Threads that make us Laugh, Cry, or Both, Continued

[Voss]

Its worth noting the stats on his dwarf ranger. I'd copy them, but my old login is gone thanks to the GleeMAX!!!@#$%!?? changeover, so I can't view the sig anymore.

[Leress]

1192234624[/unixtime]]Its worth noting the stats on his dwarf ranger. I'd copy them, but my old login is gone thanks to the GleeMAX!!!@#$%!?? changeover, so I can't view the sig anymore.

here they are

Lawful Good Dwarf Ranger
STR: 10, DEX: 17, CON: 16, INT: 12, WIS: 15, CHA: 15

[angelfromanotherpin]

I just realized. Two 17s, and he put one of them in Charisma? Wow. Now that's powergaming.

[Captain_Bleach]

I had problems with trying to "migrate" my account, and for the time being, I cannot post on the WotC boards or view the Mature Topics forum. Anybody have any similar problems?

[Koumei]

Ok, WotC released a teaser for the Warlock in 4th Edition. I'll just quote a little bit of it.

After some initial shock, everyone admitted the warlock's Eldritch Blast didn't break the game. The class's ability to maintain relevant arcane attack power, instead of running out of finite resources like a wizard,

I don't even know where to begin there.

[cthulhu]

1192209529[/unixtime]]cthulhu - I've played the game a few times and never noticed the Newspaper imbalance, but I do know why I never noticed this.

1) I've never gone through the decks counting good vs bad results.

What sort of person are you/!?!?

I only bothered to look because I was short of cash because I needed a weapon one time and asked one of the more experinced players ' where do you get money' and the answer was newspaper. I camped that up for a few terms a noticed that nothing bad happened. Contrasting this to my normal experince of getting reamed by most encounters, I read the decks after the game, as the other option was go to the beach but it rained the entire holiday:(

2) Players don't go to the Newspaper because there's no obvious reason to go there. It doesn't accrue clues, it doesn't have portals, you can't buy stuff or trade in trophies there. From the outside, it looks like one of the last places you want to go.

Yup! I only went so I could get cash to buy a weapon, and then figured out things are weird. It's just that you go backwards with most encounters, whereas newspaper generally gives you cash or clues! Next time you play, give it a whirl. There are definately events that give you clues, one allows you to buy clues at 2 dollars a go.

Almost all the expansions have added cards to the Location decks: has this changed the balance of the Newspaper at all?

I had read about the Curiosity Shop mining as a problem, but once again it's never came up in the games I've played. I'm not sure why that is, except perhaps that no-one was interested in sitting on the store turn after turn.

It depends on your approach. My group for that arn't very tactically focused - me and another guy are (out of 5) so we tend pursue a really focused strategy while everyone else cocks about.

As for the expansions, I've only played the dunwhich horror board. When I saw it I gave the newspaper deck a read to see what changed, and they had 'diluted' the power by adding some neutral events, but there was actually less bad events too.

[Username17]

Actually, all of the stable locations are net-benefits. There's literally nothing bad at all that can happen at the Shack. The worst event is that the owner leaves town and you can't get encounters anymore.

But you don't ever "have" to go to any of the stable locations unless it's for a Task. All the unstable locations start with clues (and generally 1 clue + a random draw is a better deal on average than even the newspaper), and eventually you have to go to some of them to keep the world from ending.

That being said, if people specialize, give equipment to people who need it, and undertake a controlled plan to fight the Great Old One, you can usually make it. No power on Earth can keep Yig from coming to town, so it's really just about trying to get Blessings and weapons for everyone so that you win the final battle. Azathoth is pretty simple, but if you don't get a gate victory in the time allotted you all die. Try not to get lost in time and space.

But hey, Shub is really hard. Even with a solid plan and a good mix of characters you still often just don't win. The fact that even Witches and Maniacs just win combats sometimes is really painful. The harder GOOs are pretty hard, the easier ones are kind of pointless. The nuber of clue tokens you can amass if you just don't spend them ever is exceeding large, so fighting off Nyarlathotep isn't even a challenge.

-Username17

[MrWaeseL]

1192254581[/unixtime]]Ok, WotC released a teaser for the Warlock in 4th Edition. I'll just quote a little bit of it.

After some initial shock, everyone admitted the warlock's Eldritch Blast didn't break the game. The class's ability to maintain relevant arcane attack power, instead of running out of finite resources like a wizard,

I don't even know where to begin there.

"After some initial shock". Hahahaha that's priceless.

[Cielingcat]

I... they think that the Warlock has "relevant arcane attack power"?

[Koumei]

And they said that they learned from this and are going to incorporate such elements into all classes.

