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I'd like to see a 3.5 Greyhawk Hardback book that doesn't just regurgitate everything we've already read. And I want to see WoTC contract with Gary Gygax to produce 1 or 2 Greyhawk adventures per year, that's all, just 1 or 2. You do that, he'll outsell everybody else.
There's some sick bastiches, of whom I myself stand in the included, that would buy a grocery list written by E Gary Gygax. Adventures? Bonus. Don't know what the pobbisility of that happening would be, but a guy's gotta dream to keep going in this harsh world we live in.
I also want more campaign settings. [...] There were 11,000 submissions to the WOTC campaign setting contest, which Eberron won. Eberron is awesome, but what about the work of the two other finalists? The final eleven? Many of them did some work and got paid, so why not make a seperate sourcebook out of each of their ideas?
The reason I've heard cited is that setting sourcebooks actually become less profitable the more settings you have on the go, because the market is divided among the fans of each setting. Forgotten Realms books cost the same to write as setting-unspecific books, but only Forgotten Realms fans will buy them. TSR had at least seven settings on the go in 2nd editon AD&D. As a result, a book made for one setting wasn't as profitable.
Especially since Hasbro bought Wizards of the Coast, there's been a greater demand for profitability. They fired a lot of people they didn't strictly need, for example. They're also avoiding publishing less profitable books. Adventures (modules) only sell to DMs and not to players, so they avoid those, although they've cleverly circumvented that recently with Eberron adventures in the name of supporting the Eberron brand!
Likewise, they all but cancelled Ghostwalk, releasing it quietly right before the 3.5 revision came out (it'd already been written and they figured they might as well make their costs back). Unless Eberron fades out of popularity, I don't expect to see a new setting all too soon.
I think they made a damn good move with the new fantastic location things, because there is also a mini tie-in.
Adventures get better when you include more PC stuff. WotC should realize that a good adventure will sell to DMs only, but if alot of groups want to play it, it will sell.
I like the fluff. I'd like to see more books with backgrounds. For instance; how can it be that there is no book on Cormyr yet? Or an extensive book on Shade? I would also like to see more planar material, but not the crap like manual of the planes. I'd like to see it restored to it's former glory like in 2nd edition, with the quotes in the sidebars, the flavor of the npc's. Same goes for Dark Sun, not a few articles in dragons, but a real book with extensive backgrounds.
I think the fluff vs crunch discussion is as old as the game itself. I suppose it depends on the type of gamer you are which holds your preference. In my experience, the "older" gamers are usually more into fluff and playing out a story line and "younger" players enjoy making their characters as buff as possible.
A good DM can incorporate both. I think the 2nd edition Planescape setting was a perfect example: lots of ways to buff up your character, but lots of story and moods as well. The great thing to me was, that no matter how buff your character was, there was always someone else bigger and meaner and they were very close by. That's what you get when you share a city with demons and devils :)
It's the DM's discression to decide what (s)he will or will not use, so whether or not (s)he needs to know rules-wise or options- wise is in his/her own hands. When I started running my 1st campaign I knew very few rules; I just improvised a lot and looked things up as I went along. As long as you're consistant, you will learn more rules in time without penalising your players.
I think the fluff vs crunch discussion is as old as the game itself. I suppose it depends on the type of gamer you are which holds your preference. In my experience, the "older" gamers are usually more into fluff and playing out a story line and "younger" players enjoy making their characters as buff as possible.
I think you're mostly right.
But I'm older, in gamer terms anyway, and I prefer crunch - but crunch that allows me to tune the PC/NPC/Monster/places/items - to what I want - not necessarily to munchkinify them.
For fluff I prefer to create my own, I think it is better than most of the fluff produced, and at the level of detail that is appropriate to my level of interest.
I can write my own crunch too - but what I (assume I) get from WotC material is that it has been playtested for balance, or at least had a lot of eyes on it with more experience in the game than I have got.
Rarely, the folks at WotC come up with material I wouldn't have tought of, and that always fun to read (even if I don't like for my own game) but the balancing - well thats hard and I am glad for the effort they put into doing it.
Don't get me wrong I think there is a place for fluff. I just don't think that is the strong suite of any of the published campaign worlds - no offence to fans of any of them - they capture some great ideas, its just that none of the worlds seem to make sense to me - they all seem to try too hard to be all things to all people at all times, and as a result seem non-viable - but thats just my opinion. It is also the niche I would like to see explored in the next campaign setting - that it not only be different - better well thought through into how regions, economics, communications, religion, culture, races, work together - to me that would be a world worthy of setting novels in an support really good role-play (as well as rollplay).
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Tone the fluff down a little. Not back to the "here's about two paragraphs on how to use the PrC and then two pages or rules" days, but less than the 2:1 ratio it seems like we have now of fluff to crunch (ie Complete Psionic's "wealth" of prestige classes.) 1:1 sounds good to me, or maybe just a full page on fluff for a PrC and then the guts of the class.
Specific book-wise, Fiendish Codex III: The Scheming Grey Dooms or whatever you care to call the book on Yugoloths. OK, throw in hordelings and night hags and whatever else you think you need to to get it to sell, but I want my invisible instigators, dang it!
Throw the Epic fans a bone. Do a "High Level Handbook" or something thereabouts. For campaigns of say, 15th level and up. How to deal with PCs that can teleport basically at will, blow up just about anything you throw at them. The fluff side of Epic, along with all the errata, corrections, and retcons you care to throw at the original Epic Level Handbook. And of course many new pages of Epic crunch, including monsters and Epic prestige classes.
