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Message: <blockquote data-quote="JasonT" data-source="post: 1315365" data-attributes="member: 16097">I'm drawing a little bit on Monte Cook's big review/rant here (not that he endorses my views, of course) -- he pointed out that in many cases in the new rules they start talking about "squares" instead of "feet", and many of the minor changes are simply to make things work better in miniatures play (no more "rectangular" creatures, the 5 ft-10 ft penalty for moving diagonally, etc.). I can't say these changes are bad, they work very well with the existing rules, but they do seem to be changing the game to make it even more miniatures-y than 3rd edition. Is this a bad thing? No, though some of their text about integrating the battle grid and miniatures in your game is pretty clunky (to very liberally paraphrase the DMG: "if you're drawing rubble or something on a map, you don't HAVE to draw it in discrete 5' squares. It's okay to draw a little bit of rubble spilling into the adjacent grids! Just make sure you remember which squares have rubble on them and which ones don't!...").To be honest (I hope this doesn't make me seem hypocritical), for the most part I _do_ use miniatures in 3rd edition D&D (though not in other RPGs, mostly). d20 is just perfectly designed for miniatures, and I actually like the new miniatures. Occasionally I play a miniatures-less D&D game if I'm caught without my figures (frankly, usually I just use dice or tokens), or if there's only a few PCs and the combat situations are simple and easily explainable. ("Okay, I rush at the nearest orc!" "As you charge in with your shortsword, he gets a free attack with his 10-foot-long halberd!") Miniatures can be very useful, and they're perfect for D&D/d20, but they're not always necessary, and occasionally they can get in the way of the imagination.But now this is drifting into a "d20 is great, but sometimes I prefer other systems" digression.... <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" /> I think what I'm realizing is: miniatures are great for d20, not necessarily so good for other RPG game systems. But of course it's not Wizards' business to introduce newbies to "RPG game systems" in general; it's their business to introduce newbies to d20.... <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" />That's a good point, and one I wasn't aware of. I guess I need to study the differences between "OGL" and "d20" more closely. I don't have any particular interest in "The Book of Erotic Fantasy" except as an example, and for the Valar guy's comment that one way to create a boom in RPG interest might be to release a product so shocking that the mainstream media did news stories on it. Which I think is a legitimate, if questionably likely, strategy... Jason Thompson</blockquote>

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