MyriVerse's page

The hobby would appeal to a lot more casual gamers...

When you start bandying about terms like "casual gamers," I can help but think of the #!@!!@#$ that ruin other people's fun by not showing up for games, or leaving sessions early. Only one thing happens to that type of player in my games: they find that their characters have died while they were away. All of us are old guys, with jobs, and spouses, and kids, but we manage it very well and very easily. I don't consider "once a month" casual. That's all we play.

I really don't think D&D is a game to which you can casually "commit." D&D games are not like, and will never be like, a computer game that's always there waiting for you or has all the info stored in 1s and 0s. If a person isn't going to do the rudimentary preparation, then they have no business being at my sessions.

And grapple's unbalanced against spellcasters; try explaining to a novice sorcerer who gets attacked by a mimic they literally can not do anything useful except get crushed to death in 3 rounds.

Seems pretty common sensical to me. Even if there were no rules regarding grappling, the very term pretty much rules out a caster doing anything with a somatic requirement.

CNB wrote:

It's hardly that easy. Quick, which of the following spells have somatic components, material components, or both: Daze Monster, Blindness/Deafness, Resist Energy, Glitterdust, Ghoul Touch, Alter Self, and Bull's Strength?

If you're a DM, and someone charges up and grapples your spellcaster, you suddenly have to know which spells you can cast and which spells you can't. This invariably results in a lot of downtime and page flipping to figure out what you can even do in that situation.

Or I flip through my spell cards (3x5 index cards with the spell information on them) in a couple seconds. Granted, this isn't something most beginning DMs would do, but it's not tremendously difficult to do with planning and preparation, either.

Precisely! All of my players have this info either on their character sheets or readily available. Heck, we don't even "allow" book use during the game (crack a book and expect a projectile of some sort in your face).

I think there's actually a very simple argument to be made against Vancian magic, and I don't think I've seen it in here yet.

Think back to when you were first learning D&D, and when you first learned about how spellcasting works. When you got to the part about how, after casting a spell, a spellcaster forgets the spell, did you say "Oh, that makes sense"? Show of hands.

*raises hand*

When I started playing D&D, I'd never even heard of Jack Vance, much less read any of his books. But this rule made sense... about as much sense as magic makes, at all. The rules of magic are pretty much defined however the fantasy world wants to define them. If that means "fire and forget," then so be it. Magic is a fleeting thing that cannot be grasped by the mortal mind for very long. Gotcha. /shrug Move along.

Nothing humanly imaginable. At this point, they'd have to change it into something that isn't 4e.

Today: No.
Tomorrow: No.
Next week: No.
Next month: No.
Day of release: No.
Next year: No.
Ever: Maybe.

Hax0rz S1ash
Deicides & Demigod-moders
D&D: 4th Perdition
D&D: AFK
DDø (D&D Offline)
GTA: The Dark Ages
No More Gnome Ore

I’m wasn’t sure which thread to put the following in, so I hope this one’s OK.

Last night, I had the following thought. It seems that, based on the marketing, WotC are aiming to grab a younger market (say 10-year olds as opposed to 15-year olds) and a broader market (ie. the “cool” kids).
Eg. “Look at this! This is the new, improved D&D! 4E is the best ever! Only geeks and nerds played previous editions! We don’t even want their money! Here’s the new Player’s Handbook!”

I have to be honest: I don't really understand this. In my experience, "cool" kids have played D&D through all of its versions. No, I'm not under any delusions of my coolness. I was (and am) one of the nerds, and I'm proud. However, over half of my most successful gaming group (started over 25 years ago, and still play sporadically) were football players in high school, one played football for a college team, and 2 or 3 did the whole frat thing in college.