Generic Dungeons, Universal Dragons

It's been about six months since we took the pen and paper gaming industry's temperature. There have been some important product releases since November, many of them well worth looking at. Steve Jackson Games continues to release books for its Fourth Edition of GURPS, and Wizards of the Coast works to expand the appeal of both the core Dungeons and Dragons (D&D) setting and the Eberron campaign world. Read on for some highlights from the world of tabletop gaming. Spell Compendium
Matthew Sernett, Jeff Grubb, Mike McArtor
Wizards of the Coast
$39.95, 288 pages

A purely functional book for D&D, the Spell Compendium is exactly as the title implies: a text collecting spells. As an 'options' book for players, it's hard to argue with the punch of the content. The book does exactly one thing. Spells from such disparate sources as the Complete series of books, the Wizards of the Coast website, and Dragon Magazine were compiled to provide an interesting, fresh set of magical effects for spellcasting characters. The book focuses solely on providing additional spells; My players objected to the title of 'compendium' considering the absence of the spells from the Player's Handbook (PHB). Unfortunately the search for novelty results in what you'd expect from a product like this: extremely variable. While some entries make you wonder why they weren't in the PHB, there are also many confusing or unbalanced ideas. At forty dollars retail it's hard to recommend a product that has such inconsistency in the content. If only on the basis of player/Game Master (GM) arguments, there's a lot of opportunity for frustration as a result of this book. This is definitely a title you can take a pass on unless you only play spellcasters and have a GM who is willing to negotiate with you.

Races of the Dragon
Gwendolyn F.M. Kestrel, Jennifer Clarke Wilkes,Kolja Raven Liquette
Wizards of the Coast
$29.95, 160 pages

The Races series attempts to fill the same niche with player species as the Complete series does with player classes. Each book concentrates on familiar races, gives new background for enthusiastic players, and offers up one or two new races suitable for character creation. Races of the Dragon is somewhat unique, in that it focuses solely on new races for players tired of the standard set. Specifically, it details the Dragonborne, Spellscale, and Kobold races as options for D&D characters. The Dragonborne are a race created, not birthed, a proud warrior race touched by the dragon god Bahamut. Spellscales are vainglorious sorcerers, an impish people with an ingrained sense of style. Kobolds are, of course, the diminutive reptilian race usually slaughtered in large numbers by early-level adventurers. Of the races discussed in the book, the Kobold information is far and away the most interesting to me. An often overlooked race, the simple creatures receive a good deal of fleshing out. As a member of a non-standard party or a quirky addition to your typical humanoid group the Kobold seems to have a lot of potential in this book. The other two races strike me as simple cosmetics: Dragonborne are statistically just magical orcs (though the concept of your character being reborn is an interesting one), and Spellscales feel like elves with shiny skin. The book also touches on half-dragons and dragonblooded creatures, and provides the usual assortment of feats, prestige classes, and spells (my favorite: Gnome Blight). As one of the iconic elements of fantasy, I can understand that there are some folks who just have to play dragons, and they'll find a lot to like here. Similarly if you're looking to complete your collection of the Races books, Races of the Dragon meets the standard set by the other titles in the series. Dungeon Masters (DMs) and non-dracophile players can safely pass; this one's pure candy.

Magic of Eberron
Bruce R. Cordell, Stephen Schubert, Chris Thomasson
Wizards of the Coast
$29.95, 160 pages

Keith Baker's Eberron setting has taken on a life of its own since it launched almost exactly two years ago. The background for Dungeons and Dragons Online, the pulp/noir/fantasy mashup is now Wizards of the Coast's premier product series. Magic of Eberron does a fantastic job of getting across core elements of the setting, elements that have been so far unclear or under-explained. With only two years of development behind it, there is still a lot about the continent of Khorvaire that's not nailed down. For example, creating magical items with Dragonshards is thoroughly covered. Dragonshards power many of the vaguely technology-inspired elements of the setting, and this fundamental flavour element speaks volumes about the world at large. Nightmarish Daelkyr magic, dragon magic, and grafting magic is also explored. Each of these elements not only adds rules grit to the setting, but explains and expands the background presented in the main campaign sourcebook.The tome also manages to balance the fine line between DM and Player content; background information is mixed well with feats, prestige classes, and spells. The Eberron preoccupation with 'places' also works well here, offering up barely sketched out dungeons to add information by example. This is definitely one of the most interesting and informative Eberron resources that has been released to date. Players and Dungeon Masters who are working with this setting should at least take a look. It may not fit your campaign's playstyle, but there is sure to be something here that will spark ideas for later.

Heroes of Horror
James Wyatt, Ari Marmell, C.A. Suleiman
Wizards of the Coast
$29.95, 160 pages

Most D&D products focus on the specific: a sourcebook covering a geographical area, a type of magic, a class or race. Heroes of Horror is the second book in a more thematic series that attempts to add a new twist to the standard Dungeons and Dragons game. Horror, and the previous book Heroes of Battle provides rules and guidelines to focus your campaign beyond the traditional fantasy tropes. As you may guess from the title, Heroes of Horror offers ways in which to include elements from the suspenseful and supernatural we normally associate with games like Call of Cthulu. I'm a big Lovecraft fan, and I was skeptical when I cracked the book if such delicate setting elements could be incorporated via a core book. I should have respected Mr. Wyatt's name on the cover more, because Horror is an unmitigated success. The secret to that success is the light touch the authors take with the source material. Instead of attempting to convey the genre in one go, they break the milieu down into digestible chunks. First they explain how to set the stage for a horror-style encounter (one specific fight, or scene). Then, using the language established with the encounter they expand that to an entire adventure. The Lovecraftian use of suspense, of lurid language, and the need to heighten tension over time is explored with ghoulish examples. Then they take the final step and work with the reader to understand what would be involved in a horror campaign. A series of adventures all with a horror theme could take the players into relatively untrod territory in D&D, and the book is a great guide for the journey. They add a mechanic for 'taint', the psychic residue left behind by dealing with the horrific, but that's just crunch thrown in to make sure you feel like you got your money's worth. Definitely not a book for every Dungeon Master, those that are willing to experiment a little with the traditional D&D experience will find a very worthwhile read here. Players need not apply.

GURPS For Dummies
Adam Griffith, Bjoern-Erik Hartsfvang, and Stuart J. Stuple
Wiley
$13.99, 410 pages

Wiley's series of cheery yellow books continues to expand beyond the borders of technology. This title, along with Dungeons and Dragons for Dummies and Dungeon Master for Dummies seems to represent a new commitment to pen-and-paper gaming. I'm not going to question it, I'm just going to enjoy it. With GURPS for Dummies, there's a lot to enjoy. GURPS stands for Generic Universal RolePlaying System, and is designed with the idea that you can run any kind of game you like using the rules they provide. Anything from fantasy schlock to post-apocalyptic sci-fi to hard-science space adventure can be represented with the system. The downside to the flexibility the system provides is that it's ... a little fussy. GURPS character creation relies on set of advantages and disadvantages, each of which has a point cost or payout. This entry in the Dummies series distills down the complexities into the most basic elements, and then walks the reader through point expenditures step-by-step. Even if used as nothing other than as a first-time player aid, this text is well worth the price of admission. Above and beyond that, they walk through combat, running a GURPS game, and provide some guidance on creating a campaign world suitable for use with the rules set. The combat section is especially brilliant, breaking down options, actions, and skill rolls, and explaining what the best route to finishing a fight is likely to be. My players often joke that no one actually plays GURPS, because the popularity of the system's sourcebook content far outweighs the popularity of the rules-set. Just the same, if you do find yourself looking to get in on a game this is a worthwhile explanatory text for a very ambitious system.

GURPS Space
Jon F. Zeigler and James L. Cambias
Steve Jackson Games
$34.95, 240 pages

While it might be that no one plays GURPS, it's easy to understand why the books sell so well. GURPS supplements are works of art in the roleplaying industry. They're well researched texts, something similar to an informational piledriver. I've known grad students in difficult college courses who refer to GURPS books as a way to get a handle on the assigned subject matter. GURPS Space is a new edition of a classic sourcebook for the line, complete with updated scientific information and new rules to match the fourth edition of the rules-set. Quite simply, this book is the finest resource you will find for running a campaign set in space. It covers, exhaustively, every detail you'll need to consider when your players blast off into the black. The granularity of the subject matter begins quite large, expounding on information like methods of propulsion, interstellar organizations, and the theme of your campaign. It then quickly descends into the nooks and crannies of off-planet science, offering up the rules governing a moon's tidal force on a planet ((T = 17.8 million x M X D)/R^3), as well as the proper placement of planetary orbits around a star. The text has random generation rules for everything from individual alien species to entire solar systems, and ties it all together with a great discussion of future societies at the end. They even include guidelines if your players decide to conquer a planet or two, and what that would entail. ('The Cortez Option', as they call it.) Even if you don't play GURPS, it's hard to recommend against this book if you're considering running a game in the briny black. Heck, even if you don't roleplay, there is enough here to keep a space nerd happy for a month's worth of afternoons.

A Player's Guide to Ptolus
Monte Cook
Sword and Sorcery
$2.99, 32 pages

Five copies of this small sourcebook showed up in my mailbox last week, a harbinger of the release this August of the massive 600+ page Ptolus setting book from Malhavoc Press, in conjunction with the Sword and Sorcery imprint from White Wolf games. The book being released in August is going to be an enormous campaign setting book thoroughly exploring a single city. The five copies I received in the mail were 'rewards' for preordering the book, intended to be given out to my players to excite their appetite for the setting. I'm a sucker for a setting, so here's one of my cynical player's assessment of the book: "Who know if the final price will be worth it, but the little promo looks good. Admittedly I read it pretty late at night, but I didn't notice anything really worth complaining about. I liked how there's a strong element of evil in the setting, not just 'island of civilization beset by darkness' type stuff." In short, the Player's Guide gives every indication that the larger book will offer up a pretty unique setting. Firearms sit side-by-side with swords in the markets, and the populous is well-informed about the dangers of spellcasting. Minotaurs and cat-people walk the streets without incident (or, at least, little more than subtle glares), and every street in the city will be named and numbered. Here's hoping this year's GenCon will see the release of another really worthwhile campaign setting from Malhavoc.

Comments

Pen and Paper?

[BengalsUF]

What be this pen and paper of which you speak?

Re:Pen and Paper?

[Tackhead]

> What be this pen and paper of which you speak?

It's like a MMORPG, but with content.

(And because most player interaction is verbal, it doesn't matter whether or not DungeonMasterTaco can spell :)

Re:Pen and Paper?

[Shadow Wrought]

Which brings up an interesting point. I used to play Silent Death and Battletech, years ago, and one of the annoying things was copying the datasheets so you could check off damage and the like. There has certainly got to be PDA based datasheets now, don't you think? Sort of a convergance of electronic and tactile gaming?

If not, I call the copyrighted patenting trademarking rights!

Re:Pen and Paper?

[irablum]

for Battletech, its even gotten better. thanks to the guys at Heavy Metal Pro there is a windows application which allows you to not only get access to all mechs from all of the books (even some of the really obscure ones) but also allows you to customize them and then print them out. No more am I using coversheets and dry erase markers to perserve sheets, now, just mark the damage and throw them away at the end....

fun fun!

Ira

Re:Pen and Paper?

[SIGFPE]

'Pen' is just another word for 'mouse' and I think 'paper' refers to any surface on the screen that can be directly modified by use of the mouse.

Re:Pen and Paper?

[cryptomancer]

Don't forget the funny dice with wierd shapes! Content is good and all (depending on the developer/DM), but you know some people play just because of the innovative system. Just imagine, instead of black-box results which can only be understood by statistically analyzing the game for hours or days on end, we *give* you the numbers and the random number generators from the start!

Well okay, you have to go buy your own dice... but then you get to choose cool-looking ones, too!

Re:Pen and Paper?

[Stradenko]

Don't forget that DungeonMasterTaco had to change his name to Violated.

Re:Pen and Paper?

[Martin Blank]

I still regret not buying a Zocchihedron when I had the chance. :-P

Re:Pen and Paper?

[Jedi Alec]

oh man, Silent Death...in space, noone can hear you scream. Great game, wonderful memories indeed.

Re:Pen and Paper?

[albyrne5]

Whaddya mean "when I had the chance" are they not available anymore?

Re:Pen and Paper?

[Martin Blank]

Not at any of the game stores around me, who once sold them for about $4 or $5 each, and a couple of years ago when I last checked on it, they were no longer available to the local stores; a few online merchants were selling them, though at more than I was willing to pay for a single die of any sort.

Spell Compendium :-)

[Whiney Mac Fanboy]

Congratulations to Zonk. You've authored an article containing 14 words (or words containing) 'spell' - and not a single spelling mistake (unlike this post).

Truly, a Slashdot first!

I await the spelling mistakes in the inevitable dupe (and the corrections to my spelling in the inevitable replies)

WOTC+D&D

[pl1ght]

Ive been loving what WOTC has done with the D&D franchise. Many say they dumbed it down(and they did), but they completely rivtalized what was a dying franchise save the hardcore. My only complaint is that Eberron is not appealing at all imo. Not many groups have been bothering with that setting. Forgotten Realms/Greyhawk still seem to be top dogs by a far margin. I just cant get into the Eberron setting.

Re:WOTC+D&D

[DanHibiki]

Cheers. They really made it accessable and fun. Though I wish there weren't so damn manny books. It seems that each day someone brings in a new book to the campaign.

Re:WOTC+D&D

[Anonymous Coward]

3E sucks shit.

Seriously... why did all you bloody nerds sink more money into that shit when your 2E stuff was just as good? Oh, that's right... you're the same guys who buy top of the line PCs every couple months and the star wars movies in every format they come out in.

Well, I'm glad the marketing gurus have figured out how to seperate you from your money without giving you anything in return.

Re:WOTC+D&D

[pl1ght]

Hehe...you have no idea how true that is. ps i will be buying the SW trilogy in original format on DVD too.

Re:WOTC+D&D

[WolfStar76]

YAY! Nothing like a Well formed opinion on Slashdot! I don't suppose you'd mind telling us what it is, in particular, that sucks about 3E? Based on your complaint about marketing sucking more money out of people, I'll presume its cost. To that I'd like to counter that the basics of the game are available for free as part of the SRD. You want to try 3.5E? Try a website like www.d20srd.org. Everything you need to play the game is right there. The rest of the material is only useful if you want to add to the game (more spells, more prestige classes, new items, etc etc etc). Most of that stuff you can make up on your own if you don't want to buy it. In the meantime, many of us are quite enjoying the new streamlined rules, the abundance of customizable options for our characters (in the form of Feats and Skills to name but two), and the option of having rules for an AC range with more than a 20 point delta.

Re:WOTC+D&D

[plover]

You fell for a 3rd level Troll. Or was that a Level 3 Troll? Or was that a Troll in the third level of the dungeon?

Hmm, maybe 3E doesn't suck as much as the GP claims...

Re:WOTC+D&D

[TommyBlack]

I'm not sure what you meant by "Not many groups have been bothering with that setting"... Everybody I know loves eberron, and the books seem to be selling well enough.

Re:WOTC+D&D

[modmans2ndcoming]

at least you can game... in my area there are no games.

Re:WOTC+D&D

[Mistshadow2k4]

The pure anal-retentiveness of the design is what sucks about it. Bonsues and penalties are divided by types and most can't be stacked. You get a +1 to something because of this or that and another +1 but you don't get a +2. No, you still only get a +1. This is worse in computer-based D&D games like NWN, where many magic item are pretty much random instead of chosen by a sensible DM.

The spells are divided into separate spell lists for each and every spellcasting class. Why do paladins and rangers need a separate spell list from clerics? One of the most innovative things about 2nd Edition rules was that they combined most of these together. WotC threw the baby out with the bathwater and made a whole new system -- and that's not the only time they did that either. I don't supposed it occurred to anyone that this might create a little more work for the DM, as some players might be tempted to cheat and use a spell that's not on his list, knowing good and well that the DM hasn't go them all memorized?

Combat. WTF?! This system is more complicated than real combat! You spend over a minute calculating attacks of opportunity for each round of combat. And they give attacks of opportunity for the stupidest things! Why should someone get a free attack against you just because you're not armed? Why should doing virtually anything provoke an attack of opportunity? Why is evreything divided into 5-foot squares? If I'm not mistaken, you can't attack soemone in the same 5-foot square as your character. Huh? You can't attack someone who is within 5 feet of you?! Talk about unrealistic. And how come your utterly helpless when you're knocked down? What, do your arms and legs automatically become paralyzed every time you're prone? Lie on back and tell me how much sense that makes.

Now, I'll fully admit the combat rules for AD&D always felt incomplete, so I completed them for my campaigns, but there was no need to over-complicate it to this extent, let alone throw in a bunch of "because I said so!" rules that don't make sense in the first place.

Psionics. It's nothing but an alternative magic system with a different spell list. Others have, fortunately, come up with a much better system based on skills and feats. Look up "d20 Skills Feats Psionics" with a search engine to find it; it's a free download in .pdf format. Pay no attention to the crass rip-off of it that Green Ronin wants you to buy from them.

Alignment. I've never liked the alignment rules and I'm sick of having them forced down my throat. To show how bad that has gotten, here's a special quote: "Malefica are always evil and should not be encouraged as player characters. This game should be about heroic fantasy. Malefica make great NPCs to challenge player characters. They should be played as the typical "wicked witch" from fairytales or stories." Well, excuse me, I didn't know my game was subject to their approval. And here I thought we could play however we wanted. How foolish of me. With some books, there's hardly a page without a reference to "good-aligned" or "evil-aligned". And some books reduce complex social situation and mental states to alignment, nothing more; example, the 3rd Edition Ravenloft rules for madness. Schizophrenia is reduced purely into the individual swithcing alignments -- a game mechanic. Well, I guess that was easier than actually bothering to look any info on the subject, wasn't it? Many are way over-dependent on the alignment rules and even use them in a heavy-handed attempt to control how others play the game.

