Xaxaxe wrote:I respect your take on alignment, Aneoth, and I can see where that might cause some problems for you as you evaluate some aspects of That New Edition. It's clearly an important part of the way you play the game, which is cool with me.

But, setting aside all talk of game mechanics for a second, I still don't think the point I was trying to make was addressed: the logic of what is considered to be "accepted" and "not accepted" elements of a fantasy-based game is wildly inconsistent at this place.

An example (work with me on this one; I'm trying to make a point   ):

Let's say, for whatever reason, that Gary Gygax had included rules for creating centaur PCs in the early editions of D&D. What would the result have been? That's pretty easy: everyone here would have spent the last 30 or so years playing centaur PCs and not giving it too much thought, other than the occasional rules-based argument. Centaurs would be canonical ... accepted ... possibly even revered ... by virtually every user here. That is an absolute, rock-solid given.

Now reverse it. Let's take what really happened (no centaur PCs in the '70s), but imagine that The Edition That Causes Cancer introduced them earlier this month. What would the reaction be here? Close your eyes and picture it ...

"That's stupid" ... "that's gay" ... "that's NOT D&D!" ... "centaurs can't be PCs because of [rule X], [rule Y], [rule Z]" ... "I'm going to add a lame feats/skills/multiclassing joke for the 10,000th time and maybe someone will eventually laugh!" ... "typical corporate WotC nonsense" ... "get off my lawn!"

Same concept: a centaur PC. But one is accepted and the other is not. And for one reason only: the first was written 30 years ago; the second is new. It has nothing at all to do with game mechanics or playing styles; it's just blind devotion to the original.

Look around this thread, any thread that touches upon 3e (with the possible exception of the DCC line), or any thread that talks "too much" (whatever that means) about a new or different game system, and see if you can tell me I'm wrong.

Hey, you want to see some REAL Grumpy old men?  Come over to Dragonsfoot sometime and join me in the 2E folder.  Where 1E worshippers jump over all the time to absolutely drop bombs on the 2E guys because obviously Satan has taken over our minds (what little minds we must have, that's unsaid) because we prefer a so incredibly inferior, awful, broken, evil piece of crap.  The stuff here is frikken Mensa material compared to that Neanderthalistic tripe.  The main gripe seems to be to complain over and over about kits, specialty priests, demi-human level limits, splat books, Non Weapon Proficiences, and an entire hoard of other ideas that BARELY make 2E different from 1E.  It's the most asinine load of shit you have ever seen.  

Saying that, just the idea we have managed to remain civil on this thread, makes me realize 1.  Dragonsfoot discourse is about 10 grade levels beneath discourse here; 2. I wouldn't want to game with about 90% of the dudes I see there; 3. Dragonsfoot allows no discourse on anything after 1999 anyway so the thread would have been killed by the "moderators" anyway.

So, once again, the fact we've been able to discuss this like gentlemen, when obviously emotions run high, is once again indicitive of why I like to hang out here so much, and why I've made such good friends here with that hanging out.

I agree 100% with your assessment, Duke, and anyone who doesn't needs to take a good long look at whether or not they are being honest with themselves.  If EGG had released "PHBII"with specialty priests, NWPs, no demi human level limits, character class kits, the 1E crowd would be shedding blood to defend it.  If EGG had created Dragonlance, 1E fanboys would have dragons tattooed all over their torso; if EGG had created Forgotten Realms, 1E lifers would have "Elminster Rocks!" scribbled allover their gamebooks, if...well, you get the picture.  

I will freely admit nostalgia rules my land.  I can't even comprehend why someone wouldn't like 1/2E better than what came after, the same way I can't believe someone wouldn't like Lee/Ditko's Spiderman better than the fluff nowadays.  But, I like to think I'm not entirely a lost cause because some stuff nowadays is just hands down better (Battlestar Galactica, for that matter)....just not, IMO, the game I grew up worshipping and playing almost every single day for many years.  

"I'm going to add a lame feats/skills/multiclassing joke for the 10,000th time and maybe someone will eventually laugh!"

