Open Thread for Personal Stuff: January 2016 Prairie Dog Hug Edition

The Awful Green Things from Outer Space was a game that my family got into around the same time as we started doing D&D.

D&D started getting weird because there were arguments about whether people were playing their alignments correctly.

@proudfootz

D&D started getting weird because there were arguments about whether people were playing their alignments correctly.

Indeed, that’s one of the things that ended up driving me away from the system after a while.

@ Orion

New as in 4th, or new as in 2nd?

I started getting cranky around 2e splatbook 16 or so, and none of the changes since then have made me any happier. I default to a kind of hybrid of 1st and 2nd ed AD&D if I’m going to use D&D at all, which I generally don’t.

I’m down for anything Mammotheers can organize. My bad experiences with online gaming have come from those times when everybody else is in the same room and I am telecommuting: I have trouble understanding everybody at all times, and often felt separated if not excluded because it was hard to participate in the table chatter because the other players couldn’t hear me over themselves.

Also, it tended to wake up my children. Who have largely outgrown naps, except that whatever their grandma did with them this morning, organized around a reading time at the library, knocked them out cold and they both fell fast asleep after lunch.

@Orion:

I personally can’t be having with these new versions of D&D

New as in 4th, or new as in 2nd?

I started getting cranky around 2e splatbook 16 or so, and none of the changes since then have made me any happier. I default to a kind of hybrid of 1st and 2nd ed AD&D if I’m going to use D&D at all, which I generally don’t.

I’ve talked to people who genuinely think the Holmes rule set was a bad move … and then I cannot resist calmly explaining that it’s the same thing as White Box, but better organized.

I have a large GURPS collection, but in practice found it clunky and fiddly.

@Falconer

You and your cat are in my thoughts! 🙁

The vet’s best guess at this point is our cat developed a polyp in her nasal cavity that filled with blood and then burst, so she was bleeding into her throat. He’s going to try antibiotics and iron supplements.

Thank you for all of your good thoughts.

Hey Falconer, long time no see.

Also, kids, man. It feels like just the other year they were infants.

D&D Nostalgia:
————-
My dad had a copy of the D&D Red Box. And a copy of Chainmail, for that matter. He came by it honestly — MIT undergrad. I never played anything older than AD&D, though. 2nd Edition either was out when my dad’s friend introduced me, or came out shortly thereafter, but we never “upgraded.” Partially because they had, as one does, accumulated so many house rules over the years they had practically written a new edition themselves.

Then WotC rolled out with 3rd edition, and it was a revelation. Almost all the best parts of our house rules were now in the official game, turned up to 11. It was exciting and radically different, and to this day I think D&D 3 is among the most ambitious projects ever attempted in the history of RPGs. It didn’t always succeed, but at least when it failed, it failed big. And from my perspective, it succeeded often enough to enjoy. I’m sure it doesn’t hurt that it came at a turning point in my development — I was just starting to feel like an outsider from the group’s decades of accumulated history, when 3rd wiped that away and gave me something to dig into on equal footing. Seriously, though, while I am normally pretty good at perspective-taking, I have trouble understanding how anyone who gave 3rd an honest shot wouldn’t see it as an improvement on what had gone before
—————–
End Nostalgia

@Falconer
Here’s a prairie dog hug. Take as many as you like.

I’m sending you and your cat my wishes for the best possible outcome. Please let us know how it goes.

@ Falconer
Best wishes for your kitty.

I have a large GURPS collection, but in practice found it clunky and fiddly.

It’s a pretty crunchy system by default, yeah. It takes considerable extra work for the GM, but I find it’s worth it for the flexibility.
@Orion

Then WotC rolled out with 3rd edition, and it was a revelation. Almost all the best parts of our house rules were now in the official game, turned up to 11. It was exciting and radically different, and to this day I think D&D 3 is among the most ambitious projects ever attempted in the history of RPGs. It didn’t always succeed, but at least when it failed, it failed big.

I was pissed enough that Wizards bought the property to begin with that I didn’t even look at it at the time. I find Pathfinder’s version of 3.5 to be tolerable, but otherwise it seems to me that 4th was an effort to turn D&D into WoW, which I would be playing if that’s what I was after. I haven’t even looked at 5e, because I loathed 4e so much.

@ erica, Ascendant
I don’t know about pickup gaming, but a friend might be starting a new long-term D&D game in the near future; her table is definitely queer- and women-friendly. ( There’s only one town in Oregon that big, so I’m guessing we’re in the same city, or at least metro area

And to think EJ wondered why the mammoths couldn’t get a D&D game together.

Thanks, Viscaria! I think we’re through the worst of it. Kitty comes home from the vet today, fingers crossed.

@Orion, I’ll play anything anybody wants to.

Today I finally went to seek help for my mental issues. They’ll hopefully call me back within a few weeks. 🙂

@Falconer

Frankly I don’t care what version of D&D anyone plays.

I only care if I’m playing myself.

I have a theory as to why 4E was so radically different, and it all hinges on the death of the wandering monster.

In brief, no wandering monsters means the players are in charge of pacing. If the players are in charge of pacing, there’s nothing stopping the game from grinding to a halt as they poke every 10 feet of corridor with a stick, or to stop the wizard nuking everything in the first occupied room they open. Then the wizard is out of spells, so they go back to town.

See, there you go; I’ve never been one for dungeon crawls for the sake of dungeon crawling, and a system that’s designed for nothing else isn’t my cup of tea. Generally, I prefer that the pacing be governed by plot rather than rules; i.e. we can’t just take all the time we want because demons have kidnapped our teammate/kids are disappearing and we need to get to the bottom of it/the corrupted land is spreading, and soon it’s going to encircle the town/we need to find the serial killer before he strikes again/etc. depending on PC motivations, goals, and milieu. I mean, there’s nothing wrong with ratcheting up the tension/difficulty by throwing in a few extraneous encounters, but as long as the PCs have a motivation beyond ‘kill things and take their stuff’ I find that pacing is rarely an issue.

I never had an urge to play D&D until I started binge watching Critical Role. (http://geekandsundry.com/shows/critical-role/)

@Falconer I hope you’re cat gets well soon.