Slashdot Mirror
Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition, Latest News
Lord Aramil of Dreadwood writes "Blogger and Dragon magazine writer Jonathan Drain is tracking the latest developments on the new D&D edition. Highlights include: Thirty levels instead of twenty, no more XP costs for magic items creation, flexible talent trees replacing feats and prestige classes, a new racial bonuses system that obsoletes ECL, and an end to rubbish skills like Forgery and Use Rope. A quote from the blog: 'Unlike 3.5, all the changes this time around sound like they're definitely for the better... If nothing else, at least they have the opportunity to get rid of Mialee.'"
News for Nerds.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Will it be a DX10/Vista only title?
(Said in jest, not out of ignorance)
Bring back Dark Sun and Planescape you sons of bitches and then your game won't suck anymore. Heck, they even watered down Forgotten Realms for the 3rd edition. Once they stop being pussies and stop whining about their RPGs being too hard they will get the hard core gamers to come back.
Contributing to the prevention of teen pregnancy since 1974! (and not through any fault of the girls either)
The Banjo Players Must Die!
The first time you hear "got rid of useless feature X", that's a sure sign the game sold out to the mainstream.
To the true gamer, there is no such thing as "useless feature".
"Blogger and Dragon magazine writer Jonathan Drain is tracking the latest developments on the new D&D edition. Highlights include: Thirty levels instead of twenty, no more XP costs for magic items creation, flexible talent trees replacing feats and prestige classes, a new racial bonuses system that obsoletes ECL, and an end to rubbish skills like Forgery and Use Rope. A quote from the blog: 'Unlike 3.5, all the changes this time around sound like they're definitely for the better... If nothing else, at least they have the opportunity to get rid of Mialee.'
Unfortunately I don't know whether to feel old or cool.
When I first saw the headline, I said to myself, "are they kidding?"
In this age of MMORPG's, where issues with game balance can be tweaked monthly, the game universe can be expanded just as often (if not on the fly), and campaigns can involve real-time cooperation among dozens of players, could there really be a thriving market for a pastime as "last-gen" as D&D?
Then it occurred to me, at least with D&D you're actually interacting with real, identifiable people. No griefing, no gold farming, no bots, no avatars with tearing polygons, no server lag to contend with.
Then I could see the market.
There are no karma whores, only moderation johns
just as I was getting comfortable playing 3.5 !!
really, this D&D thing starts to smell like software with every now and then a shiny new release with fresh bugs and annoyances.
and then after a while, surprise surprise! bugfixes!
and then finally when you think things start to settle, tada, yet another 'upgrade' or whatever.
it starts to piss me off.
I know that having more levels is the "in" thing to do.
Originally, in AD&D First Ed, you hit level 20, there was a high chance that your DM would suck up your char sheet because your character was so powerful that it was a god, and not a minor one.
The first MUDs were somewhat based around that, when you hit the topmost level, you became an immortal. The level limit for "ascension" ended up being between 20-30.
As time went on, this limit climbed to 40, 50, then on some MUDs, even was as high as level 100.
Around 1999, MMOs came into the picture. UO didn't use a level based system, but EQ did. To keep players going, and the game interesting for people at the level cap, the original level 50 limit was raised to 60, 65, 70, now 75, and in the next major expansion 80. EQ2 similar, except the game is structured by tiers, starting at 50, then 60, now 70, and will be 80 come the next expansion. WoW too. Next expansion, level 80.
There is something lost in this climb for levels, to the detriment of everything else. In WoW, level pretty much is the gauge of your character's abilities, so a character that is level 70, that has crappy equipment is more often asked for groups/raids than a level 65 with excellent stuff.
I used to DM, and have been since First Edition AD&D. In campaigns, levels were there, but they were mainly a gauge of progress, of what difficulty I needed to make encounters. Characters had a lot more ways to progress and gain in power. They could gain reputation by pushing back orc scout parties, learn spells (In First Ed., magic items were VERY rare, and a +1 sword would be something that would be a 3-4 session campaign, but worth obtaining.), and perhaps travel, guarding trade caravans (or waiting until the caravan was alone, then sacking the people on it.) As the party grew, they became impressed into a local ruler's service as a scout group for taking care of enemies and seeking relics, then the party eventually was able to start their own kingdom after a number of fights, and having to not just go head off places, but make sure the kingdom was in good order while they were gone.
