Brontoforumus Archive
Game Boards => Gaming Discussion => Topic started by: jsnlxndrlv on March 17, 2010, 08:48:46 PM
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I don't really have a lot of time for tabletop gaming anymore—I'm lucky that I can make it to our Everblue sessions. Most of my enthusiasm for the games has been channeled into reading blogs, like JDigital's (http://www.d20source.com/) and ars ludi (http://arsludi.lamemage.com/) being two that I dip into occasionally.
Over the past couple weeks, I've supplemented the reading with podcasts and videos of actual play: Penny Arcade's D&D podcast (http://www.wizards.com/DnD/Article.aspx?x=dnd/4pod/acqinc), the Robot Chicken game that JD keeps posting (http://www.d20source.com/2010/02/video-writers-of-robot-chicken-play-dd). Today saw a new series premiere over at the Escapist: I Hit It With My Axe (http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/i-hit-it-with-my-axe). Interesting enough, I suppose, but the thing that's getting the most attention is more prominently featured in the accompanying blog's title:
Playing D&D With Porn Stars (http://dndwithpornstars.blogspot.com/).
Which would be intriguing enough on its own—except that, in addition to featuring various Adult Industries performers as the players, it turns out that the DM is Zak Smith, that guy who made an illustration for every page of Gravity's Rainbow (http://www.themodernword.com/pynchon/zak_smith/title.htm), and is just sort of a fascinating person, regardless.
(Also: now we have a thread for tabletop roleplaying games. Or, another one, anyway.)
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I'm currently running a (Savage Worlds) Deadlands (http://www.peginc.com/games.html) game on the rare weekend when enough players are free. It's a rollicking jaunt through the shattered coast of California, delivering cargo, accidentally burning down fledgling townships, and unknowingly combating hunger spirits that have dessicated the West.
On Friday, the posse will be attacking the pleasure yacht of a Chinese warlord in order to earn the acclaim of a rival tong leader, while learning more about their own demons on the process.
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Sounds cool, Zach. How's the Savage Worlds version treating you? All I know of Deadlands was taken from incidental articles about the CCG version in early Duelist magazines; I kind of wanted to try it, but never met anybody else who played.
Still reading Playing D&D With Pornstars. Just spent a solid minute giggling aloud at this table of Hidden Traits For NPCs You Didn't Realize Would Be Important Until You Actually Started Playing (http://dndwithpornstars.blogspot.com/2009/12/hidden-traits-of-npc-you-didnt-realize.html). Utterly amazing and useful tool; I'm always having to come up with personalities and histories for inconsequential characters that are suddenly roped into a central role in the adventure. This chart makes that unnecessary: just roll d100 and apply the listed effect. The first possibility on the list: "Is a random PC's mom, in disguise." They just get better from there.
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Savage Worlds isn't as fast and furious as the ad copy suggests, but it's still a good generic system for handling action-movie-level tropes and situations. There are lots of moving parts with which players can interact (fate chips, adventure cards, constant character advancement, exploding dice), but the numbers are simple enough for the GM to keep track of. It's a very traditional system, but streamlined -- with a few fun flourishes. As an added bonus, unlike Unisystem, the other generic system that I like, there are times when Savage Worlds mechanics aid a scene rather than just serving as the backdrop.
There are forum purists who prefer Deadlands Classic because it's deadlier and has more crunchy/flavorful subsystems, but every time that I tried it, gameplay slowed to a crawl. The setting is written with enough gonzo camp thrown into the sun-bleached horror that bean-counting flesh wounds and tracking damage for five or six hit locations is too much. My players can blow themselves up and get gunned down in the street just fine as is.
Fluffwise, Deadlands is one of my top three settings. It doesn't always make sense as written (only villains in the 1876 Confederate States are racist?!), but it's jam-packed with adventure ideas and larger conflicts that I would want to stick my nose into as a player. Rail barons are carving up the West, engaging in covert battles with one another and any stubborn township that gets in their way; Chinese tongs are setting up camp in California, carving out tiny kingdoms; Santa Anna's planning to invade with an army of the undead; the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse haunt the earth; Mormon secret police do battle with steampunk monstrosities; hillbilly blood wizards try to enter high society! One of the most difficult elements of GM'ing in the setting is limiting myself to a manageable number of NPCs and sub-plots -- I had a similar problem with the similarly backstory-rich Legend of the Five Rings.
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Eeeeugh, L5R seemed like a nightmare as an RP-heavy setting. All those society rules you had to follow.
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I loved it, for exactly that reason. GMed well, it's pretty immersive, and it's fun to think in terms of a value system so antithetical to our own.
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Tea Ceremony is the most broken skill.
L5R iTs fun with the right people, but if I ever play it again, those right people will have to be the kind who don't care one whit about canonical events or how the card game impacts my samurai drama. It's worse than the Old World of Darkness, hearing who hooks up with whom and which designer-created NPC sealed away Fu-Leng for the fourth time in a generation.
Some of my best gaming memories are in Rokugan -- especially when the players treat it as an extended game of The Mountain Witch (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mountain_Witch), but AEG is guilty of pretty much every complaint I've had against role-playing games or the industry.
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I'm hearing good things about the Dragon Age RPG from Green Ronin. It's intentionally more like old Basic D&D to appeal to newbies, plays quicker, and has a more "dark fantasy" vibe for people who find WoW or D&D4E too technicolor.
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I don't really have a lot of time for tabletop gaming anymore—I'm lucky that I can make it to our Everblue sessions. Most of my enthusiasm for the games has been channeled into reading blogs, like JDigital's (http://www.d20source.com/) and ars ludi (http://arsludi.lamemage.com/) being two that I dip into occasionally.
Over the past couple weeks, I've supplemented the reading with podcasts and videos of actual play: Penny Arcade's D&D podcast (http://www.wizards.com/DnD/Article.aspx?x=dnd/4pod/acqinc), the Robot Chicken game that JD keeps posting (http://www.d20source.com/2010/02/video-writers-of-robot-chicken-play-dd). Today saw a new series premiere over at the Escapist: I Hit It With My Axe (http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/i-hit-it-with-my-axe). Interesting enough, I suppose, but the thing that's getting the most attention is more prominently featured in the accompanying blog's title:
Playing D&D With Porn Stars (http://dndwithpornstars.blogspot.com/).
Which would be intriguing enough on its own—except that, in addition to featuring various Adult Industries performers as the players, it turns out that the DM is Zak Smith, that guy who made an illustration for every page of Gravity's Rainbow (http://www.themodernword.com/pynchon/zak_smith/title.htm), and is just sort of a fascinating person, regardless.
(Also: now we have a thread for tabletop roleplaying games. Or, another one, anyway.)
So I finally got around to reading that guy's blog and watching the accompanying escapist piece, and I actually own porn (http://vod.adultemart.com/dispatcher/movieDetail?movieId=102733&theaterId=40407) that features almost every person at the table.
That aside, this is going on my bookmarks list as a permanent addition alongside Grognardia and Jeff Rientz' Gameblog, all porny-ness aside, it's honestly quite a good read.
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Yesterday, I calculated that my D&D blog D20 Source (http://www.d20source.com), which has updated twice a week on average for the past year, only receives 50% more hits than my old Fullmetal Alchemist fansite, which hasn't meaningfully updated since 2007.
As a reader, what do you think this blog is doing wrong?
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Don't think of it like that.
I'm fairly sure it's more likely that it's because it was a Full Metal Alchemist fansite.
Fucking things were traffic MAGNETS
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Again, I wish there was a game store or something in town. I'm trying to get a DnD game going but nooooo. Can only find two MAYBE THREE people to play with me.
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This stuff (http://twitter.com/Wizards_DnD/status/11734164821) bothers me. Official Wizards twitter posts offering in-game bonuses, always explained as some hand-wavey crap that makes "a wizard did it" sound like a scientific proof.
It's entirely metagame. Without a link between the in-character narrative world and the combat mechanics, the game world ceases to be engaging. It implies a mode of play that's almost purely boardgame, with none of the imagination and malleable, tangible world interactions that define D&D in contrast to a videogame.
There's a weird magic for no reason! You instantly recognise that you can teleport with it!
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I can see something like that actually being fun if the story was about a chaotic energy field or something like that.
I played in a game with something similar for a while. Every 15 minutes real time one of the rules changed. Stupid stuff like move an extra few squares if this do extra damage if that, take fire if you ___. Not terrible but it only works in very certain situations
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This stuff (http://twitter.com/Wizards_DnD/status/11734164821) bothers me. Official Wizards twitter posts offering in-game bonuses, always explained as some hand-wavey crap that makes "a wizard did it" sound like a scientific proof.
It's entirely metagame. Without a link between the in-character narrative world and the combat mechanics, the game world ceases to be engaging. It implies a mode of play that's almost purely boardgame, with none of the imagination and malleable, tangible world interactions that define D&D in contrast to a videogame.
There's a weird magic for no reason! You instantly recognise that you can teleport with it!
Stuff like this (and all of the modules being really fuck boring) is why I don't do living forgotten realms anymore.
That and the fat beardo paladin of the raven queen who thought killing people was wrong and helping beggars and thieves prolong their meaningless, miserable lives was the AOK thing to do.
Gnoll Ranger worshipper of Kelemvor: "Before we kill the thief, I want to knock his teeth out with this table leg and save them as trophies"
Fat Beardo Paladin: "NOOOOOOOOOO THAT'S EVIL WE HAVE TO LET HIM GOOOOOOOO"
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Stick-in-the-mud paladin has been a problem ever since AD&D introduced the paladin.
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It wouldn't have bothered me as much if he wasn't worshiping a god of death.
