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Arivia posted:christ what is this just a niche opinion or do people in TG really think 5E is worse than Pathfinder and 3.0/3.5
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Jun 24, 2019 00:20
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Terrible Opinions posted:It's the whole people are brain damaged weirdos for liking game I don't like thing. Especially when the game in question is something fairly mainstream. That was Ron Edwards back in 2006. And I don't think anyone defends Ron Edwards using brain damage as a description for classic RPG design assumptions. (For anyone interested here's Ron Edwards forgetting the first rule of holes in expanding his original statement about brain damage).
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Jun 24, 2019 00:27
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neonchameleon posted:That was Ron Edwards back in 2006. And I don't think anyone defends Ron Edwards using brain damage as a description for classic RPG design assumptions. (For anyone interested here's Ron Edwards forgetting the first rule of holes in expanding his original statement about brain damage). If the term is indefensible, then I don't see why people were just reusing it again?
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Jun 24, 2019 00:42
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neonchameleon posted:This is not a high bar - but you're I think forgetting just how fiddly and awkward 3.X is and how say what you like about THAC0 being rear end-backwards it was actually an improvement in speed and comprehensibility over the 1e look up tables.
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Jun 24, 2019 00:47
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alg posted:is this just a niche opinion or do people in TG really think 5E is worse than Pathfinder and 3.0/3.5 I definitely do. 5E is insanely boring to play while 3.5/PF are jankfests but I still had a whale of a time with stupid builds.
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Jun 24, 2019 00:56
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To be quite honest, I think the actual play content of 5e D&D is helping other RPGs out more than it's hurting them- you get a lot of smaller podcasts/streams running other systems sometimes and that gets exposure out there. It's never going to match D&D's level of marketing but it does bring people into the RPG ecosystem and i think that's a good thing.
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Jun 24, 2019 01:04
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Nuns with Guns posted:If the term is indefensible, then I don't see why people were just reusing it again? It was brought up in the past few pages by Terrible Opinions saying he didn't like it. Plutonis pointed out that almost all the mentions in the past few years had been against the use of the term. But some people still think a statement made thirteen years ago on another forum is worth bringing up, I guess?
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Jun 24, 2019 01:06
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Plutonis posted:I definitely do. 5E is insanely boring to play while 3.5/PF are jankfests but I still had a whale of a time with stupid builds. Honestly I'm in the same boat. I don't care for either but I can at least understand why someone might have fun dicking with 3.X's insane number of classes and spells and spellcaster classes and Double Classes and feats etc. while 5e is both dull as well as bad.
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Jun 24, 2019 01:13
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Kai Tave posted:Honestly I'm in the same boat. I don't care for either but I can at least understand why someone might have fun dicking with 3.X's insane number of classes and spells and spellcaster classes and Double Classes and feats etc. while 5e is both dull as well as bad.
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Jun 24, 2019 01:15
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neonchameleon posted:It was brought up in the past few pages by Terrible Opinions saying he didn't like it. Plutonis pointed out that almost all the mentions in the past few years had been against the use of the term. Terrible Opinions brought it up specifically because Liquid Communism just said this: Liquid Communism posted:That 'lets use this for random concept I have' is the brain-sick musings of people who have never been exposed to any other system and refuse to leave the comfort of their mud hovels. And okay, sure, "brain damage" is swapped for "brain-sick" but it's obviously the same sentiment. So the reason Terrible Opinions felt the need to bring up a 13 year old statement is because someone else expressed something functionally interchangeable for a hyperbolic, but still inappropriate, joke. Which is the same context this always comes up in, because it's some periodic meme that's cycled around this subforum since grognards.txt days. And people like repeating it for a laugh, because for some reason it's alright so long as you ignore that Rod Edwards was comparing the rules internalized for Storyteller games to childhood sexual abuse.
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Jun 24, 2019 01:17
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Kai Tave posted:Honestly I'm in the same boat. I don't care for either but I can at least understand why someone might have fun dicking with 3.X's insane number of classes and spells and spellcaster classes and Double Classes and feats etc. while 5e is both dull as well as bad. Yeah. Like I still play Pathfinder and I'm willing to admit it's not a good game. It's just that 5e isn't any better, pulling out complexity and replacing things that didn't work with "Ask your DM" spackle. It's telling that the only thing neonchameleon can name 5e as actually maybe doing better is being easier to teach, and even that's incorrect. There's plenty of 2e and 3e starter sets that are fine and easy to teach, it's just that those systems actually go somewhere afterwards while 5e doesn't. It's the lowest common denominator of D&D editions, and that's really sad.
