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"Secondly, 3.5's changes were primarily about balancing and clarifications. It didn't favor miniatures any more than 3.0 did."

With regard to this. You need to refer back to the beginning of your core rulebooks. 3.0 lists miniatures as optional and 3.5 lists a battle grid and miniatures as required. Pathfinder continues this with at least the box set saying miniatures and battle grid are required to play. I'd have to check the books. If in doubt refer to Monte Cook (architect of 3.x) and his post explaining that 3.x was designed to be mini agnostic and his annoyance at 3.5's change of language regarding this. He then goes on to make suggestions for mini-less play. http://www.montecook.com/arch_dmonly21.html

Miniatures were common before 3.x true, but they weren't required or even the default there really weren't abilities that primarily benefited mini players and didn't make sense without minis. Most groups didn't use them or if they did use them didn't use the full game mechanics for them only using them to indicate rough positioning.

I've played every edition of D&D as well.. I'm certainly not buying 4th edition. I have a bookshelf of D&D products, and I canceled all of my outstanding orders when they canceled their relationship with the brilliant folks at Paizo, dumping the hardcopy magazines, Dungeon and Dragon. Now they're issuing a new version of the game, which will put further nails in the coffin of Paizo, and trying to milk the franchise for another round of "upgrade", which will incidentally harm all of the third parties like Malhavoc Press who have just finished huge efforts to publish OGL-compatable d20 games.

No, I can keep buying the 3rd party d20 stuff and just ignore Wizards from here on... if I'm really jonsing for something D&D I can whip out my 3.5 edition rules and the dozen or so sourcebooks I have.

"Use little icons showing different Monet paintings at the head of each page"

Use these.

AD&D is very different from third edition (d20) D&D. AD&D abounds with rules exceptions, separate tables for exceptional circumstances, and ambiguous areas where it isn't clear which excpetional table to apply.

In d20 (and 3ed D&D), Jonathan Tweet and Monte Cook (don't ask about "Skippy the Wonder Sage") made it into a smooth, self-balancing system - where AD&D was an accumulation of strange special cases, d20 / 3ed D&D is a thing of beauty, making clear unambiguous implementation straightforward and natural. You can almost run it without referring rule books once you understand the underlying mechanics. It's just that intuitive.

Unfortunately they couldn't let well enough alone (or rather, wanted to sell more books), and started overtweaking everything after Tweet and Cook left. That led to the abomination, v3.5.

"Elbereth Habeas Corpus!", cried the Armani-clad knight as he swung his +3 Firebrand (tm, registered, patent pending, copyright) down upon the arms of the bespectacled Mage, which at that moment were holding an open Holy Tome over one of the Demonic alters - a shaft of light and a macabre hum emanating from it's heart. A single word, "Xerox", emblazoned on the front...

There's a lot of insinuation about WoTC executive greed/money-grubbing going on - which may be the case, but it is also a very hard time for any business to stay afloat. Still, with the relative success of the d20 system, I expected WoTC to be in the black for some time (although I've heard it said that they only make money on the sales of Player's Handbooks - don't quite follow why.)

Monte Cook's rant has some fine points, but no specific names or facts about WoTC. It does seem that somebody has decided to squeeze the venerable D&D turnip, or perhaps killing the goose is a better analogy - ok, they're doing something they shouldn't be with farmyard items - let's leave it at that. Over the past 20 years (where are them wooden teeth, dad-gum-it!) I've had the pleasure of playing the following gaming systems:

• AD&D 1st and 2nd Edition (missed out on Chainmail!)
• Gamma World
• Traveler
• Top Secret
• Paranoia
• Gangsters
• Chill
• Arms Law/Claw Law/Spell Law
• Empire of the Petal Throne
• GURPS
• AD&D 3rd Edition
• Some others, but my Alzheimer's is acting up again...

So, what's my point? (Hey, this is /., do I need one?) Forget the gaming system. Get a good group of creative people together, crank out your own house-brew, and battle on.

If you see an Orc in the road, kill it.

White Wolf's been benefitting from D&D, the d20 system, and the Open Gaming License, too. They've got several imprints and smaller studios that produce d20 material for them to print, such as Sword and Sorcery Studios, Necromancer Games, Malhavoc Press. Until recently, Fiery Dragon Productions was an imprint of Sword and Sorcery Studios, but they've since decided to strike out on their own and try their luck.

So I don't see the demise of D&D (which is a game, not a developer or comapny) any time soon, because companies like White Wolf are now free to create their own content for the game. Besides, with the OGL in place, Hasbro/WotC (the developers of D&D3E) could go under, and there'd be plenty of new d20 gaming products still to be had, so long as people had inspiration to create them.

WotC's having a hard time of it, but it's been indicated that they plan to just use more freelancers - they've already done this with some people they laid off, like Monte Cook. Between this and the Open Gaming License, support for D&D will always be available.

That said, the biggest progress in RPG's lately has been from smaller, independent creators. Check out The Forge - tons of people all working on their own creator-owned games.

Read this article on Monte Cook's website. You may want to search for the word "disadvantage".

Negative effects DO NOT always lower the caster level, nor the value of the item. Keep in mind that NWN tries (I don't own the game, so I know that it tries.. I just don't know how accurate it is) to be compatable with Wizards of the Coasts' 3rd Edition D&D rules.

Just my two cents

Here's the link: orc and pie

How long until somebody releases the "The Ogre and the pie" adventure?

IMarvinTPA