The Gaming Den

sabs wrote:That was okay in the 80's and really early 90's with AD&D.. but that stopped being okay when 3rd edition came about and you could actually roleplay, instead of running miniatures through a gygaxian meat grinder.

Stating that you need to meticulously select every aspect of advancement of your character in advance in order to properly roleplay doesn't exactly fill me with sympathy towards your position. I mean, that was okay in the aughts, but stopped being okay when 4th Edition crashed and burned and encouraged people to find paradigms that actually let them roleplay instead of playing Pretty Princess Dressup with their Elothar and Drizz't clones.

Then you're not playing D&D. You're having to completely re-write your fantasy heartbreaker. I also did not say I needed to meticulously pick every single item (although that is how 3rd and 4th are played) I said I wanted to be able to get the magic items I want that fit my character. But I'm actually okay with a combination of Magical Bazaar and Quest for That Item!


If you completely re-write your fantasy heartbreaker where I don't care about the treasure drops.. then.. uh.. why do I care about the treasure drops? I agree that D&D's magic items are fidly and anoying.. +1 sword of +1 strength. yawn.

or Ring of Spell 3x/day.

But how exactly is randomly rolled drops from some guy's list of magic items actually any better?
The One Ring should never fucking drop from a random table. And it doesn't make any sense.. That's like running a WoW dungeon, and hoping that THIS time.. BubaHotep is going to drop the "thing you want" because he only has a 5% chance of dropping it each time you kill him. What if I need the ability to fly by 12th level. and yet, I've yet to get one of the 6 items that grant flying to drop from your randomly generated list.. but I did get the ring of tunneling twice.. because rolls.

FrankTrollman wrote:I would hasten to add that not only is it bad if the system requires this in order to function, but it is bad if the player "requires" this event (whether they are requiring it to play their character, or requiring it to have fun, or requiring it to not veto the game in a huff, or whatever). It's bad in two ways:

• The first is that this event obviously may never come. If you're playing a pregenerated dungeon, there simply may not be any rooms with insertable treasure. Or if there are, there may not be any insertable treasure slots "big enough" to fit a flying carpet or whatever the fuck it is that you want.
• The second is that even if the MC asks the players for ideas, there's no guaranty that they are actually going to comply with your suggestion. They may have a good reason for this (such as you requesting a laser rifle in a fantasy game), they may have a bad reason, or most likely of all: they may have a reason that they think is good and you think is bad.

And not to put too fine a point on it: if the MC is depending on the players to fill in the treasure slots in the Temple of Fiscally Irresponsible Elves, that can easily blow up in their face. Many players actually want to be surprised by the treasure they find and won't have anything to suggest. Many other players don't actually know what items of the next experience level are supposed to be like and can't give reasonable suggestions.

Okay, you definitely have a point here. I do think there are situations where behavior that is technically wishlisting can still help create a great and memorable game. Let's say you're concepting for a pathfinder campaign about the PCs reuniting Brevoy, and one guy says he wants to play an adventurer-archeologist who uncovers the Sword of Choral the Conquerer around level 10-12, and it turns out to be intelligent. He thinks it would be really cool for his character to have a talking sword with an agenda, where it has definite ideas about how to unify the country that will clash with those of the rest of the party.

Or you're doing a game in notIndia, and 2 players tell Mister Cavern they think it would be totally sweet if there was an adventure that was basically a fantasy heist movie, where the party conspires to steal flying carpets from a Rakshasa Rajah and things end with a high-speed chase through a thunderstorm.

But if someone is saying that one of the above must happen, I can't feel very sympathetic. RPGs are supposed to be collaborative, after all.

sabs wrote:Drolyt,

1) All those examples are Artifacts.

The vast majority of magic items in fantasy literature and myth and legend are "artifacts" by D&D standards. That is precisely the problem.

Only one of those settings is High Magic.

Meaning what exactly? I probably shouldn't even bring up the fact that D&D is supposed to have a medieval economy at the same time adventurers are supposed to be able to walk into town and buy powerful magic items.