XP costs. We played just fine for over 15 years without that nonsense. Yes, they say it's an optional rule, but then they try hard as they can to browbeat you into using it, over and over again with spells and magic items stats.

Armor and weapons. Did you know that the longsword of D&D isn't? And why is the bastard sword an exotic weapon? It was a popular weapon in Europe for centuries! And what's with it weighing 10 pounds?! Bastard swords should weigh ab

Re:WOTC+D&D

[Mistshadow2k4]

Yes, Eberron has been selling well. But not well enough to suit WotC. Part of the problem is that they seem to think they're a software compnay nowadays, and if they refuse to support other game worlds by dropping them, they can force others to switch to Eberron. How is that supposed to work? You can just keep paying any world you want, regardless of whether new material is coming out for it or not. Not to mention that a good DM uses his or her own material anyway. Hell, I use my own world, just like a lot of other DMs. I don't know, but word on the message boards (many, many of them) for months now has been that's what WotC is trying to do.

Re:WOTC+D&D

[ryusen]

2E was just as good? I gave up on D&D sometime after 2E. I just did not liek it. that's when i swore off D&D and switched for good to Rolemaster. I finally got convinced to try 3.5 last year and it's not bad. Although, in all honesty, i am thinking about making my own system next time around...

Re:WOTC+D&D

[spauldo]

The pure anal-retentiveness of the design is what sucks about it. Bonsues and penalties are divided by types and most can't be stacked. You get a +1 to something because of this or that and another +1 but you don't get a +2. No, you still only get a +1.

No kidding. The whole stacks/don't stack thing drives me up the wall - especially with newbie players. I've got a cheat sheet I use for it myself that helps out a lot. It does act as a bit of a deterrant to munchkins though, which is good in my book.

Why do paladins and rangers need a separate spell list from clerics?

They only get four spell levels each. Rangers are closer to druids anyway - why would a ranger be able to cast spells which are deity-oriented?

Paladins/clerics just have different sets because a paladin's training is so different than a cleric's (at least that's how I rationalize it). As far as actually playing, why would someone play a cleric over a paladin if a paladin was just a superset of the cleric (besides the obvious roleplaying reasons)?

And they give attacks of opportunity for the stupidest things! Why should someone get a free attack against you just because you're not armed? Why should doing virtually anything provoke an attack of opportunity?

I agree with you here. I always joke that attacks of opportunity are a way of goading you into using miniatures (which add a few hundred dollars to the hobby). I do without them, but there's a lot in the game that uses the assumptions that you at least use tokens.

Why is evreything divided into 5-foot squares?

It's easier to use miniatures with it. When you play without them, it's mostly a non-issue.

If I'm not mistaken, you can't attack soemone in the same 5-foot square as your character. Huh? You can't attack someone who is within 5 feet of you?!

That depends what weapon you use. Polearms, obviously, are useless against an adjacent foe.

I'm aware of no rule that says you can't attack anyone in the same square as you. It doesn't happen in miniature games, because you can't physically stack the minis.

It helps if you've actually watched combat with the types of weapons used here - ren faires and SCA events are a good chance for this. If someone's up your ass, you can easily get 'em with a dagger, but a greatsword? No way.

This doesn't become an issue in my campaigns either (except the polearm thing). The DM should run the game by common sense, and unless an opponent is attempting to grapple, I assume that there's enough arm room to use a weapon unless it's a confined space (extremely small tunnel, for instance, and there's rules in the book for that as well).

And how come your utterly helpless when you're knocked down? What, do your arms and legs automatically become paralyzed every time you're prone? Lie on back and tell me how much sense that makes.

You can, albeit at a -4 to hit with melee weapons, no negative to crossbow, and you can't use a regular bow. The DM can adjust this as the situation allows. See table 8-8 in the 3E PHB.

Now, I'll fully admit the combat rules for AD&D always felt incomplete, so I completed them for my campaigns, but there was no need to over-complicate it to this extent, let alone throw in a bunch of "because I said so!" rules that don't make sense in the first place.

Personally, I feel the combat rules are the most complete part of 3E. It's lacking on the roleplaying part in my opinion.

Psionics.

Can't comment here, I don't use them in my campaigns.

Well, excuse me, I didn't know my game was subject to their approval. And here I thought we could play however we wanted. How foolish of me.

You can play however you want. The books describe the greyhawk campain setting (as much of one as there is outside of LG), but you can certainly bend the rules however you wish.

I agree the whole good/evil thing is a bit undefined. What makes someone 'evil'? Palla

Re:WOTC+D&D

[kria]

A third party setting that I whole heartedly endorse is the Arcanis setting by Paradigm Concepts. To me, it seems to have a backstory nearly as rich as Forgotten Realms (it's to get to that mark without having a hundred books or so), but it's also set up for things to happen. Players get a lot of input into what does happen through their RPGA campaign, Living Arcanis, including some characters from that being included in flavor sections of one of the main books, the Player's Guide to Arcanis.

Blows Eberron out of the water, IMHO.

Re:WOTC+D&D

[Seraphim_72]

The grandparent's comments about longswords is about the fact that in modern nomenclature there is no difference between a dnd broadsword and a dnd longsword. They do not exist as seperate entities. The gp is also correct about bastard swords. A bastard sword is (traditionally) a blade of equal length to a broadsword, or a bit more, but with extra length to the hilt. This allowed the man weilding it to do what came naturally, grab and swing with both hands. Making it "exotic" is like making a two handed back-hand in tennis and "exotic" skill. It is a common fallacy than a fully armored knight was cumbersome and slow. Slow on a battlefield means dead on a battlefield. The rules in the game are a mechanic, so that everyone isn't running around in plate mail 24/7 - they are not meant to be a reflection of reality (or that is what I keep telling myself).

There was a Dragon issue ages ago where some of the editorial staff went out to a boffer fight and came away some revelations such as that shields are worth far more than +1.

And no, I am no armchair warrior. I have made the stuff before. And trust me, you work there, you have to know your history.

Sera

Re:WOTC+D&D

[spauldo]

Reguarding the swords, I have no comment, since I'm not an ancient weapons expert.

Reguarding the armor, I can't really say I've ever watched people in armor do the 440 yard dash, so I can't say how slow it makes you movement wise or how well that is represented by the speed penalty. However, the limit to your dex bonus makes you average at worst. Someone in full plate can do things that someone with an average dexterity can do, or even better than average (full plate has a dex modifier cap of +1), but not someone with extraordinary dexterity, like a contortionist or martial artist.

Like I said before, you can't do gymnastics while wearing heavy armor. That's what the dex limit is for.

The skill modifiers for armor make some amount of sense as well. I've climbed ropes and cliffs before, and I don't imagine that wearing armor will make that any easier. Moving silently in heavy armor is a lot harder to accomplish as well - most armor isn't made to be quiet. You'd have to practice in heavy armor quite a bit to be able to balance on a beam or tightrope as well as you can normally. Same goes with tumble.

The rules don't say you _can't_ do these things - they just say you can't do them as well.

No news about Palladium?

[Orrin Bloquy]

http://forums.palladium-megaverse.com/viewtopic.ph p?t=57048

Doesn't look promising.

Re:No news about Palladium?

[crossmr]

I think the link is /. but I miss palladium. I used to thoroughly enjoy their "After the Bomb" mutant stuff. I still have them in my closet. Never got into Rifts though.

Re:No news about Palladium?

[Anonymous Freak]

Read the status updates in that forum. It looks VERY promising. They've had $200,000 worth of business in the two weeks since that 'plea for help' was made. Kevin (the founder of Palladium,) has stated that it looks like they are going to recover now.

(And for those nay-sayers who will just blame their troubles on the N-Gage game... They didn't LOSE any money on it, it just didn't bring any money IN. Nokia is the one who lost money.)

Re:No news about Palladium?

[Anonymous Coward]

It was still a god damned stupid idea, which characterizes the Palladium leadership as a whole.

Re:No news about Palladium?

[Orrin Bloquy]

So, Nokia ponied up all the cash to manufacture and package the game chips for the N-Gage and didn't request any money from their developer? It's possible, but sounds unlikely.

I didn't mean to troll, but someone begging on the Internet for a sum between $850K - $1.3M sounded like he was circling the drain. Good for the fans. I don't play their games, but the worst thing for any market is watching it turn into an oligopoly of two or three companies.

Re:No news about Palladium?

[Anonymous Coward]

i think that with PnP games, if you have never played it you dont care about it. i submitted that Palladium Books story the day it was published thinking how much of an issue it would be if one of the top 5 RPG game publishers went out of business from embezelment and theft it would be big news.

Alas, "Palladium Books Suffers Theft; Call for Help 12:33 PM April 21st, 2006 Rejected".

Re:No news about Palladium?

[RSKennan]

I submitted an article when the story broke, but I think it meandered too much to get approved.

Re:No news about Palladium?

[ApostateApostle]

Don't worry, it's not so much of a loss.

Re:No news about Palladium?

[Anonymous Freak]

Nokia, as publisher, bought the rights to the game, and solicited a developer. They paid the developer a flat fee, and took the loss. If there had been a PROFIT, there would have been profit sharing between all three parties (Nokia, Palladium, and developer Backbone.) As it was, Backbone got a development fee, Palladium got a small licensing fee, and Nokia lost money. (Nokia was expecting the Rifts game to be the breakout 'makes the N-Gage respectable' game, and had even optioned for sequels.)

Just like with the Bruckheimer-produced Rifts movie. The initial licensing fee has been paid to Palladium; and if Bruckheimer ever finds a script he likes, it will be produced. If the movie tanks, Palladium won't lose any money, but they won't GET any, either. If the movie is a blockbuster, Palladium will make money.

And again, he wasn't begging for $850k-$1.3M, he was stating that those were his losses, and wanted fans to help keep the company afloat by buying about $200k worth of merchandise. He was NOT soliciting for donations (overly-rabid fans on the forums started that,) and he wasn't looking for sympathy. He was just trying to keep his life's work alive, and finally decided he needed to let his fans know of his plight.

Yeah, Kevin's a dictator of a publisher (heavily re-writing outside writer's work, or even scrapping it and writing it from scratch himself,) and self-admittedly not a great businessman, but you do have to respect his dedication to the fans of his works.

Re:No news about Palladium?

[IgLou]

I'm glad someone brought this up. I'm a little choked that this pen and paper update had no mention of the Palladium news. Mind you, I have severe misgivings about Palladium and their lack of response (and sometimes abuse) to fans. So I took this whole thing with a grain of salt. I also wouldn't pay that much for the art print regardless.

The sad part about the Palladium is how it shows how mismanaged it's become.. Anyways, RPGNow has a huge forum on this topic and let me tell you that this has been discussed to death there!

This was flamebait HOW?

[Orrin Bloquy]

Y'know, if it had been modded Offtopic I'd be irked but lick my wounds. Mentioning an RPG company in trouble in the context of a story about paper/pen gaming platforms wasn't meant to start an argument, it was a comment that not everything is rosy in this arena and it's worth looking at.

Oh. Wait. I get it. Someone got offended by a sig satirizing someone else's sig.

Re:This was flamebait HOW?

[zaren]

My very first thought when I saw this article was to mention the palladium debacle. Glad to see someone beat me to it. I think it's very on-topic, considering this is a "state of the industry" article, and you'd get mod points for it if I had them.

GURPS Space

[Cthefuture]

I have to agree with the GURPS Space thing. I haven't played GURPS in probably 15 years but I still love to read some of the books. Especially GURPS Space is very interesting reading because it compiles a whole bunch of research knowledge down into a single digestible book.

Re:GURPS Space

[Gilmoure]

Same here. As I've gotten older, with less time on my hands to sit down with others on a regular schedule, I've been using the past edition of GURPS Space and GURPS Traveller First In to develop my own scenario of space (and mess around with database program, trying to create clickable space maps). Development is fun!

Lack of opportunity

[ApathyCollider]

You know, this story justs reminds how much I've wanted to get into pen and paper rpgs lately, but can't find anyone within 50 miles who runs them. I don't know if it's just Pittsburgh or what, but the internet is pretty useless for locating games, and as a beginner I can't really start my own. I think if some of the bigger companies came out and made like a uniform game location tool, popularity would skyrocket.

Re:Lack of opportunity

[east coast]

Actaully, I'm from the Pittsburgh area and there is an active gaming community here. The questions come down to where in the area do you live and how far are you willing to travel.

Unfortunatly gaming shops don't advertise much and that's the fertile ground for getting involved in the local gaming scene. I live about 5 miles from my closest gaming shop and I will say that unless you walked up to the store front to see what the store is all about you'd probably not guess it was a gaming store.

Re:Lack of opportunity

[pdboddy]

http://www.rpol.net/

A good resource for either playing online, via forum/group posting, as well as a player/gm locator for such games, and I do believe they have other resources for finding live tabletop rpg games.

There are also a huge number of Yahoo! Groups and Google Groups games going, not to mention LiveJournal and Greatest Journal rpgs.

You can also find games on IRC, which are a bit more interactive (not to mention faster).

I realize these games lack some of the things a live tabletop game offers, such as the social time and friendly banter, but I think these sorts of forums are good for those who can't find live games elsewhere, or who don't have 6 hours to set aside on a regular basis to roleplay.

Re:Lack of opportunity

[ApathyCollider]

Well actually I'm shocked to hear that so quickly. I'd be really interested in getting into it, though, I live in Oakland, and I go to Pitt in a liberal arts capacity so naturally I have a tons of free time. (Unlike CS or Engineers who are up at 8AM for 2 hour chem labs, I generally saunter down to my history electives around 2pm). If you're in the area and wouldn't mind picking up an extra guy, I'd love to get in touch with you about it.

Re:Lack of opportunity

[Yabol]

Game Masters on Babcock Blvd ( http://maps.citysearch.com/location/8630254 ) has sessions. An associate of mine plays on Monday nights.

If you can drive, it's only about 15-20 minuts from Pitt's campus.

Re:Lack of opportunity

[misfit815]

I've been trying unsuccessfully for years to get a group going. The problems have typically been things like a) the rest of the group has more time/money to spend on stuff and i just can't keep up, b) gamers apparently think that hygiene is... optional, c) once you get past college, the numbers are pretty thin.

All of these things are directly related to the fact that I (and people my age) have a family, a job, responsibilities, etc. There just doesn't seem to be a venue for the average, everyday, thirtysomething suburbanite.

On that note, it's been my personal opinion that average, everyday, thirtysomething suburbanites still think pen and paper RPG's are for kids, yet they latch on to the latest MMORPG. In fact, I would say it's the other way around.

Re:Lack of opportunity

[Poleris]

If you live in Oakland, why don't you come down to Carnegie Mellon? Lord knows we have quite a bunch of DnD going around here.

Re:Lack of opportunity

[MadMorf]

I have had great luck finding games and players over the years with AccessDenied.Net:
http://www.accessdenied.net/index.htm

Re:Lack of opportunity

[jythie]

You do realize that pitt has a pen and paper roleplaying student group? Last I heard they meet in the student union about once a week or so. I could be a bit out of date though ^_^; PJAC is also (or used to be) filled with pen and paper peeps.

Re:Lack of opportunity

[Anonymous Coward]

Within 50 miles of Pittsburgh?

http://www.tjccc.com/

The store is closed now, but people there still actively play D&D. Email the owner (link on website) to see if you can join in.

Re:Lack of opportunity

[Allison Geode]

i have a similar problem, and I thought 'hmm, maybe i'll check the gameshops.' unfortunately, the people at the gameshops (that are *just* games, and not game-comic hybrid) are incredibly rude to me. I'm not sure if its because I'm in 'newb' status (I've been out of the pen and paper loop for a few years) or if its because I'm not exactly 'one of the guys' and they just don't know how to talk to me without making complete asses of themselves (every time i've been in these places, i was the only one who wasn't a droolingly-nerdy guy; the stereotypes are true!)
but either way, i'd love to get back into gaming, but its difficult to do so!

Re:Lack of opportunity

[Arivia]

Currently, I'm looking for players for a D&D 3.5 Forgotten Realms game(Undermountain), and a sometime-to-be Mage: The Awakening game. The Undermountain game is on Wednesday nights, while the Mage game is currently set to be run on Mondays --- both are online, over IRC, and I attempt to be beginner-friendly. E-mail me for details if interested.

Re:Lack of opportunity

[Stroman Rebar]

If you are interesting in trying Living Greyhawk, check out the RPGA site. There are probably gamedays in your area, just check out the campaign rules and join the relevant yahoo group for your area.

I would start here:

http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=lg/welcome

Good luck, and happy gaming.

Re:Lack of opportunity

[GMFTatsujin]

If you're fortunate enough to have a gaming shop in your town, go there. Chances are that there will be a billboard and a registry of gaming clubs in the area.

Brick and mortar may be so very twentieth century as far as retail goes, but as beacons for hobbyists who want to find their community, they can't be beat.

Another good place to look: the local university will probably have a gamers' group.

Re:Lack of opportunity

[moondance1970]

actually my gaming group is 30+ year olds with a wife and kids we play once a week for 4 hours. We play GURPS and use all the online programs available so we never actually use the books which we have one copy of. I live in vancouver and this nice city has the site : www.vancouvergamingguild.com which is where I found my gaming group it is awesome.

Re:Lack of opportunity

[Anonymous Coward]

Try this http://www.sjgames.com/gamerfinder/

Re:Lack of opportunity

[crazyjimmy]

Ya know, back when my Brother and I lived in Pittsburgh, it was the same feeling. We were freshly moved and trying to keep the game alive (without the rest of our old group), and had very little luck. I was told there were hundreds of gamers in the area, and total I gamed with 2. The first defined the "mouth-breathing dweeb", and the second was a very intellegent dope. We finally just grabbed friends out of the community college and started force feeding a rules-lite version of GURPS to them :D. I don't know what it is about that city. Back in salt lake, and I know of at least 4 different groups besides my own that games frequently. And that's without even looking for them.