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There are forum purists who prefer Deadlands Classic because it's deadlier and has more crunchy/flavorful subsystems, but every time that I tried it, gameplay slowed to a crawl. The setting is written with enough gonzo camp thrown into the sun-bleached horror that bean-counting flesh wounds and tracking damage for five or six hit locations is too much. My players can blow themselves up and get gunned down in the street just fine as is.
Our group just recently abandoned our Deadlands game, actually. We were using the revised classic rules - the mechanics are too beautiful to ignore, especially the playing card mechanics, and also it turns out a friend of our host had a big stack of the books. It was a lot of fun, but it was way too deadly - an artifact of the pre-White Wolf paradigm of roleplaying, before it occurred to people that players might like it if their characters didn't die three times a session and they could actually have some kind of long-term character development.
This stuff (http://twitter.com/Wizards_DnD/status/11734164821) bothers me. Official Wizards twitter posts offering in-game bonuses, always explained as some hand-wavey crap that makes "a wizard did it" sound like a scientific proof.
It's entirely metagame. Without a link between the in-character narrative world and the combat mechanics, the game world ceases to be engaging. It implies a mode of play that's almost purely boardgame, with none of the imagination and malleable, tangible world interactions that define D&D in contrast to a videogame.
There's a weird magic for no reason! You instantly recognise that you can teleport with it!
I have mixed feelings about this. On the one hand, "a wizard did it" is a rich tradition in justifying all kinds of bullshit that's now quintessential D&D canon. Owlbears, for example. (As an aside, I seem to recall once reading in a canon source that the reason gelatinous cubes are 10' by 10' is that dungeon corridors are 10' x 10', so it's a natural adaptation to their environment.)
On the other hand, our group got tired of 4e and just started playing Descent instead.
On the other other hand, that may be less about "4e is a boardgame" and more about "4e is a boring boardgame". I've found that I have a hard time making mechanically fun characters in 4e, which was never a challenge in 3e, and I really want to try WHFRP3 to give me a better idea of what it is about 4e that has so failed to grab me.
Stick-in-the-mud paladin has been a problem ever since AD&D introduced the paladin.
The problem with paladins is that, until 4e, they were mechanically required to have a stick up their ass. As in, if you don't have a huge stick up your ass and refuse to budge even a little bit about minor things even if they're important plot points, all your levels in paladin are converted to levels in an NPC class (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/npcClasses/warrior.htm). That's not hyperbole.
In Dark Heresy, there's a class (Sororitas) with similar super-strict code-of-conduct restrictions, and there's a sidebar all about how important it is to not allow that class in your game if you're trying to tell a story that even a little bit could be interpreted as deviating from that code of conduct.
It wouldn't have bothered me as much if he wasn't worshiping a god of death.
To be fair, Wee Jas is and always has been lawful neutral.
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I play an unaligned paladin of the Raven Queen specifically because I can do anything I want and hang out with whoever I like as long as I go after undead and wannabe immortals whenever they pop up, which I would do anyway. The whole point is that you don't give a crap what people do with their lives as long as they stop doing it when their time is up. That's so refreshing for the class that I can hardly believe somebody would play one as a by-the-book fussypants.
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Deadlands is only deadly if you're a dope. To put it another way, it emulates its genre just fine and you need to treat any gunfight as one you're not likely to survive. Solution? Don't get into gunfights you haven't stacked in your favour.
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This stuff (http://twitter.com/Wizards_DnD/status/11734164821) bothers me. Official Wizards twitter posts offering in-game bonuses, always explained as some hand-wavey crap that makes "a wizard did it" sound like a scientific proof.
It's entirely metagame. Without a link between the in-character narrative world and the combat mechanics, the game world ceases to be engaging. It implies a mode of play that's almost purely boardgame, with none of the imagination and malleable, tangible world interactions that define D&D in contrast to a videogame.
There's a weird magic for no reason! You instantly recognise that you can teleport with it!
I have mixed feelings about this. On the one hand, "a wizard did it" is a rich tradition in justifying all kinds of bullshit that's now quintessential D&D canon. Owlbears, for example. (As an aside, I seem to recall once reading in a canon source that the reason gelatinous cubes are 10' by 10' is that dungeon corridors are 10' x 10', so it's a natural adaptation to their environment.)
On the other hand, our group got tired of 4e and just started playing Descent instead.
On the other other hand, that may be less about "4e is a boardgame" and more about "4e is a boring boardgame". I've found that I have a hard time making mechanically fun characters in 4e, which was never a challenge in 3e, and I really want to try WHFRP3 to give me a better idea of what it is about 4e that has so failed to grab me.
I think there's a difference between "a wizard did it" in the context of a thing that gets put in a book (like owlbears) that can show up in any game at any time, and something like this that feels like drawing a Mythos card from Arkham Horror. So your boardgame analogy is right on.
In Dark Heresy, there's a class (Sororitas) with similar super-strict code-of-conduct restrictions, and there's a sidebar all about how important it is to not allow that class in your game if you're trying to tell a story that even a little bit could be interpreted as deviating from that code of conduct.
Indeed.
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The fun part of the story is running a Dark Heresy game where the party to some degree questions the morals or intent of their goals, ends up being split on if it's right to question said goals, and the sororita ends up murdering your superior because he's a heretic who keeps waving around silly things like 'proof'.
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The fun part of the story is running a Dark Heresy game where the party to some degree questions the morals or intent of their goals, ends up being split on if it's right to question said goals, and the sororita ends up murdering your superior because he's a heretic who keeps waving around silly things like 'proof'.
Sounds like good roleplaying that sticks to the actual universe. Amazing!
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Deadlands is only deadly if you're a dope. To put it another way, it emulates its genre just fine and you need to treat any gunfight as one you're not likely to survive. Solution? Don't get into gunfights you haven't stacked in your favour.
I'm curious what you think the genre of Deadlands is. It's a question that the game itself seems often unable to answer; when your answer is "old west Call of Cthulhu", you are completely right, but when your answer is "pulpy steampunk western", it fails miserably because "pulpy" is mutually exclusive with "you die when somebody shoots at you".
You might say, "Burrito! How could you possibly think Deadlands is supposed to be even a little bit pulpy? It has sanity mechanics!" To this, I say: gatling pistols.
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My favorite outside-of-D&D tomfoolery was the +10% XP sticker that certain gaming stores handed out for a while. It was hokey and ridiculous, but it was a large golden sticker that you could stick on your character sheet like a Pokemon badge.
Deadlands is only deadly if you're a dope. To put it another way, it emulates its genre just fine and you need to treat any gunfight as one you're not likely to survive. Solution? Don't get into gunfights you haven't stacked in your favour.
My players tend to go bust on their Arcane Background/resist Harrowed possession rolls, turning their occasionally clever plans into near-routs.
I would say that's an implicit part of the genre (Faustian bargains), but still feel like it deserves special mention. Even though you know as a player that your magic has a chance of causing your brain to explode, it's totally unsatisfying to just sit on that cosmic power and never use it.
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I'm curious what you think the genre of Deadlands is. It's a question that the game itself seems often unable to answer; when your answer is "old west Call of Cthulhu", you are completely right, but when your answer is "pulpy steampunk western", it fails miserably because "pulpy" is mutually exclusive with "you die when somebody shoots at you".
That's a good question, and one that I danced around in my last post by implicitly sticking Deadlands in its own genre. The mechanics seem to suggest that Classic is more suited to running gritty, Cthulhu-esque games while Savage Worlds supports more Brisco County Jr. antics -- especially given the wacky Healing rules.
There's material to run it either way though. The sequel, Hell on Earth, is even worse in that respect.
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I think that the lethality of pulp also depends on the genre of pulp we're talking about.
Pulp horror never ends well for the heroes.
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Fun fact: HP Lovecraft was a pulp writer.
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Fun fact: HP Lovecraft was a pulp writer.
^^^ this
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I heard Eberron described as pulp meets noir, but never quite understood what "pulp" was.
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The thing that always bugged me about Deadlands was the chip system. I don't like the idea of my character's growth being dependent on how many chips I don't need to spend on rolls, and I don't like the zero-sum mindset behind the middle tier of chips. The GM doesn't need an extra chip to kill you if the GM wants to be an ass and just kill you, and the game shouldn't be encouraging the GM as a player antagonist. 7th Sea had the same problem, with drama dice.
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Well, you look at cowboy movies, specifically spaghetti westerns, and there's a lot of opportunities where the hero is just totally fucked and wins by dumb luck or craftiness. You might say that's true of all movies, but generally in a western movie, all it takes to kill the hero is one bullet and he spends the entire movie avoiding that one bullet.
I mean, the entire Man With No Name Trilogy is full of bits where the only reason the good guys didn't die was because they took precautionary steps not to die. Imagine if Tuco hadn't had a gun in the bathtub. He would have fucking died man.
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For westerns, I picked up a copy of Aces and Eights (http://www.kenzerco.com/aces_n_eights/). It looks really nice and has rather detailed combat. The problem is it is damn near impossible to play this thing online. Determining hit location requires using a transparency sheet over an image of your target, flipping some cards and rotating/sliding the transparency to see where your bullet/shotgun blast hits. (Poker chips are used for fist fighting)
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Last night, I dreamed that a friend of mine got a new Dark Heresy supplement which had rules for playing Tau, Protoss, and Zerg.
You could be a Hydralisk at 1,000 experience, but when you started as a Zergling you only got 150 XP instead of the normal 300, so you'd have it when everybody else was at 1150 XP.
Then my friend ran a game in which we were all human characters, using basically nothing from the new book. I played Martha Jones, in her capacity as a UNIT operative.
That was a pretty awesome dream.
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Here's a dumb question. If one were to try and make a campaign where you play as Mega Man and you fight robot masters and whatnot, what pre-existing RPG system would be best for that?
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When it comes to systems for pulling stuff out of your ass on the fly, BESM. Purists like 2nd edition, I'm fond of 3rd edition.
