The Gaming Den

...You Lost Me wrote:I don't understand why either side of this argument keeps on coming back. Shadzar will always continue to ignore your questions while saying very dumb things, and everyone else will just ask him new questions about the dumb things hr said (which he will then ignore).

You win by letting the thread die. For the love of god let the thread die.

We've got Shadzar backed into a corner. Eventually his cognitive dissonance will become so profound his brain will explode.

infected slut princess wrote:

shadzar wrote: people want to play D&D to adventure, again that is what was lost. people want to tell STORIES of characters.

No. It's always been that way. People played 2e because they wanted to create cool stories with a fun game.

"you keep using that word. i do not think it means what you think it means."

you seem to believe SOME means ALL.

well you are wrong. i am 100% sure you think EVERYONE played the way you think, and THAT is the problem. stop trying to define why other people played. You only make yourself sound like Mike Mearls as the definitive on the "feel" of the game.

Mike cannot know what the game feels like to other people, since he cannot understand their position, nor can you know why people played since you aren't them.

1. 2nd let people play in interesting worlds. that was its big schtick and NOBODY on this forum would disagree with me since 2nd had 348756559875659876 published settings to choose from. that was ONE OF its major draws to it.

2. other people moved on to a book that was legible and organized. se tussocks threads on the DMGs to see where this is explained.

3. other people moved to it because, well they just wanted to get away from Gary.

i can only guess, and am again probably right that you are like Droylt (sp) and started with 3rd and just basing everything you say on what you have heard form the rumor-mill. you have no actual experience in the time frame you want to define.

did SOME want to tell stories. yeah, but they usually kept to themselves or posted those stories on obscure places. USENET didnt have many threads about "what kind of story can i tell with this or that", it was mostly rules lawyering and charop-ing similar to TGD. there wasnt much room for anything other than that and what we have here as "in the the trenches" which were play journals. yeah you had SOME people confused how to play some race/class combo and give it motive based on alignments (which nobody still understands cause Gary fucked them up with his "9 rings for the humans").

the purpose of the game for ANYONE reading the book as spelled out in ALL editions is to join a world in adventure. it never says "here is a way to help you write novels about your pet character concept".

i can't even imagine where in the hell that idea comes from, or what kind of person reads that from the books. it is about as stupid as the Jack Chick collective trying to say D&D was performing Satanic rituals, because they failed to understand what it is due to NOT READING THE DAMN BOOKS.

IF you had a single player for a DM and were playing through one of the, i think 3, adventures made for just a single player and DM, then the game WAS the story of just one character. nowhere does it say that that is the "default" to play the game, and the mountains of products that states on the cover "for Z characters X to Y level" should have told you it isnt a single player game, or at the very least NOT a single character game.

it is really like 3.0 was made for EVERY player that was thrown out of games for being disruptive just so that they could play D&D again, even though they were a problem to it. the whining rules-lawyers, those Munchkins, those self-centered morons that thought the game was only about their singular character and the rest of the players nor the game itself didnt matter anymore. and that is the EXACT attitude i see form the vast majority of players that came after or were introduced with 3.x.

those players have no intent in cooperating for the adventure, they are only worried about their own character to depths that is bordering psychological disorder, if not just sociological disorder. that or they are just children throwing the temper tantrum when they cant be the racecar in Monopoly and impede everyone else from playing because they dont get their way.

D&D isnt about ONE player, but ALL the players, DM included, to have fun. and the GAME must be made for MORE THAN ONE table of players. it must offer the BASICS of what is needed to play. the very nature allows you to personally add shit that you want to add, but each individual group has the right to decide what to add. Feats/NWPs/skills/powers were NEVER needed by D&D as a whole. people could add them their-selves, at home in THEIR game. not need to force them upon everyone.