If I was still in pittsburgh, I'd happily offer to game :P.

--Jimmy

Re:Lack of opportunity

[pdboddy]

Hehe... you know, there are enough folks in this thread alone looking for a game to get into... one could start something up, online-wise anyways.

Re:Lack of opportunity

[kria]

I suggest looking here. It's the mailing list set up for your state for people who play RPGA campaigns. The RPGA is an organization run by WOTC that run a number of shared world kind of campaigns. My personal favorite is Arcanis (which is pretty high roleplay, but still has some deadly combats), but there is also Living Greyhawk, Living Spycraft and some others.

Re:Lack of opportunity

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, what city are you in?

Re:Lack of opportunity

[Anonymous Coward]

There's a open source tool called OpenRPG, similar to IRC but with a map window and gametree for pre typed content and dice rolling script.
http://www.openrpg.com/
Maybe you cannot get 5 people in a room together at the same time, but usually you can get 5 people across the world to show up, minus the pizza and cheetos.

Re:Lack of opportunity

[Thorkull]

Wizards of the Coast's RPGA Network is also a great way to meet local gamers, if you're willing to play D&D 3.5E. I'd recommend Living Greyhawk over other "campaigns" they offer, however.

Re:Lack of opportunity

[ExPacis]

Check with Phantom of the Attic in Oakland at 214 S. Craig. They've got postings for games that they either host there or people host elsewhere.

GURPS Space next on my 'Must Buy' list.

[spun]

The fourth edition is really great. Totally reworked a lot of things I thought were broken from the beginning. All skills progress at the same rate now. DX and IQ cost way more than HT and ST now, but they don't increase in cost. Advantages and Disadvantages can be modified with Enhancements and Limitations. The rules have, in general, been simplified and made logically consistent.

I have the "Characters," "Campaigns," and "Magic" books right now and have been waiting for the "Space" book so I can update my third edition space campaign. A new version of "Vehicles" would be nice, too.

Not to be too fanboyish, but GURPS beats any other tabletop RPG hands down for clarity, simplicity, realism, and playability. Plus it only uses 6 sided dice. It has the largest collection of licensed game worlds of any system, including Conan, Uplift and Riverworld, among others. Plus, it has a huge collection of historical supplements allowing people to role play in historically accurate game worlds from the Aztecs to the Vikings.

So all you other RPGers out there who haven't, please give it a try. You have nothing to lose but your huge bag of polyhedral dice.

Re:GURPS Space next on my 'Must Buy' list.

[Kuang_Eleven]

GURPS is wonderful, my system of choice, bu i just can't justify making all my 3rd Ed. "crunchy" rulebooks obsolete. I just about about have every crunchy rulebook! Now, my question is, do you know if 4th edition is that much of a leap and a bound above 3rd with GULLIVER thrown in?

Re:GURPS Space next on my 'Must Buy' list.

[meringuoid]

Not to be too fanboyish, but GURPS beats any other tabletop RPG hands down for clarity, simplicity, realism, and playability. Plus it only uses 6 sided dice. It has the largest collection of licensed game worlds of any system, including Conan, Uplift and Riverworld, among others. Plus, it has a huge collection of historical supplements allowing people to role play in historically accurate game worlds from the Aztecs to the Vikings.

Y'know, if you've got a system that works equally well with weird space monstrosities and with stone-age tribes and with pirates and Vikings and so forth...

...

* heads over to Google and types in 'gurps "doctor who"' and wonders what stat bonuses might be conveyed by a recorder, a bag of jelly babies and / or the Key to Time, and how much one might expect to pay per month for one of those call-through-time SIM cards *

Re:GURPS Space next on my 'Must Buy' list.

[spun]

I've never like the GULLIVER unofficial rules all that much, but 4th edition is a big improvement over 3rd. Plus, you don't need to throw anything away, just make a few simple conversions. I mean, some of the 3rd edition stuff that's out of print probably won't get redone anyways.

Re:GURPS Space next on my 'Must Buy' list.

[Anonymous Coward]

They come free when you buy or steal a TARDIS, kick Davros in the Ninnies, and build your own robotic dog.

Re:GURPS Space next on my 'Must Buy' list.

[hal2814]

There was a Who RPG a while back. It was kind of odd because it was only one sourcebook and that was sold as a regular paperback. I can't remember if Virign published it but it was around the time Virgin was publishing Who novels that I saw it. It was a system that only used six-sided dice. I kick myself for not buying it when I found it. It looked like rubbish but would've been fun to have around just for the sake of it.

I'd seriously consider updating my GURPS collection to include some Dr Who.

Re:GURPS Space next on my 'Must Buy' list.

[greg_barton]

You have nothing to lose but your huge bag of polyhedral dice.

Except for those six sided polyhedrons we call cubes...

Re:GURPS Space next on my 'Must Buy' list.

[Rydia]

If you want to do Who, you should use Hero System 5.

Absolute Time Sense
Danger Sense
Universal Translator
Simulate Death
Teleportation (Time/Unlimited Range/Obvious Inaccessible Focus)
Find Weakness
Mind Control (only on friendly target/limited to suggestion)
and then 20 INT and a billion points into various skills.

And, of course, Dependent NPC.

Fun stuff.

Re:GURPS Space next on my 'Must Buy' list.

[spun]

Pedant. ;-)

Re:GURPS Space next on my 'Must Buy' list.

[greg_barton]

I prefer the moniker "pedademagogue" or "white hat svengali"

Re:GURPS Space next on my 'Must Buy' list.

[oGMo]

Yeah, I got the 4e books out of curiosity and wow it is more organized than 3e. The rules are very similar, with (as you said) some welcome stat additions (separate HP, Will, and FP for instance). They've also folded Psi into advantages, which is ... interesting, at least. Definitely a bit less confusing, with the downside that it's not quite as focused as before.

Re:GURPS Space next on my 'Must Buy' list.

[OwnedByTwoCats]

I've been a big fan of Steve Jackson's creativity since I compared Melee to the combat system in Basic D&D almost thirty years ago.

But I haven't done much more than collect books since I got married the first time... Supporting a wife and a house and a child doesn't leave much time... and I'm away from all my friends who used to game...

It's the middle-aged geek's lament.

Re:GURPS Space next on my 'Must Buy' list.

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, I found a Dr. Who The Roleplaying Game box-set in a local gaming store not far from my place. Picked it up for $5 or something like that.

It contains, as I recall, 3 books: a Game Master's Guide, a Player's Guide and a Time Lord handbook.

It was published by FASA and uses an unusual and complex system with lots of tables and such (though it had some neat rules for automatic resolution of skills).

Re:GURPS Space next on my 'Must Buy' list.

[SydShamino]

>> heads over to Google and types in 'gurps "doctor who"' and wonders what stat bonuses might be conveyed by a recorder, a bag of jelly babies and / or the Key to Time, and how much one might expect to pay per month for one of those call-through-time SIM cards

There have been threads discussing Doctor Who in GURPS on the SJGames forum. See:
http://forums.sjgames.com/showthread.php?t=14788
http://forums.sjgames.com/showthread.php?t=15351

Re:GURPS Space next on my 'Must Buy' list.

[spun]

It's the middle-aged geek's lament.
I hear ya, buddy. Just wait 'till the kid's old enough to play. My dad and I played the original blue-box D&D when I was ten. When I started DMing, he came up with the best four character names ever: Eski Ker the fighter, Kneal Downs the cleric, Dewey Tewya the thief, and Balzo Phyre the wizard. Hehehe, and I still remember them. Every kid loves playing make believe, not much of a leap to RPGs.

Re:GURPS Space next on my 'Must Buy' list.

[Valdrax]

Not to be too fanboyish, but GURPS beats any other tabletop RPG hands down for clarity, simplicity, realism, and playability.

While your mileage may vary in what you consider fun, and I respect that opinion, there's a bit too much chest-thumping pride to ignore in your statement when you so boldly declare the GURPS wins the trophy for all of these things.

You obviously have not strayed outside of the classic supplement machines of WotC, White World, SJG, etc. if you think that GURPS wins in ALL four categories. You definitely haven't played any indie RPGs and have never played a diceless game. While GURPS may beat the d20 and Storyteller systems in many ways, it's not the king of the hill for some of the virtues you ascribe to it.

For simplicity and clarity, you can't get much better than diceless games like Amber or Theatrix. For simple games with dice, quick-play systems like QAGS or DIY games like FUDGE offer very simple rules to work with. Over the Edge is also a wonderfully simple game. Even a game with a lot of crunchy bits like Feng Shui is much simpler than GURPS if a bit less focused on "realism."

"Playability" is of course a completely subjective virtue, so I won't try to dispute you there since it's pointless to argue about a subjective opinion. However, I find that simplicity and clarity are virtues in a game directly opposed to "realism." Attempting the goal of realism generally means rigid modeling of a situation which inherently demands complexity to cover all the "what-ifs." All games fail in this some degree or another, leading to the long-running Murphy's Rules comic in SJG's Pyramid magazine.

Objectively, though, any time your game relies on a grid of some sort with facing, turning, and movement rigidly defined, you've already lost the battle for simplicity. If it's more complicated than, "Roll to hit, roll for damage," then it's already out of the league of many games for simplicity.

Re:GURPS Space next on my 'Must Buy' list.

[meringuoid]

Absolute Time Sense

Well, perhaps not as absolute as all that. Last year the Doctor tried to drop Rose off at home, at an epoch twelve hours after the time they'd left. Turned out to be twelve months. A couple of weeks ago he attempted to go to an Ian Dury gig in 1979. Wound up in 1879.

Now, you can put all this down to the TARDIS being less than perfectly reliable, but both times the Doctor didn't notice the mistake until he found out the hard way...

Re:GURPS Space next on my 'Must Buy' list.

[DragonWriter]

"Playability" is of course a completely subjective virtue, so I won't try to dispute you there since it's pointless to argue about a subjective opinion.

Simplicity and clarity are subjective, too, and you had not problem debating them. (and I disagree with all your specific counters, though I think that Risus beats GURPS for simplicity, and some forms of clarity, though not realism.

Objectively, though, any time your game relies on a grid of some sort with facing, turning, and movement rigidly defined, you've already lost the battle for simplicity.

This is both subjective, rather than objective, and irrelevant to GURPS which, while it has a tactical combat system which relies on a grid, can be run without it, and indeed the system is not present in GURPS Light, the free ("like beer") basic introductory version available as a PDF download. (Though certainly, in one sense, having multiple plug-and-play options, which GURPS clearly does have, is a strike against simplicity.)

Re:GURPS Space next on my 'Must Buy' list.

[damiangerous]

Not to be too fanboyish, but GURPS beats any other tabletop RPG hands down for clarity, simplicity, realism, and playability.

The biggest problem with GURPS is that it tries to be all things to all people (hence the Generic Universal part). That's what kills it. GURPS is just...boring. It's a clear and fairly straightforward system, to be sure. But it's just not at all fun. GURPS is what a role playing system would be if it were invented by IBM.

Re:GURPS Space next on my 'Must Buy' list.

[spun]

Well, I did admit to being in a fanboyish mood when I wrote that, so you have every right to criticise. Let me clarify. I think GURPS has the best balance between clarity, simplicity, realism, and playability.

Re:GURPS Space next on my 'Must Buy' list.

[spun]

Well, I disagree and I would disagree if you made that comment about any game system. Game systems are all boring, if you sit down and read them. In this regard, GURPS is actually the least boring.

Games themselves can be boring, but that is invariably the fault of the GM, the players, or the person who wrote the particular adventure. I can GM a game with no frickin' rules and no preparation, just making shit up off the top of my head and it will be exciting, because I have an imagination and a head stuffed full of fantasy and sci fi plotlines.

Re:GURPS Space next on my 'Must Buy' list.

[Valdrax]

Simplicity and clarity are subjective, too, and you had not problem debating them. (and I disagree with all your specific counters, though I think that Risus beats GURPS for simplicity, and some forms of clarity, though not realism.

Risus is an excellent minimalist game, but you're going to have to dispute that all of my specific counters are not simpler than GURPS? All of them?

Let's describe a few of them:

QAGS rules are dirt simple. You have a job with a score beside it. You roll a d20 under the score to succeed if you try something that you can do under your job. You similarly have a Gimmick and a Weakness with a score. That's pretty much your entire character, and that's pretty much all of the rules except for Yum Yums -- food that you are awarded that you can bribe the GM with. Over the Edge is also very freeform and simple with I believe only 4 player-defined traits to pick and roll against. That's a far sight simpler even just in character creation that GURPS.

Amber's mechanics are dirt simple. You compare stats and the highest wins with only a little play for one character having set up the arena of combat in their favor. Theatrix doesn't even really look at stats and is essentially a pure "drama" mechanic where the GM rules in favor of whatever preserves the story best with no required regard to what the stats say (as they just define that the character is like) and gives players the ability to spend a pool of points to dictate the plot themselves. This is in stark contrast to the initiative, to hit, damage, cover and concealment, fatigue, etc. rules of GURPS.

Feng Shui's character creation system is to take a template and fill in a couple of values. All rules complexity comes from the various schticks the PCs employ. Actual combat is completely a matter of rolling two dice + an attack value and comparing it to the defense value. Damage is static, and death comes at doing checks against your constitution once damage gets above a certain level. It's the most complex system that I mentioned, and it's still very simple and very fast to play compared to GURPs.

GURPS Lite is very simple compared to the standard core rules, but I still say that it's significantly more complex than games like QAGS and OtE much less the purely diceless games. If you have a good reason why, for example, Amber is more complex than GURPS, I'd love to hear it.

Re:GURPS Space next on my 'Must Buy' list.

[Valdrax]

Fair enough. I disagree, but that's because I sit at a far end of the "simplicity" vs. "realism" spectrum. I don't think that "realism" should even be a goal of a game compared to ease of play. I started gaming with diceless games, and so I've been "ruined" for most mainstream systems.

Tastes differ. As long as we're gaming with people that have similar goals and are all capable of having fun, that's what really matters, you know?

Re:GURPS Space next on my 'Must Buy' list.

[roguebfl]

The biggest problem with GURPS is that it tries to be all things to all people (hence the Generic Universal part). That's what kills it. GURPS is just...boring. It's a clear and fairly straightforward system, to be sure. But it's just not at all fun. GURPS is what a role playing system would be if it were invented by IBM.

Then you have not looked at the Setting Books 8) Conan, Uplift, Discwork, IOU, etc...

Re:GURPS Space next on my 'Must Buy' list.

[DragonWriter]

Risus is an excellent minimalist game, but you're going to have to dispute that all of my specific counters are not simpler than GURPS?

No, I'm not going to have to dispute them, I'm pointing out that the issue is subjective and that I disagree with your assessment. I'm most emphatically not going to argue about each of them. Though, as an example, I emphatically agree with the factual part of your description of Theatrix but would suggest that resorting to subjective story-based determination for everything takes the load of the game designers back and places it squarely on the GMs, but is neither "simple" nor "clear" as I would use the term, especially from a GM's perspective. (In fact, its pretty much the default rule most GMs I've ever known have used in practice, looking to the susbtantive game rules in products to simplify or clarify such decisions when that "rule" didn't clearly, to them, compel one particular outcome.)

Re:GURPS Space next on my 'Must Buy' list.

[kpharmer]

>> Not to be too fanboyish, but GURPS beats any other tabletop RPG hands down for
>> clarity, simplicity, realism, and playability.

> The biggest problem with GURPS is that it tries to be all things to all people (hence the Generic
> Universal part). That's what kills it. GURPS is just...boring. It's a clear and fairly straightforward
> system, to be sure. But it's just not at all fun. GURPS is what a role playing system would be if it were invented by IBM.

Hmmm, no. The game and supplements are produced quickly by a small team of people. Some of the supplements also show quite a lot of humor and author personality. None of these traits are common in IBM products. I say this as an ibmer that wishes it was otherwise.

Additionally, your comment looks more like a generic boilerplate response to anything with the term "Generic" in it than something specifically aimed at GURPS. I'll grant you that the rules are relatively dry, but then again rules generally are. And the settings are seldom "adventures in a box", instead they typically introduce an entire genre or world to play in. Consider:
    - places (Imperial Rome, Greece, Egypt, Vikings, Celtic Myth, Arabian Nights, WWII, Napoleon, Medieval, Old West, etc)
    - myth/literature(Voodoo, DiscWorld, Lensman, Witch World, etc)
    - complete oddities (Goblins, IOU, Girl Genius - pending, Atomic Horror)

If you're looking for "modules", well GURPS isn't big into those. They do exist, just not on the D&D scale. And while they can be handy when you're in a time crunch, in reality you're usually better off creating your own adventures anyway. So, not much of a loss there.

Re:GURPS Space next on my 'Must Buy' list.

[bogado]

For the DIY games I would recomend FATE rpg, it is free (as in speach) and has a (very) well written rule book, simple character creation and a new way to look at the hole thing. Very good.

Check it out.

Ps. sounds like an add? It's not I don't have no connection to the creator what so ever.

Re:GURPS Space next on my 'Must Buy' list.

[Valdrax]

Actually, I'm playing in a FATE game on weekends right now, and I really like the rules system. The Aspects rules fit nicely with the high action game we're playing in. I only didn't mention it because it adds complexity to FUDGE, and I was shooting for the simplest systems that people are likely to have at least heard of.

Re:GURPS Space next on my 'Must Buy' list.

[damiangerous]

Well, I disagree and I would disagree if you made that comment about any game system. Game systems are all boring, if you sit down and read them. In this regard, GURPS is actually the least boring.