I like levels at a low number. For a lot of intents and purposes, 20 is enough. Epic levels in third edition and up never really played a part, because at that level of character power, I'd have to move the party off of the usual medieval fantasy world into either different spheres (Spelljammer), or do like everyone and their brother does, and start plane hopping, which meant that it wasn't really my campaign world, but just using the Planescape sourcebooks pretty much verbatim.
Maybe I am an old timer, but I try to get player characters to grow "horizontally", and focus on getting reputation, gear, and status with their class guilds, rather than climb the numbers with regards to level. When getting status and doing missions, the XP comes in its due time.
Until this article, I would've been sure that D&D is dead. I wouldn't even give much on AD&D, with d20 stealing the show and all. But maybe that's just because for the past 5 or 6 years I've been concentrating more on smaller RPGs and found what I had been missing all the time with the "mainstream" stuff: Innovation, creativity and an honest desire to create a good game, above all.
I wonder how much of that's true for MMORPGs as well. I've never played WoW, but I've seen at least 20 MMORPGs and they are all more or less the same. Played one, played 'em all. Which, of course, explains why players concentrate on just a few really large ones - there's no compelling reason to go anywhere else, so you can stay where your friends are.
But in pen-and-paper RPGs, you can be more flexible, can't you?
Here are some of the games that I've enjoyed a lot, and where I would gladly exchange one evening of playing those for a full campaign of any (A)D&D, GURPS, Shadowrun, Vampire or any other mainstream game:
Amber - though you absolutely have to have read the books
Godlike - great setting, interesting and quick game mechanics
The Riddle of Steel - has its shortcomings, but for some reason it was a great experience
Fireborn - I'd kill for having a regular Fireborn group
Sorcerer - consensus opinion of many, not just me: One of the best indie RPGs out there
The problem, of course, is the same why WoW has millions of subscribers, and other (possibly better) games struggle: It's hard to find other players.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
how on earth will i pull my wagon of magic missiles now?! : P
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
Video 1
... check the Related Videos on the right side of any video you look at.
Video 2
Video 3
Video 4
Video 5
There are more
No one talked about this subject yet.But I wonder whether Dungeons & Dragons Online would be converted to 4th and how hard programmers and other stuff should work.Please enlighten me.
While I'm still not sure if I'll drop a bunch of money on getting this new edition when it comes out I'm slightly more optimistic about this edition of the game. The designers seem to have a few good ideas in their heads; not least of which is getting rid of those bloody prestige classes. I've lost count of the amount of times I've seen that feature abused!
Still, is it enough to get me to spend money? I dunno. And the sting of needing to update the material I've written hasn't quite worn off yet. It'd be nice, though, if they could cut down to one core rulebook, or failing that have a basic rulebook handling the first few levels -- sort of a digest version of the core rules
As a player of D&D since third edition (maybe four or five years going, now), I have to say that my group of friends is not particularly interested in investing the time and money of purchasing/learning the new 4.0 source books, when they're finally released. We just don't have a need for them.
As of right now, most of our gaming sessions (which last between 4 and 6 hours) involve at most, a dozen die rolls that mean anything, and I'd say more often than not, a session ends without a single combat. I guess our campaigns have evolved into what could be considered drama. And to be honest, it's a much more enriching experience than a traditional hack & slash game that I so often see with newer/younger players.
This isn't to say we won't do a bit of research into the new system, but if all it does is revise the combat and levelling system, then we won't be adopting 4.0.
Deleted
Deleted
Suddenly, I feel very cool for not knowing or caring anything about this news.
It would be interesting to see the effect the new D&D Edition will have on other D20-based Games and third-party Sourcebooks.
