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There was one salvagable bit of one all of the paragon level 4E adventures and that was the one where you were getting guided around the dungeon by the animated undead elf head in a floating glass bubble and they weren't entertaining enough to make up for like everything else about those adventures.
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Nov 26, 2017 04:40
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IIRC 5e's starting adventure isn't super great either.
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Nov 26, 2017 04:45
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Was it also written by Mearls?
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Nov 26, 2017 04:46
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LongDarkNight posted:How about some good and cool TradGames news. Magic: the Gathering and Dungeons & Dragons artist Tony DiTerlizzi has an art exhibit in the Norman Rockwell museum. According to my local NPR station its the first ever exhibition of D&D art in a museum. That's great to see, I to meet Diterlizzi several years back, got to talk him about semi-officially writing for Planescape, and got a sketch of the edgiest D&D character, Factol Pentar. It feels like he has a real fondness for the old D&D days that shows through when talking to him, even if professionally he's moved on.
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Nov 26, 2017 05:21
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It's been forever, I forgot, what were Keep's issues again? Was it just a boring dungeon crawl without anything interesting or did they put some wacky poo poo in it that made it too lovely to do to newbies?
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Nov 26, 2017 05:43
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ProfessorCirno posted:2e -> 3e was the larger change in mechanics, but it obfuscated 99% of it's changes and revived the brand. Honestly, in this day and age, if you're playing 5e, you deserve it. It is so easy to find out about and get better games now that the only reason to play bad games is if you can't get anyone to play anything else, or find anything better to do with your time.
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Nov 26, 2017 05:46
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as much as we poo poo on pathfinder around here even it is a vastly less bullshit system than 5e at this point if you literally can't not play dungeons and dragons
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Nov 26, 2017 05:49
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sexpig by night posted:It's been forever, I forgot, what were Keep's issues again? Was it just a boring dungeon crawl without anything interesting or did they put some wacky poo poo in it that made it too lovely to do to newbies?
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Nov 26, 2017 05:52
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sexpig by night posted:as much as we poo poo on pathfinder around here even it is a vastly less bullshit system than 5e at this point if you literally can't not play dungeons and dragons When I look at a Pathfinder class these days my eyes literally glaze over. 5e is at least lighter enough than PF that I can actually play it.
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Nov 26, 2017 06:00
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Also, I recall the pre-gens in KotS to be questionably designed (or at least most of them).
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Nov 26, 2017 06:00
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Kurieg posted:IIRC 5e's starting adventure isn't super great either. Kavak posted:Was it also written by Mearls? Hoard of the Dragon Queen was outsourced (to either Green Ronin or Kobold Press), and it was written before 5e's mechanics were really set-in-stone, and is all the weaker for it by having a number of encounters that are vastly overtuned or undertuned for the party. And this is on top of low-level 5e being a rocket-taggy shitshow anyway, combined with 5e having a lot of uneven class design. Lost Mine of Phandelver kinda sorta dodges some of these issues by being very unambitious, but the first 5 to 10 minutes of the game is still liable to produce TPKs from fighting packs of bog-standard goblins, though that has more to do with 5e as a whole than with LMOP's writing specifically. Even in later adventures you've still got problems, like the transition from Hoard of the Dragon Queen to Rise of Tiamat to be this really ham-handed magical flight to a completely different region, and some temples in Princes of the Apocalypse to be just rooms full of cultists to beat up on, but I suspect there's some kind of nerd fallacy going on where 5e isn't getting nearly as bad a rap as 4e's Keep on the Shadowfell. sexpig by night posted:It's been forever, I forgot, what were Keep's issues again? Was it just a boring dungeon crawl without anything interesting or did they put some wacky poo poo in it that made it too lovely to do to newbies? Having run it, the problem is that it's mostly a boring dungeon crawl. The party would have done something like a dozen combats in a row with nothing to break it up if I didn't insert things for them to interact with that wasn't just "kill them and take their stuff" KOTS was also early enough in the game's design that it was still using the "bad" monster math, where monsters had way too many hitpoints and way too high defenses, but simultaneously dealt so little damage that fights turned into a slog: the players weren't in danger, but it would take 5 or more turns to end an encounter, and the back-half of those encounters were down to spamming At-Wills because you already ran out of Encounter powers. Finally, the very first version of KOTS had a really deadly mini-boss kobold encounter that was vastly outleveled for the level 1 characters facing him. The revised version online (I can never actually find the original) has toned this down somewhat, but the module as-written still has all the other problems.
