d20 Hatred near you?

[Wombat]

this is the kind of stuff spoken by a true gamer who has never made his own chainmail.

some of us spent weeks/months putting links together for 55lbs of used Long Fence(tm). going out and joining groups like the Markland Mercenary Militia and beating each other up on the weekends.

Chainmail? Chainmail is for the weak! Some of us used Carpet Armour, like Carpet Man!

Thus spake a man of the West...

 

[diaglo]

Chainmail? Chainmail is for the weak! Some of us used Carpet Armour, like Carpet Man!

Thus spake a man of the West...

a good moving pad made a great padded armor base. then you pulled your long fence over top. and then some from of tabard. you had to have a tabard.

july and august around the DC area is hot. let me tell you. more guys yielded to the temperature than they ever did to the swordplay.

 

[Calico_Jack73]

WizaDru... you are being WAY too literal.
What I mean is that when the 70's kids were growing up and playing D&D very few in the "Adult" social strata had heard of it or even understood it except for the VERY rare adult who gave it a try and even then most of those enlightened adults that I know treated it like they would a Poker game... it was strictly a pick-up game and they never played it as long running hobby.

All of the 70's kids have now assumed the Adult role in society and almost EVERYONE either knows or has known someone who has played a Role-Playing game. Back in the 70's you could run into people that had never heard of it. That was what I meant when I said we run the country now. I wasn't stating that you or I were president or that any of the people in the current administration play or played RPGs. The generation that grew up with and understood roleplaying are now the people who decide what is socially normal. As far as what is considered normal we SOCIALLY run the country.

Edit: I went back and changed some stuff in regards to "Everybody" and "Nobody". I know how sensitive some people are to those words and how they shut out the rest of the message when they take those two words out of context.

Everybody = Everybody in my experience
Nobody = Nobody in my experience

The Politically Correct people are responsible for more Electron Waste in the universe than any other social group.

 

[swrushing]

"2. The D20 system version is not cinematic in any way, while the original was a very cinematic system. If the enemies you were fighting were unnamed brutes, you automatically killed them in one hit, and could possibly take down 4 in a single action ala Indigo Montoyo from the princess bride. Now, it is the typical "you can only make 1 attack/6 points of BAB". So killing 4 brutes takes 4 rounds for a 5th level warrior! ARG! "

OK, color me confused... wouldn't great cleave allow you to wipe out as many "unnamed brutes" as you can reach if indeed a swing could kill them? As each drops you get a new swing and drop that one and so on until no one remains in reach OR you miss or you hit someone tough enough to take your shot.

IOW, in D20, its not assumed that every PC, by dint of being a PC, is automatically capable of the Indigo move, but allows those who want to be able to to be built with feats to make it happen.

Can't fighters get great cleave soon enough?

 

[diaglo]

Can't fighters get great cleave soon enough?

too soon if you ask me.

 

[WizarDru]

The generation that grew up with and understood roleplaying are now the people who decide what is socially normal. As far as what is considered normal we SOCIALLY run the country.

Pshaw. And you say I'm too literal.

Seriously though, I just don't agree. Having heard of it isn't the same as considering it normal. The difference now is that its been relegated more to the 'mostly harmless' category, than anything else. Mothers aren't running out to demand stores not carry it on their shelves, and throwing those kid's PHBs in the trash (or on the fire...shudder). There are still folks out there who consider it evil (as recent threads have atested).

I've still got people I've worked with, even in the last three years, who had never heard of D&D except in the most abstract of terms. But geeks in general are a lot cooler, thanks to the rise of tech....D&D just got swept along for the ride. Besides, D&D has nostalgia factor now, just like He-man or the Big Wheel.

But what do I know? Heck, I'm still trying to explain to my kids that we didn't have Tivo or even VCRs when I was growing up...my daughter thinks I'm outright lying when I tell her we didn't have a color TV until I was older than she is now.

 

[woodelf]

That's almost exactly the one I was thinking of when I said "stuff I could have guessed." Things like "gnolls don't treat their prisoners nice" had me thinking "why did I buy this again?" (And I did buy it... this was before I started getting review products.) Also, looking back at my review, it seems that the stat blocks they had for it were flat out wrong.

Well, i'm sure this won't surprise you, but i never even looked at the statblocks, and wouldn't have a clue if the statblocks were "wrong"--probably even if i used them in a D20 game.

As for the rest of the content--admittedly, i read it 3yrs ago, and haven't looked at it since, so my recollections might be suspect. It came out at a time when D20 System stuff was all crunch, all the time, so the mere nature of its content might have colored it over-favorably in my eyes, despite any failings in the content itself. I also got it for, hmmm... $3?, 'cause it was a damaged copy. I gotta admit, as much as i like them, in practice they just aren't worth $10 to me, unless it happens to be a creature that i want to be a central role in a campaign (and i like their vision for it--didn't buy the Illithiad because i didn't like the take on mind flayers). But when i see one in a half-off bin, i usually snatch it up. In any case, it made a favorable-enough impression (whether warranted or not) to make me wanna buy more.

 

[Calico_Jack73]

Yet another episode of "Edition Wars" goodness.

 

[dead]

d20 haters might be worried about a d20 monopoly occurring. D&D was always huge but that was previously limited to fantasy RPGs. Now d20, a satilite of D&D, opens the core d20 reference (3E D&D) to ALL genres and settings.

d20 haters might not be saying that d20 isn't capable of serving a non-d20 campaign well (CoC, for example), but they might be saying that it's hedging out unique non-d20 systems. That the OGL is a free and easy alternative to creating a unique system that opens wonderful new vistas to the RPG market.

Also, d20 haters probably like the non-d20 systems they are using in preference to a d20 alternative and are worried about the extinction of their non-d20 game. Some people might say: "So what, keep playing your out-of-print editions of such-and-such a game. You don't *have* to up date to the new d20 version that more gamers are now playing". If they did this, however, it would isolate them from the wider gaming community that are playing the d20 version.

In a lot of cases the unique non-d20 game is including d20 rules in its publicaitons. I guess they are worried that, eventually, the game will become completely d20 and that the original system, which they prefer better, will cease to exist.

In the end it's all about economics, and if their beloved game changes to d20 to survive then they have to decide whether this is *better that nothing* or isolate themselves from the gaming community and just play their out-of-print game.

 

[National Acrobat]

Games...

There is also a large category of folks who just like to play RPG's and could care less what the system is, as long as it gets people together to have some fun once in awhile, and I happen to be in a group like that. We play 1E ADnD, ODnD, d6 Star Wars, Old Gamma World, Hero System, the Original Traveller, 3E DnD, D20 CoC. We don't care what it is. If someone needs a break from running a campaign and someone else wants to do that, and has a specific game in mind, we go with the flow. It's about playing the game, not worrying about which system.