5. Roll-playing Game
While not as bad as some systems (*cough* World of Darkness) in terms of the amount of dice you roll at one time, there are a lot of rolls for resolving single tasks. There are so many extra rules for things (most of which require rolls) that the emphasis is on the rules and dice rather than the roleplaying. You also need multiples of every type of dice - while most roleplayers have these it’s still a bit of a pain. One roll per action - surely that’s enough for any system? Oh, and don’t forget your synergy bonus!
4. Alignment
While I realise that alignment is just supposed to be a guideline, the rulebooks seem to contradict that. You can’t play a Paladin unless you’re Lawful Good at all times. How do you make a Paladin interesting then, while still remaining a Paladin? They’re all going to be shining paragons of justice and virtue. Playing clerics requires adherence to certain alignments, and the same for some other classes. While it might not be constricting for some, to me it’s like someone pigeonholing me simply because of my ethnic background or my accent.
3. Levels
Now that I’m a 3rd Level Rogue, I’m more likely to survive being stabbed that I was last week, when I was a 2nd Level Rogue. Having arbitrary levels which state what abilities you have or can have is so … 1980s. Please, I thought we left that all behind when we left high school. OK, you can use the optional rules (more rules!) around training, to make this a bit more realistic, but still. It bugs me that I can’t be (for example) a Wizard who only knows a Magic Missile spell but can cast 5 of them instead of the 3 dictated by his level. It feels like exactly what it is - a completely arbitrary way of rating characters so you can pit them against random monster enounters (hmmm .. I should have put random encounters on the list too).
2. Two Book Minimum
You want to play Dungeons and Dragons? Then you have to buy at least two books - the Players Handbook and the Dungeon Master’s Guide. Oh, you wanted a background? One more book (e.g. Player’s Guide to Faerun). Oh, you needed monsters for the background. That’s another (e.g. Monster Manual). Brand new at MSRP that’s $122.80. Even getting them second hand it’s over $50. One list of “essential” D&D books on Amazon has 40 entries totalling $834.75 (that includes Amazon’s discounts).
“But Wizards spawned the whole d20 movement, when they ‘open sourced’ the system!” Oh, really? Great - lots more games based around the same shit system.
1. Rabid Players
So, after spending vast quantities of money on all these expensive and extensive rule books, it seems that the average D&D player doesn’t want to be told that the game is pile of poo. Instead, they defend any slight vociferously, even when blatantly in the wrong (or when they miss the point entirely). And this symptom seems to spread into the other popular D20 games (ever notice how often Mutants and Masterminds players say “System X is no good, you can do all that and more in M&M”?).
March 30th, 2007 at 11:40 am
Do you know, I only played D&D for the first time a year ago even though I’ve been gaming for, what 15/16 years (can’t remember)? Loved it. We tried to play it to the hilt which as much rules as we could stomach, lots of roleplaying too.
Not that that’s an indication is a good game at all. It is what it is. The one thing D&D has over White-Wolf, is that D&D is completely honest about what it is. You know what you get with D&D.
Alignment and Levels didn’t bother me too much. We never really played long enough for them to matter. But the continual need to have more and more books really puts me off. It’s partly what pushed me over the edge with White Wolf. Along with the Rabid Players…
March 30th, 2007 at 1:55 pm
When people derisively turn their noses up at ROLLplaying (now that expression is so 1980s) I always find myself thinking that RPG stands for roleplaying GAME. Games need rules, obstacles and the opportunity to succeed through skill or even luck. People need to understand what they’re facing and trust that their actions will have some impact.
I’ve never read any of the so-called ‘diceless’ RPGs (I find the concept abhorrent) but most of the system-lite games I’ve seen rely extensively on GM judgement to resolve situations. Some even revel in it. That’s all very well if you have a skilled GM, but in less expert hands this is a recipe for railroading, fudging and eventually player disengagement – why bother trying if the story is predetermined?
Some games suggest that the more abstract a game becomes the better, to the point that they’ll have skills like ‘Combat’ in order to simplify things. It may indeed simplify things (to a level fit for six years olds), but it can be pretty jarring when you realise that your Angry Barbarian character is theoretically a master artilleryman.
