They just don't get it, do they? • Page 11 • Collecting General • The Acaeum

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They just don't get it, do they?
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killjoy32
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Posted: Mon Sep 03, 2007 6:57 pm

gyg wrote:
You know how to irritate people with rodents of unusual size - which means you must know a LOT

ah man thats easy. poor mike...wait til next time, i know JUST what buttons to press with him - its gonna be a ton of fun

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Badmike
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Posted: Mon Sep 03, 2007 8:05 pm

killjoy32 wrote:
ah man thats easy. poor mike...wait til next time, i know JUST what buttons to press with him - its gonna be a ton of fun

Al

I'm bringing a blaster rifle and grenades from S3 Barrier Peaks the next time!

Mike B.

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deimos3428
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Posted: Mon Sep 03, 2007 8:42 pm

Badmike wrote:Although the 2E dragons may seem overpowered to some, if you look at the various Dragon magazine articles published over the years, it looks like the powers that be merely took a lot of the suggestions in those articles and made them official, basically houseruling the 1E dragon up to 2E toughness. In particular, the extra attacks such as tail slap, kicks to the rear, wing buffet, plummet, and others I seem to remember being taken almost verbatim from Dragon magazine articles.

That's funny...I was pondering this thread offline, and came to a quite similar conclusion.

Personally, I'd have preferred that they continue to add the information to Dragon articles, and not attempt to make it "canon" with a new edition. A lot of 2E was good, a lot was not so good, and it's easier for a DM to pick and choose if it's "unofficial".

Badmike
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Posted: Mon Sep 03, 2007 9:12 pm

deimos3428 wrote:That's funny...I was pondering this thread offline, and came to a quite similar conclusion.

Personally, I'd have preferred that they continue to add the information to Dragon articles, and not attempt to make it "canon" with a new edition. A lot of 2E was good, a lot was not so good, and it's easier for a DM to pick and choose if it's "unofficial".

If you study a lot of the changes in 2E, particularly with certain spells, monsters, and magic items, a lot of it is either stuff that everyone had houseruled anyway, or ideas that were the subject of Dragon magazine articles the decade before. This is why I never had any problem with 2E, because all it was (to our group) was making official a lot of stuff we were using anyway. 3E was such a radical change because this manifestly was NOT done with the changeover from 2E to 3E...the game itself along with the mechanism of the game changed completely. Which is why most old timer draw a line in the sand after 1999.

Mike B.

"THE MORE YOU THINK ABOUT WHY i DONE WHAT i DONE THE MORE i LAUGH" Cougar
"The Acaeum hates fun" Sir Allen
"I had a collecting emergency" Nogrod
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killjoy32
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Posted: Tue Sep 04, 2007 2:40 am

Badmike wrote:
I'm bringing a blaster rifle and grenades from S3 Barrier Peaks the next time!

Mike B.

well actually....its funny you should mention them chummer......

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sauromatian
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Posted: Tue Sep 04, 2007 2:47 am

Badmike wrote:If you study a lot of the changes in 2E, particularly with certain spells, monsters, and magic items, a lot of it is either stuff that everyone had houseruled anyway, or ideas that were the subject of Dragon magazine articles the decade before.

Many 1e players were unaware that rolling against an attribute stat was a house rule, used in a lot of Judges Guild product but not TSR. Until the 2e skills system, game functions were indirectly derived from attributes.

killjoy32
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Posted: Tue Sep 04, 2007 5:27 am

sauromatian wrote:
Many 1e players were unaware that rolling against an attribute stat was a house rule, used in a lot of Judges Guild product but not TSR. Until the 2e skills system, game functions were indirectly derived from attributes.

i just use sensible methods to make things work - who needs 1e or 2e or whatever

if it fits between you and the group - the method you use is cool. as long as everyone thinks its fair, thats fine.

i still think too much emphasis is placed on rules and formats myself.

but as for the thread, personally, from what i did actually read from 2e stuff, i do also get the impression that the material is a cumulation of what mike has written - makes the most sense to me anyway.

