>it's 2016
>D&D came out almost 40 years ago
>people are STILL debating alignments REALLY mean
>people are STILL debating what hit points REALLY are
>people are STILL arguing about what attributes REALLY indicate
>people are STILL rolling up demi-human and wizard PCs instead of playing human fighting-men as Gygax intended
D&D was a mistake.
>>46911036
Or maybe the entire point is that it's up to the interpretation of each individual group of players based on what they like so they can have fun like they want?
>>46911036
>It's 2016
>4chan was launched almost 13 years ago
>OP is STILL shitposting
OP was a mistake
>>46911036
At least it popularized TTRPGs paving the way for future good systems.
>>46911036
The alignment system will be completely understood and no longer a subject of debate once HL3 is confirmed.
without gygax we'd probably be reading books right now or some shit.
>>46911036
No no, longevity is a good thing.
I realize that's difficult for someone too young to be on this website to understand.
Was he a hack?
>>46911036
>playing human fighting-men as Gygax intended
Are you saying that's what people should be doing?
Because if you are then your b8 is weak.
>>46911273
>only successful systems were Chainmail and D&D
>everything he published after leaving TSR was over-complicated, nigh-unplayable garbage
Possibly.
>>46911036
>Thinking that debates become less common as time goes on.
>The year Em-em-ecks-vee-eye
Dude, the arguments over the meaning of the bible have only gotten worse, not better.
The farther we get away from the lifetime of the creator, the more divorced of context that anything has. Eventually, gamers will even say the word "Thaco" as some other disjoined concept likely heavily divorced from what it was back in the 80s and 90s.
>>46911346
I guess he was trying to have his cake and eat it too by making demi-humans 'better' from a narrative perspective yet 'balanced' in game, but christ he really went about it all wrong.
>>46911036
>nerds are STILL arguing about shit that REALLY doesn't matter
5 internetz says there's someone, somewhere, arguing about whether Kirk was gay for Khan RIGHT NOW, and winning the argument using MLA citations from the script.
>>46911236
Don't even joke about that shit.
You know OP, if anything's worthiness was dependant on nobody arguing about stuff anymore, then the only worthwhile endeavour is human extinction. And we're working on that, so there's nothing for you to be mad about.
>D&D was a mistake.
And there still isn't a better alternative.
>>46912149
>there still isn't a better alternative
GURPS exists.
>>46912149
FantasyCraft.
>>46912149
>And there still isn't a better alternative.
For generic adventure fantasy? Torchlight, Dungeon World, any of the better-designed OSR clones.
For everything else? There's everything else.
>>46912149
that's a lie, [MY ESOTERIC RPG SYSTEM] exists!
>>46912348
>Dungeon World
>>46912348
>Dungeon World
I don't think I've ever seen anybody actually play DW for more than a couple of seasons without coming to hate it.
>>46911273
It's not all or nothing. It's quite possible for somebody to make a meaningful contribution somewhere along the progression of something, but then get left behind when that thing continues to progress. When you stand on the shoulders of giants, it's easy to look down at some of the things they've done wrong. Hindsight is 20/20 and all of that, and it's easy to take for granted the current, more sophisticated perspective on whatever it is.
But while, say, Space Invaders is primitive compared to what we have now, that doesn't mean it was bad for its time. And keep in that we learn and adapt best to our environment when we are young. So we use Gygax's accomplishments as our springboard, while Gygax is stuck building on the foundations of the world that existed when he was young.
>>46911776
>5 internetz says there's someone, somewhere, arguing about whether Kirk was gay for Khan RIGHT NOW, and winning the argument using MLA citations from the script.
As long as they aren't using Turabian, because fuck that shit.
>>46912460
well gygax is stuck in the ground now but you make a good point
>>46912460
Now wait just a second. You don't get to excuse garbage like Cyborg Commando, Dangerous Journeys, and Lejendary Adventures just because they were old.
They were shit even back in the day.
>>46912531
anon was just talking about watershed works throughout the ages, not 'good because it's old'
>>46912149
How are you defining "better" in this context?
>>46912477
What about APA?
Better System Bros, have any of you used Hackmaster? It's still d20 but it makes a lot of changes that appeal to my tactical side, I wanted to know if it was worth trying out.
>>46912531
Nobody hits homeruns all the time. Gygax had what it took to, under the right conditions and in conjunction with folks like Arneson, do an amazing thing and fundamentally create role-playing games as we know them. But just because somebody does one great thing doesn't mean that everything they do will be great. And remember that D&D isn't the baseline he was working from--it's the baseline other folks were working from. His baseline was a world before D&D.
And I've looked over Dangerous Journeys, and while I found it overly involved and without any particular magic, I don't know that it was entirely without merit. And we're talking about something that was published 18 years after D&D. Just because the '90s were "back in the day" for you doesn't mean they were early days for Gygax.