No, they're not. That's my point. Technical material can be presented in an engaging and entertaining manner. GURPS fails miserably at this. Reading a non-setting book is like reading a technical manual. I enjoy reading most game books, even if I don't play the systems involved. I've never gone back to read for entertainment the half dozen or so GURPS books I own.

Re:GURPS Space next on my 'Must Buy' list.

[damiangerous]

Additionally, your comment looks more like a generic boilerplate response to anything with the term "Generic" in it than something specifically aimed at GURPS.

I don't know of any other systems with the term "Generic" in them, and I have no experience with any system that tries to be anywhere near as generic as GURPS. The only other thing I've found quite as boring as GURPS is the d20 SRD, because that was intentionally designed to be as dry and technical. The D&D Player's Handbook is actually quite entertaining to read, regardless of what you think of the system. Most game books attempt to engage the reader and draw them into the world. GURPS and most supplements have no "world" to draw anyone into because they're trying to be everything to everyone. I mean "world" as in a specific setting either, they just fail to inspire any sort of imagination at all. The setting books are a bit different, sure, but I've never cared to use them as I don't need or want pre-made settings. Again, GURPS manages to fail here as it becomes overly specific. Give me an interesting base on which to build things and let it go. The GURPS books I find to be the "best" by that criteria would be the historical setting books, and those are hardly necessary for an experienced GM familar with the period.

Re:GURPS Space next on my 'Must Buy' list.

[Saint Fnordius]

It was published by FASA in the 1980's, and was similar to the Star Trek RPG that FASA also made (with the main difference being that Star Trek used percentile dice, and Dr. Who 6-sided). It started off well, but soon suffered from lousy artwork and a decidedly American slant in supplements, conflicting versions of canon villains and monstors, etc.

I still have a copy of it.

I also thought about doing a GURPS conversion back in 1999/2000, but I was foolish enough to ask the BBC for permission first. That taught me a lesson about how expensive licensing can be. As other projects piled up, I soon abandoned the idea, and haven't returned to it since then.

Re:GURPS Space next on my 'Must Buy' list.

[Saint Fnordius]

I think the key here is what brings about "suspension of disbelief". Some gamers lose SoD when they hit a "Murphy's Rule" (where rules bring about a situation that is unrealistic), others lose it when forced to break the narrative pace due to complex rules and flipping through tables and references.

There have been plenty of tomes written about this, talking about narrative players versus simulationist players (and of course the dreaded munchkin). I wish I could get into more detail, but my knowledge of these discussions is rusty at the moment.

So, yeah, a lot of words that could have been summed up with a standard AOL-esque "I agree".

Re:GURPS Space next on my 'Must Buy' list.

[spun]

Wow, I guess that's why its a well known secret in the gaming industry that poeple buy GURPS books to read, not play. Although, admittedly, that probably applies more to world sourcebooks than basic rulebooks. In defense of the basic rulebooks, they are a much better read in 4th edition.

Re:GURPS Space next on my 'Must Buy' list.

[hal2814]

Turns out what I saw wan't the FASA version. I actually had my hands on a game called "Time Lord" published by Virgin Books in 1991. Here's an about blurb http://www.geocities.com/sege1701/TimeLord/about.h tm that I found after looking it up. Apparently, it was mis-marketed as a resource instead of an RPG which is why I found it amongst the Who novels.

Re:GURPS Space next on my 'Must Buy' list.

[Gilmoure]

Same thing here. Our gaming group survived marriage but once kids showed up, no more. My daughter's 5 now and am thinking about breaking out the original D&D books (lil' brown ones) but may just start her in on GURPS. My stuff's in storage but went and downloaded latest GURPS lite today. She may have fun with it.

Re:GURPS Space next on my 'Must Buy' list.

[JerryP]

SJ GAmes say something about this topic here. I have not done any massive conversions from 3e to 4e yet, but converting characters should be pretty straigthforward. The only drawback is that the point costs for 4e are normally significantly higher than for 3e (IQ and DX are now 20 pts/lvl). It would be harder with supers and psionics than with SF or Fantasy characters, I'd guess.

For some areas there are no 4e rules available yet (vehicles and martial arts come to mind), but I heard they are being worked on.

For Transhuman Space they also have an online product in the pipe that should provide more conversion rules.

That said, the core contents of the excellent sourcebooks still will be useful without any changes. I think many people buy those to use them with different systems anyhow.

Eberron and the state of D&D

[crossmr]

There are a lot of things WoTC could be doing to revitalize D&D, but they're not doing any of them. Lets have a look at what they did do:
A long time ago, probably in someone's basement Ed Greenwood developed Forgotten Realms. He developed it for his group, and someone caught wind of it. It turned into phenomenon. It was home grown, made purely for fun, and spawned countless wonderful hours. He wasn't a professional, he didn't do it for money, he did it to enrich his group's play.

WoTC tried to duplicate that by soliciting submissions from everyone and creating a new line based on their original home grown idea. They had judges, a competition, etc. I'm surprised Fox didn't air it. Forgotten Realms was far from dead, and many continued to enjoy playing in it. They decided to abandon what was working, and try and force the same success the line had had under TSR.
I'm not sure how this has worked out for them. I've only just gotten the Eberron Campaign setting, from the bargain bin, over 50% off. That is probably pretty telling.

What else have they done besides trying to capture old glory? They gave the video game license to Atari. I really hope they gave the license itself a tube of KY after doing so. Atari has done nothing but produce crap. Temple of Elemental Evil was the only product that showed promise, and Atari bungled that beyond recognition. Its actually shown so much promise that a group of fans have gone on to work diligently in recreated B2: The Keep on the Borderlands. Atari long ago abanonded it. This engine had the potential to be the next "Gold Box" line of games. Instead they created a mediocre RTS, and a mediocre MMORPG. Because those are all the rage. They also had that bad LoTR rip-off with Demon-stone or whatever it was.

Sometimes the right thing to do is suck it up, give Troika a little more money and realize that you could probably sell 5-10 more games using that engine without a problem.

What else is around the corner for D&D? NWN2. Ah...Bethesda. The providers of such quality games as Oblivion. Anyone with a critical eye can easily realize what a bad console port the PC version of this game is. Its VERY shiny. Its a lot like that hot model with the vacant stare. I don't really want to talk to it the morning after. I'm not particularly optimistic about NWN2.

Re:Eberron and the state of D&D

[Anonymous Coward]

>>I'm not particularly optimistic about NWN2.

The original NWN had a crappy campaign. However, I was patient enough to wait for all the cool community made modules to start flowing into the NWVault. Because of all the homemade modules, NWN has been on my PC ever since it debuted and I play it a few times a month on average. If NWN2 has that kind of replay value, I won't care about the quality of the campaign.

Re:Eberron and the state of D&D

[teeseejay]

Ok, i give up. What's Bethesda got to do with NWN2? Obsidian Entertainment is developing NWN2, Atari is distributing.

Where's the Shadowrun

[Anonymous Coward]

What about Shadowrun? Doesn't that count as well: 4th edition and all the suppliments coming out this summer?

...I just want to be accepted!

[minitual]

I don't understand people. All I want to do is be accepted. When I brought this book to school I got beat up!
Do you guys understand this? I guess some people just truly don't appreciate D&D books.

More than that...

[Kriticism]

Good grief....D&D...D&D...GURPS...D&D.....

You make it sound like the only books coming out for pen-and-paper gaming are D&D and GURPS supplements. There's a lot more than that in the past 6 months.

Here's a few new releases that seem to have flown beneath /.'s radar:

- Exalted 2nd Edition - http://www.white-wolf.com/exalted/index.php

- Weapons of the Gods - http://www.eos-press.com/products-wotg.html

- True20 from Green Ronin - http://true20.com/

- Shadowrun 4th Edition - http://www.shadowrunrpg.com/

- Mutants & Masterminds 2nd Edition - http://www.mutantsandmasterminds.com/

All excellent books. I suggest taking a look.

Re:More than that...

[Anonymous Coward]

There is also HERO system http://www.herogames.com/.

I am surprised it doesn't hit this board more often. I think computer geeks are really drawn to the game system myself.

Re:More than that...

[lotsotech]

It should...it's basically an object oriented game. You create a power and then add advantages/limitations to tweak it for its effect in-game. There are 100s of ways to build a power that all can get you to the same result kind of like programming.

Re:More than that...

[Arandir]

When you get down to small and independent publishers, there are hundreds of new and upcoming RPG products.

Frankly, I'm surprised Slashdot even bothered to mention the existance of GURPS. That's because D&D is the Microsoft/McDonalds/Budweiser of the roleplaying industry. I outgrew D&D around the time the third pubic hair came in. Three and a half editions later and I still have no desire to play it. Give me Runequest, Rolemaster, CoC, HârnMaster, HARP, Fudge, etc.

Windows user upon learning of the existance of another OS: "It's too much work to learn something new. It's too confusing. It doesn't run my favorite spyware."

D&D users upon learning of the existance of another RPG game: "It's too much work to learn new rules. It's too confusing. It won't support my twentieth level chaotic good halfelf ninja amazon mage."

Re:More than that...

[Golias]

There are few things worse than a game-system snob.

I've had fun playing one of the worst game systems (Doctor Who) designed by one of the worst game companies (FASA) on the entire planet.

I've had fun playing RPG's with no rulebooks at all. Just a DM willing to wing it.

If the game system is the most important thing to you, then I would suggest you are doing it wrong.

I agree that D&D is not perfect, but I wouldn't call it the "Budweiser" of games. I'd call it the "vi" of games. It might not be your favorite tool, but you can find it on every *nix server you log in to. Likewise, d20 may not be as well-designed as several others out there, but you can count on finding players who know how to play it.

I'm currently playing in a GURPS campaign, and have found it to have become (as of version 4) just as bad as, if not worse than, D&D 3.5. We're still having fun with it, though.

Re:More than that...

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm glad someone mentioned Ex2e. And they just released Wonders of the Lost Age, which is pure Geek. Skyships, power armor, AI, biotech, and giant mecha. What more could you ask for?

Re:More than that...

[Spaceman40]

What about Spycraft?

Re:More than that...

[Kriticism]

I was replying in the context of the last 6 months.

To go further than that, I would have added Ars Magica 5th Edition, Paranoia, the New World of Darkness+Vampire+Werewolf+Mage, Legend of the 5 Rings 3rd Edition, Nobilis, Deadlands, the Mechanical Dream, the Riddle of Steel, Risus, Fudge, Fate, Dust Devils, Savage Worlds, My Life with Master, Dogs in the Vineyard, Feng Shui, Tunnels & Trolls 5.5 and 7th edition, Unknown Armies, Godlike, HERO, Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 2e, Talislanta....the list just goes on and on....

Re:More than that...

[Lalo Martins]

I agree that D&D is not perfect, but I wouldn't call it the "Budweiser" of games. I'd call it the "vi" of games. It might not be your favorite tool, but you can find it on every *nix server you log in to. Likewise, d20 may not be as well-designed as several others out there, but you can count on finding players who know how to play it.
ergo, Budweiser. I think the parent's analogy was perfect. D&D tastes like cold piss, specially for those who already tasted a real game like Exalted or Falkenstein.

Re:More than that...

[Anonymous Coward]

"It won't support my twentieth level chaotic good halfelf ninja amazon mage."

I HAD a 20th level chaotic good half-elf fighter/mage/thief, you insensitive clod! And yes, she was an amazon, with big-boobs and flowing red-hair. Or maybe I just read one too many "Red Sonja" comics. :)

Re:More than that...

[Arandir]

I am not a game-system snob. I am an anti-snob. It is the D&D players who are the snobs. They won't buy a supplement unless it has the d20 logo, even if it's a completely generic supplement that doesn't have system-specific rules in it. They won't even bother trying other game systems, even systems far easier to use than D&D/d20. These people NEVER sign up for alternate games at conventions, something that is routine for players of every other system.

Re:More than that...

[Xeriar]

Damn, you'd think Exalted 2nd edition, the second most popular fantasy TRPG ever, and the return of Shadowrun (which also has routine sales a significant fraction of D&D's) would merit more news than a GURPS supplement or even most D&D supplements.

Re:More than that...

[foo fighter]

We've just started using Ars Magica 5th Ed. It's really great and I recommend the core book to everyone no matter what system they currently use.

http://www.atlas-games.com/arm5/index.php

Re:More than that...

[mcvos]

I agree that D&D is not perfect, but I wouldn't call it the "Budweiser" of games. I'd call it the "vi" of games.

D&D the vi of games? Good god, no. vi is lightweight, fast, and easy to use, once you get the hang of it. D&D tries to force you in certainly shapes and directions that you may not like. It's more like the Word of games. Or the Windows of games. The vi of games would probably be Fudge or CORPS: needs quite a bit of work before things start to fall into place, but once you get the hang of it, you can do anything with it. But the average Joe won't understand why anyone would ever want to use something like that.

Re:More than that...

[Golias]

You are mistaking laziness for snobbery.

The only people I've ever meet who roleplay but don't play non-TSR systems are people who *just barely* managed to get the hang of d20, and don't want to take the time to learn something else.

And why should they? Once you learn either d20 or GURPS, you can role-play in pretty much any genre or setting you like, limited only by the imagination of the GM and the players.

That's why Call of Cthulu released a d20 book. Their original system was crap, and it made a lot more sense to adapt it to a system people are familiar with than to re-invent the wheel.

Yes, there are systems out there which make combat more realistic. There are also systems out there which make it more simple. But a good GM can tweak ANY rule set to work the way they want it to work.

To shun d20 merely because it's less than perfect and far-and-away the most popular with "n00bs" most certainly does make you a snob.

Re:More than that...

[Golias]

D&D the vi of games? Good god, no. vi is lightweight, fast, and easy to use, once you get the hang of it

So is D&D, as long as you stop buying books once you have the Core Rules.

The biggest problem d20 has is that everybody levels too fast, which makes it very video-gamey.

That's solved easilly enough: Double the requires XP, then subtract 1000.

Now, instead of needing 1000, 2000, 5000, 9000, and 14000 to go up the first few levels, you need 1000, 3000, 9000, 17000, and 27000.

The second-biggest problem is that some gamers don't like the traditional "class" system. That's also easy to fix: Turn most class features into feats, and set requirements according to how difficult you think they should be to acquire. Most of the monk abilities are already available as combat feats, so you can use those as a model for how to transfer others.

Re:More than that...

[Arandir]

That's why Call of Cthulu released a d20 book. Their original system was crap...

What an effing snob you are! The only reason there's a d20 CoC is because 90% of the gaming market REFUSES to even look at a game without a d20 logo. The BRP system (the underlying rules for CoC) is one of the most elegant rules system out there. Easy, simple, effect, generic. It most definitely is not crap.

But a good GM can tweak ANY rule set to work the way they want it to work.

I know a guy who has spent six months trying to squeeze a low-fantasy realistic medieval setting into the d20 rules. This is something people can do with Runequst, GURPS or Fudge over a weekend. The problem he is having is that d20 was designed for high fantasy absurdist settings. I say "absurdist", because there is no attempt whatsoever at realism. That's not a bad thing, but it does mean it's ill-suited towards many campaigns and settings.

D&D and nearly every other d20 game centers around challenges to the players. Hence the emphasis on feats and special items. But not every game is this way. Runequest, for example, centers around the character himself, and his goals, asperations and quests. Hence Runequests emphasis on skills and an almost complete lack of feat-like special abilities.

Ask a D&D player about his character, and he will talk about his magic sword, or his multi-class, or the monsters he has slain, or his followers. But ask a Runequest player about his charact, and he will actually talk about his character! He'll talk about his background, what he does for a living, who his friends are, what his goals are, etc. That's stereotyping, to be sure, but it's a stereotype that fits.

D&D players aren't roleplaying, they're rollplaying. There's nothing wrong with that, as it's a legitimate style of play. I just wish they woulnd't be so hostile towards other games.

Re:More than that...

[Golias]

The only reason there's a d20 CoC is because 90% of the gaming market REFUSES to even look at a game without a d20 logo. The BRP system (the underlying rules for CoC) is one of the most elegant rules system out there. Easy, simple, effect, generic. It most definitely is not crap.

Having spent many, many long years playing the origingal CoC rules (going back many years before d20 even existed), I'm afraid we will just have to agree to disagree. I find it to be a very clumsy, poorly designed system which was only invented because, in the days before Open Gaming Licenses, a company could not create a roleplaying game without first re-inventing the wheel and producing their own systems of basic mechanics.

I'm positive that the creators of CoC, if they could have, would have loved to have skipped over all the statistics and dice rules and simply focuses on what makes CoC great: Story and setting.

I know a guy who has spent six months trying to squeeze a low-fantasy realistic medieval setting into the d20 rules.

Your friend must not be very good at it, then. I've done it, and it's INCREDIBLY easy.

Hell, IIRC, the Core Rules even have published guides for stripping arcane and/or divine magic out of your campaign, including rules for a no-magic paladin and a no-magic ranger. You're just flat out wrong about it being hard to adapt to a more realistic setting.

That's stereotyping, to be sure, but it's a stereotype that fits.

Gosh, I wonder why I called you a snob earlier... Could it be because of THAT kind of attitude?

Re:More than that...

[Arandir]

Having spent many, many long years playing the origingal CoC rules (going back many years before d20 even existed), I'm afraid we will just have to agree to disagree. I find it to be a very clumsy, poorly designed system which was only invented because, in the days before Open Gaming Licenses, a company could not create a roleplaying game without first re-inventing the wheel and producing their own systems of basic mechanics.

Just because you don't like a rules system doesn't mean it's crap. That is what I mean by "snobbery". If the original white cover D&D was so bloody perfect that Chaosium should have used it instead of writing their own rules, then how come WoTC eventually threw out the entire system TSR-D&D system for d20?

Re:More than that...

[Golias]

If the original white cover D&D was so bloody perfect...

You obviously haven't paid attention to a single fucking word I said, beyond the fact that I was critical of your precious CoC system.

