EOTB
So ... slow work day? Every day?
Ah, yes. I was post-eternal september.
2e - why you think it sucks, and why you're right
- Thread starter The Heretic
- Start date
squeen
8, 8, I forget what is for
And now, back to our show...
Dang! I've forgotten what the topic is anymore....
...but alls I know is common-place magic sucks the wonder right out of the game. ;P
...and 2e done did it b-a-d!
Looks like Ebberon is following suit codifying and classifying every fantastic element, not by playable example (i.e. great adventures), but by over-specifying the setting at its outset---locking you into it's patchwork fantasy pastiche. ZZzzzzzzzzz.....
"Oh, hey man! Pass me one of dem dar "Dragonmark-ers" thingies so I can operate this here "Creation Forge-ry". You jokers should be happy I rolled up with my mad skillz, or y'all'd be skee-roo-ed!" ["actual" game play]
<ducks>
Dang! I've forgotten what the topic is anymore....
...but alls I know is common-place magic sucks the wonder right out of the game. ;P
...and 2e done did it b-a-d!
Looks like Ebberon is following suit codifying and classifying every fantastic element, not by playable example (i.e. great adventures), but by over-specifying the setting at its outset---locking you into it's patchwork fantasy pastiche. ZZzzzzzzzzz.....
"Oh, hey man! Pass me one of dem dar "Dragonmark-ers" thingies so I can operate this here "Creation Forge-ry". You jokers should be happy I rolled up with my mad skillz, or y'all'd be skee-roo-ed!" ["actual" game play]
<ducks>
Malrex
So ... slow work day? Every day?
I'm going to say yes, but I think the highest I've started with was 4th. To be honest, my group gets bored once we all reach around 7th level though. I have a 9th level druid but its because I found a Deck of Many Things and got reallly lucky. We usually start over when we drift into 8th level. I don't think I've ever cast 8th or 9th level spells cept off a scroll? Hah! I much prefer to play when my character is 'weak' with little to no resources.
A note on civility...
Hobbies are mostly born from passion, hence people can have very passionate opinions on a shared hobby. I don't agree with everyone and I remember I would constantly argue with people and it would get nasty. But now, instead of arguing my points (which I still sometimes do), I prefer to have more of a discussion to try and learn the how or why of someone's opinion and it makes it way more interesting to me. I can still disagree with it, but most of the time, when you really open yourself up to someone else's opinion you will realize they are still a fucking idio...I mean...you may realize where they are coming from and maybe even change your mind.
I know some people I have disagreed with in the past, and still disagree with on certain points (hi EOTB!), but they are some of my favorite people to see on the forums and you can still argue/discuss with someone while still having a huge amount of respect for them and their knowledge. Everyone here has the guts to put their stuff out there to get feedback, whether its ideas, or adventure contests that deal with congealed witch doctors, and that's not always easy to receive the criticism...but you guys do it...so you are all ok in my book and hope no one leaves.
And, after saying all that, Ill step off my soapbox. And in case this thread gets locked for whatever reason, I just want to say that I'm just so damn glad that everyone agrees that 2e is great!!
Alright, tropic fucking weather and multiple beers has mellowed me out.
So bottomline:
If this was my blog DP would be gone in an instant, trial by combat, no quarter. I see absolutely no value in his opinions and interaction between us is appears to me like trolling for all intents and purposes because everything he says evaporates into nonsense the moment I try to figure out what he means. We cannot meaningfully communicate. The reason he is still around is that this is Bryce's blog and I see some of you don't share that sentiment and those people I respect enough to allow his continued existence. My recommendation is that we (DP and I) do not interact. It does not end well. It will not end well. So it was and so it will be. It has gone the exact same three times and this time it has escalated with him threatening to leave the forums. If we do, for whatever reason, interact, we should treat that like we are wearing quarantine suits, with elaborate protocols, and we should probably not argue. I will give him leeway, and I expect the same in return. No smarmy tricks, no riding the line, no epistemological inquiries into the nature of what exactly constitutes 'wide berth' etc.