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I heard Eberron described as pulp meets noir, but never quite understood what "pulp" was.
The sort of lurid, grim and generally shlocky stories you find in pulp magazines, I imagine. Which makes it a perfect fit for your average sexually frustrated gaming group.
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Pulp is named for the now-obsolete material that it was used to distribute. It's inexpensive, accessible, and disposable. Not even trying to stand the test of ages. Meant to be consumed transiently, comprehended fully in one experience; although it may stand up to repeats, it will not be because there was anything you missed the first time. No deeper layers to ruminate over. Done well, it will ignite your imagination and leave you with a few fun memories, but it will almost certainly not edify. Pure entertainment, low on ambition and high on spectacle, defined variously depending on the medium and genre.
That's what pulp is.
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I think Eberron is more or less a mix between Jack Vance's The Dying Earth and some kind of fucked up steampunk noir.
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I thought Dark Sun was the off-brand Dying Earth.
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Pulp is named for the now-obsolete material that it was used to distribute. It's inexpensive, accessible, and disposable. Not even trying to stand the test of ages. Meant to be consumed transiently, comprehended fully in one experience; although it may stand up to repeats, it will not be because there was anything you missed the first time. No deeper layers to ruminate over. Done well, it will ignite your imagination and leave you with a few fun memories, but it will almost certainly not edify. Pure entertainment, low on ambition and high on spectacle, defined variously depending on the medium and genre.
But how does this contrast with normal D&D?
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Pulp is named for the now-obsolete material that it was used to distribute. It's inexpensive, accessible, and disposable. Not even trying to stand the test of ages. Meant to be consumed transiently, comprehended fully in one experience; although it may stand up to repeats, it will not be because there was anything you missed the first time. No deeper layers to ruminate over. Done well, it will ignite your imagination and leave you with a few fun memories, but it will almost certainly not edify. Pure entertainment, low on ambition and high on spectacle, defined variously depending on the medium and genre.
But how does this contrast with normal D&D?
http://grognardia.blogspot.com/2008/03/pulp-fantasy-d.html
This should help
being primarily escapist tales of pure adventure whose protagonists are often morally ambiguous in their beliefs and actions. Ironically, though, it was the Tolkien elements that many players of D&D latched on to and emphasized, which inexorably dragged the game away from its roots and toward what came to be known as "high" fantasy.
Pulp fiction in the context we're using refers directly to a point in history where you could go to a newsstand or a grocery store and buy novels for 5-25 cents - pulp novels were trashy, and produced en masse by particularly prolific authors of the era. James Bond, Conan the Barbarian, Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser, Elric, etc, are all pulp heroes, some of whom with hundreds of books to their credit. The genre was bound by stereotypes, tropes and cliches mostly out of necessity, since the authors had to produce a LOT of books to make a living selling them at 5-25 cents a piece, and as far as literary value, they have none, but they're easy to pick up and fun to read. Before the advent of cable, this was entertainment, apparently.
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Pulp is named for the now-obsolete material that it was used to distribute. It's inexpensive, accessible, and disposable. Not even trying to stand the test of ages. Meant to be consumed transiently, comprehended fully in one experience; although it may stand up to repeats, it will not be because there was anything you missed the first time. No deeper layers to ruminate over. Done well, it will ignite your imagination and leave you with a few fun memories, but it will almost certainly not edify. Pure entertainment, low on ambition and high on spectacle, defined variously depending on the medium and genre.
But how does this contrast with normal D&D?
By that definition, most D&D is pulp. Applying "pulp" to tabletop gaming means you're playing in a setting that is attempting to evoke the conventions of other genres' or media's pulp forms.
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Before the advent of cable, this was entertainment, apparently.
Still is. The overwhelming majority of my does-not-have-pictures fiction is by Howard, Lieber, Lovecraft, and Burroughs, and I love all of it to bits. Better than most of the stuff on TV.
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This is an interesting blog.
Today I learned that TSR in 1995 had an ethics policy (http://grognardia.blogspot.com/2010/03/blast-from-past.html) drawn up after the satanism moral panic, which prohibited referring to PCs as "you", to avoid confusing players with their characters.
Dragon magazine's writer's guidelines still had this particular clause in 2007, but with the reason that it's poor form for the read-aloud text to presume actions on the part of the player characters.
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This is an interesting blog.
Today I learned that TSR in 1995 had an ethics policy (http://grognardia.blogspot.com/2010/03/blast-from-past.html) drawn up after the satanism moral panic, which prohibited referring to PCs as "you", to avoid confusing players with their characters.
Dragon magazine's writer's guidelines still had this particular clause in 2007, but with the reason that it's poor form for the read-aloud text to presume actions on the part of the player characters.
Grognardia is a daily read for me. Jeff's Gameblog (http://jrients.blogspot.com/) is good times as well.
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Here's a dumb question. If one were to try and make a campaign where you play as Mega Man and you fight robot masters and whatnot, what pre-existing RPG system would be best for that?
Hey, I did this and I used the awesome system for it. Sooo.... I have no idea :3
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I'm not so big a fan of Jeff's Gameblog lately. It seems to be full of charts for RPGs I don't play and photographs of William Shatner.
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I'm not so big a fan of Jeff's Gameblog lately. It seems to be full of charts for RPGs I don't play and photographs of William Shatner.
That's what Jeff's Gameblog has always been about.
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I was thinking about what we were talking about before re: DnD 3.0 and 3.5 and modularity and it occurred to me that modularity might actually be the only thing the system has going for it. Take away the DnD label and you're left with (controversial statement) REALLY NOT THE BEST OF RPGS TO BE QUITE HONEST, in that it is a system that is NOT easy to learn, extremely difficult to create a character for, suffers a massive breakdown and class imbalances at higher level (although this is more the fault of bonehead GMs* than the system) and, most obviously, drastically rewards players who know the system well over those who don't.
But anyway, I'm not here to bash 3.5, I just do it as a reflex action by this point. What I was going to say is that the simplicity of the core rules (note that I said core rules and not system) allowed for the OGL to take off pretty well and give the system one of the things that actually made it fun: a torrential downpour of absolutely insane sourcebooks, prestige classes and mods. I still think some of the stuff White Wolf published under their Sword and Sorcery label was some of the best stuff produced for the system. So, yes, saying DnD 3.5 isn't suited to mucking around with is just completely crazy. The most fun d20 game I ever played was a completely homebrew AvP game where we were stuck as level 1 marines for the entire campaign and all rolls were made by the GM behind a screen. That owned and we even got to be Predators for the last session.
This is the biggest area 4e has lost out on, since adapting it away from fantasy fighting is going to be virtually impossible in comparison. I'd be curious to see if anyone's tried yet, but I really doubt we'll ever seen another OGL. Anyway, apologies if those whole post reads like JD IS WRONG JD IS WRONG JD IS WRONG JD IS WRONG JD IS WRONG forever, but if you're going to play 3.5, you might as well add a personal touch to it, it's not like it can make the system any worse.
*A lot of people complain about the caster/fighter class imbalance, but it's really not that difficult for your GM to just reward the class that is equipment-dependent with more equipment. One decently powerful magic sword is all it really takes to even up the huge disparity between, say, Barbarians and Clerics. Remember when people first played the system and were just going crazy over how broken Vorpal Swords were? Yeah, we had no idea.
You could argue that someone playing a Cleric could make the Fighter sell his sword and distribute the gold among the party, in which case the GM could just step in and say, "Fuck you, no." I would put player enjoyment over not breaking the fourth wall, if it was getting to the point where a player was actively whining that their level 20 human fighter was a combat accessory.
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I've been thinking about this for a couple years, and I think most of my issues with Type 3(.5) D&D all spring from the way combat changes at higher levels.
I don't like how AC and attack bonus grow asymmetrically. AC jumps up in fits and starts, and mostly as a product of your equipment; attack bonus ratchets up at a steady pace, though, and rapidly leads to multiple attacks. Meanwhile, HP totals are rising astronomically, but so are damage rolls. It feels like most every fight falls into one of three categories:
1. Total blowout, and the party has barely a scratch
2. Wipe or near-wipe, almost guaranteeing that one or more PCs die in the process
3. The DM's pulling punches and spreading attacks around in a way that feels kind of transparently stupid
Basically, fights are stupid.
It really doesn't help that, like in 4th Edition, the mechanical metagame puzzle of maximizing synergies and effectiveness during the character creation/level-up process guarantees that the tactical outcome of the fight is going to be foremost in my mind, rather than anything dramatic, emotional, narratively relevant, or atmospheric. Don't get me wrong; I like tactics-centric games. I just don't have much interest in a game whose main focus is a degenerate system.
We started using Champions out of frustration with the way fights played out in D&D, which is kind of unfortunate because I can't resist gaming that system any more than I can resist D&D's. It's so complex that actually playing is a chore, though.
All of which is to say that these issues are at least as much if not more a product of our particular group's interactions with these systems and says more about us than it says about these systems, but basically I barely roleplay any more.
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Here's a dumb question. If one were to try and make a campaign where you play as Mega Man and you fight robot masters and whatnot, what pre-existing RPG system would be best for that?
My gut response is Savage Worlds, but that's my response to everything. Powers stolen from robot masters could easily be modeled with an Arcane Background that applies a different pool of power points to each weapon tank (a combination of Super Powers and Mad Science).
Would this be a single-player game? What would the people who aren't Mega Man do? Would it be Mega Man as the primary fighter, reprogrammed Gutsman as the close combat specialist, and Roll as the hacker?
If I were running it, I'd try to find an indie RPG that has a "What does it meeeeeeean to be humaaaaaan" mechanic. It would make for a goofy My Life With Master game, for one.