>>46911346
Wow. I'm on an OSR kick right now and those stupid level limits on demi-humans are by far my largest gripe. Didn't know Gary was such a prick about it.
>>46911346
>Legendary Adventures
>Bad
Faggot
>>46912760
I really hate Hackmaster, because it revels in the obnoxious, pointless crunch that weighs down AD&D*... and actually multiplies it whenever possible. Being rules-heavy makes a game harder to learn and play, but it's justifiable if there is a good trade-off. Frequently that trade-off is increased realism, but you're never going to get anything remotely realistic using the core D&D system, so that only goes so far here. Improved gameplay is the other big reason: making the game more tactical and giving greater choice to combat. But as far as I can remember, most of additional rules in Hackmaster simply add detail or granularity to things (like subdividing all attributes using percentile scores, regardless of how high they are), which frankly doesn't accomplish a whole lot. Granted, some of the detail makes it into a more "sophisticated" system, but the problem with this is that it's still tied to the old D&D system, creating a Frankenstein's monster with parts that interfere with each other's best qualities.
*Not that AD&D doesn't have its good points, just that Hackmaster seems to revel in its worst ones and say: "Wow, that's pointlessly intricate and serves no real purpose other than to be a detail that 'masters' of the game can use to make themselves feel superior to others; let's add a bunch more of those!"
Pic is a character sheet for Hackmaster Basic. Fucking Basic.
>>46912734
I never really had to use APA much, so I can't say. It was mostly Turabian and MLA.
>>46912885
>>46912149
RuneQuest came out like 2 years later...
>>46912933
I don't really remember any styles, I mostly remember my Math and Comp Sci courses. My wife did most of her papers with APA citations.
>>46912998
Turabian is persnickety while MLA is more permissive/easy going. Or at least that's the way it was. It's been a good while since I was in college.
>>46912885
>>46912965
Seems like a lot of work to get going but I'm kind of a sucker for crunch.
I'm browsing because my group will pretty much only play D&D, even though I wouldn't mind trying some other systems.
>>46912985
Oh wow, the game with ducks that no one outside of England has heard of. Get real.
>>46913094
There are a whole bunch of retroclones and OSR games. Are you specifically looking for something extra crunchy? Because there's less of that (I'd still recommend Dungeon Crawl Classics before Hackmaster though). If you're not looking for extra crunchy, but something that makes some changes, check out Castles and Crusades (streamlined and significantly tweaked AD&D that uses the universal d20 mechanic) or Lamentations of the Flame Princess (Moldvay Basic with tweaks and a gritty horror atmosphere).
>>46913192
>Oh wow, the game with ducks that no one outside of England has heard of.
I'm not that guy, and RQ is a bit crunchy for my taste (though simpler versions of the system aren't bad), but anybody who hasn't heard of RuneQuest doesn't know much about role-playing games. It's sort of like being unfamiliar with Traveller.
>>46913283
>RQ is a bit crunchy for my taste
I only really know OpenQuest and BRP, is RQ that much more crunchy than BRP because it seems really simple to me.
>>46911036
>almost 40 years ago
You need to check your math.
The system wasn't great, but it paved the way. Julius Caesar wasn't so great either.
>>46913192
He asked for *better* alternatives not popular ones. Anyway, who the fuck doesn't know about RQ?
>>46913398
>You need to check your math.
2016 - 1974 = 42
FORTY-TWO YEARS OF DUNGEONS AND DRAGONS
THAT'S AS MANY AS SEVEN SIXES
AND THAT'S TERRIBLE
>>46913351
>is RQ that much more crunchy than BRP
I can't speak for all editions, but yes. RQ is more involved. Like, each different body part has its own individual number of hit points.
It's rather like military history where it's pretty easy to think something like "why weren't stirrups invented earlier" with all the power of hindsight.
Gygax did pretty well with the tools that were available to him.
>>46913546
That's an optional BRP rule, doesn't seem like it adds that much overhead.
>>46911036
It's because, within the game, thse are objective values but they rely in our subjective interpretation. DO you think the assholes who flew planes into buildings thought they were evil? A few million people would disagree. So... were they evil?
We can debate it but, in the D&D world, there IS an answer. A single answer. And the only person who can tell you what it is is your GM... which means that single answer can be different from table to table and if you're a player, you should clear that shit up before you even sit down to play.
>>46913574
>why weren't stirrups invented earlier
When were they invented?
>>46913596
It's been too long since I've played RQ, but I remember when I first looked at BRP thinking that it was basically the same thing, but streamlined. At least with the basic game. I think that BRP with all the options might start to look like RQ, but from what I've seen and everything I've ever heard, RQ is on the complicated edge of that family of games.
>>46911236
>>46911882
Marc Miller would have come up with something resembling Traveller out of his various wargaming projects. Or Steve Jackson might have ended up extending the campaign/character rules in Car Wars beyond all sense.
