The state of Post-OSR content

[The Heretic]

To be fair, the thing that most annoyed me about the new races in Stormwrack was that they were nilly-willy tossing in new races, with new backstories, into my campaign world (if I used it as written). One of the other annoying options was the Aventi - which, IIRC, are LG humans that were placed in the oceans for a purpose by a good deity. That's annoying.

These weren't "here's a new race that fits organically into the generic campaign world" (a la Drow in G1-3) but instead "we made a book about water and we need to generate interest among the player base, so let's make up a bunch of new races they can use".

New spells and new monsters are easier to assimilate. New feats, new skills, new PC races, those are not.

 

[The Heretic]

I often include non-human species, but simply don't provide them with much, if any mechanical differentiation. It doesn't preclude people from still playing half-were-orcas or whatever, but it does discourage the people who are simply hunting through for the best bonuses to a particular set of stats, or a particular ability, in order to optimise.

Alas, this seems to be what happens in my experience. "I want to play a cleric, this particular type of teifling gives a +2 to Wis and +2 to Con, can my character be this type of teifling?"

 

[squeen]

In the interests of community diplomacy, I am biting my tongue.

 

[The Heretic]

In the interests of community diplomacy, I am biting my tongue.

When has that stopped you before?

 

[squeen]

First time for everything.

 

[PrinceofNothing]

The result was crap like Stormwrack, which introduced totally unnecessary things like the Darfellan (orca humanoids)

By the time they got to the Complete ~something something~ books, the game had degenerated into an impenetrable mess of animu carnival exhibition, this is correct.

I often include non-human species, but simply don't provide them with much, if any mechanical differentiation. It doesn't preclude people from still playing half-were-orcas or whatever, but it does discourage the people who are simply hunting through for the best bonuses to a particular set of stats, or a particular ability, in order to optimise.

But surely the non-humanness or anime-ness of the characters's race does more damage then its bonus-ness?

I prefer humans only but stripping the elves out of Mystara is a bit of a leap too far I think.

 

[The1True]

In the interests of community diplomacy, I am biting my tongue.

I thought for sure I scored Squeenrage Bingo with my character description

 

[Beoric]

But surely the non-humanness or anime-ness of the characters's race does more damage then its bonus-ness?

I prefer humans only but stripping the elves out of Mystara is a bit of a leap too far I think.

Is it the non-humanness, or the Mos Eisley Cantina variety that causes the (perceived) problem? I played in a campaign with no humans, where the primary inhabitants of the area were shifter hunter-gatherers (including all the PCs), with a few dwarves from the mountains and a horde of invading orcs. The shifters were the ordinary and the dwarves were the exotic. It worked reasonably well.

 

[Malrex]

I guess Im still confused with Squeens candy class description as I think its more a problem with background then the actual class. I could play that dehorned minotaur example above or...
Blade, the human warrior, wielding a longsword. His true name must be hidden as he is really a prince from a murdered king and is all fancy pants important and talks like Vin Diesel. Sages believe Blade is 'the One' who will save everyone.
Which would you prefer? Which one is more candy? From your previous arguments, it seems you would prefer Blade as...human...fighter..longsword. But your last description...maybe not? Im honestly a little confused with your stance.

 

[Beoric]

I guess Im still confused with Squeens candy class description as I think its more a problem with background then the actual class. I could play that dehorned minotaur example above or...
Blade, the human warrior, wielding a longsword. His true name must be hidden as he is really a prince from a murdered king and is all fancy pants important and talks like Vin Diesel. Sages believe Blade is 'the One' who will save everyone.
Which would you prefer? Which one is more candy? From your previous arguments, it seems you would prefer Blade as...human...fighter..longsword. But your last description...maybe not? Im honestly a little confused with your stance.

I think squeen's just conservative in his gaming tastes and wants to play the game he always played. And early edition D&D doesn't include a Warforged Warlock|Swordmage Avernian Knight Sage of Ages, or a Minotaur Avenger|Runepriest Hammer of Vengeance Destined Scion. That and IIRC he has had negative experiences with players who wanted to play the AD&D "overpowered" classes like paladins and bards.

Which is all fine as a matter of taste, and only becomes an irritant when it morphs into the suggestion that it is a better style of play. But it's a pretty common position among grognards; for instance I see Maliszewski expressing a preference for humancentric gaming all the time, and I used to see it a lot on blogs I no longer follow.