To give two examples, I’ve played in games where no PC would ever die. You’d take damage, but because the system was a little fuzzy on detail, the GM would always find away to keep a PC alive. He meant well of course, character death is a pain, but without the danger people lost interest.
In another game, D&D, the GM concentrated on the story and let the ‘rules as written’ handle outcomes. In this game if you planned it right and the dice went your way you could off a major bad guy way before he got carry out his Evil Plan, and the GM would have to deal. Similarly, as all dice were openly rolled, a peasant with a shovel could roll three crits in a row and kill The Hardest Man Alive – I saw it happen. Being in a world where anything can happen focused the mind and heightened the excitement.
Additionally, a lot of people like to work out the nitty-gritty details of their characters, and while many may be happy to let details like encumbrance remain off-camera, others will find their suspension of disbelief damaged by the inevitable character that carries 2000 arrows or 15 different guns.
I also think the implication that a rules-heavy game leads to less roleplaying is ludicrous. I’ve played many games with many people and the only constant is that good roleplayers tend to roleplay well no matter what the system, and bad roleplayers suck in any game.
As for the rest:
Alignment: In D&D Evil is a metaphysical reality, not a personality trait. The D&D Mythos includes planes devoted to each alignment and if you are a Paladin or Cleric you are connected to that plane. If you want to play a normal guy, be Neutral. If you want to be a slightly dubious priest, that’s fine, but you shouldn’t expect the Lawful Good god of righteousness and flowers, who is very real and looks into your soul every night, to sponsor you.
Levels: Perhaps not the greatest method of character advancement in the world, but it does help the GM avoid situations where players find their characters’ abilities are out of whack with the world and (more importantly) their teamates.
Two-book minimum: This is kinda the same as the ROLLplaying complaint. There’s a lot of detail in D&D, and if it where all in one book it’d be unwieldy. Besides, what roleplayer doesn’t have a library of books for each game? It’s part of why we like the hobby.
Rabid players: There are plenty of strange types who play D&D and RPGs in general, but since D&D is the best system available it’s easy to get riled by it’s (usually) snobby critics.
So there.
March 30th, 2007 at 3:26 pm
I’m going to hell for this…
All true…
Bolox. You talk about people turning their nose up at D&D and what do you do? Turn your nose up at everything else. Nobilis, a diceless game, is feck’in brilliant and no it’s not “predetermined”. Rules-lite does not mean rules-less. Fudge, Universalis etc.
That mis-representing the concept altogether. If your going to run a game where “combat” in even an abstract sense, is going to take place then you need a system that can handle combat. Fudge, for example, can give you various levels of granularity. If you want combat, have tons of different combat skills… little combat, have one or two combat skills if at all. Depends on the type of game and setting.
Real reason: Bad GM.
You can run games that are not centered on combat and death and where tension is derived from completely different dramatical origins.
I’d like to point out, that it’s still possible, with a complex system, for the GM to to 1) railroad, 2) fudge (no system can cover all eventualities and all systems require interpretation), 3) player disengagement (for some roleplayers this is the lifeblood of roleplaying) and 4) predetermined stories. I’ve seen them all, on a wide variety of systems.
Yea and a lot of people don’t. I don’t. I find my suspension of disbelief is lost the moment someone starts calculating how many seconds are in a combat “turn” or when you spend five minutes calculating the fifteen plus modifiers to do a single attack and you end up not being able to do it because of some weird exception in the rules. Or worse, you lose the battle only to discover that you missed some bonus or other on your character sheet that would have turned the tide.
I remember reading these excellent rules for gun combat, coming from some who had military training. One of the interesting thing was that you weren’t allow track your bullets because in reality you wouldn’t either and you’d have no idea how many you have left. It heightens the tension. So you can still work out the “nitty gritty” of how many bullets your gun can hold… you just have no clue how many you’ve fired when in combat. You can model the “experience” or you can model the “reality”. Of your can just have a good game.
True. But also the implication that “rules-light” and “diceless” systems lead to suspension of disbelief is ludicrous.