According to TFA, the designers already took some clues from other D20 Games to incorporate into the new edition (the skill trees have been implemented into the new Star Wars D20, for example), but all changes into the D&D core books will in one way or another affect all the other D20 publications, especially (of course) alternative D&D settings and similar fantasy sourcebooks.
I am thinking primarily about things like the removal of prestige classes and the merging of core classes, because quite frankly, I was sick of all the more or less useful prestige classes seemingly appearing in every sourcebook, but their removal from the game means all those now obsolete classes must be converted or abandoned.
As there are so many D20-based books now, with a lot of them being supplements to the core D&D setting, the reaction to changes especially from other developers will be interesting to see.
It's more a matter of the value you can get out those skills. You might have an actual need for 'use rope' once every five sessions, while other skills such as 'spot' or 'diplomacy' would be used repeatedly during a session. So you have the choice of spending your limited number of points gaining ranks in a skill that might eventually be useful versus one you know will be used over and over.
The other side of this is that the people writing the adventures know that most players don't take those skills. So they don't add events that require the skills, or provide alternative ways of solving the problem. So it spirals down fast.
my scout/assassin, Ropeman the Forger, is going to need a little work.
No Longer a Menace to Society.
Alexandria Morrigan born 2/22/01 l. 20.5in wt. 7 lbs. 5 oz.
Why does everyone rag on Use Rope? It and Tumble are the only two skills I always max out. Rope Use + Whip = crazy-Indiana-Jones-style, min/max goldmine. /dork off
In honor of 4 editions, the new rules are based on d4 gameplay, using the following results table (fig. 2b):
evens: success
odds: failure
Everything else translates well into the d4 system as well. For instance, percentage rolls are now 25d4 (yeah, like you used those bottom three percents). A Quasar Dragon's breath attack does (3.6x10^7)d4 damage to whichever planet it's aimed at. And so forth.
http://www.burningwheel.org/
The GeekNights podcast is going strong. Listen!
They do not favor much the "Roleplay" part in RPG. Just like their counter part of MMOG, a lot of player tend to fall in the calculator-rpg. See the post above with fighter-barb-red dragon disciple-frenzied berserker. As a master I tend to try to concentrate on the roleplay only (remmember "Amber", the RpG without dice ?). But usually you get a mix of all. Some who are there for the roleplay and some which are there for the munchkin. More than often, the munchkin in my campaign end up more or less the guardian of the roleplayer, which in turn by their relationship they build tend to be far more powerful due to their social connection, and tend to solve problem without using "raw" power as in strength. It is funny to see because most munchkin don't realize that even if they could wipe the roleplayer with 2 attacks, or fry them, or whatnot, they are de facto "weaker" in all sense than the one which build a social net in the roleplaying session. So that way everybody is satisfied.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
Why is something "cool" your character does have to be some bad ass move you do? Some magic spell that makes your sword +10 or something. Really, its getting to much make my character awesome and dm you try to defeat me. What happened to problem solving and team work in dnd? Battles are the most important part but these battles and the rest of the game shouldn't just be massive damage.
I am surprise someone from this list hasn't talked about the possible forking between the 3.0/3.5 Open Gaming License (OLG) and the proposed new 4e OGL. Unlike a new version of Linux, the new D&D rules do not have to be under the old OGL, they are in effect a completely new operating system for D&D. It has been confirmed there will be a version of the OGL/D20 license, but with some added restrictions: 1) Professional game companies will need to pay a license. 2) Fan/Non-Pro offerings will have to be through their site www.gleemax.com (unconfirmed). Here is a list of known stuff about the new edition on the ENWorld forums: http://www.enworld.org/showthread.php?t=204119 Gleemax.com has stirred some controversy already because of the Terms of Service. The most blatant is that anything you post their grants Wizard's of the Coast limited rights to republish your material and limits your ability to publish anything that uses their IP, e.g. Greyhawk, Planscape, Forgotten Realms, etc. So, what does this all mean? Well, if the use restrictions on the 4e OGL/D20 license are, well too restrictive (and kinda takes the O out of OGL) that will mean a fork in the D&D development path. Some publishers will want the latest and greatest and put up with it, others will not and use the 3e OGL which has no licensing fees and cannot be terminated. There are already some development forks in 3e, Green Ronin's True 20 and Mutants and Masterminds rules, Iron Heroes and Arcana Evolved from Malhavoc Press (Monte Cooke) which take the core mechanics in new and different directions. Anyway, my two coppers on the subject, Saracenus
Brilliant joke, sir.
