Your Thoughts on the Heroization of D&D 3.x

[hong]

Which are all neat, but none too like hero. In 3e, you are adding to structures and bins. That's not hero. Hero, you tweak one thing at a time.

I didn't say D&D IS HERO. I said that D&D/d20 is moving in the direction of effects-based modelling, and HERO is the prime example of a game that takes that approach.

Templates are a perfect example of this, assuming you take the next step of divorcing their mechanical effects from their flavour text. Eg even though the half-fiend description talks about these things being the direct offspring of demons, you can just take the mechanics and use them to create a generic "icky demonic thing" monster from a base creature. The building blocks may be chunkier and more unwieldy in D&D compared to HERO, but they're still building blocks.

Perhaps the biggest barrier to greater acceptance of the EBM paradigm is that D&D gamers are used to treating flavour text and mechanics as a seamless whole. If the game says it's X, then it must be X and X alone, even if you could use the mechanics to model Y as well.

 

[diaglo]

Fantasy Hero was the edition of D&D I played between 2e and 3e.

was Fantasy Hero available between 1977 and 1979?

i mean just cuz Holmes didn't edit his D&D.

 

[Psion]

was Fantasy Hero available between 1977 and 1979?

i mean just cuz Holmes didn't edit his D&D.

Sigh...

Y'know, this act gets REALLY old.

And I just took you off ignore yesterday.

 

[diaglo]

Sigh...

Y'know, this act gets REALLY old.

And I just took you off ignore yesterday.

you invoked it. how could i leave that one so obvious quote untouched.

 

[Psion]

I didn't say D&D IS HERO.

I never said you did. I said that none of the things you cited (except spell seeds) resemble the hero approach. I thought I was pretty clear on that.

Hero does not do "packet management" they way 3e/d20 does.

 

[hong]

I never said you did. I said that none of the things you cited (except spell seeds) resemble the hero approach. I thought I was pretty clear on that.

Hero does not do "packet management" they way 3e/d20 does.

The point is, you still have building blocks. They may be chunkier and more unwieldy in D&D, but they're still building blocks.

 

[diaglo]

The point is, you still have building blocks. They may be chunkier and more unwieldy in D&D, but they're still building blocks.

but they are building blocks for D&D. and nothing else.

 

[Doug McCrae]

Psst. HERO is more than just superheroes these days.

I've heard that. But it is rooted in an attempt to model superhero comics. Just as the d20 system has its roots in a fantasy medieval wargame.

 

[Psion]

Yeah, whatever, diaglo. You're just like those "computer whizzes" who resent that the term "hacker" is typically used by the masses to refer to a computer criminal, and insist people use the term "cracker" instead, but it you did, most people would think you are invoking a disparaging term for a poor white person of the rural, especially southeast United States. You understand what the accepted lingo is, and it's not going to change because you constantly bring people up on technicalities. If you wish to try to hold the ocean back with a broom, you have fun. But I don't have to watch it.

<Once again>

 

[hong]

but they are building blocks for D&D. and nothing else.

Well, sure. Nobody claimed that D&D's scope is automagically going to become as wide as HERO's; it's still a fantasy game. What goes on WITHIN that scope, though, is the interesting part.