D&D - Needs to be more open

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I am of the opinion that D&D is an extremely flawed system, which you may have picked up from previous waffles. My latest gripe with it is how little freedom it gives the players and DM. Even though it waffles on about how the DM can ignore what they don't like and make up their own stuff and whatnot, if they truly wanted that then they wouldn't have put it in in the first place.
For example:
In the 3.5E PHB, a comment about druids going along the lines of: There is some mysterious order of druids around the place, and every single druid belongs to it, and has to meet with it.
Now, this'd be all fine if it was a world specific rule system, but as a general system, it sucks.

Also, it waffles on about how classes probably worship X deity, and dislike Y deity. To what purpose? Chances are the the DM will have his own pantheon anyway. Plus it encourages roleplayly to leave such things entirely up to the player. Hell, a player may want their warrior to worship the god of healing. Sure, the system doesn't say they can't, but it doesn't leave it open for the player to decide either. The player is encouraged to think that a warror should only worship a god of battle.

Ther races are too broadly sterotyped. 'Elves are aloof and haughty', 'Dwarves are gruff'. Mayhap they could leave it to the DM to decide what dwarves are and are not?

(Methinks I'll read a bit more of my book tomorrow and continue this rant then)

 

The PHB 3.5 is based on the Greyhawk campaign setting. And as you say:

You can change the stuff it says about pantheons, and druids, and yada yada yada.
So what I'm saying is that change all the things you want meself thinks that Greyhawk sucks, except fer Sigil, which me buddy Firestorm say isnt a part of Greyhawk ( ).

 

Aren't all of the core books seen from the Greyhawk perspective? [EDIT: sorry, I was typing while Jaganis was posting] That's probably why they more or less say in, for example the Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting: "It is described in the core books like this, but in the FR, it's a little bit different."

Aren't you contradicting yourself here? Of course it leaves the player open to decide; they can choose any deity they want, it just says which deities they are most likely to worship. Just like they say which races choose which classes most often, by naming a favorite class, or do you think this is also a stupid rule?

Nowhere is stated that they should choose something, or how a specific race is. You are open to decide for yourself, and they only give stereotypes as guidelines. Else, they might say: "Elves have pointy ears, figure everthing else out for yourself". The thing is, you can't write a book, about a rule system, with everything open, because if they did that, they would exclude for example the DMs who do not wish to make a pantheon of their own.

Everybody has their own house rules, and rules that they change. There isn't a rule in those books which is used by every DM or playing group in the world. If they wanted to make a book which everybody followed, they should sell a book with blank pages.


And Jaganis, Sigil is indeed not from Greyhawk, but from the Planescape Campaign Setting.

 

Yes, but why write it from any perspective? Why not write it completely free from any world? It would make a heap more sense I'm thinking, encourages people to think for themselves.

Erm, yes, I probably am contradicting myself, I tend to do that. The player has less incentive to think of what will be best as a roleplay, beacuse the easy option is there for him, mapped out. Stereotypical characters all the way!

And well, I think the concept of classes in general are stupid, but that's a whole different matter. The way it does give favoured classes though is not so good though, once again, stereotypical characters. You get bonuses as a halfling for being a thief, all you'll end up with is a whole heap of halfling thieves *snores*.

Yes, but in putting in rules that need to be changed, saying for example 'druids are in organisation X', they haven't written it all that well now, have they. I'm not familiar with Greyhawk, so it could be very possible that you have to be in organisation X for your deity to grant spells, but if not, why have such a thing stated. And why write from that perspective anyhow?

 

Greyhawk doesn't require a druid to be part of Organisation X, sure their is the Old faith (organisation X btw), but still they are many many druids who don't follow the old faith's ideal so their's a mistake in the book.


But the rule allow you the be anything you want, okay Halfling make better thieves, elfe better archer etc, etc. But If you want to make a gnomish barbarian who is mad killer? Go for it! Even though the book say Gnome are genrealy good, make good bard and their main Diety is Garl Glittergold. Not a sing rule prevent you for making a Chaotic evil barbarian gnome worshiping Corellan Larethian! So yes the game is open!

 

Not a single rule, mayhap, but plenty of strong suggestions. For one, the writers seem to be against PCs being evil.

Notice how good and neutral are the 'best'. Now while this can be easilly ignored, the fact that it's there at all annoys me. It should just state the facts without the random babble of the writers.

Continuing on the topic of alignments, does no one else think of them as ridiculous. I know somewhere it says that they should only we used as guideline and are highly open to interpretation, but if so why have them at all? They don't achieve much but putting unnecessary rules in, for example:

Can someone please inform me how this concept of law and chaos can possibly effect the ability of someone to become better at pickpocketing, magic, songs, tales, ect.

What I think I may possibly be trying to say is: There are better systems, more logical sytems which can enhance the experience. Ones without unnecessary rules. The PHB babbles on about things which are not necessary for the player to know, such as specifics of the deities of Greyhawk. These are things that, IMO, should be kept out of the core rulebooks. Non world specific examples would have been fine, but those probably would belong more into the DMG, as he is the one making the pantheon.