It's really the next logical step after skirmish-level wargaming.
>>46913744
Weren't there already Napoleonic wargamers doing role playing?
>>46911776
But Kirk -was- gay for Khan.
>>46912807
There are plenty of alternate rules to replace the level limits, but the honest truth is that most characters wont have to deal with them, and if they do, retire the character and continue play as one of their Henchmen.
>>46911036
>>46914068
>
Charismatic Bad Guy vs. Dickish Good Guy
Personal Codes vs. The Laws of the Land
>>46914068
>chaotic means I'm a loose cannon cop with nothing to lose
No, not really.
>>46914068
>>46914068
No, that is the mutation it became when they decided to add good/evil into the mix.
It is being supernaturally on the side of good, chaos, or not being on a side.
I have to wonder, if gygax disliked magic casters so much why did he play one?
>>46914214
Maybe he didn't actually dislike them and people are just parroting exaggerated nonsense?
>>46913993
Nah, the problem isn't quite as much the level cap. I can at least understand that for B/X because a cap of 10 isn't so huge for a game that slows progression at 9 and hard caps at 14. The issue is that it means inherent demihuman superiority in the lower levels because humans don't get anything special other than being exempt from a handicap way later on and that is a shitty way to balance. There's good reason no other game follows that school of thought.
>>46914696
I think it's tied to shitty justifications for NPC power levels. Without the caps the most powerful human wizard would never ever compare with even a mediocre elven elder purely because the elf has had several hundred years compared to the human's meager decades.
>>46914913
That's never made sense to me because: A) most people in the world aren't adventurers with PC character classes, and B) if you followed the argument to its logical conclusion, almost every elf you met would have already hit the level cap. But most elves aren't 10th level, and if you look at their monster listings, they're like 1+1 HD.
>>46915011
Right, what's why it's a shitty justification rather than a good one.
>>46915029
I wasn't arguing against you, just adding my two cents about the top of discussion.
Two questions guys
One is there a better system to use if me and my group want to just go balls to the walls with random anchronisms and shit, and have guns and robots, but also traditional knights on horseback and wizards in robes?
Also should I turn one of my player's alignments to evil.
They are nominally chaotic neautral, but have done crimes such as.
>Murdering prisoners
>Attempting to rob party members
>Attempting to not share the loot (granted almost everyone who isn't lawful good has tried that)
>Purposely alerting a Goblin hoard of half the parties assassination attempt at their leader, for the purpose of getting them into a semi-enclosed space to maximize AoE and kill them
>Only justified the last thing with "Well the party would most likely have survived"
>>46912452
Unless you have a really strong narrative There is almost no point in using it. The system itself is so shallow.
>>46915775
FATE
>FATE
>>FATE
>>>FATE
>>46915848
Is the general the best place to ask? Is there even a general?
Also what about my second question.
>>46912149
No, [Name of Derivative RPG system that I like] exists!
>>46915941
We have the occasional general. It either dies without much activity or gets derailed with shitposting and pointless arguments.
And for your 2nd question (even though I'm not the anon you're responding to), murdering unarmed prisoners is definitely evil. The other things are debatable, but that alone is enough as far as I'm concerned
>>46911089
>mfw I've been here for 12 of those years
Fuck me sideways what am I doing with my life?
>>46916028
Anon, I certainly hope that you play [Name of Derivative RPG system that you like] [earlier iteration] because it's way better than [later edition]. People that play [Name of Derivative RPG system that you like] [later edition] are [slur]s.
>>46911036
>D&D was a mistake.
Nah. SOMEBODY had to take the first step and be the pioneer, even if we may lament all its failures. But it got the ball rolling and the conversation started.
Now there are definitely some concepts we can point to and say "Don't do THAT in your game, or it will suck." And then call each other faggots if we disagree.
>>46916073
Got any download links?
Also the murder happened while they were interrogating the prisoner. It wasn't exactly on purpose, but then again there was the lead up where they killed other unconscious enemies and captured the one.
>>46916101
>divisive comment that garners attention I desperately crave but don't get from anywhere else.
>>46916097
I'd say wasting it, but your crippling autism doesn't leave you much more opportunity than this.
>>46916149
>Got any download links?
Just use drivethroughRPG. It's pay-what-you-want there, as are most of the many supplements
>>46916149
Oh, and that sounds suspiciously like torture
>>46916188
>>46916223
It sort of was they had convinced the guy he was being tortured in a sex dungeon, but the rest of the party wasn't planning anything other beating him a bit at worse. Mostly they hoped to bluff him into spilling everything. This all ended when he decided to stick just the tip of a (dragon) dildo into the dude causing him to have a panic attack impale himself further and die.
>46911036
>it's 2016
>D&D came out almost 40 years ago
>people are STILL talking about D&D
>people are STILL playing D&D
D&D is a great success.
>>46916280
That's... Horrible.
