Heroes of Battle and Defining Roleplaying

[Ryltar]

As an aside from debating the silliness of this quote (and yes, it is silly) -

I'm really, really looking forward to Heroes of Battle. I already own books with mass combat systems, but this seems to fill a niche that is - thus far - unoccupied. If they do creative stuff and don't just repeat the same kind of missions over and over, this seems like a must buy.

 

[buzz]

The quote solely serves to define the focus of the book, i.e., war from a grunt's-eye view, not from those who are leading nations and commanding armies. Those grander perspectives are the purview of mass battle wargames and political boardgames. I don't think the quote is precluding these from being *relevant* (it is a book about war, after all), but just that the focus should be on the players sitting around the table and their PCs.

It may not have done it well, but it certianly convenys what the book is about. I'm fine with that. Actually, I wasn't planning on getting it until I read some of the recent marketing copy on the WotC site. It sounds like a pretty cool book.

 

[S'mon]

Jeez, this sucks. "Politics isn't roleplaying"? Whereas dungeoncrawling is? *sigh*

 

[Plane Sailing]

It seems to be illustrative of a change of emphasis in D&D which I think is unfortunate. The earlier editions may have had a hodge-podge of rules against the sleek conformity of 3e, but in their favour they did expect PCs to graduate to different kinds of activities - building towers, castles or temples, raising taxes, becoming landowners. That form of activity and generic rules for political world-building was noticeably absent from 3e - to its detriment. Even the "epic" handbook was just about fighting the same monsters with bigger numbers attached.

I like to hope that if 4e eventually appears this situation will be reversed.

 

[Ranger REG]

Personally, complaining about WotC's direction is a waste of breath and bandwidth.

You want political roleplaying? Find a d20 publisher that will do it for you.

Besides, it would defeat the purpose of the OGL/d20 that WotC should only do main product while d20 publisher support with niche products.

Oh, and stop being a labels fan. Just because it doesn't have "Official Dungeons & Dragons Product" printed on a non-WotC d20 supplementary sourcebook, doesn't mean it can't be used with D&D.

 

[Banshee16]

Personally, complaining about WotC's direction is a waste of breath and bandwidth.

You want political roleplaying? Find a d20 publisher that will do it for you.

Besides, it would defeat the purpose of the OGL/d20 that WotC should only do main product while d20 publisher support with niche products.

Oh, and stop being a labels fan. Just because it doesn't have "Official Dungeons & Dragons Product" printed on a non-WotC d20 supplementary sourcebook, doesn't mean it can't be used with D&D.

I don't know if labels are even part of the discussion. Most of us know that there are several D20 publishers who are kicking WotC's behind with respect to originality and quality of supplements.

I saw the evolution to pure dungeon crawling back when 3E was first coming out, and thought it was a mistake then. My opinion hasn't changed. There are several books and settings that deal with this kind of thing. It's just unfortunate to see WotC venturing in the wrong direction.

Banshee

 

[Jdvn1]

I think they mean that D&D isn't built to handle political stuff. At least, not that much. It's combat-heavy system, a quick browse through our Rules forum makes that clear. This isn't true with some other systems.

 

[Steel_Wind]

From the publishers of Birthright. Interesting.

(Mind you, Birthright is consitently on the bottom of the rung for fan interest. Maybe they are right).

 

[Crothian]

I think they mean that D&D isn't built to handle political stuff. At least, not that much. It's combat-heavy system, a quick browse through our Rules forum makes that clear. This isn't true with some other systems.

I think it means that they've given up that it can handle politcal stuff. Ya, the system is cambat oriented but that does not make it not able to handle political studff. Heck, all they need to do is look at some of the third party books to see that it does do political stuff. Of course there is the chance the third party guys are better for D&D and makingt it more versatile then the Wizards guys are.

 

[Staffan]

From the publishers of Birthright. Interesting.

Wizards never published Birthright. They had a Birthright 2nd ed scheduled for the year after the takeover, but cancelled it.