RPG/D&D terms and phrases that are no longer clever or amusing.

[CyberSpyder]

Big Bad, when used outside a Buffy context, annoys the @#$#^%@ piss out of me. I don't like Buffy, I don't like cutesy Buffy talk, and I certainly don't want to hear about the Big Bad in a Forgotten Realms module. It's not even a proper use of the (inspid) term, which self-consciously refers to the serial nature of the clash between good and evil on the show.

Er, I'm pretty sure 'Big Bad' as a phrase predates that particular television show. Case in point, the famed Big Bad Wolf.

 

[Corinth]

Outdoors adventuring doesn't have to be overland travel. An adventure can be exploring a new area, survival, or investigating activities. Adventures old (X1) and New (Standing Stones) use this as a major element.

Those adventures become a matrix of sites, wherein the PCs bounce back and forth until they piece together everything and resolve the adventure's hook; in this case, travel between sites again becomes that which gets glossed over unless there's an encounter. This gets worse at high levels.

Those rules are used by you as speed bumps. Not everyone shares your approach to their use. If that's how you like to play, more power to you, but I think it is a mistake to force everyone into one playstyle.

Until I got online, I never heard of anyone regarding them as anything but speed bumps. Since then, very few people speak to the contrary. It's not like I didn't go asking around either; travel is regarded as a boring waste of time--downtime--because there's nothing happening and that's the opinion of every gamer I've met face-to-face for the last 20 years. At this point, I must regard this as the majority opinion because your position--the contrary one--is so uncommon as to be remarkable.

Your observation about how the game is run is hardly universal. In various published and homebrew adventures, the placement of outdoor encounters is often planned and deliberate, and various monters books have not skimped on monstrous encounters that are only appropraite outdoors. The staple MM included.

My extensive experience--mirrored by the overwhelming majority of gamers that I've met over my lifetime in the hobby--says otherwise. After 20 years with so little contradiction, I must say that you're wrong: it's universal.

Again, you presume to speak for everyone and pidgeonhole them into your playstyle. Further, you still seem to conflate the outdoor elements with "travel". They need not be the same thing! The whole adventure or significant parts of it can occur outdoors.

Because, by and large, they are the same. There's the Home Base (whatever that is) where the PCs are safe, the Adventure Site where the gameplay goes does and Everything Else--travel--which gets glossed over because nothing's happening and thus is damned boring. While outdoor sites exist, they often are little more than above-ground dungeons and possess most of the same characteristics as their underground counterparts.

The problem here is the presumption that this particular ability needs to be universally useful. It doesn't. Again, it's okay to have abilities that are only useful in certain situations. If it's only that useful, the rest of the paladin's abilities should be strong enough that on average, the paladin is a competant member of the party (and in 3.0, I have never failed to beleive that they are, based on direct observation of a paladin in the game that was progressed into the high teen levels.) Morphing the ability so it belies the basic concept of the paladin in order to make the ability universally meaningfully is a mistake AFAIAC. It's putting the cart before the horse. Concept should drive the rules, not vice versa.

No, it's not. The basic classes of the core rulebooks are suppossed to be as close to universally applicable as possible, which means that their class abilities must also be meet that standard. That's what all of the bitching regarding the 3.0 paladin mount was about; it needed to be more useful than it was, and thankfully this was fixed to make it so.

No such thing happened. Unlike 3.0, 3.5 was not based on massive playtesting.

Correct; it was based on massive user feedback from millions of hours of actual play.

Fair enough, but my contention it does not make the game better. It limits the scope of the game, which is inherently less variety. Which is generally a bad thing. You are not the only one who plays the game. It's all well and good that you feel you are served well by this change, but there are a significant members of the D&D playing audience for whom the dungeon is not the end-all be-all of adventuring and such a change is not worth conceptually distorting the paladin.

If the majority of D&D players wanted it to be as it is now--and they did--then they're the ones that get served. That majority knows where the heart and soul of D&D gameplay is--the dungeon--and they wanted the game to better reflect it in the core rules; WOTC heard and obeyed, because they know where their bread's buttered. Those like you--those that aren't part of that majority--are supposed to find your fix amidst the orbiting circle of third-party publishers that can afford to cater to minority tastes.

The rules should serve the game, not vice versa.

Then organize some like-minded people, get out there and change the minds of the majority to support your way of playing the game. This is a political issue at its heart, and you're not going to get that change reversed unless you're willing to do what it takes to convince a critical mass of the core D&D audience to see things your way (and thereby convince WOTC to do likewise). Until then you're stuck with house rules and third-party product support.

 

[Krieg]

Edit----

After reading through the rest of the thread I see that Psion (Bravo!) has already pretty much covered all the points I was planning on making!

I've also come to realize the discussion has turned into little more than a defense of WoTC for propogating the "right" way to play D&D.

No thanks.

 

[rounser]

Those adventures become a matrix of sites, wherein the PCs bounce back and forth until they piece together everything and resolve the adventure's hook; in this case, travel between sites again becomes that which gets glossed over unless there's an encounter. This gets worse at high levels.

