I read it waiting for the funny to start...
Perhaps if you put in <laugh here> tags?
My native language is French. What does hillarious mean in English?
OH! I wasn't supposed to think it was serious (WE DON'T HAVE AN UNDERCOMMON LANGUAGE!!!)
"No, according to the footnotes, if I roll a Nat 20, the thing auto dies no save, but if the enemy rolls a Nat 20, it explodes no save and it is assumed we are rogues with improved evasion and made our save."
"*Groan* I miss the english of 3.5 ... Screw it, rocks fall, everyone dies"
"But according to the section here in undercommon, the gm cannot under ANY circumstance, use Rocks fall, everyone dies to kill the party. So you canno-Hey, where did Joe the GM go?"
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I read it waiting for the funny to start...
Perhaps if you put in <laugh here> tags?
I guess you have to understand where the satire is coming from.
Pretty much any time there's a new edition of a popular game coming out and the designers intend to streamline the system, a segment of the gaming population reads "streamline" as "dumb down for stupid babies." A part of this mindset comes from simple resistance to change, but there's also a degree of a false sense of intellectual superiority to it. ("They said they're changing the rules so that casting a spell no longer requires you to triangulate the exact positions of each of the four elemental planes and to roll on four different charts. Well, we're smart enough to use those rules and they're not all that complicated, so they're just dumbing down this thinking man's game!")
It was the most apparent when 4e came out, but the same criticisms were fielded against 3e when it came out. I recall a particularly vitriolic blog post from someone who was of the opinion that 3e was nothing but a money-making scam from WotC with the intent of getting a bunch of stupid kids who couldn't understand the beauty of THACO and Save vs. Wands to play the game. Also, it was tabletop Diablo 2 or something.
The Cracked article is written as an over-the-top satire of that mindset, with demands to make the game more unapproachable and complicated than ever, like the way it should be.
Also, what's up with all this resistance to Undercommon in the game? For an intellectual like myself, it wasn't all that hard to learn that completely unnecessary language. Why do you guys want them to dumb down the game?[/smugness]
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Interestingly enough, I wouldn't of had a problem with 4e if they called it "DnD Tactics", instead. It is a different game with a different focus and good at what it does, it's just not the same kind of game as 3e and shouldn't have been marketed as such.
Here's to hoping 5e will be in the spirit of 3e instead of 4e or get renamed to Tactics.
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Interestingly enough, I wouldn't of had a problem with 4e if they called it "DnD Tactics", instead. It is a different game with a different focus and good at what it does, it's just not the same kind of game as 3e and shouldn't have been marketed as such.
Much the same criticism can be made about 3e.
Here's to hoping 5e will be in the spirit of 3e instead of 4e.
I found 3e and 4E pretty similar, but those judgements aside it seems pretty clear they're aiming more for the AD&D/2E crowd than the 3E fans.
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I found 3e and 4E pretty similar
Yep, with the perspective of RPGs in general ranging from Don't Rest Your Head to Traveller to World of Darkness, 3e and 4e have loads in common.
I certainly wouldn't mind trying out the earlier editions, and with an open mind of the fact that they are likely to be very different, and I want to see just how THAC0 was used.
I am not so bothered about AD&D, but I have just bought the original Red Box and B2 Keep on the Borderlands off Ebay to check out Basic D&D, I think it would be quite a nice change from the crunch of 3.5 and 4e for me.
You should try swords and wizardry, digitalmage. It's a very different take - the incompleteness of the rules is almost celebrated. Balance considerations aren't as important either. Very fast moving though.
It's not for everyone, of course (and its especially not for avid 3.5 fans, imo) but the investment required is negligible if you've already played a more modern edition.
You're not going to find what folks wax nostalgic about by reading the rules. There was a time when the magic happened at the table and the rules stayed out of the way. Many of us remember those times fondly, and hope that D&D Next will be a return to those days.
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You're not going to find what folks wax nostalgic about by reading the rules. There was a time when the magic happened at the table and the rules stayed out of the way.
Well I am hoping to actually run the game as well as just read it, I fancy playing a much rules lighter version of D&D. Plus with B2 I now have a bit more background for the Caves of Chaos D&D Next playtest scenario :)
I think the idea will be a rules light system for the core rulebbok, and then sell complex rule systems as splat books.
Who knows? It might work...but I doubt it will reach the level of profitability WoTC and Hasbro are looking for.
THAC0 is only for intelligent people. :-)
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In response to my own post: I guess the article came down to writing style. I personally didn't find the author's writing style particularly humorous but that's just me. Others of you may have found it "rip-roarin' hilarious" and that's cool. I had that same feelings about the movie (at the risk of giving away my age) "Fast Times at Ridgemont High". So many of my friends thought it was so funny and I was just sitting in the movie theater waiting two hours for something (anything) funny to happen.
THAC0 is only for intelligent people. :-)
I remember when THAC0 was a revoltuionary idea that seriously sped up game play! It is astonishing the changes in the game over the years...
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I remember when THAC0 was a revoltuionary idea that seriously sped up game play! It is astonishing the changes in the game over the years...
THAC0 was in the DM's Guide...
Look at the list of monsters in the back under "Appendix E: Alphabetical Monster Listing" (pages 196-215), each has a THAC0 number.
THAC0 was in the DM's Guide...
Look at the list of monsters in the back under "Appendix E: Alphabetical Monster Listing" (pages 196-215), each has a THAC0 number.
Yeah I know, but it was never refrenced in any of the modules until 1983! And the calculation of subtracting AC from that number wasn't readily apparent unless you thought about it. I was relying on the tables until I picked up the module "The Sentinel", and they actually spelled out the use of THAC0. Then it was a "Duh, obvious" moment. With all the material in the DMG, it is not surprising that many of us missed that point. It should also be pointed out that it was NOT in the Monster Manual, which is where most of us were getting our monster stats!
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Honestly, in my experience, games are always as complex or simple as you want to make them. I don't think I ever really figured out 2e (I was pretty young at the time and didn't have anyone to play with at the time), but in retrospect I really appreciate the streamlined nature of newer systems. Rules can only "get in the way" if you let them; as a GM, my typical response to rules lawyers has been to shrug my shoulders and ignore them. And there have always been rules lawyers, as far as I can tell.
Rules can only "get in the way" if you let them; as a GM, my typical response to rules lawyers has been to shrug my shoulders and ignore them. And there have always been rules lawyers, as far as I can tell.
They were a significant enough presence that Gygax actually referenced them in the original DM's Guide in 1979, five years after the games debut. So that is a very safe assumption. :)