Community

Yes but bad scans and pdfs are a poor replacement for brand new books. 

My trip to amazon .com where I found the prices of the reprints had a lot of 1e D&D books of dubious condition for under $5.00 each. Since two of my originals are in poor condition I figure it's just as well. 

I guess the most important thing besides those other games not being D&D is that they weren't written by EGG, and for me, that is the point of buying them. 

Oct 20, 2012 -- 8:33PM, warrl wrote:

Oct 20, 2012 -- 7:22PM, epicfreak wrote:

I could be wrong, but I don't think the issue was the supply of arrows - it's the supply of arrows on-hand.  Sure, you might have a warehouse full of arrows back home, but if you've been trapped in Undermountain or trekking across the Sahara for the past 6 months - where are those arrows coming from?  You can't possibly carry enough with you.

Believe me, we've done the math and it isn't difficult at all to do exactly that.

WITHOUT a bag of holding, or a pack animal, or the like.

With one, it is of course trivial.

Sir, you're math is further askew than a politicians.

But if you'd like to post it I could use a good laugh. 

Oct 20, 2012 -- 10:24PM, Zaramon wrote:

Oct 20, 2012 -- 5:04AM, Phantymwolf wrote:

Yeah cause playing 'heroes' in the World of DARKNESS is totally the point...

If you were a player in my vampire game, you would be going back to character creation quite a bit methinks. I guess I'm just of the mindset that if you can't play within the setting then don't bother and play something else. Want to be a hero? Play D&D, Savage Worlds, or any superhero game. Want to play something dark and gritty? Play WoD, Cthulu or Warhammer.    

As for the conversation about Skills & Powers? Loved them, would love to see a similar system for crafting races and such in Next, but I doubt it'll happen.

Ever played Hunter: The Vigil? There is totally room for heroes in world of darkness, and in fact, the darker the world, the brighter the heroes shine. I probably would be going back to character creation a lot because that statement alone makes me think you are the kind of storyteller that likes to punish players for not playing the game how you envision it should be played. The fact is the troupe in any storytelling game gets to determine how much light they want in their world of darkness, and that question is especially important in a game like Hunter, and to a lesser extent Geist.

But a lot of the stuff in World of Darkness draws on Jungian and Campbellian heroic archetypes, particularly the Welsh fey/folklorish themes of Changling: The Lost. Heroes don't always have to be good guys. Hercules and Samson were both pretty mean guys, but they were deinitely heroes. I like to play characters that have an impact on the setting, and I like watching players play characters that have an impact on the setting. I don't want the pcs licking the prince's boots all game, screw that. Let's shake things up, let's rip the world apart.

Actually haven't played Hunter: The Vigil, though I did run a Reckoning game in the Classic WoD, so yes in those aspects of heroism in WoD you are right, not going to deny that.

As for the going back to character creation, no I don't enjoy punishing my players, but if you do something blantantly stupid like go on a murder spree in front of everyone and as you put it 'crap on the Masquerade', well you will face the consequences, and those consequences (for a vampire anyway) usually turns into the police taking notice, and if they don't get you, then the FBI, and if they don't get you, by that point professional hunters are after you and likely they will find your haven and drag you out into the sunlight. Thems the facts. That is if the Prince and his Sheriff don't catch you and punish you for breaking the laws, though to be fair, I don't necessarily have the Prince execute those that step that far out of line, they usually have worse punishments like Blood Bonds (or recently I had one serving the local werewolf pack because he killed one of their kind in their territory. The Uratha were quite pleased to have someone with a lot of influence in mortal society to get things done for them). If you're familiar with the setting, then you should expect these sorts of outcomes as a vampire that pretty much outs itself.

As for Changeling? Wow, you want to talk about dark and twisted. The changelings are too busy watching over their shoulders and plotting the deaths of their fetches to be worried about much else. At least from what I've read about the setting. Back to a little D&D here, I plan to use some inspiration form their backstory for a Fey Pact Warlock one of these times.   

And lastly, about PCs having an impact. I agree. I like to see them plot and scheme and I usually hope that someone will take the Prince position themselves or back an NPC that they particularly like, but it always ends up being their choice.

And to stay on topic, I will ask, could you even get a three way multi-class character (like a Fighter/Mage/Rogue) anywhere past 10/10/10 once you took into account the atrociously slow progression they had?   

Oct 21, 2012 -- 3:26AM, Qmark wrote:

Oct 21, 2012 -- 2:29AM, Phantymwolf wrote:

And to stay on topic, I will ask, could you even get a three way multi-class character (like a Fighter/Mage/Rogue) anywhere past 10/10/10 once you took into account the atrociously slow progression they had?   

with the discrete XP tables, it's not possible to have ten levels in those three classes at the same time.  The same XP total needed for a level 10 wizard became a level 11 thief 30000 xp ago.

Meanwhile, the rest of the party is around from level 12.

1e/2e xp tables were pretty messed up.

Yeah they were, one of the big jokes I have with a friend of mine is that in 2e you'd have a 3rd level wizard and the rogue is running around at 9th level. I still have a soft spot for the edition, but I'm not sure I could ever play it out of the box again... 

1st and 2nd editions of D&D, as well as basic D&D, had many, many issues. Characters were never balanced, some races were just plain better than others, some classes were great while others were pitiful and the level progressions where so uneven that level had no meaning.

It was never clear what characters could do outside of combat and the thief's skills tended to suggest that there really wasn't much. In fact, the only justification for having a thief in the group was that it was the only way for the group to receieve access to some very vital skills. Otherwise they were utterly useless.