IF you couldn't add them then maybe TTRPG isnt your type of game, or you should have sought someone else to help you, NOT try to change D&D to ONLY suit your needs at the expense and sacrifice of everyone else. without those that came before.. you wouldn't have SHIT except GURPs and warhammer. no cRPGs, no jRPGsn, no MMOs. you would have only board games, wargames, and things like pong and ET for Atari. or maybe not, since those companies making FF didnt require the name D&D in order to make a game for those people. Pokemon didnt require changing D&D in order to give people that game. HALO didnt require changing D&D either... yet the new age video gamers needed to change D&D so they could claim the name. "I claim this game in the name of my generation!" pretty much synonymous with conquistadors.

do you know why i don't go into AS or Shadowrun threads around here? cause they don't mean shit to me. i don't need to change them for me to like them. i just accept that i don't like them and am mature enough to find something else. the same cannot be said for post-1999 "D&D" players.

shadzar wrote:the purpose of the game for ANYONE reading the book as spelled out in ALL editions is to join a world in adventure. it never says "here is a way to help you write novels about your pet character concept".

i can't even imagine where in the hell that idea comes from

The idea comes from your own head. No one else thinks that what any edition of D&D is. You are railing against this idea that no one is advocating or defending because you refuse to read what people are actually saying.

shadzar wrote: stop trying to define why other people played.

Sure. But you can define why other people played, right?

The thing is, I actually know why other people played then. I know why other people play now. It's not rocket science. It's the raison d'etre of RPGs in the first place.

And my assessment is much more reasonable than yours, which is "people played D&D because they wanted to play as characters who suck dicks."

i can only guess, and am again probably right that you are like Droylt (sp) and started with 3rd and just basing everything you say on what you have heard form the rumor-mill. you have no actual experience in the time frame you want to define.

You don't know shit. I first played D&D after getting a huge pile of hand-me-down 1e AD&D books. I loved playing 1e, 2e, and 3e.

The reason most people played these games was the same. This is why I have the authority to say you are a retard who doesn't know shit about why people play D&D. And it's hilarious that this probably breaks your heart, because you laughably consider yourself the guardian of D&D's true meaning.

did SOME want to tell stories. yeah, but they usually kept to themselves or posted those stories on obscure places. USENET didnt have many threads about "what kind of story can i tell with this or that", it was mostly rules lawyering and charop-ing similar to TGD. there wasnt much room for anything other than that and what we have here as "in the the trenches" which were play journals.

You are like a raging retard who cannot understand anything. Playing the game is the story that is being created. It has nothing to do with campaign journals or USENET threads or writing novels after.

But since you are a retard with a major martyr complex and no friends, you don't know why people play D&D. In fact, I'd wager no one plays D&D with you because you are an dried-up stinky dick licker.

Here's what I basically don't get about shatzar-types...

They're all "OMGZ YOU SHOULD BE A FIRST LEVEL, STATS-IN-ORDER-3D6, SHIT FARMER AND IF YOU WANT TO PLAY SOMEONE WITH DEFINED SKILLS OR ABILITIES YOU ARE FUCKING MUNCHKIN SWINE AND I WOULD TOTALLY KICK YOUR ASS BECAUSE I'M AN INTERNET TOUGH GUY!1!"

So, you've got your character "Joe with a hammer and a loincloth" and who is a blank slate, scraping placenta off himself, knowing nothing of the world but feel of a good breeze on his balls and the basics of shit farming. He is then supposed to be defined by his interactions with the world, and his interactions will be determined not by some munchkin-pussy number on a piece of paper, but by PLAYER SKILLZORS!!1

Joe talks to ye olden quest giver, and he who givereth quests treats Joe like shit because Joe has a low Charisma and shit stuck to his loincloth (but ignore the "Reaction Modifier" based on "Charisma Score" BECAUSE YOU'RE NOT SUPPOSED TO KNOW THE RULES ABOUT THAT SHIT YOU MUNCH-PUSSY!), but gives Joe a quest to visit the conveniently located Dungeon of Doom.

