Oh, I get it now, Fighters /should/ have spells.

[Lago PARANOIA]

I've heard the 'Chess' and 'Monopoly' argument being thrown around as examples of the viability of evergreen editions, but (ignoring the fact that they went substantial changes) quite frankly, those are simple games whose selling point is that you can get your grandma and Little Timmy to play with 20 minutes of explanation.

And you know what? When you throw roleplaying, asymmetric and improvisational strategy, and a steady stream of expansion material into the mix I content that it's pretty much impossible for any game to get it completely or even mostly right in the first couple of tries. Yu-Gi-Oh! and Magic: The Gathering certainly didn't and D&D is much more complicated than those games.

[Josh_Kablack]

Sign me up for the chorus of "dude spouting nonsense belongs on your ignore" and fucking read at least wikipedia.

[Username17]

If you want an example of a truly evergreen game, you should pick Scrabble or Yahtzee. Those games have had their rules unchanged since publication for 64 years and 56 years respectively. Those games actually are "fair" in the classic sense and essentially perfect as-is.

But you'll note that even Scrabble has undergone stealth errata numerous times. That is to say that since you can use any word that is in the dictionary, you can now use "lol" and "omg" where just a few years ago you could not. There was even a scare two years back that they were going to errata the rules to allow proper names (this rumor turned out to be false, and based on Mattel coming out with a Scrabble variant where you use the names of people).

As for Chess, it's actually a pretty good analogy for early D&D. When the Queen piece was first brought in (replacing the "Vizier"), she only moved one space. Over the centuries, people gradually came to the understanding that she needed some fucking abilities.

-Username17

[Chamomile]

Although certain corners of the internet still insist that it's "more realistic" to give her 1-space movement and -4 STR.

[erik]

This thread.



Thanks Fectin for page 7's prose.
I came back after Storm Bringer's entrance to see how pages 8-9 played out. Was not disappointed.

(in case this was not clear, yes SB, your arguments are horribad on a variety levels, but don't stop. please. don't stop. if you must go all ad hominem all the time, do it, but i won't ever stop loving you. you're adorable)

Sorry, games don't by definition 'improve' with each new edition. Especially RPGs.

No, not "by definition," as nobody ever said that, but that's the fucking plan.

How the fuck do new RPG editions expect to compete with a product already on the market? The intention is to improve and outsell. If you don't improve then you wind up with 4th edition being outsold by your competitor printing your 3rd edition product with make-up on, for example. When you do improve then you get something like 3rd editions which blow previous editions out of the water.

[Josh_Kablack]

If you want an example of a truly evergreen game, you should pick Scrabble or Yahtzee. Those games have had their rules unchanged since publication for 64 years and 56 years respectively. Those games actually are "fair" in the classic sense and essentially perfect as-is.

But you'll note that even Scrabble has undergone stealth errata numerous times. That is to say that since you can use any word that is in the dictionary, you can now use "lol" and "omg" where just a few years ago you could not.

Yahtzee is a great example, since it was supposedly played in its current form before publication.

Scabble is a bit trickier, as the core functionality of the base game is largely static,

aside from wikipedia's list of changes and:

• In addition to the changes in a dictionary - even the establishment of a single official dictionary was debated at the tournament level for a time. On top of that there are minor quibbles over whether various derogatory and offensive terms which were at times purposefully excluded from the OSPD should be legal.
• There are different language editions - which necessitate different tile frequencies
• There are regional and national variants to the challenge rules, in some places there is a major bluffing element to the game, others there's not reason not to challenge every single word.
• There have been cosmetic changes - most notably to the color of scoring spaces.

[Ted the Flayer]

Fuck scrabble. My dad used to play that game with me when I was a kid, and tell me that I wasn't allowed to pass my turn if I couldn't come up with a word, and there were times I'd sit for nearly an hour because he wouldn't let me pass, wouldn't let me place a blatantly fake word so I'd lose a challenge and miss my turn, and there was that one time he insisted that "ax" wasn't a word and I couldn't use it. And would under no circumstances look at my letter tiles and tell me what word I could make if he was so goddamn smart.