Any further conversation is therefore pointless. Have a nice day.

The old DragonLance is the New D&D

[Durrill]

Ever since the release of D&D 3.0e, my friends and I only relied on the Dungeon magazine for our campaigning fun. There were additional purchases, such as the 3.5e revisions of the core books, and even the main Eberron core book upon its release. Other than that, I just summarized the last 5 years of gaming for my friends and I.

Things have been coming around lately, over the past year I'm starting to see more and more interesting stuff being released. Its like a new wave of D&D hype is building up, and i'm already prepping for it. I stumbled across a full (level 1-20) campaign for dragonlance. The products that have been published for D&D 3.5e Dragonlance can be seen here. I have picked up and read the 'Key of Destiny' and 'Spectre of Sorrows'. This campaign storyline is immensely epic as your PCs (Player Characters) play as the heroes of the new age (Age of Mortals). I have also picked up all the core and resource books that goes along with this new campaign. All that is left is for the 'Price of Courage' to be released later this month so that I can run my friends through it in June.

I have not been this excited to run a campaign in a long time. So much material was developed to assist a DM run an incredible full feature story line that i'm sure it will be the most memorable. I for one appreciate the work that all these publishers have been working into this style of gaming.

It'll be one hell of a ride and I recommend that any DM that reads this comment to check out the dragonlance.com site and see all the new goodies.

Re:Eberron and the state of D&D

[crossmr]

That was me thinking about something else half-way through a long post ;)
The example I meant to give was about Kotor II and how they didn't really do all that much with what was given to them, it didn't really look better, and it seemed to have a lot of issues Kotor I didn't have.

you'll have to forgive me because I just started stats this week, and I read like 75 pages of it today ;)

Re:Eberron and the state of D&D

[brother_b]

I haven't really taken much of a look at Eberron, other than using the 4-page character sheets from it for out Forgotten Realms campaigns since they're laid out better than the standard 3.5e sheets. Our group pretty much does FR exclusively and has been doing so since 2000. We're familiar enough with the world's religions, geography, and political climates that we don't need to rely on the books for every little detail.

FR is a great setting with a lot of structure but enough open gaps to make up your own storylines. I wish WotC would stop treating it like a bastard child like it has since Eberron came out.

Re:Eberron and the state of D&D

[crossmr]

Its not the campaign itself that I care about. I see NWN more as it was originally intended. Originally it was meant as a modable DMing tool, they included the campaign to add some value to the purchase. So you could play it out of the box. I think Obsidian is placing too much emphasis on the campaign from the bit I've read about it, and I'm worried they're going to be dropping the ball on the more important parts, like the modding tools.

I really hope they don't try to significantly alter the gameplay itself either. I think most people are really just looking for:
1)Improved graphics support
2)more modding tools
3)more included resources like more creatures, spell effects, etc

Re:Eberron and the state of D&D

[crossmr]

I used to play in Mystra, and I know the feeling. Once TSR got on the FR bandwagon, Mystara dropped off the map, very little was released for it under AD&D rules, and you had to work everything out through conversion charts, etc.

TW:2K

[greenegg77]

What I want to know is when someone will put out a new version of Twilight : 2000 (GDW - RIP)? We spent many a Saturday when I was in the Army playing that one.

Re:TW:2K

[mwbay]

It's called Twilight 2013

http://www.twilight2013.com/

Re:TW:2K

[greenegg77]

Well, butter my buns and call me a biscuit. Thanks!

Re:TW:2K

[MightyMartian]

That was an incredible game, the first game in which me and my mates played what I'd call long-term campaigns. Of course, we mutilated the rules and the environment along the way, and somehow my character ended up in post-WWIII Vietnam with a severe case of schizophrenia and an undying hatred of monkeys.

Ah, the memories!

Why are computer geeks obsessed with fantasy games

[Anonymous Coward]

Power, Blood, Death, etc... Can't you just be happy in your Mom's basement with your porn torrents and astroglide?

Dead to me

[Apreche]

I used to be all about D+D. But ever since discovering Burning Wheel I really don't care anymore. As far as I'm concerned Burning Wheel is the be all end all of RPG systems.

http://www.burningwheel.org/

Re:Dead to me

[Flossymike]

Certainly an interesting system, but reading though it since the Gaming Nationals in Sheffield. If you like Burning Wheel, you may well like 'My Life with Master# http://www.halfmeme.com/

Why 3e sucks

[mark-t]

I'm not the grandparent poster, but I agree with him/her wholeheartedly.

3e and 3.5e suck because:

Feats - although some may argue a way to individualize a character, actually complicate the process of level advancement tremendously. Further, with the possible exception of a handful of them, they seem largely geared towards producing the power-character... a character who is, by the time he reaches 20th level, a pen and paper version of some sort of anime fighter character from Dragonball Z.

And speaking of reaching 20th level - WTF??? I can count on one hand the number of characters I played for years in pre3e AD&D that even made it past level 8, and I only had one ever make it as high as level 12. With WotC's new rules, a player can very easily and within the framework of the rules as given acquire a 20th level character within a few months of gaming a few hours every week.

Skills - which complicate the process of character creation and level advancement, as players often spend considerable time figuring out which skills they should put skill points into. A simpler mechanism was employed back before the Skills and Powers option was created for 2e, you either had the ability, or you didn't. There was nothing else to keep track of. 3e's mechanism involves too much beancounting.

Ability score increases every few levels - this further propogates the mindset that the only good character is an uber powerful character with great stats. Although there are some fabulous roleplayers that do play 3e, they are vastly outnumbered by players in their teens and early twenties whose time could be equally well spent playing a video game.

Stacking modifiers for combat - While initially appearing like a simple idea, it actually is very complex, because you're adding, for example with a missile weapon, your base combat bonus, your dexterity bonus, your range bonus, any bonuses that are applicable because of class abilities or feats, and magic bonuses. Further, not all of these bonuses apply in every situation, so one can quickly lose track of what they should be adding together and what they should not. Again, this is bean counting that does not enhance game play.

3e's spell selection - Ugh! It sucks! Really! It might initially appear to be largely the same as earlier editions, but closer examination shows that it is not. Many spells are simply rehashed versions of a spell at a lower level but with more power. And even worse, IMO, is the fact that the different classes' spells are not particularly distinctive; spells for one class are often little more than renamed versions of another spell of the same level in another class. This is especially bad with psionics, which once bore the distinction of being very unique and different from spellcasting now feels like nothing more than just another class of magic.

Any class can do anything at the cost of a feat or cross class skill - This option almost completely dissolves the class archetypes that were once a staple of fantasy roleplaying games.

Overall mechanics - 3e, when all is said and done, is little more than a pen and paper version of a computer game like Diablo or some such thing. It is a poor, poor replacement for classic AD&D and I, for one, mourn its loss. AD&D had a balanced ruleset in the sense that making changes to the game, or house-ruling, was not only possible, but encouraged, and that doing so was unlikely to cause any serious ramifications outside of the domain in which the house rule was made. However, 3e goes overboard, trying to meticulously "overbalance" the rules, and the result is a result so firmly laid out that sometimes even the simplest change by a DM can have far reaching implications that throw game balance out the proverbial window.

WotC has turned my beloved hobby into a game that appears to be explicitly designed to appeal to the instant gratification desires of today's videogame generation. The only similarities between it and the original game that Gary Gygax created are highly superficial.

Re:Why 3e sucks

[tolendante]

"Any class can do anything at the cost of a feat or cross class skill - This option almost completely dissolves the class archetypes that were once a staple of fantasy roleplaying games." I can't comment on your other concerns because I haven't actually played 3E D&D (heck, I haven't played any edition D&D in nearly 20 years);however, I disagree that the softening of archetypes is a bad thing. I always found it frustrating that characters were so locked into a particular class with basic D&D and later AD&D and 2nd edition. I suppose it makes sense that a seventy-year old mage wouldn't be able to swing a sword deftly, but I see no reason that a young mage couldn't possibly have physical skills to allow him to be great in combat or a muscle-bound fighter to be smart enough to learn some spells. I appreciated the dual-class options from 2nd Edition (were those there in 1st also?) and often played a fighter-mage or other combo.

Re:Why 3e sucks

[mark-t]

If one follows the age guidelines in the DMG, there's no such thing as a "young mage".

Re:Why 3e sucks

[Kingrames]

How the hell was this modded insightful?

None of these statements are true.

"Stacking modifiers for combat - While initially appearing like a simple idea, it actually is very complex, because you're adding, for example with a missile weapon, your base combat bonus, your dexterity bonus, your range bonus, any bonuses that are applicable because of class abilities or feats, and magic bonuses. Further, not all of these bonuses apply in every situation, so one can quickly lose track of what they should be adding together and what they should not. Again, this is bean counting that does not enhance game play."

read this as: "the old way of rolling and consulting a chart was MUCH better than rolling a number and adding 2-4 numbers to it to see if you beat a target number"

"Feats - although some may argue a way to individualize a character, actually complicate the process of level advancement tremendously. Further, with the possible exception of a handful of them, they seem largely geared towards producing the power-character... a character who is, by the time he reaches 20th level, a pen and paper version of some sort of anime fighter character from Dragonball Z."

First of all, the vast majority of characters created in 3.0+ d&d are significantly less cheesy and anime-ish than the olde editions. NO LONGER can you become as strong as a god by adding 5 to your strength score. (assuming you have a strength of 20)

"Any class can do anything at the cost of a feat or cross class skill - This option almost completely dissolves the class archetypes that were once a staple of fantasy roleplaying games."

Good. your old system was fucking stupid. The idea that a race can be contrained to as little as one CLASS is so inherently wrong that I'm surprised you know how to use the internet.
Yeah. remember way back when Elves were rogues, and they were just called "elves"?

"And speaking of reaching 20th level - WTF??? I can count on one hand the number of characters I played for years in pre3e AD&D that even made it past level 8, and I only had one ever make it as high as level 12. With WotC's new rules, a player can very easily and within the framework of the rules as given acquire a 20th level character within a few months of gaming a few hours every week."

COMPLETELY up to the DM. No book writes in stone how much XP the players get any given adventure. If you don't like it, DON'T DO IT!

"Overall mechanics - 3e, when all is said and done, is little more than a pen and paper version of a computer game like Diablo or some such thing. It is a poor, poor replacement for classic AD&D and I, for one, mourn its loss. AD&D had a balanced ruleset in the sense that making changes to the game, or house-ruling, was not only possible, but encouraged, and that doing so was unlikely to cause any serious ramifications outside of the domain in which the house rule was made. However, 3e goes overboard, trying to meticulously "overbalance" the rules, and the result is a result so firmly laid out that sometimes even the simplest change by a DM can have far reaching implications that throw game balance out the proverbial window."

HA! You do realize that Diablo had more robust character creation than the old D&D game? You've taken everything bad about the old D&D, attributed it to the new D&D (which fixed those problems) and then claimed that the new D&D sucks because of it. I don't think there's even a name for a fallacy this stupid.

This is about as "Insightful" as when President Bush, the most liberal President America has ever seen, uses the word 'Liberal' as a 4-letter word and accuses his opposition of being "As Liberal as they can be" and at the same time "a flip-flopper."

Re:Why 3e sucks

[Flossymike]

Perhaps 3.5 Ed does dumb down and play towards a munchkin style of play, but there are other games out there. Please look at the many independent systems out there. Let people enjoy their 3.5ed rules, it doesn't stop other forms of role playing!

Re:Why 3e sucks

[Anonymous Coward]

if you don't like D&D or are tired/bored of it, try HARP (High Adventure Role Playing) by ICE

http://www.harphq.com/

excellent game, currently my favourite (my favourite used to be RoleMaster, also by ICE)

available in hard-cover, soft-cover, and PDF. you can even get a free HARP-Lite version at http://www.harphq.com/free_downloads/3000L_HarpLit e.pdf

Re:Why 3e sucks

[mark-t]

First of all, the vast majority of characters created in 3.0+ d&d are significantly less cheesy and anime-ish than the olde editions. NO LONGER can you become as strong as a god by adding 5 to your strength score. (assuming you have a strength of 20)

First of all, nothing existed in the olde game that could add 5 to a person's strength to cause it to go that high because there was, in general, a cap of 18 on abilities for player character races. Further, no stat modifiers ever stacked with other stat modifiers in the olde game. Only the single largest bonus would apply.

The idea that a race can be contrained to as little as one CLASS is so inherently wrong that I'm surprised you know how to use the internet.

You are of course entitled to disagree with me, but calling into question my own intelligence to bolster the validity of your own assertions isn't a particularly valid way to make a point. It's called an ad hominem argument, and is a type of fallacy. The grandparent poster seemed to request a more verbose explanation than "3e sucks" and happening to agree with the poster that prompted this response, I decided to offer my own views to that end. You can take them however you want. I do not take it as a negative reflection upon you if you play the game and enjoy it. I tried 3e and didn't like it. And so I merely assert my own reflections on why I feel the way I do.

Re:Why 3e sucks

[Anonymous Coward]

"And speaking of reaching 20th level - WTF??? I can count on one hand the number of characters I played for years in pre3e AD&D that even made it past level 8, and I only had one ever make it as high as level 12. With WotC's new rules, a player can very easily and within the framework of the rules as given acquire a 20th level character within a few months of gaming a few hours every week."

Ok, I'll start by admitting that I've hardly played any PnP roleplaying ( a couple of sessions a couple of times). It's not that I don't like the idea of PnP, but have always had a hard time committing to a weekly or even semi-monthly game night - seems like something's always come up to interfere (I started in one group, got a new job 2 weeks later that required me to work on Friday night when the group was meeting *sigh*).

But I've got to ask, what is wrong with people attaining high level characters after playing them for awhile? Maybe you enjoy slogging it out at low levels, and dieing by the time you're level 5 or 8 (or just getting bored of the current adventure and starting a new character/campaign). Some people want to experience some of the higher level content in the game. To each their own. I'm sure any DM who doesn't want characters to become high level (or rather, to take longer to become high level) can certainly control the rate of leveling of the party.

Is there something intrinsically Holy about playing low level characters, and if you ever get any high level characters, obviously you are a blasphemer and not a real player?

Re:Why 3e sucks

[mark-t]

Of course not..

But 3e's design makes progression virtually automatic.

A good DM can counter this problem somewhat, but not entirely. I've seen 3e campaigns, I've been in them, and I've even DM'd one. So I'm not talking about hearsay, these opinions are based firmly on what I have observed.

Oh, and I neglected to mention that the 3e rules take virtually all decisonmaking by the DM away... relegating him to little more than an automaton that tells the story. A DM's job seems to be to just follow or enforce the rules, and not really DO anything. He may as well be a computer. And of course, IMO 3e is little more than a pencil and paper version of a computer game, and if I want to play a computer game, I'll just use a computer.

This is my experience, and I'm utterly disappointed in what WotC has done with D&D. My solution to this is to work on rebuilding my 1e AD&D collection through ebay, which is going pretty well so far. "The Most Advanced RPG" will live again... if not in current print, in the hearts of its fans, of which there are fortunately still many.

Re:Why 3e sucks

[binary paladin]

Thank you so much. I was about to write something because, deep down, I loathe 2ed. It's the reason I didn't role play and thought table top gaming sucked for a long time. The mechanics were a kludge, plain and simple.

THAC0 anyone? The GP is complaining about stacking modifiers but thinks a system with THAC0 was a GOOD idea? You needed a table for like... everything. And the non-linear advancement of attributes? Well let's see here... the jump from 16 to 17 != 17 to 18. (Oh yes and let's not forget the weird ass 18/00 - 18/99, none of which are as burly as 19. And then 25 isn't 25% buffer than 20... it's a cloud giant compared to an orc or something.)

Half the problems he complains about have nothing to do with anything but power leveler characters... something that happens in any game. Ever play White Wolf Games? Power level characters are easy to deal with. Either DM yourself or make sure you have a DM that nips the problem at the bud. I usually play with the same crew, but new plays always get "the chat."

And if you really wanna fore role playing... roll for stats flat out and let them go from there. It really just depends on how you want the game to go.

2ed. had a lot of good fiction with it and a rich background but the implementation sucked balls. This is what Shadowrun (not a very good system either, but better) and White Wolf got me into gaming.

Re:Why 3e sucks

[Dr. Spork]

I've tried 3e and made exactly the same observations, plus one: aesthetically, the books look like children's books. That's no accident. Children (9-13 y) are the audience, and every aspect of the design is made with that target in mind.

Of course, there is a modern alternative, and it's brilliant: Hackmaster. Really, it's the best fantasy roleplaying system I've ever seen, with rules that never lose track of the fact that the fantasy setting is supposed to feel like a consistent world, not just a backdrop for "awesome characters" to showcase all their "feats and powers." Hackmaster bought the rights to lift certain material from Gygax's AD&D, and it not only keeps that old spirit - it actually adds to it. Don't confuse it with a novelty system - it's really the most playable role-playing game that I've ever been a part of. I campaign with AD&D veterans (most now with Ph.D's) and since we all have the Gygax books, we still officially use that system. However, I (the DM) have supplemented so much of it with ideas borrowed from Hackmaster that it's starting to feel like we're making a transition. First I started with importing some wonderful monsters, then the initiative system, then chunks of the character generation system (really fun and great for roleplaying!).

Hackmaster is a system for people who like roleplaying because they enjoy immersing themselves in consistent, detailed yet fantastic worlds. Many of the things that happen are not flashy. They're mundane, grimy, lifelike (a treasure horde of fine ebony furniture and disturbing silk tapestries for which only one curiously shady art dealer is prepared seek a buyer) and decidedly not pure hero stuff. In sensibility it's just like the first AD&D except even a bit more so.

Sorry, I didn't expect this post to sound like such a plug, but I've made and heard complaints like yours before. My experience is people who say that sort of stuff should consider a flirtation with Hackmaster because when they try, they tend to find compatibility.

