Wednesday, March 5, 2014

Fearing What Change Does to You, I Threw Your Keys in the Garbage Disposal.

When Fourth Edition came out I bought the Player's Handbook and started working my way through it with a view screen in the hopes that I had finally found a game that I would be able to play for decades without even thinking twice about it. You see, while I started on Third and dabbled in the others, I was never very satisfied. 

I'm still not. 

So I approached Fourth with a lot of hope and took the view that I was being given the opprotunity to jump on at the beginning of the edition and would be able to buy everything new for the first time ever (at the time I had always gotten everything second hand). But working my way through that Player's Handbook I found myself becoming incredibly disinterested. 

The classes, while different, were too similar for me. A bigger detraction for me was that the variability between the classes was limited - especially when compared with Third. Then there were the powers. 

Look I know that I don't play Dungeons and Dragons like everyone else, and I've never claimed to be the same, but I don't play fighters so that I can bitch about not having magic. I don't like magic. I really don't like being forced to have a form of magic attached to my class. So imagine my delight when I found that I was going to have powers.

And then the pages of magic items with levels attached to them . . .

Generally I'm an early adopter of change when it comes to work, children, and in most phases of my life. I'm also one of the first people to alter the way things are going when I don't like the way they're working. Yet when it came to Fourth I found so much to dislike that I walked away from the edition. That was a mistake on my part as over the years I've seen others do some amazing things with that game that I never would have thought possible at the time.


My God, the Fourthcore cats knocked it out of the park! Sersa V where are you now?

Anyway I build folders in my computer where I design my house rules, handy tables, and generally reallocate my thoughts on the games I'm playing. For years before I started this blog I would sit down at my computer and work on how I wanted the game to play and where I wanted to go with it; and lately everything that I start to work on has to do with the new edition of Dungeons and Dragons. 

I'm hamstrung and feeling like I can't take the next step because I've gotten so used to sharing everything here on this blog. It's dumb but where I feel safe talking about the older editions I feel like opening my mouth too widely on the new edition is asking for trouble. 

Ah hell, it's only a four more months and then I'll be able to start running with the damned thing in publich. 

Four months is nothing.
I can stand on my head for four months.

8 comments:

  1. The trick to doing time is to let yourself into that black pit of despair so deep you'll never come back out again. Seriously, just let yourself say it and there is no going back, and you are free of the wait. Just call the guy an asshole in the bar with his 4 biggest buddies hanging around with him, do it man, do it! Say what you need to say about this latest pile of crap marketing scheme for people too stupid and unimaginative to use a better game system (1eAD&D) and too brain dead to avoid wasting their money on the latest 'shiny thing' that Hasborg dangles in front of them with the go-faster stripes and the whistle with the alternate cover and glow in the dark hologram. Or whatever you were going to say that is.

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    1. Sometimes when you leave me notes I would swear you and I have been friends outside of blogging before. That whole thing up there is almost word for word what my buddy the Master Planner told me the last time we were out in town together. Only he was pushing me into starting some shit with a group of semi-drunk factory workers.

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  2. As long as he is there to help take on the asshole's buddies then that is a real friend.

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    1. Hell, he usually throws the first and last punch.

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  3. I walked away from fourth edition pretty early on as well. I never even tried to give it a fair shake, and a part of me regrets that. I've tried to get excited about fifth edition, but here lately I find myself regressing instead. I don't know if I have the heart to invest $150+ in a set of new books. A big part of me wants to grab a 1st edition player's handbook, head off to White Plume Mountain, and never look back.

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    1. I totally understand that feeling. For me it's going to depend on what that Starter Set looks like as to where I go with it all.

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  4. To answer your question - I'm still around, and about to release a storytelling game called The Chamber. You can follow me at @svdpress.

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    1. And I'm following you Sersa. Thanks for stopping by and letting everyone know you're still out there being awesome!

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