Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 6031315" data-attributes="member: 27780">Dragon Issue 295: May 2002part 3/10Up onna soapbox (wouldya like fries with that luv?): Co-incidence is a funny thing. You make a path intentionally difficult to discover and follow, and then suddenly, three different characters independently discover it. Goes to show, people love a challenge, and often, all it'll take is a tiny hint to have them chase it down way beyond the point of common sense. It also reminds me of the pleasure of putting down a puzzle in your game without creating a solution, just to see what the players'll try to get to the bottom of it, or remove the obstacle from their path. So Gary's contribution this month reminds us how differently he used to play the game, with a loose pool of players that all played in the same dungeon, but not always in the same parties, rather than a fixed set of people who turned up each time, except when sick or whatever. He got to see how multiple people handled the same challenge, which you can't say for most DM's, and almost definitely helped when tweaking the rules in response to playtesting. On the other hand, he didn't know how people were going to use D&D once it was taken away and played in thousands of homes around the world. I guess that this once again proves it's the bits that surprise everyone that get remembered the most, and that's one of the big reasons we roleplay in the first place. As soon as everything goes according to plan the whole time, it's not an adventure, it's normal life. Zogonia tries to figure out the most efficient scouting policy. It still involves the substantial risk of horrible death. Epic level countdown: The teaser on epic magic items and spells really hammers in that it's going to be mostly just lower level play, but with bigger numbers. Sure a +20 bonus to something rather than a +5 one is nice and all, but it's not exactly mind-blowing or game changing in the way adding teleportation or the ability to breathe in space is to your game. The new spell system is slightly more impressive, but it's still vastly less so than either version of Mage or ARS Magica, and your ability to construct spells to spec instead of relying on a list in those. Still, at least you don't have to worry about paradox here, just your ability to twink out your spellcraft rating to hit those hundred+ DC's. You don't get people not believing in monsters that often in D&D universes. Still, this is a good reminder that the game changed more between boxed sets back in the days of BECMI than it does between epic and regular levels in 3e. That's a bit disappointing given how hard they're working to sell it here. Dork tower finds that perfection is short-lived. Everything must change, often for the worse.</blockquote>

Verification