>>46914156
Which edition was the first one to change the definition of Chaotic Neutral to "does literally whatever they want all the time, is totes bananas XD XD XD" because whichever one did it is officially the worst D&D edition.
>>46916789
2e. Blame David Cook.
>>46916818
The paragraph that ruined a thousand games (courtesy of PCs rolling up Kender thieves who steal from their own party)
>>46916097
>mfw I've been here for 12 of those years
>Fuck me sideways what am I doing with my life?
Well ya know, it isn't much different than going to other social media sites like Facebook or Reddit and do the same shit. They are a dime a dozen, at its core 4chan is really not that much different.
>>46916818
>>46911081
underrated post
>>46913677
Huns I think.
>>46917711
>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stirrup#Early_development
That does not appear to be the case.
>>46917726
My bad. At least I had double dubs.
>>46916818
Compare the 1e paragraph:
>Chaotic Neutral: Above respect for life and good, or disregard for life and promotion of evil, the chaotic neutral places randomness and disorder. Good and evil are complementary balance arms. Neither are preferred, nor must either prevail, for ultimate chaos would then suffer.
>>46911036
>fighting-men as Gygax intended
Mordenkainen was literally Gygax's self-insert who mind-controlled Bigby into becoming a good* guy
(*: of course the only true good is ABSOLUTE NEUTRALITY FOREVER)
>>46917902
>Mordenkainen was literally Gygax's self-insert
I thought that was Zagyg.
>>46911036
I know, isn't it wonderful how one man's idea can grow and change with time and be interpreted in so many different and wonderful ways?
>>46911036
>it's 2016
>bible/quran/watever holy text came out almost 2000 years ago
>people are STILL debating
>>46911036
>2016
>Armor is STILL shit
I mean... 40 fucking years.. Few editions... In combat-oriented game. And they can't fucking figure out something that 3/4 of other games are doing without ANY problem whatsoever. It's like the infamous THAC0, which for absolutely no reason had to go in reverse. It would worked exactly the same way by going up.
Who the fuck is doing their crunch?!
>>46912149
>I live in small town somewhere in the US and I thing the only game around is D&D, because there are no other at my reach
Seriously anon? I mean your post could work say... 35 years ago. But at this point, with such absurd level of variety in tabletop RPG, it's nothing more than pic related
>>46918377
>for absolutely no reason
AC originated with a naval wargame, and originally stopped at 1 (i.e., First Class).
>>46917996
>Grow
>Change
Did you just implied D&D is anything else than stagnant piece of patchwork fast fixes of never truly adressed issues for past 30-something years?
>>46918403
Which only strenghten the points, really. But hey, there were times when D&D was played as a competitive game, so at least tabletop RPG managed to get out of being simply form of figurine warfare... sort of.
>>46918377
This
Jesus, I can take all the shit that goes with D&D. But the way how absurdly abstract AC/THAC0 and whatever else they will call it is just plain annoying. The sole concept of the armour allowing you to dodge blows and not simply nullify their effect is mind-numbing. I could really get if if the rules were stating "better AC means you are better at blocking the hit with your superior armour". Instead somehow wearing armour makes you better at DODGING blows.
Which brings us to the retarded and truly toxic cliche D&D created. Namely - being unarmoured makes you more dexterious, which means you can dodge hits instead of enduring them after being hit. I... lost count how many times D&D players which I had a pleasure to play with in other games died because of this assumption.
Who needs protective armour, right?
>>46918440
>Which only strenghten the points, really. But hey, there were times when D&D was played as a competitive game, so at least tabletop RPG managed to get out of being simply form of figurine warfare... sort of.
Naval ships aren't really dodging anything, so more armor does make you harder to "hit" anything of any importance.
>>46918480
>The sole concept of the armour allowing you to dodge blows and not simply nullify their effect is mind-numbing.
This is just you being an idiot. Armour makes it more difficult for the blow to connect, same as being more dextrous does.
>>46918494
Have you ever been hit by anything while wearing protective gear?
I'm not asking about wearing actual armour and doing combat or whatever else, but for example taking a hit while wearing pads in sport or a brick hitting you in the head while wearing hard hat?
It still goes with a force that can do you a lot of harm. Simply less of it. And no matter how hard the damage is, chances are blunt trauma will be a bitch. This is actually a reason why people pad the hell of their armour in re-enacted medieval combat (or behourt), since maybe the armour block the hits, but the blunt trauma remains.
>>46918480
The problem was when they applied dexterity and mobility to ARMOR CLASS which was originally just to see if a given weapon could penetrate your armor.
>>46918534
Which is why armour that absorbs more force has a higher AC.
>>46918546
I think the dex mod was originally supposed to be applied to the opponent's to-hit roll, like magical protection, but people worked out it was easier to just apply it to their AC.
>>46918552
>Still not getting the point
Ok, let me try again.
