Savage Species- is there something wrong with me!?

[WizarDru]

Point two, the Magic syndrome. Magic the Gathering started off as a really well designed game. Over the years in order to make more money WOTC started selling sucessive lines of new and more powerful Magic cards. After enough new lines of cards the game became less about skill and more about whoever was willing to blow $3000 on a collection. In essence, as a system the game lost its balance. Granted you could always argue with that person who had spent all that money on all those cards not to use certain cards but they had a clear incentive to be stubborn about things. The game is now a shadow of what it used to be. I see a similar trend with 3rd edition D&D. Maybe Savage Species isn't the culprit but there is definitely an escalation in power. All you need to do is put a 1st edition fighter up against a 2nd edition fighter up against a 3rd edition fighter. Hands down the 3rd edition fighter will win. Is edition 3.5 going to take this yet one step farther? Is there a point where you draw the line or should we all start playing god characters? I think there is at least a certain subset of D&D players that want to see a game world that is willing to preserve the balance more.

Well, for starters, Magic was ALWAYS about buying the most cards. I bought one of the very first starter decks, and now some folks who helped playtest it, back in the day. The term 'Mr. Suitcase' was referenced in the very first issue of the Duelist. The fact of the matter was, the rare cards were universally better, and he who had four Royal Assasins and two Mox Onyxs was going to do better than a guy with regular mountains and four Hurloon Minotaurs. It wasn't a guarantee of victory, but it was a COLLECTIBLE trading card game. It seems unfair to accuse WotC of ruining the game by constantly introducing new material...though it is fair to accuse them of not sticking to their own guidelines. The very first expansion invalidated some cards in the main game...why bother using a merfolk when you can use a man on a flying carpet? Sure, they addressed that later, but it was a bad call from the get-go.

I'm not sure what your comparison of a fighter in different versions is meant to express. Can a 3E fighter kill more kobolds in his system than a 1E fighter could in his? What quantitative analysis are we using to gauge the perceived increase in power? Surely not hit points, as the inflation of same invalidates a 1:1 comparison between editions. The same applies to many factors for comparison...without applying the whole ruleset in the equation, it's a comparison that doesn't hold much meaning, IMHO.

I find it amusing that you (and others) seem to assign the idea of better role-playing opportunities under 1e. I recall twenty-years ago that no one accepted that as the case, in my circle of friends. AD&D was about killing things and taking their stuff, and the non-combat interraction was purely the invention of the DM, and was as much or as little as that DM was capable of. A quick review of many of the 'classic' modules shows that role-playing wasn't a priority, or even emphasized. Look at the 'G' series, for example: it's almost pure battle, with little explanation of anything but monsters and loot, with the general idea that 'giants were made for killing' is your motivation. 3E offers the greatest incentive within the system to roleplay, IMHO, with it's various skills and discussion of the use of such topics within the actual PHB and DMG, as opposed to the 'roll on a table and see what happens' approach of 1e.

Finally, the game has become more about playing a half-dragon/half-troll wizard/dragon disciple/archmage/psionic adept than it is about roleplaying. Its become all about what the characters get and the mechanics of how they advance, than playing a three-dimensional character and telling a story. I am sure not everyone is this way, but I just haven't seen as much quality of roleplaying being produced by many third edition players.

It's certainly not true of my experience, and I can assure you that people playing such types of characters isn't a new thing, either. I remember playing in a game in 1987 with a player who was a young Silver dragon, another was a doppelganger, and another who had an powerful artifact of his people [by contrast, I could juggle. Seriously. ]

The play style you're describing is neither new nor is it indemic to 3E. Some enjoy it, even if I don't, so much. But if you think that there weren't players under 1e that didn't play the game just so they could get Meteor Swarm and the Staff of the Archmagi, then you're mistaken. Some people just enjoy the game in a style closer to the wargame it once was, as opposed to the rpg that it's become. Savage Species certainly has nothing to do with any of that. SS is purely a toolkit, and a balanced one, at that.

As an aside, what's wrong with wanting to have cool powers and do amazing, cinematic things? I don't know about you, but I enjoy playing a character with magic powers, who can stun with a sound and fell three enemies with one strike. That's high adventure, in my book.

