D&D General [rant]The conservatism of D&D fans is exhausting.

[FrozenNorth]

In the last 20 odd pages I've been active in this thread I haven't seen anyone make this argument. If I'm misremembering I'd appreciate a citation.

You disagreed with @Hussar ’s statement that a group of gamers felt aggrieved because the character THAC0 the clown in « Beyond the Witchlight » and requested a citation.

@Hussar was probably referring to Mournblade’s post at 757, which I will not cite because he was booted from the thread for it (among other things).

 

[TiQuinn]

It also encouraged players to argue about every scrap of trash's inherent value. My players were notorious junk dealers, if I had pegged XP to GP, they would have sold each other repeatedly just to level!

We always dealt with that by whether something was "treasure" or not, which is something that modern OSR games like Shadowdark do well. Rather than selling off junk for GP to convert into XP, the items need to be legit treasure found, no different than you don't get XP for endlessly killing rats when you're a 10th level PC (another half-serious spitballing that we liked to do as players - how many rats could you kill with a single fireball, etc.)

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Of course some people had issues with THAC0, claiming otherwise is completely delusional, but Ascending AC isn't better, isn't worse, it is just different.

No.

This is flatly untrue. It's not even possible to argue. You're just asserting something that isn't true, but in a format that is popular - the old - "Oh it's not better it's just different...". Sorry, no. That applies when it applies and not when it doesn't.

The majority of people demonstrably and reliably had more issues with THAC0 than with BAB and ascending AC. It's a simple fact of the human brain that it's better at adding than subtracting. You can literally look it up (it's true on multiple levels as well - not only with numbers, but with objects and task and so on, humans always default prefer to add more, even when with some tasks it's a bad idea).

Calling people "completely delusional" about something they're factually, scientifically, demonstrably correct about is... uh... well it's a choice.

What's sad is "Not better, different" does apply, quite easily, to any given edition of D&D as a whole, because the differences are so multifarious. But this is just a simple way of doing a comparison, and there are objectively better and worse ways of doing simple things like that.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Meanwhile, I dislike the mechanic because most of the PCs I play with aren’t motivated by greed, so I don’t like how it incentivizes them to be greedy even in cases where they wouldn’t be otherwise.

That just tells me that a game that prominently features gold for XP simply isn't for you and your players. Nothing wrong with that, but nothing more than that.

 

[Micah Sweet]

That just isn’t the case. The thread in the enworld forum wasn’t prompted by anything.

D&D General Thread 'Thaco the angry clown... really?'

Oct 7, 2021

WotC has a new NPC in it's latest book, Witchlight.

Thaco the CN retired clown who doesn't want people touching his stuff and hates kids.

Very subtle. Like a brick through a window.

• DarkCrisis
• Replies: 482
• Forum: *Dungeons & Dragons

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In this thread, THAC0 the clown was brought up by @Micah Sweet who was definitely not using it as an insult.

More generally, in order to get the reference you pretty much had to have played 2nd edition., so it doesn’t make sense as an insult.

I wasn't the one that first brought it up, but the rest of what you say is accurate as far as I know.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

That just tells me that a game that prominently features gold for XP simply isn't for you and your players. Nothing wrong with that, but nothing more than that.

I think the real problem with XP = gold these days is that in 5E D&D gold just isn't that useful or interesting, so it all seems like a bit of a farce - like it doesn't even feel like greed for gold makes much sense - it can't do all that much for you. Whereas in 1E/2E and actually 3E and 4E as well, it really felt like it had some actual value, was something even powerful PCs might pursue. This is more vibes than anything else though I admit.

Also like, I think if we wanted to make gold give XP again, we'd probably want to like, rescale it so that it wasn't a 1:1 conversion, but like, diminishing returns, like maybe it starts at 1:1 but it declines. I'm not sure what the best way to do that would be. I have played 2E with XP = gold, note - it was fine - it was better than "only XP from killing monsters", that's for damn sure, for us.

 

[ezo]

No.

Yes. You have your opinion. I have mine. Shall we leave it at that or do you want to continue this pointless back-and-forth??

 

[The Firebird]

You disagreed with @Hussar ’s statement that a group of gamers felt aggrieved because the character THAC0 the clown in « Beyond the Witchlight » and requested a citation.

@Hussar was probably referring to Mournblade’s post at 757, which I will not cite because he was booted from the thread for it (among other things).

Thanks for the specifics. I don't think the point made in Hussar's post is accurate because of the claim "that is all it takes to make someone feel unwelcome in the hobby". The clown discussion, in my reading, considered it one of many factors contributing; not a particularly big one on its own, but representative in context.

Appreciate the citation.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I think the real problem with XP = gold these days is that in 5E D&D gold just isn't that useful or interesting, so it all seems like a bit of a farce - like it doesn't even feel like greed for gold makes much sense - it can't do all that much for you. Whereas in 1E/2E and actually 3E and 4E as well, it really felt like it had some actual value, was something even powerful PCs might pursue. This is more vibes than anything else though I admit.

Also like, I think if we wanted to make gold give XP again, we'd probably want to like, rescale it so that it wasn't a 1:1 conversion, but like, diminishing returns, like maybe it starts at 1:1 but it declines. I'm not sure what the best way to do that would be. I have played 2E with XP = gold, note - it was fine - it was better than "only XP from killing monsters", that's for damn sure, for us.

Sure, vanilla 5e and 5.5 don't use gold well, which is why they are not good systems for gold=XP. Make more uses for gold (as some variants on WotC 5e have done), and IMO that math changes. It also works just fine for other versions of D&D (not all of course) and D&D-style games, if wealth is a motivation for players. You can even expand that by allowing the mechanic to work for magic items sold but unused by the PCs once they get back to a market.

 

[James Gasik]

I never really though there was anything "silly" about it really because it works the same way.

"+" does not mean "add", it means improve. Plate mail armor is AC 3 (3rd armor class), so Plate mail armor +2 is improved by two classes... to AC 1, the 1st armor class.

So plus doesn't mean plus, but minus means minus! Perfectly clear!