2) Aladin's Lamp isn't special in D&D because summoning a Djinn that has to grant you wishes just isn't that freaking hard in high level D&D.

Yes, but that is a bug, not a feature. We also should ask just what "high level" corresponds to in the setting. I mean, just how common are 5th level wizards? 10th level? 15th level? 20th level? Epic?

3) You're basically wanting to completely change D&D. For the One Ring to be special, then you can't have every 5th level Wizard running around with the invisibility spell. You're comparing Apples to Concrete, and complaining one of them doesn't taste very good.

Did you read the Lord of the Rings? The One Ring's main functions were that it was a power amplifier (in D&D terms it probably gives big enhancement bonuses to a lot of different things), it gave power over those wearing the other rings, and it acted as a sort of phylactery for Sauron. It only turned you invisible if you were too weak to control it, and being invisible wasn't actually very useful because anyone that mattered had see invisibility.

As for "completely changing D&D", I'm not seeing it. Ignoring the fact that if I were to do anything with the results of this discussion it would be to make my own system or set of house rules and not to have any effect of D&D itself I don't think the current magic item system is an integral part of what makes D&D D&D. Case in point:

sabs wrote:

Lago PARANOIA wrote:

sabs wrote:Or you think that it should all be random drops from a chart, and people just.. deal with it?

As far as D&D goes, yes, actually. For quite a few reasons.

That was okay in the 80's and really early 90's with AD&D.. but that stopped being okay when 3rd edition came about and you could actually roleplay, instead of running miniatures through a gygaxian meat grinder.

You're a terrible person. And you should feel bad for it.

PS:
You probably think that we should roll 3d6 in order for stats.

So yeah, changing D&D is only a bad thing if it is changed for the worse.

Omegonthesane wrote:

Fuchs wrote:

Omegonthesane wrote: This is false. As has already been discussed, it is easier to spot GM abuses if the GM has to violate game rules to commit those abuses, and it is therefore more likely that social dynamics will kick in in retaliation against those abuses. It also implies the sole purpose of such mechanics is to rein in the MC, rather than to make his job simpler by reducing the number of things he has to personally adjudicate.

But a GM dosn't have to violate the rules to be abusive. Unless you reduce him to a mere dice roller on tables and attack scripts, the GM can stay within the rules and still be as abusive as he wants. The examples I mentioned are all covered by the rules, yet allow him to wreck abuse all over the place.

Item the first - it isn't a matter of directly physically stopping abuses, it's a matter of making them obvious when they happen even if all you know about the game is what you were able to get flipping through a rulebook. If you have a defined set of rules, you can observe and learn when the DM is e.g. playing one rule for one player and another for another, or cranking Team Monster's rolls, or whatever.

Item the second. You have in no way addressed the fact that having tables and procedures makes the MC's live easier, NOT harder. If you're not up to populating an abandoned palace with appropriate minions for some reason, you can use the appropriate encounter table. If you don't feel like examining the game mechanics, finding every abuse available, and then comparing them to the relative intelligence and culture of a mob of enemies, you can follow the script provided.

you are wasting your time. Fuchs only wants the game to give HIM EVERYTHING he wants for his narrow pet character concept. if his character doesn't get every exact item from ANY book Fuchs has purchased during the game, then the DM is being abusive because Fuchs feels the DM OWES Fuchs those things, since Fuchs bought those books.

this has been seen before in the previous thread like this by Lago which i posted a link to earlier. Fuchs feels the DM owes him whatever he wants because Fuchs is a player in the game, and if Fuchs isnt having the exact fun he wants in his mind, then he wont play, or he will be disruptive. Fuchs is the spoiled brat player type, so anything the DM does that doesn't grant Fuchs his EVERY wish is an abusive DM.

D&D isn't medeival economy, we've already hashed that one to a thousand pieces.

Lets take Lord of the Rings as an example.
There's 3 magic items in the entire campaign? 1 of which would be better off in the hands of the Wizard, except that it's cursed.