 

[hong]

Okay, I'm going to tone down the rhetoric and make a couple points. All these new races, prestige classes, etc. aren't so horrible in and of themselves. Of course as DM I can chose not to use them. But the direction the industry is heading in I am seeing more and more of them in modules and other DM resources incorporate them. I buy modules to save time... but when I start having to make all sort of modifications to modules just to use them, they lose that value for me.

Utter nonsense. Look in Dungeon or any of the published modules that have been published since 3E's release. If you find more than a handful that actually use any of the six million third-party races and PrCs around, I'll be surprised. _Nobody_ ever uses these frills (except for the people who created them), for two reasons:

- A lot of the time, it's not open content, so you're not allowed anyway.

- It doesn't make sense to include something that you don't know will be available to your audience. Any time you make a reference to the Fungi Hunters of Doom that appeared in Pink Ronin's Shrooms and Shysters sourcebook, you're gambling that people will actually have bought Shrooms and Shysters, and think highly enough of Fungi Hunters to use them in a campaign. This applies just as much to WotC material outside the core rulebooks; I recall seeing exactly two Epic-level adventures since the ELH came out.

This scaremongering canard gets trotted out time and again, and I'm still to see any actual evidence to support it.

Point two, the Magic syndrome. Magic the Gathering started off as a really well designed game. Over the years in order to make more money WOTC started selling sucessive lines of new and more powerful Magic cards. After enough new lines of cards the game became less about skill and more about whoever was willing to blow $3000 on a collection. In essence, as a system the game lost its balance. Granted you could always argue with that person who had spent all that money on all those cards not to use certain cards but they had a clear incentive to be stubborn about things. The game is now a shadow of what it used to be.

I might care, if 1) I played Tragic: the Gathering; 2) D&D was about the DM competing against the players; 3) I was stupid enough to allow open slather in games that I DM.

I see a similar trend with 3rd edition D&D. Maybe Savage Species isn't the culprit but there is definitely an escalation in power. All you need to do is put a 1st edition fighter up against a 2nd edition fighter up against a 3rd edition fighter. Hands down the 3rd edition fighter will win.

And if I put that 3rd ed fighter up against a 1000 pt GURPS Supers character, the GURPS Supers character will (probably) win. Your example is similarly pointless, unless you like indulging in the rather surreal exercise of mixing characters from different editions in your campaign.

Is edition 3.5 going to take this yet one step farther? Is there a point where you draw the line or should we all start playing god characters?

Thin end of the wedge arguments imply that nothing is wrong, since if something _was_ wrong, you'd be pointing to it as opposed to a nebulous thing that might never come to pass.

I think there is at least a certain subset of D&D players that want to see a game world that is willing to preserve the balance more.

What, you mean like myself?

Finally, the game has become more about playing a half-dragon/half-troll wizard/dragon disciple/archmage/psionic adept than it is about roleplaying.

The Dragonsfoot grognards do this better than you.

Its become all about what the characters get and the mechanics of how they advance, than playing a three-dimensional character and telling a story.

Tell me again why what you think is so important is something I should give a damn about.

I am sure not everyone is this way, but I just haven't seen as much quality of roleplaying being produced by many third edition players.

Then you haven't been looking hard enough. I recommend doing that, instead of yelling dire warnings about the Fungi Hunters of Doom.

 

[Sholari]

Then you haven't been looking hard enough. I recommend doing that, instead of yelling dire warnings about the Fungi Hunters of Doom.

You have no idea what you are talking about there. I have indeed had to look _very_ hard for a group that I liked since having to move for my job and have only managed to do that 5 months ago. After 20 years of gaming that was quite a new experience for me. At first I tried just playing as a regular player. The first group by third level had a million gold pieces and a pet blue dragon. I couldn't leave that group fast enough! The second group I tried was run by a DM without a lot of experience because no one wanted to have to DM. It degenerated into mindless hack-n-slash and after a couple sessions it lost its point. So I did not stay long with that group either, because it seems that everyone was just fine with hack-n-slash as long as their characters advanced in level and they loads of magic treasure.

As a result I decided I'd go back to being a DM and just try to clear room in my schedule for it. The first group of players was a group their DM had left because it took too much time away from his family (or so they told me). I got really tired of the constant rules lawyering and push for peoples characters to advance at a faster rate or having to constantly say "no" to a different prestige class every month. I told these guys flat out that it just wasn't very enjoyable to be the DM for their group and I would be leaving the group. Apparently, the fellow after me felt the same way because their advertisement is out again at the local gaming store. I tried another group and this one wasn't as bad but they really could care less about story and would try to solve all things through combat. This second group was a nice group of people, but our interests in gaming didn't really align and again I decided to leave this group.

