Mike "I won't force you, but i'm going to force you" Mearls

[Avoraciopoctules]

I like how Warhammer Bestiary split the descriptions into...

1) "Rumors about X": A peasant tells you that time he met a guy who fought a wight
2) "First hand encounter with X": A merc tells you what it was like to meet that wight
3) "From X's mouth": The Wight tells you why he does what he does
Basically like varying levels of knowledge checks

Then there is a voice of god description with the stat block at the end of the book. It was a fun read and made the Warhammer world feel more 'persistant' than any D&D monster manual ever did. It's not that space efficient though.

That sounds pretty cool. Was this a recent book?

[silva]

The reason WoD was never as big as D&D is because everyone didn't want the shitty story attached to it, same with Shadowrun, Rifts, etc.

I'm pretty sure the sole reason the mentioned games sold at all was because of story and setting. The actual mechanics of WoD, Shadowrun and Rifts are barely playable.

This. I wouldnt go so far as to say the games are unplayable (well, in Rifts and Shadowrun post-2nd edition I would) but story and setting were the decisive factor in the success of those games.

[shadzar]

Let me know when you get to the part about anyone, anywhere, actually getting FORCED to do... anything.

Hello?

Tell me again about that awful day those WOTC thugs came to your house and put guns to your head to FORCE you to play D&D by their rules!

No? Didn't think so.

While partially accurate, you do realize that a social game requires other people, and the community's opinions are very commonly (rationally or not) directed by designers and their products? If you disagree with the industry's direction, you will have an objectively harder time finding players; whether it be house rules or even whole systems. Indirectly, WotC did force me to play by their rules, by making it harder to find players who hadn't drunk the Pathfinder or 4E kool-aid.

this is what people have been saying since 1999 effectively, but alas nobody gets it. this is what has poisoned gaming, that people are brand followers instead of playing a game they want because there is NO stable game anymore. hey are trying to find the next fastest processor or more memory or octocore architecture.

definition is Shadzar using that makes most of the Revised Edition of 2nd edition and the entire Players Option series not count as D&D at all?

Because ever since 1977 it had been part of another game called AD&D. You have been sucking too much Mike Mearls cock and Greg Leeds cock, and James Wyatt cock, to think that they should all be called "D&D".

let me explain it again so small minds like yours can understand.

D&D: (being called and built on the thing carrying this logo)
OD&D 1973
Holmes BD&D 1980
Moldvay BD&D 1981
Memtzer BECMI 1983~1989
RC 1995
3.0 2000
3.5 2003
4th 2008
4.E 2010

AD&D: (a different game purposefully to be a different game and thus having a different name)
1e 1977
2e 1989

Now the Rules Compendium did exist on some shelves in 1996~2000 but had no sort of support at all. it was jsut a collection into 1 book of BECMI with some errata in place for people that had played before. You bought one book for your group, that was it. but IF you could find it in ALL the other games books which were mostly AD&D 2nd edition.

D&D stopped being a product save for RC from 1989 until 3.0 came out under that name.

You are basically saying WoD sold better than a single book for those years with Vampire having what, 6 books? That is just including core for the LARP that i knew of at the time, not even counting the TTRPG if it existed that I didn't know about.

so when you say D&D, you see above the things I recognize as D&D, and the other list is NOT D&D anymore than Shadowrun or Boot Hill are D&D. Yes they all use a bunch of the same stuff to play them but they are NOT the same game.

The reason WoD was never as big as D&D is because everyone didn't want the shitty story attached to it, same with Shadowrun, Rifts, etc.

I'm pretty sure the sole reason the mentioned games sold at all was because of story and setting. The actual mechanics of WoD, Shadowrun and Rifts are barely playable.

This. I wouldnt go so far as to say the games are unplayable (well, in Rifts and Shadowrun post-2nd edition I would) but story and setting were the decisive factor in the success of those games.

Pretty much.

Hey Buffy is popular as botht he original movie and a TV series, people are into vampires, lets make a game about them just to get people that like the idea of vampires in today's world! Vampires were even so popular that THEY got a TV series called Kindred. Even with Twilight recently and such, where is it now though? Just like all other fads it has died because it wasnt a good game in any form, the TV series tanked, etc. People got tired of the story.

V:TES
Jyhad


both gone lost to pokemon, yugioh, and MtG.

oWoD, nWoD, pratically dead

the shitty stories people get tired of because with those games that are based around a story have no where else to go outside of that story. a vampire game will always be a vampire game where you are trying to hide you are a vampire from the rest of the world.

