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MadScientistWorking posted:Eberron fundamentally was designed from the get go to include film noir and similar genres which tends to put emphasis more on political intrigue than it does in any of those other settings. Sure Forgotten Realms has Waterdeep and Neverwinter which are actually pretty cool but its a small fraction compared to Eberron. Film noir still has stuff like shootouts and bank heists and roughing up thugs to get info out of them which all translate really easily into D&D combat. Eberron does have some great political intrigue but the setting changes the rules of D&D so minimally that it's not innately more non-combat focused than FR or Dark Sun or whatever else.
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Mar 14, 2013 23:39
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Using the extreme outliers of CharOp (bullshit CharOp board characters versus hypothetical Can't Fight Dude) is dumb and you keep shifting the goalposts here so let's talk about food again Baking bread owns. Sometimes I'll make a quick cinnamon bread for game night, very heavy on the cinnamon. The GWS Banana Bread is a good place to start, just sub out the nuts and put a ton of cinnamon in there instead. Taking out the bananas is fine too but I like banana-cinnamon. You can sub out the banana and put coconut in there instead, put a little pineapple juice in the mix, then top with pineapples and it's amazing.
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Mar 14, 2013 23:40
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Mikan posted:Using the extreme outliers of CharOp (bullshit CharOp board characters versus hypothetical Can't Fight Dude) is dumb and you keep shifting the goalposts here so let's talk about food again Something that I had once that was actually really good is a banana bread by way of carrot cake. Someone had taken a banana bread recipe and "cakified" it (using different proportions of flour, eggs, and such...more of a kitchen wizard than I would have to be the one to express the exact formula), added raisins and walnuts and I'm pretty sure cinnamon, and then gave it a cream cheese frosting topped with dried banana chips. It was pretty loving good, I've gotta say. I bet you could do something like that and add some coconut and/or pineapple too and it'd work out a treat.
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Mar 14, 2013 23:51
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Brother Entropy posted:Film noir still has stuff like shootouts and bank heists and roughing up thugs to get info out of them which all translate really easily into D&D combat. MadScientistWorking fucked around with this message at 00:08 on Mar 15, 2013 |
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Mar 14, 2013 23:59
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Kai Tave posted:Jesus loving Christ. I take what I said back THIS is what is most entertaining about D&D Next. Either that or maybe how I get to see how rock hard a forum gets over their preferred edition. MadScientistWorking posted:The bank heist concept actually is sufficient enough to design an entire game around. D&D Bank Robbing module has got you covered. (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
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Mar 15, 2013 00:11
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Have Some Flowers! posted:Take a look at the list of optimized characters here - http://community.wizards.com/go/thread/view/75882/28872281/DPR_King_Candidates_3.0. Or don't. 4e CHarOps, devoid of 3.x's very clearly broken mess, have done what they can to try to break 4e and recreate it in that image. This typically entails finding the spergiest or buggiest messes and then demanding that everyone else play with them or that this is the one TRUE way to play. The "DPR King" stuff is the worst, because most of those characters are simply unplayable and sacrifice absolutely everything just to get their numbers higher, often abandoning even the slightest pretense of being a character you would play. The problem with 3e was never "that jerk who made a super powerful character and one shot everything," and that's what 4e CharOps tends to represent. The problem was always "that guy who accidentally made the character that one shots everything" or "the new player who just wanted to be a cool fighter" or "the dude who updated his wizard to 3e and now all of a sudden he's better then the rogue at everything." dwarf74 posted:Hey, look: more warlord talk. So the response is pretty much as I expected. Roll out one of the few guys seen as still being "for the 4e players" and have him soothe - but not appease - the 4e side as much as possible. Actually, what's funny here is that, despite this article being little more then them trying to continue stringing 4e fans along, it's still written for people who hated 4e. Come on, referencing a comic book hero shouting someone back to life? They're still engaging in edition war rhetoric - while trying to convince you to play their game! Credit where it's due, this IS the most backhanded article I've seen in awhile.