Fuck that game, I would gladly burn every fucking scrabble set in the world if given the power to do so.

[erik]

I don't think scrabble is necessarily at fault there. That's like if I burned every soccer ball in the world because my brother was a douche to play soccer with, hypothetically.

[Ted the Flayer]

Quiet, you. I'm trying to create my motivation to be a super-villain.

[MGuy]

Quiet, you. I'm trying to create my motivation to be a super-villain.

Name yourself Word Master.

[Username17]

Your sidekick can be Quizling.

-Username17

[Josh_Kablack]

and there was that one time he insisted that "ax" wasn't a word and I couldn't use it.

You're blaming his houserules there. In the official (at least in the USA prior to 2002) rules the response is "are you fucking challenging? if so break out the dictionary and one of us will be losing a turn. If not, shut the fuck up."


And if we are nitpicking at Scrabble, there is a fundamental flaw in the rules in that the scarcity points were assigned by frequency of occurrence in newspaper headlines and yet the actual difficulty of playing a given letter has roughly as much to do with how many 2-letter words it occurs in as with how many common words it occurs in.

So you get X being worth 8 points and showing up in Ax, Ex, Ox, Xi, and Xu, yet V is only worth 4 points and shows up in no legal 2 letter words, making it a tile more for blocking than for scoring.

[StormBringer]

Sign me up for the chorus of "dude spouting nonsense belongs on your ignore" and fucking read at least wikipedia.

Ok, sure.

"In early chess the moves of the pieces were:
King: as now.
Queen: one square diagonally, only.
Bishop:
In the version that went into Persia: two squares diagonally (no more or less), but could jump over a piece between
In a version sometimes found in India in former times: two squares sideways or front-and-back (no more or less), but could jump over a piece between.
In versions found in Southeast Asia: one square diagonally, or one square forwards.
Knight: as now.
Rook: as now.
Pawn: one square forwards (not two), capturing one square diagonally forward; promoted to queen only."
Noting that the Pawn can only move two squares from the second rank on its first move only in the current rules, and promoting to a piece other than queen is not common. Hardly a drastic change for the Pawn.

So, only the bishop and the queen have substantially changed in almost a millennia. The names have changed over the years, but the pieces themselves made the same moves.

"By the mid-12th century, the pieces of the chess set were depicted as kings, queens, bishops, knights and men at arms."

So, around 1150 or so, the pieces as we know them were pretty much locked in, due to the Europeans changing them from the original Sub-Continental Indian forms. There were some few changes to the movement rules:
"The game, as played during the early Middle Ages, was slow, with many games lasting for days. Some variations in rules began to change the shape of the game by 1300 AD. A notable, but initially unpopular, change was the ability of the pawn to move two places in the first move instead of one.
...
Queen once moving two squares with jump, diagonally or straight. This right was sometimes extended to a new queen made by promoting a pawn.
The short assize. ("assize" = "sitting".) Here the pawns started on the third rank; the queens started on d3 and d6 along with the queens' pawns; the players arranged their other pieces as they wished behind their pawns at the start of the game. This idea did not endure."

The moves hadn't changed drastically, mind, just the depictions. Hence:

"In Europe some of the pieces gradually got new names:

Fers: "queen", because it starts beside the King.
Aufin: "bishop", because its two points looked like a bishop's mitre; In French fou; and others. Its Latin name alfinus was reinterpreted many ways."

The changes to the bishop and the queen:
"The queen and bishop remained relatively weak until[12] between 1475 AD and 1500 AD, in either Spain, Portugal, France or Italy, the queen's and bishop's modern moves started and spread, making chess close to its modern form. "

So, chess has been in its modern form for about 500yrs.

Was this supposed to support your argument about how radically and quickly chess has changed over the years?