"I hope to God clerics got toned back a bit..."
Whose God are you hoping to? The overpowered Cleric's, or yours?
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
The MMORPGs are all bj, all the time. And even the offline CRPGs.
... so that's the mainstreaming.
The source myths involve sacrifice left and right. And the source fiction. Maybe the story-lines would allow escaping dooms or finagling sacrifices, but the overall theme we have here now is turning sacrifice of power into a cartoon no you're still powergod deluxe getting the RPG bj making you allpowerful when IRL
How has this not been linked to yet?
"It takes considerable knowledge just to realize the extent of your own ignorance." - Thomas Sowell
The more I read about 4th edition, the more it sounds like WotC looked at WoW and is trying to emulate it. I don't think it should be the direction to move in, as Blizzard will always be way ahead of them, and DnD should not try to compete with any computer game in general, but focus on it's own strengths.
RogerWilco the Adventurous Janitor
mod parent interesting
The AD&D 3.5 manuals are just too damned complicated. Hundreds of pages and table after table after table. It's more like a software spec than game instructions. No one new is going to get onto this. If you're going to make it that complex, let a computer handle all that messing around.
Enter WoW. It's the AD&D online that AD&D never had. Must irk them to see all that money going to someone else. Their own DDO Stormreach bombed. This is a desperate ploy to cling some of their market back. If they can find people who'll pay $$$ for all new AD&D 4.0 books. In this day and age of the net does it have to be WOTC that rewrite the rules a few solitary voices claim so badly need repairs. Nope. Fans could do this by themselves. WOTC, like the RIAA, are on an outdated business model.
If someone went to a VC with this as a business plan, they'd get laughed out of the office. WOTC on their way out.
These are great. It tells me right away that WoTC is going to fill the new manuals with DRM "enhanced content as soon as it KNOWS you own the physical product"...
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Why does anyone hold on to these rules as sacrosanct? If you didn't like the rule requiring an XP expenditure for this-or-that, why not just disregard them? Why wait for a new book to purchase? Why not enable yourself? For that matter, why ever use "D&D" in this age? I suspect that FUDGE is an effectively superior replacement. There's no reason why you can't steal the monsters, weapons, etc; from your favorite system and simply apply them to FUDGE?
Some friends of mine started making thier own world a long time ago, gotten pretty detailed. Here's a link
An I.T. motto in the hands of an idiot is a dangerous thing...
Of course, if your on board with the D&D Insider your probably going to need to buy the core set. The Insider is actually the Dungeon and Dragon magazines which WOTC brought back in house, combined with a ton of digital tools such as an online game table, dungeon master tools, character creator and visualizer, and other features. That would probably be the only reason to buy the core set, unless of course you have some reason to want to see WOTC succeed, which I do. Of course that doesn't mean I'm going to buy supplements I'll never use. I'm pretty far from the completist.
This really isn't a money grab, at least not on some levels. Yeah, I'm sure Hasbro is happy about the core set, but Third Edition being tapped dry. There is nowhere else to go. I don't want to see WOTC die. If they don't release a new edition, its over. Look at whats been released lately, compendium after compendium, splatbook sequels, worthless environment books, adventures I have no interest in playing. Nobody is buying these books, nobody but completists, and there isn't enough of those to keep a company afloat. Besides, there is plenty of rules that need to be tweaked, plenty of skills that need to go, plenty of classes that need revision. Third edition was broken the day they released it, ask Monte Cook, who wrote third edition.
Its time to take what everyone learned playing third edition for the last eight years, and make the game better. WOTC deserves their coin for what they do. Of course, I'm a WOTC fanboy, what do I know.