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Mar 15, 2013 00:34
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here, from probably the most warlord-friendly guy on the team. Still clearly lukewarm.
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kingcom posted:D&D Bank Robbing module has got you covered.
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Mar 15, 2013 00:45
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ProfessorCirno posted:Or don't. Just saying, nothing on the DPR Kings list is actually supposed to be played; they're mostly exercises in number crunching and exploring different game elements to see how far they can be pushed. I won't pretend to know what goes on in every CharOper's head, but most of the regulars on that board tend to advocate not breaking the game over your knee for the hell of it. Not to mention a lot of the DPR demonstrated there is useless since at a certain point you reach diminishing returns. For the reasons you say, no one actually plays these builds because they're so narrow in focus.
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Mar 15, 2013 00:58
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Have Some Flowers! posted:Take a look at the list of optimized characters here - http://community.wizards.com/go/thread/view/75882/28872281/DPR_King_Candidates_3.0. Hi, I'm from CharOp and here to tell you nobody takes the DPR kings seriously because they are theoryop. They're deficient builds that sacrifice mobility, practical damage and survivability for those silly numbers. You're wrong if you think they represent a proper CharOp's best striker, bye. (The difference between a baseline and opped character isn't 10%, mind. It's more like 30 to 50%, but that is still a minimal difference because we're talking 100% vs 150%, not 50% vs 100%. AKA, the baseline is functional.)
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Mar 15, 2013 01:05
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kingcom posted:D&D Bank Robbing module has got you covered. Thing is, there's a lot of design space that gets left by the wayside in most RPGs in favor of combat getting the most robust challenge/task resolution work. There's nothing preventing you from making a system that's as in-depth as fighting goblins but geared towards, say, robbing banks or trying to convince the king to lend you his support. Some, not many, but some games do this. SpyCraft 2.0 has a set of challenge rules that are sorta kinda like skill challenges? Only someone who likes SpyCraft and hates skill challenges will get mad at me for making that comparison and it's not ENTIRELY correct, but it's more than simply going "okay, roll your HACKING skill a half dozen times, done," and it covers things like car chases, infiltration, interrogation, hacking, manhunts, etc. Then there's stuff like Weapons of the Gods' "Great Game" which is a system meant to deal with everything from mass combat to political upheaval. And of course you have games like Cortex which attempt to frame every challenge using a multi-purpose resolution system. I could see D&D doing stuff like this. I'd think it would be the bee's knees if they actually made a bank robbing module, and a nation building/ruling module ala Reign, and a "helping one Planescape Faction change the metaphysical narrative of reality" module, and all that poo poo. I also agree that 4E didn't do as much towards this as it could have and that skill challenges weren't really as well-handled as they could have been. That said; 1). The overall goal of 4E was "everybody participates at every juncture," not siloed spotlight time, and speaking personally I prefer this approach to the "fighty guy gets to fight, then sits and waits while talky guy does all the talking because fighty guy is fight-optimized and can't diplomize worth poo poo, then sneaky guy does the sneaking because both fighty and talky guy are bad at sneaking and why would you bring them to do that?" approach. This is frankly the approach they'd rather keep to going forward than going back to the idea of one guy making a super-skilled but crap at fighting guy coexist with Sir Stabs von Murderfuck. You're all around the table together, I feel like everybody ought to be doing poo poo together, at least most of the time. So even in a D&D where they beefed up the non-combat resolution, I'd still want them to keep it so that your Rogue or Bard wasn't just hanging out when the fighting starts, maybe singing a song or ineffectually trying to backstab a couple of dudes before checking out. 2). None of this really matters anyway because frankly I doubt any of this sort of stuff is at all a priority for the Next design team.
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Mar 15, 2013 01:05
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The 4e charop thing was kinda infectious. There was one campaign where I played an oAssassin. I was the only striker in the group, so I wasn't comparing myself to any theoretical oprimized ranger or something, and my damage output was perfectly fine considering the challenges we were going against. But the frequent refrains about how bad the Assassin's DPR was was made me insecure as hell about the class I chose and got me into a mindset where I had to try and optimize the poo poo out of it.