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Nov 26, 2017 06:16
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My experience with HotDQ was "Melee drops to 0HP in the first round because enemies get multi-attack far before players do, casters trivialize everything while I warm the ground with my near-corpse."
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Nov 26, 2017 06:26
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Keep on the Shadowfell suffers from being an extremely lovely and boring dungeon crawl that's basically not much more than a bunch of combat encounters glued together including at least one instance of two encounters which can occur back to back without giving players a chance to grab a short rest between them, and it also featured pre-errata Needlefang Drake swarms which were at the time one of the deadliest monsters a low-level party could run into because they did a ton of damage relative to their encounter level and I think also had some debuffs or something that just made them really awful to fight. Like, more than busted monster math the problem with KotS is it just had all the impact of a wet fart. They rolled out a brand new edition with a dullsville adventure that did nothing all that interesting, exciting, or creative.
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Nov 26, 2017 07:07
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LogicNinja posted:When I look at a Pathfinder class these days my eyes literally glaze over. 5e is at least lighter enough than PF that I can actually play it.  I think one of the biggest reasons for 5e’s overwhelming mediocrity is that the developers set the bar not at “lets make the best D&D game we can”, but “let’s make something better than Pathfinder.” And that’s such a ridiculously low bar to set that it’s a wonder you’re trying anything at all.
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Nov 26, 2017 08:00
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Trying to figure out how to categorize which of Pathfinder or Next is the better game than the other is like trying to figure out who to root for at the rear end in a top hat Olympics, both of the choices suck even if they suck in different ways so it's kind of a fruitless endeavor.
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Nov 26, 2017 08:18
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Another big issue with 4e KotS was that it used Kobolds. As an introductory adventure for people who maybe hadn't played D&D before this was an issue because kobolds' main gimmick was that they all have an at-will minor action that lets them shift one square. When your players are still trying to nail down the basic combat mechanics of a combat-focused tactical board game, it's hosed up to immediately meet an enemy who all thwart one of those basic mechanics - for example, that a shift costs a move action. Note that the example adventure in the back of the 4e DMG is "Kobold Hall." Yeah. When I ran that adventure as my first 4e adventure with two or three players unfamiliar with 4e D&D, this constantly threw them off. It made it very hard for them to figure out how to fight effectively, like setting up flanking for example. Here I am trying to tutor people about the basic mechanics of the game, and the enemies all have a special rule that changes that basic mechanic. The rest of that adventure is more kobolds, traps, a drake (so, a skirmisher with fly 8 (hover)), and... a young white dragon, which was a level 3 solo Brute with the hosed up math so it had 232 hit points. And a breath weapon that recharges on a five or six, so, using it roughly every three rounds of an interminably long combat. I pretty much think this encounter was intended to TPK a party of 1st level adventurers, and at best, it'd take hours of real-time gaming to grind through that encounter, especially when you consider the only things the players have dealt with up to that point are a bunch of kobolds and that one drake, so they've had zero practice fighting a big Brute type monster. KotS had very similar design, just much longer with more map to explore. So not only did it totally fail to introduce the game as being something more than a hack & slash dungeon grind, it also failed to provide a set of challenges that would be good for teaching and learning the game's fundamentals. I really don't know what the gently caress they were thinking.
