Hi. I've noticed that a few people remember from when I used to post here about 6 months ago. Perhaps you're wondering what I've been up to and why I haven't posted so much as once.
The reason is that I did horribly that semester at college and since then have taken a cold-turkey stance towards D&D in order to get myself back to normal. It was drastic but had to be done. But enough of this personal stuff.
I think the biggest problem I had was overtweaking. You know, the obsessive compulsion not to create anew but to rework from the ground up. I've noticed that only about 10% of what comes out of this forum is actually original. The other 90% is obsessing over the smallest details, such as reworking the DMG's NPC classes or reworking the ranger class. Some of it is reworking stuff that's already been around a long time but is still somehow contraversial, like trying to work 2e weapon initiative rules back into 3e or all the off-hand parry feats (I just saw one with the subject line "New Feat"... it's not new, I saw dozens of them 6 months ago). We, as a forum community, generate this stuff in droves. I am not going to count, but I bet there's a good number of threads (not posts, threads) just on the 4 topics I described, and there are other oft-repeated thread topics besides those.
Now, I know I cannot stop you from posting an obsessive reworking of an already-been-done idea. Nor should I, even if I could... this is a forum and it's about free expression of ideas. So obviously this isn't about stopping it. It's about my chance to express my ideas, specifically the feeling I've had about all these sort of posts but haven't replied with because I realized it'd be so much better to take them on all at once in a new thread. And what I think is: Come on, we've worked this to death already. We have the basic framework, and small tweaks along the lines of which are typical discussed ad nauseum in these threads are best left unposted and contained within your own group; usually, these tweakings only reflect the particular tastes of the DM and really don't transfer well anyway.
The reason is that I did horribly that semester at college and since then have taken a cold-turkey stance towards D&D in order to get myself back to normal. It was drastic but had to be done. But enough of this personal stuff.
I think the biggest problem I had was overtweaking. You know, the obsessive compulsion not to create anew but to rework from the ground up. I've noticed that only about 10% of what comes out of this forum is actually original. The other 90% is obsessing over the smallest details, such as reworking the DMG's NPC classes or reworking the ranger class. Some of it is reworking stuff that's already been around a long time but is still somehow contraversial, like trying to work 2e weapon initiative rules back into 3e or all the off-hand parry feats (I just saw one with the subject line "New Feat"... it's not new, I saw dozens of them 6 months ago). We, as a forum community, generate this stuff in droves. I am not going to count, but I bet there's a good number of threads (not posts, threads) just on the 4 topics I described, and there are other oft-repeated thread topics besides those.
Now, I know I cannot stop you from posting an obsessive reworking of an already-been-done idea. Nor should I, even if I could... this is a forum and it's about free expression of ideas. So obviously this isn't about stopping it. It's about my chance to express my ideas, specifically the feeling I've had about all these sort of posts but haven't replied with because I realized it'd be so much better to take them on all at once in a new thread. And what I think is: Come on, we've worked this to death already. We have the basic framework, and small tweaks along the lines of which are typical discussed ad nauseum in these threads are best left unposted and contained within your own group; usually, these tweakings only reflect the particular tastes of the DM and really don't transfer well anyway.