So bottomline:
If this was my blog DP would be gone in an instant, trial by combat, no quarter. I see absolutely no value in his opinions and interaction between us is appears to me like trolling for all intents and purposes because everything he says evaporates into nonsense the moment I try to figure out what he means. We cannot meaningfully communicate. The reason he is still around is that this is Bryce's blog and I see some of you don't share that sentiment and those people I respect enough to allow his continued existence. My recommendation is that we (DP and I) do not interact. It does not end well. It will not end well. So it was and so it will be. It has gone the exact same three times and this time it has escalated with him threatening to leave the forums. If we do, for whatever reason, interact, we should treat that like we are wearing quarantine suits, with elaborate protocols, and we should probably not argue. I will give him leeway, and I expect the same in return. No smarmy tricks, no riding the line, no epistemological inquiries into the nature of what exactly constitutes 'wide berth' etc.
I don't know if it works Time-zone wise, but if you got room I'd dig a seat. I'll play something with daily's and encounter powersIt is my fondest wish that someday I will have enough time to run a short 4e game for you guys, if only to shut you all the fuck up.
EOTB
So ... slow work day? Every day?
All my best friends strongly disagree with me on various points. I wouldn't have it any other way.
Nicely playedI just want to say that I'm just so damn glad that everyone agrees that 2e is great!!
Beoric
8, 8, I forget what is for
I have, mostly as a player. It helps if you are also a DM, you get used to putting on a character's skin on a moment's notice.
SO not what I said. I'll answer you anyway, even though I know you are serious - not serious - but yeah, serious. Eberron locks pretty much nothing in. All the sourcebooks, including the original campaign setting, are treated like they have an unreliable narrator, major elements are often presented as three or four rumours, none of which are necessarily correct, and it is frequently suggested to DMs that you can take any piece of generally accepted "canon" and determine that the "canon" is just what everyone believes, and the truth is something else entirely.
An an illustration, Keith Baker wrote an article earlier today about why he prefers to keep many details about the world uncertain, so that DMs don't get hemmed in by the content.
squeen
8, 8, I forget what is for
WHAT I WROTE BEFORE YOUR REPLY:
My point (in spoiler above) --- there is little-to-no trust by the powers-the-be in the consumer's creativity. So everything gets spelled out way too much...put in to little boxes, labeled as if for children. Quantified. It's a practical/necessary thought-process if you're in the business of selling games, but it stabs what I love about D&D in the heart. The OSR (momentarily) grabbed the mojo back with its amateur enthusiasm, and then lost it too. If you haven't read it lately, go enjoy EOTB's brilliant first-hand accounting of that again.
The great (late) SIlver-Age comic book writer/artist, John Byrne, recently lamented about what he called the "RPGing" of superhero comics. By that, he meant the excessive need he saw in the "next-gen fanboys-turned-writers" to justify and explain everything. I immediately understood his sorrow. I feel it too. Sucks the magic right out of the room. Beoric said it recently in the Illusions thread --- the familiar isn't scary. I offer up this corollary: The known is also not interesting.
Similarly, trust the player's creativity. Make puzzles and locks without keys. Don't railroad the story. Don't Quantum Ogre them. Allow them to surprise you! Dive into the unknown.
NOW THAT I'VE READ THE ARTICLE
I think Baker "gets it". He's describing his process and encouraging you to do-what-he-does---and I am totally in agreement. The psychotic disconnect is that there's a purchased product somewhere in all that to be had. For heaven's sake WHY? I can see buying an adventure---as Byrce says, he pays for the nitty gritty details he doesn't have time to do---but why a campaign setting? That's both the most fun AND THE EASIEST PART! You can even do it organically, in parts, just like Baker is describing. He's telling you how to be creative...in D&D...imagine that!
Again, I don't fault the guy. He's living the dream. But why not leave as much as possible vague in a settling so the DM can fill it in as needed? Really. Just sell you a map and start churning out awesome, tight little adventures that take place in it. Do a slow reveal. The rules should be flexible enough to accommodate whatever new stuff you dream up as you go.
Tell me the "what Ebberon does for me" part of your story. That's probably what I'm missing. And how is it any different than Planescape?
