Who are Howard and Leiber?

[Patman21967]

Well,
As someone who recently ran a game for a group of stranger at my FLGS, let me say, the ways of gaming are a changing. It is much more tactical now. It seems to be more adversarial than I ever remember. I have been gaming with the same group for 20 years, rarely breaking out and seeing how the rest of the world plays.

1 thing that really bothered me, is after every fight, they would expend their magic, and want to rest. They fought for 2 minutes, spent 15 searching, and now, let's rest to get our spells back. Very computer gamish if you ask me. They want to take weeks to create items, and expect everything to remain static.

We recently tried miniatures for the first time, actually using AoO and such, and let me say, it is extremely boring and wasteful. I understand that all these tactics are cool if that's how you want to play the game,but for ME, and I am not denegrating anyones choice of game style, I don't like it. I don''t like that characters now have their feats and prestige classes mapped out before the campaign even begins, so they can yoink whatever they can. In my game, I prefer earning pretige classes through actions, not just as something you go to to get Improved Evasion or Mettle. Instead of just saying, I vecome a Harper Scout, the story should revolve around that character finding the Harpers, convincing them to let them join, doing things that Harpers would do.

Someone mentioned that the game is all "kill things and take their stuff" while the poster may have said that tounge in cheek, I think it is becaoming very true. Games that I have witnessed don't seem very story driven anymore.

Enough rambling.

 

[I'm A Banana]

As someone who recently ran a game for a group of stranger at my FLGS, let me say, the ways of gaming are a changing. It is much more tactical now. It seems to be more adversarial than I ever remember. I have been gaming with the same group for 20 years, rarely breaking out and seeing how the rest of the world plays.

Looking at it another way, you just like the way your group plays and don't like this other style. AFAIK, this isn't a change. It might be something you're not used to, but maybe you just hadn't been exposed to it until this recent game?

Basically, I don't think that one game in a group of strangers is indicative of any change in the ways of gaming, especially when it is only really divergent from your own experiences (which are by no means nessecarily normitive, yeah?)

I think this "other group" has been playing thier way since you've been playing yours.

 

[Turjan]

Well,
As someone who recently ran a game for a group of stranger at my FLGS, let me say, the ways of gaming are a changing. It is much more tactical now. It seems to be more adversarial than I ever remember. I have been gaming with the same group for 20 years, rarely breaking out and seeing how the rest of the world plays.

Hmm, I sometimes have the feeling that the people on this messageboard are to a certain extent detached from how the game is often played by groups outside in the world, even though we have quite a mix of different playstyles presented here. When I see the book "Deities and Demigods" denigrated on this board (for the record: I don't like it, either), I have to think about how many groups out there actually take this book and, with their bags of holding full of major artifacts and riding their gold dragon cohorts, work down the list of gods in that book on their way to replace them as rulers of the world. I know they exist. I know they always existed, even in prior incarnations of D&D. It's just that they don't post on EN World . Doesn't make them less real, though .

 

[mhacdebhandia]

1 thing that really bothered me, is after every fight, they would expend their magic, and want to rest. They fought for 2 minutes, spent 15 searching, and now, let's rest to get our spells back. Very computer gamish if you ask me. They want to take weeks to create items, and expect everything to remain static.

Not everyone likes playing in a world that makes sense. To a certain extent, without overstating it, I think that comes with maturation of one's gaming tastes. But my question is this: As the DM, why did you allow this?

In my game, I prefer earning pretige classes through actions, not just as something you go to to get Improved Evasion or Mettle. Instead of just saying, I vecome a Harper Scout, the story should revolve around that character finding the Harpers, convincing them to let them join, doing things that Harpers would do.

As the DM, what prevents you from saying that the acquisition of feats and prestige classes doesn't require a teacher or an initiator?

 

[Hussar]

*snip*
I do prefer one where magic is rarer and feels like magic. A world where magic is not always a gimmick to get out of a tight spot or to short-cut the storytelling. Magic should be the primal shaping of energy, not a safe pseudo-replacement for technology.

But, the problem with that is, magic in DND has ALWAYS been a pseudo-replacement for technology. Say the words, get the spell. There has never been any sort of "primal shaping of energy" in DnD. It can't be really. How the heck would you design game mechanics around it?

Really, the only reason that magic isn't commonplace in campaign world's is because people ignore the logical extensions of the existence of DnD magic. I wasn't kidding about the idea of Continual Light (or Continual Flame) resulting in a major revolution in technology in a DnD world. The fact that you can have a perpetual light source for free would greatly change any society.