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Mar 15, 2013 01:09
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The reason I mentioned the CharOp thread was to point out that the difference between an optimized character and a bad one wasn't "like 10% or something", it can potentially be a lot more than that. I never see anyone actually play those busted characters, but it's just to illustrate a point. I also actually agree with Kai Tave that normally that disparity doesn't matter or affect people's enjoyment of the game. The problem is when it does matter. It matters when you're GM'ing games with a mix of seasoned and new players. I've heard stuff from the new players like "I don't think my character is any good" or "why should I even fight." Another sad one was "Okay I'll do that, but I'm not sure why." These aren't rear end in a top hat players pushing the newer ones around or demanding results, it's friends trying to help friends enjoy the game and enjoy the combat. For a newer GM, balancing content for unbalanced parties is actually difficult, even when we aren't talking about the extremes of AwfulGuy vs DPR King. Think about why you don't mix high level characters with low level ones. Same drat thing. Hitting that balance of encounters that are challenging for the beefy characters but not totally brutal for the average ones is difficult, especially when the disparity is bigger. This is one of the reasons a lot of GM's say stuff like "core books only" - it's too much poo poo to consider and factor in. Some players also feel pressured or like they're missing out if they aren't using the added resources and others are. I'm not making this poo poo up for the sake of argument, this is feedback I get from players and what I've personally experienced.
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Mar 15, 2013 01:12
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Der Waffle Mous posted:Ossassin The issue with the Ossassin wasn't/isn't that it's damage can't be "perfectly fine"...it's just inferior to other striker classes. Anything you can do damage-wise with an Ossassin can be done on another chasis, but better since those other classes have better support/options. So yeah, it's not so much that it's horrible, it's just not as good. All this 4e CharOp talk probably belongs in the actual 4e thread though.
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Mar 15, 2013 01:29
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Have Some Flowers! posted:The reason I mentioned the CharOp thread was to point out that the difference between an optimized character and a bad one wasn't "like 10% or something", it can potentially be a lot more than that. And in the interest of fairness I'll cop to that. I should have simply said "the gap between a charopped 4E character and a non-oped one is much, much, much smaller than the gap between a charopped 3.X character and a non-oped one, to the point where you can have both in the party and not accidentally end up playing Ars Magica." quote:The problem is when it does matter. It matters when you're GM'ing games with a mix of seasoned and new players. I've heard stuff from the new players like "I don't think my character is any good" or "why should I even fight." Anecdote not equaling data, I don't know what to tell you except that my own personal 4E gaming experiences have involved a wide mix of players from the seasoned fatbeards to the casual newbies and rarely has this ever been an issue the way you're describing it, and the most  rant I've ever seen came from a dedicated gamer who's played 4E longer than I have who kept complaining that his Monk kept getting hit all the time despite jacking his AC up through the roof.quote:Another sad one was "Okay I'll do that, but I'm not sure why." These aren't rear end in a top hat players pushing the newer ones around or demanding results, it's friends trying to help friends enjoy the game and enjoy the combat. Well at the risk of sounding like That Guy, some of this kind of sounds to me like it's not an issue that has anythng to do with charop so much as maybe these new players honestly just don't get some stuff and maybe need it explained to them, not in a patronizing way but just in a "hey, here's a thing maybe you don't know" sort of way? I've been doing this sort of thing since 1996 or so and it still took me a little while to really get some stuff about 4E that made the lightbulb go off above my head when I finally figured it out. Things like "I'll do that but I'm not sure why" and "I don't think my character is any good" sounds to me like, I dunno man, it sounds to me like the issue isn't really stemming from the game in a way you can address solely through system tinkering. But I'm just a dude on the internet getting this second-hand, so I could be way off base.