I finally had to get to the point of telephone interview potential players to look for people that were into the storytelling aspects of the game as well as the mechanics. (I still find it ridiculous that I had to go to this length). After finding another group for one of the players, I now have a group that can play three-dimensional characters and are not so concerned about how powerful their characters are. It has been a lot of fun DMing this group for several months now. However, if I have to move again for some reason... I just do not not if I want to go through all of this just to find a gaming group.

Now you could make the case that maybe I'm a real jerk or that I just do not know how to run a game. But honestly, most people consider me a really nice guy and a lot of my old gaming buddies look back at my games with a lot of nostalgia. My campaigns would typically run 3 or 4 years, and the players generally really enjoyed them. They still bring up certain things that happened in adventures that I do not even remember.

You could also make the case that my experience is an isolated one. I have seen a few posts from other DMs who aren't happy about certain aspects of the game. I have also had two close friends (also former DMs) leave roleplaying entirely since 3rd edition, because they are not happy with the direction the industry is headed in and the lack of quality players.

Finally, you could make the case that it is not 3rd edition but something else entirely that could be the problem. Who knows you could be right? Unlike some people that have left gaming entirely, I've tried to point out what I think to be the problems in a couple posts here. I am not a champion debater but as a consumer of roleplaying products I am just not happy with where things are headed.

With that said, I welcome all the witty sarcasm and invalidations of my opinion that people can muster. Times change... and at this point I really do not care anymore.

 

[ColonelHardisson]

Y'know, in the nearly 25 years now that I've been involved with gaming, I've found that whether or not a player or group of players engage in roleplaying-intensive campaigns as opposed to simply playing maxed-out ubercharacters depends almost entirely on the players themselves, not the game. While I'm sure 3e attracted a number of new gamers from the ranks of video and card game players, I'm also sure that they are simply a subset of the larger population of gamers. Maybe there are those who are playing half-dragon/half-celestial/yuan-ti barbarians, but believe me, there were plenty of similar PCs back in the late 70s/early 80s, no matter what some old grognards would have you believe (and hell, I am an old grognard). Maybe the game mechanics were different, or non-existent, for such characters, but I saw plenty of people come up with equally bizarre backgrounds for their characters. The experience of gaming was new for most of us back then, and we delighted in goofing around with the possibilities presented, or creating our own. Plus, power inflation hit hard, with house rules and incorrect interpretations of the rules ("let's see, you all got 8 million xp to share; I think most of you go up 15 levels or so" "Cool!") ramping up the power with each session. So when did that end? It probably took 5+ years or more for the group I gamed with back then - we were in our late teens by then. The point is, if there are similar powergaming groups out there now, they still have a way to go to get it out of their system. It's fun to game like that for a while, but eventually everything will settle down into more roleplay-intensive campaigns. I think a lot of people, especially many long-time or older gamers, are simply forgetting this aspect of our own RPG history.

 

[WizarDru]

You have no idea what you are talking about there. I have indeed had to look _very_ hard for a group that I liked since having to move for my job and have only managed to do that 5 months ago. After 20 years of gaming that was quite a new experience for me.

That's all well and good, but that's not really indicative of anything, other than that you're having a really crappy time finding a compatable bunch to play with. That's really nothing to do with Savage Species, D&D 3E, or the current state of games. These same folks existed twenty years ago, too. Perhaps you were lucky enough to have never run into gamers who you weren't compatible with, but I've had gamed with a pretty wide base, and nothing you cite here is new. It's unfortunate, but it's not indemic of the current gaming scene. Its always been there. It may just be more noticable since there are so many gamers who have returned to the fold since 3E. I ran into players who had a Staff of the Archmagi at 4th level a decade before M:tG was a glint in Richard Garfield's eye.

My recommendation is to either try and create new gamers from non-gamers, or to try some online options.

 

[Piratecat]

In my experience, Wizardru is correct. We powergamed WAY more in 1st edition than we do in 3e; it has a whole lot to do with the maturity level and playing style of our group, and very little to do with the edition. I've still got a copy of my 1e PC Randimar the Manyhanded, who helped kill two green dragons in three rounds - at 6th level. Another one of my 1e PCs had his own pet blue dragon. Sound familiar?