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Nov 26, 2017 09:39
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Leperflesh posted:Another big issue with 4e KotS was that it used Kobolds. Even ignoring the teaching aspects of this, a big problem with this is that kobold's shifty mechanic means they are nasty as gently caress to fight. They can flank like it ain't no thing and might be able to squeeze past a chokepoint and get right past the defender to the squishies in the back. I love my shifty kobolds, but they're bad times for noob adventurers.
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Nov 26, 2017 10:15
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While we’re on the subject, has there ever been an introductory-level D&D where the central premise was something other than a band of kobolds/goblins/orcs/bandits/1HD creatures menacing the countryside, and who turn out to be led by some sort of boss monster with a couple of hit dice more?
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Nov 26, 2017 11:05
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Not really, that’s the basic gist of most adventures but with the HD of the monsters going up. Investigations are too fiddly and broad for modules, especially basic ones, and non-combat ones would be way too simple.
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Nov 26, 2017 11:41
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Yeah Keep on the Shadowfell. God what a bad adventure. Playing it in like 2008 was such a bad experience it turned me into a 4e hater for a brief period before a friend talked into trying it again. Actually it's kind of funny I briefly became a 3.x grog when I was a 2e one back in the day because I resented 3e over Wotc axing PlanescapeComrade Koba posted:While we’re on the subject, has there ever been an introductory-level D&D where the central premise was something other than a band of kobolds/goblins/orcs/bandits/1HD creatures menacing the countryside, and who turn out to be led by some sort of boss monster with a couple of hit dice more? Do you mean like a level 1 adventure, or one specifically written and marketed as introducing an edition or a new aspect of D&Ding?
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Nov 26, 2017 13:16
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I can't hate on Keep of the Shadowfell too much because Irontooth and the lads was at least cool *conceptually* and it was any easy thing to point to when people claimed 4E was montyhaul bullshit where you were never challenged (With some decent rolls Irontooth will eat you alive) or that inane "combat as sport vs combat as war" bullshit (right there in the first adventure you have to make sure the kobold signal-bearer goes down so he doesn't pull in a whole bunch more dudes)
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Nov 26, 2017 13:36
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Lightning Lord posted:
I was thinking level 1 adventures in general, but the ones marketed as the first adventure for any given edition tend to follow that norm even more strictly.
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Nov 26, 2017 14:55
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FMguru posted:For me, the biggest change in 3E was the easy multiclassing Granted, it's also because there's very little character customization without it, but then that just leads down the hole to where progression choices should be made from "within your lane" anyway, ala 4e power selection or 5e archetypes ... or caster spells at all levels. Comrade Koba posted:While we’re on the subject, has there ever been an introductory-level D&D where the central premise was something other than a band of kobolds/goblins/orcs/bandits/1HD creatures menacing the countryside, and who turn out to be led by some sort of boss monster with a couple of hit dice more? But all of the contemporary official "starter" set adventures hinge on it, whether you're talking about 5e's Lost Mine of Phandelver's goblins, 4e's Keep on the Shadowfell's kobolds, or 3e's Caves of Shadow's orcs (or Scourge of the Howling Horde's goblins) Leperflesh posted:As an introductory adventure for people who maybe hadn't played D&D before this was an issue because kobolds' main gimmick was that they all have an at-will minor action that lets them shift one square. When your players are still trying to nail down the basic combat mechanics of a combat-focused tactical board game, it's hosed up to immediately meet an enemy who all thwart one of those basic mechanics - for example, that a shift costs a move action.
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Nov 26, 2017 14:56
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https://twitter.com/wizards_magic/status/934625377330352128 what happened?
