Kamikaze Midget said:
...And you see that as 3e's problem, and not yours? If a game, 1e, 2e, 3e, GURPS, MERP, OD&D, Star Wars, whatever, is "cheesey," it's not the ruleset, it's the game, it's the campaign, it's that particular adventure.
Quite the opposite... Picture this if you will: I'm in my local gaming store and I pick up a book. I open it up, look at a page, and say, "cheesey". I flip the page, "cheesey", flip again. "Cheese," flip, "cheese", flip, "cheese", flip...
And this is the Player's Handbook.
I'm not saying your a bad DM or anything, I mean, we've all run adventures that were cheesey, sub-par, and, in my cases, a few dozen times that were absolutely horrid and downright insulting. But it's not the fault of 3e that I ran those adventures, it's my own....it's not the fault of Low Magic that some GMs who choose it are railroad-happy drama queens, it's not the fault of High Magic that some GM's who choose it are simplistic nerf-herders who just want to beat the players. You can't assume that just because your games were cheesey, the game itself is.
I'm not assuming. I'm assessing the flavor of the default setting (and the rules that support it) based on their presentation within the rule books.
It's okay if you don't like normal magic D&D, and prefer low magic. But don't assume just because your games with 3e were 'increasingly cheesey,' that it means that 3e itself is cheesey. Your basing your entire opinion on a type of gaming purely on your own experiences, which may have not been typical.
Boy, are you wrong.
Tell you what... Go back to page 1 of this thread and start reading from the beginning. Note how many derogatory statements are made about low magic games before the people that play low magic start "firing back". The reason being that most low magic gamers have no inherent desire to rip on high magic games; We'd rather talk about what we
like about low magic rather than what we
don't like about high magic. Yet, after X pages of defending our personal tastes, it's eventually going to turn towards what we don't like about high magic since stating what we do like about low magic doesn't seem to satisfy the "other side" of the debate.
Interestingly, rather than solving the problem, this seems to only add more logs to the fire.
In short, forget everything that's been said in this thread about what people don't like about high magic, leaving only the reasons given for liking low magic. If these reasons aren't enough, than why not just state that you think we're wrong and that neither diplomacy nor anecdotes are going to sway your opinion (which would be far more effective than spending X number of pages telling folks they're tastes are wrong or misguided).
I don't like high magic because it just comes across as cheesy. Too much magic. Too much superheroics. Character design focused on creating characters that don't interest me in regards to playing as or GMing for. A CR system that labels characters I would like to play as "sub par" or "ineffectual" when such things are actually a product of the individual group and not the generic rules.
Where I come from, we call that an invalid generalization.
Again, re-read this thread from the beginning. It's full of them, and mostly about low magic.
....which indicates that your opinion that "high-level D&D is grossly limited in the conflicts that can arise by the magic the players possess" could maybe *not* be typical of high-level play in general? That maybe just because WotC put out crappy adventures doesn't mean that it's what most higher-level games are like? That perhaps you need to re-think that particular criticism of high magic games?
I don't need to "re-think" my criticisms; I fully stand by them. However, I'm not prone to post my criticisms until I feel that my tastes and prefereces have been attacked repeatedly and blatently long enough.
As for the modules, no, I don't think WotC's adventures are bad examples. After all, if all these discussions assume that the D&D rules are the "standard" by which comparisons of gaming environments are made, than why wouldn't their D&D adventures be considered the "standard" by which comparisons of plots and adventures are made as well? WotC is either the shiznit or they aren't.
So, what, are you saying that to mimic myth and literature and other adventure stories that arbirtrary nerfing is desirable? Or that these movies would make bad games because of their railroading tendencies?
I'm saying that one man's nerf is another man's challenge. At the very least, nerfs and fiat are common in literature, they are common in movies, they are common in the adventures WotC has produced, and they even have a fairly high-average frequency in the "How To" thread you started.
In short, if you want the curteousy of being viewed as an exception to the stereotype, or even to have that stereotype-image removed from the community completely, than perhaps you should also consider a bit of fair play regarding those stereotypes you like to apply on others yourself.
Open-mindedness and acceptance are two-way streets, last time I checked.