Sean Reynolds' new company press release

[Nightfall]

Mike,

Any chance we can get a little "tidbit" before BoIM comes out? (less than 24 hours anyway...)

 

[Shemeska]

Hmm, to be honest I'm willing to give him the benefit of the doubt on his company's products. In the end, if a book looks good and I'll use it or plunder it for ideas I'll buy it.

Sure SKR sincerely pissed me off with his hand in the changes to the FR cosmology in 3e. Sure I think it was an utterly boneheaded decision. And yes I find his political opinions to be both extreme, reactionary, and oftentimes misinformed. However my point about his company's books still stands. The man might personally get under my skin for previous decisions (though alot of his work I've liked otherwise) and for his politics, but I'll buy a good book if it's a good book.

Somewhere in there I'm sure there's a backhanded compliment for Sean if you look.

 

[SteveC]

But sneak attack -damage in d20 is not just extra damage. It's extra damage dependant on the skill of the attacker and the vulnerabilities of the attacked. By design. This is a basic d20 premise which the designers should know and take into account.

IMHO, the people who think of sneak attack as just extra damage do not fully understand the game mechanics and rules justification behind it. A designer should.

Be careful when you paint with a broad brush! In 3.5 a ranger gets a bonus to damage versus any enemy he chooses: undead, constructs, elementals, you name it. That bonus comes from his training and understanding of how and where to strike those creatures. So are you saying that WotC doesn't understand this premise?

Now I don't have Libris Mortis, so I don't know if this is a balanced feat or not. It does seem silly to me to write off an option based purely on an opinion of what the physical nature of an undead creature's anatomy is. I've seen Shaun of the Dead,* The Mummy and all of the Evil Dead movies, so I think I can say that undead creatures do have more vulnerable parts, just not parts that are immediately obvious. Heck, from watching Lord of the Rings, it seems like even wraiths have vulnerable spots...

I have Blood and Brains, which has a section detailing critical hit rules for the undead, and that is an excellent book, which understands the underlying principles of D20 design pretty darn well.

* Oh and you should too! It's brilliant.

 

[seankreynolds]

Let me point out that in the recent "Morrus rant" thread, I'm the guy who said that ENworld visitors are among the best-informed gamers out there.

Unfortunately, ENworlders aren't the entire gaming population, or even a simple majority. There are people out there who assume that if it's in a printed book, it must be good.

I did not intend any insult to gamers. There's a LOT going on behind the scenes in the d20 rules, and many people don't care enough to learn all (or even any) of that. I know what I do because I was there when they were working on 3E D&D, I participated in discussions and argued points with Jonathan Tweet, whose desk was right next to mine. I'm trying to use my knowledge and experience to help people understand the game better so they can make their games better. If you disagree with my assessment of how something should work, that's fine (I certainly have my reasons for my opinions about the rules, but you're still fully within your rights to disagree about how you want to run your game or what materials you want to use in it and why). And if you choose to not buy anything by me because of my policital leanings, atheism/agnosticism, left-handedness, vegetarianism, or my ideas on what is "right" for core d20 design, you of course have that right, too.

If you already understand the game very well, you don't need the small parts of my products that explain certain things to you. Good for you! Enjoy the rest of the book, or don't buy it.

Nobody is dumb here. Ignorance does not equal stupidity. Pointing out someone's ignorance isn't mean-spirited. Telling someone they're about to walk into an open manhole is the right thing to do. Maybe they know they're about to take that long step and are already planning on jumping over it. Maybe they want to walk around underground for a while. Maybe they're about to stop walking. But it doesn't mean that pointing out the hole is there is mean or insulting.

Folks, I had a really bad day today, capped off with a public altercation with a stranger that left me feeling very depressed. Yes, I'm blunt, but I don't make a point of insulting people for not knowing something. Please don't ascribe cruel motives to what I've said; that's not my motivation at all. Honestly, I want people to be able to pick good game products and know why they perceive them to be good; that helps gamers, helps games, and helps game companies by removing competitions for valuable shelf space.

 

[Vigilance]

Vampire is sort of an exception with one vital spot that can be harmed with a specific weapon type. However, a vampire is immune to attacks targeting liver, spleen, brains, tendons, etc... Enough so that the general undead immunity to sneak attacks in d20 system is not negated.


