CorvidMP's page

Honestly for me its not the name so much, while I love Monte's work with malhavoc (and am even in the midst of planing an arcana evolved game), his insistence that vancian spell casting was central to DnD grated on me.

My concern is that management seems to be mucking about with the creative/design folks. No good ever comes of this. None.

I've never seen such a thing in 3.5.

Then you weren't paying attention.

CorvidMP wrote:

Didn't he move to Seattle for the gig with WoTC?

Yeah, he did. I remember following the saga of the move on FB (kind of like watching Daigle's check ins across the nation).

That was actually the first thing that struck me when I saw his blog post: "Damn, that was a waste of a move halfway across the country".

Yeah...when a man says screw it, and gives up working on the premier RPG imprint, after moving his family halfway across the damn country no less....this speaks of problems, big problems.

Crap. I had high hopes for 5e, this really does not bode well what ever it means.

Didn't he move to Seattle for the gig with WoTC?

I guess it could've been pay, but what in the RPG world pays more than DnD? I mean seriously, its one of maybe two? three? companies that can offer a table top designer a serious salary.

The curious thing is that his differences weren't with the design folks...so as to who exactly he had his problem with, that's whats interesting.

Corporate number crunchers/marketing types exerting to much control over the project perhaps? I dunno it certainly seems to indicate a certain ammount of interference from somewhere, and that doesn't bode well at all.

Also I can't imagine it was over OGL, you gotta figure as a writer/publisher/designer 99.9% of the stuff you do won't be open license just cause thats the way the industry usually works.

All that to say, I think pretty clearly 4e had some really really good ideas that were really poorly implemented, along side some just plain bad ideas, that blotted out the ability of some people to see any some the actually well implemented stuff (especially since most of the really good stuff was on the DM's side of the house).

What really boggles my mind though is that many people who were the most upset that 4e had so many issues, are crying foul now that WoTC are closing the door on such a problematic edition and trying to start fresh...

Basically, 3rd/4th Edition taught players to distrust DMs who didn't play by the rules, and DMs that the rules were a straight-jacket when they really weren't. I think this is really what they are trying to correct with 5e.

I actually had the opposite experience with my games, my players would look at all the stuff they could do on their character sheet and assume that was ALL they could do. Despite repeated reminders that I actually liked improvisational play, my players, many of whom are self professed improvisational role-player, just couldn't see past that list and always picked off that list.

While I'm on the subject- they often picked poorly, because as it turns out my players 1- couldn't be bothered to try and learn to work together under the new rules or 2- be bothered to learn what their actual power selections did.

At first I thought the problems that led to the games discontinuation was their fault (and honestly I still think they're partly to blame- they did spend about as much time complaining about the new edition as they actually did playing it), but I've come to realize the problem was largely one of presentation on 4e's part. The system was so transparent they just couldn't suspend their disbelief and get into character.

Despite much of what happened from game to game being functionally the same, 4e broke the fourth wall in a very drastic way with it's presentation, and my players just didn't like it (which is fine, and understandable really, I just didn't need the fifty dozen rationalizations of why the system didn't encourage role-playing).

Also- the change from a game with a light veneer of tactics, to a game with some serious tactical elements was WAY more abrupt than they were prepared for. Instead of seeing additional ways for expressing their character's personality in combat situations, they just saw a game that was all combat.

Just my personal experiences, hardly universal I'm sure.

I absolutely adored the use of Themes in Darksun. That said it often seems like a much high cliff to scale when talking about more generic D&D. While I think one could get away with 18 or whatever themes in Darksun being able to use themes for broader D&D is much harder because we don't need 18 themes we need a great many more just to have some shot of allowing everyone to pick something that is in the neighborhood of their character concept.

I can see one book covering all the theme's you'd need for a generic campaign pretty easily actually i mean hell these 6 themes here- noble, peasant, outlaw, military, merchant, and tribesman cover damn near every basic social class of medieval society. Anything past that is just gravy.

Yes, there is regeneration in 4E. Trolls, Vampires, Werewolves all have regeneration.

Hell fighters can get regen when bloddied as a 2nd level utility power (granted its a once a day thing) it represents them sucking it up and charging on in the face of an enourmous beat down.

Even if the VTT was released tomorrow and perfectly functional and integrated, the current limit on characters in the web based CB, and no monster builder would make it very limited in scope.

Not to mention largely pointless for those of us who use hand painted mini's and battlemats....

Now a capmaign planner with encounter building monster modification treasure rewards and what not all built in...now that i coul use. I'm never going to see it from these nimrods though, if they're focusing all their energy on a watered down web only VTT.

