I like being creative. I am even a fan of some "over the top" concepts. However, just like in a movie, special effects can be overdone; likewise, special effects can't always compensate for a bad movie. One of the main reasons I cannot take modern horror movies seriously is because they too often spray gore and blood around and hope the audience won't notice that the movie is terrible. In contrast, I don't believe Hitchcock ever actually showed a person being murdered in his movies; yet,...
View full commentI like being creative. I am even a fan of some "over the top" concepts. However, just like in a movie, special effects can be overdone; likewise, special effects can't always compensate for a bad movie. One of the main reasons I cannot take modern horror movies seriously is because they too often spray gore and blood around and hope the audience won't notice that the movie is terrible. In contrast, I don't believe Hitchcock ever actually showed a person being murdered in his movies; yet, he's still viewed as one of the best directors of the genre.
I do agree that players often remember the oddities and wackiness of a campaign. However, the most amount of pride I ever took away from a game was when the players remembered the story itself as being good. To be sure, there was a lot of cool stuff I included in my last 4th Edition game. I had arcane hover bikes; high speed chases, and all manner of other things, but none of them would have been anything without the underlying quality of the campaign. This article gives great advice, but sometimes you can do a lot with very little.
Quite literally all of those have happened in my groups campaigns... Probably the most over the top thing that has happened was a character in a campaign became the avatar of Olidammara, after being given a deck of chaos which was used to choose which of the party members would ultimately be the champion. The characters then meet this character again some years later in the next campaign and find that the character has transported to the Dark Sun campaign setting where he then split in 5 parts...
View full commentQuite literally all of those have happened in my groups campaigns... Probably the most over the top thing that has happened was a character in a campaign became the avatar of Olidammara, after being given a deck of chaos which was used to choose which of the party members would ultimately be the champion. The characters then meet this character again some years later in the next campaign and find that the character has transported to the Dark Sun campaign setting where he then split in 5 parts to become the ultimate Lawful Good, Lawful Evil, Chaotic Good, Chaotic Evil, and Chaotic Neutral beings which then had to duke it out highlander style (one controlled by the player who's character it really was) for the ability to be called the only one. All of this is happening while they have armies coming to invade their town (run by the party under a false pretense of not being magical (one was a blood mage and another a wizard) and helping sorcerers escape) while they put sorcerer's into a ghetto to "protect them" before ultimately giving them up and climbing a sorcerer's tower where the illegitimate son's of one of the character's children grow up and turn out to be Bigby and Mordenkainen who were raised in an artificial time loop to kill their father because he caused the death of their mother (a prostitute he chose not to pay) with his defiling magic. All leading up to the epic final battle where the gods come into Dark Sun in order to stop the players from becoming gods Bahamut leading the final attack.
While I personally think that the 1st and 2nd edition covers are the best (and I admit, I may be biased to those editions), I think that the 4th edition cover is one that if you covered up the D&D name I would have thought Dungeons & Dragons the minute that I saw the artwork.
Dsrilk, I wholeheartedly agree that Fortune cards (or ANY "cards" come to that) are a massive cause for concern - this all goes toward the "dumbing down" of the game that started with 4E. Be afraid. Be very afraid. And don't even get me started on the DnD Insider subscription.... When 4E and the "Digital Initiative" (which eventually became DnD Insider) was announced, we were promised so much, and in the end so little was delivered. Where is the Character Visualizer? Where is the...
View full commentDsrilk, I wholeheartedly agree that Fortune cards (or ANY "cards" come to that) are a massive cause for concern - this all goes toward the "dumbing down" of the game that started with 4E. Be afraid. Be very afraid.
And don't even get me started on the DnD Insider subscription.... When 4E and the "Digital Initiative" (which eventually became DnD Insider) was announced, we were promised so much, and in the end so little was delivered. Where is the Character Visualizer? Where is the Virtual Tabletop? Where is the mapping tool? Shall I go on? These were the things I wanted to use, and they never saw the light of day apart from a few (seemingly almost complete and ready-to-go?) demo videos. What ever happened to fulfilling promises. To my mind, Wizards broke their promise to us, the buying public, and have forever given me a bad taste in my mouth.
So as for 5E, personally I can see it coming sooner rather than later. Like Microsoft did with Vista, a lot was promised and little was delivered, and so as soon as is technically possible, out came Windows 7 to fix the problems. My personal opinion is that Wizards are doing the exact same thing. 4E was/is rubbish, and so they're now racing to get 5E "fixed" and out the door as soon as they are able...?
late comment, but please stop pushing dnd too far in the minimal direction. no game will ever be all things to all people. there are diceless games out there and they don't sell well. Not saying that is what you are doing, but that sounds like the direction you are going and I think its a bad one. i have not liked mr cook's approach to 4e so far either. Its fun to theorize different approaches to the game, but the game is good right now. it is neither too simple nor too complex. i really...
View full commentlate comment, but please stop pushing dnd too far in the minimal direction. no game will ever be all things to all people. there are diceless games out there and they don't sell well. Not saying that is what you are doing, but that sounds like the direction you are going and I think its a bad one. i have not liked mr cook's approach to 4e so far either. Its fun to theorize different approaches to the game, but the game is good right now. it is neither too simple nor too complex. i really really like 4e but i am still not sold on essentials and now i get to read more and more ideas for how to change it. Essentials came out late last year for pete's sake. Stop changing the game!
View full comment
View full comment