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Jun 24, 2019 01:19
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Kai Tave posted:Honestly I'm in the same boat. I don't care for either but I can at least understand why someone might have fun dicking with 3.X's insane number of classes and spells and spellcaster classes and Double Classes and feats etc. while 5e is both dull as well as bad. 5e's main point is, so far as I can tell, to be bland as a pile of plain white rice so you can drift it as far as possible and there will be just a little in the game to support anything. For whatever you are trying to do it's a mediocre system but there's just not enough in there to find any reason to hate it. Of course it fails at that fairly miserably thanks to things like hit points and Vancian casting being pretty strong flavours in their own right. Nuns with Guns posted:Terrible Opinions brought it up specifically because Liquid Communism just said this: Ah, missed that, thanks. There is something to be said but brain damaged and brain-sick are not it. I am however reminded of the anti-Last Jedi crowd that have pretty clearly missed a lot that was actually in the film (and about Rey in particular). Film studies would call this film-literacy. But that's not the term we want at all.
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Jun 24, 2019 01:28
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Kai Tave posted:Honestly I'm in the same boat. I don't care for either but I can at least understand why someone might have fun dicking with 3.X's insane number of classes and spells and spellcaster classes and Double Classes and feats etc. while 5e is both dull as well as bad. And the sheer amount of insane poo poo that's available re: traps and funky monsters for GMs while the monster manuals for 5e might as well be all reskins
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Jun 24, 2019 01:31
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neonchameleon posted:5e's main point is, so far as I can tell, to be bland as a pile of plain white rice so you can drift it as far as possible and there will be just a little in the game to support anything. For whatever you are trying to do it's a mediocre system but there's just not enough in there to find any reason to hate it. So how is it better than other editions? You didn't argue that it was mediocre, you said it was better than 1e/2e/3e. 1e is better dungeon crawling. 2e is the actual narrative theater of the mind game 5e tries to be. 3e is the fiddly bits and crazy characters game that's way better for tactical challenge. What is 5e actually better at as a game? What games can you run with it that you can't with any other edition you listed?
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Jun 24, 2019 01:41
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Terrible Opinions posted:Apocalypse World has the same problem late 2nd edition D&D had. Most of its supplements are essentially new campaigns. People aren't going to buy them for existing games so you're cannibalizing your own market.
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Jun 24, 2019 01:49
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I would say people who are poorly habituated to RPGs as a general art form, lacking the critical tools to discuss non-D&D games, and convinced that D&D covers the whole spectrum of gaming, can be called tabletop gaming illiterate in a certain sense? But yeah there's not a good term to encapsulate how many players are effectively taught to be incapable of considering RPGs formally that doesn't sound insulting.
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Jun 24, 2019 01:50
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neonchameleon posted:There is something to be said but brain damaged and brain-sick are not it. I am however reminded of the anti-Last Jedi crowd that have pretty clearly missed a lot that was actually in the film (and about Rey in particular). Film studies would call this film-literacy. But that's not the term we want at all. I do agree that there is a lot of uncritical consumption of D&D tropes, and a large part of that is that D&D doesn't want people to think about it on a meta level and therefore doesn't teach it to players, DMs, or any would-be designers. It goes hand-in-hand with a lack of major independent news sources following tabletop gaming, I think. Publishers putting out these products have had a luxury of controlling the most popular places to review and give feedback (through hosted forums, official magazines, etc.) for a long time, and now discussion is centered around subreddits and other social media outlets created by fans or officially controlled by the publishers. Unless you go digging, it's hard to find dissenting opinions. There are people out there that are happy to do deep dives of D&D or any other game, but there's not a large platform to do it on or have it seen by others. It says a lot that the offsite FATAL & Friends hosting done by inklesspen gets linked around different places so much because otherwise there's often not any kind of critical evaluation of any given RPG.
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Jun 24, 2019 01:50
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Lord_Hambrose posted:Has anything other than Pathfinder (or perhaps back in the day White Wolf) had any significant success in the world beyond the dedicated rpg fans? It is pretty telling that the biggest threat to the utter crushing dominance of D&D was when they mixed it up and their former jilted magazine publishers just decided to make more 3.5. Imagine for a moment that all RPG sales were divided up by product line and drawn up as a pie chart. Imagine you made one of these for every year. Vampire and Werewolf in the 90s were, until Pathfinder devoured so much of D&D's market, the only non-D&D games that would spend any time with sufficiently large pie wedges on which to print their names.
