Chronicles of Ganth

Thursday, May 16, 2013

What A week....

School has wrapped up, today I took my MTA certification test, thats a Microsoft entry level test for thoses that care, and it seems I had a really good job interview I have a an extreme amount of "work" on my plate of late and I am ready for the next move in my life. God willing I will receive a call from the company I interviewed with.

I am ready to move, to get stuff going, school was a blast but the next stage in my life is at my doorstep.

All this is the reason since my Contest I have not posted a single thing, I am burnt.

I have a project I am apart of that I am ready to try focusing on and I need to get back to designing my MEGADUNGEON...

So I guess this is a big "I am Sorry" for not posting much of late...

ERIC!

Wednesday, April 24, 2013

4th edition is a response to Dark Dungeons!

It is true!

How do you stop the rampant rate of suicide among girl teen D&D players, like Marcie?

You create a game system that discourages player death!

You get rid of the Save vs. Die mechanic! Like when Blackleaf died when she failed to find the poison trap!

Divorce the character and the player by encouraging Character Builds over Role playing, that way when a character dies there is grief in losing a sheet full of numbers!

4th Edition has save BILLIONS of LIVES!

And now what do we get a return to those dark and evil days of yore? It's clear that the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy is up to no good again! Leading our young teen daughters down a path of Priesthood and Witchcraft to the Temple of Diana where they will be able to force their fathers into buying 200 dollars worth of figurines and manuals!

ERIC!

Thursday, April 18, 2013

Nostalgia, or why 4e fan boys hate 5e...

So here we are coming off the S&W Epic fun day posts. The dust is settling, we have all made new friends, the community is growing.

We OSRers are varied. Some of us love all games, regardless of edition, some of use are hard core 0e grogs. But in the end, we came together and had a good time.

I think we have grown up. Grown closer, maybe like to snuggle sometimes.

However, I like to poke around my old haunting grounds....look and see what is happening in the desolate wastelands of the internet, called the forums. (Side note, Yes, I think blooging is a vastly superior way to share with a community, than trying to get someones attention in a forum post that ran off the rails 27 pages ago.)

Anyway a Forum Post from the D&D website asks about Nostalgia.

Here is the OP...

"So what happens when the nostalgia wears off?
If you've been keeping up with Mearl's tweets, you'll see that he's on a major nostalgia trip right now. He's even going so far as to pull out really old (2000) convention pictures.
Its my fervent belief that Mearls and possibly the rest of the development team are really into the nostalgia of early editions, but what happens when they wake up and realize what they are doing to 5E? What then?"

Apparently nostalgia includes, ahem..."REALLY OLD (2000)" convention pictures. Are we serious here?

Look, Nobody in Hasbro gives a flying Rat's Bumper what Mike and the boys are doing to 5e. Magic the Gathering is the cash cow. So whatever Mike does, he does it for one reason and one reason only, 4e fractured the community. As great as 4e is or is not, or however you want to look at it, when the marketing campaign was launched it burnt alot of folks. Mike has admitted such, he has also stated that this new edition is about bringing it all back together.

What the piss, am I defending 5e?

Crap.

Lets continue...

"He starts dusting off his resume. That sounds cold, but what happened to Bill Slavisek(sp?) could very definately happen to him if this goes about as well as I'm afraid it will."

In response a poster gives this bit of fortune telling....Amazing! So Bill Slavicsek (google, took me two seconds to get the correct spelling) was what fired? I thought he left, of his own decision, What the piss is this guy talking about....

Why does this guy think Billy Boy was fired? Wasn't Billy Boy a major force behind 4e? So was Billy fired because of 4e?

And on we go...same poster as above...when some one else points out nostalgia sells...

True but only for a while, then it bottoms out (fads/nostagia driven products are cyclical). Eventually the main group of people that play TTRPGs will grow old and die off. Again that's cold, but I've seen that handwriting for a while now.

He clearly is some kind of marketing genius. And it's clear that he hasn't figured out that the "main group" that grow old and die, have kids....Kids that grew up playing these nostalgia games....
What happens when these kids grow up and die...do they not share their love for the games they grew up playing?

It's clear our poster thinks that fads only last one generation...not cool...wait cool...people still say cool...what is this the 1950's?

Let's dig deeper...

Nostalgia is something you have to be really quick about responding to, because like Polaris said, it's cyclical. When a given generation hits their early-mid 20s, generally there's a wave of nostalgia towards the things they enjoyed a decade ago. There's a number of reasons why this happens, but it basically happens about once every five-ten years. It also happens whenever there's an economic downturn, which is why there's one right now, but that's also why you have to be quick about it, because the opposite is true as well.
Citing the Ducktales remake, that's coming out within months of being announced. Next is taking at least two years, a drastically longer development time, and is furthermore establishing itself as the paradigm for the D&D brand for the next four-eight years. A wave of nostalgia simply doesn't hold up for that long.

Another poster helps us out by giving us this OUTSTANDING bit of information, HE/SHE must be some kind of Sociology Major, you know the type...