Joe goes to the Dungeon of Doom and starts poking the walls with a 10' pole... or does he? Now, the DM decides if Joe thinks that poking walls with sticks is something he would know about "in character" because RAELIZARM. If the DM decides that Joe knows about "traps," then poking works without any need for a "Search Check" that some shit eating WotC lover might roll. The dungeon continues to get progressively harder, in that "harder" means "player of Joe must solve puzzles/traps based on his ability to read the DM's mind."

Ultimately, the "Old School" D&D game becomes this metagaming tight-rope walk where you're supposed to use your PLAYER SKILLZORS to solve problems in a system agnostic way with the DM reserving the right to shut down anything you do as being metagaming. Know too little, and you're a shitty player who needs to learn at the "altar of DM raped my character." Know too much, and you're a "shitty metagamer."

The only "good" experiences with "Old School" gaming are when you're a teenager and you've got a DM who is an amazing story-teller/entertainer. Then you're too young and inexperienced to realize you're just riding his rails (literally, as he's probably a pedophile, which is why he's a thirty year old failed author hanging out with teenagers). Later, you get old enough to know better, and sit around internet forums bitching about how great gaming was in the good old days and SOMETHING (WotC, the Swine, World of Warcraft) must have ruined this great hobby you once enjoyed.

Everyone wrote:Pointless arguements

Hasn't it already been proven that arguing with Shadzar never goes anywhere? We do our thing, he does his thing, and when they cross we say "fuck you!", he says "fuck you!" and NOTHING WILL HAVE CHANGED.

Wiseman wrote:

Everyone wrote:Pointless arguements

Hasn't it already been proven that arguing with Shadzar never goes anywhere? We do our thing, he does his thing, and when they cross we say "fuck you!", he says "fuck you!" and NOTHING WILL HAVE CHANGED.

I wouldn't participate if I didn't have a little extra free time and wasn't enjoying myself at least a little.

I'd admit to enjoying myself more if shadzar would write using correct grammar and punctuation. I scanned his last post, but actually reading it with the poor formatting would have taken too much of my extra free time and would not have been at all fun.

Since I didn't read his last post and therefore cannot respond, can someone else who has spent more time here clue me in on one aspect of Shadzar's insanity?

He really seems butt-hurt about 'Drizz't Clones'. I've never had a Dark Elf character, so not really my thing. But didn't he say that Shadzar is some portmanteu of Shadow Czar his Dark Elf dual-wielding character that he thinks is total awesome sauce. Is he upset that he thinks Drizz't stole his idea? Or that every time he tries to talk about his Shadzar who totally isn't a Drizz't Clone and everyone rolls their eyes and says, "Sounds like a Drizz't Clone to me".

Edit - Okay, I did actually go back and read his whole post. I'm still confused as to the depths of his insanity.

It sounds like he simultaneously holds the following conflicting ideas:

1) AD&D 2nd edition was the best edition ever, and WotC ruined it forever by releasing 3rd edition.

2) Third edition removed all the crappy 'I'm a special snowflake character' players from 2nd edition, leaving all the 'true' D&D players to enjoy their preferred edition without regard to those crappy players they're better off without.

So, yeah, I don't get it. Obviously 1 is false - 2nd edition still exists and if there's no additional product it's because TSR went bankrupt. Not to mention that, due to the OGL, a lot of 2nd edition support is now possible the way it never was under TSR. And if 2 is true, I'd think Shadzar would really appreciate that he can game in peace and spend less time vomiting illegible screes on the interwebs.

If I could briefly summarize the biggest possible problem with shadazar, and explain how a sane person deals with the problem.

Shadazar like 2e more than 3e. Therefore, 3e ruined D&D forever.

Here is how sane person deals with this problem. I like Halo 1 better than Halo 2 or 3 or 4 or Reach or ODST. But I don't throw a shit fit about how making a second game called Halo 2 somehow ruined Halo forever.