Take it a step farther. The existence of flying creatures large enough to ride. All it takes is a single nation to step up and begin a breeding program and you suddenly have Roc Airlines. Create Water and Purify Food and Drink would greatly change a Medieval setting. Non-humans SHOULD dominate the world. Heck, a standard Yuan-Ti is a genius. Why bother messing around with cults and whatnot? Just take over the world the smart way - through money.

So long as DnD has the magic system it has, it logically should look a lot more like Harry Potter than Hyboria.

 

[tetsujin28]

The more D&D is influenced by Howard and Leiber, and the less by Tolkein, the happier I am.

Oh, wait...there's Iron Heroes

 

[mhacdebhandia]

Word, Tetsujin. But then, that would be demanding that D&D cater to my preferences and prejudices, and I'm not that selfish.

 

[MerricB]

So long as DnD has the magic system it has, it logically should look a lot more like Harry Potter than Hyboria.

And thus, Eberron.

Early D&D gets around the lack of magic by saying "high-level wizards are grumpy old bastards who won't help anyone" and "there's not many of them". One wonders where all the magic swords came from that litter the early adventures...

Cheers!

 

[mhacdebhandia]

Well, the answer to that was "Ancient empires now fallen and forgotten! Old techniques now lost!"

Yes, pretty dumb.

 

[Felon]

Just because there are vague similarities does not make it an equality.

The existence of similarities takes all those blanket statements filled with all those "nevers" and "nothings" out of the tautological context you were trying to put them in. You went out of your way to be so utterly contrary, telling me how I'm "way OFF BASE" and that "D&D is NOWHERE NEAR a video game" and based it on nothing more than an abstract concept like verisimilutude, speaking of it like it was some vast, monumental, tangible barrier between RPG and MMOG. Commitment to role-playing is pretty inconsistent from group to group--and in some groups, there is no commitment. Some folks play D&D with the same outlook they would a MMOG.

Are you going to tell me that it's not as generally true that verisimilitude is more important in D&D than in video games while at the same time telling me that it is generally true that D&D adventures have no real consequences?

I will tell you that the emphasis on verisimilitude is not a sacred concept as presented by the PHB, and it is not unversally considered sacred by players. It is something sacred to individuals, and a new player will only pick it up from interacting with them, not from the books. Maybe you're not talking about D&D as presented by the folks writing the books, but I was.

Specifically: "Lack of long term consequences": This doesn't come from a videogame. Resurrection magic existed in D&D long before 16 bits used them. Lack of long term consequences is inherent in D&D, not a bi-product from a video game. EVIDENCE: Was there a resurrection spell in any edition before 3rd? Perhaps one even pre-dating 1980?

I'm saying D&D is becoming more like a MMOG with every iteration. So, is raising the dead more routine and prescribed now, or less? Is a 9th-level cleric from OD&D the equivalent of a 9th-level cleric in 3e?

And did it remove a "real consequence" from the game? Furthermore, there is much in the way of long term consequences in video games. EVIDENCE: In most MMO's, a character death will undo hours of game play that you will never get back. This is a long term consequence, no? A permenant loss of your playing time invested?

No, spending a little time to eliminate XP debt or what-have-you is a transitory consequence. And in most modern MMOG's, it's not even a matter of hours. A character dying ahd staying dead is long-term.

Let's look at how a couple of other long-term effects are handled. Consider a character afflicted with a terrible curse or a debilitating disease. In a literary context, it would be a story element; the character would have to struggle to cope with it. In a video game it would simply be a negative effect ("debuff") to be removed with the expenditure of a resource. Going strictly by the book, which most closely resembles the way curses and diseases are handled in D&D?

"Cut-to-the-chase mentality": Do you mean the desire for players to not want to waste time on the boring stuff? Because I think you can find THAT inherent in D&D, too. EVIDENCE: DM's are supposed to gloss over days, hours, weeks, months, DECADES of game time to, in effect "cut to the chase."

Who decides what's boring? Would the LotR trilogy have been more interesting if the fellowship just went "poof" to Sauron's doorstep? I don't think so. It's those savory moments between points A and B that allow characters to develop and allow tension to build. They make for a good novel, and for a good RP experience, and the official attitude is that they should be gone for the sake of expediency. Forget daring the high seas, just get the cleric to cast Wind Walk so you can jet where you want to go as 600mph intangible vapors. Forget having to figure things out and look for clues, just cast a spell to get the info you need and move things along to the next fight scene.

If you're going to assert something, you're going to have to back it up.

If a person needs to go into very specific details to explain something to you, don't be so quick to lay all of the blame at their feet because you refuse to see their point of view.