Great, so everyone can have "abilities that matter" (the 1/day ones) and "useless abilities" (at will), until they figure out how to Rope Trick/Planeshift Shuffle.

[angelfromanotherpin]

1192259324[/unixtime]]But hey, Shub is really hard. Even with a solid plan and a good mix of characters you still often just don't win. The fact that even Witches and Maniacs just win combats sometimes is really painful.

Shub's my favorite GOO by far. It really feels like CoC, where monsters are really dangerous, the Great One needs arcane secrets to be defeated, and success is actually an accomplishment.

[Voss]

So, Koumei, where is this teaser?

Nevermind, found it. It just wasn't showing up on the front page.

http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/drdd/20071012a

[NineInchNall]

Please, someone tell me if this thread is as bad as its title would suggest.

I have a morbid desire to search out the threads with the most stupidity, but I don't seem able to bring myself to actually read them anymore. Shell shock, I guess.

[Voss]

Its bad but its also funny.

This is particularly funny:

Second edition had a lot of flavor with a lot of campaign settings. This is where I get the idea for story based games, rather than hack and slash games.

Third edition went back to the hack and slash games of first edition and added some spiffy rules. But the more fleshed out campaign settings went away, and we found more crunchy books to build super hero characters.

Fourth edition is turning into a collectible war game. This is about as far from second edition as you can get. And, I think, turning D&D into a collectible war game with overly simple rules is what is turning away my 30 something generation.

If we want simple rules, we will buy board games, which have come a long way, or we will buy Indie games.

smoker

i] he knows exactly what 4e will look like
ii] 2e wasn't hack and slash at all , but was the height of roleplaying
iii] the wargame turned RPG that is D&D is going back to its wargaming roots, and thats bad, despite quite a few of the old D&Der's thinking its going away from its wargaming roots, and that being bad

These people have some seriously funny opinions, particularly when you realize that the exact same thing means something different to each one.


For some crying/laughing though, there is this from Rich Baker's Blog (10/11):

I spent a little time here and there polishing up some Player's Handbook bits. Yesterday I cast my eye over our list of fighter powers, and spent a couple of hours patching up placeholder names and writing up better flavor text. We had a 1st-level power called "Wallop" that had a knock-you-prone rider on it; I changed the name to "Dragon's Tail Cut" and flavored it as a crouch down and make a long looping swing through target's legs power, sort of like the way a dragon might use a tail whip to knock someone down. Maybe it's dorky, maybe it's cool; hard to tell with flavor you write yourself.

http://forums.gleemax.com/showthread.php?t=906386

[Koumei]

I read a couple of paragraphs and just decided it wasn't worth the effort to read through fully.

I also like how apparently anyone who went from 1 --> 2 --> 3 seems to think that the systems get worse as they go along, and more complex. I started on 2Ed, and hated it. It also was more complex than 3Ed, in a "arbitrary bullshit" kind of way, with the rules not being consistent (or in some cases, present).

And I'll never understand quite what they mean when they refer to D&D becoming very anime in style. It's just... every grognard seems to have their own term for it. Does it really just mean "I don't like it"?

Hell, I've never seen anything in D&D about female magical ninjas raping each other with energy-penises, and schoolgirls performing martial arts combat with really short skirts and exploding shirts. Much to my disappointment. The day they introduce that is the day I'll agree there's anime influence.

Or maybe I watch the wrong types of anime.

And yeah Voss, it is strange that they seem to think D&D started with 2Ed and never had any wargaming elements, and that not only is it moving away from its roots, but it's also moving towards that, and this is inherently bad.

[Leress]

1192294451[/unixtime]]

Hell, I've never seen anything in D&D about female magical ninjas raping each other with energy-penises, and schoolgirls performing martial arts combat with really short skirts and exploding shirts. Much to my disappointment. The day they introduce that is the day I'll agree there's anime influence.

The only anime I can think of that are like DnD are the ones based off of it, like Lodoss Wars, Slayers, Dragon Quest, Arc the Lad, Bastard, and Orphen.

I really couldn't read past the second post, it filled me with such anger. The OP was saying that since they played 1ed then they know where the DnD orginated. There was all this double talk about how it geared towards these a certain type of person and then saying that is not a wrong way to play. In that same post talks about how things are dumbed down and for WoW and Diablo players, but of course since they have been there in the TSR days the fantasy was dumbed down.

Also the OP goes into the art work...who gives a fuck what the artwork looks like! It just the same as any other fluff (3rd has crappy artwork, Oh Noes they are dumbing down the fantasy of the game). If you don't like the art draw some your damn self.

I love how the OP takes jabs at the "anime" direction of the game even though japan got animation from us, and anime is a wide ass type of media. I assume the OP is using the derogatory version of the word meaning over the top action. The animes that had that are usually based of things in DnD during the second edition.