I can suggest a simple cure for this mindset:
1) Hex map your wilderness, at a small scale (e.g. 4 miles to a hex, or 1 mile to a hex, as I did with the Korinn Archipelago because many of the smaller islands were that or less).
2) Number your hexes.
3) Think of the wilderness as one big dungeon, and detail it with exciting and mundane detail alike...from dryad's trees, to magical streams, to hills covered in plant hazards, to small lairs for giant insects or a barrow of wights, to manors and abandoned farmhouses, to an oddly shaped lookout rock.

This sort of approach might even make the ranger and druid classes be actively missed if they're not present. Who knows - if you used enough imagination, I'm sure you could even make certain parts of the wilderness suitable purely for high level play, too...

 

[BryonD]

I've also come to realize the discussion has turned into little more than a defense of WoTC for propogating the "right" way to play D&D.

No thanks.

If "propogating the 'right' way" is an unusual jargon for "supporting the 'most popular' way", then I'd call that a fair assessment.

 

[Aeolius]

Think of the wilderness as one big dungeon, and detail it with exciting and mundane detail alike...from dryad's trees, to magical streams, to hills covered in plant hazards, to small lairs for giant insects or a barrow of wights, to manors and abandoned farmhouses, to an oddly shaped lookout rock.

That's my approach, as well. My campaign is set beneath the surface of the sea. The adventuring party is just as likely to explore a reef, kelp forest, or a sprawling expanse of sea grass as they are to investigate a sunken temple, shipwreck, or debris field.

 

[Brennin Magalus]

If the majority of D&D players wanted [the paladin's mount] to be as it is now--and they did--then they're the ones that get served. That majority knows where the heart and soul of D&D gameplay is--the dungeon--and they wanted the game to better reflect it in the core rules; WOTC heard and obeyed, because they know where their bread's buttered. Those like you--those that aren't part of that majority--are supposed to find your fix amidst the orbiting circle of third-party publishers that can afford to cater to minority tastes.

Then organize some like-minded people, get out there and change the minds of the majority to support your way of playing the game. This is a political issue at its heart, and you're not going to get that change reversed unless you're willing to do what it takes to convince a critical mass of the core D&D audience to see things your way (and thereby convince WOTC to do likewise). Until then you're stuck with house rules and third-party product support.

The majority according to whom?

 

[WizarDru]

Presumably according to dollars spent and WotC marketing research.

I find certain terms becoming tired in their use, such as "fluff" and "crunch" because they often degenerate into shorthand for something else. "Munchkin" is a classic example of this, and this can be a problem when everyone starts thinking it's shorthand for differing things. More, I dislike terms that factionalize or marginalize gamers or sections of the game. Terms like '3-tard' for example, are just insulting, at the least.

 

[Orius]

Vancian magic. I don't use it to show how smart I am. I use it because it's the simplest way to refer to the "fire-and-forget" (a term I'm tired of) magic system that D&D uses. Vance is listed as an inspiration for D&D and it's commonly acknowledged that the magic system came from his works. Objecting to "Vancian magic" is as silly as objecting to "Newtonian physics", "Jungian psychology", or "Keynesian economics".

I'd agree. There's several different ways of hadnling magic in fantasy games, and the D&D system is just one. "Vancian" I think is a fairly good tern for it, because that's where the idea came from.

Although from what I've read, the original Vancian wizards were totally nerfed compared to broken munchkin D&D uber-mages.

 

[mxmarkargent]

I don't like books coming out with their own little "catchword." Examples: (references to ELH and BoVD)

There are legitimate rules-based reasons for descriptors, though -- among other things, bonuses require descriptors to determine stacking, and under 3.5, DR is bypassed by descriptor (eg 15/epic or 15/vile rather than 15/+5) rather than bonus. Those are just two examples off the top of my head.

Things that need to die quietly:

<ul>
<li> "T$R" -- from the same great wits that brought you "Micro$loth Winblow$" and "Macincrap"
<li> "it's called <i>role</i>playing, not <i>roll</i>playing" -- puns are in fact the lowest form of humor
<li> "pretentious" used to describe any style of play that doesn't involve hitting things and pushing around tin soldiers on a vinyl grid
<li> "hack & slash" used to describe any style of play that doesn't allow for waxing shakespearean/schwarzeneggarian/montypythonical all session long
<li> the phrase "politically correct" when used to denigrate attempts to be more inclusive of people who are not white or male (eg "the use of the female pronoun in this book is just a lame attempt at being <i>politically correct</i>")
<li> "dungeonpunk" and for that matter, the word "punk" as a suffix -- it's as horrid as saying that something has "attitude"
<li> negative comparisons of 3e to CRPGs -- when did characters that gain customizeable special abilities as they increase in power suddenly become a bad thing?
<li> the phrase "politically incorrect" when used to excuse one's own jackassery (eg "I speak my mind, I'm <i>politically incorrect</i>")
<li> the image of WoTC and White Wolf as being run by "money-grubbing suits" -- there are few people in the industry who would not benefit, salary-wise, from a career change to something more stable, such as pizza delivery, and although you might not like what they produce, they're all doing it for love of the game
<li> good-aligned drow -- enough already.
</ul>