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stuff
you might have gotten some sympathy if you hadn't said you went to champions to take a break from dnd
"guys, I'm sick of dying in call of cthulhu so much, let's play paranoia"
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The 3e era had a lot of problems.
For starters, it's a misconception that 3e is purely the product of Wizards of the Coast. It's true that it was thrown together over the course of a few years with a handful of intro modules released prior to it coming out. But 3e had been hinted at at multiple occasions in dragon magazine and at trade shows prior to the merger. If these hints were to be believed, TSR had been working on the game for years before Wizards bought them, and with the way TSR was being run at the time, it's not unreasonable to think that the project was probably cancelled, restarted, cancelled and restarted again six or seven times before Wizards got to it, with swaths of it being scrapped after the buyout and a whole new development team coming in and new management team coming in... It's not surprising they had to revise it a few years later.
The primary problem with 3e is that it kept too much of the AD&D era rules and systems. Something to keep in mind about AD&D? You weren't supposed to get past level 10. There was rules there, yes, there was higher level spells and things like that, but for the most part the game was designed for levels one through ten. Basic D&D even had a system worked out for that very inevitability - after level 9 or so you could start putting together bands of men and apply for a noble title and build a fortress, and then focus your efforts on expanding your influence and holding. At this point, your character was 'done', and the idea is that either the game would be over, or you'd roll up the children of your characters and start again.
That's not to say all the content out there was low level - there are, after all, a handful of beloved high level adventures intended for characters above level 10 - Die Vecna, Die!, The Rod of Seven Parts, Tomb of Horrors, etc - but for the most part these modules were few and far between and basically cheated to get around a lot of the problems that plagued the game at high levels. Tomb of Horrors was never about combat, for example, Die Vecna Die is an intrigue module for the most part and the Rod of Seven Parts seriously considers a half-ogre as a fair choice for a melee pregen character.
But what about dragons! Well, what about them? Let me show you a stat block about dragons:
Room 97. The painting shows good spirits being judged. After a
good spirit has been judged, it glows with a golden light.
Monster: 1 blue dragon (AC 0; HD 9**; hp 40; MV 30'; fly 80';
#AT 3 or breath; Damage 2-7/2-7/3-30; Save F9; ML 9; AL C). The
dragon breathes lightning in a line up to 5' x 100'. The breath does
damage equal to the dragon's current hit points (save vs. Dragon
Breath for half). It has a 20% chance of being asleep when the party
enters the room. This dragon does not talk or use spells.
Treasure: A mound consisting of 6000 sp, 15,000 gp, and 18
pieces of jewelry worth 20,000 gp total.
This was taken from The Lost City.
(http://img63.imageshack.us/img63/2552/thelostcity.png)
This same module has golems, hill giants, and and a lich. It was actually intended to be played as the last of a longer series of modules, that eventually culminated in the Lost City - so at the high end of 3, probably 4 by the time you reached those fights, but the point remains that these encounters that are traditionally staples of high level play in the 3e era were literally thrown at you before you even hit level 5. You were also, for the most part, expected to successfully overcome the encounter. Because, really, the difference back then between a 4th level fighter and an 8th level fighter was a few points of thac0 and some HP. There's plenty of treasure to be had in the Lost City, and ideally you have the equipment to kill the dragon by the time you reach him.
Third edition seems to be built from the ground up with high level play in mind, but falls apart even worse after 10th level. Wizards were decidedly more powerful than fighters after 10th in 2nd edition, and multiclassing got progressively better the less the experience disparity mattered (getting retarded once you got past level 10, because you'd only be a level behind everyone else but have stats that were literally twice as good) but you could easily still manage this - you knew what players were getting, what players had access to already, and you could manage progression of the campaign to keep that from becoming a problem. Classes that were more powerful than their more mundane counterparts - Druids, Clerics, Rangers, Barbarians - paid for their extra abilities and stronger low level power by basically ceasing their leveling at this point. It takes as much experience for a druid to go from level 12 to 13 as it does to level a wizard from 10 to 17.
Now, take third edition. Everyone gets the feats and the ability score modifiers, and with the default settings (greyhawk and forgotten realms) magic items basically rain from the sky. At tenth level players can reasonably expect to have an ability score over 30. Feats up armor class, HP and attack bonuses to astronomical levels. and everyone is basically a ranger or a paladin now, with unique snowflake class abilities, but everyone levels at the same rate so there's no controlled scaling. To top it all off, there is clear power differences between the different classes and the difference between two parties of the same level can be astronomical. The challenge rating system becomes more meaningless than the effective hit dice system before it. Even monsters fall under the same problem - CR 20 can mean a lot of things, but it apparently means that Tarrasques and Balors are apparently just as challenging as some particular types of Golems.
The solution to the problem is simple. Either axe everything, or make it much more rigid. If you axe the extras, you go back to the previous editions. If you make things more rigid, you end up with fourth edition. Either way, things seem to work out better. The problem lies with options - the more options you give your players, the harder it becomes to keep those options from letting the game go out of control. When you have literally 300 feats to choose from at level 12, there is a lot of balance concerns to be worked out. You have to reduce those options to keep things from getting ridiculous.
This of course means that in 4e, new feats are rigidly required to sit within a defined power structure and the really good feats (which might have even been available to level 1 characters in the 3e era, I'm looking at you prodigy spellcaster) are now locked into different power bands or race specific. A DM can reasonably expect players to have certain feats and balance around it. Roles are rigidly defined and it's harder for things to get out of control. But in the end, the price you pay in freedom is rewarded in that a new player can come to your table and not quit after three games because they feel useless with CharOp Guy 1 and CharOp Guy 2 flanking them.
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right
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Fantasy Craft always seemed to me to be a purely upgraded form of D&D3.5. Like, 3.9 or something. Tried to start a game here but didn't get a big enough response to make it worth starting. Has anyone tried the system? How'd yah like it?
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I heard it was 3.5 + Crunch, which seems a little ridiculous to me. It's the same reason I've stayed away from Pathfinder for the most part.
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So my (3.5) group consists of a bunch of very dedicated twinks. I don't like the amount of fudging I have to do in order to give them a decent challenge without just completely fucking them. Challenge ratings being useless doesn't help me much here. That rigidity is why they're reluctant to really give 4th edition the old college try.
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Iron Heroes is pretty great
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So my (3.5) group consists of a bunch of very dedicated twinks. I don't like the amount of fudging I have to do in order to give them a decent challenge without just completely fucking them. Challenge ratings being useless doesn't help me much here. That rigidity is why they're reluctant to really give 4th edition the old college try.
Yeah, to be honest, it sounds to me that you are playing with people whose only comfort comes from breaking the game.
Maybe run SenZar for them?
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I do like Iron Heroes. I was going to run Iron Heroes, but then D&D4E came out and everyone knows you can't run an old RPG once a new one is out
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Not without being one of those guys
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I can't think of a single thing Iron Heroes does that 4e doesn't do better.
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I like the focus on martial classes and the tokens based powers system. Iron Heroes is something different to D&D.
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I play the Idiot Card in face-up position! (http://www.wizards.com/DnD/Article.aspx?x=dnd/4alum/20100422)
It seems Wotsy is bringing back the Deck Of Many Things for 4th Edition. Like most of the updates for 4th, I'm torn about this one. It's all but eliminated the terror and drama of accidentally drawing one of the horrible or swingy cards like The Flames or Balance by making them into a minor setback with a quest attached. It seems like they've put it at a level where it will actually see play, but it doesn't seem open ended anymore. Sigh.
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I was sort of toying with the idea of doing a regular rpg thing where I run the worst systems I can find, each in a short one-two session adventure. What are some of the worst systems you have played?
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In my experience, the more traditional Deck of Many Things was an awesome thing in theory, but in practice became the GM saying "I am bored of this campaign. Let's start over."
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I was sort of toying with the idea of doing a regular rpg thing where I run the worst systems I can find, each in a short one-two session adventure. What are some of the worst systems you have played?
Honestly? I've reached the point in my gaming philosophy that I can't actually think of a system that I can actually describe as bad - there may be elements of systems that were bad, but as a whole, the worst I can say for any system I can think of is that it doesn't provide the experience I want.
You could try Iron Kingdoms, which was a disastrous mechanical implementation of a great idea and setting. Or you could try a 3rd edition GURPS game with mecha and vehicles. Those are proven mechanical clusterfucks.
Thematically... Wheel of Time d20? And demand that your players have read the entire series of books before playing the game? That would be terrible.
In my experience, the more traditional Deck of Many Things was an awesome thing in theory, but in practice became the GM saying "I am bored of this campaign. Let's start over."
This is my experience also.
In other news, I'm in a Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 3rd Edition game, and I am super-impressed by it. It is, in basically every way, everything that 4th edition tried and failed to do.
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I play the Idiot Card in face-up position! (http://www.wizards.com/DnD/Article.aspx?x=dnd/4alum/20100422)
It seems Wotsy is bringing back the Deck Of Many Things for 4th Edition. Like most of the updates for 4th, I'm torn about this one. It's all but eliminated the terror and drama of accidentally drawing one of the horrible or swingy cards like The Flames or Balance by making them into a minor setback with a quest attached. It seems like they've put it at a level where it will actually see play, but it doesn't seem open ended anymore. Sigh.
I really hate all of these changes to existing fuck you stuff in D&D; I honestly feel like 4th edition is just taking old content and watering it down for 12 year olds and adult manchildren who grew up with games with infinite continues and no concept of danger or loss.
In 1e/2e, a deck of many things was an item players wanted to find. Yes, it could result in losing your character permanently, with no save, but it could also result in you gaining a couple of levels, becoming rich beyond your wildest dreams, gaining a boost to a stat, gaining 1d4 wishes, etc - in an edition that was based almost entirely on low level play, any of the beneficial rewards from the deck could be potentially gamechanging, and you had better chances of a good result than a bad one.
