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What things do you miss from D&D?
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<blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 6519652" data-attributes="member: 4937"><p>Dragon and Dungeon magazine were such huge parts of the game and gaming for me. I realize that the world has somewhat evolved past dead tree periodicals, but paper has a certain quality that digital things just don't. There is something friendly and comfortable about a stack of magazines that a folder full of pdf's doesn't have. "Back in my day... Hey, you kids get off my lawn", and such.</p><p></p><p>Honestly, I miss the small fonts and black ink of 1e hardbacks. These full color glossy treatments to me never seem to have the class of the old books - class that incidentally White Wolf closely emulated in the early versions of their Storyteller books and which can be found in the classic Chaosium Call of Cthulhu thick softbacks. And the D&D module where the maps were printed on a separate detachable cover was the most useful format for an adventure ever. Two things I just hate are maps printed in the text, and stat blocks printed in a separate appendix at the end of the module. And I miss real dungeon maps. Thirty years later, we've never excelled the maps for I6 and the DL series. How is that even possible? I for one never believed we'd have flying cars in 2015, but I would have been absolutely sure in 1985 that by 2015 we'd have actual fine literature and art in RPGs. </p><p></p><p>And on the subject of art, how is it that the best art for RPGs is from a period between 1985 and 1995? Back to the to magazines, all those iconic Dragon covers from the gold age of the magazine in the early '90's have just never been surpassed. Or for that matter, think of the art of ShadowRun from the same period. WotC has a lot of strengths, but their increasingly tight artistic direction for magic cards has tended to make for art that looks like cells in a comic book or graphic novel, rather than stuff you'd find hanging on the wall of an art gallery, and the art for D&D has tended to follow that trend. Beyond that, has there ever been a better visual aid for an adventure than the book of pictures that came with S1 Tomb of Horrors? How is that we have all these different examples of doing it right, and yet still can't do it better?</p><p></p><p>I'm not big on settings per se, but how is it that we are still recycling intellectual property from 20 or 30 years ago? Why hasn't there been three or four novelizations at least as good as Chronicles of the Dragonlance in just the last 20 years? Considering just how much penetration gaming has had of science fiction and fantasy - you'll hardly find anyone writing in the genera today that didn't grow up gaming and have it influence how they see works - and yet instead of generating intellectual property of its own that gets novelized, every gaming company out there is trying to license someone else's intellectual property. Looking back just makes TSR look more and more amazing all the time. Seriously, how did they attract that much talent? Has it all moved on into video games because it pays better? Where did it all go?</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Celebrim, post: 6519652, member: 4937"] Dragon and Dungeon magazine were such huge parts of the game and gaming for me. I realize that the world has somewhat evolved past dead tree periodicals, but paper has a certain quality that digital things just don't. There is something friendly and comfortable about a stack of magazines that a folder full of pdf's doesn't have. "Back in my day... Hey, you kids get off my lawn", and such. Honestly, I miss the small fonts and black ink of 1e hardbacks. These full color glossy treatments to me never seem to have the class of the old books - class that incidentally White Wolf closely emulated in the early versions of their Storyteller books and which can be found in the classic Chaosium Call of Cthulhu thick softbacks. And the D&D module where the maps were printed on a separate detachable cover was the most useful format for an adventure ever. Two things I just hate are maps printed in the text, and stat blocks printed in a separate appendix at the end of the module. And I miss real dungeon maps. Thirty years later, we've never excelled the maps for I6 and the DL series. How is that even possible? I for one never believed we'd have flying cars in 2015, but I would have been absolutely sure in 1985 that by 2015 we'd have actual fine literature and art in RPGs. And on the subject of art, how is it that the best art for RPGs is from a period between 1985 and 1995? Back to the to magazines, all those iconic Dragon covers from the gold age of the magazine in the early '90's have just never been surpassed. Or for that matter, think of the art of ShadowRun from the same period. WotC has a lot of strengths, but their increasingly tight artistic direction for magic cards has tended to make for art that looks like cells in a comic book or graphic novel, rather than stuff you'd find hanging on the wall of an art gallery, and the art for D&D has tended to follow that trend. Beyond that, has there ever been a better visual aid for an adventure than the book of pictures that came with S1 Tomb of Horrors? How is that we have all these different examples of doing it right, and yet still can't do it better? I'm not big on settings per se, but how is it that we are still recycling intellectual property from 20 or 30 years ago? Why hasn't there been three or four novelizations at least as good as Chronicles of the Dragonlance in just the last 20 years? Considering just how much penetration gaming has had of science fiction and fantasy - you'll hardly find anyone writing in the genera today that didn't grow up gaming and have it influence how they see works - and yet instead of generating intellectual property of its own that gets novelized, every gaming company out there is trying to license someone else's intellectual property. Looking back just makes TSR look more and more amazing all the time. Seriously, how did they attract that much talent? Has it all moved on into video games because it pays better? Where did it all go? [/QUOTE]
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