Guilty as charged, cmon man I always laugh at those. Mostly because way back in the day (probably 2000 or so), I happened to overhear a conversation at my local game/comic store from a guy imploring his DM to allow him a template/level as a "Gray Ooze" and pleading that his character would "make it work".  That shit is just funny.

Mike B.

Badmike wrote:If EGG had created Dragonlance

I believe he claimed to have done just that.  Didn't I read that he was the inspiration behind a series that emphasized dragons and added romance to D&D role-playing?

I believe I am quoting EGG himself.  

He wasn't the writer, of course.  No need to pounce on me!

Traveller wrote:If he didn't write the concept in OD&D, then it had to be Dave Arneson who came up with the guideline which says that players can in fact play any race they want, as long as it starts off small and works its way up (Other Character Types, Men & Magic, p8 ).

The guideline is in there, but it was left to the individual referee to determine what was allowable and what wasn't.

That was the beauty of OD&D.  Talk to any group that started out with the White Box and used it for a few years, they had at least one player that was a dragon/centaur/merman during that time. OD&D is/was so wild ass it wasn't a shock to see a party with a couple clerics, a samurai, a baby dragon, a mage from another dimension with a couple of laser pistols, and some dude name "Ed the Thief" taking up the rear.  Which makes all the talk of "purity of old school D&D" so hilarious....!

Mike B.

Wasn't one of the characters in the old Rogues Gallery a centaur? (Been reincarnated by a druid IIRC). I think it would be quite a nice roleplaying challenge.

(Is that the trick of all of this - as long as you try to roleplay then the system is kind of irrelevant?)

gyg wrote:Wasn't one of the characters in the old Rogues Gallery a centaur? (Been reincarnated by a druid IIRC). I think it would be quite a nice roleplaying challenge.

You got it: "Talbot." Seventh-level fighter.

Great old-school Erol Otus art, too. I'd forgotten just how much art EO provided for that item.

Xaxaxe wrote:It's interesting that "done before" is being brought up as a negative. That just seems to reinforce the general feeling that concerns me: if it was first (Gygax) it is canonical and inviolate; if it wasn't first (pretty much everything else, with some exceptions), it's derivative and distasteful.

It's even more interesting that you assumed I was bringing it up a negative.  I was putting them into historical context alongside some other notable reptilian races.  (I actually edited the post a bit short.)

The saurials were well done, in that they were rather subdued.  They had considerable weaknesses (at least in the context in which they were written), namely being unable to speak.  Dragonlance's draconians don't make a good PC race at all.  Lizardmen -- well, go ask your DM, but if you pulled them straight from the MM they'd probably work fine.

The only things wrong with 4E's dragonborn are: stupid name, horrible artwork, lame backstory, and of course the common stuff that 4E got wrong on all the races -- namely massive stat inflation and nifty but completely unnecessary powers.

Oh, I forgot: poor legacy.  The 3E dragonborn was ridiculous, and not a race at all.  As min/maxers handbook linked below makes perfectly clear, it was a game mechanic -- (+2 con, -2 dex) -- tied to an epithet.  You could be a "Dragonborn Grey Elf".  Or a Dragonborn Anthropomorphic Monkey.  Or a Dragonborn Centaur, theoretically, if you could find the stats for a centaur.  Distancing themselves from that mess would have been wise.

http://forums.gleemax.com/showthread.php?t=846085

So if they wanted this race to be taken seriously, they probably should have dropped the breath weapon and rather lame backstory, called them lizardmen, and avoided tying them to a new class -- the Warlord.

Zenfinite et al:
As far as how realistic you like your RPGs,   Be careful what you wish for!

Take a look at the original edition of "Cyberpunk."