[fectin]

Err, actually your original argument was that a long stretch of relatively stable rules for DnD showed that those rules were good. Somehow, you reached for chess's currently stable rules as a comparison. Frank et al. pointed out that chess went through a long, slow set of rules revisions before it reached its current (nominal) prefect state.

I really don't understand why you are underscoring their point.

[StormBringer]

As for Chess, it's actually a pretty good analogy for early D&D. When the Queen piece was first brought in (replacing the "Vizier"), she only moved one space. Over the centuries, people gradually came to the understanding that she needed some fucking abilities.

-Username17

And had Ye Gamme Denne existed then, within two or three years there would have been a chorus of screaming that the Queen was broken, has the 'I win' button because she can move anywhere, and has made the King (and pretty much all the other pieces) completely useless.

And the Queen didn't replace the Vizir. They are the same piece, they just changed the name.

[fectin]

Only if black had Queens and white had viziers.

[Username17]

Does anyone else think it's hilarious that StormBringer is now so far into strawmanning that in order to try to support his idea that AD&D was just fine and didn't need changes that he is accusing us of being the kind of people who would have claimed that Chess was just fine and didn't need changes had we lived five hundred years ago?

In the Chess analogy, the people who are opposed to changing the rules are the people who are opposed to changing the rules. The degree to which StormBringer keeps scoring "own goals" is actually breaking my brain.

He is literally the person he is making fun of in his own strawman analogy.

-Username17

[StormBringer]

Err, actually your original argument was that a long stretch of relatively stable rules for DnD showed that those rules were good. Somehow, you reached for chess's currently stable rules as a comparison. Frank et al. pointed out that chess went through a long, slow set of rules revisions before it reached its current (nominal) prefect state.

I really don't understand why you are underscoring their point.

Yes, relatively minor changes over centuries. Meaning, it was virtually stable since the beginning.

I am not against changes in D&D, I think there are some things that need updates and tweaks. Largely, I think those should be things individuals do at their own tables, though. D&D was popular for 25 years (albeit not problem free, of course), underwent massive changes with 3.0, then more rapid and radical changes in the twelve years since. I am not discounting the influence of the internet on the ability to be heard, but it seems like all the major complaints started a few years after 3.0 was released. I find the timing (and the claim that AD&D obviously sucked) intriguing. In fact, the changes from 3.x to 4e were so radical, a former 'vassal' broke off, keeping the 3.x ruleset, and was a major challenge to the dominance of D&D.

So, my question is, are we sure that AD&D was a horrible set of rules (being largely stable for 25 years) that no one really liked? Further, that 3.x (radical changes before and during) is manna from heaven? Isn't the mere existence of The Gaming Den (whose sole purpose seems to be demonstrating how horribly broken almost every aspect of 3.x is) some kind of evidence that these two statements may be reversed? Maybe AD&D only needed a few minor changes, because it wasn't quite so hated as claimed; maybe the radical changes in 3.x really are the problem with the game, not this particular spell or that particular feat.

Maybe?

[Ted the Flayer]

and there was that one time he insisted that "ax" wasn't a word and I couldn't use it.

You're blaming his houserules there. In the official (at least in the USA prior to 2002) rules the response is "are you fucking challenging? if so break out the dictionary and one of us will be losing a turn. If not, shut the fuck up."

I did ask to check the dictionary, he said that using the dictionary was cheating, and he then slapped me for back-talk. Also, I was 9 at the time.

[StormBringer]

He is literally the person he is making fun of in his own strawman analogy.

-Username17

But, Frank, all these additional rules and feats and spells and character options ("features") and how they interact in very broken ways is exactly what you spend your days posting about over here.

You take this mass of poorly vetted rules, combine them in obviously broken ways, then complain about how broken the rules are. You demand more features for certain classes, then pull a 'gotcha' with how those features further damage overall game play.