In 3e, the game's focus shifted to high level play, which made the deck not worth it, but if you put it smack dab in a low level / low magic game, it was still a powerful item with powerful disadvantages.
If they're going to put the deck in, they either need to make it just as much of a potential fuck you, or not bother with it at all.
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I challenge your No Bad Systems claim with Puppetland, The Window, RIFTS, the Ninja Turtles RPG, BESM 1st Edition and the more obvious examples of World of Synnibar and That Game With The Circumferences.
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I was sort of toying with the idea of doing a regular rpg thing where I run the worst systems I can find, each in a short one-two session adventure. What are some of the worst systems you have played?
What follows is a list of roleplaying systems I have access to and can send you (one way or another). Considering how you've reacted to my suggestions in the past, I can only conclude these games would likely be valid candidates for inclusion on your list.
- Awesome Women Kicking Ass — a story game about awesome women who kick ass
- MSG — a game for professionals
- Lacuna — Part 1. The Creation Of The Mystery And The Girl From Blue City
- Microscope — a game for making history
- Age of Heroes — Adventures in High Fantasy
- Groovy Gaming System — a system for running asynchronous role-playing games
- GURPS Lite — I guess one of my roommates who didn't have a computer of his own put this on mine so he could play in some Vampire: The Masquerade-themed GURPS game
Kind of surprised I didn't find more squirreled away in the unused corners of my hard disk.
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I challenge your No Bad Systems claim with Puppetland, The Window, RIFTS, the Ninja Turtles RPG, BESM 1st Edition and the more obvious examples of World of Synnibar and That Game With The Circumferences.
Sorry. I meant to say "that I've played" somewhere in there; I've never played any of those.
...But actually, I really and truly do want to try RIFTS, Ninja Turtles, and Synnibar some time. Especially RIFTS.
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Honestly? I've reached the point in my gaming philosophy that I can't actually think of a system that I can actually describe as bad - there may be elements of systems that were bad, but as a whole, the worst I can say for any system I can think of is that it doesn't provide the experience I want - that I've played!
Doesn't really work, does it?
Considering how you've reacted to my suggestions in the past, I can only conclude these games would likely be valid candidates for inclusion on your list.
Well, did you like them? If you did, then, yeah, they are probably the sort of things I would regard with open revulsion. We might have something to work with here.
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I think I might be infatuated with the Groovy Gaming System.
I don't know or care about GURPS.
I liked MSG, Lacuna, and Age of Heroes; the other games are cool, but I can't say I like them unconditionally.
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I challenge your No Bad Systems claim with Puppetland,
Oh no you didn't! This is the premier system for running Jewish puppets in WWII ghetto fantasy-lands.
Dipping into the pool of 24-hour RPGs and Game Chef entries should provide more than enough choices. I'd be interested in joining in, assuming that nothing actually happens until mid-May or so.
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I was sort of toying with the idea of doing a regular rpg thing where I run the worst systems I can find, each in a short one-two session adventure. What are some of the worst systems you have played?
Roll for anal circumference.
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as I understand it, FATAL is actually literally unplayable. Like, there are rules for everything but actually resolving combat.
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Oh, I should clarify something about Ninja Turtles.
Under the default rules, which since it's a Palladium rpg, are the ONLY rules, your mutant race is randomly determined.
Our party ended up being an armour-plated hippopotamus, a twelve foot tall rhinoceros and... a chicken.
I COULDN'T EVEN FUCKING FLY
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Actually, FATAL has 28 pages on combat. Whether you'd want to play with such convoluted rules is another matter.
Three pages describe damage modifiers based on armour type. Ten pages cover attacks to body parts, including eight pages of tables for critical wounds. There are three pages on fumbles and a full page describing how your dead body decomposes.
The base combat rules are as so:
(http://i40.tinypic.com/2lxumw4.jpg)
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a full page describing how your dead body decomposes.
:OoO:
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I generally advocate that game systems appear bad more often due to bad GM than bad game design. However, I cannot deny some game systems have rules that make zero sense.
I've never been able to find a PDF but I always wanted to find a copy of 'Sketch' again. Sketch character generation requires you to draw a picture of your character, citing that even stickfigures with biceps is acceptable. Stats are done by passing your drawing to the left, that person taking a pool of points, then distributing them as they think the picture represents to your various stats. Keep passing till you get your sheet back, take the average of all allocations.
It's a cheesy superhero game.
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Actually, FATAL has 28 pages on combat. Whether you'd want to play with such convoluted rules is another matter.
How many pages does DnD have on combat?
I mean, are you seriously saying 28 pages is too many? You? Really? Please tell me I'm mistaken.
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I generally advocate that game systems appear bad more often due to bad GM than bad game design. However, I cannot deny some game systems have rules that make zero sense.
I've never been able to find a PDF but I always wanted to find a copy of 'Sketch' again. Sketch character generation requires you to draw a picture of your character, citing that even stickfigures with biceps is acceptable. Stats are done by passing your drawing to the left, that person taking a pool of points, then distributing them as they think the picture represents to your various stats. Keep passing till you get your sheet back, take the average of all allocations.
It's a cheesy superhero game.
This actually sounds pretty hilariously fun.
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Actually, FATAL has 28 pages on combat. Whether you'd want to play with such convoluted rules is another matter.
How many pages does DnD have on combat?
I mean, are you seriously saying 28 pages is too many? You? Really? Please tell me I'm mistaken.
You're mistaken. I'm making two separate statements here: that FATAL does have combat rules, and that those rules are convoluted despite their brevity. I then go on to describe just how convoluted they are.
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I generally advocate that game systems appear bad more often due to bad GM than bad game design. However, I cannot deny some game systems have rules that make zero sense.
I've never been able to find a PDF but I always wanted to find a copy of 'Sketch' again. Sketch character generation requires you to draw a picture of your character, citing that even stickfigures with biceps is acceptable. Stats are done by passing your drawing to the left, that person taking a pool of points, then distributing them as they think the picture represents to your various stats. Keep passing till you get your sheet back, take the average of all allocations.
It's a cheesy superhero game.
This actually sounds pretty hilariously fun.
This ^^^
I would play the shit out of that game.
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Confession: I bought all the TMNT/After The Bomb books when I was a kid. I was obsessed with TMNT stuff and had just gotten into RPGs, so I was super crazy obsessed with the idea of a TMNT RPG. I tried over the years to get my friends to play, even one of my oldest friends who also loved the TMNT and RPGs, and never got anyone to play it with me. Probably for the best, because the rules really do look like shit. I loved creating random mutant characters, though... not that I would ever follow the random animal table if I were to play the game for real, because that's a stupid rule.
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::(:
Are we going to talk about RPGs all day or is someone gonna RUN one?
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I will start something as soon as I get enough players, promise.
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Confession: I bought all the TMNT/After The Bomb books when I was a kid. I was obsessed with TMNT stuff and had just gotten into RPGs, so I was super crazy obsessed with the idea of a TMNT RPG. I tried over the years to get my friends to play, even one of my oldest friends who also loved the TMNT and RPGs, and never got anyone to play it with me. Probably for the best, because the rules really do look like shit. I loved creating random mutant characters, though... not that I would ever follow the random animal table if I were to play the game for real, because that's a stupid rule.
I had folders upon folders of characters, at one time, but I only played it once. It seems like with the right group (say, this one...) a lot of fun could be had with the gonzo-ness of the setting. I'm thinking specifically of the war snails and reborn King Arthur of Mutants in Avalon, crossed with some Rocket Raccoon-style shenanigans.
I also know that, a few years back, Palladium donated prizes to a local convention of which I was part. They sent a crate of the newest After The Bomb book. I don't recall seeing anybody that weekend who didn't have access to one. As far as I know, nobody has yet run it.
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Generally speaking, getting together a group of people willing to play a game they don't know - even if they have access to the rules - is fucking impossible. This is why so few RPGs other than D&D are really successful.
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Generally speaking, when it comes to running rpgs, I am a fucking God.
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Generally speaking, getting together a group of people willing to play a game they don't know - even if they have access to the rules - is fucking impossible. This is why so few RPGs other than D&D are really successful.
The hard part is getting people to play something new. Actually learning new rules is quite easy. I got games running of Munchkin and A Fistfull of Miniatures without having played before.
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(http://i626.photobucket.com/albums/tt344/Frocto/venndndagram-1.png)
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Gee, Skip's pretty huge then. Is he like Gabe Newell huge, or Scott Kurtz huge?
EDIT: Or Matt "Positron" Miller, of City of Heroes fame?
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He needs big legs to operate his footbow.
Nobody's going to get that, are they.
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Oh, no. I get it far too well.
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Pathfinder: Tell me about it
Specifically, I've heard it fixes 3rd Ed without nerfing casters. If that's true, I'll fuck a goat.
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I expect pictures or a video
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Pathfinder, you say? (http://www.sendspace.com/file/107smy)
We've only gone through character creation, but so far it feels like an improvement. It doesn't fix the main issues I have with combat in D20 at high levels, but few people seemed as bothered about it as I was.
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The PDF of Pathfinder is only $10, which is not bad for 576 pages full colour.
I reviewed the Pathfinder RPG beta (http://www.d20source.com/2008/11/whats-new-in-pathfinder-rpg) in 2008. The main differences I noticed from 3.5 were new class abilities, an extra ability score bonus per race, feats every two levels instead of three, trained class skills get a +3 bonus instead of 4x skill points at level 1, cross-class skills no longer cost double, item crafting no longer costs XP, changes to some spells including a radically altered Polymorph spell series, some new spells and feats, and a slower XP progression.
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Pathfinder: Tell me about it
Specifically, I've heard it fixes 3rd Ed without nerfing casters. If that's true, I'll fuck a goat.
