the text….hmmmmmm….my books are in storage right now so I can’t check but I could have sworn the text was dark brown rather than black….I’m willing to believe I was thinking of another book though

the art….ya, it’s not a very good reason to reject a system It does give an indication of the focus and general feel of the system though (did you ever see the art for Werewolf 1st ed? Yikes)….It’s sort of the chocolate sprinkles on top of the cherry on top of the disappointment parfait

Partly it’s flat-out prejudice: I don’t like treed systems in anything - computer or pen&paper - and I think they’re a particularly bad fit in a system with classes.

This is one thing that 4e should be appeasing. Feats and abilities shouldn’t be treed any more, or at least very little.

In any case, I do understand most of your reasonings, though I don’t think the artwork is a great reason to reject a system. The class balance was greatly fixed in 3.5e.

Just one question.

Between the glossy paper, beige background, faux lines & other background details, and not-black text

I definitely understand the beige background. I have pretty good eyesight, and it can still hurt. Luckily, 4e seems to be dropping the beige colouring.

But my question is, did you have a different book than me? I just checked the 3.0 PHB, and the text is most definitely black.

For me the bigger issues were the feats and the actual physical design of the books. Partly it’s flat-out prejudice: I don’t like treed systems in anything - computer or pen&paper - and I think they’re a particularly bad fit in a system with classes. I also really dislike the idea that I should plan my character out several levels ahead when creating it - if I’m creating a 10/20/whateverth level character I might as well play a 10/20/whateverth level game - I would rather have my character develop through the game. As for the books….I have bad eyes and I stare at a computer screen all day. Between the glossy paper, beige background, faux lines & other background details, and not-black text I can’t read the books for more than 1/2 hour to 1 hour at a time, which really doesn’t allow immersion in the system.

Mostly it was such a letdown because I was initially quite excited about it

On prepless games: There is a storygame called Universalis that makes prep practically impossible. In it, everyone is kind of GM and spends coins to add to or change the fiction. There is no prep possible because everyone has exactly the same amount of power (disregarding any variants with a GM).

There is another story/roleplaying game called Capes, which is strange and which I haven’t played. No GM there, either.

Both of these games must be played with no prep. To call or not to call them roleplaying games is a semantic argument.

My personal take on prep is that necessary preparation should be very close to zero, but the presence of optional prep is no problem. Sometimes it is fun, sometimes not.

Tommi’s last blog post..Rules as toys

Not to dis on 3e, but the monsters seem to take up too much space! Why would they have feats and skills, or even ability stats for that matter? Not for some monster whose only impact on the story is that he gets killed and then forgotten as soon as the PCs leave the room. It’s just silly!

No, you’re right. The thought process was twofold.

1) Have characters, NPC, monsters, etc use a single unified mechanic for advancement. A noble goal, but ultimately flawed.

2) With monsters using the same mechanics, it will make advancing them to make them tougher more formulaic. It will also make adding class levels (troglodyte barbarian, for instance) easy. This succeeded, but formulaic doesn’t mean simple. Especially when it came down to determining CR afterwards.

2 also allowed for monstrous races to be used as PCs easily. A goblin of lizardman could be picked up and used as a PC with little trouble.

4e is definitely moving a little bit back towards 2e-style monster creation, but is trying to do it better. They’re giving guidelines for creating monsters of a certain CR, and for creating monsters in general. 2e and prior versions gave little to no help if you wanted to create your own stuff.

Monsters no longer use the same creation methods as PCs. Having ability scores, however, enables you to still add levels of Rogue to a goblin, or Cleric to a kobold chief.

Oh, and level drain? It doesn’t exist in 4e. Same with all the other hard-to-balance, overly complex stuff.

@ Rip: I couldn’t agree more and that’s why I wrote about 4e seemingly embracing what Gygax did in 1e and have monsters built differently than characters a few days ago (just with better math underneath it all now).

A lot of people liked having the engine open to play with. I was one, 3-4 years ago.

There are thousands and thousands of crunchy forum posts on the net about 3e monsters tweaked to perfection. Hell there is a complete fan-driven 3.0 to 3.5 conversion of Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil on Monte Cook’s old forums.

Hopefully the next version will deliver the same crunchy thrill, but with with far less indigestible bits.

My game mastering style is that each monsters primary job is to serve the story. Computers have cut down my prep time considerably, I use to have to write all of this crap longhand and sometimes I can’t even read my handwriting! Not to dis on 3e, but the monsters seem to take up too much space! Why would they have feats and skills, or even ability stats for that matter? Not for some monster whose only impact on the story is that he gets killed and then forgotten as soon as the PCs leave the room. It’s just silly!

I don’t know, I guess that I’m well read enough to know what each monster is capable of, not that I’m happy with all 2e monsters. Vampires for instance are just stupid as written, level drain . . . WHAT?!?! Heck, with all the crap that they wrote down for Gargoyles, I’d hate to see their stats for real badass monsters! It would go on for days! It just seems over analyzed, which to me, hurts my game. I once read this book on Writing Technique full of tons of rules of professional writers, and as a result I couldn’t write anything for a few years until I threw that book in the trash. Technique comes naturally, over analyzing things slows you down.

Simplifying monsters would be a bonus for ANY game. D&D is attractive to book readers, all of us are very well read! At least that is my impression. And if a DM doesn’t know what a gargoyle is, then he needs to spend more time playing and reading fiction.

Man, I am windy. Maybe I should start my own blog too, huh?

RIP

Ripper X’s last blog post..Creating Mysteries part 2

I think the most telling part was when it was said that creating a brand new monster with an appropriate challenge rating in 4e would take anywhere from 5 to 15 minutes, depending on your DMing experience.

With 3e, this was essentially impossible, and an NPC would take about 1/2 hour. A monster from scratch? Likely to take an hour per iteration, with a couple iterations involved..

That being said a RPG game with no preparation time is called a computer game everything else requires, at least, some logistics… :p