How exactly is that fun for a group of 3-5 PC's with a GM. How is that even going to be fun? So the Thief gets a ring that if he had any spellcasting would force amplify him and make him go Super Evil everytime he used it to cast a Spell. The Wizard (who is clearly a mary sue GMPC) gets an Ancient Sword, and a slightly weaker artifact ring, The Ranger gets another Ancient sword. The Dwarf and the Elf get bupkus, the entire campaign.

Not to mention, that's an E6 campaign at best.
If you want to know what High Level is.. go fucking read one of Frank's incredibly long but amusing to read rants about it. We've got at least 3 different threads about what High Level Play should look like. And I don't give a fuck if you don't like how powerful level 6+ spells are. They fucking exist in the game. How many level 15 characters you ask? Well in Faerun, that's just about every bartender, shopkeeper or town Priest.

In a gaem where you're expected to have anywhere from 4-10 magic items, that all coherently work for your character, random drops and asking the GM how many blowjobs he wants.. are not viable options.

This is the most retarded thread I've seen in a good while on TGD and you should all feel ashamed and dirty for posting in it, especially when a large portion of the argument is constituted by Shadzar.

The reality is that almost no matter what item generation system you encode into the rulebook the players will do something different. It's the one thing I've seen people consistently not care about. Very few games get high buy-in from their players on any item allocation mechanisms.

Almaz wrote: The reality is that almost no matter what item generation system you encode into the rulebook the players will do something different. It's the one thing I've seen people consistently not care about. Very few games get high buy-in from their players on any item allocation mechanisms.

Honest question: is your experience mostly constituted of 3rd and 4th edition D&D? Because those games had frankly extremely terrible item allocation systems. On the flip side, Champions, Shadowrun, and even AD&D all had item allocation systems that worked reasonably well - and those games usually had people playing by the given rules in my experience.

Essentially you're making an Oberoni fallacy argument by the back door. You're saying that the rules for this subsystem don't matter because people are going to change them. But have you considered the possibility that people are changing them because it does matter and the rules in the systems you are most familiar with happen to be fucking terrible?

-Username17

MGuy wrote:The point where it gets to be a problem is if someone is using a dual sided dire flail and THEY want to go on a sidequest to find a BETTER one and the group vetoes the idea and one is found anyway. Now in a game like D+D where this sort of bs is necessary, that is ok, expected even.

except it is NOT ok in D&D. when someone added the weapon specialization to make it such that a narrow concept was used either by the name of the WP or whatever 3rd/4th calls, it then that is the problem,. 3rd/4th made weapon specialization a standard and created a problem,. previous editions had none such unless you actually invoked the weapon specialization rules, then that is your own fault, not a fault of the game. it was an option, and YOU choose to use that option. you invoked the option and the problems that came with it from the game standpoint and player attitude standpoint associated with that mechanic.

i agree with the group vetoing the sidequest aspect pretty much except, the player should be able to make his own damn X. it is possible in AD&D, and the ability to craft items removes the need for sidequests for an item, unless it is a world-specific item, then odds are it was placed for a reason and the players denying the sidequest are actively missing something in the game or just telling the ONE player that wants it that they dont want them or their style in the game in a polite manner; and it removes all need for any sort of wishlist. you can just make the thing, why beg or bride the DM for it? AD&D gives item crafting BD&D you use what you find. neither needed wishlists.

Lago PARANOIA wrote:The downside to making a treasure system that fungible, of course, is that there isn't such a thing as treasure anymore. What you have are gems with bonuses that combine in certain permutations.

there is plenty of stuff that the PCs just cant make, and that is still treasure beyond just a GP value.

the case of a wishlist is mostly armor and weapons, those and potions are things that a PCs could easily make. everything else is treasure. if a wishlist includes a Gem of True Seeing, then i am going to start wondering about the player as to whether they are a Munchkin that is only playing to metagame. the PC should have some knowledge of the item to WANT it, it should not be about player's metagame wants. it is the metagame playing that is the wishlist itself, THAT is the problem. the PLAYER read splatbook X with item Y in it and somehow never before mentioned in the game, the player wishes his PC to have it, though there is NO reason the PC would know about this obscure item.

