TheAuldGrump Posted November 10, 2017 Share Posted November 10, 2017 At the very least, 5e is not offensive - nor was it marketed in... such an amazingly insulting way as 4e was. Someone rolled a 1 on their Profession[Marketing] check, and then confirmed with another natural 1. And 5e has gone back to the OGL, which may help in the long run. (WotC burned a lot of trust and good will in the run up to 4e.) The Auld Grump 5 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Unruly Posted November 11, 2017 Share Posted November 11, 2017 There's something to be said for playing in a game where the DM really doesn't pull punches, though. Some of the most fun I've had in the last couple years was in a game where the DM basically threw the book at us and we had to be very smart in how we played in order to survive it. But then again, I don't want my characters to be invincible and I go into every new campaign knowing that at some point I'm going to do something really stupid and end up dead. Like when I took my level 4 bard to "parley" with an advancing enemy army, by himself, with the whole pan being to insult the commander so hard that when I challenged him to single combat he would accept. Then, during the big spectacle of a fight, my friends were supposed to sneak into the camp, plant about 80 gallons of alchemist's fire throughout, and set it off while I turned invisible and ran away. It didn't happen. I called him a bunch of names and taunted him because he failed to kill me the last time we met, and he threw an ice spear through my chest before I had even finished. Because that's what a bloodthirsty warlord does when he's unwilling to accept anything other than unconditional surrender and you call him a "weak, pathetic, impotent half-man with no balls and a penchant for buggering livestock because no sapient being would willingly lie with him" in front of his men. I probably should have stopped short of offering him my horse's services for his own "satisfaction" and just made my challenge, but hindsight is 20/20 and I really wanted that guy to be mad. It was kind of a Crowning Moment of Awesome to have my bard die after the tirade, though. The plan failed, but I died in spectacular fashion. And that made it more memorable for me than it probably would have been if it was just "I insulted him, got my butt kicked, and then the plan worked so we won and I got healed up" like the way Die Hard plays out. Sometimes a failure is more fun to me than a victory. 5 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PaganMegan Posted November 12, 2017 Share Posted November 12, 2017 OMG! Al Qadim is getting updated to 5E! Julie just emailed me about it and Jon is talking about running! I can SO picture Grump as a Sha'ir! We have never both been players! But now I want to play a Pathfinder Summoner in Zakhara. On 11/9/2017 at 4:52 PM, TheAuldGrump said: Okay, that one I'll grant you. The Green or Blue is more likely to keep you alive and interrogate (torture) you. Megan has a tee, from gods know where, that has the slogan 'Mothers Against Drunk Dragons'.... The Auld Grump I have no idea where I got the shirt. It just showed up one day, already well used. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dr.Bedlam Posted November 12, 2017 Share Posted November 12, 2017 If Wizards is really that determined to keep launching splatbooks, they could do a hell of a lot worse than to update the various realms to the new version... Dark Sun, Spelljammer, Al Qadim, and all the others. Still would like to see a decent quasi-African setting. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BlazingTornado Posted November 12, 2017 Share Posted November 12, 2017 22 minutes ago, PaganMegan said: OMG! Al Qadim is getting updated to 5E! What? Where was this announced? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Unruly Posted November 12, 2017 Share Posted November 12, 2017 Well, wasn't Al-Qadim just a different part of Faerun? It wasn't like Dark Sun or Planescape that took place on a whole other plane of existence, so they can continue their strong push for Forgotten Realms being the "one true setting" for 5e even though Al-Qadim can have an entirely different feel. Sort of like how they made Barovia part of the Forgotten Realms with Curse of Strahd, while just giving a few little sidebars about how you could do it as its own plane. I'd still love to see new Planescape and Dark Sun though... 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Club Posted November 12, 2017 Share Posted November 12, 2017 The mention of dragon and dungeon got me thinking about a guy I used to know. last saw him when D&D was 3.0. He had the entire runs for both mags He was OK with 3 as a system, but he ranted about what it did to the content of the magazines; claimed that content for the new system replaced the stuff he actually bought the magazines for, and that the magazines had been issuing some really good stuff for a few years before the changover. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BlazingTornado Posted November 12, 2017 Share Posted November 12, 2017 2 hours ago, Unruly said: Sort of like how they made Barovia part of the Forgotten Realms with Curse of Strahd, while just giving a few little sidebars about how you could do it as its own plane. I must've missed that part, I recall the lore of Curse of Strahd still making Barovia its own extraplanar entity... Especially as Mordenkainen himself makes an appearance in the module. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Unruly Posted November 12, 2017 Share Posted November 12, 2017 1 hour ago, BlazingTornado said: I must've missed that part, I recall the lore of Curse of Strahd still making Barovia its own extraplanar entity... Especially as Mordenkainen himself makes an appearance in the module. You appear to be correct. I went back through and looked, and it's just that all of the intro hooks mention the Sword Coast and Daggerford, but then you get whisked away into the mists of Barovia. I must have mixed them up. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sylverthorne Posted November 12, 2017 Share Posted November 12, 2017 That might actually get Mr. Thorne and I playing 5e; he had a very good time playing Sha'ir back in 2e, and I just generally like the setting. If they updated Planescape ... *groan* I'd have even more trouble resisting that. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheAuldGrump Posted November 12, 2017 Share Posted November 12, 2017 I wonder whether they just meant that someone is opening up Al Qadim in the League that WotC has for folks that want to publish within WotC's IP..... Going to look around though... I never played or ran Al Qadim, but kind of wanted to. The Auld Grump Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheAuldGrump Posted November 12, 2017 Share Posted November 12, 2017 (edited) 12 hours ago, Club said: The mention of dragon and dungeon got me thinking about a guy I used to know. last saw him when D&D was 3.0. He had the entire runs for both mags He was OK with 3 as a system, but he ranted about what it did to the content of the magazines; claimed that content for the new system replaced the stuff he actually bought the magazines for, and that the magazines had been issuing some really good stuff for a few years before the changover. Pretty sure he was in the minority, in regards to the magazines. The mags had been focusing on TSR material since before 2e. Circulation had been diminishing before WotC bought out TSR - which may mean that they were focusing to much on the wrong portion of their audience, at the cost of general popularity. Or had simply lost the part of the audience that wasn't buying what they were publishing. Part of this was just that TSR had a whole lot less money than people had thought - and were a year late paying for artwork used in calendars and cartoons in Dragon. (So, they dropped cartoons entirely - the bulk of the articles in the magazines was either by salaried staff or from amateurs getting paid less than professionals.) The art, on the other hand, was by professional artists - Larry Elmore, Keith Parkinson, and Clyde Caldwell for example. With 3e circulation went up - not a whole lot, but significant enough to put them back in the black. (New editions mean new players and new GMs.) But both magazines got a lot better when Paizo took them over from WotC - especially Dungeon. The Adventure Paths were a great idea, and later became the basis for Paizo as a company, once they lost the license from WotC during the lead up to 4e. There was now a reason to get every issue of Dungeon, not just get one when you needed a dungeon for that weekend. The Auld Grump *EDIT* Paizo has not-nice things to say about the magazine industry - calling it the 'organized crime controlled magazine industry' - and I am not sure that Ms. Stevens wasn't serious. Edited November 12, 2017 by TheAuldGrump 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheAuldGrump Posted November 12, 2017 Share Posted November 12, 2017 (edited) The only 'official' thing I could find for Al Qadim and 5e was a free book on DM's Guild for Classes and Backgrounds. I will have to ask Julie and Jon - they may have been talking about some fan work that is out there. The Auld Grump - I really hope that it really is in the works. Edited November 12, 2017 by TheAuldGrump Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheAuldGrump Posted November 12, 2017 Share Posted November 12, 2017 And, for the sake of entertainment - Eric Mona's post on the Paizo boards as to whether or not Paizo would be going 4e. Which... comes down to 'We don't know - WotC still hasn't released details about either the system or the license'. (See the above mentioned 'natural 1 on Profession[Marketing]'.) The Auld Grump Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BlazingTornado Posted November 12, 2017 Share Posted November 12, 2017 SPEAKING OF DRAGON. This month's issue of Dragon+ features the monster designed by fans (and mostly Mike Mearls and Chris Lindsay) at Hasbro's inaugural HasCon convention. Behold the Spider Shark. http://www.dragonmag.com/5.0/#!/article/116311/103599102?loadFresh=true&title=16_08_Spider Shark Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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