it mostly seemed easy to tweak because you were intimately familiar with the system after a decade of using it.

In any event, tweaking 3e by removing or changing elements disconnects the modular nature of the system, making it more like 1e/2e in this regard. Since you like 1e/2e, why is this a problem?

I also disagree with you about the potential impact of unintended consequences on the long-term running of a 3e campaign. However, as I have repeatedly said already in this thread, if you have good players willing to alter things later on in a campaign (in light of such 'unintended consequences'), then this is not a problem.

Altering the system in the ways advocated by many people who are nostalgic for 1e/2e (removing AoOs for example) will make the game play more like 1e/2e, with all of the attendant oddities thereof. Since you are nostalgic for 1e/2e why would you be concerned about issues like balance: those systems were horribly unbalanced in all kinds of ways. Since you liked that system why is it a problem for you if you modify 3e and it becomes unbalanced in a similar fashion?

Well I disagree with you again about that. Those were merely guidelines,

Just like the CR system and the PC wealth guidelines. They are just making explicit what previous editions made opaque and difficult. They say "these are the base lines we used when designing things", knowing that, you can change them. previous editions used base lines, one only has to go back and read through the books and various articles written by Gygax to know this. He just didn't bother to explicitly let you in on the secret, but rather implied it through the treasure type system.

and there was no CR system or expectation that PCs would get so many magic items per level. The classes were not designed in such a way that fighters needed 'x g.p' worth of magic items in order to 'keep up' with magic-users.

Yes they were. They just didn't tell you that up front. You had to figure that out on your own, or glean it from articles written by various Gygax cronies in Dragon.

However, I do think that worries about maintaining the appropriate level of magic items in 3e are usually exaggerated.

Wildly so. In any event, if you are a fan of 1e/2e, why are you concerned with maintaining "balance" (via the CR/Treasure guidelines) in 3e? 1e/2e made no pretense of balance, and you claim you loved that style of play. Why then is balance a big deal when you play 3e?