Best pen-and-paper RPG world - Page 2

That's what our opinion was, too. Frankly, we've all invested a couple hundred dollars EACH into 3e and 3.5e. 4e feels like a money-making venture more than anything else.

eta: 3e and 3.5e work JUST FINE in my opinion. The TSR sourcebooks are very well done (spelling errors aside) and offer plenty of ideas for pretty rich campaigning, and the licensed secondary publishers really cranked out alot of worthwhile additional material to expand upon your own particular realm. Even without the monetary issue, there's really no NEED to leap to 4e.

Well...of course it's a money grab. 3/3.5 Edition sales had slowed down, and they were really running out of stuff to do (at least that would be worth the expense of producing). Technically there's never any "need" for a new edition. Old editions can be patched up just as easy (if not much, much easier) as putting out new editions. But the gaming companies have to make money to justify their existence...particularly if they're owned by Hasbro.

Translating the MMO to tabletop was a no-brainer move. There are a heck of a lot more people playing WoW than playing D&D regularly. Trying to capture some of that market is pretty smart business, really. Otherwise the RPG market is tending to shrink over time.

But the "tactical combat simulation" line really gives me a chuckle. Not to be rude, but D&D has always been a tactical combat simulation with some extra window dressing. It started as an outgrowth of a miniatures wargame and it's stuck pretty close to those roots. 4E just makes it perfectly clear that combat is the primary aspect of the game that requires firm "rules." Once you get past that, you get "skill challenges" and pretty much everything that could happen in game beyond that is a function of roleplaying and not so much die-rolling. Or to put it another way, as soon as you start adding the abstraction of "stat systems" to any setting you start to make it more like a "tactical simulation."

Don't get me wrong...like I said 4E didn't blow our socks off when we played, and I'm not trying to "convert" anyone, but from a design and marketing perspective, it's mostly smart moves. Yes, the emphasis on miniatures is annoying, but honestly, are there really that many groups out there that don't/didn't use miniatures or at least some kind of markers even as far back as 2nd Edition?

Tabletop RPGs already were a different experience, though, and the market was shrinking, or at the very least stagnant. Wizards of the Coast/Hasbro is still a business. In the long run it basically becomes "release a new edition that tries to attract a new audience or go out of business because you're not profitable enough for our shareholders' tastes."

They could start attracting new business by lowering the prices on some of the source books. The fact that it costs over $100 to start from scratch on ANY of these editions of D&D is ludicrous.

Creativity is something you bring to your own table. I love that they simplified everything. Scaling encounters, hell, improvising a session with mere hours of prep time is a breeze now.

And really, role-playing depends on the role-players. Everybody makes their own flavor, no matter what edition you play.

Special attacks? Yeah, I'm kinda happy my fighter doesn't just spam basic attacks anymore, while the wizard gets to fart and kill armies.

Kinda defeats the purpose if you're trying to make money, doesn't it? Not that I don't agree (RPG books have pretty much always been overpriced), but the basic fact is that most of the people that have any interest in playing D&D had already bought the books. Hasbro, being a for-profit business, told WotC to create a product that could at least theoretically boost their profits.

The tabletop RPG industry is a niche market comprised of people who are stereotyped as being on the extreme fringe of geek society. The smaller a production run of a book, the more it has to cost to make up its' production costs (to say nothing of profit margin behind it). We can harp and complain about "MMO in my RPG" but the basic fact is that if WotC hadn't done something, D&D was simply going to die a slow death. I'm not making a judgment either way as to how successful their attempt to draw a new audience has been, but I can understand the business decisions behind it.

Could they have gone in another direction? Sure. Would it have been more successful? No way to know.

Quoted for Absolute Truth.

Seriously...I couldn't help but laugh at all the folks (not necessarily folks here) screaming that 4th Edition "took the role-playing out of role-playing" because it's bunk. Role-Playing is a function of the players and dungeon masters portraying their characters. It's the stuff that doesn't rely on die rolls nearly as much as how the players interact with each other. People arguing that there aren't enough "rules for role-playing" are creating a self-defeating argument.

That's the other aspect of D&D that differs from MMOs and always will no matter how they change the rules - D&D/Tabletop RPGs are just as much about gathering around the table with a bunch of friends and having fun interacting face-to-face with other human beings as they are about rolling the dice, slaying monsters and getting cool loot. The actual game rules and structure thereof are ultimately secondary to the social aspects of the game. Yeah, online voice-chat programs like Ventrilo can make MMOs a little bit closer to that...but it's still not the same.

Ah WFR! the first system I ever DM'd

Still my favorate moment from that was as a player. The group had deicided that the chaos worshipping noble's mansion we had to storm was impregnable and gave up trying. That was save for me (a pit fighter at the time) and a hypnotist.

Our plan was simple, hypnotise as many people as we could find and storm the place with an army. Im pretty sure we should have failed but our DM was so impressed with the fact we hadn't given up and the sheer insanity of our plan he let us win.


Good times.

