WotC Blogs II

[Glyfair]

I'd guess they need a little time to edit the podcast...

It was about 1 1/2 weeks between the recording of the last one and its being posted.

 

[Arkhandus]

My question right now is why the tiefling is a playable race in the PHB but not the aasimar?

Cuz everyone knows that evil is what's in, yo. :\ Warlocks and Tieflings are the cool people that get to play with all the l33t evil powers that the Dark Lords pass out for free, like candy, to show people how awesome the dark side is. You're not a real hero unless your emo. Hercules was a wuss. You want to be Vampire Hunter D.

Cuz only sissy hero wannabees call on saints and angels for help against the forces of darkness, or bear the blood of such creatures in their own veins. You have to sell your soul or be the spawn of evil if you're going to be a real hero, and kick evil's arse with evil's own l33t powers of dooooom.

Join the dark side!! We have cookies!!!!





.......or, y'know, it's probably something more realistic like "Points of Light is the new Official D&D Setting and we expect all you gullible consumers to accept it as your Gaming Messiah and the One True Way of D&D, with all its doom and gloom and antiheroes, so buy it and like it suckahs, or else." :\

 

[Lackhand]

Or "We figured that, as planetouched go, Eladrin would be a lot more palatable to the majority of our consumers than Aasimar. More thematically appropriate, too."

I do like the level of hatred engendered against the Tiefling. I don't share it, myself, but it definitely puts some steel into the 'hated outcast' role they're to fit.

I mean, they're already filling it, without any players playing them yet!

 

[Arthnek]

I find it tiresome to hear game developers bashing on AD&D.

The first comment in this thread which stated that monsters in the old monster manual were basically slapped together to see if they were fun and usually were not is completely wrong.

Writing good adventures is a bit like writing an adventure story or fantasy novel. A fantasy writer does not sit down with his slide rule or calculator to create a mathematical formula to balance one character against another. They write something creative and entertaining and there is a certain amount of art involved in the process.

This is what happened with the monster creations for AD&D. It was meant to be fun and the monsters were written up as a fantasy game with a lot of shoot from the hip and artistic creation going on more than anything else.

To say that they were not fun to play is total hogwash. I find it disturbing that the game designers working on the new D&D are not fans of the old D&D.

I am sorry to hear that the original poster had such a horrible time in his apparently deep and lengthy experience running monsters in the old D&D. My memories of the game and those of everyone I know who played avidly in the 1970's, 1980's and 1990's - are absolutely different. We had a great time playing the game then. We had no problem having fun with the monsters as they were written and in using that largely artful, non mathematical slide rule method of writing up an adventure so that it was fun.

All the number crunching smacks loudly to me of GURPS and Hero. I like Hero for playing super hero characters but for running anything else which requires a lot of adventure creation I find that massive time involved in building -anything- in that system to make it unwieldy and -not fun- to game master.

Using it to pit a couple of villains against a couple of heroes is great. Trying to write up hundreds of monsters, dungeons, modules, magic items using the system sucks so much time out of writing the story and setting and into building stat blocks for mobs and items that I have largely abandoned Hero as unwieldy.

Now I have to number crunch encounters to make them "fair"?

The entire notion of writing good stories seems somehow completely lost in this mix to me and like I said to start with I was pretty offended to read about how the old monsters and the old game was not fun.

It was fun and remains a lot of fun.

I am sure someone is going to post..hey..old guy...if you don't like 4e then why post?

This is why I am posting here young padi-wan. As a player and DM with more than 30 years of experience running this game I have a great deal of experience and perspective. It was my dollars and my input as a player and DM along with hundreds of thousands of other people like -me- that took D&D out of the little stapled books and into a major hobby. If it was not for us leading the dungeon parties and adventuring groups over the last thirty years you wouldn't have a forum or a game to be discussing.

Telling us old timers not to post because we are not thrilled with some of the stuff we are reading is frankly insulting. We were the ones making this game happen when many of you younger folks were not even born yet.

 

[Andor]

Anybody else notice this?

That is, instead of having to change everything manually, one could simply change their level and much of their corresponding skills and defenses would change accordingly.

Looks like some king of saga-esqe system will be used for skills, rather than the 3.X point system.

 

[Lonely Tylenol]

I doubt that Tieflings bother to listen to My Chemical Romance or Fugazi or Hawthorne Heights or Linkin Park. And if they did listen to Fugazi they'd probably call themselves Indy Kids instead.

Craaaaaaaaawlllliiiiiinnnnngggg iiiiiiiinnnnn myyyyyyy skiiiiiiiinnnnnnn!!!

...

No, really. There are things crawling in my skin. I could use some calamine lotion over here. Or a Remove Disease, maybe.

 

[Arkhandus]

Or "We figured that, as planetouched go, Eladrin would be a lot more palatable to the majority of our consumers than Aasimar. More thematically appropriate, too."

I do like the level of hatred engendered against the Tiefling. I don't share it, myself, but it definitely puts some steel into the 'hated outcast' role they're to fit.

I mean, they're already filling it, without any players playing them yet!

Eladrin aren't planetouched, though. At least not in any edition before 4E, AFAIK. Nor do I see in any way how they're more palatable than aasimar or more thematically appropriate. Just how common is the mythological/legendary/fictional concept of a hero descended from the gods, nature spirits, or other such creatures? Or blessed with their favor?

Aasimar are cool. They deserve to be in the PHB at least as much as tieflings do, if not moreso, because they're a more heroic race, and D&D is first and foremost about heroes.

I don't hate tieflings, either. I just think it's silly and backwards to make them a PHB race without aasimar at least being included the same way.

 

[Azgulor]

I totally agree here...but nothing stated in that blog makes a point of why this is easier than in 3.5. It basically just seems to tout the idea that guesstimating is a new and innovative thing. It seems a little like hyperbole for hyperbole's sake without anything really backing it up. He doesn't say there's a system for it in 4e, just that it's easier to do when you realize you only need certain things in a particular encounter(I mean to me this is a no-brainer, most things in life are easier when you only focus on what you feel is absolutely necessary to accomplish a given task). The problem I see in this is only that PC's often do the darndest things so you also gotta be willing to roll with the improvisation if you go that route. If the monsters stated fully, you don't have to worry so much about that, but yes it's more work.

This is true of many of the 4e previews. Instead of getting tidbits of new, innovative items, I keep reading things that have me scratching my head and saying "I could do that now if I wanted to".

 

[rounser]

I don't hate tieflings, either. I just think it's silly and backwards to make them a PHB race without aasimar at least being included the same way.

Yeah, it's difficult to suspend judgement on this one. Tieflings without their mirror image seem arbitrary. Yes, they look kewl in pictures, and promise to be "the next drow", but without aasimar they seem unbalanced, incomplete...arbitrary.

 

[Campbell]

I very much doubt Eladrin are going to take the same role in the default cosmology in 4e as they did in 3e. I predict that Eladrin will be distinctly Fae creatures, not Celestial. For better or worse, it seems that Fourth Edition will be embracing more of a 'shades of gray' model than previous editions.

Interestingly enough the Desert of Desolation preview mentions that Fire Archons are servants of Elemental Fire, and may be aligned with Imix. It remains to be seen how exactly that relationship plays out.