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I'd like to see a 3.5 Greyhawk Hardback book that doesn't just regurgitate everything we've already read. And I want to see WoTC contract with Gary Gygax to produce 1 or 2 Greyhawk adventures per year, that's all, just 1 or 2. You do that, he'll outsell everybody else.There's some sick bastiches, of whom I myself stand in the included, that would buy a grocery list written by E Gary Gygax. Adventures? Bonus. Don't know what the pobbisility of that happening would be, but a guy's gotta dream to keep going in this harsh world we live in.
Even if not by Gygax (however, why not ...), I'd like to see a real GH specific production line.
I'll buy every (well written, coherent and well designed) GH's setting books (hard or soft covers), as well as adventures, pantheon book...
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Adventures. Big ones. My last three purchases have been big adventures--City of the Spider Queen, Red Hand of Doom, Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil. Coming up with a great adventure is so, so hard, and I want all the help I can get. I like the scope and ambition of longer adventures, how they allow the players to change the status quo, not just maintain it.Me too! Specifically, I'd love some kind of supermodule set in NE Greyhawk, perhaps as a continuation of the "Howl from the North" and "Five from the North" modules. Stonehold and the various barbarian tribes are very underdeveloped (besides "Iron Orb of the duergar", I can't recall any other adventures set in that region), and Sevvord Redbeard is one of the coolest and most iconic characters of the Greyhawk setting. It could combine harsh weather conditions and grandiose vistas with barbaric Erythnul cultists, white dragons, frost giants and all sort of other goodies - in short, it would be awesome, and should appeal all those who liked both "Ill made graves" and, hopefully, "Kings of the Rift" adventures in Dungeon 133, as well as oldies like the "Steading of the hill giant chief" and "Glacial rift of the frost giant jarl".
I'll drink to that! That is an awesome idea.
Someone pointed out the fluff v crunch on PrCs in the complete books. I agree it is extremely over written. Cut down to a page of fluff for the PrC, and then add more of other things.
Yeah, a 'Complete Book of Encouter Tables'
You people scare me.
Someone pointed out the fluff v crunch on PrCs in the complete books. I agree it is extremely over written. Cut down to a page of fluff for the PrC, and then add more of other things.
I tend to like fluff. But this sort of thing is just bad fluff. Who cares that much one how some strange class might interact with fighters or elves? Give me an idea of what the class is all about and the rest can be decided on a campaign by campaign basis. In fact if one is going to go through the trouble of writing this stuff down it would be better if it was at least aimed at the specific campaign worlds instead of some kind of generic 'every place'. I might find it more interesting to understand how Lurks are supposed to fit into the Forgotten Realms versus Ebberon. Even though I use neither it might at least help spark idea's for how I'm going to fit the class into my homebrew. But this generic 'every place' fluff kind of boils away to nothing once you take a hard look at it. Quite a bit is written but not much information is actually passed on. What is there is usually so hopelessly generic that it can't really be utilized to answer the key question "How does this stuff fit into my campaign?".
Generally speaking however if I'm going to be reading fluff I like material that's more theoretical. The PHBII's section on playing well with others was good fluff for example.
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What is "The Singing Sheet"? And where can I find it?- A Greyhawk 3.5 sourcebook
- A fillable PC sheet in .pdf form
- More on the Yugoloths and their lords
- More modulesI also like someone's suggestion from earlier on books about Giants, Fey and Evil Humanoids (Goblinomicon?). I think that a "Book of Giants" would be especially cool.
"The Singing Sheet" isn't bad as a fillable pc sheet. Have you tried it?
FH
http://boards1.wizards.com/showthread.php?t=448946 is the link in WotC messageboard under digital D&D. It is a character sheet that you enter in your info but it auto-calculates skill points, synergies, BAB, AC, etc. My group loves it. Try it and see if it does what you want, I mean WTF, its free.
FH
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http://boards1.wizards.com/showthread.php?t=448946 is the link in WotC messageboard under digital D&D. It is a character sheet that you enter in your info but it auto-calculates skill points, synergies, BAB, AC, etc. My group loves it. Try it and see if it does what you want, I mean WTF, its free.FH
Sweet! I found it. Looks awesome. Thanks oh Fake One. Thou art the Dark Power that we shall follow unto the end of the known universe (oops, wrong thread).
I did find the new prestige class format a little verbose, although I don't know yet if this is going to be something I'll warm to. I suspect that it's a case of the writers trying to give us more for our money without making twenty prestige classes that nobody will use more than two of in a year. (Writing more is in the writers' favour too, if they're freelance employees; they're paid per word)
(Writing more is in the writers' favour too, if they're freelance employees; they're paid per word)
Heh, this is funny...I'm not sure how other companies do business, but if the publisher that i work for paid freelance writers by the word we'd be out of business in short order.
As ever,
ACE
I tend to like fluff. But this sort of thing is just bad fluff. Who cares that much one how some strange class might interact with fighters or elves? Give me an idea of what the class is all about and the rest can be decided on a campaign by campaign basis.
Agreed. Lords of Madness, a great book, had tons of fluff and background, but it was pretty good, including a lot of neat details to help in a campaign.
But, yeah, the stuff on the PrCs is alot of inane detail I can figure out on my own.