The Role of the Wizard, or "How Come Billy Gets to Create a Demiplane?"

[Ariosto]

Look, if the 3e guys really had a coherent plan -- as opposed to a committee's collection of half-baked ideas about how to jury rig three incompatible machines out of parts cannibalized from a fourth -- then what was it?.

I don't want what 4e delivers, but at least it has a clear scheme and does not seem to be working at cross-purposes versus itself.

Old D&D is also clearly designed for the gears to mesh in a certain way, but that way is about as different from 4e as from HeroQuest, Panzer Blitz or Super Mario Brothers.

As I have written repeatedly, the 3e designers seem to take flak for "rules" they never wrote. I might be confused as to their intent because I'm mistaking how other people want the game to be for how Cook, Tweet and Williams actually meant it to be.

 

[Barastrondo]

That is not so. How do you figure there would be fewer choices in the scenario I mentioned above? As far as I can see, there would have been nothing to "lose" except the edition wars that would not have come into existence in the first place.

Well, off the top of my head, there'd be no Mutants and Masterminds or Spycraft, to name a couple, if 3e had come out from a different publisher. There wouldn't have been nearly enough incentive for other publishers to adopt the d20 system, it not really being compatible with D&D, so there'd be a slimmer pool of RPGs in the market.

There's nothing to "lose" from a lack of new games from the perspective of people who weren't going to play them anyway. But at the same time, there's not much to "lose" for them if new games or new versions of the current game come out. If you run a mean game, people will show up for it no matter what system you run -- and if they refuse to give it a try because they dislike a particular system so much, I hate to say it, but they probably wouldn't have been that happy in your game anyway.

However, since you think it is so, then here's a solution to please us both:

All the "your game must be my game" crowd can go bother White Wolf instead!

Who's saying "your game must be my game"? Nobody is advocating kicking down doors and replacing rulebooks. When we talk about why designers change things to suit the tastes of people who don't care for elements of a system, they're not changing "your" game. Your game is still right there. It's fine. They're changing their game.

As for bothering White Wolf -- well, people who want all Vampire to be their Vampire do. Often enough that we remind them as well (or really, other people will do it for us) that we don't have a secret police who mandates that people adopt the new system. If you're happy with the old one, fantastic: play it! If you didn't think that the four-roll combat system needed streamlining, then bear in mind that the one-roll system was designed for those who think it did.

"Waah! Vampire needs to be redesigned from the ground up to accommodate my Zamboni fetish!"

If enough people said that, I can assure you it'd actually get some serious consideration. (At the very least, to try to figure out what they were using Zambonis as a metaphor for.) If enough people want a particular thing, it's no longer about a personal fetish: you're very likely looking at something emerging out of actual play. It might be a dissatisfaction with how your fighter performs; it might be a serious problem with the vampire-combat-on-ice-skates subsystem.

Whether each individual problem needs to be fixed or not -- well, there's the controversy. But "change nothing and fire the players who want any change" is not the cut-and-dried optimal answer; it's only argued that way because people adhere to this hobby like unto a religion.

 

[Jefe Bergenstein]

Because you're a magic user, and if you can indeed have retinues, they will be of a different nature (notice for instance the Followers for Upper Level Characters in the First Ed DMG p. 16-17, which does not list magic users).


If you're trying to act like you are a mercenary leader as a wizard most of the time in the campaign, you are going to earn way less XP than the fighter acting as a mercenary leader, because in one case, one character is actually playing according to his character archetype, while the other is not (See First Ed DMG, "Gaining Experience Levels," p. 86).

Mercenary leader seems to be an occupation, rather than a class. I recall my mage being paid for fighting. Crap, guess I better reroll him as a fighter...

Your points are just... odd. Anyone can be the party leader, lead troops, etc.

 

[Jefe Bergenstein]

I think there is something that can be done to potentially solve this problem other than taking away narrative power from the wizard: give fighters a comparable source of narrative power that is distinct in its quality. The answer is that dumb, brute force can become a source of Deus Ex Machina if it comes in a sufficient quantity.

Look at mythological heroes such as Heracles or Thor. If Heracles needed to clean out a massive stable in a day, he just used his ludicrous strength to redirect a river. If Thor had business with the Midgard Serpent, he just whipped out his fishing pole. If Thor wanted to lower sea levels, he just started drinking (though this one wasn't intentional on his part). One of the best examples of Deus Ex Machina through brute superhuman strength comes from the Ramayana, where Hanuman jumps from Sri Lanka to the Himaleyas to find a mountain where healing herbs grow, then uproots the entire mountain and carries it back to Sri Lanka in a single leap, successfully bringing needed medicine to his friends.

If D&D Fighters could smash through solid stone walls with a punch, run for days on end without rest, leap hundreds of feet in a single bound, or dig canyons with their bare hands, then there would be greater parity between them and Wizards in terms of narrative power. There is even a strong basis for this kind of power in myth and legend. Unfortunatly, D&D fans have traditionally balked at giving Fighters anything resembling superhuman capabilities. There is a strange idea that even Epic level Fighters who can go toe-to-toe with Balors and Elder Dragons should fundamentally resemble mundane humans.