Re:Why 3e sucks

[mark-t]

I've looked over HM, but I can't say I care for it. I find the parody element hard to look past, and the fact that they split the monster manual up over half a dozen volumes isn't exactly a point in their favour either. HM also has no rules for psionics, which is one optional aspect of AD&D that I've always liked.

I do like that to the extent they have incorporated the old D&D rules, it maintains an old school feel, and I understand there are a couple of modules for HM that are fairly decent, but I have yet to see them for myself. I've heard that City of Brass is decent and I may get it at some point. At the moment, I'm still rebuilding my 1e collection though.

Re:Why 3e sucks

[Mycroft_VIII]

Can't say as I agree, yes there were some elements of 3e I was concerned with (the feats looked alot like the special power trees in diablo),but overall the game went from the mess 2.0 made of AD&D to a coherent system, which 3.5 smoothed out and debugged for the most part (not entirely, a few glitches).
    For reference I've been playing since 1982 (remember the efreet cover on the dmg?).
    Not that your criticisms are invalid, indeed most strike me as a matter of taste not innate good or bad.
  I did have a player who's character needed a flowchart to track damage and attack bonuses with a bow, of course he IS a been counter (more or less, he was a final year economics major who has sense gotten a job in DC making a good tidy sum) and kept said flowchart in head. The smallest numbers on both were frighteningly good ('bean counters' can do some serious stat crunching!) though outside of archery his char was fairly normal.
    But the main thing is it IS a system, not the hodgepodge of semi-arbitrary rules patched on top of a small kernal that 2.0 was (and 1.0 to a lesser degree).
    The fact that it IS a system is why house rules need more thought than in 2.0, which was largely a collection of house rules.

Mycroft

Re:Why 3e sucks

[ahsile]

True dat. I still go back to 1e for some of the best gaming ever.

I don't really know why all these guys love their 3E so much. The real goal when we're playing is to get into the role. I have found that with 2E, or even 1E... the lack of rules have allowed us to play more unhindered. 3/3.5E is much too rule based, and takes away from the flow and natural progression of the game. There's no more role playing, it's rule mongering.

Re:Why 3e sucks

[Anonymous Coward]

If 2nd Ed was so great, why did TSR have to sell out to WoTC?

Why has D&D gone from being an antiquated gaming system, hidden behind GURPS and Vampire to taking up the majority of the space in gaming stores.

The d20 system now dominates the gaming market.

Re:Why 3e sucks

[kria]

Others have addressed some of your points, but there are a few that I'll throw my opinion on. Oh, and I'll note that I was introduced to D&D with 2nd edition, but frankly, I don't recall how it works very well because it was so stupidly complicated, taking 47 charts to play (in contrast to a few charts needed to level up), that shortly after I started playing 3.0, it all dribbled out my ear.

Ahem.

"Skills - which complicate the process of character creation and level advancement, as players often spend considerable time figuring out which skills they should put skill points into. A simpler mechanism was employed back before the Skills and Powers option was created for 2e, you either had the ability, or you didn't. There was nothing else to keep track of. 3e's mechanism involves too much beancounting. "

Skills are one of the things I love best about 3.x. I can actually be better or worse than someone else at a skill, so that I can, for example, make a character who is an apprentice blacksmith, or a diplomat in training or whathaveyou, rather than "I have the skill, the only difference between someone else with that skill is what my attribute score is".

The mechanics of D20 are very simple to learn, since they almost universely consist of rolling a D20 and adding something. The only exceptions are damage dice, stabilizing when unconscious, and miss chances, that I can think of.

D20 allows me to build a character exactly, instead of popping a few different pieces into the cookie cutter mold, and while you can roleplay without numbers to back something up, it's much easier to do so when, for example, your steppe barbarian really CAN ride a horse muchmuch better than someone else (maximum ranks in the ride skill + a campaign feat called Saddle Warrior).

Re:Why 3e sucks

[PantsWearer]

Actually, there's a simple answer here that most people on the forum will cheer about: D20 is open source.

Yes, it helps that the system has great consistency and is supported by a large company, but what really made it shine is that WOTC basically gives the D20 system away for free. You can write adventures for use with D&D (or other D20 systems) without paying anyone a licensing fee (unless you count including the D20 license with the product, which is required). You can create new, non-D&D compatible campaign settings that use D20 the same way.

Re:Why 3e sucks

[tmjva]

I agree Hackmaster is brilliant. My primary reason is thus: It allows you to continue to play all the old modules with minimal conversion. Ibid. Dr. Spork said above. I don't worry too much about Psionics. It will come around eventually. Planar operations are also lacking, but that's in the works also.

Re:Why 3e sucks

[swillden]

Children (9-13 y) are the audience, and every aspect of the design is made with that target in mind.

I've been trying to play 3.5e with my kids, and if that's their target, they missed. Badly. My kids are pretty bright, and right in that age range, but the system is just too complicated for them.

Realistically, I think the game starts to get accessible to kids at about 12. 2e, which I started playing at age 10, was much more accessible.

Re:Why 3e sucks

[some guy on slashdot]

I can't agree more. Seriously, for someone who doesn't get a raw thrill out of keeping track of variables and crunching numbers, 3rd Edition just isn't fun. The only thing less fun than playing 3rd Edition is having a conversation about 3rd Edition. I'm sorry, the rules are just too obscure for me to know how badass your 25th level Zeff Half-Dragon Necromancer/Rogue is.

I would rather watch someone play a CRPG. It's all the same numbermunching, without having to argue with your loud obnoxious rules lawyer friend about how many hit dice Dire Giant Spiders have.

Re:Why 3e sucks

[mark-t]

TSR sold out because they had to. As a corporate entity they were dying. TSR had diversified the AD&D trademark across so many different campaign systems, Ravenloft, Dark Sun, Planescape, and others, that the number of core adventures that they produced, which would have had the largest audience, dropped below a level that could sustain interest in their product. Adventures didn't make as much profit as books did, which is the bottom line that TSR was seeing, but in retrospect it could have also been noted that adventures had the advantage in that they made it fairly easy for existing players to invite new players to game, thereby ultimately the customer base, and a growing customer base is always good. Without an influx of new adventures, however, especially core adventures that were not campaign setting specific, interest waned to levels that was making it increasingly difficult for TSR to survive. TSR then shifted its direction to publishing splat books of rules options and campaign supplements, which revitalized interest somewhat, albeit only temporarily, and they were ultimately bought out by WotC. Unfortunately, the approach of splat book publication seems to be the avenue that WotC seems to be taking too, and is probably why they are going to have to come out with edition 4.0 soon just to retain interest among their current fanbase.

Original AD&D remained virtually unchanged for 20 years because it worked. The only reason it changed to 2e at all was because at the time TSR was already starting to make the mistakes they would do en masse before they would be bought out by a trading card company.

Re:Why 3e sucks

[buffer-overflowed]

Last time I played 3e, to prove a point, I tricked a bard(by level 6) out so far the only enemies the DM could throw at us had to be lacking the senses of sight, hearing and smell. That was fun. Oh, hostile bandits, here's a joke, take 20, shifted to friendly. Here, listen to some music, bonus from instrument, bonus from feat, etc., etc. shifted from hostile to fanatically loyal. The mechanics for a lot of things are just downright screwy.

It's not cumulative damage from rockets + nigh-unlimited drones that can mount those rockets rigger from SR2 stupid(record damage output, 605,000 20-something above deadly), but it gets up there to White Wolf levels.

Say what you will about 2e, for all of it's flaws, you couldn't bend it over and break it like you can D20. Mainly because the customization aspect from feats and skills wasn't really there. You had to be all creative with what your character did, or luck out on some loot from a DM that wasn't paying attention(IE: Bow of Teleportation + Ring of X-Ray vision + Elven Ranger).

Re:Why 3e sucks

[Dr. Spork]

Oh, I'm sad to hear that, but it's good of you to have given a shot. I don't have kids but I've played at multi-generational tables and I thought it was a good bonding experience. I hope you give it another shot later, maybe when you notice their interest piqued by something that could be played out in D&D (Pirates, Zombies, Hobbits, etc.).

Re:Why 3e sucks

[Dr. Spork]

Fair enough about the parody element and the inconvenient monster books. But I can tell you there is not a single Hacklopedia of Beasts that is not worth buying. Just the monsters alone are enough to provide a great tone for a campaign. Just don't ask the players at my table about their last encounter with a Bolter. Hillarity ensewed, to be sure (but not for them). The next adventure will require some serious tracking and detective work. But that's just one of hundreds of monsters that can really make make an evening of gaming a memorable event.

Re:Why 3e sucks

[swillden]

Oh, we haven't given up, and my kids still enjoy it. I just have to handle a lot of what would normally be their side of it. I'm using RolePlayingMaster, a software package that does the bookeeping, so that I'm not completely overwhelmed with keeping track of all of the mechanics as well as trying to move the story along, plus I fudge quite a bit. The fudging is necessary, anyway. With kids you can't really just let the dice determine the outcomes, not even with a judicious alteration of the odds, because sometimes they get a bad roll.

No White Wolf?

[_bug_]

What about White Wolf?

They've got a bit going on as well, especially as they're in the middle of releasing books for their new Mage series.

Re:No White Wolf?

[etherlad]

Well, the article is "since November." Let's see the big releases which have come out since then...

- A Game of Thrones
- Racer Knights of Falconus
- World of Darkness: Chicago
- Vampire: Prince of the City (boardgame)
- Exalted Second Edition

Except for Exalted 2, there really hasn't been much worth mentioning. But yes, Exalted definitely deserved a mention.

Re:No White Wolf?

[Anonymous Coward]

White Wolf lost some of its audience by eliminating the overarching story and going to the new WoD system, unfortunately. Most people I know who were into it with Revised lost interest with WoD, or continue to play the old version. I don't know how the new system is doing.

Re:Eberron and the state of D&D

[cnelzie]

Kotor II was released early at the demand of Lucasarts. The early release is why the game appeared half-finished and had plenty of problems. It was half-finished, Lucasarts just didn't care.

    I used to think that was an extremely well known fact, since every gaming site in the known universe carried something about it. Apparently, there are still people deriding Bioware for Lucasarts not giving them time to finish the game.

NWN2

[PIPBoy3000]

I've been closely following Obsidian Entertainment's development of NWN2 and so far I'm quite happy with their approach. They've completely redone the graphics and toolset, kept the part of the game that worked (rules engine and scripting system), and are focusing on a single player game that so far sounds quite good.

In the last few days, they've released new screenshots (and here), as well as new movies. So far, it looks to be a very pretty game at least.

three cheers for the little guys

[sammy baby]

You know, I keep seeing these stories on pen and paper roleplaying games pop up, and there's never any damn coverage of the really interesting and fun games that keep coming out from small, independant publishers.

Slashdotters, please: if you're sick and tired of shelling out twenty to forty bucks for the latest supplement, how about throwing a little money to some of the little guys who are making truly innovative stuff? Look here for some ideas on where to start, and I'll plug a few of my favorites. (Disclaimer: I know one of the authors of some of the following games. He's a great guy. But he doesn't pay me to say this, or to plug his games. ;) )

• Kill Puppies for Satan: An Unfunny Roleplaying Game. "the system is minimal in the way that particularly irritates people who would rather be playing rolemaster or millenium's end. you have only six stats, for instance, and that's counting generously. one stat is how many people hate you"
• Dogs in the Vineyard. The Lord may be your shepard, but sometimes he can use a gnarly old Watchdog to help keep the wolves at bay.
• Primetime Adventures. Roleplaying games are about telling stories - why not make them about television shows instead?
• Polaris. Once upon a time, as far north as north can go, there lived the greatest people that this world will ever see. They are gone now, destroyed just as the world destroys all beautiful things.

Please make a few indie developers happy. You have nothing to lose but your twenty-sided dice.

Re:three cheers for the little guys

[Flossymike]

Why knock RoleMaster? I happen to love it, but still manage to also love games like 'My Life with Master' http://www.halfmeme.com/

Give 'My Life with Master' a look, I think you'll like :-)

Re:three cheers for the little guys

[sammy baby]

Oh, I have nothing in particular against RoleMaster. I kinda think of it as one of the O(rp)Gs. (Original role-playing games, but with the same sort of vibe as original gangta, if you get my drift.) It's what D&D would be if D&D had never had a second edition and still had Gary Gygax's input.

(Well, okay, no. I gues that's Lejendary Adventures. But you get the idea.)

"My Life with Master" is one of those games that consistently pops up in conversation with people who know far more about games than I do, and I have no earthly idea why I haven't played it yet. Should I manage to lose a point of Weariness, I'll probably pick up a copy and play it, thus also reducing my Self-Loathing.

Not even close

[ChozSun]

There is only one campaign we will play: George R.R. Martin's A Game of Thrones http://www.agameofthronesrpg.com/. I am not too keen on the D20 system but AGoT takes out the one thing that is broken in D20: the Magic System. No enchantments, no magic. If you are dead, you are d-e-d dead. A great campaign setting for one of the best Fantasy epics of all time.

Re:Not even close

[Anonymous Coward]

Which is ironic, because at least a few people in the GRRM novels don't stay as dead as perhaps they should.

Too bad...

[jaaron]

I have a huge collection of Rifts RPG books as well as several other Palladium books. At one point, I had most of the books they had printed. But I feel they've really strayed. Their game system is broken and the point of each book is to just supply bigger, better, badder weapons and spells and whatnot. It completely throws off the game balance. It's been a while since I've played Rifts and I'm much happier with the new D20 system.

That said, I'd hate to see them go under given the circumstances as reported.

Re:Too bad...

[MightyMartian]

The Palladium system is certainly broken (it never was that great, but looking at its age, there weren't many systems that were), but the out of control power situation is not the system's problem, it's the writers, who often, being lazy or just simply bad at writing, choose to describe their creations purely through the system's attributes.

What this means is that when a writer creates a new race, say Chiang-ku Dragons, rather than making the creature unique through some good descriptive writing, simply just up its attributes and damage capacity to "tell" (rather than "show") us just how tough the critter is. The next guy who comes along and makes a whiz-bang super creature, forced to compare to the Chiang-ku, now has to play the same game, and you have an out-of-control snow ball effect of almost logarithmic proportions.

The earliest, and still worst offender, is the way the Glitter Boy, who was in the first book really written up to be the ultimate killer combat suit/armor, was, by the time of the Triax book, a weiny piece of crap that no player would really want to take out.

Palladium has long suffered from bad writers. The environment is still one of the best post-apocalyptic multi-genre uniting environments ever developed, but I think Palladium's appetite got too big, and it ran off in too many directions at once, creating an impossible schedule and ultimately pushing out a lot of mediocre products that diluted the entire Rifts environment. It's still a relatively small company with a pretty small staff, and they tried to do it all, and the whole catalog suffered.

I'm glad they've survived this disaster, but at the same time, they're still ultimately going to disappear unless Simbieda either gives up being all things to all people. If he's going to be a writer, then be a writer, otherwise, be a manager and get some decent staff writers.

Re:Eberron and the state of D&D

[crossmr]

Bioware didn't make Kotor II...
Obsidian did.
I believe much or part of Obsidian is old Bioware employees, but not the same.

Either way, Atari isn't any different than Lucasarts in that regard. They screwed with Troika and the release of ToEE. Taking an older build and at the last minute forcing them to make game breaking changes (like removing children from the game, which broke somethings, and having them remove the brothel which broke other things).

What I like about Eberron

[TrentC]

First, some background. I'm 34 years old, but I started playing 1st edition D&D when I was in 7th grade. I played D&D fairly consistently until college, but starting playing again after the 3.5 edition came out. Every campaign I've ever played in, with one brief exception for a Forgotten Realms game in high school, has been homebrew. But I'm currently playing two campaigns with the same gaming group; one person DMs their own homebrew campaign, and the other, a brand-new DM, is running an Eberron campaign.

These are some of the things I like about Eberron:

1) It takes familiar D&D staples and makes them interesting. For people who feel constrained to stick the to the Rules As Written, Eberron gently gives them permission to bend (or break) them; this can also serve to wake up players who might feel compelled to attack every goblin on sight, because "everyone knows goblins are evil". Chromatic dragons and metallic dragons are not constrained to their usual alignments. A cleric of an Eberron deity is not required to be within one step of their deity's alignment (although they still get the undead turning/rebuking options and, more importantly, the holy/unholy aura generated by the connection to their god). Clerics in Eberron are not tied to being a follower of a single deity; the Sovereign Host pantheon and the Dark Six pantheon are valid options, and Player's Guide to Eberron has clerics of an entire plane of existence and of the nation-state of Riedra. With two nations of non-humanoids -- the goblinoid empire of Darguun and the monstrous lands of the Shadow Reaches, ruled by a trio of night hags -- PC options are more varied while making intergrating backgrounds easy.

2) It makes it easy for the PCs to stand out. One of the design goals of Eberron was that the majority of NPCs will not have PC levels; they use the generic "NPC classes" from the DMG a lot, and introduce a new NPC class, the magewright (a magically-enhanced craftsmen). It also makes it easy for casual players to get up to speed in a relatively short amount of time. Many NPCs as written top out around 8th or 9th level -- the two exceptions that spring to mind are the Lord of Blades, a 12th-level NPC who is the leader of a group of warforged that assert superiority over the "fleshy" races, and the head of the Church of the Silver Flame, who has the powers of an 18th-level cleric so long as she remains in the capital city of Thrane. So in a relatively short amount of time, players can rise to the top of their game. One downside of this is that WotC provides few options for epic- or near-epic-level play in Eberron, although the Player's Guide to Eberron suggests taking one of the major themes and building a campaign around them.