No armour protects against blunt force trauma.
None.
It's simply fucking impossible, because, well, physics. You can lessen the impact, but that means a heavy bruise and cracked ribs instead being killed outright - still shitload of damage done to the body and that's when you are lucky.
By D&D rules it's entirely possible to completely and absolutely ignore the impact force, even if sizable chunk of the damage is taken from Strenght, meaning it's the mentioned above basic physics about simply being hit.
Meaning it makes no fucking sense when added together
>>46918546
>>46918579
And thus the fallout from this shitty mechanics was turned into "muh tradition"
Meaning it's pretty much another shit element of the crunch, but now glorified as integral part of what makes D&D D&D.
>>46918581
>No armour protects against blunt force trauma.
Are you a potato? Compressible armour protects against it by absorbing some of the kinetic energy.
Not even talking D&D here.
>>46918552
Not the anon, but you do realise AC is absolutely abstract and can't be translated in no way to how armour works, right? It's a factor so detatched from any form of reality it could be even called "Elephant Factor" and used as a way of measuring how hard it is to smack you, measured in elephant trunks.
That's how AC works.
And armour in D&D is pretty much a meme for past... 25? 20? years
Yes armour doesn't reduce the amount of force transmitted to you. What it does is it spreads out that force over a very large area instead of it been focused in a tiny area.
Yes I play spot were this effect is played out - I do paintball as a hobby.
>>46918596
>Compressible armour protects against it by absorbing some of the kinetic energy.
>some
Read again what you've just stated yourself. And that's exactly what is my point. You can mitingate the effect of the hit, but the hit still connects and still affects you.
Here, the easiest possible example. You are wearing protective gear and someone simply pushed you. Obviously you didn't sustain any lasting damage, BUT you were affected by the hit.
Now imagine instead of the pushing there was a mace smashing you to the ground. Congrats, your collarbone is still in one piece, but you are now on the ground/your knees and it hurst like a bitch
Or boxers and their padded "coifs". Sure, they are not sustaining any real damage... but still get their head knocked around, because it was simply pushed. It's not the point here about breaking their neck or decking them out cold, but they still sustained such hit.
>>46918581
When the system was originally developed for use on naval warships, it did. You could very easily have a ship get hit by a shell, have the shell bounce off, and the ship really suffers no real adverse effects compared to a flesh and blood person.
But they never changed it.
>>46918590
>And thus the fallout from this shitty mechanics was turned into "muh tradition"
That's always been the justification for every shitty mechanic in D&D. Hell, "muh Tradition" is why D&D is even still played.
People want their LOTR-ish races in a Conan-ish setting with 1-9 spell levels, AC, saving throws, 6 ability scores, gold pieces, 20 sided dice, etc. They want to reference Magic Missile, Cure Wounds, Mordenkainen XYZ, and Fireball. They want Rogues to disarm traps and stab shit in the back.
They want it to feel like it did when they were a teenager and their highschool/college friends invited them over and they spent the night eating pizza and making Monty Python jokes. They want to recapture those feelings by invoking mechanics that bring back those feelings.
D&D these days doesn't sell because people are walking along and say, "Hey. These mechanics look awesome to any other fantasy game. Let's play this!" D&D continues to exist because one of your friends invited you to a game of D&D, and when you became a DM, you invited a friend, so on and so forth.
For good and ill.
>>46918668
>D&D these days doesn't sell because people are walking along and say, "Hey. These mechanics look awesome to any other fantasy game. Let's play this!" D&D continues to exist because one of your friends invited you to a game of D&D, and when you became a DM, you invited a friend, so on and so forth.
I've noticed the only people that say this tend to have never played anything other than D&D with said friends.
I introduced my group to tabletop with memeshit like Dungeon World and Savage Worlds and hated it with a passion yet enjoyed the everliving fuck out of Pathfinder.
>>46918744
>enjoyed the everliving fuck out of Pathfinder.
Well, that's just because you've got brain problems.
>>46918757
Well, they did later switch to e5.
>>46918744
>I introduced my group to tabletop with memeshit like Dungeon World and Savage Worlds and hated it with a passion yet enjoyed the everliving fuck out of Pathfinder.
What game system did you have your most formative and fondest memories with, pal?
>>46918783
RuneQuest? Why?
>>46918787
Did you try playing that with your friends?
>>46918815
Yes, they absolutely loathed having to roll dice to determine if they advanced in a skill.
>>46918668
>People want their LOTR-ish races in a Conan-ish setting with 1-9 spell levels, AC, saving throws, 6 ability scores, gold pieces, 20 sided dice, etc. They want to reference Magic Missile, Cure Wounds, Mordenkainen XYZ, and Fireball. They want Rogues to disarm traps and stab shit in the back.
>They want it to feel like it did when they were a teenager and their highschool/college friends invited them over and they spent the night eating pizza and making Monty Python jokes. They want to recapture those feelings by invoking mechanics that bring back those feelings.