Arg. I hate that, everyone on the same “power” level. It’s completely unrealistic and undramatic. In most fantasy genres (besides D&D and roleplaying) you have characters of various power levels. (Doesn’t mean the hero is the most powerful). Mages should be fucking scary for example. It’s unrealistic and takes from my suspension of disbelief. Even without levels there are other ways to balance power, such as access to knowledge or in-game resources.
March 30th, 2007 at 10:43 pm
I’m going to start this off by saying categorically that I don’t like d20® from a mechanical, a roleplaying or a political standpoint.
I find the mechanics antiquated and blocky and the insistence that there are optional rules and you can ditch this and that to be counter to the point. I find the arguments about how it IS the One True Game to be boring and an echo of the bad old days when the AD&D players snubbed everyone who played anything that wasn’t AD&D. We see the same mentality on RPG forums now especially, as Aidan said, with Mutants and Masterminds - their advocacy is so strong I’d suspect someone of AstroTurfing (fake grassroots community) but some of the guys are reasonable enough. It’s the militant hatred of anyone who criticises M&M that I find hard to swallow.
From a roleplaying perspective, I don’t like d20 because I don’t believe for a second that it promotes heroic roleplaying. It’s a generic, antiquated mish-mash and promotes only sales of it’s core rulebooks. The promotion of heroic roleplaying was always the “line” we were fed in our old group when someone wanted to play D&D. And I fell for that line so many times. It does nothing to promote any sort of play. It’s just rules. There are a lot of rules in those books and defenders will tell you that many of them are optional…
From a political point of view I’m very cynical about the blatant land-grab attempt by WotC which plunged roleplaying into get another dark age and it’s only managing to clamber out of it due to the rising popularity of Indie Games. White Wolf was catalyst for bringing roleplaying ut of it’s last great dark age. Seems we need these landmarks. WotC trademarking and copyrighting the very things which were previously ruled to be non-trademarks and not copyright left me with a bad taste every time I read their books and noticed the small print.
I hesitate to bring in the GNS terminology (Gamist, Narrativist, Simulationist) because it’s only partly relevant here. The rules themselves do not matter but some rules-sets lend themselves to G games because there’s a reward-based system (old D&D springs to mind because you gained XP to progress and had to kill monsters and steal treasure to get it) or S games (because the rules so accurately portray encumbrance, autofire spray and wound effects). I’m an N gamer - but that said I’ve never played a strictly diceless game. I like using dice as a prop more than anything and players in my games shouldnt notice that the plot progresses with or without the dice roll - with successful dice rolls it progresses in their favour!
I’ve written a few systems now and some of the ones I like best are, for example, ERIS - which is a N/S type system. Designed to help me roleplay, but also having some nice crunchy bits around the guns and wounding area.
Encumbrance bores me so I left it out.
I must applaud Aidan at an excellent piece of troll-bait. I don’t care what systems others use. It’s only when I have to try and read stuff like M&M that my brain starts reminding me that I’m of an age when everything is slowing down. Yet it perks up again reading Wild Talents or when I start to think about 23rd Letter, 3rd Edition.
April 14th, 2007 at 4:45 pm
d&d sucks??? sorry but it’s only for people who have imagination and freedom of thoughts. The prices? I play with regular friends and we split costs… I paid a total of something like 20€ max… also regarding Alignments?! What is a paladin known for… it’s something of a Knight adicted to religion and law… why to be changed? if you prefer a different class pick another one or make a new one (trying to respect the rules of course)!!!
D&D does not suck and it is in my opinion a grandson of Tolkien’s imagination and the father of roleplays.
imagine it like real life with a mix with fantasy and fiction (including magic and overwhelming powers)
and this is a very personal opinion:
rolling dices… that’s a fun part of the game that you can avoid if you like. you know why? ask your DM to shorten encounters by only describing them based on pre-roled dices by himself. and while he’s telling the battle you can ask to take an specific action or whatever else you wish inside the rules!
You can change the game. The advice is not to break the rules… then you’ll be “pimped out” and the game will have no fun because it will give you no challenge…
best regards
just a simple d&d player and DM
April 18th, 2007 at 9:14 am
Sadly the comment shows that petrofski didn’t understand the question
See, this is exactly my point. you can make D&D as good as other games by avoiding the rules!