D&D can be about vampires today, werewolves tomorrow, goblins and orcs next week, rescuing a town from a dragon next month, and overthrowing a corrupt king 3 months from now. the story isnt stagnant because there is NOT a default story.

remember Wyatt is the one writing most of these stories about mosnters, and he is the one during 4th that said those stories are boring and only the fighting was fun with his, "traipsing through faerie rings and talking to the little people isn't fun"..."just handwave talking to the city guards and get on with what is fun [the fighting]"..."D&D is a game about killing things and taking their stuff".

you want that kind of wishy-washy flake telling you the stories of ANYTHING when they don't even like ANY of the story elements or even understand why anyone would find them fun?

remember and early playtest video podcast live thing where James Wyatt inferred he had knowledge of things that was going on somewhere he was not and was smacked down by one of the players that was present in the events, telling James, "well you weren't there so you don't know what happened until and IF we tell you."

Wyatt doesn't understand D&D at all even and he should be trying to make stories for it?

[hogarth]

I know that Shadzar posts are always a window into madness, but can anyone sane actually explain what the hell he's going off about here? I know that D&D was physically being sold during those years.

He's saying that if you're saying "X was bigger than Y", it probably makes more sense to compare total impact rather than one moment in time. Otherwise you end up with nonsensical comparisons like "Chelsea Handler was bigger than Dostoevsky" or "the Furby was bigger than the steam engine".

[Desdan_Mervolam]

No, he's saying AD&D isn't D&D because they added the word "Advanced" to the title.

[Korwin]

No, he's saying AD&D isn't D&D because they added the word "Advanced" to the title.

He is? Isnt he the AD&D Fanatic?

[Neon Sequitur]

The "butt-hurt train" just keeps rolling on.

Don't like the new game? Play the old one.

No one's stopping you.

[shadzar]

No, he's saying AD&D isn't D&D because they added the word "Advanced" to the title.

No, he is saying that in no instance of AD&D is elf a class, but in D&D it is.

sadly this is where 3.x, 4.x, etc fail to be D&D.

AD&D started a trend toward separate factors. When someone mentions D&D i do not think, "Oh everything that uses ability scores and has elfs, wizard, fighters, etc". I think Elf is a class, it is an RPG, and it hasnt been made or supported since @1990.

When the 3taards that WotC bred and their kin learn that D&D and AD&D are not the same game, but two different system then communication will be much better.

Boot Hill is not D&D either, it is sixguns and sorcery, and uses the same rules built from the D&D system idea, and AD&D was built off of it. But Boot Hill is neither D&D nor AD&D.

Learn the language, speak clearly and make sure you are using understandable distinctions rather than being vague and stupid.

Quit sucking Mearls cock, and learn that D&D and AD&D, and 3.x, and 4th, and 4E, and DDN are all DIFFERENT games. this is where the game has been screwed up for so long because people think they are all interchangeable in play and discussion. They are not.

stop drinking the WotC koolaid and learn to think for yourself, rather than regurgitate lies and misinformation due to your own ignorance. unless of course you wish to work for WotC marketing team....

[Lago PARANOIA]

It was a fun read and made the Warhammer world feel more 'persistant' than any D&D monster manual ever did. It's not that space efficient though.

That said, the underlying system for monsters still need to be good. Even if the prose would've been good in a vacuum or a statless game, nothing but nothing undermines the presentation quite like, using 4th Edition D&D for example:

[*] Lack of Monster-PC transparency.
[*] Shovelware monsters where a troglodyte with a spear is a different creature than a troglodyte with a club.
[*] Lack of abilities that allow the monster to do what its fluff says that it should do.
[*] Exception-based design that makes people unsure as to whether hearing that a monster has the 'evil eye' makes it a minor inconvenience or a TPK-inducing machine.
[*] Lack of ways to interact with the monster other than combat.

[shadzar]

nothing but nothing undermines the presentation quite like, using 4th Edition D&D for example:

1. Lack of Monster-PC transparency.
2. Shovelware monsters where a troglodyte with a spear is a different creature than a troglodyte with a club.
3. Lack of abilities that allow the monster to do what its fluff says that it should do.
4. Exception-based design that makes people unsure as to whether hearing that a monster has the 'evil eye' makes it a minor inconvenience or a TPK-inducing machine.
5. Lack of ways to interact with the monster other than combat.

1. you mean who a human PC isn't anything like a human (brute)?

2. a different weapon caused a new monster entry?

3. fluff is becoming too muc and stupid like on magic cards. that is the problem with this article and their current approach of trying to put fluff in in the first place. it is like saying dragons can breed fire, and then you ahve this dragon that breathes only acid, but not fire. guess it isnt a dragon then is it? which i know makes sense to everyone but with their "template" and "keyword" systems, by that definition it is worse than having fluff that doesnt actually do anything except sit as magic card fluff, it is fluff that contradicts the rules.

4. this must be in reference to 3.x because I don't know what you are talking about. all monsters should be assumed to be a potential TPK until you begin fighting them and find otherwise.