Alternatively, 4e sucks dick, but 3e is still good, and 4e did not retroactively destroy D&D, and even though it is really shitty and not in the least backwards compatible in that people can't tell the same stories. All the same, it is still D&D, because future editions don't stop being D&D just because they are different, they are just a worse edition of D&D.

Shad also seems to have a particular belief that I've seen mostly in 2e Grognards and Old People, which is that streamlining a system to make it easier to understand and operate it worsens the system because it is 'dumbed down", rather than improving the system because the mechanics less are obtrusive and the game over all is more accessible.

The fact of the matter is that whether you like 3e or not, 2e is a mess of conflicting, non-intuitive systems. It makes you do algebra in your head in the middle of combat. It forces you to add negative numbers and subtract positive numbers. Yeah, it is not an impossible feat to do any of this. You can teach yourself to do it, but you shouldn't fucking have to.

To me the weirdest bit about all this shad ranting is that most of the D&D games I've personally been a part of were very scenario driven and had pre-generated characers 'n' shit. We treated things like a competition to see who could cut knots the fastest and only resorted to teamwork when combat rolled around. It was a very marked departure from the Shadowrun & White Wolf games I more usually played, and we were actually playing 3.0 at the time. Same deal with what I saw from AH's Crypts of Chaos game--It's 3.x, but people are more interested in the crazy shit going down in the actual game rather than what happened in the backgrounds. You know, because as far as I can tell nobody really bothered with writing a novel when they could just put down "thieving potato farmer" instead.

I can't say that I've had that experience. Personally, all of the 3e campaigns I have been involved in have been identical to the 2e campaigns I was involved in, system aside.

Desdan_Mervolam wrote:Shad also seems to have a particular belief that I've seen mostly in 2e Grognards and Old People, which is that streamlining a system to make it easier to understand and operate it worsens the system because it is 'dumbed down", rather than improving the system because the mechanics less are obtrusive and the game over all is more accessible.

you like what you call this "evolution" and streamlining, so you must LOVE 4th edition right?

what i believe is shit some people want need not be forced on all.

ISP wrote:shit

no i know what the GAME was for. you think you know WHY everyone played. and for the most part YOU ARE WRONG as to why people played. how much story do you RALLY think is gotten out of a one-shot? this includes anything like well anything that came before Encounters. even the LFR or living greyhawk had either the same thing over and over, or is you missed something you were left out of the story. not sure how Encounters new method will fix that, but i doubt it will, because if a store has to run it even though you miss it, there is NO story for you, it will just be a collection of scenes from a continuity chaos. there is about as much story in those type of games as there is in the entirety of MMOs.

Desdan_Mervolam wrote:I can't say that I've had that experience. Personally, all of the 3e campaigns I have been involved in have been identical to the 2e campaigns I was involved in, system aside.

so you carried over you unidentified playing style from one edition to the next? that helps very little without knowing HOW those games worked, but it does prove that the new edition drawing in NEW players that didnt come from a previous edition have different ideas about what D&D is before they enter into it.

thus again as in the other thread, why D&D design follows the newest popular fad or trend.

no i know what the GAME was for. you think you know WHY everyone played. and for the most part YOU ARE WRONG as to why people played. how much story do you RALLY think.

You do not know what the game was for, since that is defined by the people who played it (you even said that yourself) and you are not everyone that excludes you. You are stating an opinion as fact.

shadzar wrote: you like what you call this "evolution" and streamlining, so you must LOVE 4th edition right?

what i believe is shit some people want need not be forced on all.

No, I didn't much like 4th edition. In my experience, 4e was too rigid and codified. You had some options, but not nearly as many as it seemed. Not only did everyone of a particular race/class combination play the same, not only did everyone of a particular class play the same, but everyone who played a specific class type played the same. It was a step backwards to pre-3e D&D in a lot of ways.

