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<blockquote data-quote="Li Shenron" data-source="post: 2309081" data-attributes="member: 1465"><p>Lots of threads last weeks were about character options and flexibility; the discussions showed that this is a very appreciated feature of 3rd edition, and in fact the books with character material are still selling very well.</p><p></p><p>On the other hand, in the past year and a half I have personally felt less and less interested in those kind of books, and I thought it was because as a player I don't have much chance on using all that stuff. Even as we always play 2-3 campaigns at the same time, plus a couple of PbP, there is still more than 90-95% of unused material in my (not so many) books.</p><p></p><p>Anyway... thinking about it from another perspective, I've now been considering another problem, which could be more interesting. There are so many character options around, which players obviously want to try since they want to use their books, that it has watered down some of ours campaigns too much.</p><p></p><p>It feels to me that the problem is more in the playable races, but also something else. The game has the advantages of letting players write up very original characters, against the cliches', and that should make the game more interesting.</p><p></p><p>But after 4 years of gaming... what has quite become the cliche' for us is itself the making of non-cliche' PC :\ If we look at e.g. Elves in our games, there are no more Elven mages than there are clerics, monks, bards... they have become just variant humans, they have much nothing left about "being an elf". Yes they have +2 Dex, but that is just a number and it makes a small difference IYKWIM.</p><p></p><p>In a way, the "options, not restrictions" great idea of 3ed has helped making <em>individual characters</em> more interesting, but the whole settings are less interesting, at least those which basically allow everything with little restriction, like FR. </p><p></p><p>Talking about restrictions, we always thought the multiclassing penalties were silly, and it's been years since we forgot about them. Now for the first time I almost miss them, because they helped giving a (small) identity to different races. [This is just an example of restriction however, don't take this specific one too seriously...]</p><p></p><p>So what am I saying after all this babble? <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile :)" data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /> That from a setting point of view, I really want some restrictions back. In a way they really make sense, and if you later feel like they have become a burden, you can make a new campaign with different restrictions (effectively it's like another setting).</p><p></p><p>A few months ago I bought OA and Rokugan CS, and started playing in a couple of adventures. Rokugan is quite a restriction-heavy campaign compared to others, but it doesn't feel like we are held captive by those boundaries, instead they give distinctive features to the setting's fantasy world as a whole.</p><p></p><p>I'd like to know what others think about it, in case I'm just going totally nuts <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink ;)" data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" /></p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Li Shenron, post: 2309081, member: 1465"] Lots of threads last weeks were about character options and flexibility; the discussions showed that this is a very appreciated feature of 3rd edition, and in fact the books with character material are still selling very well. On the other hand, in the past year and a half I have personally felt less and less interested in those kind of books, and I thought it was because as a player I don't have much chance on using all that stuff. Even as we always play 2-3 campaigns at the same time, plus a couple of PbP, there is still more than 90-95% of unused material in my (not so many) books. Anyway... thinking about it from another perspective, I've now been considering another problem, which could be more interesting. There are so many character options around, which players obviously want to try since they want to use their books, that it has watered down some of ours campaigns too much. It feels to me that the problem is more in the playable races, but also something else. The game has the advantages of letting players write up very original characters, against the cliches', and that should make the game more interesting. But after 4 years of gaming... what has quite become the cliche' for us is itself the making of non-cliche' PC :\ If we look at e.g. Elves in our games, there are no more Elven mages than there are clerics, monks, bards... they have become just variant humans, they have much nothing left about "being an elf". Yes they have +2 Dex, but that is just a number and it makes a small difference IYKWIM. In a way, the "options, not restrictions" great idea of 3ed has helped making [I]individual characters[/I] more interesting, but the whole settings are less interesting, at least those which basically allow everything with little restriction, like FR. Talking about restrictions, we always thought the multiclassing penalties were silly, and it's been years since we forgot about them. Now for the first time I almost miss them, because they helped giving a (small) identity to different races. [This is just an example of restriction however, don't take this specific one too seriously...] So what am I saying after all this babble? :) That from a setting point of view, I really want some restrictions back. In a way they really make sense, and if you later feel like they have become a burden, you can make a new campaign with different restrictions (effectively it's like another setting). A few months ago I bought OA and Rokugan CS, and started playing in a couple of adventures. Rokugan is quite a restriction-heavy campaign compared to others, but it doesn't feel like we are held captive by those boundaries, instead they give distinctive features to the setting's fantasy world as a whole. I'd like to know what others think about it, in case I'm just going totally nuts ;) [/QUOTE]
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