In the classes section, instead of speaking about background, roles, and other sub-sections which are either too broad or too narrow to be of much use, they could have provided example characters in order to give ideas.

The first sentence of the background of clerics really says nothing but you can become a cleric at any age, in too many words, soe of which may be contradicting a certain faith.

Instead of waffle such as this, I'm thinking that maybe a write up of two example characters per class are given, as well as the necessary information for the class. This way the
information used for roleplaying isn't so general to be useless, and new players have something to go by if they're stuck.

And now I'm rambling. In fact, I meant to shut up several paragraphs ago, but oh well.

(On a totally irrelevant note, does anyone else look at Gruumsh and immediately think 'Sauron!'

 

Practically every module in existence assumes the PCs aren't evil. An evil party is the exception, not the rule. It is such an exception that it is relegated to the Book of Vile Darkness.

Law implies not only having a set of ethics, but abiding by them. Doing that suppresses the true nature of magic that the Bard embodies. A Bard is not a person with ranks in Perform and Sleight of Hand - that's any old person. A Bard has music that can fascinate, charm, inspire, and even kill.

1. Greyhawk defined in the PHB is very loosely defined. It's a start for the group that doesn't want to get into making up their own world.

2. When it comes to the RPGA and a lot of gaming associations, it is often necessary to have a world with constants (like these deities exist, doing this). This is particulary important when you are doing something like Living Greyhawk - it is not only necessary for providing a world to start off with, but for providing an example world for DMs to use by.

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The PHB may provide "common" ideas to work by, like "many Elves are Rangers" or "Half-Orcs are great at being Barbarians but not Wizards". You get the idea. In no way is this constraint of roleplaying or encouragement of metagaming, since nothing's wrong with playing a Halfling Rogue or a Dwarven Fighter.

Rather, these "stereotypes" provide the players and DM a place to start and understand what the usual game world looks like and is done. Elves inhabit the forests, Orcs are not very bright but are great smashers, Lawful Evil emperors might worship Hextor, etc., etc.

These ideas provide a solid footing for knowing what a D&D game world might look like. Without it, really, you'd be a bit lost. And putting all the ideas into a DM's hands? Not the best idea first time around. Believe me on this - issues like game balance, world versimilitude, and other stuff gets raised.

Once you get past these normal ideas, however, it's great to go on and experiment with variant rules, different kinds of characters, and so on. Previous releases like Savage Species deal with this, and so will a new release (Feb. 2004), Unearthed Arcana*.

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You mention example characters for which to go by. Well, each class has a "starting package" described. The players could use the 15, 14, 13, 12 10, 8 point buy, and go from there, reading the description to know what stat is best for a particular class. Iconic characters (Soveliss, Hennet) are also great guidelines to start off with.

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Your argument seems to be that there is some better system out there (like, I don't know, GURPS, maybe? White Wolf? I really have no idea about those systems).

In any case, I'm a stickler to the basics of D&D, and I feel that D&D (3.5E, anyways), covers a great amount of material and situations (both core books and splatbooks), has a large gaming base, is easy to understand and learn (with the d20 system), and best of all...

(let's wait for it)

It's D&D. I don't know about you, but I just wouldn't feel right playing another kind of genre. To me, D&D is not only fantasy adventure, but a familiar game with familiar things: horrid regenerating Trolls, insidious Mind Flayers, artifacts like the Book of Vile Darkness or the Deck of Many Things, and yadda yadda yadda you're bored with this post now.

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* - not to be confused with Arcana Unearthed, a variant PHB by Mr. Cook which I am very excited about.

[ January 16, 2004, 03:59: Message edited by: Oaz ]

 

Honestly Aikanaro I can't understand how you could have such a problem with the modern incarnation of classical D&D.

If the core rulebooks were just rulebooks and nothing else, it'd be like eating boiled cabbage for dinner. Bland! There have to be constants for beginners and casual players to work with.

And besides, all the constraints you mentioned that seem to bother you so much are, as far as I can tell, in your mind only. No one DM uses all the rules in the books, but that doesn't mean they all leave out the same ones.

The system is meant to be flexible. If there is anything, anything you don't like about it it's very easy to just change it. I've been doing it for years.

 

Constraints that need to be ignored should not be there. That is a large part of what I'm waffling about

I personally would prefer a system that doesn't need changing. I did read somewhere about some guy who claimed to have 3 binders full of house rules after he'd finsihed going through his books - not my idea of a good system.

In fact, the writers of the modules aren't supposed to be writing evil campaigns, theoretically because Hasbro (owner of WotC or some such) wants to keep up their image. The article is on the WotC site somewhre, though I can't presently find it.

Hmm, I see what you're getting at, but I don't think it's all that logical. A person can follow their ethics and make brilliant songs which can do those things, they just have to be not about things contradicting their ethics ... Unless of course I'm mission your point entirely.