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Jun 24, 2019 01:51
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Pope Guilty posted:Imagine for a moment that all RPG sales were divided up by product line and drawn up as a pie chart. Imagine you made one of these for every year. Vampire and Werewolf in the 90s were, until Pathfinder devoured so much of D&D's market, the only non-D&D games that would spend any time with sufficiently large pie wedges on which to print their names. Probably Traveler, West End Games' Star Wars, and Tunnels and Trolls as well when you are going back even further.
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Jun 24, 2019 01:54
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Arivia posted:So how is it better than other editions? You didn't argue that it was mediocre, you said it was better than 1e/2e/3e. I specifically said it was easier to learn any any of the above and gave reasons why. And I disagree that 2e is better at being a narrative theatre of the mind game than 5e let alone being an "actual narrative theatre of the mind game" in any way, shape, or form. Edit: Don't forget Call of Cthulhu
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Jun 24, 2019 02:08
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theironjef posted:Used to be independent. Now sponsored and supported by and oh hey what do you know a bullshit brand ambassador job just happened to open up. I guess it is hard to be a scrappy underdog when you're breaking Kickstarter records.
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Jun 24, 2019 02:18
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neonchameleon posted:I specifically said it was easier to learn any any of the above and gave reasons why. And I disagree that 2e is better at being a narrative theatre of the mind game than 5e let alone being an "actual narrative theatre of the mind game" in any way, shape, or form. So your grand assertion is ultimately “5e is easier to learn because it has a combination of general mechanics that I find easy to grasp?” That doesn’t correspond to being easy to learn. That means you have found the mechanics to your liking. If you’d like to elaborate on 5e being specifically well introduced (you might want to compare to the guided play introduction of the mid-90s introductory D&D box set), go ahead. If you’re not aware, 2e unlike other editions of D&D does not have grid combat rules in its core rulebooks. As an edition, 2e was created for more narrative and historical games that were popular at the time, like Dragonlance. This is why one of 3e’s big selling points was “Back to the Dungeon.” 5e has grid combat rules and the rule set in general assumes you’re using them, even if it says you can play without a grid. You seem very uninformed about the editions of D&D you’re making comparisons about.
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Jun 24, 2019 03:36
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alg posted:is this just a niche opinion or do people in TG really think 5E is worse than Pathfinder and 3.0/3.5 5e is worse than Pathfinder and 3.0/3.5
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Jun 24, 2019 03:59
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Terrible Opinions posted:The fiddliness of 3.X is the point. No one is playing it in the modern day for any reason besides enjoying the fiddliness or out of nostalgia. Both of which is fulfills better than 5th ed. The rules cyclopedia is better than 5th ed for simple dungeon crawling, and a different era of nostalgia. 4th ed is better for a tactical skirmish game, and a skill different era of nostalgia. What niche does 5th ed fill better? Trying to make critical role fan games? Not true. I'm with a couple of groups that play various variations of 3.x because we simply like the system. We also have played 4e, 5e, Dungeon World and FATE, in the last few years and 3.x seems to be the most popular.
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Jun 24, 2019 04:01
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Humbug Scoolbus posted:Not true. I'm with a couple of groups that play various variations of 3.x because we simply like the system. We also have played 4e, 5e, Dungeon World and FATE, in the last few years and 3.x seems to be the most popular. Well what did he say that's not true? He said people enjoy 3.x because it's fiddly or nostalgia. You didn't list a reason that disproves the "fiddly" part, only maybe the "nostalgia" part. A lot of us like 3.x because of all the fiddling, I can't think of any other reason to like it.
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Jun 24, 2019 04:13
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3.x / PF is more of a deckbuilding wargame than an RPG at this point, but that's fun and why people like it.
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Jun 24, 2019 04:21
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I take a metamagic feat to let me hold the two ideas of "5e is not mechanically that great, even by D&D edition standards" and "people liking a particular product are not necessarily disabled in some way" at once, at the cost of a level 2 spell slot.
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Jun 24, 2019 04:26
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moths posted:3.x / PF is more of a deckbuilding wargame than an RPG at this point, but that's fun and why people like it. I liked playing a fighter, even if I just got mind controlled in every important fight after like level 8. 
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Jun 24, 2019 04:30
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Lord_Hambrose posted:I liked playing a fighter, even if I just got mind controlled in every important fight after like level 8. PF fighters are actually kind of not terrible at this point, though that's mostly because they gave them feat access to SLAs, magic item powers, etc.