-- 4 8 15 16 23 42
I really think pen and paper roleplaying games should get their own topic, instead of the generic "FFIV" one. After all, there is little in common with Mass Effect and D&D...
Yes, it's news for nerds, but it comes up sufficiently that it makes sense.
Lex
1)
Check out the new retro-style releases:
- Labyrinth Lord
- Basic Fantasy RPG
- OSRIC
- Castles & Crusades
And those are just D&D derivatives. There's also a revised edition of Tunnels & Trolls that came out recently (not much changed, just a few fixes).
There are lots of good games out that aren't as rules-intensive as the big commercial stuff. And they're a lot cheaper too (most of the games I listed are either free PDF downloads, or buy the print version for $10-30).
Ok, I haven't played D&D since I was a kid. Recently some friends and I got together and have been playing, or at least found an excuse to get together and throw back some brews (much to the dismay and utter disbelief of my fiancee, but I digress) I have spent a crap ton of money on stupid books and I have a friend that has the leather bound super expensive version of the DM's guide. I wish they would just make these things backwards compatible so I wouldn't have to buy a second crap ton of books for a game I am too old to be playing anyway. By the way. Firefox's spell check refuses to believe that fiancee or fiance are words that can be used by the same person talking about D&D and underlines it giving me no option for a correct spelling.
...Because 10 years later they have a kid or two and the football jock that knocked them up has left for another girl and doesn't make enough money to support much beyond his drinking habit.
I am not interested in giving a grown-up cheerleader access to my income so I can provide for the offspring of the asshole who used to stuff me in a locker.
Ten years of solitude has made us masters of emotional independence. Now that the girls want us (or, more properly, our money), we don't want them.
Sweeten the deal, girls, or lay in the bed you made.
> Dungeons & Dragons was a gateway for me
:)
I know there's a decent drug joke that can be inserted here, but I'm too tired to come up with one
Bark less. Wag more.
Flumph.
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
I think D&D is to role-playing what Dragonball Z is to anime. Everyone should try it, and it's simple enough to introduce newbies to the genre, but as tastes grow mature and refined one should move past it to more, shall we say, verdant fields.
Alcohol and automobiles provide better examples.
D&D is beer / "Consumer" cars. Everyone starts out with it, and a few folks leave it because they want something that caters to their tastes better. These other choices require more work (finding players / earning cash / finding the damn books), and have real differences... but they don't get you any drunker or get you to your destination any faster.
IME, most people who play "D&D" start with the base game, and then take it to something else. Heck, the same line applies to every RPG system... so if you're going to hack it anyway, why not start with what's most popular?
I always disliked the XP "cost" for creating of magic items. It really made no sense to lose your experience about things by creating the things you had experience for. It's like an IT support professional being dumbed down to below the peers he's helping by answering too many support calls. Or to pick a more suitable profession, a glassworker becoming retarded. Sure it's about magic this time, but still the same reasoning behind it.
So thanks for that at least! I understand it was there for balance reasons, but I hope the balance can be achieved more logically this time!
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
An evens/odds system is effectively D2; Hollow Earth Expedition uses one and makes it practical (see http://www.exilegames.com/games/ubiquity.html). As another poster has pointed out, 25D4 (or 50D2) is not the same as 1D100. With the former you get a bell-shaped distribution (google normal distribution or gaussian distribution); with the latter, it's flat. Their system takes advantage of this.
A clever result of their D2 system is that you can make a 2^n-sided die worth effectively n coin flips by putting the correct binomial distribution on it; a die of value 2 would have sides 0 1 1 2, and value 3 would have sides 0 1 1 1 2 2 2 3. If you need to flip 10 coins/roll 10 dice, grab any number of dice that add to 10. Simple, streamlined, and flexible.
I'm glad someone mentioned Spelljammer, as it's my favorite campaign setting. While I suppose I don't expect them actually to do a fourth edition version of it since they didn't do one for third edition, I do wish that they'd at least have unified comprehensive rules for battles between ships, both nautical and aerial.