Given that nobody ever managed to agree exactly what was wrong with 3e, it's impossible to say if it fixes what you didn't like.
But I don't think anybody can argue it nerfed casters. Wizards and clerics are unarguably better; turning is now just straight-up AOE d6s of healing, wizards can have a focus item instead of a familiar, and specialist wizards get domain-like special abilities in addition to being specialist wizards. (Meanwhile, sorcerers get the short end of the stick as usual; if there's one thing a d6 hd, 1/2 BAB class needs, it's Power Attack as a bonus feat!)
Oh, and Assassin is no longer a casting class, which makes me Very Unhappy.
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Pathfinder also uses the Unearthed Arcana style XP system, where each monster gives fixed value of XP regardless of the PCs' level. In D&D 3.5, a monster of a given CR gives less XP as you level up. In Pathfinder, the monster always gives the same XP, but you need exponentially more XP to reach each level. This makes it easier to combine monsters of different levels.
Pathfinder also has three rates of XP progression. "Fast" is equivalent to standard D&D, "Medium" requires 50% more XP than Fast, and "Slow" requires 50% more XP than Medium.
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Pathfinder, you say? (http://www.sendspace.com/file/107smy)
We've only gone through character creation, but so far it feels like an improvement. It doesn't fix the main issues I have with combat in D20 at high levels, but few people seemed as bothered about it as I was.
well, the trick here is to end your campaign at level 10. I still think pathfinder is too heavy on power creep, but the game is really intended to run old school style games - high level play, while obviously an option, isn't what they necessarily had in mind.
Pathfinder: Tell me about it
Specifically, I've heard it fixes 3rd Ed without nerfing casters. If that's true, I'll fuck a goat.
Given that nobody ever managed to agree exactly what was wrong with 3e, it's impossible to say if it fixes what you didn't like.
But I don't think anybody can argue it nerfed casters. Wizards and clerics are unarguably better; turning is now just straight-up AOE d6s of healing, wizards can have a focus item instead of a familiar, and specialist wizards get domain-like special abilities in addition to being specialist wizards. (Meanwhile, sorcerers get the short end of the stick as usual; if there's one thing a d6 hd, 1/2 BAB class needs, it's Power Attack as a bonus feat!)
Oh, and Assassin is no longer a casting class, which makes me Very Unhappy.
Yeah, I don't understand the whole 'pathfinder nerfs casters' thing when it clearly does not. I think the people who actually say this are the ones who think that 'buffing everyone else a lot and buffing casters only a little' = 'nerfing casters'. As if having a huge margin of power over everyone else was supposed to be a class feature.
You can easily fix the assassin thing though.
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Given that nobody ever managed to agree exactly what was wrong with 3e, it's impossible to say if it fixes what you didn't like.
Grappling.
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Everything Skip Williams did, so grappling and dual-wielding.
CR system is just irreversibly fucked.
Class imbalances to, like, 20 magnitudes.
DMG is a waste of paper.
I think the people who actually say this are the ones who think that 'buffing everyone else a lot and buffing casters only a little' = 'nerfing casters'. As if having a huge margin of power over everyone else was supposed to be a class feature.
So are the classes actually balanced?
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Dude, did you click my link? Click my link.
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No. I'm not reading the book to get the answer to a yes/no question.
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Two-weapon fighting is unchanged.
Grapple is... simpler, but not necessarily better. (For a given value of "simpler." (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/config/app/images/grapple-flow-a1.gif)) The process is better, but the math is still horribly skewed; if you aren't expressly built for grappling (full BAB, high strength, high dex, devoting all available feats to combat maneuver abilities), you're still fucked over if something with Improved Grab hits you.
Example: To grapple you, a behir (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/bestiary/monster-listings/magical-beasts/behir)(CR 8) must hit your Combat Maneuver Defense (10+BAB+str+dex+2 if you have Improved Grapple) with his grapple attack modifier of +22. Assuming that the old PHB2 guidelines for equipment and stats are still reasonably accurate, we can expect a 10th level fighter to have a dex of 14, a strength of 18 (including gauntlets of ogre power +2), and thus a CMD of 28. The behir will successfully grapple you on a d20 roll of 6 or more. (8 or more if you have Improved Grapple.) In order to escape from the behir, you must beat it's CMD of 29 with either an Escape Artist check or a grapple check; the grapple check would be a modifier of your BAB + your strength (+14 in the case of our aforementioned fighter.) Improved Grapple does not improve your check to escape from a grapple. (Escape Artist would provide him with a modifier of +15, less any armor check penalty, if he had full ranks and it was somehow a class skill for him.) Thus, on a 15 or more, the fighter can escape from the behir, who may attempt to grapple him again for free the next time he hits.
Note that this is for a fighter, who is a front-line combatant and who is supposed to be in melee with the behir. If this was, heaven forbid, somebody who wasn't a full-BAB class (a rogue or cleric, for example), they'd probably be right fucked.
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Pathfinder's grapple rules are simpler than 3.5, but still complex. The wordcount for the grapple rules is halved (about 800 words compared to 1,600 for D&D 3.5), although part of that is abstracted out into general combat manoever rules used for bull rush, disarm, etc. Contrast with 4E's "grab" rules, about 350 words, which amounts to "Attack vs Reflex, target can't move, target can roll Acrobatics or Athletics as a move action to escape".
Two-weapon fighting hasn't changed.
The CR system isn't perfect, because there are too many variables: very flexible monster statistics and ability sets, party composition, how many hit points and spells they've consumed so far, what spells they've prepared. A great deal of 4E's major changes seem to be about fixing the CR system, with the result that character classes and monster stats are more homogenous.
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so are the classes balanced
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Yes.
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Twilight: 2013 (http://www.93gamesstudio.com/site/node/7) is one of those WORLD WAR 3 ENDS EVERYTHING settings. The first 20 pages or so are a time-line that forks from ours in 1997. I haven't finished reading it yet but it does a pretty good job of painting a picture of how things went from bad to nuclear winter. Anybody ever read or perhaps play this setting?
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Just gonna post this (http://www.clanwebsite.org/games/rpg/Dawn_of_Worlds_game_1_0Final.pdf) here for my own convenience. (It's basically Microscope except much more deliberately fantasy in setting.)
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Has anyone read and/or played The Day After Ragnorok (http://savage-blogger.blogspot.com/2009/06/review-day-after-ragnarok.html)? I'm thinking of picking it up for my summer campaign.
Here's the part from the review that spoke to me:
The setting's premise: In 1945, the desperate Germans turn to their SS occultists to turn the tide of war to their favor by starting the end of the world! They magically summon Jörmungandr, the world-spanning Midgard Serpent of the Norse sagas, to attack the shocked Allies. In response, Truman sends a lone atom-bomb-armed B-29 on a suicide mission against the titanic, 300 mile wide, snake. The blast kills the creature, but its immense carcass falls across Europe and Africa crushing millions and sending a mega-tsunami to drown the Eastern United States while the Serpent's poisonous (and now radioactive) venom enters the environment, creating all manner of bizarre and malevolent life.
Now it's 1948 and the human race is trying to put back the pieces and face the realities of the world after the Serpentfall. The Narts, the legendary giants of Osseian folklore, awaken and serve Comrade Stalin as he expands the Soviet Union into what's left of Europe and the Middle East. The British Empire, who has relocated the throne to sunny Australia, has been exploring and experimenting with the remains of the Serpent, creating everything from super-fuels to organic pressure suits. The Western United States tries to hold itself together while the Eastern half of North America is broken into numerous city-states that war with each other and the supernatural horrors that surround them. The remnants of Nazi Germany plot and scheme in South America (yes, Antartica too) and strange cults worship the dead Serpent, preforming obscene rites in hopes of reviving it.
There is pretty much nothing that I don't like in there. It's Savage Worlds, which is currently my favorite generic system, for all its faults, and I doubt that this will be the year when I get to run one of my long-stewing campaign darlings.
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:rage:
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:wuv:
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WHAT.
I don't know if that's awesome or an utter disaster. It's cute as the dickens though.
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I've got the other pages around here somewhere. Let me check.
EDIT:
I'll find them eventually. There are two more pages of this. Some race detail and some powers. Pretty neat stuff.
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Wait, really? Those are new, then - that first page is about as old as 4e, but it was the only part when it came out.
Please to be finding additional pages.
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I'm actually involved in a Fantasycraft campaign right now as a Human Intelligent Wizard Mage. 3.5+Crunch is a good way to put it.
I've played a little Dark Heresy as well, but when it gets down to it I love comedy games - I have a friend I'm still mad at because he didn't follow through on a promise to run Teenagers From Outer Space several years ago, and I have the books for Tales From The Floating Vagabond, My Life With Master, Maid RPG, and Big Eyes Small Mouth on my backup hard drive. Eventually I'm going to have to bear down and run one of these things, because that's the only way I'm going to be able to play any of them.
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If I got mad at my friends for not running games they said they'd run, I wouldn't have any friends left by now.
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So, I've been playing a lot of horror games lately, and it got me thinking. Has anyone ever played with a system where combat caused a smooth, simple transition, without stopping the general flow of the game? Like, where combat (or traps, or really anything hazardous) could be resolved very, very quickly without totally wrecking the sense of pacing or immersion? As it is, pretty much every system I've seen causes a total conversion of the players sense of the game the second 'roll for initiative' is uttered.
I've been seriously considering running a horror/investigation themed game, and I'll probably be advertising for players at some point in the future. But I'm certainly open to suggestions for what system I should consider.
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Labyrinth Lord (http://www.goblinoidgames.com/labyrinthlord.html) is a re-make of the ~1983 D&D rules. I'm not sure why it appeals to me, but it does.