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Mar 15, 2013 01:29
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Kai Tave posted:That said; 4E did provide for encounters that layered threats at least. You could have part of the party fighting while a rogue disarmed a trap and the cleric banished a portal or whatever. Another example would be the fighty guy and wizard silencing a patroling guard while the rogue was sneaking into a building and going through records. The encounters don't have to be all fight, all sneak, all skills or all talking. Sometimes the fun happens specifically when you take characters out of their element too, like throwing the crass barbarian into a social situation, or when the lorekeeper finishes a villain with the swat of a staff. So much of it comes back again and again to the GM's ability to work people's strengths and weaknesses in.
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Mar 15, 2013 01:35
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Generic Octopus posted:The issue with the Ossassin wasn't/isn't that it's damage can't be "perfectly fine"...it's just inferior to other striker classes. Anything you can do damage-wise with an Ossassin can be done on another chasis, but better since those other classes have better support/options. Well sure, but again, this was a case where there wasn't another striker in the party I could stare at wistfully as I got completely overshadowed. Actually, now that I think of it, there was, he was a sorcerer, and it was less of a damage competition than it was seeing what kind of ridiculous reflavored action-movie shenanigans we could get away with. Which, of all things, the ossassin was pretty good at.
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Mar 15, 2013 01:41
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Have Some Flowers! posted:This is one of the reasons a lot of GM's say stuff like "core books only" - it's too much poo poo to consider and factor in. Some players also feel pressured or like they're missing out if they aren't using the added resources and others are. I'm not making this poo poo up for the sake of argument, this is feedback I get from players and what I've personally experienced. That's one of the reasons one of my groups plays D&D with the "core only" thing. We have two experienced players who could easily make the most powerful characters in the party (and can usually be trusted not to, but might do it by accident anyway), one experienced player whose decision paralysis kicks in at three options, one semi-experienced player who's not that into fantasy, one player who games a lot but doesn't really get into RPG combat and is all about the roleplaying, and one brand new newbie who has no idea what they're doing but has fun pretending to be a fantasy character. If we added PhB 2 and 3, then not-into-fantasy lady would pick a core race/class anyway (because she knows them already), not-into-combat-guy wouldn't care since he just roleplays however he wants and isn't that interested in the fighting, and brand-new-newbie would say something like "I'm don't have time to read 3 loving books" and be perfectly justified in having that opinion. Option-paralysis guy, who's been gaming for over 20 years, would be likely to make an excuse to not play, or else spend so long trying to figure out a "good" thing to be that he'd never get around to actually making a character. Our usual in-game fight strategy is to work at cross-purposes and hope things work out. In 4e, it usually works. Mostly because it's impossible to accidentally produce a useless character, even if you have no idea what you're doing. If you follow the steps in the PhB, you get someone with combat competency and at least one useful skill.
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Mar 15, 2013 01:52
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Iunno, I never ran into problems with too much material in my group (i.e. option paralysis) because the Character Builder + DDI Compendium kept it all pretty manageable. The only actual 4e book I own is the Rules Compendium, DM has picked up campaign books when needed. I really hope they maintain the 4e tools and develop some for Next, they just make the game so much more accessible. I don't think I would've ever gotten into it if I had to buy all the books/products...it just costs too drat much. A few years of DDI has been far cheaper than buying every supplement. Actually, the more I think about it, the DDI tools are pretty much what got me into 4e in the first place. Just made things so much easier to manage.
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Mar 15, 2013 02:06
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Have Some Flowers! posted:Myself and thousands (millions?) of others have enjoyed the non-combat interaction and challenges in D&D. I don't think it's unreasonable to put attention on the non-combat aspects of the game, because that's a huge draw for many players, even for players like myself who also really enjoy the combat.
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Mar 15, 2013 02:19
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To drag this poo poo back on topic, remember when Next was supposed to address the whole "combat/social/exploration" business directly, via some "three pillar" system? Yeah, remember that? Whatever happened to that? Have they brought it up at all recently?
