Let's see...
If my old notes are correct: happy birthday, Moe.
Operation: Gnomeregan
Honestly? I'm disappointed. It's a neat little quest chain, I suppose. I actually found it cool that the gnomes you round up at the beginning mount up when you do instead of chasing behind on foot like some 'escorted' NPCs in the past. But overall, it doesn't feel as epic as the assault on the Undercity and it doesn't really accomplish anything. It's supposed to be setting up gnome control of upper Gnomeregan as a starting zone come Cataclysm, right? But the plotline ends with the invasion barely escaping back to Ironforge and a new, "more powerful" radiation bomb going off. There's no real indication that the gnomes should gain any sort of foothold there.
The first-day technical issues didn't bother me too much. An unresponsive quest NPC was fixed up fairly quickly. Some people insisted on trying to block questgivers with their mounts, though that didn't slow me down very much, and actually taught me a couple things. Having the invasion glitch if people get too far ahead is bad, and I think they'd have figured that out during some sort of testing, but it wasn't more than a minor delay.
Tuesdays
Another night of waiting for people to show up, and it looks like we've called our World of Darkness game off. It's been plagued by little problems here and there, so that might have been inevitable.
Tanks' Lament
As much as I dislike pugging, I find myself feeling a little left out of the 25-man runs that some guildmates are squeezing into with another guild. Scheduling hasn't worked out in the past, so it wasn't even really a question before (having been on Tuesday nights). But I know I'm missing out on some potential equipment upgrades I haven't even really considered because they drop there.
But... I don't have much hope of that changing, either, due to my chosen role. In a 10-man raid, you need two tanks. In a 25-man, you need three. Being the lowest number needed, that's often where the formation of the raid starts and where you least want to take in strangers. So I suspect even if I have the time now, there's no room for another tank in those runs.
Similarly, there's been interest expressed by a couple of our guild members who want to do more tanking, but those slots are usually filled by Elly and myself in our runs. We've specialized to it, so switching out is less than optimal all around.
So... eh... yeah. There doesn't seem to be a good solution. For my personal position, I look forward to Cataclysm's normalization of loot, where 25-man loot won't be better than 10-man.
Offline Gaming
Having scheduling issues there, too. The existing group has absorbed some people from our old weekend ground and expanded somewhat. Somehow, organizing eight people is much harder than five, and it's almost a given that not everyone will be available. Our new gamer/Dresden GM is swamped at work Fridays, unable to get off early (and usually being kinda late). We've a couple people who have trouble getting into town mid-week due to school or whatever else. We've a family man (even though two others are married, go figure) who can't get away on weekends and has to work around his wife's schedule. And we've one person who can almost never make it anyway. It's almost as bad as trying to feed people. Two diagnosed diabetics, one vegetarian, and one person who can't eat a lot of little things ranging from tomato sauce to nuts.
Yesterday, it looked like we've be gaming tonight. Now, there's some talk about trying to Friday - I don't know if that'll happen. @.@
D&D 4E
It's grown and I've gained a little tiny bit of experience with it. I've also had multiple reasons to reconsider it of late. I still think I have a greater fondness for the tool set that is 3(.5)E, but I'm finding a lot of complaints about the newer edition just don't hold water. Some I've heard recently:
WotC/Hasbro went all corporation-greedy! This isn't new. Expansions are all over for allt he editions. If they don't make it as a business, there's no product, so they have to try to be profitable.
4E is more generic! Strange, considering it looks the other way around to me. Dragonborn, tieflings, and the manuever-based combat system seem a lot more focused on a specific type/tone of game than 3E did. Neither really has a lot of setting details outside of a short list of default deities (or stuff found in expansion books).
It got all tactical! Eh? Well, compared to 2E, sure. Compared to 3E? I don't know. Maybe. If you want the most out of either combat system, you sort of need a grid. I don't see a huge leap with this iteration, perhaps just small progression.
But they took away my multiclassing and similar options! Yeah, sort of. Multiclassing in the PHB is rather lackluster. It's a lot harder to mix classes with how they're laid out - as shown by the hybrid class rules in a later book (PHB3, I think?) that really cover it. So... there's a version there which appears to work, but it is different from what went before because it has to be.
I can't do non-combat stuff! I don't know that this is any worse than 3E was, honestly. There are skills (most of which are the same) to resolve things that way. There are item creation rules, though they're extremely simplified and provide more a means to get exactly what you want than to make any sort of profit. Beyond that, D&D (and a majority of RPGs I've seen) really never has had a lot of support for non-combat stuff. Combat is assumed to be the default conflict for most fantasy games, and it's treated thusly.
On a plus side, I find the character builder to be awesome. Even if the free version is a bit limited and only goes up to level 3, it's easier to use and more comprehensive than any other chargen program I can recall.
Operation: Gnomeregan
Honestly? I'm disappointed. It's a neat little quest chain, I suppose. I actually found it cool that the gnomes you round up at the beginning mount up when you do instead of chasing behind on foot like some 'escorted' NPCs in the past. But overall, it doesn't feel as epic as the assault on the Undercity and it doesn't really accomplish anything. It's supposed to be setting up gnome control of upper Gnomeregan as a starting zone come Cataclysm, right? But the plotline ends with the invasion barely escaping back to Ironforge and a new, "more powerful" radiation bomb going off. There's no real indication that the gnomes should gain any sort of foothold there.
