TravisPennington

Here's a list of my favorate Anime Movies. - Vampire Hunter D - Wicked City - Ninja Scroll - Ghost in the Shell - Princess Mononoke I highly recommend all of them.

That is totally true. It even applies to horrible games. A couple of years back, a friend of mine had a really awful Dragonball Z game on his Gamecube. But we ran through it in coop mode, and had a lot of fun. :/ But yeah, I honestly don't care about Halo 3 at all. I have Bioshock and Warhawk. Those two games will hold me over just fine for a little while. Halo 3 is going to be infinitely more popular than both titles, and receive much more praise...but I know I won't like it to anywhere near the extent. Halo. Bleh.

I'm playing...Temple of Elemental Evil. Yes, that buggy Troika game. Shutup, I like it.

Oh see...actually I like those skill changes. There were way too many skills that accomplished very similar things. It's good to see them getting rid of some, combining others, etc. That doesn't bother me at all. As for completely eliminating skill ranks, though...yeah, I'm not so sure on that one. I wouldn't call it D&D Lite, though. 3'rd Edition brought in a lot to D&D that 1E and 2E AD&D simply didn't have. The skill system, even in its upcoming "dumbed down" form, is still more complex than all of the proficiencies that were in 2E. I don't like how they're eliminating some of the core classes, though. In addition, the whole Tier Hierarchy they're doing for abilities and whatnot is just too much like a videogame. I'm sure professional CRPG developers are totally digging it (with good reason), but I'm not. Still, I wouldn't go so far as to say I wouldn't give 4E a chance. I'll pick up the Players Handbook and read through it. If a group of people want to play, I'll try it out and see how it works out. If I don't like it better than 1E and 2E, I won't keep playing it. If I do, then I will.

What's an easier solution? Forcing people to go out and spend a bunch of money to buy the same three rulebooks again...or a DM deciding to put weaker Goblins without Spears in the adventure? Give the Human a "rusty" Greataxe with worse damage. There are all sorts of simple solutions to this that do not require a revamp of the rules. That's a a lot easier than sorting through the books and debating for hours and hours which guidelines you want to keep in and which you want to leave out. People can try to justify it all they want, but in reality it's all about cash. =P EDIT: And yeah, people die at level 1 from lucky crits. D&D is hard. That's what the game is about. It's not impossibly hard to survive through 1'st level, but it can be difficult. Sometimes you are just unlucky. Smart players will always roll two 1'st Level characters before going off on a new adventure. That way when you die, you can bring in the other one. People should die half the time at Level 1. They're considered inexperienced adventurers, and they're going out and facing dangers. This is tabletop gaming we're talking about. Not CPRG's. Tabletop gaming always has, and always will be more hardcore. CRPG's can be fun, exciting, and beautiful works of art...but they can never be what tabletop D&D is. They are different for a reason. Tabletop D&D isn't for everyone. If you can't handle a challenge or the possibility that you're going to die (a lot) then don't play it.

The thing is, I have never met a DM who isn't kind or nice to an inexperienced player. If it's someone first time playing, the DM will usually make sure to botch any bad initial die rolls to as to ensure he doesn't die. You want to give the new players a taste, and a chance. They don't usually think in D&D as they do in real life. They get intimidated. There's nothing wrong with going easy on a new player the first couple of levels, as a DM's choice. The problem I have, is that the general rules and guidelines are making it easier for everyone, not just the new players. I find levels 1-6 in AD&D to be the most exciting out of the entire game. The option used to be, "DM can just cheat a bit for the new player". Now the option seems to be, "Players can spend 5 hours sorting out what rules they do, and do not want to use, with the DM. Sorry, new players take precedence here." I don't hold it against anyone involved in the development of the game. You can't make money if you can't bring in more people. If you can't make money, you can't succeed a business, and you can't make any more D&D. That would be bad. But I can still whine about things I don't like.