But sneak attack -damage in d20 is not just extra damage. It's extra damage dependant on the skill of the attacker and the vulnerabilities of the attacked. By design. This is a basic d20 premise which the designers should know and take into account.

Uh-huh, and in a lot of genres Zombies can only be killed by having their brains destroyed. There's two undead with a "vulnerable" spot.

Also, many undead are vulnerable to certain materials and weapons made out of that material. Sneak attack could be tied to such materials, allowing a properly equipped character to treat an undead as a living opponent.

In short, there are justifications for such an ability that make sense, and using doesn't mean you don't understand the intricacies of the d20 system.

And liking it doesn't mean you need SKR to save you either

Chuck

 

[Vigilance]

I did not intend any insult to gamers.

Sean, I thought it was a brilliant press release, you can't deny it has people talking

Chuck

 

[Jeremy E Grenemyer]

Sean was an opinionated, angry young man when he was TSR's webmaster.

That's funny...I don't remember Sean being "angry" back then, much less grumpy later on.

Do you know him personally?

 

[rounser]

Remember the Mystic Theurge discussions on this board?

Mystic Theurge was bad design, but not necessarily in the way you're intimating - it was the a class with no archetype, a patch to a flaw in the system, masquerading as a role - slapping an arbitrary name and a meaninglessly generic "role" description on what's really a dual class. That was primarily why it was (and is) bad design IMO, it's putting the cart before the horse....similar to the sneak attacking undead thing - it doesn't make sense except in rule terms.

 

[caudor]

I did not intend any insult to gamers. There's a LOT going on behind the scenes in the d20 rules, and many people don't care enough to learn all (or even any) of that. I know what I do because I was there when they were working on 3E D&D, I participated in discussions and argued points with Jonathan Tweet, whose desk was right next to mine. I'm trying to use my knowledge and experience to help people understand the game better so they can make their games better.

I appreciate what Sean is saying and I do believe he did not intend to insult anyone. I look forward to his products.

However, mastery of the rules in game products is not the only criteria I use to evaluate a publisher or product. I also look at how much passion a company brings to the game/community, as well as other factors.

I know that many publishers/freelancers did not have the fortune of having a desk right next to Jonathan Tweet, or the obvious mastery of the rules right out the gate that Sean has developed. But over time...with feedback and practice, I've seen many OK publishers evolve into good publishers simply because of support and feedback from the community. That's how the d20 community got to where it is today.

So overall, I think the growth (success) of the d20 community is a good thing. Yeah, some publishers will continue to produce low-end stuff, some will fall in the middle, and some will release outstanding material. Really bad ones will probably not maintain profits long enough to improve or stay in business. Nevertheless, I have lots of products to pick from, and as a whole I think the quality of material market-wide is improving.

It sounds like Sean will start at the high end, and set a great example for other publishers to follow. We can't have too many outstanding products, you know. I think his goal is a noble one.

 

[Incenjucar]

(The mention of Monte stems from him supposedly * being behind some of the alignment / undead / negative energy issues in the BoVD that have so many people hating the book despite the interesting ideas found elsewhere, and for the Str trumps all notion in racial mod balancing, which many many threads are devoted too arguing against. * I have no idea if any of this is true, due to having a life. If I'm wrong, I'll happily take it back. Either way, Monte is a brilliant designer, and TSR and WotC both owe most of my thousands of dollars in purchases to him and the PS crew.)

I agree that the press release works on a shock-jock level. However, as many know, Howard Stern is on his way out...

--

The problem, Sean, is that you're making it very clear that you're going to give a biased view of things (since you've already listed two things that many find to be very good ideas for individual gaming styles that you declare as bad). If I were in the position to take on such a project, I'd be focusing less on 'good' and 'bad' and more on 'does this help you in YOUR game'. As it is, that press release reminds me of my literature teachers who are all quite certain that Fantasy and Science Fiction are 'bad', while "The Great Gatsby" is worth preserving forever, and anyone who ever enjoyed a Harlequin romance novel is a lower form of being (seriously, my Brit lit teacher said that 'literature' makes you BETTER than everyone else).

The more bias you have, the less useful you'll be. Bias is only good for keeping the audience who already agrees with you. Being reasonable is what gets you 'converts'.