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Mar 15, 2013 02:25
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Kai Tave posted:To drag this poo poo back on topic, remember when Next was supposed to address the whole "combat/social/exploration" business directly, via some "three pillar" system? Yeah, remember that? Whatever happened to that? Have they brought it up at all recently? I thought that was bioware's model? Actually havn't they said they would address the multi-play style nature of D&D in every edition? Splicer posted:If you can roleplay in 3.x but not 4E, you're mistaking familiarity for system support I feel this may be the crux of the issue. If I know 3.x and am comfortable enough to be able to mess with it to get the experience I want. Why would I move to 4th? I wonder if that same circumstance is going to reappear with 4E people moving to NEXT. I mean if the combat isn't your priority/isnt enough of a better system for you to spend more money. Why move? kingcom fucked around with this message at 02:36 on Mar 15, 2013 |
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Mar 15, 2013 02:29
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Splicer posted:Let me rephrase... 4e was no worse than previous editions at this, and in some respects, arguably better. If you find you can't roleplay in 4E, then you couldn't roleplay in 3.x. If you found yourself able to roleplay in 3.x, you can roleplay in 4E. If you can roleplay in 3.x but not 4E, you're mistaking familiarity for system support and/or you went into 4E expecting to be unable to play in tabletop WoW and took this self-fulfilling prophecy as an issue with the system. Think about your first experiences with making a character. Most of your decisions affect your powers and abilities in combat, and only a few speak to your background, quirks, relationships, motives and so on. I guess it's just assumed that players will focus on those things outside of the system, but I know many players (especially new ones) aren't wired that way unless you prompt them. The initial state for most new players is "okay, what am I allowed to do" rather than "what can't I try?" I agree that it's not an actual limitation of 4E but just a matter of player and GM focus. I don't see any changes with D&D Next that will affect the incentives of where to focus, for better or worse really.
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Mar 15, 2013 02:38
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Kai Tave posted:To drag this poo poo back on topic, remember when Next was supposed to address the whole "combat/social/exploration" business directly, via some "three pillar" system? Yeah, remember that? Whatever happened to that? Have they brought it up at all recently? (insert Next design process) Three Pillar Support, New and Improved: The game can be split into three segments, combat, social, and exploration. Each class will be hard-coded to be functional in only one, maybe two of these situations. Except spellcasters who will of course remain good at everything. But a Fighter will be really good at swinging a sword because he has his Combat pillar maxed out, and a Rogue will have Not-Combat maxed out and some combat! But seriously, wizard still has to be best at everything. Pillars! In other words, they completely inverted an excellent concept while keeping the same name. Because they're a pile of idiots.
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Mar 15, 2013 02:41
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Have Some Flowers! posted:That's a fair point, too. It is what you make of it, and always has been. I think the confusion comes from where the players see all the structure is. If the majority of the instruction about the game is about combat, it makes sense that a player would feel like they were doing it wrong by focusing on non-combat roleplaying.
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Mar 15, 2013 02:43
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kingcom posted:I thought that was bioware's model? Actually havn't they said they would address the multi-play style nature of D&D in every edition? The main reason to play 4th over 3.x is that it's tactical combat is leagues better. If that's not your "thing" then there's no real reason to play 4th over 3.x, as the skill systems/non-combaty stuff are very similar rules-wise. I'm not sure what reason there is to move to Next from 3.x or 4th from what we've seen so far whether taking combat into account or not though.