Don't get me wrong, it's valuable reading on how to avoid many game design pitfalls. But you can't scream about more class features, then scream about how those class features have broken the game even more. Well, I mean, you can. It's just really disingenuous.

George Berkeley tagged you over 300 years ago:

I am inclined to think that the far greater part, if not all, of those difficulties which have hitherto amused philosophers, and blocked up the way to knowledge, are entirely owing to ourselves that we have first raised a dust and then complain we cannot see.

[Username17]

But you can't scream about more class features, then scream about how those class features have broken the game even more. Well, I mean, you can. It's just really disingenuous.

I can't tell: are you just trolling, or are you really that fucking stupid?

Decrying a situation where there are not enough abilities is in no way incompatible with decrying a situation where abilities are badly written or unbalanced. It's fully compatible, and the stance is "there should be more well-written material". If you think it is disingenuous to ask for more and to also ask that the quality of what you get remain high, then your standards are too low.

-Username17

[DSMatticus]

But, Frank, all these additional rules and feats and spells and character options ("features") and how they interact in very broken ways is exactly what you spend your days posting about over here.

You take this mass of poorly vetted rules, combine them in obviously broken ways, then complain about how broken the rules are. You demand more features for certain classes, then pull a 'gotcha' with how those features further damage overall game play.

You are retarded and everything you say is something you and your close family should be deeply ashamed of.

What we are actually talking about is shit like how wizards and dragons have fly, but fighters do not. That is not a combo. That is a single ability. A single spell. The opposition has it, the wizard has it, the fighter does not, the fighter is not carrying his weight.

What we are actually talking about is how the wizard is better off casting fly on himself (so he can fight the dragon) instead of the fighter (so he can die) if he woke up in the morning and did not take any evocations (the only school of magic that isn't full of awesome). Those are not interactions. They are not combos. They are wizards waking up in the morning, taking sleep, color spray, wail of the banshee, or anything inbetween, and being better than the fighter because he can and will kill more things.

We are not pointing out "convoluted class feature/feat/spell combo that makes the fighter obsolete; lol imbalanced." No. We are pointing out how practically every core spell in the game contributes in a big way to making the fighter straight-up obsolete by level 5 or earlier. How the wizard can do anything the fighter can, and then a lot more of it. The wizard can contribute to every non-combat and every combat sitaution, and the fighter, by mid-level, cannot even contribute to combat at the same level as anyone else without the convoluted 'broken' combos you are referring to.

You are terrible. Absolutely terrible. Stop talking.

[Sashi]

The AD&D rules are bad. There's no way to get around it. They are incomplete, inconsistent, overwrought, poorly written, and contradictory.

They are the equivalent of the official "Royal Chess Society" pamphlet of chess rules in the 1200's neglecting to include how pawns capture (while still having En Passant rules that say the pawn captures "in the standard way"), lists on page 2 that Rooks should be on columns 1&8, then (after listing the knight) on page 4 relists the Rooks as being on 2&7. It also, in the middle of listing the Bishop rules, goes on a 2-page screed of how stalemates are the worst thing in the universe, chess does not support stalemates as they go completely counter to the "intention" of the rules of chess and anyway are impossible to achieve if the game is played "correctly".

The rules on pawn promotion also accidentally allow only Black to promote pawns. And possibly allow Black to turn White pawns that would promote into black pieces.

Now nobody actually plays that game because it's impossible and unfair. Any group of chess aficionados in the 1200's who want to play chess with only that pamphlet available to them are going to have to make house rules if they want to play "Chess". Not even the officiants of the Royal Chess Society who wrote the rules are playing it that way because, again, it's impossible you have to, at the very least, agree on how the Rook actually functions.

Then in the 1400's the Royal Chess Society publishes a new set of rules that says how Pawns capture, lists the Rook on only columns 1&8, "clarifies" that both players can promote pawns, and exclusively to non-king pieces of their own color, introduces Castling (a popular rule on the tournament circuit), and says that the player who "initiates" a stalemate loses the game (which sparks a huge debate on what it means to "initiate" a stalemate).