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Nov 26, 2017 16:10
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From memory, a really good intro module was actually the first official published adventure for 3e, the Sunless Citadel. There are definitely goblins and kobolds in that but again from memory they aren't the focus. Also I mentioned "aspects" because some adventures aren't meant as starter experiences but they are intended to introduce something new about D&D, either in general, as in the first time it's ever been done, or to the people currently running and playing the adventure. For example, Isle of Dread is considered the first outdoor D&D adventure. Night's Dark Terror was meant to transition players from Basic to Expert D&D, with the idea that players had probably been sticking to dungeons, and thus NDT would be an intro to a wilderness sandbox. There's goblins in that but again, they're not really the focus. gradenko_2000 posted:It would be an interesting thought exercise to imagine what D&D design would be like if multi-classing was never a thing, or probably more feasibly, if one were to redesign 3e classes with the assumption that they'd never be able to multi-class. So much CharOp fuckery comes from it, and it's spilled over even to 5e, where any discussion of character builds comes from how many levels of what to "dip" into which classes. You'd have Earthdawn  Christine Sprankle, a popular Magic cosplayer, has quit Magic because of harassment by youtube crank MTGHeadquarters. He's been down this road before, he lost it at someone who talked about her experiences in the Magic community and as a result, Wizards ceased sending him product to preview. Ultimately, the resulting loss of fans has made him worse. Hopefully he eats a DCI ban. Lightning Lord fucked around with this message at 16:21 on Nov 26, 2017 |
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Nov 26, 2017 16:16
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The introductory adventure to Eberron starts with a body falling out of the sky and the party being ambushed by an assassin before being sent on a mission into an underground foundry to figure out why the body that fell out of the sky was killed. Nary a kobold to be found.Lightning Lord posted:Christine Sprankle, a popular Magic cosplayer, has quit Magic because of harassment by MtG youtube crank MTGHeadquarters. He's been down this road before, he lost it at someone who talked about her experiences in the Magic community and as a result, Wizards ceased sending him product to preview. Ultimately, the resulting loss of fans has made him worse. Hopefully he eats a DCI ban. To elaborate, she's met some harassment in the past but the inciting incident for the latest, terrible, round was when she was at a convention recently and a group of magic artists invited her to play a game with them that's basically russian roulette except you're tearing up cards rather than shooting yourself. The terrible part of the MTG community hates this game because it 'removes cards from circulation and thus makes everything cost more' and took this as evidence that Sprankle is a fake geek girl because any true nerd wouldn't play such a game. He's deleted the tweet/comment/whatever but MTGHeadquarters made a post about her something to the effect of "She looks like a man, she's only about a 3, but I'd still gently caress her." Kurieg fucked around with this message at 16:24 on Nov 26, 2017 |
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Nov 26, 2017 16:19
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Yeah, but Eberron stuff was about a thousand times better than it had any right to be.
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Nov 26, 2017 16:21
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rumble in the bunghole posted:Not really, that’s the basic gist of most adventures but with the HD of the monsters going up. Investigations are too fiddly and broad for modules, especially basic ones, and non-combat ones would be way too simple. Later editions could do this kind of thing better because by then people had sort of wised up and included things like experience rewards for completing story objectives but I think the lack of that in early D&D is probably a big factor in the endless waves of slightly increasing humanoids that characters would face. Kobolds, now goblins, now orcs, now HOBgoblins, now bugbears, now gnolls... etc, etc.
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Nov 26, 2017 16:28
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Someone who should be banned and gotten their videos taken down for any excuse got a light flick on the wrist instead. There’s now a rallying call for CHUDs using the Facebook magic for 🅱️Ad page E: page is led by Travis Woo, known MTG semipro who makes anti-Semitic “Hitler is misunderstood” rants Chill la Chill fucked around with this message at 16:35 on Nov 26, 2017 |
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Nov 26, 2017 16:29
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Chill la Chill posted:Someone who should be banned and gotten their videos taken down for any excuse got a light flick on the wrist instead. What? Last I heard Woo was a shirtless weirdo but harmless. When did he go nuts? Also lol @ rip it or flip it (which I think is dumb, but who cares) being some sign of not being a ~*real player*~ and that even "mattering". These are the same people who went apeshit over Jeff Miracola and a few other artists livestreaming themselves destroying old art of theirs that they hated Lightning Lord fucked around with this message at 16:45 on Nov 26, 2017 |
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Nov 26, 2017 16:41
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Kurieg posted:The terrible part of the MTG community hates this game because it 'removes cards from circulation and thus makes everything cost more' and took this as evidence that Sprankle is a fake geek girl because any true nerd wouldn't play such a game.