I see people blaming playing style on rules, and that strikes me as an understandable error. It's always easier to blame a rules system than a player's style. I've found that the rules are a tool; you can use them to play whatever style game you want. Just because some people want to play super-powerful characters doesn't mean that there's an endemic problem with power escalation. On the contrary, I think rules supplements have stayed remarkably well balanced.

Sholari, where do you live?

*Putting on Admin hat* Pay attention to Henry's warning, folks. Don't make us pull out our cute animal pictures to restore peace.

 

[magnas_veritas]

First of, I dont have SS... yet.

But a question for those who do:
Does SS have a height/weight/age table for all the races it details, or even some of them. Or should i just BS how long my half-ogre has to live(his natural lifetime, that is)?

Nope, I wish. Heck, we had to houserule that my tiefling character aged like a half-elf.

The problem would be that you'd have to do age categories for every single monster, if every monster can be a character. You also have to decide if the monster who doesn't physically age (say, the awakened construct) gets smarter and more charismatic the older it gets.

It'd be a nifty web enhancement, though.

Brad

 

[Elemental]

Yeah, this is a boon to a certain kind of munchkin -- not the strict power-gamer, but the sort of person who plays a character just for cool weirdness factor, without respect for versimilitude. You know, the Half-Dragon Kua-Toan Monk/Rogue/Assassin/Deepwood Sniper ("Character background? ... He got kicked out of his pond. And Seeks Revenge.")... Even if that's balanced, how do you DM for a creature (or party of creatures) that makes so little sense?

Finally, the game has become more about playing a half-dragon/half-troll wizard/dragon disciple/archmage/psionic adept than it is about roleplaying. Its become all about what the characters get and the mechanics of how they advance, than playing a three-dimensional character and telling a story. I am sure not everyone is this way, but I just haven't seen as much quality of roleplaying being produced by many third edition players.

"Hey, can I play a Half-Dragon Kua-Toan Monk/Rogue/Assassin/Deepwood Sniper?"

"Hey, can I play a half-dragon/half-troll wizard/dragon disciple/archmage/psionic adept?"

"No. PHB races only."

Seems simple enough to me.

 

[Voneth]

I find it amusing that you (and others) seem to assign the idea of better role-playing opportunities under 1e. I recall twenty-years ago that no one accepted that as the case, in my circle of friends. AD&D was about killing things and taking their stuff, and the non-combat interraction was purely the invention of the DM, and was as much or as little as that DM was capable of. A quick review of many of the 'classic' modules shows that role-playing wasn't a priority, or even emphasized. Look at the 'G' series, for example: it's almost pure battle, with little explanation of anything but monsters and loot, with the general idea that 'giants were made for killing' is your motivation. [/B]

You don't have to use your memory, just read Gary Gygax's opinions about "story based" games and his memories of the first years of D&D. He pretty much said that in that in the day, dugeon delving was the most popular aspect of the game and that he catered to his customers. The reasons there is no "explanation" of why beholders and vampires were roommates in dugeons is frankly, G.G. didn't care about the "ecology" or "story."

He was designing a game of puzzles and combat for fun. He spun the game off a wargame, for goodness sakes! It was one of the reasons why the whole "satanic" panic irked him. It wasn't because it was just a "role-playing" game, it was becasue it was just a game. He probably would have felt the same way if he had designed a Gettsyburg wargame and he suddenly had the KKK and the Black Pathers duking it out in his front yard. In his opinion, the whole "story" element in D&D is overblown and is an excuse to metagame away restrictions that he put in the game to keep it balanced. As compared to just out and out ignoring the rules.

Play DnD how you want, but to say that the early editions were specificly designed to be "role playing" heavy is an uninformed opinion.

I have indeed had to look _very_ hard for a group that I liked since having to move for my job and have only managed to do that 5 months ago. After 20 years of gaming that was quite a new experience for me.

I can sympathize. I once moved to a town that was a nightmare for rpgers. The one group I did find pretty much dissolved once the Diablo computer game came out. The computer game pretty much gave them exactly what they were looking for in a game, they got tired of me trying to drag out all those "boring" parts that involved their PCs familes and such. That and I kept ticking them off for refusing to run AD&D. Why should I run such a game, I was "story" based GM and AD&D was all about combat, don't you know. XP for gold, never again.