And you are honestly arguing that the 1200's rules were "good" because "people still played chess in the 1200's". It doesn't work that way, being so poorly written that everyone literally has to houserule the game even if they aren't aware they are doing that is not a "feature" it is a flaw of the rules and it makes the actual rules bad. Full stop.

[Lago PARANOIA]

We are not pointing out "convoluted class feature/feat/spell combo that makes the fighter obsolete; lol imbalanced." No. We are pointing out how practically every core spell in the game contributes in a big way to making the fighter straight-up obsolete by level 5 or earlier. How the wizard can do anything the fighter can, and then a lot more of it. The wizard can contribute to every non-combat and every combat sitaution, and the fighter, by mid-level, cannot even contribute to combat at the same level as anyone else without the convoluted 'broken' combos you are referring to.

I'd like to point out that the meme of 'the fighter is bad because of a specific spell/combo/item' leads to Pathfinder SRD-only, no third-party cleric-archers being even more powerful than your average 3.5E '2 WotC sourcebooks per player' cleric-archer even though Divine Power/Righteous Might/Polymorph got sodomized with the nerf-stick.

I'm almost considering posting a build on the Pathfinder thread; the degree to which the blaster cleric and the cleric archer overlap in Pathfinder is laughable, to the point where they really aren't distinct builds. The choice is seriously 'do you want your spells to be moderately harder to resist' or 'do you want to do a lot more weapon damage'. That's unfairly overpowered, by the way, but people refusing to examine why the fighter and his worthless friends suck keep recreating the situation.

[CRKrueger]

The AD&D rules are bad. There's no way to get around it. They are incomplete, inconsistent, overwrought, poorly written, and contradictory.

They are the equivalent of the official "Royal Chess Society" pamphlet of chess rules in the 1200's neglecting to include how pawns capture (while still having En Passant rules that say the pawn captures "in the standard way"), lists on page 2 that Rooks should be on columns 1&8, then (after listing the knight) on page 4 relists the Rooks as being on 2&7. It also, in the middle of listing the Bishop rules, goes on a 2-page screed of how stalemates are the worst thing in the universe, chess does not support stalemates as they go completely counter to the "intention" of the rules of chess and anyway are impossible to achieve if the game is played "correctly".

The rules on pawn promotion also accidentally allow only Black to promote pawns. And possibly allow Black to turn White pawns that would promote into black pieces.

Now nobody actually plays that game because it's impossible and unfair. Any group of chess aficionados in the 1200's who want to play chess with only that pamphlet available to them are going to have to make house rules if they want to play "Chess". Not even the officiants of the Royal Chess Society who wrote the rules are playing it that way because, again, it's impossible you have to, at the very least, agree on how the Rook actually functions.

Then in the 1400's the Royal Chess Society publishes a new set of rules that says how Pawns capture, lists the Rook on only columns 1&8, "clarifies" that both players can promote pawns, and exclusively to non-king pieces of their own color, introduces Castling (a popular rule on the tournament circuit), and says that the player who "initiates" a stalemate loses the game (which sparks a huge debate on what it means to "initiate" a stalemate).

And you are honestly arguing that the 1200's rules were "good" because "people still played chess in the 1200's". It doesn't work that way, being so poorly written that everyone literally has to houserule the game even if they aren't aware they are doing that is not a "feature" it is a flaw of the rules and it makes the actual rules bad. Full stop.

Interesting analogy. It would, of course, had been better if you had provided page numbers and quotes from the AD&D books instead of the 1200 Chess Manual. You proved the 1200 Chess Manual RAW was unplayable, however, proof does not carry over with an analogy.

Personally, I think OD&D is a closer match to the 1200 manual, with AD&D being the 1400 version. 3e would be the version of Chess where certain pieces were given the combined moves of all the pieces, leaving the other pieces rather lacking.