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Mar 15, 2013 02:48
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kingcom posted:I feel this may be the crux of the issue. If I know 3.x and am comfortable enough to be able to mess with it to get the experience I want. Why would I move to 4th? I wonder if that same circumstance is going to reappear with 4E people moving to NEXT. I mean the combat isn't your priority/isnt enough of a better system for you to spend more money. Why move? This is the crux of the issue with every edition change in every game ever except maybe Call of Cthulhu and even then I'm not 100% sure. If you're comfortable and familiar with the current edition, why would you change to the new one? Well, there are a couple reasons maybe, how compelling they are is debatable: 1). Because it's new and people like trying new things. If you're familiar with 3.X because you've played it for five straight years, maybe you want a new approach to elfgaming even if you don't hate 3.X but you still want, y'know, dungeons and dragons and elves and orcs. 2). Because it's what everyone else around you is starting to play and you feel like you have to switch over to keep playing. 3). Because WotC ninjas set fire to all your previous edition books and now you have nothing but ashes and bitter tears to remember them by. The way I figure it, losing some of your fanbase when you make a new edition of a game like this is an inevitability, it's the price of changing editions. What you do, I assume, is use the new edition to both retain those of your fans who like your stuff but don't like it so much that they don't want to see something new and (hopefully in some way) better and to try and draw in new people who didn't care for your last offering (out of dislike or just apathy/non-recognition) but might like this new one. It seems to me that's how WotC approached 3E as well as 4E. With 5E the "try and draw in new people" side of things seems to be getting short shrift next to trying to draw fans of prior editions who chose not to move on to newer ones back, which seems like a bit of a losing proposition in the sense that if people chose not to move on to newer editions it's probably because they stuck with what they like. So to do this they're having to try and make Next the "just like the D&D you love only better" to something like two or three different fanbases and I dunno, it seems like kind of a recipe for a big ol' mess but I'm not a professional smartyman game designer so I could be totally wrong. But it feels like they're setting themselves up for a long uphill struggle with this.
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Mar 15, 2013 02:48
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Splicer posted:Three Pillar From what I remember, the majority of fans immediately misunderstood the three pillar system to be along the lines of "Fighter: All combat pillar, nothing else. Rogue: Most of the exploration pillar, some of the combat pillar", rather than what WoTC was originally talking about. I'm not saying that influenced the design, just that the misunderstanding was immediate.
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Mar 15, 2013 02:52
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Kai Tave posted:But it feels like they're setting themselves up for a long uphill struggle with this. It's especially tough with a new game system because GMs and players provide much of the content involved. Like, I can keep coming up with new 4E adventures and campaigns for my players if they want to keep playing 4E. Or I can just take the new campaign settings and ideas and turn them into 4E adventures. It's not like I'm deciding to stick with a PlayStation 2 and I'm never getting another new video game. What about a "free to start, pay for benefits" model where all the core material was freely available (to drag in more potential customers) but players had incentives to buy extra stuff for convenience or fun? Something like League of Legends - the fact that it's free means they have like 12 million daily players or something ridiculous, and those are all potential paying customers for their other perks and benefits. For instance, if after I created my character on the free Character Builder, if I could pick through hundreds of options for what my character looked like (like video game character creation) and then buy that exact miniature, unpainted or painted, and have it shipped to me? That'd be great. Tons of people would do that. GM's would love it if they could order exactly what they wanted. If D&D Next was just a better marketed version of D&D, that could be enough for a rebirth of the hobby, even if the rules were unremarkable otherwise. I doubt that will happen if they're just looking to sell new books and new supplements though.
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Mar 15, 2013 03:39
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Kai Tave posted:It seems to me that's how WotC approached 3E as well as 4E. With 5E the "try and draw in new people" side of things seems to be getting short shrift next to trying to draw fans of prior editions who chose not to move on to newer ones back, which seems like a bit of a losing proposition in the sense that if people chose not to move on to newer editions it's probably because they stuck with what they like. So to do this they're having to try and make Next the "just like the D&D you love only better" to something like two or three different fanbases and I dunno, it seems like kind of a recipe for a big ol' mess but I'm not a professional smartyman game designer so I could be totally wrong. But it feels like they're setting themselves up for a long uphill struggle with this. This is more what I was saying, that its an impossible goal unless the genuinely decide to open things up of improve a new area and make that the selling point. For someone like me who is that potential market, working to improve non-combat stuff would get me to try it out.
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Mar 15, 2013 03:40
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Have they ever directly addressed how, exactly, they're going to circumvent the problem of trying to attract these people who found a system they like and stuck with it? I know the blurb about having something for everyone, but nothing so far has attracted me to Next over something another edition does.
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Mar 15, 2013 03:59
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AlphaDog posted:From what I remember, the majority of fans immediately misunderstood the three pillar system to be along the lines of "Fighter: All combat pillar, nothing else. Rogue: Most of the exploration pillar, some of the combat pillar", rather than what WoTC was originally talking about. I don't think there was any misunderstanding there, because if I remember WotC outright used that as an example.
