NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Hussar" data-source="post: 2940083" data-attributes="member: 22779">Superior is a very loaded word that I wouldn't touch with a ten foot pole.  Or an eleven foot one either.  <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />The original point of this whole mess was the idea that DnD becoming self reflective was a bad thing.  If you swim WAY up thread, you'll see that.  My point was always that self-reflection is a signal of a genre beginning to mature as a genre.  You can see it in the development of the game.  Going back to Keep on the Borderlands.  There's nothing in there about what the Cave dwellers eat, there's no attempt at any sort of reason for them being there.  It was simply "There's a keep, there's a bunch of monsters, go kill them."  And it was glorious.  Then, a little later on, people started detailing things a little more.  Adventures became tied to a general theme.  Slave Lords comes to mind here.  The encounters in the modules are generally tied to the theme of the module.  There are reasons given for many of the monster's being where they are.  There are guidelines given for what the monsters do in their day to day existence.  Sure, it's emaciated to the point of undeath, but, it's still there.  And, again, it was glorious.Skipping over 2e since many of the modules in 2e were not very good, we come to 3e.  Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil.  There is little or no sense that the monsters are simply a random conglomeration of critters.  There are leaders in each group and they all talk to eachother.  There is an attempt to make the entire complex act in a manner that is consistent.Compare THAT to Shackled City or Age of Worms.  Now, to me, this is the sign of the genre of DnD maturing.  Like fine wine, it gets better with age.  Not that new wine is BAD.  It's not.  There are lots of very fine new wines.  It's just that it gets better.  And part of that is actually taking the time to examine how the RAW interacts with the setting.</blockquote>

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