Frustrating Gamers- slight rant

[Tiefling]

No, not only. Of course, D&D pretend to be generic, and to let you play anything -- hence d20 Modern. But D&D is still biased toward flashy high fantasy. The CR system, for example, use this assumption. The balance between the classes also.

Quite true.

For low magic, I have other games

I bet.

But D&D is the game where you can play non-humans.

You can indeed.

Dwarf, elf, gnome, you name it; they are core races.

So they are.

PC parties are expected to include several non-humans, often even a majority of them.

Just who is expecting this and why should I care about them?

D&D is also the game where you have half-dragon, half-celestial and half-fiend templates.

That's right.

It is the game where you may have 8 200+-page monster books and still be missing famous creatures the setting background refers to.

You're on a roll.

The sheer diversity of spells, magic items, and creatures, both playable or not, are what makes it a high-magic game.

When played in the default manner, yes.

By using D&D for a low-fantasy, low-magic play, you are cutting what makes D&D's richness.

Just who decided that's what makes it rich and why should I care about them?

It's castrating the game.

No. No it's not.

Yes, it's exactly that.

No. No it's not.

Do you want to play Dungeon & Dragon, or do you want to play Cellar & Capon ?

I want to play a game whereby I have fun. I can do that without saying that other ways of playing are inferior. Amazing, isn't it? It's my fu. Your fu is lacking.

 

[Chris Tavares]

We all know these people. They take one look at a PrC, class or feat and call it broken without taking the time to playtest it. The current one people kick in the tail is the Mystic Theurge. How many of those whining about the class have actually playtested or evaluated it to see if it IS overpowered? No one. It takes weeks or more to really playtest a PrC.

When am I supposed to find those weeks to do this playtest? My Dragonstar game currently runs for 4 hours once every three weeks. The players and GM can't afford any more play time than that. So what should they do. "Hey, Brian, could you put your character on hold for a couple of months to test out the PrC for me? Then we'll throw that character away." Yeah, right.

 

[Belen]

I am not saying that everyone should take the time to playtest every class; however, if they are going to take the time to complain about it, then they should have evaluated it first.

 

[Azlan]

Frostmarrow, I doff my hat to the king of non sequiturs. I hope your day went well.

IMHO, moderators shouldn't encourage thread hijackers (or encourage trolls, for that matter).

 

[barsoomcore]

I think that what really burns me are the people who run low-magic simplely because they hate casters. This is fine for groups where everyone hates casters, but is horrible in a group that really enjoys a balance.

Of course, then they stick their nose in the air at all of us who think that the game is balanced as is.....

See, I have to say I haven't seen anyone behave like this.

I run low-magic. Sort of. There aren't any spell-casting classes on Barsoom except for Psions. And a few other wacky ones I made up. There aren't any non-human player races, either. Very few magic items. Lots of dinosaurs. Flintlock pistols. Yahoo.

Am I a snob? Do I hate casters?

Honestly, neither question ever crossed my mind. I don't care how other people run their campaigns. At all. I'm INTERESTED, but I don't CARE.

Hate casters? I'm not sure I understand how that's even possible. It would be like hating grass. Or HTML, or databases, or cold water, or turquoise or ring-necked lemurs.

I frankly like ENWorld for the strong opinions people put forward here. There have been many lively debates with people holding completely different opinions, feeling very strongly about their opinions and yet not deteriorating into name-calling and abuse.

Except for hong. But we all abuse him.

I feel very strongly about such things as I feel strongly about, and when I get into a debate I express them as such. So do many other people here. I guess that can come across as snobbery but to me it's just good conversation.

Who's a snob here? I can't really think of anyone off the top of my head that I would characterize as a snob. I guess Gez' last post about "Cellars and Capons" counts as snobbery, in that he's kind of putting down people who don't play like him. But I don't take statements like that at all seriously.

It's remarkably difficult to castrate something that doesn't possess reproductive organs.

 

[barsoomcore]

IMHO, moderators shouldn't encourage thread hijackers (or encourage trolls, for that matter).

And when you're a moderator you can make those decisions.

 

[Azlan]

Who's a snob here? I can't really think of anyone off the top of my head that I would characterize as a snob.

Myself, when someone posts a rebuttal that leads off with the sentence, "Have you ever heard of -- gasp! -- roleplaying... ?", I almost always characterize that person as being a roleplaying snob.

When someone says, "It's my character, and no DM knows him by even a thousandth as well as I do, so no DM can tell me (or even suggest to me) how to roleplay him! And if any DM tells me otherwise, me and my character are walking out the door!", I usually charactertize that person as being a roleplaying snob (and a priss, too).

When someone says, "Look, I'm just roleplaying my character. If that bothers you, personally, then that's your problem -- deal with it. And please keep your out-of-character remarks to yourself.", I see that person as being both a roleplaying snob and a self-centered jerk.

When someone says, "I don't need alignments, quirks, disadvantages, or background options to tell me how to roleplay -- I can do it all on my own!", I find myself wondering if this person might be a roleplaying snob.

And, of course, if ever someone uses the derogatory term "roll-playing", then I know that person is a roleplaying snob.

 

[Azlan]

And when you're a moderator you can make those decisions.

Really... ?! Wow. I didn't know that. Well, then, that totally invalidates my opinion on the matter.

 

[Tiefling]

Really... ?! Wow. I didn't know that. Well, then, that totally invalidates my opinion on the matter.

You'll sound much less petulant if you bring up your opinion in the Meta forum where it belongs. Stop hijacking the thread to condemn the hijacking of the thread.

 

[EricNoah]

Ok, guys, that's enough. Let's try to keep this on target please.