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Message: <blockquote data-quote="rounser" data-source="post: 246612" data-attributes="member: 1106">Indeed.  In fact, I'm thoroughly unsurprised that newbies to the game become god slayers because the published books naturally gravitate towards that.  It's easy to line up the gods for slaying because that's what the books provide - rules for escalating PC power, and funky high statted gods for them to fight.  That's one of the easiest ways to play D&D.Running fully featured D&D with depth, in Celebrim's style is a lot harder than plucking stats from the book - it requires preparation because the hardbacks don't naturally provide the resources for it without a heap of additional effort.  What we have here is essentially a chicken and egg problem - if TSR had replaced the 1E Deities and Demigods with a campaign book promoting the play style that Celebrim prefers, he may have found them doing that, instead.Path of least resistance and all that, y'know?To repost some thoughts on the topic originally mentioned on Nutkinland: I would like to see WotC provide resources for mastering levels 1-20 playing adventurers in your average setting before opening up whole new cans of worms such as the planes, epic levels, oriental adventures and deities. By emphasising ephemera , no wonder so many campaigns are boring, or self-destruct so quickly.For example: Instead of just providing a few chapters in the DMG with Monte Cook saying, "I think that this is how you construct a good campaign", publish examples of good campaigns for levels 1-20 so people can learn by example - or simply play the damn game without the DM preparation work overhead. And, if possible, it would be good if quality and page count weren't compromised in the process.Megadungeons (RttToEE) and serial railroads (Adventure Path series) do not count - DMs don't learn anything from these exercises except that Too Much Dungeon For Way Too Long Makes Johnny's Campaign A Dull One, and that if there's an alternative to railroading, it's mostly theoretical (and probably unofficial).  I'll be surprised the upcoming drow book improves this situation.Instead, we go straight to dessert, and DMs who can't make a village full of compelling NPCs to save themselves waste their time mapping multiverses full of planes their PCs will never visit, statting out custom ninja gods that their players will never interact with, and making epic level NPCs like Elminster to prove how uber-eleet their worlds are with their new hardbacks. In other words, they encourage ephemera in a game where the first rule of Dungeoncraft is already ignored enough. The game itself suffers from this publishing policy, because it confuses newbies and tempts experienced DMs to waste their time on trivia rather than focusing on the building blocks of a good campaign. There are very legitimate uses for epic levels, oriental adventures and manual of the planes, and 3E may be "all about options", but the net is cast too wide, there is too much attention on the macro rather than the micro, and instead of throwing lifesavers to DMs, WotC is handing the unwise ropes to hang themselves with.Dancey thinks he coined why TSR caused the decline in popularity of AD&D in the 90s, but I have another theory - too many products that don't improve the quality of the game where the rubber meets the road.  Often, crunchy rules bits alone will not do this, nor will setting detail - but paradoxically they sell best of all!So in some ways, I think gamers deserve what they are given by the market research-based decisions. In the end, though, I think it's somewhat like a child asking for candy - give them the cool stuff they crave, and you'll please them, but it won't do their games much good. And when that happens, D&D's popularity declines, because a lot of people just aren't running decent games.I'm probably way off base in at least one way, and I'm not having a go to people who fully exploit these hardbacks - hats off if you do. It's just what I suspect - I don't begrudge those who want to run a campaign beyond level 20, just some of the implications that I think that the current WotC publishing policy has for the game.</blockquote>

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