May 14th, 2007 at 6:06 pm
5. You can play it however you like. I’ve been in games where no one knew the rules. It got unbalanced, and it quickly began to feel like everyone was just a supporting character for the guy that ignored the most rules. They help keep the balance, but you can get rid of them if that’s nto a concern.
4. Were you planning to play a paladin that committed heinous crimes whenever he felt like it? There are a couple of alignment restricted classes, but that’s because members of those classes would live pretty restricted lives. Are you going to throw a fit with the Catholic church because they forbid their preists “certain activities?” Besides, you could just play a different kind of paladin. Paladins of freedom are pretty neat concepts.
You could just play without alignments, but then it messes with a few of the games concepts. The paladin’s detect evil suddenly becomes pretty useless if no one has an alignment.
3. Meh, it’s just a game. Lots of games use the leveling system, and they’re really quite popular. Not really realistic, but perhaps you should get a bit more creative. When you take hit point damage, you aren’t always bleeding. Hit points do NOT just represent your health. They represent luck, divine favor, etc.
2. SRD. ‘Nuff said.
1. Pretty much ANYTHING will have those kinds of fans. They’re really just unavoidable. I fail to see how THAT’S the number one reason that you give for your dislike of D&D.
I really like the game, but if you think you can do better, then go ahead. D&D is tons easier to mod than any video game.
May 30th, 2007 at 4:30 pm
SRD is a nice idea. Still, a book is nicer - I often game in places with no internet connection, and I hate roleplaying with a laptop in front of me.
Fans: most games have fans, only a few have fan-boys.
Alignment: All paladins are the same - I’ve yet to find a D&D novel that has a main character as a paladin - they are just so 2-dimensional. In fact, alignments in general discourage character. Maybe that’s the real problem - all the rules allow you to create an entity but don’t encourage you to create a character.
In fact, I think there’s a blog post in that notion…
June 9th, 2007 at 12:33 pm
I want to point out the ‘Two book minimum’. In my game, we have players handbook and DMG (yes, it is two books). But the rest of the books I have on my computer. It works fine. Those books are like MM, FR Campaign setting and so on.
(http://isohunt.com/torrents.php?ihq=d%26d)
June 22nd, 2007 at 3:50 am
Some interesting points. However your lack of imagination regarding alignments doesn’t really reflect badly on the system, more on you. A lawful good paladin can be a lot of fun, inquisitors and other such church fanatics are technically lawful good but they’re crazy. The term ‘kill the heathens’ can be an awesome way to make anything seem plausibly good. Morality is murky ground, but as long as you can justify you actions in terms of your alignment there are a million possibilities. Just think a bit more creatively.
June 22nd, 2007 at 7:43 am
Lathana: I think inquisitors etc. are probably lawful neutral - obeying the law of the church at all costs. However, I do agree that those characters are fun - all the most interesting alignments are the ones with “neutral” in them.
I understand the reason for the mechanism, it just feels too much like a mechanism to me, which detracts from the character/story and adds to the feel of a simulation (i.e. something where numbers matter).
June 22nd, 2007 at 7:34 pm
I think petrofski and Lathana are showing some deep rooted insecurity here
June 23rd, 2007 at 10:22 am
well said! away with dnd once and for all. it’s boring. the latest effort, Eberron, is a major flop.
we used to spent more time tinkering with the rules than actually playing!
for example, here’s a little benchmark. once my players reached 10th level, the process of leveling up took them between 1:30 and 2:00 hours. yawn
July 16th, 2007 at 8:49 am
I am playing the original AD&D game as it was written by its original author and I don’t have a single problem.
I like levels because they are more simple to deal with.
We focus on the game as a game, not as storytelling, or medieval emulation or theatrics silliness. Some things don’t make sense but it’s a ~game~.
Alignment is part of the game: you choose this action and you lose some treasure or you choose that action and you have problems with your alignment.
I am very sorry to see people being drowned in a sea of rule books for the various “editions” of the game, but so be it.