It's annoyed me that on some of the forums ppl have complained about those of us that took the occasional dip into a DDI supscription to get updates every couples of months. They usually try to explain how a program as "complex" as the character builder takes alot of work to maintain, but I gotta tell you when you consider what comparable amounts of money will buy you software wise I thinks its a pretty crappy arguement.

Just for some perspective I've paid over 80 bucks in supscriptions fee's for the occassional update in the years since 4e came out. That will damn near buy me copies of both Fallout: New Vegas and Fable III. I'm no programer but i'm pretty damn sure the CB can't even begin to remotely touch either of those products in complexity, let alone both.
Is it because the cost of production is spread across more users? Maybe to a certain extent but I still don't think that accounts for the HUGE disparity in cost vs complexity.

Basically what I'm trying to say that even if the old model of subscriptions wasn't the most optimal means of distributing/selling digital content ther is no way I'll ever believe it wasn't profitable as a hell regardless. This just makes their decision to remove the one product of DDI we all actually use and enjoy, and spend all thier time and development energy re-inventing the damn wheel (and a less useful wheel at that) instead of bringing us DDI users more useful apps to lure us into maintaining a sub, all the more insulting.

I'm a huge capitalist/libertarian, so I'm all about WoTC doing what ever it takes to make more money. I just think taking their one decent online product and replacing it with a crappier version for no other reason than to increase thier income is crappy customer service...

As a slight side note I'm very wary of purchasing a SERVICE like the new, unlike the old cb which was a PRODUCT. One might get discontinued if its not profitable enough (say in the event of another economic speed bump), or if a new edition come out. Where as with an offline cb like the old one its mine as long for as I can keep my data backed up.

Fabes DM wrote:

I played 2E with minis. Players Option: Combat and Tactics provided a very fun series of optional rules for their use.

True - though that supplement did not come out for a long time. Something like 7 years after the initial release IIRC.

Granted but still i don't think I've ever played DnD (over the past 25 years) with out some kind of graph paper hitting the table for significant portions of game time, even if we didn't use mini's necessarily. It's definitely part of what distinguishes the game from a lot of the other games on the market- Gurps, White Wolf, Savage Worlds, all doa better job of handling the low tactics high drama kind of roleplaying that to be honest i generally prefer.

The tactics heavy nature of the game has always been something that distinguished DnD from many of the other offerings, so when 4e moved more in that direction it wasn't all that jaring for me really.

but if they do it like Themes ala Darksun and they provide enough themes (cause we need more then just professions - we need themes like 'The Hero's Journey') then it might be interesting.

I'm pretty sure I read somewhere last night that this was the case, with black smith being a theme for example. Could be cool, allowing you to do black smith esque stuff in combat if you like in addition to letting you craft stuff. Other professions would be interesting as themes as well...

of course it could just be wish listing I remember.

The only thing I feel 4E lacks (and I can understand why) is a good rules set for creating unique items and constructs. One of my favorite 3.5 characters had the Craft Golem feat. This feat requires the DM to trust the PC not to abuse its use; that trust factor is removed in 4E, imo.

Actually they heard all the complaints about this and are including a section on crafting skills in the players options book they're releasing next year (thank the gods...cause it really annoyed me).

Fabes DM wrote:

The changes to magic items and races have been carried across, or will be carried across as errata to the other books.

Which makes them "not changes" how?

I agree on one count...this is going nowhere. You can keep moving the target all day (after, all, its "subjective"), but the fact remains that essentials:

1. Is different that 4th edition;
2. Contains substantive changes; and
3. Is a complete, stand-alone rules system.

If you choose not to recognize that as a new edition, that's your prerogative.

Just for arguements sake lets say it is 4.5.

If i can nonethless use all the future supplements they have planned in my current game including classes races monsters feats and items with little to no alteration....why should i care that its 4.5?

The situation is no different than when one person has a 3.0 PHB and other has a 3.5 PHB.

Actually it's entirely different than that.

It's more akin to some one playing with character from the 3.5 phb alongside someone with a character from the Bo9S (if they had reprinted the 3.5 combat rules in the Bo9S anyway).

What part of essentials is a compatible supplement with a reprint OF THE SAME DAMN RULES in it seems to elude you?
Frankly i think your just trolling at this point.

The denial that Essentials isn't a pseudo-4.5 is amazing.

No your insitance that the metaphor that 3.0 is to 3.5 as 4e is to essentials is anything other than totally subjective, ans utimately meaningless (in the face of the fact that I'm not buying essentials yet will be able to continue to buy new DnD suplements from WotC that mesh seemlessly with my games) is amazing.