3) The focus of many of the Eberron products is adding options for storytelling. There are certainly DMs who don't need a book to tell them what a human who was tainted at birth by the horrific daelkyr is capable of, or what a knight sworn to the service of the necromancy-friendly nation of Karrnath can do. But not everyone has the creativity (or more importantly, the time) to work such things out, and a gaming business doesn't make money off of the Dms who just need the core books. I tend to think of WotC products (or any D20 product, really) as options; you can either use what they provide you verbatim, you can tweak something for your own campaign -- maybe the bone knights of Karrnath become the sentinels of K'Dar, God of the Underworld in your campaign -- or you can simply use the ideas presented for inspiration. (Thrane, a nation under the mostly-benevolent rule of the Church of the Silver Flame, is a pretty good model for how a theocracy might operate in practice.)

4) Some of the Eberron products are really well-designed. Although the Ptolus sourcebook may end up surpassing it in size and depth, Sharn: City of Towers was a well-written product focused on the signature location in Eberron, taking you from the top of the highest towers t

Re:What I like about Eberron

[ShakaUVM]

>>4) Some of the Eberron products are really well-designed.

Sure, like the one that lets a 7th level Psion cast as if he were a 21st level psion? Only three times per day, but that's some crazy astral constructs you can spit out. Or the original weretouched master, or bleh.

Well-designed and Eberron don't really go hand in hand. The setting is almost overwhelmingly bland, doesn't fit their goal (film noir / action film D&D) in the slightest, the setting has no rules support for this goal (action points does nothing to contribute to an action film setting), and about half the game content they release is too weak, the other half too strong.

Over all, I give all of Eberron 3/10.

Re:What I like about Eberron

[Arivia]

As someone with more than a passing interest in 3e game balance, I must ask exactly what feat/prestige class/whatever you're referring to that results in such a manifester level jump from 7th to 21st --- which one is it?

Re:What I like about Eberron

[PantsWearer]

Like you, I've played through a variety of the D&D products (starting with Basic, through 1st and 2nd, and now onto 3rd/3.5 editions). As for campaigns, I've played in Greyhawk, various homebrew, Forgotten Realms, Eberron, and a few more than I really can't remember specifically.

Eberron has some great ideas. It has a 19th century feel of exploration with magic to replace much of the technology of the time. I love the fact that it's so easy to work in playing a "monster" race. In a lot of ways, there are no "monsters" in Eberron, just factions of various sorts, some good, some bad. An argument can be made for just about any race, class, and alignment combination. Heck, there's a whole village of good-aligned yuan-ti. The thing that I like the best is the fact that the vast majority of the population is low level and/or having only NPC classes, which is the parent's second point.

When playing most other major campaigns (homebrews usually excepted), I would regularly find myself wondering: "Why doesn't the guy hiring our 2nd level party just do this himself? He's a 8th level fighter who's only job seems to be to hang around this town as a constable. I'm pretty sure the three other constables, who are only 6th or 7th level, can hold down the fort until he gets back." (Yes, that's an exaggerated example.)

The Forgotten Realms is especially bad about this. You walk into anything resembling a city and you can't spit without hitting a second or third level character, there's a couple of 7th or 8th level spellcasters, every barkeep seems to be a 4th level veteran fighter, and an average member of the local thieves' guild could assassinate your party before having her morning coffee. When you go into a major city, it's even worse. Without really trying, I can think of half a dozen characters, all of them good, who have levels greater than 15th. Three of them are far over 20th. Most of them are spellcasters who can save the world without breaking a sweat. These people can and have taken on dieties and have been around for hundreds of years (potions of longevity seem to be on tap in most bars). There are really evil NPCs too, but they don't seem to be doing so well, since the steady state seems to be that the good guys are in control. They're your allies, but why do they need you?

Eberron can let you be someone. It's high magic, so basic items are easily available, but any time you get yours hands on something that's even of moderate power, it means something and probably has a history. Alignment isn't set in stone. All of the countries just got over a terrible war and seem to be in a major cold war right now. There are no countries that are "evil", even the one run by a vampire and uses undead as shock troops, and there are no countries that are "good", since even the "best" countries have spy organizations that wouldn't blink before capturing and torturing someone for information.

Of course, like the parent states, there aren't any high-level "set" adventures available, but there is a huge amount of potential to make them. There are at least two eras where extraplanar beings tried to take over (first demons, then aberrations), many of which are trapped in various places across the globe. There's a fallen kingdom of giants (they're the ones who took out the demons), a whole continent that's home to introspective dragons, and another continent where the human population is basically ruled by extraplanar beings through possession and subterfuge.

As campaigns go, it's definitely got more potential than most and the ideas are interesting and work well together.

Re:What I like about Eberron

[ShakaUVM]

It's a shard that gives you 2 points of augmentation (which does NOT count against the manifester limit) for free, three times per day. You can have up to one per level, so a 7th level psion would get 14 points of augmentation free 3 times per day, resulting as him being the equivalent of a 21st level psion for all intents and purposes. Magic of Eberron, can't remember the exact name since it's banned in Living Planar (www.livingplanar.com).

RoleMaster/SpaceMaster

[fitten]

I thought RoleMaster/SpaceMaster were the most fun systems to play (only in small groups... a GM and 3 players, 5 at the extreme). WoTC just tried to make a simplified form of RM and named it the new D&D. I've tried the new system and it just seems like a watered down RM. Of course, with RM you pick/choose the skills and stuff you wanted, otherwise you'd end up practically having the butt-wiping skill (which you could fumble!) but when you got the subset of skills to cover the depth you wanted, it was fun. There's nothing like getting really lucky and stabbing that bad guy through the eye, killing him instantly!

Re:RoleMaster/SpaceMaster

[duranaki]

I can't imagine every going back to D&D after rolemaster.. which I still play and love.
And what's with all the new systems? It seems people just can't get enough of redoing the same old thing... table top games are about the creative energy between GM and players... not about spending money on new books. Besides which, I have a hard enough time finding the time to play, let alone throw away all my current knowledge of game mechanics to learn new ones.

Ka-ching!

[PCM2]

All I know is, when I was buying AD&D manuals the Players Handbook, Monster Manual, Deities and Demigods each retailed for around $11. The Dungeon Masters' Guide was maybe $12.50. That, a bunch of clear plastic dice, a few afternoons crafting the world's most elaborate and comprehensive character sheet (complete with box to draw your guy in), and one friend who was sucker enough to buy the Dungeon Master's Screen were pretty much all you needed. Lead figures were optional (albeit cool).

Re:Ka-ching!

[damiangerous]

Why do you think you need more now? The books cost about the same in 2006 dollars as they did then, and you still only need the three core books to play. In fact, if you're an experienced gamer you can get by with just the PHB and the free Open version of the d20 System, the System Reference Document. They've been churned out supplements almost since the beginning, it's what killed TSR, and they're no more required now than they were then.

Tabletop games?

[Gunfighter]

How does this work again? You just write "/roll" on a piece of paper with a pencil and then the DM shouts out numbers between 1-100?

Holy schnikes

[tacokill]

OMG. I read through the entire thread and I honestly have to say - I have no earthly idea what you people are talking about.

Yea, I know D&D and played it as a kid. But I haven't the foggiest clue about anything else mentioned on this entire page. It's like I just got a blinding hot dose of unexpected geekdom and I kind of dig it.

Re:Holy schnikes

[saucercrab]

So, do you want to get some breakfast or something?

Re:Holy schnikes

[Beale]

Well, the "Industry"'s come a long way since the first box o' D&D. Now, you can find almost any setting to play, from the Hardest Science Fiction (GURPS Transhuman Space) through Scary Messed Up Modern Day Magic (Unknown Armies), to any kind of fantasy you'd care to name (D&D, Earthdawn, A Game of Thrones, etc). So, find some people, find a good gaming shop, and start playing. You know you want to.

More than two companies

[whisper_jeff]

It's been about six months since we took the pen and paper gaming industry's temperature.

You do know there are more than two RPG companies, right? If you're going to claim to take "the ... industry's temperature," you might want to look at, you know, the industry.

And the smaller press...

[Cheetahfeathers]

As with many mass market items, look to the smaller press for the more innovative and interesting ideas. Not every game is for every RPGer.. it's worth it to check out some of the indie games out there. From the serious and gritty, to the silly, there are a lot to choose from. Below are only a small
sample.

http://www.sorcerer-rpg.com/
http://www.anvilwerks.com/?The-Shadow-of-Yesterday
http://www.septemberquestion.org/lumpley/dogs.html
http://www.adept-press.com/trollbabe/
http://l5r.alderac.com/rpg/

Re:Eberron and the state of D&D

[ajs]

Obviously, you're not a fan of Eberron, but I think the setting has promise. It makes several bold moves and at the same time, it retains compatibility with other D&D settings and the system as a whole.

I like the warforged for several reasons:

*They're not just "humans made of metal" (role playing not withstanding)
*They impose unique needs on players
*Their background isn't based on mysterious, powerful "ancients" who are gone now
*They can add as much or as little steampunkishness as you like

The other races are fairly par for the course, but I don't dislike any of them. The fact that some otherwise minor monsters (e.g. Rakshasa) play a major part in the world is nice. The use of dragons was fairly novel, but not overbearing (such as the way they were used in Arcana Evolved, which is a very nice system modification, but sometimes grating as a setting for me).

Overall, it's just a high-magic D&D world like you would expect, and I think it caps off the spectrum nicely when viewed in combination with the other D&D worlds including Greyhawk (I run a game set here), Forgotten Realms (I love the basic concept, but haven't been able to make the time yet to dive in), Dragonlance (not a fan personally, but I know a few people who enjoyed it), Ravenloft (S&S did some good work on this, under their license from WotC), etc.

Small Press RPGs Alive and Well

[Robotech_Master]

Have you looked at RPGNow? It's an e-bookstore that sells PDFs of various games--some from the bigger gaming companies, others from small companies that you've never heard of, such as this giant robot RPG that was written by a friend of mine. Many of these are just as imaginative, if not more so, than a lot of the stuff you'll find from the larger companies--but since they're so small you'd never have heard of them.

Paranoia is still around!

[spun]

Your Paranoia comment got me wondering, is this excellent game still around? Turns out it is! I thought it went out of print ten years ago, but a new publisher, Mongoose, is publishing a brand new edition. Okay, sorry Steve Jackson, but this just bumped "Space" off the #1 spot on my must buy list.

Re:Eberron and the state of D&D

[crossmr]

Obviously, you're not a fan of Eberron, but I think the setting has promise. It makes several bold moves and at the same time, it retains compatibility with other D&D settings and the system as a whole.

I didn't say I didn't like Eberron. I said that I don't particularly like the way that WoTC went about creating it and seemed to almost toss FR to the side in the process. I haven't formed many opinions on it as I haven't really explored it, but given that its in the bargain bin, it might indicate that its not doing that well.

OT: OS X version of Vulture's Eye and Claw here!

[teamhasnoi]

I know this is slightly OT, but forks of Falcon's Eye - Vulture's Eye and Vulture's Claw (Nethack and Slash'Em, respectively) are finally available for OS X. For anyone who didn't like the QT version, or couldn't get the terminal version to compile or don't have classic, this rocks.

One of the nicest RPGs is finally running on the mac, and is rock-stable! On to YASD!

Before you mod this down, I'd like you to know I have my Powerbook on a table, AND I use pencil and paper to write down my Inventory when I die - cheating as much as I can.

All the hallmarks of tabletop D&D'ing. Don't judge me.

Re:Eberron and the state of D&D

[Arivia]

"*Their background isn't based on mysterious, powerful "ancients" who are gone now"

Incorrect; there have been multitudinous hints that Merrix D'Cannith received/recovered the basic blueprint of a warforged from a giant ruin in Xen'drik; Grasp of the Emerald Claw's climax basically confirms this.

Slashdot needs regular tabletop RPG stories!

[TrentC]

This thread is exactly why Slashdot needs a dedicated tabletop games editor; these kinds of stories need to come out more often, so people can work out their frustrations and actually get around to discussing the topic at hand.

It seems like 5% of the posts are about the actual story, and the other 95% of the posts end up being:

* D20/3e/3.5e sucks
* (Insert campaign world) sucks
* WotC sucks
* Only losers need sourcebooks -- give me the core rulebook(s) and I'm happy
* Tabletop gaming is for losers
* Computer RPGs are for losers
* Why not mention (insert gaming system)?

Re:Slashdot needs regular tabletop RPG stories!

[SydShamino]

I submitted a story when GURPS fourth edition came out, in August 2004, but it was rejected. (A story on the release of the latest D&D was accepted, but the market size is of course very different.)

But yeah, even if the mainstream, Linux-n-PC gamin' Slashdot crowd doesn't invest heavily in P&P RPG, I think it definitely falls in the "Nerds' Interests" category that would make it worthy of deeper, more frequent Slashdot coverage.

Re:Slashdot needs regular tabletop RPG stories!

[painandgreed]

"It seems like 5% of the posts are about the actual story, and the other 95% of the posts end up being:"

...and this differs from any other slashdot article how?

Re:Slashdot needs regular tabletop RPG stories!

[Cheetahfeathers]

Well, what type of discussion were you wanting from this subject? Something about how online PDF sales are seriously altering the RPG market? Something about the various theories about why people RP? A bunch of posts agreeing that those are good games and that everyone should play them? :)

It is rather too large and diverse of a subject for slashdot to cover well. You might want to go to a dedicated message board for rpgs. Check out the following links:

http://forum.rpg.net/
http://forums.rpgchat.com/
http://www.rpgconsortium.com/main.cfm
http://www.indie-rpgs.com/forum/

There are many others. Go out there and search for ones you like.

Re:Spell Compendium :-) ALMOST

[Anonymous Coward]

No, it is technically a spelling mistake. Zonk meant to use populace and spelled it populous. Just because populous happens to be the correct spelling of populous does not keep it from being an incorrect spelling of populace. Of course, Zonk could have been using populous in its correct form, as an adjective, and failed to us a noun. That would be a grammar mistake, but its unlikely that was the case.

Now what we need is

[einhverfr]

"GURPS for UNIX Geeks"

This would be a pretty cool introduction to the GURPS system. GURPS is very UNIXy in the sense that you have a pretty good generic system that allows for small pieces to be integrated into it pretty much anywhere you want.

Or maybe a joke about if operating systems were tabletop role playing games...

GURPS would be Linux (or maybe *BSD)
D&D would be Windows
Warhammer would be a Mac
I don't know, any others?

Re:Now what we need is

[DragonWriter]

GURPS would be Linux (or maybe *BSD)
D&D would be Windows
Warhammer would be a Mac

Well, except that D&D is the one with a core available under an "open" license inspired, in part, by the GPL, whereas GURPS and Warhammer and both "closed".

There aren't really good analogies; the P&P RPG market isn't much like the OS market (though maybe its like what the OS retaining enormous marketshare dominance, was bought out by a dominant player in an faster-growing, overlapping market [Google, maybe?] who then released most of the operating system under a open-source license but kept some critical parts proprietary; or maybe its not like that, either.)

Re:Now what we need is

[roguebfl]

Well, except that D&D is the one with a core available under an "open" license inspired, in part, by the GPL, whereas GURPS and Warhammer and both "closed".

You're not familure with SJGame's Online police, and the "Powered by GURPS" Divistions 8) Powered By GURPS allows other publishers to use the GURPS rules for their settings, with only a small restristion of a finial edtorial pass by SJGames before publishing. PbG settings inled Prime Directive and Hellboy

Re:Now what we need is

[DragonWriter]

You're not familure with SJGame's Online police, and the "Powered by GURPS" Divistions 8) Powered By GURPS allows other publishers to use the GURPS rules for their settings, with only a small restristion of a finial edtorial pass by SJGames before publishing. PbG settings inled Prime Directive and Hellboy

Yeah, I am familiar with PbG. PbG is a conventional licensing arrangement, nothing like open source. (And Hellboy isn't third-party, even though its PbG: its an SJG in-house project, just like Transhuman Space [also PbG]. Prime Directive and GURPS: Conspiracy X are third-party PbG products, though.)

Since there's plugging going on...

[Aeonite]

I'll stick my head in here and mention that the 2nd Edition of the Ninja Burger RPG is now available at DriveThruRPG, RPGNow and SJGames' e23 as PDFs, with a Print-on-Demand option through Lulu.com at RPGNow.

The new edition is based on the PDQ system that's used in the cult hit Monkey, Ninja, Pirate, Robot from Atomic Sock Monkey Press, which is obviously what inspired the current Slashdot Poll.

Why 3E doesn't suck

[Stroman Rebar]

I couldn't disagree more, not necessarily with your observations, but with most of your conclusions.

Feats and class abilities

Can they be used to make cheese-monkey uber-twinkie characters? Yes. Can they also be used to individualize a character, so that YOUR 8th lvl fighter is different from all of those other 8th level fighters? Yes, Yes, Yes! In 1st / 2nd Ed there were not a lot of difference (mechanically) from one fighter to the next. In 3.5, you can create the character that YOU want to play. There are still plenty of room for house rules and imagination. You just have a lot more flexibility, more options in the core mechanics.

2) The D20 System

A lot of people complain that it is a dumbed down system consuming all the competition, but in fact the game is marvelously elegant in it's execution. There is a reason so many systems have jumped on the bandwagon. It's a good place to be. Saves, Attacks, Skills are all resolved via the same streamlined method. Except grapple checks :) Those are just silly.

The skills are so easy to use once you understand them fully, allowing for a lot of flexibility in what your players can accomplish. Compared to the clumsiness of non-weapon proficiencies? Like night and day. I don't know where all of your bean counting comes in, but the skills system we use doesn't slow down play a bit. I am not saying that there isn't some math once a level, but come on, it's 3rd grade math. Once a level. Sure, large combats with high level characters do take a while, but it isn't the math that is slowing things down. It's all the players. You know, the ones playing the system you hate and they seem to enjoy.

I am not saying that 3E is perfect. But from one crotchety old fan-boy to another, it's actually pretty good.

