Why I don't write FRP articles any more

[William Ronald]

An old timer that obviously never will bother to spend enough time to really learn what 3rd edition is really about and that's just sad.

It is sad, but I remember thinking of Lewis Pulsipher's articles as only being okay to boring. The only article that I can recall of his from Dragon magazine was a Timelord NPC class that had various time spell related abilities. I can remember a few great Ed Greenwood articles in the Dragon back in the 1980s, but Pulsipher's work seems to have largely faded from my memory.

I would argue that although 3.5 is not perfect, it is a better and more comprehensible rule set than that of 1st edition. The 1st edition grappling, overbearing, and pummeling rules were so complex as to be something that many players I knew avoided using. Similarly, the psionic combat charts -- especially the one for psionic attack on a non-defending psionic creature -- was also a royal pain.

I LIKE being able to customize characters to fit my personal vision. Also, I find the comment on 2nd Edition to be amusing as there were several differences between it and 1st edition. THACO, kits as well as the elimination of some classes were only some of the rule changes. Also, I should point out that TSR also produced some games during the time of 1st and 2nd edition that generated few sales. (The various editions of the Buck Rogers game come to mind.)

Good points, BiggusGeekus. I think there are many legitimate styles of play, and a power gamer can still be a heck of a good role player as well. Most characters in fantasy novels, such as Conan, Elric, Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser, tended to work hard on what they did best. So, one could argue that a player who makes a character who is a superb warrior may be following the path of the literary characters that helped inspire D&D in the first place. Hopefully, players will also role play their optimized characters. So, I think that what matters most is that people are having fun in a game. Somewhere the word fun seems to have never surfaced in Pulsipher's critique.

 

[FreeTheSlaves]

Moreover, what D&Ders seem to want these days is an unending stream of new prestige classes, new magic items, and other new stuff to make characters more powerful. In general, third edition D&D seems to be an excuse for players to find unearned advantages for their characters. The more new rules you can get hold of, the more ways you can find to circumvent play balance. This is why, in my House Rules for 3D&D, I don't allow any rule additions beyond the core books.

This sums up my pov as well, in particular the word "unearned" struck a chord with me. I fully respect the concept of keying power to class level but I'm an older school 1st/2nd edition player where characters also earn powers that can never be gained by virtue of the standard character generation method.

As for the bulk of his writing, welcome to the unjust world of unbridled capatalism.

 

[Joshua Randall]

Some guy whines about how things were better back in the day. *yawn*

Y'know what I hate about the Internet? That things like message boards and blogs make people think the rest of us care about their petty problems. If you don't want to write for d20 publishers, then don't. We don't care. So stop whining.

 

[JoeGKushner]

An old timer that obviously never will bother to spend enough time to really learn what 3rd edition is really about and that's just sad.

But that could apply to quite a few of 'em.

 

[Morrus]

I don't quite get the problem regarding the pay issue. If the pay isn't enough to appeal to him, that's perfectly fair enough. There are millions of people in the world who don't do things because they don't think the reward is worth it. They don't make a song and dance about it - they just do something else.

The guy is basically pricing himself out of the market for RPG writers. The value of a writer's work is based solely on the profit it can generate. In the current market, where no product makes much money, the value of that work is fairly low. No publisher is going to pay for the privilege of publishing someone's wonderful words - they publish to make a profit.

 

[Henry]

It is sad, but I remember thinking of Lewis Pulsipher's articles as only being okay to boring. The only article that I can recall of his from Dragon magazine was a Timelord NPC class that had various time spell related abilities.

Lew Pulsipher wrote one of my favorite Dragon Articles of all time, "Be Aware, Take Care", which is the first time I ever saw someone get serious about Tactics and planning in a D&D game. Prior to then, we teenage newbies would charge in like idiots and get our characters killed seven times out of ten, and he was the first person to ever put a bug in my ear that you can survive almost anything, Tomb of Horrors included, if you just PREPARE.

Sadly, this needs to be hammered home in more players, in my opinion. Sadly, it wasn't until the ill-fated EN Gamer that I saw anyone taking steps in this direction in the past twenty years.

 

[reveal]

(emphasis mine)

What?!

I thought exactly the same thing. So he never played the second edition but somehow he "knows" it was almost the same as the first edition? To me, that smacks of trying to justify a "I don't like 3E because it's too complicated" argument with false logic. :\

 

[Turanil]

Too many people are trying to write books for fun, which means that the people who want to make a business out of it have odd competition.

Not only that, but some people also release them for free!! (I mean: see the link in my sig...)

 

[TerraDave]

Leaving aside his 3rd ed comments (please!) his comments on the bussiness side are mildly interesting.

In theory, you could have a downward spiral, where lots of bad products drive out (a few) good products--this can and will happen if people don't know enough about the good products, its called "adverse selection" and I not just making it up--These products lower overall demand and revenue, leading to lower pay, and worse products, as the cycle continues.

In practice I think that many consumers are informed, in some ways product quality has actually been increasing over the last few years, and things aren't as bad as all that. But I also think there is something to what he's saying, at least something.

 

[SWBaxter]

I thought exactly the same thing. So he never played the second edition but somehow he "knows" it was almost the same as the first edition?

Well, I did play second edition, and I know that - at the level of the core rulebooks - it was almost the same as first edition. So he seems to have got that one pretty much right.

Otherwise, it seems to me a lot of people in this thread are missing what seems to me to be his major point, which is that freelance writing for D&D (and presumably the RPG market in general, I doubt anybody else is paying any better) is not a sustainable career choice. This actually gibes pretty well with various other threads that have been rumbling around these and other boards recently on the state of the RPG market. It all looks to me like the RPG industry, such as it is, is in for some tough times. At heart, this is because nobody wants to pay enough for a product in order for the publishers/authors/artists, etc. to make money, and that just can't continue indefinitely.