Drolyt wrote:

sabs wrote:Well, I was more thinking your average Adventurer just sells their magic items back to Enchanters and Brokers, and gets "currency" and then they spend that currency on buying new magic items, or getting their magic items upgraded.

If you already have a +1 full plate. then getting a +1 halfplate isn't special at all. D&D treasure doesn't feel special at all. And if you're a rapier/knife dual wielder and your gm only drops magical hammers. you're like.. HHJJ.

I'm not sure why you think it's like wealth by level. It's more like Magical Bazaar land.

Because that is WBL. D&D 3e doesn't really work without the Magical Bazaar.

yeah Ye Olde Magick Shoppe doesnt exist. fuck that. keep it to video games where Cloud Strife needs to find his buster sword for plot point X or Kite/Tsukasa travels The World full of magic items to be bought like the Bazaar on the moons interior, the Nexus of EQ, or whatshisface in MAR buying stones to upgrade his weapon with however many slots it has for magic stones in MAR.

sabs wrote:You think it's better that the GM picks 100% of what drops, and screw you if you wanted to play a guy who uses Axes

why is someone sitting down to play a Gimli-clone, rather than playing the game of D&D? again it is ALL about playing a pet character concept rather than the game. that isnt even a flat personality, that is NO depth to the character at all, and NO personality. personality is not "must play with weapon Y". maybe players should stop trying to play "builds" and actually play characters? you know someone with personality and character?

for all the complaining about the dumb fighter stereotype with a specific weapon, people sure as hell want that EXACT thing in these narrow character concepts!

Drolyt wrote:It is a big fucking deal that Excalibur can only be pulled out by King Arthur.

Excalibur was useable by anyone, but only the Lady of the Lake could give it to the one she chose. ONLY King Arthur could pull the sword from the stone.... two different swords. result remains the same, just correcting your mistake.

sabs wrote:

Lago PARANOIA wrote:

sabs wrote:Or you think that it should all be random drops from a chart, and people just.. deal with it?

As far as D&D goes, yes, actually. For quite a few reasons.

That was okay in the 80's and really early 90's with AD&D.. but that stopped being okay when 3rd edition came about and you could actually roleplay, instead of running miniatures through a gygaxian meat grinder.

such stupidity again, guess what it still works that way for AD&D in the 00's and 10s too! it doesnt work in 3rd and 4th EVER because WBL exists as a core part of that system and wishlists for the other. they changed a core fundamental element of the game which made random drops impossible to be used, since you REQUIRED X power at X level across the board with the unified level tracks.

it isnt the times that changed anything, but the edition itself that totally fucked up by existing in the first place that caused such problems in not only its design, but players minds as well.

sabs wrote:Then you're not playing D&D. You're having to completely re-write your fantasy heartbreaker. I also did not say I needed to meticulously pick every single item (although that is how 3rd and 4th are played) I said I wanted to be able to get the magic items I want that fit my character. But I'm actually okay with a combination of Magical Bazaar and Quest for That Item!

so you admit 3rd and 4th editions have caused problems for many gamers? good. finally someone understands one of the reasons those systems are trash.

NO, 3rd was the fantasy heartbreaker of D&D that made it NOT be D&D. thus why DDN is trying to retcon parts of WotC design philosophy to "gain back the feel of earlier editions" in such as removing this WBL and wishlsit nonsense, though they have shifted the goalposts and added by WBL and wishlists to DDN because they cant understand how to play without them!


why do you need a Bazaar to buy magic tiems? why cant you Quest or Craft?