And I can actually say I gave 4th Edition a shot with people who like the game instead of just assuming that it was crap before I even touched it.

shadzar wrote:no i know what the GAME was for. you think you know WHY everyone played. and for the most part YOU ARE WRONG as to why people played. how much story do you RALLY think is gotten out of a one-shot? this includes anything like well anything that came before Encounters. even the LFR or living greyhawk had either the same thing over and over, or is you missed something you were left out of the story. not sure how Encounters new method will fix that, but i doubt it will, because if a store has to run it even though you miss it, there is NO story for you, it will just be a collection of scenes from a continuity chaos. there is about as much story in those type of games as there is in the entirety of MMOs.

This quote is so full of fail. Here we learn the truth about shadzar.

Despite his blithering, incoherent butthurt rage about video games and 3e, he actually wants D&D to be more like an MMO -- meaningless grinds with characters who suck and nobody cares about.

Of course, he overlooks that people playing one-shots fit into one of two categories: either they did not normally play the game, or they did normally play the game.

If in the latter category, then one-shots were not the majority of their D&D activity. They were primarily doing what the DMGs for each edition told us to do all along: they played campaigns with characters they liked.

Desdan_Mervolam wrote:

shadzar wrote: you like what you call this "evolution" and streamlining, so you must LOVE 4th edition right?

what i believe is shit some people want need not be forced on all.

No, I didn't much like 4th edition. In my experience, 4e was too rigid and codified.

and the cycle is never ending... see this is EXACTLY where people from previous editions come from.

I feel that way about 3rd, many feel that way about 2nd, etc....

WHY do all the classes need to be on the same XP track?
WHY do i need these NWP bastard children when i didn't care for NWPs to begin with?
WHY do i have to have this monster here just because it has these numbers, when it makes no sense for this to be here?

the "rigid" from 2nd > 3rd was worse than from 3rd > 4th since 3rd carried most of its systems over.

And I can actually say I gave 4th Edition a shot with people who like the game instead of just assuming that it was crap before I even touched it.

oh this tired strawman... i dont have to eat a pile of dog shit to know i wont like eating dog shit. yet you think people cant see form the books what the system holds without playing through it. well some people may just be smarter than you if that is the way you want to phrase it and CAN see how it will play without having to play it. well for MANY that was exactly right. the predictions many made about 4th BEFORE the books were ever released we exactly true. long drawn out battles of identical character with different paint jobs, spamming at-wills, etc.

maybe grow up and realize that people are able to make such distinctions without having to "try" the thing, even if you are not able to do it.

D&D 4th = DDM 4th

your above statement i first quoted says exactly the SAME thing people said about 4th WITHOUT playing it. they didn't need to play it to know they wouldn't like it BECAUSE it had all that nonsense of unified levels, WBL, feats, etc; as those were things they did not want.

is there actually a thread on here yet that details the things gained from 3rd? i don't mean simpler math because every goddamn body uses phones for shit now with apps, there is no excuse for even complaining about THAC0 since an app can be made to roll attacks and you just use it. but what of all the things 3rd added were of real benefit that couldnt be done before?

i would like to rad that thread to get some idea what the attraction is to 3rd, cause i still dont see it. all i can see in 3rd is "too rigid and codified".

Leress wrote:

no i know what the GAME was made for. you think you know WHY everyone played. and for the most part YOU ARE WRONG as to why people played. how much story do you RALLY think.

You do not know what the game was for, since that is defined by the people who played it (you even said that yourself) and you are not everyone that excludes you. You are stating an opinion as fact.

missing word now put into place and bolded for ease of finding.

Shadzar, don't give me that crap. I don't believe for a second you've ever read a third edition book, much less ever touched a 4th edition book. You're practically proud of the fact that you're speaking from ignorance. It's very simple, if you want to have a stated opinion about the relative qualities of the game system, you have to have at least a little actual knowledge on how that system works.. There are plenty of people who hate 4e as much as you think you do, and we respect their opinion on the matter because they, if nothing else, read the goddamned books to find out why they hate the game.

believe in one hand and shit in the other and se which ones fills up[ quicker. it will be the one you are full of, shit.

shadzar wrote:believe in one hand and shit in the other and se which ones fills up[ quicker. it will be the one you are full of, shit.