 

Hold on now. Why would anyone ever want to play a realistic roleplaying game. I don't know about you, but I always thought of roleplaying games as a way to act out a fantasy or sci-fi world.

If you mean that you do not think that the physical rules of the world make sense, I disagree. I have DMed enough of 3E to have memorized most of the rules, and I have found nothing that seems hidiously contradictory to reality. If you have some specific example other than "it's unrealistic" by all means expound.

 

Well, keep in mind that the Book of Vile Darkness was written quite a while ago. Also, third party publishers like Malhavoc Press and Sword & Sorcery aren't affiliated with WotC; they operate under the Open Gaming License.

That asides, practically every campaign is good or neutral-aligned. A evil party requires much more work for the DM (but the BoVD helps the DM out here).

We can only presume in D&D that the true nature of magical music cannot be contained in a lawful soul, although "brilliant" songs can be written by anyone, since the Perform skill is available to all classes.

I do have to disagree with you about the "unrealistic" part. While D&D does not follow real-world practices to the extreme (IMO, its rules for mundane stuff is already complex), it provides some degree of realism.

The more important thing is that while you are playing D&D, the setting is similar enough to the real world for most purposes (e.g what goes up must come down, wearing full plate while in the middle of summer for 8 hours is not a good idea) that will be taken in the game. And when it comes to things that cannot be had in the real world (e.g. magic items, 20th level Paladins), D&D is very consistent with such things. It's called fantasy realism - you can have laws that don't agree with the real world, but they are laws nonetheless and are consistent.

All in all, if you don't want to play D&D, that's okay. But I don't think it's inherently wrong.

 

The above discussion shows why I tend to treat core books as guidelines. Much like their own authors do

 

The Core Books are called rulebooks for a reason.

When you play, you don't assume everything in the book is a guideline. It's a rule. Rules are the basis for making guidelines for situations that aren't covered in the book. Why would you go around changing the rules arbitrarily?

(And when you play by variant rules, why would you change them arbitrarily?)

 

For fun? For the sake of playing a game and having fun from it?

Such things as "elves are frivolous and aloof" can't be considered rules in all seriousness. If they were, however, it would mean that rules can be disproved easily from material provided by Wizards or their licensees. Find just one example to the contrary and the whole rule makes a big puff by virtue of Chevalier's Universal Antigeneralisational Syllogism

 

Well, first of all, I'm sure that when you play a game like basketball, your referee doesn't arbitrarily decide that your opponent scored a goal but you didn't even though you did the exact same. If you have fun playing a crazy, nonsensical campaign, well... okay.

By the way: the idea that "Elves are aloof and frivolous" isn't a rule - it's a description of what Elves might generally be like. Note that the Monster Manual states that Elves are usually Chaotic Good (under the Alignment entry).

Therefore (under all official rules; let's assume you're playing in the RPGA here), the rule about Elves' alignment is that the majority (more than 50%) of Elves are Chaotic Good. This may be due to strong cultural influences, or it may be a legacy of Elves' origin. Alignment is defined in the PHB, and how many Elves are Chaotic Good is defined in the MM.

Say something like "All Balors are Chaotic Evil" is a rule, since the Balor entry in the MM states that Balors are always Chaotic Evil.

 

Thanks for proving my point

 

To quote directly from the Pathwanderer rulebook (The section in which the auther said what he was trying not to achieve with his system):

And then from the part in which he said what he was trying to achieve:

The first one is a good example of non realism in D&D, the second being how a realistic system would treat the problem of damage. Here the realism doesn't detract from the fighting and epicness, but it follows the laws of intelligence better than D&D does.
The crazed gnome barbarian may have both his legs sliced off, but hey, he still has 40 hit points, carry on fighting people...

 

Have you ever played a RPG with a "realistic" combat system? Ever had a charcter decapitated in his first battle or been unable to function from a strange disease in his/her first adventure? Where is the fun in being killed in 20 seconds (except for the game paranoia) ?
PS. Is Cook revising the Unearthed Arcana?

 

Realistic, mayhap not. Believeable, yes.

 

Aikanaro: the rolling (d20 + X vs. DC) is abstract.

That is, if you have a Half-Orc Barbarian (with a greataxe) roll a 24 on an attack roll, and he deals 18 damage, it may mean he took one big swing and gave the Ogre enemy a big gash. But if you have an Elf Rogue (with Weapon Finesse and a Rapier) roll an 18 on an attack roll, and he deals 16 damage (with Sneak Attack), it may mean he took a few successful jabs at the Ogre, hitting him in several vital blood vessels.

Like the above example, D&D rules are often abstract that way to simplify things to have games run more smoothly and for beginners to understand them. They provide enough realism (having a good attack bonus lets you hit more often; overcoming obstacles results in experience) but not very much complexity to confound everyone (there are no official rules for attack an enemy's solar plexus; XP is XP).

Maybe D&D just isn't for you.