Thursday, January 26, 2012
Things You Can't Say On The WOTC Fora
I have discovered, from sorry experience, that you cannot talk about the following things on the WOTC Dungeons and Dragons fora.
Nine-fold Alignment System
Realism
Save Or Die
World Of Warcraft
Random attribute generation
Vancian Magic
XP for GP
Fragile entry-level characters
Role-playing
Player-skill challenges
Narrative combat
Heterogenous classes
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14 comments:
Blech! Vancian Magic!
Granted, while not a fan, I'm fine with others discussing it and even appreciating it, even if I've despised and done everything I can to get rid of it throughout the past two decades. >.>
Besides wanting to be sarcastic, I was wondering what you meant by heterogeneous classes. I'm assuming you mean losing the roles design style to classes, or maybe the power sources. But I could see it being used to mean something like the old Bard, or even something like a Rat Catcher or similar.
p.s. Save or Die is another I'm glad to be done with. Though it wasn't the threat to suspension of disbelief that Vancian Magic was.
LOL! Thanks for the response,
By Heterogenous classes I mean classes that operate differently from each other. When I play a spell-caster, I want it to "feel" different from playing a fighting-man.
I gather you have read Vance.
As for save or die, it is a reasonable emulation of falling from the sky, being blased by Orcus' wand, and a handful of other effects, but lots of players don't like the idea of it, since it is poses a threat to their cherished and finely polished character builds.
re: Save or Die.
I leave it up to the players. If they don't like rolling save vs die, they are free to just "die" instead.
In other words. You are dead. But, since you're characters are precious snowflakes beloved by the gods/fate/gamesters of triskelion/etc they are granted a final chance to somehow survive.
My qualm with Save or Die actually comes from being DM more than being a player. I'm one of those odd players who enjoys having their characters killed, but as a DM I hate having to tell one of my players that their character just died.
However, I do like the 4E's "Save or go to -1 hit points" abilities. They let me do the whole Save or Die thing without out-right telling a player he's dead.
As to heterogeneity, I see what you're saying. I think there's some benefits to the 4E model where every class functions similarly, but there are definitely benefits to variety as well. I'm working on a home game using 3.x, because it's supposed to be a low-magic setting and I want to get rid of the spellcaster feel to play.
All that effort they spent aping MMO gameplay in 4E and they don't let you talk about WoW? Weird.
LOL. It seems I can still learn something new everyday. I was about to respond to the 'spelling error' of the word 'Forum' in your post title. I was then compelled to first look up 'Fora' on an online dictionary.
Well played sir. :)
I'm not a diehard Grognard or anything, but I doubt I will ever take a look at WOTC's forums. I have Dragonsfoot for when I want to feel sick or argue with tools on a forum.
Add women's suffrage and the abolition of slavery to your list of WotC's hot-button topics. Apparently certain mods are in doubt that those were good things.
Yeah, it's pathetic. But sometimes it's understandable; comments like Kristian's can easily be construed as derisive.
Why can't you talk about the nine fold alignment system? I don't go there, so I am clueless about this. Did they do away with it in 4th edition?
My word verification by the way is "mison", which I envision as a herd of very tiny rodent-Bison.
They ended up replacing that system with five alignments - Lawful Good, Good, Unaligned, Evil and Chaotic Evil. As you can probably surmise, not everyone was happy with that little change, particularly the way it treated LG and CE as "the same but more" of Good and Evil.
Me, I prefer the old Lawful-Neutral-Chaotic alignment system from OD&D, with the understanding that Lawful does not always equal Good and Chaotic does not always equal Evil.
Verification word: "rebracs."
I think you gave me a good topic to discuss on my blog, as I have found in "lurking" on the WotC forums, it is a nest of 4e or die hornets.
ERIC!
@Tequila I'm bright enough to know that joke wouldn't fly there but on an Old School blog its worth it for the chuckles. I tend to avoid most 'official' forums because humorless mods are the rule not the exception... and based on my experiences the average poster needs such a heavy hand.
I haven't tried, but I'm guessing "the 15-minute work day" would not be a welcome topic either....
"Me, I prefer the old Lawful-Neutral-Chaotic alignment system from OD&D, with the understanding that Lawful does not always equal Good and Chaotic does not always equal Evil."
I like the AD&D system, but I have to admit that some of the Neutral combo-alignments are rather vague.
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