The first-day technical issues didn't bother me too much. An unresponsive quest NPC was fixed up fairly quickly. Some people insisted on trying to block questgivers with their mounts, though that didn't slow me down very much, and actually taught me a couple things. Having the invasion glitch if people get too far ahead is bad, and I think they'd have figured that out during some sort of testing, but it wasn't more than a minor delay.
Tuesdays
Another night of waiting for people to show up, and it looks like we've called our World of Darkness game off. It's been plagued by little problems here and there, so that might have been inevitable.
Tanks' Lament
As much as I dislike pugging, I find myself feeling a little left out of the 25-man runs that some guildmates are squeezing into with another guild. Scheduling hasn't worked out in the past, so it wasn't even really a question before (having been on Tuesday nights). But I know I'm missing out on some potential equipment upgrades I haven't even really considered because they drop there.
But... I don't have much hope of that changing, either, due to my chosen role. In a 10-man raid, you need two tanks. In a 25-man, you need three. Being the lowest number needed, that's often where the formation of the raid starts and where you least want to take in strangers. So I suspect even if I have the time now, there's no room for another tank in those runs.
Similarly, there's been interest expressed by a couple of our guild members who want to do more tanking, but those slots are usually filled by Elly and myself in our runs. We've specialized to it, so switching out is less than optimal all around.
So... eh... yeah. There doesn't seem to be a good solution. For my personal position, I look forward to Cataclysm's normalization of loot, where 25-man loot won't be better than 10-man.
Offline Gaming
Having scheduling issues there, too. The existing group has absorbed some people from our old weekend ground and expanded somewhat. Somehow, organizing eight people is much harder than five, and it's almost a given that not everyone will be available. Our new gamer/Dresden GM is swamped at work Fridays, unable to get off early (and usually being kinda late). We've a couple people who have trouble getting into town mid-week due to school or whatever else. We've a family man (even though two others are married, go figure) who can't get away on weekends and has to work around his wife's schedule. And we've one person who can almost never make it anyway. It's almost as bad as trying to feed people. Two diagnosed diabetics, one vegetarian, and one person who can't eat a lot of little things ranging from tomato sauce to nuts.
Yesterday, it looked like we've be gaming tonight. Now, there's some talk about trying to Friday - I don't know if that'll happen. @.@
D&D 4E
It's grown and I've gained a little tiny bit of experience with it. I've also had multiple reasons to reconsider it of late. I still think I have a greater fondness for the tool set that is 3(.5)E, but I'm finding a lot of complaints about the newer edition just don't hold water. Some I've heard recently:
WotC/Hasbro went all corporation-greedy! This isn't new. Expansions are all over for allt he editions. If they don't make it as a business, there's no product, so they have to try to be profitable.
4E is more generic! Strange, considering it looks the other way around to me. Dragonborn, tieflings, and the manuever-based combat system seem a lot more focused on a specific type/tone of game than 3E did. Neither really has a lot of setting details outside of a short list of default deities (or stuff found in expansion books).
It got all tactical! Eh? Well, compared to 2E, sure. Compared to 3E? I don't know. Maybe. If you want the most out of either combat system, you sort of need a grid. I don't see a huge leap with this iteration, perhaps just small progression.
But they took away my multiclassing and similar options! Yeah, sort of. Multiclassing in the PHB is rather lackluster. It's a lot harder to mix classes with how they're laid out - as shown by the hybrid class rules in a later book (PHB3, I think?) that really cover it. So... there's a version there which appears to work, but it is different from what went before because it has to be.
I can't do non-combat stuff! I don't know that this is any worse than 3E was, honestly. There are skills (most of which are the same) to resolve things that way. There are item creation rules, though they're extremely simplified and provide more a means to get exactly what you want than to make any sort of profit. Beyond that, D&D (and a majority of RPGs I've seen) really never has had a lot of support for non-combat stuff. Combat is assumed to be the default conflict for most fantasy games, and it's treated thusly.
On a plus side, I find the character builder to be awesome. Even if the free version is a bit limited and only goes up to level 3, it's easier to use and more comprehensive than any other chargen program I can recall.
One must not forget the cheese of D&D 3.x combinations of feats, prestige classes and the like. Such as Pun-pun and the Jumplomancer.
ReplyDeletePun Pun is easy to fix. Know that race Pun Pun needs contact with, from the Forgotten Realms? Doesn't exist. Done.
ReplyDeleteThis from the man who says if it's printed it's legal.
ReplyDeleteMy method's simpler. The person in question needs to get to the Forgotten Realms, find the creature, and convince it to use that alteration power on the critter. No small feat, since I don't run games in the Forgotten Realms. ;)
ReplyDeleteI had no idea what you two were talking about until I searched. Even then, I don't think I want to know more than a basic overview. O.o;
ReplyDelete