Seriously draw a a hard non subjective line in the sand for what 4.5 actually means, and why, assuming that your right, i should care if it is, and you might have the start of having a point.

Quite simply, if the the two systems were fully compatible, then by definition a book to allow swapping features would be unnecessary. That it is necessary is telling.

This argument doesn't hold water. There are entire edditions of DnD, nay entire other roleplaying systems, who don't allow the swapping of class features at all.

I'm not sure how much more fully compatible you want it to be really.
Xp and challenge levels compatible? check
combat rules identical? check
classes balanced against one another? check
Some class features cant be taken by other classes, but that been true of all DnD ever regardless of edition.

They have not rewritten the core classes either. They have just offered radically different new builds for the new classes.

What I don't enjoy about 4th is the books seem really "hollow" when I read them. There doesn't seem as much depth or feeling to them as there is in Pathfinder, particularly the monster manuals. There's just something unsatisfying in the MM books since they rarely contain much detail about the creatures themselves, their behaviours, their habitats or history. It is this meat and bones that really gives a DM inspiration for great game building. So I'm glad I have experienced over 20 years of DMing and gaming to draw on when it comes to fleshing out the baddies into something more than numbers. However, this is the trade off you get for having great and easy to use stat blocks created at multiple challenge levels. I can live with it.

I think this may be largely in response to the huge number of people, like myself, who play in homebrew worlds of the time and who just got tired of paying for X pages of fluff they would never use in every book WotC published.

I love the bared boned approach they've used, as a world builder it apppeals to me.

It's also worth pointing out they still have ecology articles in dungeon every month, so if you really want fluff just subscribe for a month and donwlad all of them, and that books like open grave and dragonomicon have a lot of fluff as well.

On a related note I also prefer how 4e rewards actual tactics more than builds.

A group of "sub optimal" characters when played with an eye towards teamwork and tactics will do far better in an encounter , than a group a group of min-maxed monsters played by glory hounding loud mouthed power gamers will.
It's a pretty strong paradigm shift really.

Frankly i siwtched because I, and most of my fellow players, prefered melee classes, and the new edition gave them just so much more to do in combat. Things that reflected the themes of the classes/characters no less. I mean hell it was impossible to even fight and walk at the same time in 3.x, but now our rogue was bounding about the battle feild and our paladin was defending the week members of the party with his holy wrath, not just acting as a cleric with a full BAB.

I stayed for the ease of game prep, which was quite the pleasant surprise. When you have two jobs and kids, cutting four hours of prep time down to a half hour is freaking huge. I'm finding them far more entertaining as well. I am eaily able to balance traps and terrain, along with monster roles into something very tricky and fun.

Not at all. Mind controling someone into stabbing themselves makes perfect sense (well unless they have a pole arm i guess but you get my point) with tons of precedents in sci fi and fantasy literature.

Bag of rats is a deliberqate misinterpretation and abuse of the rules in a way that totally brutalizes game balance, rules as intended, and basic human decency.
This is just a slightly liberal/creative interpretation of the targeting rules, that, in the end, doesn't do much that a regular at will wouldn't.

Pretty much what i do.
As a police officer with a modicum of self defense traing i know all sorts of tricks to get suspects to move how i want them to, using foot work, talking etc. So i'n down with a lot of the fighter powers that move people arround.

Yet i can't in even the most outlandish of circumstances think of an insult or trick that would cause an archer aiming at a guy with a sword to run ten feet and throw himself on the blade, not just shoot the bastard.

There are litterally three books full of viable fighter powers at this point, not counting dragon articles or darksun. He can pick one of the ones that doesn't defy all logic in certain circumstances.

I'm with you on this being a problem unique to the martial power sourse though, all the other power sources allow you to just shrug your shoulders go "its magick".
Martial powers, on the other hand, seriously needs to consider their realism

You know I've often wondered if it was the formating that that created a lot of the initial bad reactions to 4e.

I know it was very jarring for me at first, you just got so used to those class charts etc. from 3.x. I didn't have anything else to read, as i was stuck in the desert, so i powered through and it grew on me as i adjusted. I was always curious how many people just got fed up and never made the jump becuase they had other options.

I'm guessing wizards figured this out after a few focus groups and -bam- we have essentials.

I fail to see how its really all that incongruous. there are numerous examples in fiction and film of bad guys mind controlin/hypnotizing people into harming themselves.

It's not all that imbalanced either but more importantly...it's freaking hilarious, which is why I would allow it :P