Re:Why 3E doesn't suck

[MightyMartian]

D20 is hardly the first system to have an elegant resolution system. Fudge has had one since 1995. The problem with D20, as with any system that tries to do everything, is that it feels cold. Sometimes even a relatively poor system, if matched to the game environment, can work rather well. I just don't buy into the D20/Gurpsian one-size-fits-all line.

Re:Why 3E doesn't suck

[lymond01]

You know, for a game based on imagination, it's a little bit like staring at someone else's naked great-grandmother. Too much information. I imagine they do this not just to sell more books to their devoted fans, but to compete with the computerized MMORPGs and their skill systems that more people are becoming devoted fans of.

Many times when I played DnD, it was just walking around the schoolyard with a couple friends while I gave the storyline and the others filled in the blanks with their actions. It was fun to write up characters at night with the items, etc., but in the end, the adventures were as great or as small as the people's imaginations. (Not criticising the "I attack the darkness" type players out there at all...just saying that there's a lot of info available, and I personally don't find most of it necessary or even useful.)

Re:Why 3E doesn't suck

[kria]

Which is why, thank God, there are different game systems out there, so that I can go play D&D, or Ironclaw (a skill based system), or throw it all out the window and play Amber, which has four stats, powers and no dice at all. Or heck, go play on a MUSH or forum online game, where there aren't even stats much of the time.

Re:Why 3E doesn't suck

[Stroman Rebar]

I have been playing "Necessary Evil" campaign of Savage Worlds lately. It is even more streamlined in D20, with initiative based on old fashioned playing cards, no hit points to speak of, robust character creation, and really fast battles. It is a great system that works well with the setting. I use is a great example of the good stuff that is out there right now. I don't there should be any problem acknowledging that fact that without "hatin" on the D20 system. Now if you want to bitch about the quality of some of the WOTC products, that is a whole different topic.

/return to lurker mode

I find their lack of taste.. disturbing.

[Valdrax]

Slashdot never reviews anything but supplements from the mainstream publishers. Some of these D&D supplements have been out for a couple of months now; I've seen them in stores.

Given who and what they review, I honestly have to wonder if they have no taste or if they're getting paid for it. Honestly, none of the smaller publishers could afford this kind of product placement, and none of these supplements are really worth a review. They're just more feats, more prestige classes, more races, etc -- in other words, nothing innovative and nothing that significantly expands your options for game play.

I'd love to see a review of a beautiful game like Weapons of the Gods, but you aren't going to see it around here.

Hero System

[Hausenwulf]

If people are going to talk about GURPS, I have to throw in my obligatory comment about Hero Games and the Hero System (what GURPS should have been). Many of you probably know the Champions superhero rpg, but Hero Games covers the spectrum of rpgs (similar to GURPS). There's nothing like a game system that lets you knock bad guys completely through brick walls. ;)

Re:Hero System

[Jim in Buffalo]

And Hero System does it in a way that calculates exactly how far the bad guy travels after going through that brick wall, and how many dice of damage you get to roll for the impact of hitting the wall and the impact with the floor on the other side. Oh, and the power "Teleport"? Four pages of rules on how it works. Four pages. (PS: Hausenwulf, don't flame me, I'm a Hero System GM myself)

Re:Hero System

[Synistar]

Jim in Buffalo said: "And Hero System does it in a way that calculates exactly how far the bad guy travels after going through that brick wall, and how many dice of damage you get to roll for the impact of hitting the wall and the impact with the floor on the other side."

This has been my problem with Hero System. It is *too* detailed. Building characters is even more fiddly than GURPS (which has a very detailed system). And combats were just grindingly slow. Generally, I like detail in a system but hero takes it too far IMO.

  I think GURPS takes a comfortable middle ground between uber-crunchy games like Hero and more abstract games like d20 or WOD.

Although d20 has a host of other problems I do really like Green Ronin's Mutants & Masterminds/True20 system for supers. It hit just the right spot IMO by dumping the class system in favor of a powers/skills/advantage system that keeps the simplicity of d20. I wish that WOTC had been brave enough to do D&D 3e in a similar manner instead of the clunky, munchkin-slanted game that they have now.

Why GURPS loses me

[metamatic]

Not to be too fanboyish, but GURPS beats any other tabletop RPG hands down for clarity, simplicity, realism, and playability. Plus it only uses 6 sided dice.

If they made the English edition metric, I'd consider it. However, I'm primarily interested in modern and SF RPGs, and there's no way I'm going to be using feet, inches and pounds in a modern or futuristic setting.

Hence, it's T20 for me.

PARANOIA continues strong

[Allen Varney]

For the last couple of years I've been packaging the support line for the current edition of PARANOIA, the RPG of a darkly humorous future. The new line now has a dozen supplements (see the Mongoose Publishing PARANOIA page) and an enthusiastic and growing fan base at the leading fan site, Paranoia-Live.net. The reviews of the new line have been so congratulatory, even The Computer would approve. If you remember the glory days of PARANOIA from the early 1980s, or if you want to understand what all those old grognards mean when they say "The Computer is your friend," check out the current line at your friendly local game store or online.

Re:PARANOIA continues strong

[GhaleonStrife]

Paranoia is fun. Other games are not fun. Play Paranoia. In all seriousness, It's a great game for newbie players and an experienced GM. All that needs to be said is "Here is your laser. Everything has the possibility to kill you. Go nuts."

Re:Eberron and the state of D&D

[Blakey Rat]

A couple points:

1) Demonstone was a fine game, if a little short.

2) Oblivion is the best RP released since Morrowind, whether or not you think it looks too much like a console port. (And BTW, what the hell does that have to do with how fun the game is? In case you haven't noticed, consoles have fun games on them. Would you have been happier if there was no port and it was 360-only?)

3) What the hell does Neverwinter Nights 2 have to do with Bethestha?

4) What the hell game *do* you like? Do you like any video games at all? How about WOW? How about a nice RP-based MUD? I think in your little rant there, you've managed to alienate every RPG except perhaps KOTOR, so it would be enlightening to know whether you have a good game in mind, or whether you just happen to hate ALL RPGs and haven't realized it yet.

Complicated != realistic

[Dire Bonobo]

> Not to be too fanboyish, but GURPS beats any other tabletop RPG hands down
> for clarity, simplicity, realism, and playability.

Sorry, but you're being way fanboyish.

I like GURPS quite a bit, so I'm hardly "anti-GURPS", but saying it beats any other RPG for simplicity and playability is just not believable. I could never get a game started because almost all the gamers I knew found GURPS way too complicated and too hard to play.

Indeed, that's a key reason GURPS has languished in obscurity for so long, while White Wolf's games became so big---they're so much simpler to understand and play.

More than that, though, a serious problem that GURPS has always had is confusing realistic with complicated . There are detailed rules for all kinds of things, but if you actually check the results of those rules against reality---which I did as a hobby for a while---you'll find they often fail badly. In fact, the fact that the rules are highly detailed often makes them less realistic than more abstract rules, since the "well, maybe this is the reason" explanations that work for abstract rules (e.g., "-6 to hit at long range") are excluded by the greater detail in the GURPS rules (e.g., "-2 for speed + -3 for range + 1 for size + -2 for evasiveness + -1 for light + ...").

If you really think GURPS is "realistic", you haven't checked the rules against reality. A great many of them have all the hallmarks of being arbitrary decisions that fail to model the real world.

Now, that doesn't mean GURPS isn't a good system; it just means that if you say it's "hands down" the simplest, most playable, most realistic system out there, well, be prepared to have very few people agree with you, and for very good reasons.

(Keep in mind, I quite like GURPS, but I'm objective enough to recognize these problems. They're not enough to ruin the system for me, but they are for the large majority of gamers. It's worth a try, but don't be surprised if it's not to your taste.

As an aside, it's interesting to note that I've never seen RPG partisans quite so loyal as GURPS fans. I suspect the complexity of the system appeals to a certain type, some of whom feel a fierce pride in having mastered a "superior" system. Reminds me of the more obnoxious "l33t Linux h4x0rs" sometimes. Not the parent poster, just others I've seen.)

Lots of other exciting developments

[Anonymous Coward]

Green Ronin has released True20, which slims down the d20 rules and uses the damage save mechanic they popularized in Mutants & Masterminds.

Troll Lords is publishing Castles & Crusades, which is basically AD&D with AC that goes up and a cool, but simple mechanic to handle saving throws and skills (i.e. the SIEGE engine). Even better, it's 99% compatible with pre-3.0 D&D, so if you have old material you can put them to use with little or no work. Gary Gygax's Lejendary Adventures is also available from the Trolls. Speaking of Gygax, you can also get his Castle Zagyg series (written for C&C), which is, of course, Castle Greyhawk by another name (all the books for this aren't out, yet).

I.C.E. has put out HARP, which is related to RoleMaster, but simpler and condensed.

Basic Fantasy rules are available onlin; essentially a free version of original D&D.

FATE (a variant of FUDGE) sounds pretty cool.

Savage Worlds is another popular system that follows the "streamlined and fast" model for RPG systems.

Chaosium has been releasing new material for Call of Cthulhu, including Secrets of San Francisco and Tatters of the King (Hastur/King in Yellow adventures).

RuneQuest is returning from the ashes.

"Not dead yet!"

[Dire Bonobo]

Some of your rant seems to be a little misinformed. Beyond what others have already pointed out...

> WoTC tried to duplicate that by soliciting submissions from everyone and creating a new line
> based on their original home grown idea. They had judges, a competition, etc. I'm surprised
> Fox didn't air it. Forgotten Realms was far from dead, and many continued to enjoy playing
> in it. They decided to abandon what was working

FR is far from dead - WotC has by no means abandoned it, and it just makes you look silly to claim otherwise. Take a look at the upcoming products - most are generic, one is FR-specific, and one is Eberron-specific. That's pretty typical.

Just because Eberron has been added doesn't mean FR has been removed. Classic false dilemma fallacy.

Re:"Not dead yet!"

[crossmr]

FR was the "flagship" or "main" campaign setting for a lot of years. It was very popular and rightly so. It was a very rich land, very detailed, and well supported.

Eberron is now the new "setting". I never said FR was removed, I said it was abandoned and taken from the spotlight that it had rightly earned. mainly in an attempt to create a new flaship setting. They tried to mimic the way FR was created by having non-designers make submissions. My point was that it didn't seem to be working since the Eberron Campaign setting was now showing up in the bargain bin, this seemed like a poor choice to make it the main setting.

Re:"Not dead yet!"

[2short]

"FR was the 'flagship' or 'main' campaign setting for a lot of years. It was very popular and rightly so."

Agreed.

"It was a very rich land, very detailed, and well supported."

And all of that material still exists. FR couldn't run forever. The sheer volume of material becomes a dettriment: no relatively new player could possibly be the ultimate master of all FR knowledge (as a certain 14-year-old segment of the D&D market yearns to be) While rightly loved by current players, FR was not drawing in new players the way something new and different would. So I don't think it's at all surprising WotC decided to do something new.

"They tried to mimic the way FR was created by having non-designers make submissions."

I don't know if mimicing the creation of FR was a motivation in setting up their contest. In any case, Keith Baker was a professional, published game designer before he ever entered their contest.

I beleive your spotting an Eberron book in a bargain bin is an anomoly. My understanding is that it has been quite successful.

I'm just saying, it's great that you like FR. Don't hate Eberron for pushing it our of the spotlight, because something had to. Also don't hate Eberron for being different than FR; if it weren't it really would be threatening it. This way, they each appeal to different sorts of player, so it's reasonable for Wotc to keep going with both.

Re:Eberron and the state of D&D

[crossmr]

1) It was a pretty big rip on Return of the King. used the same engine if I recall, and it was basically the same game with new skins and sounds.

2) Consoles do have fun games, but if you're going to release a high quality PC game, you need to make it for the PC. It was lacking a lot of basic features, like key-mapping, and some of its mechanics were dumbed down to account for the 360. The AI was also trashed because of it. Something I've already linked to and explained several times on /. and the oblivion forums. It has to do with the crappy "in-order" processor the 360 uses. Those are the words of developers, not me. Actually I grab you the link so you don't whine: http://crystaltips.typepad.com/wonderland/2005/03/ burn_the_house_.html read the stuff from Chris Hecker about the processors. Oblivion is exactly what he predicted. The same crap only shiny.

3) Read the whole thread before commenting, I already corrected the Bethesda/obisidian mistake. I meant to compare the subpar performance with kotor II

4) Wow is crap. All MMORPGs are, because they're not roleplaying games. They're hack n slash crap. Not all, Eve is reasonable since its not about the level grind, and Wish would have been amazing but was canned (I was in the Beta). I also really liked Temple of Elemental Evil, as you can see I praised its quality, I didn't like the way Atari handled it and killed the franchise before it had the chance to get off the ground.

I'm also a big fan of D&D in general. I'm not particularly happy about the way WoTC passed off on FR and tried to make a "new FR" by trying to force the process with Eberron. I also quite enjoy Palladium's Heroes Unlimited and After the bomb games.

I like quality, I don't like garbage shovelled out by a company to try and make a buck.

The One True RPG, Maggots!

[sudog]

Hackmaster is the One True Inheritor of the AD&D title. All those new rules, all the needless additional rolling, the Need A Rule For Everything Because I Lack An Imagination generation of D&D might as well flush itself now, while it still has a modicum of self respect left.

Put the Dungeon back in D&D, the Gummy back in the Gummy Elemental, and the Betty back in the Skipping Betty fireball.. skip the crap, stick with Hackmaster! ... and the combat mode of the Hackmaster GM shield puts the fear of god (a.k.a. the DM) back into players who are far too used to rules lawyering their way to 20th without a single resurrection!

Bring back the 20-or-die poisons, the lethal curses and diseases, and the System Shock rolls! Ha ha haaaaa....

GURPS Books

[Garrett Fox]

Some of the GURPS books really are good references for other things, like writing. I especially recommend GURPS Religion (the design of gods, real-in-the-setting or not), Atlantis (the original legend and spin-offs), Bio-Tech (gengineering), and the Transhuman Space books (advanced tech of all kinds).

WoW vs. Everquest

[Anonymous Coward]

D&D 3.5 seems to be more like WoW... the end-game is in sight, and actually seems obtainable. You can have a great story getting there, and once you're there, you feel all powerful and good about yourself, but it's probably time to start again.

The old D&D was more like a grind (less like an action movie) as far as progress went.

People like not having to be hardcore to get to the good stuff (simplified, generalised and unsupported psychology FTW!), so this is popular.

The books are still out there for the older stuff, and it always seemed more free-flowing anyway, so extra books are less important. If you needed story ideas, you could go read a book (any book, fantasy, sci-fi, fiction, non-fiction).

-Steven

Who cares about ragons? Give me cyberpunk, please!

[mu22le]

Do you know of a good cyberpunk rpg with playable rules for the cyberspace?
I have tried a few (fron cyberpunk 2020 to GURPS cyberpunk) but non of them was simple and yet accurate enough (and yes I know those 2 reqirements are in conflict).

I am still looking for a system that does not make the "netrunner" some kind of mage with programs instead of spells and somehow resemble the real experience of "hacking" without requiring all the knowledge.

I've heard of the mythical GURPS Hackers that was beeing developed when Steve's Jacksons home was raided (http://www.chriswaltrip.com/sterling/crack2m.html ) I wish I could take a look at it!!!

Re:Who cares about ragons? Give me cyberpunk, plea

[Anonymous Coward]

It wasn't mythical, nor was it GURPS 'Hackers'. You are referring to the original release of GURPS Cyberpunk. The FBI raided his home and company offices and effective shut down his business for a couple days. Their pretext was that the sourcebook was going to be a 'manual for computer crime'. Steve Jackson Games promptly sued the federal government for damages and to make a long story short they won the case.

Steve Jackson Games' side of it can actually be found on their website at this address:
http://www.sjgames.com/SS/

Re:Eberron and the state of D&D

[sckeener]

I've only just gotten the Eberron Campaign setting, from the bargain bin, over 50% off. That is probably pretty telling.

I'm not running or playing an Eberron game at the moment, but the setting is decent. It was created for the player in mind. They had a contest, took submissions for campaign settings, and Eberron is the one that won. There are aspects to the setting that rub me wrong, but I think anyone that has been playing a long time will see stuff they would have done differently. Eberron is perfect for anyone interested in pulp Indiana Jone-ish type adventures with lots of intrige.

Re:Who cares about ragons? Give me cyberpunk, plea

[Anonymous Coward]

"I am still looking for a system that does not make the "netrunner" some kind of mage with programs instead of spells and somehow resemble the real experience of "hacking" without requiring all the knowledge."

Shadowrun certainly meets part 1. The "real experience of hacking" consists of sitting at a desk, perhaps occasionally doing something very clever and leftfield. Not really something you could roleplay.

p.s. Shadowrun is ace.

Re:Who cares about ragons? Give me cyberpunk, plea

[mcvos]

I am still looking for a system that does not make the "netrunner" some kind of mage with programs instead of spells and somehow resemble the real experience of "hacking" without requiring all the knowledge.

This depends entirely on your opnion on what the "real experience of hacking" should be in a cyberpunk game. IMO the best approaches are either: some kind of mage with programs instead of spells (for people who like flashy netrunning), or some computer related skills that you simply roll for information gathering and anything else you want to do. The rest is just roleplay: handle it the same way you handle players looking for and meeting people and rolling Streetwise or Savoir-Faire, or burglars sneaking around and rolling Lockpicking to get into the building.

You don't need a big system if you don't want one. and the best part is that this works in any system.

If you needed any more evidence of kludge...

[Elemenope]

Oh yes and let's not forget the weird ass 18/00 - 18/99, none of which are as burly as 19. And then 25 isn't 25% buffer than 20... it's a cloud giant compared to an orc or something.

The best part for me was that the extrodinary strength scale went not from 18/00 -18/99, but rather from 18/01 - 18/00. (A really, really, REALLY stupid notation artifact, IMHO).