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Mar 15, 2013 04:04
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ProfessorCirno posted:I don't think there was any misunderstanding there, because if I remember WotC outright used that as an example. Oh? Then my memory's flawed. Because what I remember is WotC saying "Three pillars, separated stuff, sounds pretty awesome, right?" and then the fanbase immediately responding with various renditions "Oh cool, so you can easily see that out of fight/explore/discuss, a fighter has like 100/0/0 and a cleric has 50/25/25 and a rogue has 25/50/25 and a wizard has 100/100/100! This is the best thing!" I don't think that's necessarily what WotC originally meant. But I might be remembering goons (I think mainly you and Splicer) talking about how to do "siloing" the right way. Elector_Nerdlingen fucked around with this message at 05:34 on Mar 15, 2013 |
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Mar 15, 2013 05:29
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Darwinism posted:Have they ever directly addressed how, exactly, they're going to circumvent the problem of trying to attract these people who found a system they like and stuck with it? I know the blurb about having something for everyone, but nothing so far has attracted me to Next over something another edition does. ITS GOING TO BE MODULAR.
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Mar 15, 2013 05:39
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AlphaDog posted:Oh? No, yeah, over here we were saying "They should use the three pillars to make differences for classes" and then WotC choose to say "Now see a class like Fighter might be 5/0/0, while a rogue might be 3/2/2..." You got us switched.
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Mar 15, 2013 05:50
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MadScientistWorking posted:You haven't really read the setting all that much because arguably a large perecentage of the monsters shouldn't have been statted out. Seriously, one of the more important creatures in that setting is something that doesn't even have a body, is just a 2D shape on the wall, and is nothing more than a glorified You can argue all you want that a large percentage of those monsters shouldn't have been statted out, but they were because Planescape is a D&D setting, and D&D is about beating up stuff. quote:Eberron fundamentally was designed from the get go to include film noir and similar genres which tends to put emphasis more on political intrigue than it does in any of those other settings. Sure Forgotten Realms has Waterdeep and Neverwinter which are actually pretty cool but its a small fraction compared to Eberron. Eberron fundamentally was designed from the get go to include everything in 3E core, which means a lot of stuff to beat up and a lot of means with which to beat up that stuff. And you clearly have no idea how big and varied FR is if you think it's a small fraction of what Eberron has to offer. Eberron has a much greater thematic consistency, but FR is the fantasy kitchen sink. Anything you can do in D&D, you can do in FR; Faerun is stupid with political intrigue. You can downplay combat in any D&D setting that's more than a dungeon. Once you add a community of NPCs, you open the door for as much out-of-combat stuff as your group wants. I DM'd a BECMI campaign that was all about community building in Thunder Rift. I played in a Planescape campaign that was all about gatecrashing and kicking rear end. My last FR campaign involved a session dedicated to securing the best publishing deal for the warlord's memoirs. The last 4E campaign I ran was a Dark Sun campaign that ran the gamut from gladiatorial combat to establishing a slave tribe to a psychedelic dream quest. The last 4E campaign that I played in focused on working in the dwarf rogue's bar. In the end, they all involved all sorts of non-combat encounters, but they also all involved kicking a lot of rear end with spells and swords because that's what D&D is all about.
