Reply to thread

Message

<blockquote data-quote="Dausuul" data-source="post: 5320902" data-attributes="member: 58197">But that was a rules change. You don't need to kill all the assassins to satisfy the requirement that assassins be removed from the 2E rules! I find it very hard to believe that it was faster and cheaper to come up with the whole Bhaal-dies-and-kills-all-the-assassins story than it would have been to say, &quot;Assassin characters now use the thief rules.&quot;It's quite rare that metaplot is required to justify a rules change. You'll note that there was no Time of Troubles when Forgotten Realms went to 3E, even though the rules changes were far more drastic than the 1E/2E transition. The Spellplague was more about fixing perceived flaws* in the Realms than the conversion to 4E; if the 4E conversion were the only concern, it would have been sufficient to provide an origin story for dragonborn.Here's my question: What is the purpose of this effort? What does metaplot bring to the gaming table? I can see a few possible answers, but without having an answer it's impossible to say whether any given metaplot element is well executed, poorly executed but necessary, or a total waste.[size=-2]*Let's not get into whether the perceived flaws were actual flaws, or whether fixing them justified taking such drastic measures. That's a whole other can of worms.[/size]</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Dausuul, post: 5320902, member: 58197"] But that was a rules change. You don't need to kill all the assassins to satisfy the requirement that assassins be removed from the 2E rules! I find it very hard to believe that it was faster and cheaper to come up with the whole Bhaal-dies-and-kills-all-the-assassins story than it would have been to say, "Assassin characters now use the thief rules." It's quite rare that metaplot is required to justify a rules change. You'll note that there was no Time of Troubles when Forgotten Realms went to 3E, even though the rules changes were far more drastic than the 1E/2E transition. The Spellplague was more about fixing perceived flaws* in the Realms than the conversion to 4E; if the 4E conversion were the only concern, it would have been sufficient to provide an origin story for dragonborn. Here's my question: What is the purpose of this effort? What does metaplot bring to the gaming table? I can see a few possible answers, but without [i]having[/i] an answer it's impossible to say whether any given metaplot element is well executed, poorly executed but necessary, or a total waste. [size=-2]*Let's not get into whether the perceived flaws were actual flaws, or whether fixing them justified taking such drastic measures. That's a whole other can of worms.[/size] [/QUOTE]

Verification