Reign for an unusual take on fantasy. (Check the link; the two rotating people literally are the campaign world)
Dark Sun for cannibal hobbits.
Exalted for heroin-peeing dinosauri.
Over the Edge for mind-bending weirdness.
Unknown Armies for badass mindbending weirdness.

And ditto the love for Delta Green -- why someone hasn't optioned this for a movie or better yet, a TV show, is beyond me.

As for the price of D&D: Only the newest stuff retails for a premium. Check out the old-school renæssance at Grognardia -- plenty of people are happy playing with 30-year old rulesets.

Freely available on the net:

Original D&D: Swords & Wizardry
Basic/Expert D&D: Labyrinth Lord
Gamma World: Mutant Future
AD&D: OSRIC

The old Deadlands rocked. One of the truly awesome, all-out-batshit-insane settings. Really a tragedy it got almost killed off by the D20 conversion.

As for the best setting that is (almost) RPG-exclusive, Shadowrun is my favorite.
However, last year in February, Black Industries (now swallowed by fantasy flight games) released the Warhammer 40k RPG "Dark Heresy", which actually was sold out from Pre-Orders alone, and I have played it since then. Its simply fucking awesome.

However, its obviously not an RPG-exclusive setting at all But I urge anyone to have a look at it, you really only need the basic book, its excellent quality, full-colour, and takes the best of the Fantasy RPG and adds on top the real madness and flavor of WH40k.
Yeah, I am a sad person

I'm surprised so few people have played Rolemaster. It had a wealth of add-ons, expansion packs and campaigns (some of which were richly designed). And the D100 combat system was way beyond anything D&D achieved.

RM always was for snobs. "D&D, fah! I play Rolemaster." I loved the Middle Earth setting that used RM but I hated dying so easily.

Love those old school links posted above.

BTW, I'm not calling Geoff a snob. I just used to work in a game store and most, if not all the Rolemaster players merely acted in a way that turned me off of the system.

It's fair to say Rolemaster character generation took time for granted. But the combat was superb. Some of the kills were hilarious.

For me it all started with Marvel Super Heroes (Advanced or 2nd Ed or whatever). WEG Star Wars for a little too long. Then on to a string of ill-fated, short lived series (TMNT up through Feng Shui/Shadowfist).

Though not truly pen and paper, I'd have to give it up for CHUD RPG Forum's own Coldstone (original run) and the gone-before-it's-time "Project R/Modern Day Raganarok" campaign featuring the lead singer of Wynternacht (sp?) amongst others.

Outside of my initial dalliances with D&D, the first pen and paper RPG I became obsessed with as a kid and what led to a long term love of all things Palladium was...



It was funny too, we were playing this game before the term 'Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles' actually meant anything to aussie kids as the RPG came out after Eastman and Lairds comic but before they became a worldwide phenomenon. People would ask us what we were doing and we'd tell them and we may as well have been speaking bloody double-dutch. The reactions to it were priceless. "Teenage Mutant What?". Watching the rest of Australia catch up to what we had been such fans of about a year or more later was a buzz. I still remember me and my best friend who'd started playing initially with me sitting in the cinema for the first movie as the lights went down marvelling at how big those comic book characters from our favourite RPG had become.

Anyway, really fun game and as I said, led onto a love of everything from Heroes Unlimited, to Ninjas and Superspies and finally of course, the epic Rifts.

Let me echo the love for Feng Shui. That shit is great.

A couple of weeks ago I came to my regular game night with pregenerated Feng Shui characters and showed them the teahouse gunfight from HARDBOILED. I said "This is what you will be playing tonight" and they all just went nuts.

I have a deep and abiding affection for Monte Cook's Arcana Evolved. Worth a look if you can find it. I'm pretty sure it's out of print though I think he'd got pdfs available for download on his site.

Ha! I was counting on Mystara to assrape us once more, to be honest. This is better news.

I have to side with Luca on 4th edition. I find it a huge improvement to the system. Every player always has something to do, and the rules across classes are consistent. You can change characters without having to relearn the game. And there's no more of this "Well, the undead are here, I guess we'll all go sit down while the Cleric cleans up this mess". It also gives everybody a wide variety of abilities to play with, instead of "sword, sword, sword, sword, sword, sword..."

As for 4th edition being a money grab. Duh. So was 3.5. And 3rd. And AD&D. It's a business. You think they're doing it for the love?

Oooh oooh, what'd you play? Or did you DM? Or perhaps just leaf through the books?

I ran a game for several months, but now it's someone else's turn. I was playing a Druid in his game, which I pretty much hated, but fortunately, he died. Now I'm using an Avenger multiclassed as a wizard.

Was that a 3.5 or 4e game in which you played a Druid? Cuz a 3.5 Druid is pretty much bookkeeping central.

I strongly advise you to try a bard one day. Bards have the Vicious Mockery at-will. Their mere insults hurt. Now that brings a lot of RP fun to the table.

The druid was 4th edition.

For some reason, our DM harbors an irrational hatred of bards. I'm tempted to make one just to see if he outright bans them.