Goblinoid Games has a free download for Labyrinth Lord, Advanced Edition Companion (an AD&D clone), and the post-apocalyptic RPG Mutant Future.
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Anything that isn't GURPS or any system JD suggests. You could ask that guy for a game without dungeons and monsters in it and he'd start handing you third ed sourcebooks.
The only systems I can think off of the top of my head that meet your criteria are Cthulhu, since it doesn't have initiative rolls and you'd just have to approach it with the right attitude and the Jenga game that I currently forget the name of.
Alternatively, run whatever you like and withhold their character sheets from them and do all the rolling privately.
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I've been trying to think of an appropriate system and the only thing that's coming to me is Fudge (http://www.fudgerpg.com/), which is strange because I've never actually played that system, and therefore have no frame of reference.
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My post isn't in reply to Makaris, I'm just throwing Labyrinth Lord into the thread because I think it's neat. Singleton posts naming random RPGs has been the modus operandi of this thread for three weeks now.
Alternatively I really did recommend an oldschool high-combat fantasy RPG for a specialist low-combat horror game because I'm JUST THAT WACKY
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but "don't play any rpg JD recommends" is also pretty good general advice, too
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but that goes for anyone who still plays third ed
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I made/played a game were combat was secondary to roleplaying and it only took one die roll to decide each hit and a small chart for damage, battles were no big deal. But it's was just something I made because I was tired of having to read manuals and wanted something to do with my friends to get them better at role playing.
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So, I've been playing a lot of horror games lately, and it got me thinking. Has anyone ever played with a system where combat caused a smooth, simple transition, without stopping the general flow of the game? Like, where combat (or traps, or really anything hazardous) could be resolved very, very quickly without totally wrecking the sense of pacing or immersion? As it is, pretty much every system I've seen causes a total conversion of the players sense of the game the second 'roll for initiative' is uttered.
I've been seriously considering running a horror/investigation themed game, and I'll probably be advertising for players at some point in the future. But I'm certainly open to suggestions for what system I should consider.
If what your players know is D&D, there is ways to change the system to make combat go smoother. Take the initiate score out of the game entirely and base initiative off of placement at the table. Determine who should reasonably go first - the monsters or the players - and then after that, go clockwise or counterclockwise depending on your preference until you're done. For IRC games, just go down the list of people in the room. Impose a time limit on turns and invest in a stopwatch or a chess counter. And don't aim for 'epic combat' - no matter how lightweight your system is, once you get past 10 people involved in combat between players and monsters, you're looking at a time investment, and players are going to stop roleplaying and focus on the battle.
Regardless of what you use, the best way to make combat go quickly is to memorize how combat works. Whatever your system is, once you have a basic handle on the combat rules, figure out what special actions the players could conceivably take - trips, charges, etc - and figure out how they work so you don't have to open the book. If the player goes to perform that action and reaches for their book, educate them on how it works and walk them through it. If the game you're playing has magic items or spells in it, figure out what spells your player has or magic items your player has, and print out two copies of a list with descriptions and all the necessary info in it, give one copy to the player and keep one for yourself.
The goal with combat should be to resolve most encounters in under 30 minutes without opening a book even once. Ideally, less than 30 minutes. This is certainly an achievable goal, the main thing that slows down encounters is people not knowing how to do what they want to do. This is esp. a problem in 3e because people have so many options. Time limits on turns pressure players to understand what they want to do before they do it, and a knowledgeable DM can keep a game from becoming a clusterfuck of book opening.
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and the Jenga game that I currently forget the name of.
Dread (http://rpg.geekdo.com/thread/510633/dread-horror-roleplaying-at-its-finest) (Not Dread: The Second Book of Pandemonium.)
Also consider trying a hack of the PDQ system (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomic_Sock_Monkey_Press) that's used in Truth & Justice, The Zorcerer of Zo, and Dead Inside. All rolls are handled with 2d6 plus the relevant skill compared to either a target number or the same roll of an opposing target. That covers combat, investigation, resisting shocking horror, etc. All failures are handled directly as skill/quality damage. When the character runs out of qualities, he's down.
Example: Professor Studious comes across Horrors that Man was Not Meant to Know. He rolls 2d6 and adds his Tenured Apathy (+2) to the roll: A lowly 4! The GM compares this to the pre-determined difficulty of Tough (6). That's two damage ranks for the professor! He chooses to take those hits to his University Connections -- no doubt he is less popular at parties on account of all of the muttering and scratching. (Note that if he lowers this quality too far, a Shocking Story Development will occur.)
Combat can be handled with one roll, or in a round-by-round fashion. Moreover, at least when using this system for super-heroes or comedy adventures, there are enough mechanical wrinkles open that it doesn't become as bland as it may sound in description.
Switching systems, I've heard good things about the GUMSHOE (http://www.pelgranepress.com/gumshoe/index.html) system (used in the Trail of Cthulhu, among other games) -- at least from Robin Laws. Its claim to fame is that it is designed so that players will spend less time hunting red herrings or totally missing the obvious clues that the GM places in their path.
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Risus, the Anything RPG (http://www222.pair.com/sjohn/risus15.htm) is a rules-light RPG with similarities to FFAGS.
Chargen: A character is defined by several "clichés", such as "Viking", "Vampire", "Chef", etc., whatever you like. You have ten dice (d6s) to divide between your clichés, to a maximum of 4 dice per cliché.
Combat: In combat or any sort of conflict, you make opposed rolls using any cliché that's applicable. Whoever rolls lowest temporarily loses one of his cliché dice. When one of your clichés is reduced to zero, you're defeated. The GM determines what clichés are applicable. You can also attempt to use a non-applicable cliché (like Viking in a cooking contest), "provided the player roleplays or describes it in a really, really, really entertaining manner". If you win this way, the opponent loses three dice instead of one.
Characters can team up on an opponent, in which case the character with the highest cliché is "leader". All characters roll together. The leader's roll counts normally, and his teammates add the sixes from their roll to the leader's roll. If they lose, everyone rolls and only the lowest loses a die. Alternatively, someone can volunteer to take the hit, in which case he loses double dice, and the team gets a "vengeance" bonus: the leader rolls double dice in the next round.
Once a team-up has begun, it says together until disbanded or the leader is reduced to zero dice. A disbanded team loses one die each. If a leader is reduced to zero, the team is forcibly disbanded.
Character advancement: At the end of the session, roll each cliché you used significantly during the session. If the dice are all even, you gain an extra die to that cliché. At GM's whim you can have a bonus advancement roll during the session for managing something spectacular. A cliché can have a maximum of six dice. New dice can be spent to take a new cliché, at GM's discretion.
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A twitter conversation between RPG industry insiders Chris Pramas (Green Ronin Publishing) and Philip J Reed:
<Pramas> So WotC is pushing their new red box at PAX. A full page ad with retro art in the program book proclaims, "The box is back!"
<Pramas> Great if you're in your 40s but PAX attendees skew a lot younger. It's like saying, "Parachute pants are back!" to a bunch of 20 year olds.
<philipjreed> @Pramas The box cover art is back. They forgot the rest of the box.
<Pramas> @philipjreed Oh, snap.
Also, I made a D&D related post over in the Miniatures thread (http://brontoforum.us/index.php?topic=2549.msg167166#msg167166).
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(http://ff12matome.jf.land.to/image/hume/viera.jpg)
VIERA
Lithe prowlers of primordial forests
Deadly warriors by any measure
Racial Traits
Average Height: 6’0” – 6’ 8”
Average Weight: 145 lbs – 185 lbs
Ability Scores: +2 Dexterity, +2 Wisdom or Strength
Size: Medium
Speed: 7 Squares
Vision: Low-Light Vision
Languages: Common, Viera
Skill Bonuses: +2 Acrobatics, +2 Nature
Viera Weapon Proficiency: You gain proficiency with the Scimitar and the Longbow.
Thrill of the Hunt: When you create your character, choose Dexterity, Strength, or Wisdom. You gain a cumulative +1 bonus to Damage rolls when you receive damage while Bloodied, up to a maximum of 1 + your chosen ability’s modifier. This bonus lasts till the end of the encounter or until you are no longer bloodied, at which point the bonus resets to 0.
Wild Sense: You have a +2 racial bonus to initiative checks.
Viera Mobility: You have the Viera Mobility racial power.
Viera Mobility – Viera Racial Power
You dance around your foe, harrying your opponent while you press your attack.
At-Will – Martial
Special: When you create your character, choose Dexterity, Strength, or Wisdom. You may use this power a number of times per day equal to the modifier of the ability you chose (minimum 1)
Minor Action
Personal
Effect: You shift 1 square in any direction and gain a +2 bonus to Attack rolls made against any opponent you have damaged this turn. This bonus lasts until the end of your next turn. This bonus increases to +4 at 16th level. The bonus from this ability is not cumulative.
(http://ff12matome.jf.land.to/image/hume/moogre.jpg)
MOOGLE
Quirky and somewhat unstable
A strange appearance belies an uncanny intellect
Racial Traits
Average Height: 2’ 10” – 3’ 3”
Average Weight: 30 lbs – 55 lbs
Ability Scores: +2 Charisma, +2 Intelligence or Strength
Size: Small
Speed: 5 squares
Vision: Normal
Languages: Common, Mog, and choice of one other language
Skill Bonuses: +2 Arcana, +2 Bluff
Fey Origin: Your ancestors were native to the Fey wild, so you are considered a fey creature for the purpose of effects that relate to creature origin
Mog Ingenuity: You gain either the Alchemist or Ritual Caster feat for free. In addition, you may cast a ritual or use a formula once per day without expending components.
Wanderlust: You have a +2 racial bonus to saving throws to end the effects of Immobilize and Slow. If the effect does not normally grant a saving throw, you may make a saving throw without the +2 racial bonus at the beginning of your next turn to resist the effect anyway.