Al

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Cattledog
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Posted: Tue Sep 04, 2007 9:22 am

I suppose that's why we had an easy transition to 2E...All of my players were Dragon subscribers. Every few months we were discussing using a new rule or trying some different option.We developed a good list of house rules.

Hmm, no, I don't have a gambling problem, I'm winning, and winning is not a problem. That's like saying Michael Jordan has a basketball problem, or Def Leppard has an awesomeness problem. So why don't y'all pour some sugar on that?

Badmike
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Posted: Tue Sep 04, 2007 9:40 am

Cattledog wrote:I suppose that's why we had an easy transition to 2E...All of my players were Dragon subscribers. Every few months we were discussing using a new rule or trying some different option.We developed a good list of house rules.

We all were also....and had a lot of fun using the "unofficial" and "NPC only" characters in gameplay, but as player characters. Offhand, I remember the Archer, Bounty Hunter and Samurai all making appearances, and the Anti Paladin, Witch, Deathmaster and Incantrix as NPC bad guys.

Mike B.

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Agent Cooper
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Posted: Tue Sep 04, 2007 9:42 am

Yes, Dragon was cool, for the most part. I bought it back in the day. I read it. I liked it. Still have copies of it tucked away somplace.

But I despised the stupid a$$- new character classes they introduced. Thanks to Dragon, there was a time when all anybody ever wanted to play was a Ninja or Anti-Paladin. Everybody and their brother photocopied those articles and brought them to games. "I can do it, it's IN DRAGON, see!"
Uhhh...no. :roll:

They introduced the Munchkin Deluxe Prestige Class before there even was such a thing.

killjoy32
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Posted: Tue Sep 04, 2007 9:50 am

Badmike wrote:
We all were also....and had a lot of fun using the "unofficial" and "NPC only" characters in gameplay, but as player characters. Offhand, I remember the Archer, Bounty Hunter and Samurai all making appearances, and the Anti Paladin, Witch, Deathmaster and Incantrix as NPC bad guys.

Mike B.

yes i have had an archer character in my games before - my daughter wanted to try it after having read about it, so we extracted what we needed so it could merge into my game.

worked out just nice iirc.

we also used an anti-paladin, but what we did, was just basically use the exact opposite of what a paladin was. simple as. worked out to be a right ol'fun game

that must have been around '83-84 or so....i dont even know if it had been in dragon or whatever at that point. we just worked on the basis that if something can be lawful good, there HAS to be an exact opposite, so we went for it

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Agent Cooper
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Posted: Tue Sep 04, 2007 10:07 am

Well, obviously others here had a better experience with these things.
But I think that's mostly because I was in high school at the time, with some pretty immature people involved. So you can just imagine the situation:

ME: Okay, what characters did you roll up?
Players: Oh, we're all NINJAS, except Pat, he's an Anti-Paladin.
ME: *GROANING INSIDE* Okay, whatever. You're in town, buying supplies...
ANTIPALADIN: I kill the Shopkeep, and take his money...
ME: Uhh...well, fine...the guard is raised, you hear many booted feet heading to towards the shopkeep's stall...
NINJAS: We're throwing smoke bombs and grappling up the buildings so we can disappear on the roof and shoot shurikens at the guards...oh and they're poisoned shurikens. Plus they can't see us cuz of our hiding abilities...
ME: Screw this, I'm gonna go play Intellivision...