How do you feel about skill challenges?

I like the idea of earning XP through means other than combat, but I have a hard time organically incorporating one. I tend to describe it as a montage that's going on.

Yeah, I think skill challenges flat-out suck. We tried like hell to incorporate them, but they just weren't working. Like you say, it was a noble goal, but the mechanics just aren't any fun.

They errata'd them out the ass, too. There's apparently a really good and clear example of how to run one in Open Grave, but fuck if I'm buying an entire book for one good example of a skill challenge.

What was the problem with your druid? I've only played one character in 4e since it came out (the aforementioned bard), so I can't say I've much experience with playtesting stuff.

In 4th edition, the Druid is a controller that shapeshifts. But going into beast form doesn't change the basic stats at all, so now you're a melee fighter with low damage potential and low hit points. And if you want to use a ranged or area attack, or generally do controllery things, you have to shift back to human form, using an action to do it.

It just doesn't contribute much to the group. As controllers go, the wizard kicks its ass.

One of the players in the game I run is an Eladrin wizard. Poor motherfucker has never hit with his encounter power in a whole year's worth of play.

You running published modules or stuff you wrote yourself? I've lead my group from level 1-3 in a self-written adventure, but I'm going to try out Thunderspire Labyrinth after hearing good things. I'm not much of a dungeon designer, so it's fun to have those pre-made.

Both I and the current DM design our own stuff. The online Encounter Builder has been a great boon, and they're supposed to have the Dungeon Builder up someday as well. In fact, the electronic resources are the primary reason to switch to 4th edition, in my opinion. The Compendium alone makes running the game 100% easier and quicker.

The cool part about my group's campaigns is that we do 3D maps. We have a guy with a huge Lego collection, and he loves any excuse to use it. So whoever's running the game e-mails him with floor plans, and he builds it for the next encounter. Having everything in three dimensions clears up an awful lot of line-of-sight and cover/concealment issues.

This is one of my few real issues with 4th edition. The D20 as a mechanic is a very wide, flat and unreliable expanse of possibilities. In previous games, this was okay, because if you missed, you'd get more chances to use the same ability, and it balanced out. In 4th, your Encounter and Daily powers are one-shots. You miss, and it's gone. It feels way too arbitrary.

I haven't tried 4th Edition yet, but I'd hunt my entire family like deer, including the in-laws, to have a Dark Sun or Arcana Evolved MMO.

If you were a spellcaster (except for a sorcerer) in 3.5, every ability you had was a daily.

True. Now everybody else just gets to feel their pain.

Well, I still think it's a huge improvement over casting your four or five spells and then plinking away with your crossbow as a wizard for 1-6 damage, or just constantly saying "I hit it" as a non-caster. And the in-game explanation for it -- some things are just too damn complicated/exhausting to pull off twice -- makes a certain amount of sense (because fuck Vancian spellcasting).

Have you ever played 7th Sea? It's an alternate reality swashbuckling game, taking 17th century Europe as a basis and adding some magic and mythical creatures. It's now sadly out of print, but it really rewards creative thinking in tight spots. Basically, you throw a buch of d10s to hit a target number. The cooler the shit you want to pull, the higher you make your own target number.

For instance: if you want to hit a goon, his TN might be 15. If you want to fend off three goons at a time, Zorro-style, the TN gets raised 5 per brute. Really cool shit (not even mechanical, just cool improv lines or whatever) get rewarded by the DM through drama dice, a pool of dice you can save up for difficult rolls ahead. Simple but fun.

Something like the Amber RPG might work for that, Richard. Remember that one?

I always liked the goofy post-apocalyptic world of early GAMMA WORLDs and their spiritual offspring MUTANT FUTURE.

Played a TON of Gamma World for a year or so. I remember having long sessions of combat against legions of armed guerilla rabbits.

Although I've spent hundreds of dollars on the Saga books, this doesn't bother me. SW Saga ended up a mess: bloated, poorly written, unbalanced, massively disorganized, and (compared to D&D 4E) difficult to prep.

If WOTC can't maintain a viable SW RPG line, I have doubts any one else can at this point. There is a baseline group of people who will always want to play a SW RPG, but beyond that the game has to be fun and easy to run, as well as have a strong presence in the gaming community. WOTC pours a huge amount of its resources into the D&D line in order to achieve those specific goals, and it was unwilling to do the same for SW. I don't see any other game publisher willing to devote the resources to a SW RPG that a big company like WOTC refused to commit.

Heh, Wizards dropping SW caught me off guard, but it is true they've been pouring all their resources into D&D.

Yeah, I can't get too upset about WOTC dropping Star Wars. Their game sucked. In a perfect world, West End would pick it up again, and re-establish their original Star Wars RPG. I loved that thing.

By the way, I started running Green Ronin's Dragon Age RPG for my group last week. I quite like it. Character generation is too random for my tastes, but the combat system has some nice elements, and runs quickly. Plus, it has Bioware's incredible world behind it.