Nostalgia only effects folks in their mid 20's. Okay got it, next.

It happens every 5 to 10 years...ok.

It happens during an Economic downturn, right, okay continue.

D&D Next will only last Four to Eight years, Ok looks like we have another fortune teller, thats okay, next.

Nostalgia does not hold up for Four to Eight Years. Done Ok.

THIS GUY IS A FREAKING DEMI GOD!

He has it all figured out!

With D&D lasting only 4-8 years and Nostalgia happening every 5-10 years, Why OMG, He just figured out why WotC continue to produce new EDITIONS. We can't play a game that is more than say 10 years old because, get this NOSTALGIA can't last that long! Oh Lords of Light those EVIL BASTICHES at WOTC are screwing with our MINDS!

Clearly they belong to some sort of grand Right Wing Conspiracy! Call Joseph Bloch we must warn him! You know, 'cause Joesph is a Republican, and we like him, and he's the only Republican I know in the community, and he needs to know that the Republicans are in league with WotC to destroy our culture. AND PAT FREAKING ROBERTSON says that D&D is of the DEVIL! It is all becoming so clear now!

I am gonna go burn my books RIGHT NOW!

Done all of 'em burnt, no more evil WotC books in my house! What, what about the TSR books...ARE YOU CRAZY! I ain't burn' them! I love those books!

OH wait where was I?

OH the Forum, ok lets look some more....

Just because someothing is old doesn't automatically make it bad. This is true. However, just because something is old doesn't automatically make it a good idea either. I am concerned given Mearl's overt nostalgia, that he doesn't seem to get that and is making design decisions based on that nostalgia.

What the piss did I just read...

What does Mike not get, that Old is Good, or that Old is Bad? Is he making design decisions on Bad Nostalgia? Or Good Nostalgia...Oh Overt nostalgia is bad...ok...so being overt is bad...good I got it...

Next!

This. Unless there are radical changes in D&DN between here and when 5e is released, the game will flop, making D&D in general flop.
Luckily, I have not-D&D that I really, really enjoy playing.

Fortune tellers... The Forum has alot off 'em. Proof that WotC is Satanic.

However I want this game he/she calls Not-D&D, it sounds AWESOME!

Continuing...

The game will flop because it is being built on the premise that there is one core D&D experience everybody can agree on, when that premise couldn't be farther from the truth. They are mistaking "traditional D&D feel" for that thing everybody can agree on, and their overwhelming focus on it at the expense of everything else is going to alienate a large enough section of the D&D community that 5E will fail its sales goals.

More masters of the Future....AND I swear I heard the same statements when 2e came out, no that was 3e, wait no that was 3.5, hold on that was 4e, definitely 4e, well maybe not, was it...Pathfinder...HELLS BELLS I don't know.

EVEN MORE!

I'm not believing any promises. I'm simply playing the game and judging from my experiences and those of the groups I'm running for. I have a few 4E lovers, a few 4E haters and some young people who don't know the difference. So far, no real problems for anyone. As a connoiseure, sure I see problems, but the average gamer seems to think it works well enough. The only people I see with major issues are very serious devotees of one edition or another. Flexible gamers just looking to play a fun game of D&D are quite well served so far. Obviously, the game is still pretty raw, but it's coming along nicely.

Well this guy makes alot of sense...CLEARLY he is just playing for Nostalgia's sake.

Let me know how those wack a mole 3 round craps game fights provide 1 tenth the richness of a 4e fight... lets just say I dont buy it.

'member when some of us were hating on 4e, and the 4e folks whined and cried about it...I get a warm spot when I read 4e hate for 5e. What comes around goes around. Oh well.

I'd be interested to see people playing stock 3.x with some PCs taking no skills or feats and see how that works out.

Done it. Didn't have an issue. Fun was had by all. Crap defending 5e again....

Show me an OGL retroclone with a skill/feat/multiclass system like 3.x where skills and feats are completely optional and the game plays fine whether you take them or not.

then this...

The OGL contains the d20 SRD which definately has skills and feats. Pretty much any OGL Retroclone is made on this skeleton with the skills and feats stripped from it.
You asked for an example and I gave it. Deal. You can in fact play 3e (which the OGL really is) without skills and feats. It's very different but you can, and in fact that's largely what the first drafts of the OGL retroclones were.
Now it doesn't play the same way, no, but that's not what you asked.

And what follows for a few posts is two clowns that can't research anything for Pudu. Adventurer, Conqueror, King would be a good start. I would also check out Blood & Treasure, a solid stripped down 3.x system, one of the best.

Ok I'm done by the 4th page it get into the standard forum rantings with bits and peices of clear thought but mostly 5e fans fighting 4e fans....sad.

Forums....glad I became a blogger.

Still fun to look at right?

I love the OSR.

Let's start a fight!
Roll a d10, using that topic post a argument in my comments, I will play devil's advocate and argue the opposing viewpoint, irrationally and with alot of made up expletives.