I'll agree that low level characters in D&D are terrible. I've been in more adventures than not where battles consist of 10 minutes of misses (in real time) without anything happening. That was more of a problem with THAC0 being entirely too harsh, in my opinion. There were tables in the 1E DMG designating your weapons bonuses, or minuses, for hitting a certain AC type however, and that did help out a bit. It was a pain in the ass to have to keep referring to the charts though. And yeah, a lot of those old modules are very unforgiving. I didn't mention Tomb of Horrors, because its traps defy any and all human logic. I consider it to be a hilarious and fun challenge though. I don't disagree with all changes that have been made to D&D over the years. I feel a lot of them are positive. But the system as a whole feels too powerful, to me, and overly complex in some areas. I hate combat in 3'rd Edition with a passion. I love feats, I really do, but it's annoying to have to refer to charts and a tier hierarchy for your character everytime you want to select a feat. I always found selecting spells as a Magic-User (Mage, Wizard) to be an annoyance more than anything, and selecting Feats is done in a very similar way. Further complexity of feats in 4E (that's what it sounds like to me at the moment) makes me feel a little dissapointed. The skills system too is ridiculously complex. Not because it in itself is difficult to understand. There's just way too many skills. I haven't read anything about skills and how they'll work in 4E though, so forgive me if I'm assuming it's going to get worse. I guess I'm looking for complexity in some areas, and simplicity in others. I'm being picky and selfish, but that's what I like. And well...I'm pretty sure you're a very experienced DM and hardcore D&Der, Josh. I'm sure your regular groups of players don't have Level 30 Prestige Classes either. You probably do give your players a challenge. They probably die quite a bit. That's one major difference between a good DM, and a bad one. But I don't think the majority of DM's and players are like that. Everytime I meet a new person who's in to D&D, they just seem to be the individuals who have everything hand fed to them. Or they DM for their regulars, and are overly generous. Its next to impossible for me to find anyone these days who plays D&D with any kind of challenge. Not that I'm claiming to be some end all, be all, god of D&D. I'm not at all (maybe a poor player, infact), and aren't trying to suggest that in any way. I just feel 1E and 2E are more exciting, overall. 3E just gives off an "easy mode" vibe to me, I guess.

Yeah, I read through the changes that were posted (I had not before my first post). Instead of an Axe Master Prestige Class (example)...you'll just pick feats in that direction. Feats atop of feats atop of feats. It's the same thing, masked under a veil, to sell more books and make $$$. Level 1 Characters seem to get more and more powerful as D&D continues to be updated. It's to appease the whiners who want to start off as gods. Brings me back to my whole Prestige Classes rant...the classes everybody seems to play...in the mid 20's of levels. I bet you could take 99% of the 3.5 Edition Gaming Community and throw them into the classic Temple of Elemental Evil module, with 1'st Edition Rules, and they'd never survive, no matter how many attempts they made. I realize why WotC are doing this. You can't sell books and make money if you cant appeal the mainstream. But it just makes D&D less and less hardcore, less and less based on roleplaying of any form (roll diplomacy and DC!). They might as well just turn it in to a flat out boardgame. Something like Clue. The game is just way too easy these days.

Haven't done any PNP gaming in a long time... ...but I'm a sucker for 1'st Edition and 2'nd Edition AD&D. :D

I haven't played tabletop AD&D for a long time now (the last being 2nd Edition about 6 years ago), but I'm pretty excited about a 4'th Edition. I picked up the 3'rd Edition Players Handbook a while back and read through it, but was ultimately disappointed with how over complex a lot of it was. They changed THAC0 because it "confused" new players (bleh. It was part of what made 2nd Edition so unique! ), but then proceeded to add in a lot of unnecessary crap. Feats were great. Reminded me of Perks from Fallout. I liked the changes to Saving Throws. I liked the new skills system (except for how many there were - a diplomacy skill? Why can't I just roleplay it, and roll a Charisma check if necessary?). I disliked what they did to Thief (Rogue). They aren't as unique as a Class as they once were. And even though I was a fan of 2'nd Edition, I dislike the kind of game they tried to show D&D 3'rd Edition as being with its artwork and atmosphere. I know you can DM whatever type of campaign you wish, and that the supplements and such probably go in to the darker side of things...but bleh. I want the darker side of D&D. I want a 1'st Edition feel when I read the core rulebooks. Last but not least...the combat system. I watched that Teaser Video on youtube (they could have done a little better, but it is what it is), and laughed when they got to 3'rd Edition, regarding grappling and attacks of opportunity. Much too complex. I'm hoping that 4'th Edition keeps what I feel are the positive adjustments to D&D that 3'rd Edition brought in, and removes some of the complexities. Being a bit selfish here, but that's what I'm looking for. EDIT: Forgot one last gripe about 3'rd Edition...all those Prestige Classes! Holy *&$(! Expand the base classes, balance them, and leave it at that. There are way too many Prestige Classes in 3E (I don't mind a few), and everyone and their mother who plays 3rd Edition seems to play one. I highly doubt 90% of the individuals who play Prestige Classes even went through the work to meet its prerequisites; they just built them. Or they had an over-generous DM who awarded them a million experience for a simple adventure. I'm hoping 4E is more restrictive. Not 1E-type restrictive...but something. =P Finally, in response to Mr. Sawyer regarding buying your stats...I like the idea to an extent (I believe that base stats such as STR and DEX should be able to be raised), but not in the way you're suggesting. It makes no sense for someone to automatically be able to simply raise their Dexterity because they leveled and gained points. Unless it's by magical means such as a Wish spell, those kinds of abilities should have a natural growth and progression. I know I was just whining about overcomplexities earlier in this post, but it just doesn't make any sense to me that a Wizard can raise his Strength when he levels when he's been sitting in the back casting spells in his light weight robes the whole time. For a Computer RPG, something like that would be fine, but tabletop D&D has always been more realistic than those. Unless of course somethings changed the past half-decade that I'm unaware of. Oh, you know what, I just re-read and I think you were referring to character creation? Yeah, I'm totally with you on that. Buying stats with set points instead of rolling for them. There should still be some sort of rolling involved to designate a potential bonus, though. Something simple that would give you the kind of delight you used to get when you rolled 3 6's for an 18. :D