LUDO IMPERFECTUS
I've got this little notion now...cooking in my mind because of all this back-and-forth. Let's call it "milieu" in honor of EGG's over-use of the word. The original game's "milieu" was open. Deceptively familiar ("medieval times"). It didn't box you in and it put a huge burden on the DM, but was a most fertile ground for writing adventures. It inspired, by doing "just enough" with its shoestring production value. Almost everything published since then has narrowed the imagination's scope just a little more, simply by hoeing the fertile ground that should have been a DM's prerogative. If there's a line between just enough and too much, it was repeatedly crossed. It doesn't matter if you've reinvented the wheel, it's your darn wheel---what matters is the ownership. What matters is that we be creative. That we dream. That's D&D's secret gift. The things we should be buying are the things that will help us do that. Maybe, for you, that's Ebberon. Skimming through it yesterday, for me, it felt like donning mental shackles. Hey, Baker! Get your crappy imagination outta my head! If I want a book full of someone else's stories, I'll read a novel!
Maybe we have become too accustomed to buying other people's dreams. OD&D was a radical shift, ludo imperfectus---a game-incomplete. Something the world had never seen before...a game that demanded far, far more from you than what was in the box. It leveraged our shared myths---thousands of years old, but that was really it, it forced you to "Bring It". It shouted,
...and amazingly some people did (sometimes with the parts glued on all catty-rumpus). They just needed to be told it was okay to do so.
AND NOW FOR SOMETHING COMPLETELY DIFFERENT
My point (in spoiler above) --- there is little-to-no trust by the powers-the-be in the consumer's creativity. So everything gets spelled out way too much...put in to little boxes, labeled as if for children. Quantified. It's a practical/necessary thought-process if you're in the business of selling games, but it stabs what I love about D&D in the heart. The OSR (momentarily) grabbed the mojo back with its amateur enthusiasm, and then lost it too. If you haven't read it lately, go enjoy EOTB's brilliant first-hand accounting of that again.
The great (late) SIlver-Age comic book writer/artist, John Byrne, recently lamented about what he called the "RPGing" of superhero comics. By that, he meant the excessive need he saw in the "next-gen fanboys-turned-writers" to justify and explain everything. I immediately understood his sorrow. I feel it too. Sucks the magic right out of the room. Beoric said it recently in the Illusions thread --- the familiar isn't scary. I offer up this corollary: The known is also not interesting.
Similarly, trust the player's creativity. Make puzzles and locks without keys. Don't railroad the story. Don't Quantum Ogre them. Allow them to surprise you! Dive into the unknown.
NOW THAT I'VE READ THE ARTICLE
I think Baker "gets it". He's describing his process and encouraging you to do-what-he-does---and I am totally in agreement. The psychotic disconnect is that there's a purchased product somewhere in all that to be had. For heaven's sake WHY? I can see buying an adventure---as Byrce says, he pays for the nitty gritty details he doesn't have time to do---but why a campaign setting? That's both the most fun AND THE EASIEST PART! You can even do it organically, in parts, just like Baker is describing. He's telling you how to be creative...in D&D...imagine that!
Again, I don't fault the guy. He's living the dream. But why not leave as much as possible vague in a settling so the DM can fill it in as needed? Really. Just sell you a map and start churning out awesome, tight little adventures that take place in it. Do a slow reveal. The rules should be flexible enough to accommodate whatever new stuff you dream up as you go.
Tell me the "what Ebberon does for me" part of your story. That's probably what I'm missing. And how is it any different than Planescape?
LUDO IMPERFECTUS
I've got this little notion now...cooking in my mind because of all this back-and-forth. Let's call it "milieu" in honor of EGG's over-use of the word. The original game's "milieu" was open. Deceptively familiar ("medieval times"). It didn't box you in and it put a huge burden on the DM, but was a most fertile ground for writing adventures. It inspired, by doing "just enough" with its shoestring production value. Almost everything published since then has narrowed the imagination's scope just a little more, simply by hoeing the fertile ground that should have been a DM's prerogative. If there's a line between just enough and too much, it was repeatedly crossed. It doesn't matter if you've reinvented the wheel, it's your darn wheel---what matters is the ownership. What matters is that we be creative. That we dream. That's D&D's secret gift. The things we should be buying are the things that will help us do that. Maybe, for you, that's Ebberon. Skimming through it yesterday, for me, it felt like donning mental shackles. Hey, Baker! Get your crappy imagination outta my head! If I want a book full of someone else's stories, I'll read a novel!
