g026r wrote:
Speaking of the GA series, what the hell is up with the cover to GA1?  It's like someone told the artist "Okay, we want you to draw Mike Grell's Warlord character on a horse.  Yeah, just like that, but could you place it underwater and turn the horse into an aquatic creature?  Some sort of 'sea horse', if you will."

I'm particularly amused by the coral/rock in the foreground that covers where a horse's rear legs should be.  It's as if even the artist couldn't figure out exactly how the horse is supposed to transition to fish.

LOL. If you think the cover picture is bad, read the adventure...and the rest of the GA series..or don't, and save a few braincells.  At this point a lot of 2E stuff read like really bad tournaments that had been inexpertly turned into a lame one shot adventure...

But yeh, it's a bad cover.  I think the Lakings drew most of the "clip art" in the core rulebooks that Mark hates so much.

Mike B.

Badmike wrote:

Plus, had you REALLY even done anything if you killed a 1E Giant or Dragon?  Please.  I've swatted puppies that were more menacing than the typical 1E giant lizard with a breath weapon....

Mike B.

I read once a good description of the differences in the AD&D/D&D versions which addressed the subject of the weaker iconic creatures in 1E. Even Lolth in Queen of the Demonweb Pits had something like 66hp, an amount a reasonably high level party could dish out in 1-2 rounds.

Essentially, they pointed out that 1E was built with assumptions that the DM was in more of an adversarial role than later editions, and also trusted the DM to be a good tactician. Coming from its wargame roots, part of the fun for DMs would be utilizing the monster's capabilities in such a way that it could be an even match for a powerful party because of how the DM played it.

The creature was weaker and the DM had to play smart and tough tactically.

2E relieved DMs from having to be a tactical genius to stand up to the party, making the creatures tougher and giving them the hitpoints they need to survive longer.

2E also assumed DMs were there to run storylines and campaigns for the players and would be in less of a me against them situation.

I stopped caring about D&D in 2002, when I first heard of the imminent release of "3.5." Sure, a company wants to make money and grab as many people's wallets as they can, but they can do that in all manners of ways... and it doesn't have to be the Microsoft school of "people love our stuff, warts and all." Its actually horrendous business, but the average person is ignorant, or, more accurately, doesn't care if they are being duped... usually because they don't even know it.

D&D: the gathering.. ahahah priceless!

What? there's a mormon rpg? wow.. awesome. That sounds so utterly bizzare and twisted. I shall have to try to introduce the mormons to rp, i'm trying slowly but at the moment we're having fun discussing vengful god vs loving god. Ahhh I love having people come round to engage in religious debates of their own volition, it's so wierd. Of course, i'm to nice to really break them.

The gender thing annoys me actually, as a female gamer I quite honestly have never ever cared that the pronouns were "he" I mean for gods sake, its a perfectly good pronoun. Given that 1: most gamers are male and 2: "he" is a generic pronoun used in most cases where gender is uncertain because it's more polite than "they" or "it".
Damn this political correctness, kill it! kill it I say!
It's wierd because I don't even really read the pronoun part as anything but a well.. pronoun. Maybe english needs a gender neutral word like the germans have, yeah. Xze or something equally as silly. It wont be long till someone seriously suggests it. Damn them. -_-
WOD did it fairly well with the alternating, heck, I have baby books that do that chapter by chapter when referring to the baby hahaha. I do find it funny though that they need to put a disclaimer at the begining explaing that "he" means "he or she". I mean it's kinda obvious isn't it?
Besides, I tend to play male characters anyway. Amusingly, i'm known for screaming "I'm a man damnit" halfway through a society game and getting stared at by everyone else who didn't catch the discussion beforehand. The party were considering using my character as bait to catch a serial killer who preyed on young women, completely forgeting for the moment that I was playing a male character. Ahh, good times, good times.
(sorta like the "i'm gonna go off with the stripper" "she's not a stripper she's a prostitute" "I'm a porn star damnit!" conversation, but that's a different story)

2E also assumed DMs were there to run storylines and campaigns for the players and would be in less of a me against them situation."