Not really.
First of all, the game barely exists outside States. I'm not saying it's forgotten or meaningless, but when making a simple comparison US vs rest of the world, D&D is pretty much another "american football": super popular in single country, barely known outside of it.
Then comes the fact how absurdly big D&D remains in States. That's the easiest game to get. Not because people are playing it, but because it's a semi-monopoly, or at least a serious business hegemony. There is a variety, sure, but when a game shop consist in 1 part of D&D, 1 part of WH40k, 1 part of Magic and 1 part of everything else, this should rind you a bell.
And in the end, there is a semi-stable equilibrium of new players getting into D&D (it's still a thing) and old players getting tired of it/stopping playing tabletops at all for dozens of different reasons (mostly lack of enough time).
So in the end, D&D is this dinosaur that is for many people the only game they can ever play. It's like on the emergency raft, which contains a miniboard for checkers as standard equipment to keep castaways entertained. Technically you can try to play chess with it, but that's where your possibilities end.
And this is what REALLY keeps D&D going - it's semi-monopolised position in States. It's also why it's pretty much "Muh Tradition: The Game" - they don't NEED to adopt to anything, because of the strong position.
>>46918869
>And this is what REALLY keeps D&D going - it's semi-monopolised position in States. It's also why it's pretty much "Muh Tradition: The Game" - they don't NEED to adopt to anything, because of the strong position.
That's how it established itself. But as the whole Pathfinder and lack of potential growth in 4e showed, combining that appeal to nostalgia with D&D's ubiquitous nature is its best recipe for success.
>>46918869
Are you the same guy that was trying to convince everybody White Wolf's stuff is really really popular in Europe and then got really mad when rebuffed by Europeans?
>>46918925
What?
Besides, who even plays White Wolf games at this point? It's 2016, not 1996
>>46918916
This is my main beef against D&D, really. Having this nice and cozy position makes it simply complaced. What's the real point of new editions (aside of making money, duh) if they are not even trying to change anything in the game as such or truly adress some of the issues that keep going literally for decades?
D&D is - at least for me - struck in late 90s, when they've decided "yeah, we are definitely king of the hill (never mind the brand was in it's lowest in the 90s), now we can bask in the eternal glory". At this point the only truly playable D&D is 0D&D, mostly because it's without all the patches, fixes and dire attempts to adress issues without actually adressing their reasons and causes.
>>46918978
They probably saw their competitors split their the playerbase so hard between editions that people couldn't sit down to a table without having 6 different editions of the core rulebook and said "Nope, lets not do that".
>>46918978
>What's the real point of new editions (aside of making money, duh) if they are not even trying to change anything in the game as such or truly adress some of the issues that keep going literally for decades?
Basically resets all the splat book bloat. Eventually, the options get to be so much that they become unwieldy and everyone just rests from the PHB/MM/DMG.
>>46919011
Anon, are you fucking insane? Starting with 3 ed, D&D goes into series of editions that are basically what you've described: people flipping 5 different 'core books', each from different edition, to decide on something. And each player considers 'their' core book as the only true and useful.
So in a sense the playerbase is intact, but the internal strife of each group is a serious issue if they aren't from Nowhere, Kansas. Because is such case they are sentenced to each other anyway.
>>46919069
Not the anon, but I don't get it.
You are making technically the same game for over 40 years.
Instead of keeping thing consistent or at least comparable or whatever, each new edition keeps the core rules as they were, but adds shitload of stuff around them, just to be "different" than the previous one, so people will buy this new great thing that comes with new, better rules.
In the end you land with few editions of the same game that are basically what can be called a disappearing xero, with each copy being worse and worse and more and more bloated, so once in a while you have to do a "reset edition" and release another game, treated as blank slate for the brand. Only to soon recycle the whole thing and end up with another bloat.
This is bad management and brand mishandling at its "finest". You would naturally expect from one of the oldest brands on the market to be carefully managed and did with care, not just a random hodge-podge of "hot fixes" thrown together.
>>46918947
>Onyx Path going strongExcept for Exalted which is kill
>>46919075
For players D&D 3E had just one book you needed to play; the player's handbook and it received one revision, 3.5E.
The idea that players used and needed to own every splat is a recent invention and something nobody did.
However Spell Compendium was pretty popular because it basically compiled books from every other splat.
>>46919156
>Exalted 3e is platinum seller on DTRPG
Too bad that's just pre-orders coming through.
>>46919168
That's true of 2E and Moldvay & Holmes Basic as well. Not sure about Mentzer Basic, because fuck that.
>>46919177
Yeah and Exalted 3e has been out for 3 years and so was three supplements and it has award winning art and the famous Onxy Path open development style to reward those that made it the most backed kickstarter RPG in history.I'm actually pained by exalted being handled so shitly. Lets not forget "We're sending it back for indexing, expect it in 2 weeks" -3 months ago-
>>46919209
What emotion does this convery? Pained smugness?