The original editions of the AD&D game can be found on the internet.
July 28th, 2007 at 4:30 pm
I think the main reason d20 sucks is the complete dearth of rules. It seems as if it were written for the 12 year old who has never run a game before and needs rules for when you fart near a torch (and what the to hit penalties are when holding the torch in your off-hand and if you’re flat-footed while doing so). The incredible amount of page after page of this rule and that rule pretty much ensures that the target audience will have a heck of a time digesting all that.
I saw Risus, modified it to my heart’s content, and never looked back.
August 15th, 2007 at 2:22 am
Foremost, it’s a game. The sources aren’t especially imaginative, and a lot of rules are stupid or paltry, and the setting is not cogently developed–but in the end, it’s a game, and it works, because I have tremendous fun while playing.
I must say, I don’t like leveling either–it makes no sense that a “higher” level being should survive the sword stroke that would have chopped him in half two “levels” ago. But it works, well enough, to balance the game so that it’s a challenge for the players, however stupid it is metacognitively.
And I have food for thought… What I’m hearing, from several opiners, is that they like narrative games, or storylines, or whatever… but I much prefer open-ended gaming where I get to mess around in a fun world, without the heavy-handedness of a gamemaster with a narrative to tell. I don’t like being pigeon-holed into a storyline where I can’t do what I want to do. Not that any of the other games do this (that is, not that I would know one way or another); but D&D provides a very good template to allow players to wander around and set their own goals, instead of relying on the gamemaster to provide them with everything.
Lastly, I’ve seen (and played) paladins with character. Alignment does not restrict roleplaying–uninspired players do.
August 15th, 2007 at 12:15 pm
I don’t see how d&d enables open-ended play any more than any other game. Indeed you have to start ignoring the rules to increase playability - something d&d advocates keep mentioning.
IMO Narrative games tend to be MUCH more open-ended if you stick to the rules. Once you start dropping rules then you’ve compromised your position.
d&d provides a supplement for the unimaginative. Imaginative players can obviously play d&d. Sometimes theres no choice
October 2nd, 2007 at 1:00 am
I have been DMing second edition AD&D for nearly 9 years now. And I have to admit that I infact have a problem with imaginative characters, the fact of the matter is I have DMed something like 100 Joe Has A Long Sword fighter’s in my time. And I’m telling you doing that for 9 years is warring down my patience. I think there are loads of good creative ideas in the various Class Handbooks (I do agree btw yes they web you into book after book… but well…I tell you I have had a bit of fun hunting threw old book stores and so forth. Then again 2ed edition books are kind of collectable anymore so…). I constantly do everything to do to expand and deepen my Champaign setting (histories, complex pantheons, mythologies, cultures, things actually happening in the world that don’t involve the PC’s.) But every one only wants to play Joe Has A Long Sword with no personality and not so much look at a kit (For some classes kits turn them into basically a hole new class! I realy cant belive they never utilized this if even for a uniqe set of abilitys). I’ve done everything in my power to premote role-playing but I have always been lacking in responce (my one role-players actually moved away). But I have to ask is another game system really have anything that really promotes better role-playing? I mean some people are just a bit too simple and uninterested in the complicated aspects. You have the be the kind of person who can invent a unique personally separate from your own. I would need some persuaded to think this has much to do with the game system. Uninvetive player are just inventive players i dont think you can blame D&D for that (P.S. I hate 3ed edtion, it has sucked all the charm out of the game and brought on a videogame-like state that i find revolting :p )
October 10th, 2007 at 2:18 pm
5. Rollplaying game
- Games need rules. it’s the law. even in real life there’s a lot hanging on to luck…
4. Alignment
- Can you not say, that, IF you read the alignment page well, you don’t fit into one of those alignments yourself? there are 9 alignments… and i can say i can pit any of the people i know in life into one of those alignments.
- Alignments don’t restrict you… instead they’re guidelines so you can RP your character better… “what would a chaotic evil character do here?”
3. Levels
- How else are you gonna know how strong you are? In life you gain skill points and levels at everything you do… you like to draw? you learn a new technique… there you go. level 2.