Yes, I know, a good DM can piece that sort of together, and I have, but the less I have to worry about game mechanics, the more I can focus on plot.
Space game using normal deck of cards: http://BattleCards.org
Comment removed based on user account deletion
From a software developer's point of view, yes. You even have to pay to play (cost of windows, software dev tools, etc), making the windows analogy even more complete.
moox. for a new generation.
Economist Levit wrote a book called "Freakonomics". He talks about how people are willing to pay so-called Experts on the assumption that their advice is worth gold. Trouble is these experts have their own agendas: WOTCs is to sell you a whole new collection of books. At least that's how they figure it. Experts use tricks like information hoarding to convince you only their word can be trusted.
;-)
WOTC, despite the names, aren't Gods. They don't have a divine touch. Fans could rewrite the rules. There's no reason a competent group of fans couldn't do their own rewrite. WOTC would of course do everything in their power to thwart that, and propagate the myth that they're so much better at this than anyone else.
I look at the vast hardbound spaghetti code tomes that is "Got to Collect them all!" AD&D 3.5, and disagree. Don't think for a moment that the D&D 4.0 effort is the work of divine artists struggling for perfection. It's suits with sales targets. If AD&D 4 turns out to be only 16 pages long, I'll retract that. What are the chances of that?
Ryan Dancey, the father of the OGL/D20 license has some interesting thoughts on the direction where tabletop gaming should be heading vs. computer hack and slash games like WoW. His arguments are far more cogent than I can do justice, so here is the link to his blog and his 5 part series (with a 6th installment about segmentation is the role-playing player base...
g /Archive.html
http://web.mac.com/rsdancey/iWeb/RSDanceyBlog/Blo
Ryan hasn't worked for WotC for years and this was written before the 4e announcement on Thursday. It does not reflect where WotC is headed directly but may give you some insight why they are moving to a new edition right now...
Bryan Blumklotz
AKA Saracenus
Dungeons and Dragons doesn't have roleplaying, just caster-playing. Charm person, contact other plane, detect invisibility, ESP, clairvoyance, clairaudience, comprehend languages, teleport, identify, detect lies, speak with dead, speak with animals, speak with plants, locate object. You roleplay until the spellcasting characters in the group get a few levels under their belt, and after that everything but combat is finished in 3 minutes of player time with a few spells. Then you're back to hacking and slashing everything in your path, absolutely no different from World of Warcraft or any other grinding RPG.
Need to get somewhere? Need to translate something? Need to figure out what that magic trinket does? Need to find something? Need to negotiate? Listen in on a conversation? Spy on someone? Get some long-lost piece of information? A mid level Dungeons and Dragons spellcaster does it all.
There are plenty of tabletop roleplaying games that offer a much more interesting and immersive character experience than any computer game. But if you want a game like that, I suggest you pick one that doesn't include every imaginable form of information gathering instantaneous transport in spells. I like Dungeons and Dragons, but there are dozens of better options for actual storytelling and roleplaying.
God I wish they made a video game of Paranoia. ... regardless of what you did.
Of course, they would have to make 5 different adventures in the games as all 6 of your clones would be dead within 4 hours of play
I started playing AD&D after buying the "original" D&D manuals (just the photocopied books plus some multi sided die) in a games shop in London in 1977. It took a couple of years to come up with our own rules and I started playiong regularly in about 1980. Now I still have a favourite character from about 1983 who is level 3. He's a great bloke (a bit thick and slow, but pretty strong) and he loves to amble around vast lands and has garnered quite a reupation in the last 20 odd years. The DM for the campaign writes a nice little magazine that has tried to capture some of the explits but the point is, after all this time my character is only level 3.
:-)
Compare this to WoW where, for instance, my son got to level 60 in about a month then wondered what to do.
It seems a little more attention to gameplay rather than levelling might reingigorate a whole new generation of players - they just might have to use their imaginations though
Mind you, Blizzard will say they're making quite enough money thanks and they don't need to deviate from their current path and I can't blame them from a monetary point of view. [sigh]
pithy comment
Okay, I just got back from GenCon.