Games I am looking forward to... #1 Starcraft 2!!!!!!!!!! #2 Fallout 3 #3 Unreal Tournament 3 #4 Team Fortress 2 #5 Metal Gear Solid 4 #6 Final Fantasy 13 #7 Heavenly Sword #8 The next WoW expansion?

Yeah meta. When I played the first Tomb Raider it was on PC and it was an awful experience. I did not enjoy it at all. To be fair, I was playing on a very poor system and the graphics were really bad. I think it was a Pentium 1 100 MHZ Processor, with 16 Megs of Ram? Maybe 24. I know it was after I upgraded the RAM so I could play the Quake demo. Did TR1 work with 3D Acceleration? I don't remember, I didn't have a 3D Card back then. It's amazing how different games were when you played them without a "3d accelerator", and then played them with one later on. Best example of this I can name is Jedi Knight. But yeah, after seeing and playing Tomb Raider on a Playstation I was hooked. Some games are just better on consoles.

I'm totally with you on Resident Evil 4. After the awesome experience that was Resident Evil 2, the whole series went on a major downhill streak. RE4 came back with a bang and saved the entire franchise from mediocrity. Tomb Raider: Legend was a good restart for Lara Croft, but I didn't like it as much as I thought I would. It didn't have that Tomb Raider "feel" to it that I got from the first two games in the series. I think the problem with the TR Series was just way too many damned games. They just kept cranking them out and it got old. Did anyone even hear of Tomb Raider: Chronicles when it came out? And did anyone care about Angel of Darkness? I didn't. It was just like the next Madden or MLB game. I know they sell well, but they come out year after year with the same rehashed crap that I simply couldn't care less. It's a problem with too many sequels. The game industry cashes in on these way too much, and it just leads to poor games. The movie industry does it too. Meh.

Yeah, I've heard countless rumors about this whole thing. "It's Starcraft 2!" "It's Diablo 3!" "It's a Starcraft MMORPG!" Personally, I would be ecstatic about any one of those. EDIT: If it is a Starcraft MMORPG that might explain the lack of Shaman love from Blizzard lately. WF nerf...meh! *raises off topic shield*

The concept art looks awesome. If the environmental artists and level designers can emulate the feel of the concept art, I'd say at the very least the game will look great. I think all of us Fallout fans will have to accept the fact that it will be a different feel than Fallout 1 & 2. Getting over changes isn't my main concern though. I can handle a different camera view and art style. I'm just worried about the gameplay and the mechanics behind it. I realize turn-based isn't going to happen, which leaves us with real-time combat. How is this going to work in Fallout 3? I really hope you don't have to aim your gun first person style and headshot enemies manually. I am a huge fan of First Person Shooters, it's probably my favorate genre...but that isn't Fallout. And Oblivion is definitely not Fallout. Personally I am more than willing to accept real time combat, but if it's like Oblivions then well...****. Then Bethesda screwed up. I really hope that doesn't happen. There are other issues I'm scared of too, but I for one am willing to give Bethesda the benefit of the doubt, to an extent. I can't help but feel a little "meh" about the whole thing at the moment though because of their resume. Not that the Elder Scrolls games are bad by any means...but they're not Fallout. Well, here's hoping.