2. Two book minimum
- No. There’s ONE book minimum - the player’s handbook. if you have any idea what D&D is you know that you don’t NEED the DM Guide to play… only the DM has to have it.
- And there’s this strange concept which is sometimes called SHARING…
1. Rabid players
- No i didn’t miss the whole point. Instead, I am willing to believe you have no idea what you’re talking about (especially after reading number 2). I have proved you wrong at every one of your points. (Except maybe on number 5… which is ALMOST true. But we don’t mind it.)
PS: Random encounters (just to prove i read your whole post)
- No good DM would EVER incorporate random encounters. Every adventure is well planned out and random encounters are only for PC RPG Games (which suck.)
October 10th, 2007 at 4:32 pm
Point 5: Not all games have rules when they start. We might impose them later but I don’t remember sitting down to learn the ground rules of “cops and robbers” when I was a child. The only guide was our imagination.
Point 4 does illustrate that you think the world fits into a narrow set of alignments ranging from Chaotic Evil to Lawful Good. Why do we even need psychologists if the entirety of human existence fits into these simple catgories.
Point 3: IIt’s true, every few months of my life I suddenly become more experienced and harder to kill. Suddenly and without warning. Usually after either receiving a lot of money (XP for gold!) or after killing someone on the way to work (and stealing their stuff).
With respect to point 2: you’ve admitted you need TWO books minimum for a game. All the players can huddle round the players handbook but the DM needs the DM’s book as well. That’s…uh…TWO….
And point 1. Well. Failing on integer maths when the highest number is “2″ shows real rational behaviour. I therefore postulate you are indeed a rabid D&D apologist!
The only good DM is a dead DM.
October 13th, 2007 at 8:25 am
If classes are “professional archetypes” for fantasy characters then alignments are the “ethical archetypes.” Fantasy stories give many examples of characters fitting these nine archetypes. The DM determines the role of alignment in the campaign, but I’ll admit that it’s hard to sort out the exact meaning of each alignment with the small amount of information that’s normally available in each rulebook.
Since alignment information is scattered throughout the rulebooks, over three different editions, and also found in other non-D&D sources, I’ve compiled all of the alignment information I have in my library and put it on a website. It may be helpful. Most of the time a rulebook or a source will only give a paragraph or two describing the alignment. This is hardly enough to describe an entire metaphysical, ethical, and social philosophical viewpoint. However, when all of these individual paragraphs are put together on one page, it is easy to see what each alignment represents.
I haven’t found anything yet that delves deeper into each alignment, so I have to be content with my borrowed paragraphs and lists. I’m still adding more content and I’m working on referencing everything. It’s a work in progress.
http://www.easydamus.com/alignment.html
October 13th, 2007 at 12:15 pm
OK.
So we postulated that two books as a requirement to lay was too much…
now we get
Cheers, glad you agree D&D is shit.
October 24th, 2007 at 9:03 pm
[...] [Please tell me that everyone knows the D&D sucks rant is satire…trollbait…linkfodder that Aidan wrote for a laugh ] Filed under: Commentary Posted By: matt [...]
October 31st, 2007 at 6:51 pm
Of course it sucks. It’s a juvenile game for juvenile players, designed to prop up lack of imagination with a scaffolding of rules that utterly choke all free thought. D&D has all the creativity and tolerance of military boot camp or an average American high school. Nearly every idea in the entire system was stolen straight from better, older, simpler games (Earthdawn in particular). WotC has brought quite literally nothing new to the table in their revision of D&D, then added insult to injury by “opening” D&D, guaranteeing that all other games (at least for now) will have to bear the burden of D20-compatibility to get the attention of any gamers out there. It’s worse than GURPS. Conrats, WotC, I honestly didn’t think it was possible to achieve that level of groupthink and Microsoft-style lock-in in a community that almost by definition has above average intelligence. Well done.