Would it kill you write your posts so they don't hurt my eyes to read?

This is a Timecube level of incoherence, right there.

So are we having Shadzar Fortnight where I make a special collection of links in the D&D Reviews/Analysis thread with these threads Shadzar attempted to shit all over, and sign it "THIS IS WHY 2E IS BAD AND SHADZAR IS WRONG"?

Because I'm down for Shadzar Psychology Fortnight. I can roll with that.

This is Shadzar's thread where he's attempting to tell us what's wrong with D&D because people asked him not to threadcrap everwhere else. So if you're here, don't complain that Shadzar's here.

It's quite a nice thread in some ways.

Shadzar wrote:

Desdan_Mervolem wrote:No, I didn't much like 4th edition. In my experience, 4e was too rigid and codified.

And the cycle is never ending. See, this is EXACTLY where people from previous editions come from.

I feel that way about 3rd, many feel that way about 2nd, etc.

See that, it's sensible enough, especially with added punctuation. The oldest of oldschool grognards running custom OD&D games fucking hate 1st edition with all it's rules for everything. They can write a D&D game in about 8 pages with classes and spells and monsters and everything, and just roll some random dice with odds they pull out of their ass when anyone does anything besides roll to hit or make a save.

They do that because that's their tolerance for a rules structure all filled up. Other people hate that shit because there's not enough structure for them to feel comfortable even trying anything.

There's something about choice theory in there, and likely something about how you'd really go about unifying the editions if you wanted to succeed.


Then again ....

WHY do all the classes need to be on the same XP track?
WHY do i need these NWP bastard children when i didn't care for NWPs to begin with?
WHY do i have to have this monster here just because it has these numbers, when it makes no sense for this to be here?

See, 1st edition had the most heavily codified XP system: hugely so. It's gotten less detailed and more MTP each edition since, to the point where a bunch of DMs in 3e and 4e just MTP it (in that you level up when the DM feels you've done enough to level up).

Skills are basically irrelevant in 3e. Most classes can totally just not use them and no one would notice. Same for NWPs in 2nd edition, background fluff that often never sees play.

I guess that last one's about level-appropriate fight design, rather than environment-appropriate fight design. That's kinda true, though 2nd edition does seem to tell you to use level-appropriate fights when you can, it just doesn't support that mechanically.

The growth in "rigidity" from 2nd edition to 3e was greater than from 3e to 4e since 4e uses the d20 system.

Which is bollox. The AEDU system of class advancement (they only have one class table, FFS), everyone having the same spells with slightly different flavour, and complete removal of most things that gave the players open-ended choices makes 4e vastly more rigid in what play styles it supports and the real player choices it provides.

4e monsters are way more like AD&D monsters than the systematic design found in 3e, in that they have a bunch of stats that do nothing, some arbitrary fuck-you powers, and you get all the important math bits off a common chart. So that goes the other way.

Funnily enough, 4e totally makes you play the sort of game Shadzar seems to desire. The combats are super-fiddly and super-slow, so it'd be a very boring version compared to doing it with a mid-level AD&D party. But there's no functional support for any of that basket-weaving "role"-player stuff in 4e. Skill use is MTP on fixed odds pulled out the DM's ass just like AD&D is, albeit heavily obfuscated.

Everyone, every single person on this board thinks there are problems with D&D that need to be addressed. This board is convened around the subject and then impugning the honor, hygiene and ancestry of people who disagree with you on it. Shad takes some things too far and tries too hard and needs to pay more attention to how to get people to take him more seriously, but ultimately he's not all that far off of other people here.

Actually, I've been thinking about taking Shadz off ignore lately. He's not the only person I have on ignore, but he is the only one I bother to click through to regularly.

If everyone just started ignoring shadzar and anyone who even acknowledged shadzar as a person that existed, this board would be way better off.