Avoraciopoctules wrote:Or you're doing a game in notIndia, and 2 players tell Mister Cavern they think it would be totally sweet if there was an adventure that was basically a fantasy heist movie, where the party conspires to steal flying carpets from a Rakshasa Rajah and things end with a high-speed chase through a thunderstorm.

i would say those were problem players. the game wasnt India focused, so why introduce these into it? not that a flying carpet really only stems from India fantasy. lets say ninjas instead or something from a culture not present and the players want to introduce that culture into the game world... that is just problem players that didnt understand ninja dont exist in medieval Europe. assuming that the easiest example on the notIndia game.

dont most people HATE Realms, since it has so much shit, and yet it includes EVERY Earth culture into it or thereabouts? so why would magical or not nanchuku even be allowed in medieval Europe? they would be an object of art or conquest, but not a used weapon because nobody has the time to bother to learn it IF one somehow landed in a lords keep or treasure pile.

C-C-C-C-COMBO BREAKER

Chamomile wrote:C-C-C-C-COMBO BREAKER

I laughed.

sabs wrote:D&D isn't medeival economy, we've already hashed that one to a thousand pieces.

You know what, you might want to leave your echo chamber once in a while, because this is one of the stupidest things I've read in a while, even counting all those shadzar posts. Obviously D&D doesn't actually work as a medieval economy, I didn't need F&K to point that out, it was part of my point. That doesn't change the fact that most people play D&D as if it had a medieval economy, that most D&D settings are written as if they had a medieval economy, and that the entire fucking image of D&D is "medieval European fantasy" (how else could "Oriental Adventures" be a thing?). It doesn't matter if it doesn't make sense, that is how people play. Tome games are not representative of D&D as a whole.

If you want to know what High Level is.. go fucking read one of Frank's incredibly long but amusing to read rants about it.

My god, not only can you not read, you can't even read your own posts. I didn't say "high level" and neither did you. Seriously, I know what high level is, I had been arguing the same points as Frank for years before I ever heard of him or this site, I completely agree with him on that point. What you said was "high magic", which is a vague term which is nevertheless the subject of long debate in the fantasy literature community, completely independent of RPGs. It means something orthogonal to D&D's concept of level, you can have high level but low magic and vice versa. It is not my fault you don't know your terminology.

And I don't give a fuck if you don't like how powerful level 6+ spells are.

I've been arguing for years that high level magic is more powerful than most people think and that melee should be brought up because I like that level of play. Do not put words in my mouth like that.

How many level 15 characters you ask? Well in Faerun, that's just about every bartender, shopkeeper or town Priest.

Sure, but how many people actually play that way? And of those who do, how many are confused by exactly what level 15 represents? The conceptual space that mid to high level D&D characters logically should occupy is in most people's minds reserved for epic levels. If you want an idea of what most people, including many of those writing for settings like Faerun, think level 15 looks like you should check out 4e.

In a game where you're expected to have anywhere from 4-10 magic items, that all coherently work for your character, random drops and asking the GM how many blowjobs he wants.. are not viable options.

And oddly after all that we agree on your actual point. Huh.

FrankTrollman wrote:Honest question: is your experience mostly constituted of 3rd and 4th edition D&D? Because those games had frankly extremely terrible item allocation systems. On the flip side, Champions, Shadowrun, and even AD&D all had item allocation systems that worked reasonably well - and those games usually had people playing by the given rules in my experience.

I'm not really familiar with Shadowrun, but Champions' item system is just paying for items with character points just like everything else and getting a discount because it could in theory be taken away. It works very well for four-color supers and reasonably well for a variety of other settings you might want to use HERO with but is not really comparable to D&D. As for AD&D, I suppose I'll defer to you on that one because of your greater experience with the system, but I'm not really seeing how it was any better than 3e, except perhaps that items didn't provide quite as many piddly bonuses.

shadzar wrote:yeah Ye Olde Magick Shoppe doesnt exist. fuck that. keep it to video games where Cloud Strife needs to find his buster sword for plot point X or Kite/Tsukasa travels The World full of magic items to be bought like the Bazaar on the moons interior, the Nexus of EQ, or whatshisface in MAR buying stones to upgrade his weapon with however many slots it has for magic stones in MAR.

