What’s Wrong With Third Edition Anyway

Greywulf posted what he feels needs to be fixed with D&D “third edition”. On his points I...

1. Grapple: Disagree
2. Attacks of Opportunity: Disagree
3. Dead levels: Disagree
4. Preparation Time: Ambivalent
5. Challenge Ratings: Agree
6. Experience point calculation: Agree

I thought the grapple rules were pretty good and not too complex. Not well presented, though. Attacks of opportunity I also found to be fine and not too complicated but poorly presented.

I get the “dead level” point, but I just don’t think it’s that important.

Prep time is only bad if you feel the need to dot every I, cross every T, and are overly concerned about “breaking the rules”. The real issue is that the rules are—for many people—overly complex. I’ve still seen people “wing” the game just fine, though.

In my experience, CR is no better than HD for judging how dangerous a monster will be. Likewise, the arcane XP calculations didn’t really add anything to the game.

Instinct

Here’s the thing, Sprint and Samsung.

I don’t really want GPS on my phone. It’s a feature I’d rarely use. (The few times I have, the iPhone’s triangulation has been enough for me.) But it isn’t about arguing whose features are better. Yeah, your GPS is better than the iPhone’s triangulation. Yeah, your data network is faster than the Edge.

The thing is, you could’ve made a phone half as good as the iPhone years ago. You could have made visual voice-mail happen years ago.

You want to talk features? How about visual voice-mail? There’s a feature most people use a lot more often than GPS. Your voice-mail was nothing but frustration. You had the ability to make something better. You could’ve had the glory of being the ones to introduce it.

But you didn’t. It took Apple breaking into your market to get you off your duffs and even trying.

In the past few years, Apple has proven itself to constantly improve it’s products. The complaints I had with Mac OS X years ago? Fixed. The complaints I’ve had with every mobile phone I’ve had before the iPhone? Pretty much the same as my complaints with the phone before that.

So, no. I’m not going to be rushing out to replace my iPhone. Because it’s not about features comparisons.

Professional sports

After hearing Frank Deford’s segment—“Need for Speed Brings Tragedy at the Derby”—this morning, I wonder: Is “professional sport” an oxymoron?

Once it’s about money instead of fun, does that mean that—eventually—a sport will be pushed and distilled into something different? Should “sport” imply recreation rather than business?

We don’t want to vote for the delusional

Eight years ago, I was very annoyed when McCain dropped out of the primaries much too early. Now, though, I’m annoyed by Clinton’s tenacity.

I think the big difference is that there was (emphasis on “was”) a bigger difference between Bush and McCain than there is between Obama and Clinton. There was a point in McCain staying in because there were differences to consider.

Or maybe just that even then I was in the “anybody but Bush” camp.

D&D 4th Edition Multiclassing

4th Edition Excerpts: Multiclassing...

The 4th Edition design had three primary goals for multiclassing:

1. Design the classes, make them cool, then force multiclassing to play nice with them.
2. Institute controls to prevent abusive combinations.
3. Institute controls to make every combination as playable as possible.

Interesting. I think these would be my goals for a multiclass design...

1. Design the classes, make them cool, then force multiclassing to play nice with them
2. Enable multiclassing for the occasional unusual character or twist of fate
3. Ensure that multiclass characters don’t outshine single class characters
4. Don’t worry about making any multiclass option playable or attractive

Labyrinth Lord review

This RPGnet “review” by Andrew Montgomery of Labyrinth Lord doesn’t really tell you much about LL, but it does an excellent job of explaining why it exists and—in layman’s terms—why it is legal. (Whether you think it should be or not.)

Don’t count your forums before they’re hatched

If you are going to start a set of online discussion forums: Do not create a bunch of individual forums on various subtopics. Start with a single forum about your topic. As your membership and traffic grows, create subtopics based on what people are actually talking about.

In reality, you don’t want to only create subtopic forums based on traffic, but I see way too many people creating way too many subtopics with no traffic than I see people not making enough subtopic forums.