Flight of Fancy: You have the Flight of Fancy racial power.
Flight of Fancy – Moogle Racial Power
Leaping into the air to escape a foe, you come down a short distance away and shake off a debilitating effect.
Encounter
Move Action
Personal
Effect: You can Fly up to 3 squares before the end of your next turn. You may make a saving throw at the end of that movement.
(http://ff12matome.jf.land.to/image/hume/bangaa.jpg)
BANGAA
The blood of dragons flows through their veins
Proud warriors and stalwart companions
Racial Traits
Average Height: 5’2 – 5’8”
Average Weight: 180 lbs – 230 lbs
Ability Scores: +2 Constitution, +2 Wisdom or Strength
Size: Medium
Speed: 5 squares
Vision: Normal
Languages: Common, Draconic, and Bangaa
Skill Bonuses: +2 Endurance, +2 Intimidate
Bangaa Weapon Proficiency: You gain proficiency with the Glaive and the Falchion.
Encumbered Speed: You move at your normal speed even when a heavy load or your armor would normally reduce it. Other effects that limit your speed (such as difficult terrain or magical effects) affect you normally.
Bangaa Tenacity: When you’re bloodied, you gain a +1 racial bonus to all defenses.
Blood of Dragons: You have the Blood of Dragons racial power.
Blood of Dragons – Bangaa Racial Power
With a mighty roar, you call upon the power of your blood to lend you the strength of your ancestors.
Encounter
Personal
Minor Action
Special: You must be bloodied in order to use this power.
Effect: You spend a healing surge and gain temporary hit points equal to your healing surge value + ½ your level. These temporary hit points last for 1 round + ½ your level.
Just something I found today on /tg/. I have no idea how well each race would perform, and the thread 404'd after it turned into a Mithra image dump. Ironically, Mithra were not statted up.
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Nu Mou? Seeq?
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D&D Character Builder is becoming a web-based Silverlight app (http://wizards.custhelp.com/cgi-bin/wizards.cfg/php/enduser/std_adp.php?p_faqid=1556). Advantages: It'll run on Mac and Linux now. Drawbacks: You can't buy a month and keep using it after like with the desktop character builder, you can't use it without an active internet connection, it'll also be harder to pirate, and Wizards have a poor track record with the usability of their web apps.
In other news, Microsoft is moving away from Silverlight on the desktop, embracing HTML5 instead (http://www.pcworld.com/article/209449/microsoft_surrenders_silverlight_to_html5_on_crossplatform_front.html).
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http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/10/arts/video-games/dungeons-dragons-remake-uses-players-input.html?_r=3 (http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/10/arts/video-games/dungeons-dragons-remake-uses-players-input.html?_r=3)
http://wizards.com/dnd/Article.aspx?x=dnd/4ll/20120109 (http://wizards.com/dnd/Article.aspx?x=dnd/4ll/20120109)
Isn't it a bit early for D&D 5th Edition?
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The cynic in me says "Nope, they've probably released the dozens of 4th edition add-on books they intended to. Time for the new money-making project."
Immortal Wisdom from the initial release of 4th Edition:
Give each edition a fair shake and then play what you like while respecting that the other editions exist.
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Obvious outsider here, but what I see as the immediate problem with the design-by-committee approach is that they've effectively whittled their committee down to the people who are going to give them the least helpful feedback. The arc of D&D's history seems to curve heavily towards trying to compete with other mediums in the areas where it's at an innate disadvantage (to the point where 4e just looks like a really gimpy way to play Final Fantasy Tactics) to the point where most of the people still buying books are probably just as likely to fuck off and go play League of Legends or something. If they want to admit they have no goddam idea what they're doing anymore, then fine, but if you want it to end with anything but a hilarious horritragedy then they're going to need to get input from the people who DON'T play D&D anymore, who fucked off to VtM or whatever, and ask them what the hell went wrong. It'll inevitably end up looking like a giant foam upraised middle finger to the faithful of couse, but let's face it: you people have already decided to be angry no matter WHAT happens.
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If they want to admit they have no goddam idea what they're doing anymore, then fine, but if you want it to end with anything but a hilarious horritragedy then they're going to need to get input from the people who DON'T play D&D anymore, who fucked off to VtM or whatever, and ask them what the hell went wrong.
But that's the opposite of what they're doing. Non-players and lapsed players aren't going to be enticed to join up in this playest because they've got nothing to gain from it. Dyed-in-the-wool veterans do, on the other hand, and WotC doesn't take a lot of their findings into consideration, anyway:
Previous editions of the game had play testing periods, but Wizards restricted access to freelancers or those connected to the company and those tests were ineffectual at best. I was in a play testing group for 4th edition back in 2007, and we submitted a 30 page annotated document of what we felt worked and what didn't work with the rules we played. Other than my name among the hundreds of play testers in the back of the 4th edition Player's Handbook, nothing I submitted made it into print. Our feedback was summarily ignored, and Mearls admitted that was essentially true of all the feedback Wizards received from the 4th edition play test.
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I heard that in 2007, playtest groups compared notes and found that they'd been given different versions where the monsters had more or less hit points. The final release had monsters with too many hit points, presumably ignoring playtest feedback.
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Non-players and lapsed players aren't going to be enticed to join up in this playest because they've got nothing to gain from it.
Non-players no, lapsed players yes. I suspect most D&D expats would like to see Wizards get their act together and put out something like their "Daddy's D&D", only with a bit less, um, THAC0. Or maybe they want D&D to die a painful death and be taken over by MtG. WHATEVER NERDS.
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Non-players and lapsed players aren't going to be enticed to join up in this playest because they've got nothing to gain from it.
Non-players no, lapsed players yes. I suspect most D&D expats would like to see Wizards get their act together and put out something like their "Daddy's D&D", only with a bit less, um, THAC0. Or maybe they want D&D to die a painful death and be taken over by MtG. WHATEVER NERDS.
To be honest, the Lapsed players are a completely lost cause and WotC would do very well not to bother courting them at all.
The players who started with Third Edition have taken up Pathfinder. Short of WotC switching back to 3E and buying Pathfinder, they're not getting those players back. And the real old guard have all moved on to new retro RPGs like Swords and Wizardry (http://www.swordsandwizardry.com/), and view WotC with contempt normally reserved for war criminals. None of these players are dissatisfied with where they are at and it is very unlikely that Wizards will do anything to change this situation, no matter how good 5th edition is at pandering to them.
I heard that in 2007, playtest groups compared notes and found that they'd been given different versions where the monsters had more or less hit points. The final release had monsters with too many hit points, presumably ignoring playtest feedback.
Yeah, the HP totals for 4e monsters, esp. in the first monster manual and in all of the early LFR games were so off the rails that gameplay did little but cause despair in unoptimized groups. When 4e first came out the wife and I went to some of the early organized stuff Wizards did in Tulsa and the general consensus was that you could either massively twink your character out to prevent TPK, or you could deal with the scorn of everyone at the table. If anything, 4e's extreme difficulty and complex rules (just push/pull/slide mechanics are a fucking headache to a new player) locked new players out entirely and those who took a chance with the game usually had to deal with That Guy at the table standing up and explaining how according to the errata, your character does not work that way.
The best thing that 5e could do is take a massive step towards simplifying EVERYTHING. They're not going to get the retro players back (that ship has long since sailed) but the entire appeal of D&D in the early days was the simplicity of the rules and the ability to get your friends into the game. They need to create a set of rules that can fit into a pamphlet. If they can't do that, it's unlikely the new edition will do anything but splinter the shrinking playerbase even more.
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The number one tip I tell anyone genning for 4e for the first time is to stack +Attack at the exclusion of all else because my first 4e game was playing a Warlord who missed every one of his Encounter and Daily powers.
You can't sell a pamphlet for $30(x3 + x1 per month), and 4e is already universally regarded as simpler than 3e.
I'd go with an easier to start but no less vicious 2e revamp or something, even if they never acknowledge it as such.
I'd also accept say, $10 pamphlets or like, smooshing the Player's Handbook, Dungeon Master's Guide and Monster Manual into the size of a single book for $30. Then they can try to get a lot of new market to offset the whole "not gouging you with a $90 up front fee." That brings up the issue of actually fitting all that content in, as although it's pricey and ridiculous to get each new errata book as it comes out, they're still simply stuffed full of new things and information. A simplification effort would have to perform incredible compacting.
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Well, that's what a lot of RPG systems do nowadays anyway. Dark Heresy and the Star Wars Saga Edition did that. Granted, the books were more like $50, but they were filled with enough information to make it worthwhile. Sometimes I just read my DH core rulebook because it has so much neat stuff in it.
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My friends and I fall under the category of people who buy books of games they don't play just because the background is neat.
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The best thing that 5e could do is take a massive step towards simplifying EVERYTHING. They're not going to get the retro players back (that ship has long since sailed) but the entire appeal of D&D in the early days was the simplicity of the rules and the ability to get your friends into the game. They need to create a set of rules that can fit into a pamphlet. If they can't do that, it's unlikely the new edition will do anything but splinter the shrinking playerbase even more.
It's been announced that 5e will be a simple set of rules with optional complexity. That should appeal to the retro-cloners who left D&D because they wanted a simpler game.
I imagine that means a lot of optional rules will be included in the core book to give it value, and more will be released in expansions as with Unearthed Arcana. The tricky part will be how those optional rules interact with each other and with the splatbook content like classes and monsters.
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My friends and I fall under the category of people who buy books of games they don't play just because the background is neat.
And you've taken it a step further by genning for games you don't even play!
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(http://images.sodahead.com/polls/000934111/Misc_OhSnap_Bear_answer_2_xlarge.jpeg)
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(http://i.imgur.com/1bCjP.png)