Oddly I think I might agree with shadzar, I hate Ye Olde Magick Shoppe.

Wiseman wrote:

Chamomile wrote:C-C-C-C-COMBO BREAKER

I laughed.

Yeah, that was good.

FrankTrollman wrote:Honest question: is your experience mostly constituted of 3rd and 4th edition D&D?

Note, Frank and Lago have effectively been making this claim to argue that everyone should use the 2nd edition AD&D style loot system.

Their claim is ridiculous because THAT loot system was so fucking broken that 3rd edition was an improvement they basically just want to grognard things up as hard as Shadzar on this one. Because they are brushing over the bad bits of the bad old days like they weren't notoriously terrible at loot allocation and constantly ignored by players MORE than 3E or even 4E was, yes, still regularly ignored by players.

PhoneLobster wrote:

FrankTrollman wrote:Honest question: is your experience mostly constituted of 3rd and 4th edition D&D?

Note, Frank and Lago have effectively been making this claim to argue that everyone should use the 2nd edition AD&D style loot system.

Their claim is ridiculous because THAT loot system was so fucking broken that 3rd edition was an improvement they basically just want to grognard things up as hard as Shadzar on this one. Because they are brushing over the bad bits of the bad old days like they weren't notoriously terrible at loot allocation and constantly ignored by players MORE than 3E or even 4E was, yes, still regularly ignored by players.

Since I'm only minimally familiar with AD&D would you mind doing some sort of compare and contrast with 3e? From where I'm standing it looks like it is just 3e without any guidelines like WBL, which would seem to agree with what you are saying but I'd like to hear from someone who knows more about it than me.

Shadzar, check your private messages.
[/The Great Fence Builder Speaks]

Drolyt wrote:Since I'm only minimally familiar with AD&D would you mind doing some sort of compare and contrast with 3e? From where I'm standing it looks like it is just 3e without any guidelines like WBL, which would seem to agree with what you are saying but I'd like to hear from someone who knows more about it than me.

you are asking the wrong person if you are asking PL. wit for the DMG review tussock is doing on the DMG for 2nd, and you will likely see a good bit about the treasure system in it. and it is mostly the same system from 1st edition as well, so you will have two views of it from the OSSR DMG reviews.

shadzar wrote:

Drolyt wrote:Since I'm only minimally familiar with AD&D would you mind doing some sort of compare and contrast with 3e? From where I'm standing it looks like it is just 3e without any guidelines like WBL, which would seem to agree with what you are saying but I'd like to hear from someone who knows more about it than me.

you are asking the wrong person if you are asking PL. wit for the DMG review tussock is doing on the DMG for 2nd, and you will likely see a good bit about the treasure system in it. and it is mostly the same system from 1st edition as well, so you will have two views of it from the OSSR DMG reviews.

Thanks I'll read those.
Edit: Sorry I missed this earlier:

shadzar wrote:

Drolyt wrote:It is a big fucking deal that Excalibur can only be pulled out by King Arthur.

Excalibur was useable by anyone, but only the Lady of the Lake could give it to the one she chose. ONLY King Arthur could pull the sword from the stone.... two different swords. result remains the same, just correcting your mistake.

Well, you are correct for most versions of the legend, but in some of the oldest versions of the legend including the Vulgate Cycle as well as many modern adaptations Excalibur and the Sword in the Stone are one and the same. Even in versions where they are different it is not true that just anyone can use Excalibur.

Say there is a character named Johnny and he likes fighting with a spear. It seems reasonable for the DM to put a few cool magic spears in future adventures. It's a common weapon.

But say there is another character named Burger. He fights with a gyrspike, a weird and obscure weapon that probably doesn't even work.



It seems lame for the DM to put a few cool magic gyrspikes in future adventures.

Whaddya gonna do?

Introduce Gyrspiko, a recurring nemesis who keeps dropping his weapon when the PCs send him blasting off again?