>>46919493
Yes.
>>46913462
>who the fuck doesn't know about RQ?
D&D 3.x and Pathfinder memelords.
> AC doesn't work!
Abstraction idiots.
"No mechanical effect" doesn't mean nothing happened.
You're supposed to talk about how you actually fought, and the DM is supposed to tell you how the blow that "missed" barely connected, or just clawed up your armour.
Buncha' fucktards.
>>46920698
The concept of Abstraction is so completely foreign to people they'll never understand unless you explain it to them like they're retarded.
>>46915775
Fate or gurps, depending on whether you like your games light or crunchy
>>46912452
It just relies so much on having a good story behind it, you can't really play it 'for fun.' And why do we have to go around the table at the beginning of the session and provide bits of something that happened between this session and the last, instead of actually playing it and getting to really make choices about what's happening?
>>46913574
Why did people use chariots instead of riding the horses?
>>46920823
I don't even know where to begin when describing what Dungeon World gets wrong.
How about how it massively rewards players that play their characters wrong? It's like rolling a Wizard but playing your Wizard like a rogue and then getting massive amounts of exp for failing on every roll.
>>46920842
so you don't fall off when charging/riding fast
>>46920912
But the Romans had cavalry long before the stirrup became widespread in about the 6th century.
>>46920698
>Game developed for four decades
>It relies on mechanic originally created for naval wargame
>HURR YOU CAN'T INTO ABSTRACT DURR
Anon, nobody is complaining about abstract numbers or role-playing value. Instead, people complain about simply awful design of one of most fundamental elements of the whole combat mechanics.
The game is simply badly designed in this regard. And no amout of good will, imagination and pretending it doesn't exist will fix that.
>>46920940
... and by that time nobody was using chariots, you dumb nigger.
The idea for chariot is bloody simple - you DON'T have cavalry. Maybe it will shock you, but it's easier to put a cart on a horse, a dedicated driver of that cart AND a guy with a bow/javelines standing right next to him, than putting a guy on a horse. It's not stirrup that's important, it's the fucking saddle.
Chariots cease to be a thing around Alexander times.
>>46917976
M was his first PC, soloing with Rob Kuntz as DM
>>46920972
So why invent a far more complex chariot with different people playing different roles just to make it useable, when you could sit on the horse and function like light cavalry? I don't see how the chariot is easier.
>>46920940
The romans had no problem not falling off their horses you idiot
>>46921008
because you don't want to fall off the fucking horse. How hard is that to grasp?
>>46921011
So the Romans had no trouble falling off horses, despite a lack of stirrups...
>>46921028
...but for some reason before the Romans, chariots were used because people wanted to avoid falling off horses?
What did the Romans have that these other civilizations didn't?
>>46920842
>>46920912
It's actually because the first breeds of horses were not strong enough to be mounted by an armored man. When they got those breeds, war chariots didn't stop existing from night to day because that's not how it works.
>>46921110
More years for better horses to develop, more years for better horsemen traditions to develop and the most important more years to develop a better mounting saddle.
Pretty much everything works like that, the "revolutionary" change is shit first but more time means more sophistication. It's literally the same with guns.
>>46921110
>Being this tier retarded
>Using Romans as example of cavalry army to begin with
Jesus Christ...
Chariots went out of battlefield around 7 CENTURY BC. That's when Rome was a small settlement.
They went out, because people figured out how to make saddles. Meaning it was easier to sit on the horseback.
Meanwhile, chariot is not complex at all - it's just a fucking cart with two wheels in it. What the hell is complex in this? Combined with harness, even the most basic one, it makes a fast-moving platform for an archer/javeliner, so they can shoot/throw their projectiles at enemy that can't really retaliate.
Thing is - chariots are absolutely shit in combat, even with their supposed mobility. So the moment humanity grasped how to properly fasten belts of the saddle, nobody bothered with chariots. They became obsolete.
Best example - Macedonian cavalry going through Persia, showing everyone how useless and anachronistic chariots were at this point.
And you are still making some idiotic assumptions that in Roman times anybody anywhere was using chariots for anything else than parades and races. Especially since few centuries earlier Alexander revolutionised warfare with introduction of pincer tactics and different ways of flanking with cavalry
>>46913574
See how you derailed a thread
>>46920842
>>46920940
>>46921008
>>46921110
>Hollywood history in action
And then people say I shouldn't get pissed about all the historical inaccuracies in films
>>46913574
It's now how Gygax handled the whole thing. It's how for next 40 years NOTHING was done to improve it, while the original was far from perfect
>>46918757
Well you can fuck off with your opinion Lel
>>46911081
/thread
>there are still fucktards who think "Chaotic" means "random"
>>46922190
>there are still idiots who think 'Lawful' means 'obeys all the laws all the time without question'
>>46922275
>there are still morons who think "Good" means "always nice"
>>46922322
>there are still fools who think "Evil" means " constant dick"
>>46922762
>there are still fools who thing "Evil" means "James Bond villain"
>>46922826
>there are still fools who think "Neutral" means boring
>>46918846
I always thought that was an exceptionally clever mechanic (the higher your skill, the harder it is to advance), though I can kind of understand how folks would feel like they were being cheated out of skill advancement they feel like they earned when they got bad rolls.