The night they announced 4th Ed., someone mentioned it in passing and the response from everyone else in the group was "Huh? They announced that?"
Right there, they failed.
If any of you were there for the release of 3.0, you remember what a huge deal it was.
Then, the abortion of 3.5.
Now 4th Edition.
And the actual announcement copy on it was so dry that it HAD to have been written by a bean-counter. You start reading, get about 10 syllables in, and you're asleep.
And I LOVED the part about "Eight years of playtesting".
As a colleague of mine put it. "Oh. Thanks for telling me that I spent all that money on 3rd Edition stuff (and 3.5) for the *privilege* of playtesting a broken ruleset!"
The people in charge of 4th Edition, and ESPECIALLY the people in charge of product marketing and development need to be bitch-slapped for this lackluster bullshit.
Ah. And I LOVED the ENnies. They passed out 3MB (THREE MEGS!) USB thumbdrives with a character sheet and a logo on it. We guinea-pigged it on one computer, and the drive wasn't stable. The OS kept losing it. So, immediately after it was removed from the system, that system was scanned within an inch of it's life for spyware and malware.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Hope this causes D&D to be more popular again. It's a great game - but no one plays it.
"sudo rm -rf your-face"
So I've read some of the quotes by the posters...
DnD is still pretty popular, but what happens is that those of us above the age of 30 who still play or enjoy the game find it more and more difficult to see a campaign through. Couples with kids that host. People show up with lots of beer. Then of the 4 hours of play time, too many people jump out of character.
It takes time and dedication, and sadly as people grow up, time is extremely limited.
Life takes interesting turns, but the most interest is when you're off the beaten path.
How are Richard and the WotC execs supposed to live with just 1 boat each?
3.5 Was fine. This is a cash grab. i hope the other developers don't, or at least delay adopting 4. They know there is a small market for the books further and further from the core. So to keep the cash flowing they have to keep reinventing the core.
This is why i RARELY buy D&D books. They're too damn expensive for what they are, they don't need to be in color or have color in the background of the text. If WotC wants me to buy more books they should lower the price to something realistic.
Utilizing the synergization of benchmark e-solutions to pre-workaround action items!
D&D is just too complicated. First edition D&D had so many rules and tables that you had to look up a table whenever you wanted your character to do anything, unless you'd played so long that you had all the tables memorized. Third edition went a long way toward ironing out a lot of that, but it still has problems. Basically anything that sends you back to the rulebook when you thought you knew how it worked needs to be simplified.
Things I think need to be fixed about D&D:
1. Turning undead. Its rules are totally different from everything else. Consolidate.
2. Special combat maneuvers. Consolidate the rules for disarming, tripping, grappling, etc.
3. Attacks of opportunity. Totally unnecessary complication. Get rid of them.
4. Actions. The rules governing what you can do in a round are too complex. Simplify.
5. Spells. Each one has its own set of rules, and there are hundreds. Consolidate them.
I have so many other criticisms, but no time to list them all. Basically, if it requires a table, it's too complicated and should be streamlined, in my opinion. Anything that detracts from fun is a bad thing to have in a game.
there are (at least) two things you can't really talk about with "normal" (mundane, boring, non-geek) people: role-playing games and open-source development. Bringing up either topic in a conversation immediately marks you as such a massive geek that everyone in the vicinity retreats instinctively into sports metaphors and discussions of TV shows, peppered with remarks such as "get a life you nerd". Mentioning both topics at once, such as "I'm working on an open-source project for a multiplayer role-playing game" marks you as a complete social pariah - and rightly so, for this would demonstrate conclusively that not only do you not have a life, you are incapable of getting one.
The D&D = Windows analogy is often made in my RPG group, and we're all linux, OSS or Apple enthousiasts.
Our only problem is that we can't agree on what other RPG is the best. GURPS was popular in the distant past, then we tried CORPS, Shadowrun, WFRP, and eventually we ended up playing Earthdawn for over 10 years. And now, with their excellent 4th edition out, I'm pushing GURPS again. But it's good to have a choice at least.