The Culture of Third Edition- Good or Bad?

[Bendris Noulg]

Also, wouldn't this be the point in Happy Days where Mouth (Diaglo) gets told to sit on it (shut up about OD&D on a 3E specific thread)? I thought so too.

Only if you want Mrs. C to come in, stick soap in every-other-poster's mouth, and redo the site in pastel blue with pink and yellow flowers.

 

[diaglo]

Also, wouldn't this be the point in Happy Days where Mouth (Diaglo) gets told to sit on it (shut up about OD&D on a 3E specific thread)? I thought so too.

i always saw myself as Richie's older brother. you know the guy that appeared for 1 episode and then vanished except for a brief rewrite every now and then when he was mentioned to be elsewhere.

 

[Psion]

And a corollary, originally posted by Belen Umbria:

The game should not fit the rules, the rules should fit the game.

Funny, I could have sworn someone around here has had something like that in their sig for some time now...

 

[BASHMAN]

The potential for favoritism!

One major problem though with GMs stating "I am following these rules, but throwing out x, y, and z" is that x, y, and z might severly hurt your character, or totally favor somebody else's.

Example: I was playing in a campaign of OD&D, and the GM stated he was using the rules as they appear in the rules Cyclopedia. I made a Mystic, and another player made a Fighter, while a third played a Cleric. We rolled 3d6 straight down the line.

After character creation, the GM announced that Fighters got to begin "skilled" in one weapon (a huge advantage over the other players)! The rules say they cannot do that until 3rd level! Maybe if I had known that, I would not have played a mystic! However, he refused to alter the deflect rules, which basically allow you to parry with a sword but not a shield, and make clerics better at parrying than fighters (because it is based on a saving throw). Then, the GM states that Mystic is too powerful, and NERFs several of my abilities.

It was heartwrenching to finally meet someone who wanted to run OD&D (because I love that system) and have the game run like some third world dictatorship. Despite my desire to play OD&D, especially after making a Mystic when we were rolling 3d6 in order, I had to quit the campaign. His rules were severly favoring the Fighter, and it was causing friction in the campaign.

Another campaign I played in (GURPS Fantasy) the GM announced that flight spell did not exist. This was after my friend had been playing a wizard in the Air college for MONTHS trying to learn flight! Had he known that, he would have been studying shapeshifting magic to transform into a bird or something probably! All that XP was wasted because the GM could not account for 3-dimensional aspects in his 2-dimensional game by allowing flight (which give the players strategic options GMs try not to think about when making "you must cross this bridge" encounters).

Anyway, just be careful when you make houserules, especially when you do it on the fly like that, people might take it the wrong way.

 

[jessemock]

i always saw myself as Richie's older brother. you know the guy that appeared for 1 episode and then vanished except for a brief rewrite every now and then when he was mentioned to be elsewhere.

I'm pretty sure--and I think most everyone will back me up on this--that you're in more than one episode.

 

[milotha]

Diversity is great. I love the options and the flexibility it provides. One can create some unique and interesting characters that were not viable in the previous systems. I have however noticed that with the loss of the more rigid class system, it is easier to create characters that are in other character's shadows. It's also easier to creat parties that are missing whole skill sets, even though the seem like they should be there.

 

[RFisher]

Maximize options, minimize restrictions.

The thing I like most about 3e is that it tends to give you consequences instead of restrictions. "Sure, mister wizard, you can use a sword & wear armor, but here's the price you're going to pay." In my old OAD&D days, we did much the same thing. Even though strickly by-the-book magic-users could never fight with a sword, we just said, "You can fight with a sword, mister magic-user, but you can't be proficient with it."

In some cases, though, I find the consequences of 3e almost worse than restrictions: "Sure, you can learn almost any skill, mister fighter, but it'll cost you dearly, mwa ha ha ha."

My argument distilled to the basic level is: Does the implied nature of the 3e say that crunch is the primary factor of the game, while flavor is secondary.

One of the things I like least about 3e is that it feeds my rules-lawyering & min-maxing habits. As much as I enjoy those things, at present I prefer to keep them to a minimum. But I'm weak.

I'm also currently preferring a more free-form style of refereeing that I personally find other games a better fit for. It can be done in 3e, but--right tool for the right job & all that.

But, to more directly address the quote: I've seen 3e games that were all crunch with a dash of flavor, and I've seen 3e games that heavy on flavor--though they still had a healthy amount of crunch. I think the system does encourage crunch, but that's not necessarily a bad thing. It all depends upon what is fun for you.

 

[I'm A Banana]

But why does the setting need to kowtow to such whimsies, as a matter of principle?

Well, it just has to justify it, really. Dark Sun has never really justified forbiding bards or paladins in my mind. Having a "dark" setting in no way hinges on not having a warrior of honor. In fact, it makes such a character *more* interesting to play, because they're more an exception than ever. Why should the setting needlessly nix something that could add interesting angles to it out of some misguided perceptions that paladins in your campaign means that it can't be dark? Or that it's harder to be dark?

If the world hinged more on "it's overrun with demons and devils with no villages that are safe havens, so any paladins would be pretty much instantly destroyed the moment they are attempted," that's a pretty okay justification. But "becuase people in this setting are morally ambiguous" is not, because you can still have moral ambiguity with a paladin.

 

[tsadkiel]

The notion to which I was responding is that it's better to deviate from the tone of a setting (or to make it inconsistent) than to deprive any potential players of any options presented in the core rules.

Honestly, I don't think that using the rules to dictate the tone of a setting ever works. When I ran Dark Sun, we stuck to the rules and setting pretty slavishly - there was certainly no plate mail, and no paladins to be seen. And the game turned out overwhelmingly satirical - it was essentially Paranoia with bone daggers. The tone came from us, despite the best efforts of the rules.

In another game (not Dark Sun, admittedly; it was a homebrew with very similar setting and thematic elements) I played a Paladin. An Aasimar Paladin, at that. And it was a very different game; I was a lone voice in the wilderness struggling to survive in a very dark setting against the overwhelming forces of naughtiness. Very cool. Still no plate mail.

The homebrew allowed nearly anything the players wanted from the 2E books we had available. Options aplenty, very few restrictions. But again, the tone came from us.

No rulebook survives contact with actual players.

 

[Bendris Noulg]

No rulebook survives contact with actual players.

True, but it should strive to be what it represents.