Cattledog
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Posted: Tue Sep 04, 2007 10:29 am

Luckily for me, our group didn't do too much tooling with pc classes although someone ran a witch pc for a prolonged period. The bad part was my players pretty much new what changes I was going to make as a DM. FWIW I'm still fundamentally opposed to the very existance of the anti-paladin.

killjoy32
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Posted: Tue Sep 04, 2007 10:55 am

Agent Cooper wrote:Well, obviously others here had a better experience with these things.
But I think that's mostly because I was in high school at the time, with some pretty immature people involved. So you can just imagine the situation:

ME: Okay, what characters did you roll up?
Players: Oh, we're all NINJAS, except Pat, he's an Anti-Paladin.
ME: *GROANING INSIDE* Okay, whatever. You're in town, buying supplies...
ANTIPALADIN: I kill the Shopkeep, and take his money...
ME: Uhh...well, fine...the guard is raised, you hear many booted feet heading to towards the shopkeep's stall...
NINJAS: We're throwing smoke bombs and grappling up the buildings so we can disappear on the roof and shoot shurikens at the guards...oh and they're poisoned shurikens. Plus they can't see us cuz of our hiding abilities...
ME: Screw this, I'm gonna go play Intellivision...

bah and you would let em get away with that?

sheesh if players wanted to be an ass like that, i would deal with it accordingly.

just get a renevant of the shopkeep

that'll soon shut em up

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Badmike
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Posted: Tue Sep 04, 2007 11:04 am

killjoy32 wrote:
bah and you would let em get away with that?

sheesh if players wanted to be an ass like that, i would deal with it accordingly.

just get a renevant of the shopkeep

that'll soon shut em up

Al

I never allowed more than one "special" type character per group. Cut down on having a Samurai, Ninja, Alchemist, Bounty Hunter, Incantrix and Archer all in the same group....

One of the reasons the characters were unofficial, is that obviously the characters were really tested in play. However I found several really worked pretty well, if you tweaked them just a bit...

I especially liked using them as NPC villains, as the characters had no idea what they were up against...

Mike B.

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AdderMcOne
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Posted: Tue Sep 04, 2007 11:42 am

Wasn't it written somewhere, or not written... :wink:

That the 'rules' weren't actually rules, but only guidelines?

Who's to say in any version of the game that any particular Dragon, arch-evil villian, or shrew can or can't behave in a certain way, or have characteristics outside of the MMs or other manuals/mag issues?

I always ran my campaigns by using the shell of the 'critter' and substituting applicable, relevent, abilities & HP etc. Sometimes teh essential monster was untouched from the MM, other times quite different - because it had to be to be challenging for the characters to interact with - either fighting with / talking, trying to out-think etc...

Al's shrew may have had 66 hps and have been able to renew itself twice daily. Or it just may have had the cleave ability and forgot to use it as it was laughing it's arse off too hard?

Here's a question: what name would you give the relevent editions if they couldn't have carried the D&D / AD&D monickers? IE what could/should 3rd edition have been called if not D&D3rd Edition? EG just call 2nd Edition 'Forgotten Realms' and be done with it?

"Don't tempt me, I can resist anything but temptation"

Agent Cooper
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Posted: Tue Sep 04, 2007 11:57 am

KILLJOY:
See that's the thing-- I didn't let them get away with it. But that meant every game was a big power struggle between them trying to turn my campaign into an episode of Kung Fu Theatre, and me trying to counter them. And it just got old with the whole "we're a gang of Ninjas" thing. It just wasn't alot of fun for me. And I don't even want to talk about dealing with the Anti-Paladin...
"You've freed the princess!"
"Great, now I want to (insert some disturbed act here) her and then sacrifice her to my evil god!!" :roll:

BADMIKE:
Exactly, and that's fine with mature cooperative players. Back when I was dealing with 14-15 year olds, which included me, forget it!

I get what you guys are saying. Of course, I understand it was that time period and who I was playing with that was the problem. But I blame those da**ed articles for starting the whole thing. And because of that
I have bad memories about the whole Dragon Mag new classes thing. *shudder*

</whining>

copycat
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Posted: Tue Sep 04, 2007 12:32 pm

One of the only things I ever liked (with some exceptions now and then, including these too) from Dragon were the classes, because it let me see something aside from the normal, and made me think "if they can do it, can I?" I used them as a baseline for what I did, or did not, want, and then learned to "balance" to my tastes. They were wonderful for a fledgling designer.

Those who can, don't. Those who should not, do.

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