The Cyberpunk combat system is (or was then) called "Friday Night Firefight" and it tries to emulate realism, with an emphasis on firearms combat.  As I recall (it's been awhile since I perused it) it's fairly exacting as far as where on the body you are hit and the effects thereof.  This makes it kind of slow to resolve, and also kind of final.  As in, it's a bit TOO real.  Basically, if you're unlucky enough to be shot, you're very likely injured very badly or killed, just as in real life.  It isn't like, "oh, you're shot, take 5HP."  It's more "you are hit, the bullet passes through your back and arm, pierciing several vital organs.  You can't stand or use that arm and will probably bleed to death soon without medical help."  And experience doesn't help.  A high level character can be taken out as easily as a low level one.  Again, just like real life.

Definitely a different experience than the HP system.  If that's your cup of tea fine.  It's fun when you're in the mood for this type of thing.  But don't get too invested in that character you just spent an hour rolling up!   

Badmike wrote:

Traveller wrote:If he didn't write the concept in OD&D, then it had to be Dave Arneson who came up with the guideline which says that players can in fact play any race they want, as long as it starts off small and works its way up (Other Character Types, Men & Magic, p8 ).

The guideline is in there, but it was left to the individual referee to determine what was allowable and what wasn't.

That was the beauty of OD&D.  Talk to any group that started out with the White Box and used it for a few years, they had at least one player that was a dragon/centaur/merman during that time. OD&D is/was so wild ass it wasn't a shock to see a party with a couple clerics, a samurai, a baby dragon, a mage from another dimension with a couple of laser pistols, and some dude name "Ed the Thief" taking up the rear.  Which makes all the talk of "purity of old school D&D" so hilarious....!

Mike B.

Gary clearly later regretted including this OD&D rule, hence the long "humanocentric" rant at pg 21 of the DMG. IIRC, he was still firmly in this camp in recent years in the Dragonsfoot Q&A thread. Others took that original rule to heart, such as Ken St Andre (in his D&D rewrite which became Tunnels & Trolls) and J. Eric Holmes. Holmes slipped a line about a party including a "centaur, a lawful werebear, and a Japanese Samurai fighting man" into the Basic rulebook, and there's a Dragon article where describes his Dreenoi character, which is a humanoid insect from Starguard.

Xaxaxe wrote:This might be closer to the truth than WotC wants to admit, sadly.

I'm pretty much sitting here and nodding with everything you typed, with the possible exception of the 2E/3E change-over. While there might not have been an actual need for a third edition, it had been roughly a dozen or so years since 2e debuted, so I don't feel like they were just trying to put their hands in the till (that came later, when I realized that this was a company that was trying to keep a straight face while it released something like five Monster Manuals, three DMGs, and two PHBs). And it seems fair to say that the Wizards' guys wanted to make a version of their D&D, since 2e is so clearly a TSR effort, through-and-through.

3.5, though ... pure cash-grab. Ugh. And I'm not sure the system really needed a 4e to debut in 2008; from what I've seen, there's nothing that couldn't have waited another couple of years or so. There might have been some dollar-signs in the air during those initial meetings ...

3.5 was starting to groan under it's own weight. There certainly were many, many people that were happy with 3.5, but there were a lot of people that were really starting to see problems with it. 3.5 was an update to 3.0 that was sorely needed for the many broken things it had. Were they also profits to the company? Yeah, probably. I suspect we'll see their true colors if they come out with a 4.5 or 5e in just 4-5 years.

From what I've read they didn't want to do 3.5 but basically had to do it to fix the problems.

Was 3.0 needed? I dunno, the industry was on the decline, gamers were moving in droves away to other things. 3rd ed and d20 and the OGL really did bring about a new revolution in PnP gaming. It arguably resuscitated the industry.

I don't get the WotC hate, honestly, it seem irrational. It's a company filled with gamers who love what they do. Yeah, they're a business too. But, I'd say TSR post about 1983 was worse than WotC has ever been.

EDIT: I believe that 4e may be closer to a system that will be able to survive the inevitable cascade of splat books and additional rules. It's a system that at it's core is built more object oriented and may be able to survive years and years of additional rules if they are added following the same internal logic of the base rules. Maybe. They'll probably need to reset after some point again to build a new system that's even closer to that.