5. wasm't that the point of skill challenges or something? or do you mean every monster entry being made like a DDM miniature card with only fighting abilities and nothing else about them except as much would be needed to be the next random AI opponent for Street Fighter?

[rampaging-poet]

1. In 4th editon monsters use reduced statblocks that don't have information for anything except combat. As far as I know they don't even have Strength scores etc, just to-hit and damage. There are also some monsters that play be special rules, like minions who die immediately if they take a single HP of damage. A 1st level "human" minion has next to nothing in common with a 1st level human PC.

2. In 3.5 the monster's statblock tells you it's wielding a spear, but it also has enough information to figure out what happens if you give it a club. In 4th edition the spear is part of the monster like an MMO creature - it doesn't drop a spear when it dies and you can't swap out the weapon without creating an entirely new monster.

3. This complaint isn't about keywording, it's about leaving things out of monster entries. It's not saying "all dragons breathe fire," it's saying in the entry for Red Dragons that Red Dragons breathe fire but forgetting to actually give them a fire breath weapon. I'm pretty sure 4th edtion has a hag or something that supposedly turns people into mindless slaves, but the never gave the monster the ability to do that and there's no rules for what happens when they try. It's a case where they should have either given them an ability that matched the fluff or left that fluff out entirely.

4. This is more of a case of keywording done very, very badly. Many creatures in 4th edition have abilities called "Evil Eye," but none of them do the same thing. It's used like a keyword, but it doesn't actually mean anything.

5. I'm not familiar enough with 4th edition to comment further on this point, but I think it's a consequence of the reduced stats for monsters in 4th edition. You pretty much can't talk to monsters by RAW, and it's impossible to know whether, for example, and ogre would be strong enough to lift a portcullis that was too heavy for the party. Even AD&D monsters had enough information for that, but 4th edition monsters don't.

[Blicero]

As far as I know they don't even have Strength scores etc, just to-hit and damage.

Not quite. As of 4E's release, monsters had a normal set of ability scores. See, for example, https://www.wizards.com/DnD/Article.asp ... /20080530a. The modifiers have the 4E "+ 1/2 level" bonus built in to them.

You pretty much can't talk to monsters by RAW

...Sort of? Monsters have languages, and their descriptions note if they are capable of speech. The default assumption in adventures was that everything you met was either a red dot or a blue dot, true. But RAW allows for communication.

[rampaging-poet]

Good to know. I don't actually own any 4e rulebooks, so I've had to go by what I've heard on these boards. It seems in my ignorance I exaggerated in my responses to points 1 and 5.

[Cyberzombie]

4th edition did everything wrong with monsters. Monster stat blocks were just too big and at the same time they didn't manage to do anything remotely interesting with them. A simple claw/claw/bite routine in 4E took around 6 lines. A claw power, a bite power and then another power to let the monster use those other powers as one action.

The format was ridiculously inefficient.

[shadzar]

You pretty much can't talk to monsters by RAW

...Sort of? Monsters have languages, and their descriptions note if they are capable of speech. The default assumption in adventures was that everything you met was either a red dot or a blue dot, true. But RAW allows for communication.

this is bad teachings from the 4 parts of 4th edition (GLEEMAX, DDi, the game, and something else). everything was just given stats to kill it and no information to players about doing anything other than killing things because... James Wyatt.

[Neurosis]

ITT: Shadzars gonna Shadzar

All of these threads are just Mike Mearls says something relatively innocuous (if a bit mealy-mouthed) and Shadzar launches off on a terrifying, serial-killer esque tirade.

[OgreBattle]

I like how Warhammer Bestiary split the descriptions into...

1) "Rumors about X": A peasant tells you that time he met a guy who fought a wight
2) "First hand encounter with X": A merc tells you what it was like to meet that wight
3) "From X's mouth": The Wight tells you why he does what he does
Basically like varying levels of knowledge checks

Then there is a voice of god description with the stat block at the end of the book. It was a fun read and made the Warhammer world feel more 'persistant' than any D&D monster manual ever did. It's not that space efficient though.

That sounds pretty cool. Was this a recent book?

Warhammer Old World Bestiary, was for the edition-before-the-current-edition edition of WHFRP. It also has nice artwork.

[tussock]

I quite like the 1st edition AD&D or Basic D&D monster stats. Probably because that's when I started. Little things like how Kobolds like bright rusty colours and sound like annoying little dogs, immediately presented so you can just rattle it off in play to brighten the scene.

Like, they could do with a couple lines extra to make them easily modified and usable as PCs, but they sold other books to do that with. They need the various information later included in the DMG and whatnot folded back in too, the common humanoid alliances and hatreds table in the DMG makes for more interesting fights. Some of the later books detailing humanoids in the Known World made them fairly interesting too.