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Mar 15, 2013 07:25
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Kai Tave posted:This is the crux of the issue with every edition change in every game ever except maybe Call of Cthulhu and even then I'm not 100% sure. If you're comfortable and familiar with the current edition, why would you change to the new one? Well, there are a couple reasons maybe, how compelling they are is debatable: AlphaDog posted:Oh? Splicer fucked around with this message at 11:57 on Mar 15, 2013 |
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Mar 15, 2013 11:49
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PeterWeller posted:You can argue all you want that a large percentage of those monsters shouldn't have been statted out, but they were because Planescape is a D&D setting, and D&D is about beating up stuff. quote:Eberron fundamentally was designed from the get go to include everything in 3E core, which means a lot of stuff to beat up and a lot of means with which to beat up that stuff. quote:You can downplay combat in any D&D setting that's more than a dungeon. Once you add a community of NPCs, you open the door for as much out-of-combat stuff as your group wants. I DM'd a BECMI campaign that was all about community building in Thunder Rift. I played in a Planescape campaign that was all about gatecrashing and kicking rear end. My last FR campaign involved a session dedicated to securing the best publishing deal for the warlord's memoirs. The last 4E campaign I ran was a Dark Sun campaign that ran the gamut from gladiatorial combat to establishing a slave tribe to a psychedelic dream quest. The last 4E campaign that I played in focused on working in the dwarf rogue's bar. In the end, they all involved all sorts of non-combat encounters, but they also all involved kicking a lot of rear end with spells and swords because that's what D&D is all about. MadScientistWorking fucked around with this message at 14:55 on Mar 15, 2013 |
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Mar 15, 2013 14:41
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MadScientistWorking posted:No. More often than not monsters were mearly fluff pieces and I really forgot about that given that I'm not used to Monster Manuals being ecology guides more than just setpieces for fights. You and I are just going to go round and round this tree of you saying the monsters are just supposed to be fluff pieces and me pointing to their stat blocks to say they're not, so let's just drop it. I'll give you this: Planescape definitely offers a lot of fun and inspiring non-combat material for players. quote:I'm pretty sure Keith Baker said at one point that if he had the chance he actually would have ripped out some fundamental aspects of Dungeons and Dragons from the setting. Its probably the reason why that if you were to look at the setting real closely you would get some really insanely bizarre clashing of mechanics like the Order of the Silver Flame and the clerics never made sense until 4E. It really doesn't matter what Keith Baker said he did or didn't want to do with the setting. It doesn't belong to him, and he, obviously, doesn't get the final say. And even if there are things in 3E core he would have rather left out of the setting, that doesn't change how combat focused it is. Hell, Eberron feels like it's been tailor-made for the kind of cool set-piece battles that 4E does best. quote:I know that but my original point is that through the time frame of Dungeons and Dragons its readily aparent that no one actually knew what they wanted Dungeons and Dragons to be. There is one thing that unites all the disparate D&D playstyles: combat. It doesn't matter what edition you are playing; it doesn't matter whether you are playing fantasy 'Nam dungeoneers, traveling murder-hobos, or characters in a grand and intricate plot; you're going to bust out the D20s and make attack and saving rolls on a pretty regular basis.
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Mar 15, 2013 16:56
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PeterWeller posted:You and I are just going to go round and round this tree of you saying the monsters are just supposed to be fluff pieces and me pointing to their stat blocks to say they're not, so let's just drop it. I'll give you this: Planescape definitely offers a lot of fun and inspiring non-combat material for players. quote:It really doesn't matter what Keith Baker said he did or didn't want to do with the setting. It doesn't belong to him, and he, obviously, doesn't get the final say. And even if there are things in 3E core he would have rather left out of the setting, that doesn't change how combat focused it is. Hell, Eberron feels like it's been tailor-made for the kind of cool set-piece battles that 4E does best. 
MadScientistWorking fucked around with this message at 17:29 on Mar 15, 2013 |
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Mar 15, 2013 17:23
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PeterWeller posted:It really doesn't matter what Keith Baker said he did or didn't want to do with the setting. It doesn't belong to him, and he, obviously, doesn't get the final say. And even if there are things in 3E core he would have rather left out of the setting, that doesn't change how combat focused it is. Hell, Eberron feels like it's been tailor-made for the kind of cool set-piece battles that 4E does best. And he'll be the first one to tell you this, too. Baker is awesomely laid back about his "ownership" of the setting, and pretty much every article he writes starts and ends with "Change to suit your table's preferences, I'm not any better or more authoritative than you; this is just how I played it with my group." Which is one of the many reason's he's so nice to read. I wish he were involved with 5e more.
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Mar 15, 2013 17:32
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