Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ahnehnois" data-source="post: 6175487" data-attributes="member: 17106">I was invited into a group some time around 1998-1999. In the time period ranging from roughly 1999-2002 or so, we went through several iterations of that group, running parallel games with different DMs and getting people together from throughout the area through references from friends. The total number of people I played with in those early days was on the order of a few dozen. Then, around 2002 or 2003, we created on firm group of around ten people, which went through a couple of changes in membership, but stayed mostly the same through 2004. Then, we disbanded. Then, around 2007 or 2008, a group of four of us from the old group reconvened. Then, one left and was replaced with a new member I hadn't played with before. That has been my group for four or five years.As to DMs, I started somewhere between ten or twelve years ago, having played with only two DMs before that IIRC. I then pretty much took over, but tried to encourage a rotating DM policy; so probably have played under around ten DMs total.Bottom line: variety, then consistency, with ten years ago being roughly the time when we settled down. Clear?To be a bias, something has to actually be not true. I'm not saying that bards are uniformly silly, only that the concept does not lend itself to adventuring as well as the concepts behind most of the other classes.I am also biased, for example, in the sense that I think Craft (Basketweaving) is a less useful skill for adventuring than Hide or Use Magic Device. If you want to call that a bias. Feel free to provide a counterpoint example illustrating how basketweaving is just as useful.You're basically just accusing me of incompetence, which you don't have any basis for and still wouldn't if I gave you the full statblock and a rundown of what happened (which I'm not all that inclined to spend time on). Believe me, this was a pretty well designed opponent. There were some minor things here and there, but the bottom line outcome is what it is.This incidentally follows a battle against a druid that I did have the same conversation about on these boards, to which several intrepid posters suggested various can't-lose tactics, some of which were decent, all of which would have failed. Do we really need to repeat that?I never said that. I'm pretty ambivalent about the work I've done. Just a path to something better...I do, however, have a graduate degree in my field, which as far as I know game designers do not. And the publications I work on are subjected to peer review, which D&D is not. So I think a description of "paid amateur" is pretty apt. It's not a bad thing per se; many of us wish we could make any money by working on our hobbies as amateurs. And most of them are probably relatively good amateurs. It just means that the pedestal that some people put game designers on isn't warranted.Yes, but that work is spread out over time. Also, it's free, whereas game books are getting spendy.Then again, the other style of DMing I see a lot is simply playing fast and loose with the rules, which takes no time at all.Not any players I've ever met.</blockquote>

Verification