A game’s rules are *part of the flavor* and in good systems are essential to the atmosphere. Look at Deadlands - the brilliant inclusion of playing cards and poker chips in a western roleplaying game, with rules that fly nearly as fast in combat as the real thing should. That’s a damn sight better than D20. Other games that focus on roleplay even have their advancement built in completely, doing away with XP (Continuum for example) or managing it like currency (Earthdawn again). People addicted to dice-heavy systems can’t even conceive that an entire multi-player combat scenario can be resolved with a single D10 roll, or with diceless rules (Continuum, Amber). Systems like Unknown Armies even use creative rules (fight/flight/freeze) to stimulate roleplaying and give charaters more unpredictability.
When (if) the young D&D players mature in twenty years they’ll come around. Until then they’ll pay ridiculous prices for ridiculous libraries of useless, barely read and rarely relevant content, keeping the gaming industry healthy for the rest of us.
There is hope - the rather chilly reception WotC got for its hints at a 4th edition shows that there’s already a generation of D&D players starting to get sick of the system and being taken advantage of. There will be a renaissance of non-D20 games in the next decade as people get sick of them and branch out to try anything they can find that is different. We may see some games that actually advance the idea of what an RPG can be for a change.
November 9th, 2007 at 9:39 pm
so yea D&D 3/3.5 isn’t the best but if you go into a room of gamers and say ‘anyone up for a D&D sesh’ most of them will know enough of the rules by heart to make a basic charactor and you can jump into hack and slash within minuets if you want a quick bit of cleichet(sp?) roleplay fun. its not a serious game and anybody who treats it like that doesn’t get the idea of PLAYING. and the only reason the D20 system is as big as it is is because its quick to learn and simple to use (if you don’t let it bog you down in details)
but realy the only thing that needs saying is if someone likes it let them play it, and if you don’t like it don’t play it.
and don’t go slagging off every system but your favorite because it only enrages the fanboys
March 5th, 2008 at 10:31 am
[...] My worst experience with this was with D&D. To a degree this feeling of being a ‘generic adventurer’ is the fault of the GM who introduced us to the campaign world by giving us a blank character sheet and the Players Handbook. No real notes on the world, the culture, the towns and cities, how society feels about wandering mobs of ruffians armed with weapons and magic (the player characters). In short, the stuff we should know from living in a world for a score years or more. [...]
March 30th, 2008 at 6:10 am
Well, I have to gently disagree. I see all of your exceptions (reasons 1-5) as based on the limited imagination and experience of the players. Not that they aren’t real reasons - I am not disregarding them at all - but I have seen them again and again over the years be the cause of game failure, and in almost all of those cases, it was because the players involved (or worse, the DM) did not have an amplitude of imagination or a modicum of experience with role playing.
March 30th, 2008 at 9:08 am
OK, thanks for that Kaiser. I’m unimaginative and/or inexperienced. Not at all to do with the system. Well, I’m going to strenuously disagree with your gentle disagreement. First off, how can inexperience or limited imagination account for needing to buy two books to play the game? You buy a game to play the game, not to play half the game and make the other half up.
While I may well be unimaginative, and my years of experience may all be shallow, I think that the D&D system creates the other problems. I’ve known (literally) award-winning gamers turn to Munchkinism once they start playing D&D. I’m sure it can be argued that D&D can be played in such a manner to avoid these issues, but the simple fact is that 99% of the games are not played in that way.
March 31st, 2008 at 2:42 pm
Agreed. D&D Players give the rest of us a bad name which is why there’s such distaste for the hobby because we’re all tarred with the “D&D” brush.
April 5th, 2008 at 8:14 am
actually, we use our imagination, and its actually good for us. you can tell d&d is better than halo when someone cant spell “role”
April 5th, 2008 at 9:21 am
Although someone also can’t spell “can’t” nor punctuate their sentences correctly (ever hear of upper case?). Also, it’s usually a good idea to use the word “actually” once in a sentence.
April 5th, 2008 at 10:56 am
Command of the English language has nothing to do with the quality of a game, as you have proved.
Besides, where did Halo come into the conversation? It’s a linear story line in a video game. D&D, I would presume, plays differently in your group (which evidently incorporates a Spelling Bee?)
April 5th, 2008 at 7:53 pm
It’s also worth pointing out that I spelt role-playing wrong deliberately as a pun, because D&D places so much emphasis on the rolling of dice.