<snip: grargh!>
Post by JustisaurI hate to defend 5e... but I am playing it with friends. It seems o.k.
to me, there's a ton of stuff I don't like - most of it the same stuff I
don't like about 3e, and some of the stuff I didn't like about 4e as
well, although some new stuff too. There seems to be much improved too.
The race descriptions at least were inspiring.
Enjoy.
Post by JustisaurI'm running Labyrinth Lord which just seems so much better than
anything else D&D I've tried, it's like night and day.
A lot of the clones are things where people wrote down what they
played for a lot of years. That helps.
<Re: 5e>
Post by JustisaurPart of the issue is the majority of the playtesters were people who
liked 4e, not the larger base of 3e/pathfinder players they wanted to
get back.
Maybe. I saw people from all sides on their boards, and on the
comment threads under the downloads. They never asked for targeted
feedback, never really organised anything, never had the staff to
actually read what was coming in. I'm pretty sure it was just marketing.
Post by JustisaurPost by tussockThey're even back to launching a huge number of taketown notices on
people that are *trying* to support 5e on the internet, like it's 1995
That pisses me off, and really makes me not want to support them. When
they started doing that, that's when I said I wouldn't buy any more
products from them.
It completely bemuses me. Active volunteer game support people are
being forced to change to supporting Pathfinder. It's crazy.
Post by JustisaurPost by tussockand bankruptcy is just around the corner again. Their few productive
and useful fans, they're blaming *them* for ... I'm /guessing/ poor
sales. Leaks from inside say they like to blame their /sales
department/ for that most of the time.
From what I understand their sales are far beyond what they expected.
The majority of people I see online even on DF seem to just love 5e.
I'm wondering when the bloom is going to fall off the rose and people
will see it for what it is.
They've got no product schedule, so who knows. They don't seem to be
hiring, or rushing to fill demand for more adventures, so it's not that
good. They can't even figure out open licencing, and the current
licensees don't seem that happy.
Plus, 4e got plenty of vocal supporter love well past when they
stopped printing books for it. D&D is a huge brand that has changed
people's lives and they will fight the good fight (or the dirty one)
regardless.
I'd love if it was huge. I would. I just can't see it. Even the
arguments that do show up are like ...
A: Gaping hole in the rules.
B: Oberoni fallacy.
A: Seriously?
It's clever really. There's so little there people can't even argue
about it properly. Just point out things which are not there, and have
the fans tell you how easy that is to fix, somehow, mumble-mumble.
Post by JustisaurPost by tussock[AD&D] Reminds one just how much proper game-design work went into
the core 3.0 books, warts and all. Proper destructive playtesting,
shame they ignored the one-round, caster-induced TPKs at high level
that bought up.
And that's my main problem with 3e. It all looks like a precision
clockwork machine on the surface... it's just powered by a bad nuclear
reactor that melts down.
It runs alright up through mid levels. The classes and monsters all
sort of work up to near level 13 PCs and CR 14? maybe, assuming the non-
casters have a bunch more magic than 3.5 allows. Secret class feature:
free artifact sword.
Post by JustisaurPost by tussockIf I had anything to say, I'd probably be saying it. I don't want
to just piss in people's cornflakes when I've little else to
contribute. Unless it's another nostalgia thread. What else am I
supposed to remind people of here?
I don't know, just what positive you're doing.
None in that post. Reminding everyone of tussock, perhaps.
Post by JustisaurWhat you like about ACKS, etc.
So, recently, I was considering stat blocks for monsters. I compared
Ogres through various editions and clones. They're such a simple monster,
it's kinda hard to go wrong unless your basic format is a disaster.
So AD&D is fine, extras hidden in the DMG. Basic is fine, for a
dungeon bash. 2nd edition of course did the full-page world-building
thing so it gets a bit of useless filler that is often wrong, but there's
a lot of game useful rules in there somewhere too. 3e they're fine, for a
dungeon bash, if a little ... numerically verbose.
Pathfinder is 3e plus a wandering tale of how to gross out your
players. They do that, it is what it is, like ancient story-telling. I
mostly enjoy it.
ACKS monsters are about a half page of gamey crunch. Even the origin
story is something players can do. Ogres have social structure you can
game, dice for allies and slaves to rescue and diced morale and so on,
everything is something immediately useful to the DM when an Ogre is
there, or when laying out an Ogre lair, and it spits out Ogre-appropriate
treasure off random dice. It tells you a lot about them at the same time.
Every sentence is like: they do this stuff, % chance, using that rule
with these dice. And it all adds up to something cool for the game world.
The whole game's like that. There's some stuff about their original
multi-year house game that became ACKS spread through it as examples,
which can be a bit talky, but they're all based off the actual rules and
you can just do that too.
It's got low-level survival play, it's got mid-level power-
accumulation play, it's got high-level political play, all with highly
functional rules. All crunchy with quick and clear resolution. They tell
you what it can do, and it gets on and does it.
Which seems like, games should do that. But most RPGs the rules just
don't support what they talk about in a lot of ways, some of the time the
rules don't even work. ACKS works, it's /full/ of rules that you will use
and they work.
A Wizard did it? How often does that show up? In ACKS /your/ Wizard
can do it. With the rules. All of it. A Fighter can fight well too. Does
what it says on the tin.
--
tussock