Maybe we have become too accustomed to buying other people's dreams. OD&D was a radical shift, ludo imperfectus---a game-incomplete. Something the world had never seen before...a game that demanded far, far more from you than what was in the box. It leveraged our shared myths---thousands of years old, but that was really it, it forced you to "Bring It". It shouted,
"HERE'S A KEEP. THERE'S SOME CAVES. YOU KNOW THE DRILL SOLIDER...SWORDS...SORCERY. GO!
WHAAAT? YOU WANT MORE DETAILS, YA' BIG BABY?....THEN READ APPENDIX N!
NOW...GET...CRACKING!"
...and amazingly some people did (sometimes with the parts glued on all catty-rumpus). They just needed to be told it was okay to do so.
AND NOW FOR SOMETHING COMPLETELY DIFFERENT
YOU....BASTARD!And in case this thread gets locked for whatever reason, I just want to say that I'm just so damn glad that everyone agrees that 2e is great!!
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Beoric
8, 8, I forget what is for
All right. What Eberron does for me.
Well for starters, while I have never played Planescape, I think I can safely say that it is nothing like Planescape because by and large you never leave the planet. Until very recently the planes weren’t somewhere you went, they were used for their influence on locations in Eberron, like ley lines but weirder.
That has changed in the last month since DMSGuild now lets Baker publish his own ideas, and he put some work into the planes. But from what I can tell from the Planescape thread, his are a lot better at suggesting what you are actually going to do there.
For example, Fernia, the Sea of Flame is NOT just the Plane of Elemental Fire, where everything is on fire and fire elementals hang out. It is the representation of all the things that earth and fire represent, and each of its various layers (the exact number of which are not detailed, so you can make up your own) represents some aspect of how people perceive fire or earth in their non-natural aspects – destruction, comfort, mining, industry, consumption. The City of Brass, for example, is a realm that represents conspicuous consumption, where efreeti compete to outdo each other with the most outrageous parties and spectacles and displays of fabulous wealth. In the tunnels below are foundries and deep halls where azer toil to produce everything that the efreeti want to consume, and dao artisans compete to create the coolest stuff. Fernia is the source of various magical substances that can be found nowhere else, a few of which are detailed but most of which you can make up as you need them. It’s not just hot, there’s stuff there you might want.
But discussing the planes is just a diversion from the main topic. I think the reason I like Eberron so much is the politics and culture hang together so well. The descriptions of the major NPCs, factions, houses, even the national character of the countries are all, as Bryce would say, sticky. I have mentioned before that a lot of my games are character driven. Well, the various factions are characters, interesting characters that are fun to play, and they react to the PCs.
The players go out and cause ripples in the world, and you immediately know who is going to care, and what they might be prepared to do about it, usually in a very indirect way. It is very easy for PCs to get themselves into hot water without being outright slaughtered, and lots of temptation for them to do it. There are lots of buttons to push, and you don’t have to do a bunch of prep or background reading to adlib the consequences of pushing the buttons that arise through play. There is just enough structure for me to riff off, and not so much structure that it is constraining. And like a good dungeon key entry, there is enough flavour to inspire you to run something, without burying you in a bunch of crap you don’t need.
But a good purchased dungeon only inspires you to help you run that dungeon. A good campaign setting inspires you to help you run the whole damn world. The Eberron milieu is different, industrial revolution with magic (say 1760 to 1914) instead of the middle ages with magic (probably 1066 to 1450ish), but beyond that the world is just so incredibly open. It is a huge sandbox, with so much to do and so many possibilities. It inspires me the way parts of the 1e DMG inspired me – the parts that hinted at the world behind the game.
And there is a lot more in the DMG that informs the way an AD&D world looks than you think. Treasure tables, random monster tables, urban encounter tables, tables delineating followers, rules for obtaining henchmen, rules regarding sages, all these and more informed what was in your AD&D world and how frequently it appeared, and pushed you towards a certain culture that you had to work actively against if you were not going to adopt it. You would say that is a feature, not a bug, and I would agree; but I would say the same thing about how Eberron is presented.
Creativity never comes in a vacuum, it always builds on the works of those who have gone before. I don’t really see what is wrong with that. I don’t know what you read of Keith Baker’s yesterday that made you feel like you were putting on “mental shackles”, but I’m going to suggest that being infected by someone else’s imagination is a good thing. Isn’t that what Appendix N was all about? It happens to me on this site all the time. And I know Baker wouldn’t want you to feel constrained, he would just tell you to toss anything you didn’t like. Hell, the man games in other people’s versions of Eberron. It’s hard to imagine Greenwood doing that (or am I doing him a disservice?).