Feats like "fast effects" what the hell? If anything feats are like the Perks from Fallout (really exactly like perks from Fallout). If you are going to make an analogy then at least get your facts straight.

[Crissa]

Sorry, Voss, but...

...He's right.

How many official settings for 3.5?

How many for 2ed?

-Crissa

[SunTzuWarmaster]

For the record, although I liked the Tome of Battle, the anime-roots seemed clear:

"Desert Wind Tempest attack!"
"Leaping Tiger Attack!"
"I am a master disciple of the White Raven combat school"
also, SwordSages are ninjas

all seem quite far away from the "I carry my sword so that I can slay monsters" subtype, but that isn't necessarily a bad thing IMHO.

seems like this to me:

[Koumei]

1192371594[/unixtime]]
also, SwordSages are ninjas

We must be thinking of different types of ninja. But I see your point.

[CalibronXXX]

I used to follow CAD, it's pretty funny.

[Voss]

1192370722[/unixtime]]Sorry, Voss, but...

...He's right.

How many official settings for 3.5?

How many for 2ed?

-Crissa

Wow. If there's more of something, it must be BETTER!
Because, of course, Dark Sun, Birth Right and Red Steel were so well 'fleshed out'!

and that, of course, has nothing at all to do with the rules becoming more simplified or war-game like. Let alone collectible. Or hack and slash vs. roleplaying. TSR just spammed more bad settings on the market.

And of course he innately pisses me by presuming to speak on my behalf, since I'm one of those 30-somethings thats somehow being magically 'turned away' by his decree.

[Koumei]

Yeah, 2E had a lot of random, crappy (and thankfully short-lived) settings. Let's put aside settings that are subject to much debate and that a lot of people want to resurrect into 3E, it just had a huge pile of settings that no-one actually cares about.

It's like they just decided to take the "fishing for 20s" route, figuring that 5% of the settings will be awesome.

In reference to the Book of Exalted Furries:

Good Drugs- Drugs that only affect good creatures and grant you hallucinations and make you feel good according to the level of your virtue.

Good Sacrifices- Killing an Evil creature in a ritual for your god that takes the evil soul and purifies it, granting you boons according to your god's favor.

Good Gluttony- Eating Evil People's food in order to starve evil people to death while teaching them the pain of selfish actions.

Good Killing- Whoops! Someone beat me to it.

I had mentioned that you don't become Exalted by not having sex (or alternatively, having sex with a nymph. You get a high-5 from all of your friends for that one, but you're not Exalted. Just awesome.), giving your belongings away or saying "That's not my job!" when it comes time to dispose of enemy corpses. That you need to do something major - like genocide. I then did the whole "It started as a wargame. The game is still focused on killing. Alignments justify this, rather than restrain it. Face it, to be Exalted you need to genocide an Evil race."

And they agreed. People actually agreed to a point like that, which on WotC would cause a shitstorm.

So that was the reply. Someone else then wanted to make a character who fought Evil by sneaking into their houses and eating all their food (that is complete awesome and win), and I had to point out that ALL drugs are good. No-one has yet stated "No, not all drugs are good. Some are GREAT!"

[RandomCasualty]

1192384804[/unixtime]]

Wow. If there's more of something, it must be BETTER!
Because, of course, Dark Sun, Birth Right and Red Steel were so well 'fleshed out'!

Eh. I like a lot of setting choices. And I don't feel a setting needs to be totally fleshed out before it's good. I personally hate how detailed the realms are. There's just TOO much information on FR, and more that I even care to know. It makes the setting a pain to run, because at some point you've got some player asking "Well what about X, what'd he do about this event?"

Then you go and give him the what the fuck are you talking about look and he explains some obscure archmagi or epic warrior from a novel he read, then you have to go and tell him the guy either doesn't exist or was out of town when whatever plotline you have went down.

Honestly, I kind of like a "complete" setting. And by complete I mean that it's possible to read and own all the material detailing that setting without dedicating several months of research to it.

[Count Arioch the 28th]

I really liked Spelljammer.

/ducks

[Voss]

1192399303[/unixtime]]

1192384804[/unixtime]]

Wow. If there's more of something, it must be BETTER!
Because, of course, Dark Sun, Birth Right and Red Steel were so well 'fleshed out'!

Eh. I like a lot of setting choices. And I don't feel a setting needs to be totally fleshed out before it's good. I personally hate how detailed the realms are.

Which is fine. But the guy's point was that because many settings were produced during 2nd edition, the 2nd edition rules themselves were somehow superior for roleplaying than any other edition. Based solely on the number of settings produced, and not in any way based on the quality or nature of the actual rules.

That is a steaming pile of crap.