 

[EOTB]

It really is on the person irritated to resolve their irritation, though. Since the great division in RPGs is upstream from rules, certain rules do better support one side of the division or the other (although both sides can find ways to use the rules to their liking).

Put another way, the best outcome is for each tribe of the great division to sort themselves into like. And that is accomplished by various tribal members touting their way of play as "the best"; the support they provide for this declaration will appeal to like people, and they will sort.

Any irritation in this process is "least irritation" as compared to the irritation produced from trying to play with people divided from your way of playing upstream from the rules chosen to use in play.

 

[Beoric]

It really is on the person irritated to resolve their irritation, though. Since the great division in RPGs is upstream from rules, certain rules do better support one side of the division or the other (although both sides can find ways to use the rules to their liking).

Put another way, the best outcome is for each tribe of the great division to sort themselves into like. And that is accomplished by various tribal members touting their way of play as "the best"; the support they provide for this declaration will appeal to like people, and they will sort.

Any irritation in this process is "least irritation" as compared to the irritation produced from trying to play with people divided from your way of playing upstream from the rules chosen to use in play.

I think very few of us here are ever likely to play with each other (although there are several I think I would enjoy playing with). I'm not here to find like minded gamers to play with, or find people who play or think like me. I'm here to discuss ideas with people who don't necessarily play or think like me. Maybe sometimes I learn something from them. Maybe once in a while they even learn something from me.

This is a forum where we have 0e and 0e/Supplement and Basic and B/X and BECMI and AD&D and 2e and 3e and PF and 4e people all talking together about the game we love (and man I regret not having any 5e players active on the forum ATM), comparing notes and finding areas of common ground, swapping mechanics and DM tips, critiquing each other's creations and feeling comfortable enough with each other to let them be critiqued. That's gold, man, why would I give that up to search out a group of people who want to play exactly the way I do?

If I am right and this is a community that exists largely to compare notes on our differences, then there will always be a bit of friction built into it, and I think it behooves us to try not to irritate each other so that we keep getting along (I admit I might not be the best proponent for this, but I do try).

And what the hell is the "great division", anyway?

 

[Pseudoephedrine]

But surely the non-humanness or anime-ness of the characters's race does more damage then its bonus-ness?

I find reducing the mechanical bonuses encourages people to concentrate on the few species I've planned to appear in the setting rather than fishing across sourcebooks for whatever optimised combination they can construct. If someone still insists on playing something really weird, I throw the burden of figuring out how they're able to function in the campaign back on them, and the burden of that often seems to discourage people. The handful that it doesn't tend to rise to the occasion well enough that I don't mind rewarding their effort and investment with acknowledgement and incorporation.

I'm also helped a bit on this by mainly using Mythras or Openquest, where culture is far more important than species most of the time. So the real optimisers are trying to figure out how they can be a barbarian sorcerer with two combat styles to start, rather than a sexy humanoid possum swashbuckler with a 20 Dex or whatever.

 

[Pseudoephedrine]

(and man I regret not having any 5e players active on the forum ATM)

I'm currently a PC in two 5e games and prepping for a post-vaxx PF 2e game, for the record. I love Openquest & Mythras but put a planned Mythras campaign on hold due to COVID-19 and some personal issues amongst the player group, and the PF 2e crew seemed easier to move forward with. I don't really love 5e, but I do like the group, so it's a compromise.

 

[The Heretic]

Is it the non-humanness, or the Mos Eisley Cantina variety that causes the (perceived) problem? I played in a campaign with no humans, where the primary inhabitants of the area were shifter hunter-gatherers (including all the PCs), with a few dwarves from the mountains and a horde of invading orcs. The shifters were the ordinary and the dwarves were the exotic. It worked reasonably well.

To me it's the latter. The new race needs to fit in with the setting, and there should be roleplaying fallout if the PC picks something non-standard. I have a spot in the ruined empire where my PCs are adventuring where it's dangerous to be an elf. The elves that lived there went isolationist and shoot to kill anyone who tries to enter the regrown forest. If the PC is an elf, even a non-xenophobic elf from elsewhere, they're going to have issues in this area.

Mos Eisley Cantina style of variety has its place though. If I was running a Planescape campaign set in...uh, what's that city called again? Oh yeah, Sigil, then I'd let anything go.