>>46918480
Mechanically speaking, armor as accuracy reduction actually tends to work better than armor as damage reduction. This is because armor as damage reduction can absolutely cripple smaller, lower damage weapons. -2 DR reduces the damage output of a d8 weapon by approximately 42% while it reduces the damage output of a d4 weapon by a whopping 70%. There are ways to mitigate that some (by making it so you always do at least 1 point of damage on a hit, the reductions are 36% and 50%, respectively), but it's definitely trickier to get it right. And things only get worse if you're comparing a weak guy with a dagger (maybe a wizard) to a strong guy with a sword (maybe a fighter).
With that said, the psychology of the thing is much better with DR (Did you hit? If you hit, how effectively did you hit?) than with accuracy-reduction (Did you hit effectively enough to do damage? If you hit effectively enough to do damage, how effectively did you hit within that range?). And the game doesn't play like the guy in heavy armor is super dodgy. (And yes, a good GM can describe things in such a way as to emphasize blows glancing off armor, but it's something to have to work around, and most folks only give a slight nod in that direction.)
I personally think it's worth the hassle to do armor as DR. It plays better, even if it's more of a pain in the ass, mechanically speaking.
>>46920842
>Why did people use chariots instead of riding the horses?
>>46920912
>>46920940
It's possible to ride a horse, even in combat, without a saddle. Plains indians did so quite well, though it is far from optimal. I don't know why you brought up Romans, since cavalry dates to AT LEAST as early as 800 BC.
>>46920972
Yeah, chariots are an outgrowth of carts used for non-combat purposes. However, as mentioned above, the lack of a saddle isn't the main obstacle to riding the horse. Also, chariots had gone out of use long before Alexander (excepting in a few places). The accounts of Persian use of chariots is a gross overstatement of their actual combat role. the Persians made wide use of cavalry, and had a much better tradition of it than Greeks.
>>46921008
>>46921028
>>46921110
Again, stop talking about Romans.
>>46921110
>>46921127
>>46921169
To have cavalry, you need several things. The size of a horse is important, and archaic horses ended to be smallish, but it's not difficult to breed larger animals, and people WERE riding horses well before the use of cavalry (as in, militarily), but it takes very intensive breeding practices to breed horses with the correct TEMPERMENT to be ridden, especially in a combat situation. Animals don't like having other animals sit on them, and are much more inclined to pull something (like a chariot).
Anatomically, you COULD ride most any large animal, but even if tamed, they're not going to put up with that shit very well. The inclination to be ridden had to be specifically BRED into horses, and this took a long time, especially since there was no precedent to work from.
>>46911036
>>46920881
It's a game that rewards anything the players do. Think like giving ALL the children medals for participation, medals bathed in gold.
This is our future.
>>46918411
>Did you just implied D&D is anything else than stagnant piece of patchwork fast fixes of never truly adressed issues for past 30-something years?
I think you just defined evolution.
>>46927483
In another hundred years, we might get a pretty good game.
>>46912477
No, fuck you. It's called Chicago and it's the best form of citation you faggot.
>>46918411
>Did you just implied wh40k is anything else than stagnant piece of patchwork
That's how I read that. I was like why is he bring wh40k up? My Fucking mind.
>>46927964
Apparently, according to like 60 seconds of research I just did on the subject, Turabian has eased up a bit and made things easier since I last wrote a research paper, so I really can't comment on it in its present form. It used to be that it required significantly more details for citations and was picky about the punctuation in them, which wasn't always obvious. MLA was a breeze, comparatively.
>>46928089
Except it's true for 40k since it's expensive as fuck and GW rapes their wallets by nerfing shit to force everyone to buy X unit and Jews you on models. D&D has no incentive to do that since people would house rule shit away as you're told to do in every fucking pen and paper game anyway. Pen and paper RPGs are just a lot less fucked over because we can change rules on a whim. If you wanna play 40k with anybody, you're stuck with shit rules and you paid big money for that shit. You're not gonna spend 40k money just to play with a few friends. You pay that kinda money to play with lots of people.
>>46911036
>year of our Lord 2016
>heretics are STILL quibbling about the divinity of the pope
The East-West schism was a mistake.
>>46929816
>dominus nomine 2016
>believing Christ said anything about any man, Pope or not, being infallible on anything
True Christianity died with the gnostics. Catholicism and the council of nicea was a mistake.