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Nov 26, 2017 16:51
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Thanks for the advice on stock art - DT had some decent fantasy stuff that matched what I wanted so I grabbed that, but nothing else really. I may be looking at commissioning some - is my best bet to search DeviantArt until I find someone I like (which I've had mixed results doing in the past), or is there a better way to find an artist or artists who can help? I'm on a limited budget here but I'm also only looking for black and white line art, similar to what you'd see in Dungeon Crawl Classics, nothing fancy.
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Nov 26, 2017 16:54
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Evil Mastermind posted:Christ, Iron Man Magic has been around since at least Unlimited. I remember people being proud of playing it. I guess they weren't "true nerds", though. Yeah, the fact that I've got a bunch of Mythic rares sitting in my binders that I haven't sold to my LGS also 'increases cost'. The fact that I've got a few revised dual lands sitting in my parents basement 'increases cost'. Everyone isn't a perfect capitalist actor, you nerdy fucksticks.
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Nov 26, 2017 16:57
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gradenko_2000 posted:One flaw of 4e's writing that I've come to notice is that they really pushed hard for the skill challenge system, to the point where the idea of doing a simple "one-roll/one-check" resolution hardly ever comes up in written adventures. Everything is an "encounter", and if it's not a combat encounter, then it's a "skill challenge" encounter requiring multiple checks. I'd totally agree that they were overused in the premade adventures. Skill challenges were an interesting idea but were initially an unrewarding grind. The updates that culminated in the cleaner challenge system in the Rules Compendium were cool, but it's still the sort of thing that needed to be treated as an occasional event, and carefully designed to make interesting instead of a thing that ground the game to a halt for a series of dice rolls each session. e- gradenko_2000 posted:It would be an interesting thought exercise to imagine what D&D design would be like if multi-classing was never a thing, or probably more feasibly, if one were to redesign 3e classes with the assumption that they'd never be able to multi-class. So much CharOp fuckery comes from it, and it's spilled over even to 5e, where any discussion of character builds comes from how many levels of what to "dip" into which classes. Dipping was a big thing in 3.0, too. The fighter, ranger, and paladin were all super front-loaded to the point that 3.5e moved a few of the level 1 abilities back to later levels in some small attempt to make players stick with a class for more than 1-2 levels. Nuns with Guns fucked around with this message at 17:04 on Nov 26, 2017 |
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Nov 26, 2017 16:58
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Kurieg posted:The fact that I've got a few revised dual lands sitting in my parents basement 'increases cost'. Can I have them?
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Nov 26, 2017 16:58
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It's all arbitrary anyway, rarity is meaningless without demand, just look at all the listings on ebay for defunct card games.
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Nov 26, 2017 16:59
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Lightning Lord posted:Can I have them? Nah, I just keep forgetting to take them to my LGS whenever I'm in town.
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Nov 26, 2017 17:00
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Peas and Rice posted:Thanks for the advice on stock art - DT had some decent fantasy stuff that matched what I wanted so I grabbed that, but nothing else really. I may be looking at commissioning some - is my best bet to search DeviantArt until I find someone I like (which I've had mixed results doing in the past), or is there a better way to find an artist or artists who can help? RPG.net has a game freelancer sub-forum for this sort of thing that I've had good experiences with in the past. Plenty of artists post links to their galleries there.
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Nov 26, 2017 17:01
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Kwyndig posted:It's all arbitrary anyway, rarity is meaningless without demand, just look at all the listings on ebay for defunct card games. It also doesn’t really matter for playing anymore. You can order cheap fakes from  that might not be the best but are indistinguishable under 2-3 layers of plastic.
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Nov 26, 2017 17:02
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Chill la Chill posted:It also doesn’t really matter for playing anymore. You can order cheap fakes from Is there a sketchy system of pdf catalogs like 40K knock offs or do they sell them in the open?
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