Agreed. Its what the TOB classes should have been. Superheroes with schticks, the kind you'd find adventuring with the other superheroes (clerics and wizards). They have one playground, the other power grades have theirs (with a weaker mage role in the other tier).

D&D could then accommodate more styles of play (as well as emulating classic fantasy).

 

[Jefe Bergenstein]

I chose deliberately to leave that part of the conversation alone, because I do not believe there is such a thing as a "narrative" in a role playing game, nor should there be. To put it simply, RPGs do not tell "stories."

You're welcome to believe they do.

I'm just reacting to the factually wrong accounts and interpretations that are perpetuated in this thread.

Your opinions are facts, are opinions are wrong. Got it.

 

[renau1g]

Oh, I reckon the Wizards of the Coast are doing that just fine.

I wonder how many among us, fans and detractors alike, would have cared (or even heard) so much about 3e and 4e, if AD&D were still on the market and these newcomers were billed as, say,
Magic Era: Third Age from Atlas Games
and
Heroes of Brightrealm from Alderac Entertainment Group.

Yes, I know that is in the event an imponderable.

However, the most visible results of the actual scheme look to me rather like something other than consolidating the brand's position in the market. "How about some D&D" is now not very useful for a lot of folks. "Which edition?" is on par with the choice between RoleMaster and Tunnels & Trolls, or some other two sort-of-D&D-ish games.

Whatever the proportions, there's a faction devoted to TSR-D&D (or "retro-clones"), one devoted to 3e (or Pathfinder), and one devoted to 4e -- only one of which WotC is actually selling. Unless 5e is just a total flop, it should be as fractious again.

Is there some great influx of new players? I don't know, but I'm not seeing any reason to think so.

Hjave you been to any LFR events? The ones I've attended or ran have had lots of new players. A lot of lapsed early edition players have been drawn back by Essentials (blasphemy I know) and many now have kids that they're introducing. So yeah I think I've sEen an increase in new players

 

[Jefe Bergenstein]

Look at Dungeons & Beavers, or Champions, or Exalted, or HeroQuest, or...

It's a wild idea, but how about folks go and play whichever games they actually like instead of insisting that someone else's game has to get stuffed into some mold?

Why are you opposed to a new, theoretical non-spellcaster class, thats as awesome as spellcasters?

Show me on the doll where the jock gave you the wedgie.

 

[Jefe Bergenstein]

That is not so. How do you figure there would be fewer choices in the scenario I mentioned above? As far as I can see, there would have been nothing to "lose" except the edition wars that would not have come into existence in the first place.

However, since you think it is so, then here's a solution to please us both:

All the "your game must be my game" crowd can go bother White Wolf instead!

"Waah! Vampire needs to be redesigned from the ground up to accommodate my Zamboni fetish!"

Oh, ye gods, if you would send blessings unto us, then this would do for a poetic start.

You seem to have found your one true edition, and that's great. Some of us havent. I promise, we wont re-write your books. Your 1st edition stuff is safe, and shouldnt really be threatened by any discussion of alteration, house rules, or moving the newer, less worthy editions in a different direction. The cat got out of the bag with Unearthed Arcana, dragon articles, and the first time some kid dared to bend the holy writ of Gygax, likely 13 seconds after he cracked the book. So arguing there shouldnt ever be any change in D&D after 30 years of change seems a little pointless.

 

[Ariosto]

Of course, blame lies with the authors and the marketing team for trying to portray the game as something it's not--a broad fantasy adventuring game instead of a tightly focused game of amoral swords & sorcery characters scheming against, bluffing, bullying, and betraying the enemies, the Dungeon Master, and each other for wealth and power.

I think it's just the opposite, that it has been a narrowing of the portfolio that is to blame. I suspect that you are following the fashion for saying things one knows very well are false because the cynicism gets celebrated as 'wit'.

In the old game (unlike in 4e!), a Paladin or Ranger could not be amoral. Furthermore, the structure of the game was one of players choosing their courses of action rather than being shorn of the responsibility upon which morality depends.

The 'breadth' I see in the prevailing sense of 'fantasy' is a wan and emaciated thing next to what informed old D&D. Anyone who cares to can look at the body of work Gygax produced, and at what came after him, and see where there is nurturing of the imagination. Nowadays, so much gets shuts down as "not proper fantasy" because it does not color inside the lines drawn by inbreeding between later commercial D&D and rigidly generic fictional pabulum.

Your claim is like the view of Trekkies (and I have been one) who imagine that it was Gene Roddenberry's goal and greatest achievement to create a pile of trivia. That the U.S.S. Enterprise was designed as a vehicle for telling entertaining and thought-provoking science fiction stories on television goes overlooked. The contraption was a convenient means to that end, not the end in itself.

 

[Ariosto]

Why are you opposed to a new, theoretical non-spellcaster class, thats as awesome as spellcasters?

Why do you hate Exalted?

Show us on the doll how White Wolf debauched with you.