The1True
My my my, we just loooove to hear ourselves don't we?
I get this. The power creep was bad in 2.5 and it's way worse in 3.5. Sessions can bog down in stoned-searches for rules and digging through 6 pages of character sheets to figure out what you're doing this round at high level. The rules disputes multiply as a result. Things are easier and more clear-cut at lower levels which makes for a more relaxing game. That said, building a super hero and matching him up against the nastiest challenges the game can throw at him is frequently worth the agony. Sometimes, the best solution, if you want to try out 'Tomb of Horrors' or 'Dungeonland' or 'Labyrinth of Madness' or the truly silly 'Throne of Bloodstone' is to skip right to the action with pregens or building your own high-level guy (which is a pretty fun activity in and of itself). And, as I said, this guy hates to do that. We usually have to give him a pregen and put up with him playing it ironically so the rest of us can have a good time.
"Just kick him out!" you say. But first of all that shit is not cool between friends (especially in a gaming group with 25 years of continuity) and second of all, half of you here are playing with your kids just to get your fix; who here really has a stable of players waiting to sub in for an absent or difficult party member?
Anyway, I'm curious to see if that works.
The1True
My my my, we just loooove to hear ourselves don't we?
I hear you man. I have to get up at 2 AM every Tuesday to play with my buddies in Canada...
The Heretic
Should be playing D&D instead
Would anyone mind if I went all Prince on Squeen's DPish misspelling of Eberron?
The Heretic
Should be playing D&D instead
Don't worry, Prince had the Charles Atlas Seal of Approval to reignite interest in this thread by asking what the the worst 2nd edition module was EVAR.
The Heretic
Should be playing D&D instead
100% I like reading campaign settings for inspiration, and I've certainly received a bit of inspiration from Greyhawk, the Forgotten Realms (especially what NOT to do), and the Scarred Lands.
Sui generis settings are very rare, and I'd say they are probably too hard to run in the real world. I love reading the Goblin Punch blogs entries on Centerra, but that setting is so batshit insane it would take too much time to try to make the damn thing work.
squeen
8, 8, I forget what is for
That was 3 insults with one sentence! I bow before you,
Or why they sucked but yeah, I was curious about everyone's takes. We got a little side-tracked there (I remember only a red haze and waking up during a lecture on Conflict Resolution with blood streaming from my eyes, ears and nostrils) but its a good thread. 2e is kind of where the game changed but it also did a lot of good so it seems like a sensible thing to ask.
Beoric
8, 8, I forget what is for
I think it is a good example of how divorced from each other the presentation in a module modules and the requirements of a system can be from each other. 2e wasn't much changed from 1e, but the modules were vastly different from early TSR modules.
For that matter, as someone pointed out above, the divide really started in 1e with Dragonlance (well there may have been some lesser offenders before Drgonlance, but that one really cemented the style). Imagine how people would have perceived the game if things like Hommlet and KotB had never existed, and the hobby had started with Dragonlance?
The Heretic
Should be playing D&D instead
I aim to please.
The Heretic
Should be playing D&D instead
Also, the biggest impact the game system changes had was with 3rd edition and the gigantic statblocks. DP mentioned that people have come up with concise statblocks for 3.x, but you still have the fact that there is a huge amount of bloat in the statistics listed for 3rd edition monsters.
When I'm cooling off after doing some gardening, I read some of the books I left in my basement. One of them is a Bestiary (ie Monster Manual) for Pathfinder. It includes a two page spread on Cthulhu. I look at that and roll my eyes. Do I need to know which feats Cthulhu took, or what his skill in Jump is? No.
(and also since he's CR 30 why on Golarion would I need his stats to begin with)
Grützi
Should be playing D&D instead
Cthulhu in Pathfinder
Behold my Brethren... but man... 9,830,400 XP
Behold my Brethren... but man... 9,830,400 XP
Beoric
8, 8, I forget what is for
If you don't know his educational history and work experience, how will you know if you want to hire him for the position of Big Bad Evil Boss Monster? Check his references? I had to call Hastur three times before I got a call back, and that really didn't go well.
EDIT: for @squeen, you have to imagine I'm writing this post in a Saturnian voice.