2nd edition was ... mostly too fucking boring to read and basically impossible to use at the table because it's a wall of text. And when one reads it carefully, it's really pretty terrible in a lot of ways, so clearly no one ever did read it carefully at the time. The 1-page format is nice for Orcs and worse than useless for Dragonnes.


3e was ... close enough. A bit light on cultural fluff for social types because they thinned everything, a bit light on non-combat interests and tactics for the genius plot-monster types, a bit lacking in default assumptions considering it was supposed to be "Greyhawk", a bit inconvenient to use in some of the ways suggested (the templates, why), but just using the monsters as-written works well at the table. 3.5 fixing some math, while making monster PCs ever so much worse.

What Pathfinder did to templates and adding character levels and monster levels is much better for the game. Fluff-wise, they also struggle to fill their 1-page format requirements with things that are ever game-useful, or even a good read. The Golarion section is not helpful, in the same way the late-3e FR/Eberron sections were not helpful, dump that shit in an appendix.


Appendices for humanoid social interaction could work too, thin the entries without losing that from the book it really needs to be in.


4e was sort of the worst of everything. The stat blocks are huge and incredibly inflexible (damage: by weapon. It's too hard! Throw it out!), there's format-filling white space everywhere, there's almost nothing to tie anything to the setting (even a crapstack setting like "Points of Light"), and the non-combat engine of the DMG requires you not interact with the combat engine of the MM like it's 1st edition again and we forgot all those lessons.

4e says: Charm Person? Too hard! Throw it away! Give them an "Evil Eye" instead! Terrible. Even 1st edition mostly just had the monsters use stuff out of the PHB as appropriate. Like monsters couldn't have just had encounter powers. Like players couldn't have just had a fucking recharge mechanic. Gah. 4e.


5e, who the fuck knows. It's nice that they're building a world and giving the monsters a place in it, having them be aware of each other and giving out leads for players to interact with and shit. Hopefully the Kobolds even like rusty colours again. Kinda suspicious they're going to put too much novel spin on it and manage to again make something that doesn't "feel like D&D": despite that being their prime directive. We shall see.

[shadzar]

2nd edition was ... mostly too fucking boring to read and basically impossible to use at the table because it's a wall of text.

It wasnt meant to be used at the table. It was a wrong correction to the MC problems and they couldnt just figure out how to print on one side of the page and make a profit without changing twice as much for the MCs.

all you need from a monster bit during play and combat was the same 1 line of info found in the adventures of those years. it was there for people that wanted to make thing in their spare time. for the grab and go play you had adventures, decks of encounters (1 and 2), 2~20 (d8+d12) encounter table, Fantasy Card sets and boosters, etc.

like all those sucking Gary's 1st edition cock, they neglect that the innocuous ecology of monster during second edition was based on Dragon surveys that made it back into the game rather than just Ecology articles in Dragon. 2nd was world-building tools, not just gauntlet in the dungeon tools. because something had to happen from one dungeon to the next other than a safe triip home and out to the new dungeon.

but it wasn't ettercaps fondling night hags with pixie parts in some spider orgy.

it was about, here is a monster and some info to let you know what it is about and YOU decide how it works in your world. for everyone else there is Master Card published adventures and settings.

[Sakuya Izayoi]

I always appreciated how in the Shin Megami Tensei games, you could talk to just about any creature you can encounter. Some would ask you for things, others would bribe you with things in order to not get killed. Some could be recruited to your party (every SMT game has some sort of pokemon metagame in this regard). It gave the monsters a nice feel of "ecology" without drowning you in exposition about their species.

When talking to a friend about a homebrew crawling game, SMT came up as inspiration for a simple inclusion with every monster statblock: a 2d6 + mod reaction table, unique to every creature. Low but not abysmal rolls might result in some creatures demanding bribes to not attack, with good rolls offering the potential for even getting sidequests from that random wandering monster. Monsters that don't even talk and/or lack intelligence, like an iron golem, would even have tables, just in case you figured out some sort of way to augment their capacity to interact, or learned a tongue PCs don't typically have access to.

Theoretically, this might allow for a lot of implied ecology with no expository descriptions. You could write up a kobold that behaves consistently without ever figuring out whether its a lizard, canine, or greenskin. I'd have to actually run it in something to be sure, though.

[deaddmwalking]

but it wasn't ettercaps fondling night hags with pixie parts in some spider orgy.

This is the only part of your post that I read. Based solely on this, I hope that's what Next delivers.

[wotmaniac]

but it wasn't ettercaps fondling night hags with pixie parts in some spider orgy.

This is the only part of your post that I read. Based solely on this, I hope that's what Next delivers.

Are you kidding? This is going in my next campaign!