- Yeah, that. Horay for storylines! I personally never got the "dm against the party" thing, I played to well.. play.. not mess up the gm's plot intentionally and piss them off. Heck, I can't be that mean to my players. I once killed off a party member off screen during downtime though, she pissed me off so I killed her character and ended the game with everyone else going off and doing cool shit while she, she just died in an undignified manner. Ahhh. Her boyfriend never forgave me for that, but he's a jerk so that's ok.

Sadly, with each new addition you'll get old fans up in arms. The OD&D players hated AD&D, the AD&D players hated 2nd ed, they hated 3rd ed who in turn will hate 4th ed. It's just what happens. Don't like the new edition? fine, play the old one. there's plenty of material for each edition to keep even the less creative GM happy and busy for a long long time.
I also don't like the "subscription for online content", I think it's crap and screams "MMORPG" but alas, what can we do? I know, not pay for it! huzzah.
As I said earlier, i'll have a read through 4th ed and see if anything actually interests me then likely steal it and add it to homebrew rules, mwhahaha. I can't justify buying a whole lot of new books unless the system is so radically different and exciting that I can't help but do so. But I doubt it will be, it'll likely be the same old junk recycled and given a new pair of clothes so to speak. Maybe they'll have a couple of good ideas, and those i'll happily steal, but on the whole, I doubt it'll add anything revolutionary or new to the D&D game. 3.5 works perfectly well for what I want it to do, so meh.. I doubt i'll bother upgrading.

and hey, I like spelljammer! it's bizzare and silly and sooo asking for a party of people to just take the piss. As we did, renaming the entire crew because they had dumb fantasy names we couldn't remember and "giggles" and "goulash" were better names anyway. There was also a talking beaver, but that was just wierd.
We had a great time in our spelljammer campaign, it was silly and chaotic and full of utter stupidity but damnit, that's what D&D in space asks for! Plus we had some great tactics for a party consisting of two rogues and an illusionist (ahahah, we so bypassed 90% of the combat with creative uses of silence and invisibility. The gm was amused.)

Death to Elminster and Drizzt though! eww. just.. ewwww.

Drizzt isn't bad. I found a book in that newest Hunter's Blade trilogy, and I kind of (gulp) enjoyed the entire series. I can't wait for the new Drizzt books to come out. And yes, that will be one of my FEW WoTC purchases in the next year.

And yes, I know it is all incredibly "easy reading." Doesn't even hold a candle to some of the "great" fantasy stories, but is entertaining none the less.

Elminster can jump off a bridge though...

Maybe english needs a gender neutral word like the germans have

Here's an interesting article about how "they" originally was an acceptable gender neutral pronoun.  I think it is much less annoying and artificial than the other options.

I've always gotten the feeling that Salvatore looked at Elric and went "You know, this would be a really good character if he wasn't such a wuss." -- and thus Drizzt was born.

I've known several DMs who have banned drow entirely (even as NPCs) from their campaign worlds because of it.  Unfortunately, I've also known several who filled their world with the buggers because of it.

Agent Cooper wrote:
BADMIKE: "2. Spelljammer.....D&D in space, blow me so very, very hard, thank you please....
6. Player's Packs: A niche product....for retards. Everyone wants a plastic lunchbox shaped piece of shit to hold their D&D stuff, right?"

Dear God!  You guys are killin' me!  Oh, man  LOLOLOLOLOL!
 

..I love this site.

mike has a nice surprise coming in the next adventure

*edit* oh they will be entering Tegel Manor again, but redesigned by me and well guess where its going to be!

you heard it here first folks. THEN lets hear him say SpellJammer sucks....he aint played it Al-style yet

Al

I see the future. Half drow/half giant shrew creatures with Great Chew and Improved BackCling feats. That's if he runs 3Eeeew.