Eberron? No way - I'm old school.

[Funksaw]

I really have to take issue with the idea that Eberron is moving the hobby forward.

I mean, sure, it's GOOD. But it's not really innovative - for that you have to get out on the fringes and start looking at games that do stuff that hasn't been done before.

Of course, it hasn't been done before in an "official" D&D suppliment, but there are so many things that havent - well, let's just say that D&D is kinda like the Catholic Church - pardoning Copernicus in the 1950s and apologizing for the inaction during the Holocaust during the 1990s - it just doesn't move so fast.

And indeed, why would it. D&D isn't about innovation - it's about providing that "D&D experience" - which, you must admit, is more about number crunching, tactical combat and crunching orcs. Eberron is a fun setting that took what was fun about other successful games on the market and ran with it.

Sure, it's moving D&D forward. But D&D isn't the hobby. (In fact, I don't even consider D&D and other RPGs to inhabit the same hobby, as D&Ding and RPGing conjure up two completely different images in my mind.)

And it's wonderful that WOTC put out a decent setting - but like those who say that Columbus discovered America completely ignored both the native americans and the vikings - there's plenty of innovation and plenty of innovation in the hobby if you look outside the tunnel vision of D&D/d20.

 

[grodog]

Sure, [Eberron is] moving D&D forward. But D&D isn't the hobby.

D&D/d20 certainly is the rpg hobby from the economic point of view, market share point of view, mind share point of view, and number of active players point of view. Everything other game and publisher is marginal, including Rifts and White Wolf.

Now, from an innovation and artistic development POV, you're spot-on....

 

[Epametheus]

Side note: I have yet to see a successful Ravenloft Comedy-Themed Game.


OK, Maybe you can run Abbot and Costello meet Strahd von Zarovich and Adam, but I haven't seen a DM with the guts to do it.

I have. The DM was giving Ravenloft the feel of Army of Darkness.

 

[Ranes]

I got to take a look at Eberron recently. I thought, "Looks well done but not my thing," whatever that is. But, to be fair to it, it's worth remembering that there are only about thirty-two things you can do with a novel.* Combination, juxtaposition and reinvention are where we're more likey to find something new, something fresh. Whether or not Eberron scores on any of these, I don't know. I've only seen it. I haven't read it.

I have old school seizures all the time. That's why I still like D&D. But I was game for Eberron's prospectus, on the whole, when I read what was going to be in it. I didn't buy it, because it looks more like a comic, which is no bad thing, than a faux-futuristic-ancient tome, which is what I went looking looking for.


*And they've all been done.**

** And that is relevant.***

***And that's enough asterisking. And beginning sentences with conjuctions passing them off as fragmented clauses, unlike here.

 

[Henry]

Perhaps you remeber Blood Brothers 1 & 2 by Chaosium for Call of Cthulhu? It featured comedic horror stories. I fondly remember "An Alien Kicked Sand in My Face" for instance. It even featured Abbot and Costello, complete with cream pies and squirt bottles.

I have. The DM was giving Ravenloft the feel of Army of Darkness.

In both cases, I wouldn't really call it horror genre any more, however. Army of Darkness was a VERY different movie tonally from Evil Dead I - while it was the same genre, there really was nothing horrifying about it. Evil Dead I had a tone of "cheesy, but creepy" and a game based on it would be different from a game based on Army of Darkness. Ravenloft without a sense of character fear just doesn't seem like Ravenloft to me, just like taking Eberron without Artificers and magic-tech would stop being Eberron.

[personal sarcasm]I should talk,[/personal sarcasm] Because I have yet to ever run a Call of Cthulhu game that didn't dissolve into players wisecracking and degenerating into players discharging firearms and grenades into everything that moved, and getting killed. I don't think I could run a successful Horror game if I started bringing thumb screws to the table.

 

[Piratecat]

[personal sarcasm]I should talk,[/personal sarcasm] Because I have yet to ever run a Call of Cthulhu game that didn't dissolve into players wisecracking and degenerating into players discharging firearms and grenades into everything that moved, and getting killed. I don't think I could run a successful Horror game if I started bringing thumb screws to the table.

I ran a Call of Cthulhu at the EN World game day last weekend. It definitely didn't degenerate into silliness. The PCs were Russian soldiers trapped in the sewers during the Battle of Stalingrad, stalked by faceless monsters that slid underneath the thigh-high water. Pretty creepy. One person almost made it out alive.

 

[hong]

I ran a Call of Cthulhu at the EN World game day last weekend. It definitely didn't degenerate into silliness.

This sounds like a challenge. If I ever make it to Boston, you are running a CoC game for me. Yeah?

 

[Piratecat]

Yeah.

There are two good types of CoC adventures. This one was a "we can possibly survive this but not stop the problem," where part of the challenge is investigating without dying or going insane in the process. The other type is "We know we're screwed, but we can save lots of other people with our deaths." KidCthulhu's adventure set on the Russian sub "Kursk" is a good example of this type.

 

[diaglo]

This sounds like a challenge. If I ever make it to Boston, you are running a CoC game for me. Yeah?

count me in too.

 

[Funksaw]

D&D/d20 certainly is the rpg hobby from the economic point of view, market share point of view, mind share point of view, and number of active players point of view. Everything other game and publisher is marginal, including Rifts and White Wolf.

Now, from an innovation and artistic development POV, you're spot-on....

Looking at THIS hobby from an economic point of view is pointless. Needlepoint is more widespread and a bigger moneymaker than RPGs.