Wizards had incredible world-breaking powers and the spellcasters were the only ones that ever received a meaningful increase in damage or armor. Fighters generally just became bigger and bigger bags of hitpoints.

Characters were highly, highly expendible and until one had access to and could afford constant ressurrection or (actually more creative, but much less useful) reincarnation spells, having at least half the party roll up new characters by the end of the adventure was typical.

Troubles were further caused by the way in which  players were meant to create their characters. Just roll 3d6 on each stat one after the other. This meant that sometimes players had really good everything while others couldn't really meaningfully contribute. It also meant that quite often the group didn't have compatible enough stat distributions to create a balanced group.

But... all that being said, one needs to recognize what it was. It was more of a simulation game than a roleplaying game. Yes, some people built stories on it, many of them decent enough that whole long-running series of novels were started back then. But it was actually pretty crap for a DM and players to actually use it to create a decent ongoing story. The reason for that is quite simple-- do you know what doesn't happen in strong stories? Any of the main characters dying at any given time for any random old reason without it having any sort of purpose, meaning or impact or even being a climatic event... followed by someone with comparable abilities just wandering in and replacing them. It can happen to minor and side characters, but virtually never to main protagonists (unless it is maybe a casting issue and/or in the pilot episode of a TV show before things take off).

Imagine if Harry Potter was killed in his second book and a totally new character that had never been hinted at before but somehow had exactly the same ability to defeat Voldamort wandered into the room two minutes later, defeated the snake and then continued on until he was killed in book 5 and then one of his otherwise fairly mute followers who was never important before suddenly takes on his role. And then he gets killed halfway through book 7, but this time the group (which now contains none of the original characters as they have been replaced by others because they died or their players quit the game) can afford the ressurection spell which allows them to bring back this third "chosen one" to life and then they work together to finally defeat Voldamort.

Sounds pretty crappy, right? Even in ongoing TV series where there are a lot of character deaths (Lost and Heroes are pretty notable for "clearing out" all protagonists and villains introduced that season and any ones remaining from last season that somehow managed not to be killed off), but there was still a group of central protagonists (and in both cases, a nefarious antagonist) who got that blessing of invincible immortality-- because to kill them off would have brought the whole story to a screeching halt and replacing them just wasn't going to fly.

But this issues goes back to what D&D is based on, what it really was... it is a wargame. The original concept for the game (called Chainmail at the time) was that each player would have an army of what we could now call low to mid level characters, those armies would attack one another and try to wipe one another out. So, of course death was ever present-- many "characters" were meant to die on every turn. At some point it was decided to change the focus to be on a small group of characters against the world-- much more like Fellowship of the Ring. So it was decided one could play be giving each player a single hero and that those heroes would become more powerful as the game progressed allowing them to fight bigger and bigger monsters that they wouldn't normally have had any chance against. The original classes were based on model types from chainmail-- Fighter, Cleric, Wizard, Hobbit, Elf, Dwarf.. and Thief was added to have the sort of skills needed for dungeon exploring.

Advancements were slowly added to this system, but they were really inventing the whole concept of an RPG system at this point. It was the first really functional system and virtually everyone who created an RPG system throughout the 70s, 80s and 90s to some degree (often to a high one) copied exactly what they did. Started in the 90s there were some who decided to go a different route and create an anti-thesis of the system-- but basically every RPG system even today could be said to be a critique of that original system. The D&D world was also originally as much like Tolkein's books as possible. There weren't many depictions at that point. Other monsters were taken from mythology or pop culture and put into the game... and, again, virtually every other fantasy franchise has copied them-- often extremely closely.

The campaign worlds created back then had very strong themes and have actually became quite a bit less dynamic and unique as time has gone on (does anyone even remember that Forgotten Realms was considerably less controled and feudalistic than Grayhawk and had dinosaurs running around including humanoid versions of several dinosaur species?) It feels utterly impossible now to be able to create a campaign world that has a strong, controled theme with an overarching metaplot that feels quite focused and doesn't somehow find a way to incorporate every single monster and humanoid race from every campaign world... but back in 1st and 2nd edition, this happened. 

I guess my main point is this-- the original D&D as well ast 1st and 2nd were the prototype RPG. There were many, many flaws and things were done in really terrible ways. At its root and core, it wasn't (and still isn't) a story game, the system really undermines any ability to actually tell a strong story, but rather it is a simulation wargame about a small number of soldiers against a much larger force of enemies. The different editions just played with how realistic or superhuman those soldiers were portrayed as being. As RPGs made their way to computers and console games, this became considerably clearer with various parts of the game being "fight system" or "story" in which things the characters had access to during battles were not available during the story segments and players generally had little or no choice as to what they would do during the story segements. This is coupled with the protagonists being unkillable or bringing the back from "death" is very easy-- or you get a game over if an important protagonist dies. Some would accuse this of being bad design, but it is actually critically necessary to tell a strong story.

For anyone to say they "got it right", particularly without having spent much time exploring or utilizing the system seems a bit naive. Instead a better statement might be that there may be some elements that were removed from the system that were better left in if one wanted to play a certain style of game or there were aspects that were added to the system that didn't work out the way they should have and made things considerably worse. Some of the fundamental issues that make D&D a roll-playing system rather than  role-playing system are pretty much insurmountable. But it is hard to deny that 3rd and 4th edition made large strides to take it from war simulation to story game-- although some of those added systems may have been critically flawed which caused them to do as much harm as good.