And your example sounds kind of cool. That was a 4e campaign I take it?

 

[Beoric]

And your example sounds kind of cool. That was a 4e campaign I take it?

It was 4e. Unfortunately the DM lost interest after a couple of sessions, I think he was having trouble coming up with content for a tribal/trackless wilderness campaign. Also, his orcs were of the depraved/fearless/always-chaotic-evil warrior type, and I was badly outnumbered (my party against a conventional army of thousands) and I determined the only way to save my people was to counter them with psyops, and rattling that kind of orc got pretty unpleasant...

 

[grodog]

IIRC, the irony of that quote is that Gygax was planning to implement his own version of 2e when he got booted from TSR.

While true, EGG's version would have been another realized consolidation of rules from Greyhawk, his and others' Dragon articles, etc. Maybe we'd have gotten at least a Stoink and a planar book out of this What If timeline, along with Castle Greyhawk (if we were luckier). We did some relatively thorough discussion of EGG's proto-2e at K&KA at https://knights-n-knaves.com/phpbb3/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=1264 and Trent Foster is working on his (quite good) interpretation of what that might have turned out like at https://mystical-trash-heap.blogspot.com/2020/01/heroic-legendarium-by-numbers.html

Blech. IIRC Wizards decided to do a different tack towards the end of the 3.x era. They realized that players greatly outnumbered DMs, so they started to focus on content that would appeal to players. [snip]
This is where I have a lot of sympathy towards Squeen's views on power bloat and humans-only campaigning. To make the book appeal to players they had to add a lot of stuff that players would want, like prestige classes, feats, new spells, etc.

To be fair, TSR started shifting to this model during the 2.5e era with the many splatblooks http://www.tsrarchive.com/add/add-opt.html and http://www.tsrarchive.com/add/add-phbr.html and http://www.tsrarchive.com/add/add-hr.html and by the time WotC bought TSR, they had White Wolf's splatbook exemplar to latch onto, which they aligned to strongly in the 3.x era too: http://www.tsrarchive.com/3e/3e2-pa.html and http://www.tsrarchive.com/3e/3e2-comp.html (along with much of the rest of the d20 glut).

That's gold, man, why would I give that up to search out a group of people who want to play exactly the way I do?

If I am right and this is a community that exists largely to compare notes on our differences, then there will always be a bit of friction built into it, and I think it behooves us to try not to irritate each other so that we keep getting along (I admit I might not be the best proponent for this, but I do try).

Constructive friction and the resulting exhange of a divertsity of ideas and PVOs from different gaming baselines is definitely a key attraction

Allan.

 

[EOTB]

And what the hell is the "great division", anyway?

Whether the pastime is an idle one

 

[The1True]

And that is accomplished by various tribal members touting their way of play as "the best"; the support they provide for this declaration will appeal to like people, and they will sort.

Can we agree that a person can trumpet "Mine's the best" without saying "Yours is the worst" though? That's generally where I'm finding the friction...

I'm here because I love adventure design. I find myself strongly in alignment with the old-school design mentality. I understand how some could feel that old-school rules editions are integral to that discussion. However, several strong arguments have been made pointing to how later editions can easily be used without serious structural house-ruling to continue this tradition of scenario building in various threads within this forum. Maybe this is an intractable issue for some, I dunno.

I think we can all agree that the host of this sight does a damn fine job of spotting winners (and the odd spectacular failure) and breaking things down to the nuts and bolts of what makes these products succeed (or crash and burn). We're all reading and using these adventures to one extent or another in whatever systems and editions best match our circles of friends and bringing the lessons we learn from their reviews to our own design work. That's pretty glorious when you think about it. I'm all for a little lighthearted edition-warring, but none of us seem to be particularly good at it, so we keep coming back to these moments of escalating friction.

I just wish we were talking more about what this site is named for and less of this old rehashed debate, fun as it is to zing each other. And, so we're clear, I'm not accusing you of dredging it all up again EOTB; you write some thought provoking stuff.

 

[EOTB]

Can we agree that a person can trumpet "Mine's the best" without saying "Yours is the worst" though? That's generally where I'm finding the friction...

Oh yeah, absolutely. The drive to criticize that which one declines to use is corrosive. A good healthy approach is to find what you want, and ignore what you know isn't for you. Life is too short to spend time and effort on what isn't for you.