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Jun 24, 2019 04:37
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Arivia posted:So how is it better than other editions? You didn't argue that it was mediocre, you said it was better than 1e/2e/3e. So far as I can tell 5e is better at having been the default edition when the content mining of all things geek nostalgia turned back to Dungeons And Dragons. That's it.
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Jun 24, 2019 04:42
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5e has better class balance and less bookkeeping. It has fewer character options than 3/3.5 but then it also has far less support (and will probably never catch up).
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Jun 24, 2019 05:03
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Ranger and Bard, totally balanced.
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Jun 24, 2019 05:15
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Cassa posted:Ranger and Bard, totally balanced. Better than 3.5 is a low loving bar
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Jun 24, 2019 05:47
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Thanks to this conversation, I have discovered that the Rules Cyclopedia is now print on demand. Neat.
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Jun 24, 2019 05:48
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S.J. posted:Better than 3.5 is a low loving bar One 5e still can’t leap over. At least 3.5 could keep things sorted until like level 5.
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Jun 24, 2019 05:52
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Level 6 is the sweetspot according to the gospel of epic6 https://1d4chan.org/wiki/Epic6 I have a lot more fun with lower level characters in any D20 system so I love it
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Jun 24, 2019 06:02
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As riveting as this discussion about D&D is, it might be better suited for the D&D or chat threads. In other industry news, [url=v http://www.game-chef.com/game-chef-2019/]Game Chef 2019 is currently running![/url] Game Chef is one of the more storied game competitions still active. It definitely leans indie, but there’s room for all sorts and some very interesting games typically make it to the finals. For designers entering, you can get up to four pieces of critique on your game (four people are tapped to provide feedback but not everyone does.). All in all, I recommend checking it out (and I’m not just saying that because I was a finalist last year).
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Jun 24, 2019 06:38
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So my local community is pretty much always, 100% clamoring for D&D. There are other games, usually a reoccurring Dungeon World game along with Starfinder(the Pathfinder guys left after the owner of the game store for one of our two main events wasn't treating them any more special than anyone else). That's the Friday event, usually 3-4 tables of D&D with DW or SF. Our Sunday thing is usually almost always D&D. Occasionally the president of the organization will run a Call of Cthulhu game which is basically just the same friends jumping in to play that, and we also have some local game devs that run their stuff or run things like Kids On Bikes. But most of the time it's nothing but 5th Edition, because only 3 tables of it isn't enough. There's just so many people that will approach, especially the older crowd at the Sunday event which is at a bar. Who are interested in playing. So many people with horror stories about having wanted to play in the past but they got put off of it and we hate to exclude those people so the general plan is... mostly D&D, and the tables always get full. So yeah, 5th Edition isn't the best thing ever. But in my experience? It's what pulls fresh people in and overall the attitude our events holds keeps people wanting to come back to it. I'm not gonna have my table fill up running Shadow of the Demon Lord unless it's a planned thing with 4-6 of my friends, no matter how much I'd like to give it a shot.
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Jun 24, 2019 06:42
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I have never, ever had difficulty filling a table for Shadowrun, be it at cons or the FLGS. There are people who want to play other games. They stop showing up after a while if the only flavor on offer is D&D, especially org play, so you may need to reach out a bit.
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Jun 24, 2019 07:14
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Arthil posted:So my local community is pretty much always, 100% clamoring for D&D. There are other games, usually a reoccurring Dungeon World game along with Starfinder(the Pathfinder guys left after the owner of the game store for one of our two main events wasn't treating them any more special than anyone else). That's the Friday event, usually 3-4 tables of D&D with DW or SF. Our Sunday thing is usually almost always D&D. Occasionally the president of the organization will run a Call of Cthulhu game which is basically just the same friends jumping in to play that, and we also have some local game devs that run their stuff or run things like Kids On Bikes. But most of the time it's nothing but 5th Edition, because only 3 tables of it isn't enough. You are really burying the lead on the big story. I mean I won't pretend lots of people want to come and play D&D 5e, it's part of why im kinda trapped running a game of it. That it's the overwhelmingly desired game (to the near exclusion of anything else) is the whole reason for people being disgruntled about it and it's why we get nonsense like D&D 5e: Stargate SG-1 or D&D 5e : Star Wars. I don't think anyone would dispute it's a popular game it's that we don't get to see anything but D&D 5e and frankly I see very few people moving off from 5e to other stuff. It's the 3.x era again where the system is being hacked into things it shouldn't to point where even the general concept of rules being used to emulate something is hard to express and explain. D&D 5e logic becomes the fundamental logic for all games unfortunately.
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Jun 24, 2019 07:39
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