Path: ...!Xl.tags.giganews.com!local-2.nntp.ord.giganews.com!news.giganews.com.POSTED!not-for-mail NNTP-Posting-Date: Fri, 24 May 2024 14:10:10 +0000 From: Spalls Hurgenson Newsgroups: rec.games.frp.dnd Subject: Re: OSRIC 3.0 announced Date: Fri, 24 May 2024 10:10:09 -0400 Message-ID: References: X-Newsreader: Forte Agent 2.0/32.652 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Lines: 70 X-Usenet-Provider: http://www.giganews.com X-Trace: sv3-WNkhRlpxTeAu/lY/7f8u/yNaOEPT9UsGvwnoXHByh/86vN12rt9u3xq0tWotfDlou0qBayQYB004ex7!h3zvAJfr30a3LzsQuBzNiYkO/I5+Qi1sZWI00JuvTcGiHQXru2f7nfV7JVvvDmj14Ye7YB0= X-Complaints-To: abuse@giganews.com X-DMCA-Notifications: http://www.giganews.com/info/dmca.html X-Abuse-and-DMCA-Info: Please be sure to forward a copy of ALL headers X-Abuse-and-DMCA-Info: Otherwise we will be unable to process your complaint properly X-Postfilter: 1.3.40 Bytes: 3770 On Thu, 23 May 2024 09:22:44 -0700, Justisaur wrote: >On 5/23/2024 1:03 AM, Ubiquitous wrote: >> spallshurgenson@gmail.com wrote: >>> On Thu, 16 May 2024 13:34:45 +0200, Kyonshi wrote: >>> >>>> Source: >>>> https://knights-n-knaves.com/phpbb3/viewtopic.php >>>> >>>> Seems they are trying for an approach targeted at younger players that >>>> have a 5e culture instead of going full old school this time. Which >>>> might be a good approach, I think Old School Essentials had basically a >>>> very similar approach. >>> >>> Meh. If I'm playing old-school* then I'm playing old-school with my >>> original rules-books. My creaky, held-together-with-duct-tape rule >>> books. >> >> Don't make me Troll-O-Meter you, bro! >> >> The original rules were nigh indestructable, although the Unearth Arcana >> never seemed to last more than a couple years of use. > >Yet another reason not to use UA. Even as an uncouth and crass young(er) player at the time, I wasn't fond of Unearthed Arcana. It wasn't that a lot of the ideas didn't appeal to me, but they all felt poorly integrated with the greater game. They were good ideas tossed into the pot without consideration for how they affected the overall game balance and style. These days I'd accuse the developers of 'kitchen-sinking'* the game; throwing in new ideas without a real understanding of its effects, just to say that they've added something new. Another 130 pages of Gygax's dense prose wasn't a welcome prospect either. Especially since his style of play started to feel extremely dated compared with newer games. Still, a good half of the manual was advice and clarifications of existing rules; essentially, a compilation of answers people had been asking TSR for ten years. This wasn't entirely unwelcome, even if I didn't always agree with the answers (again, Gygax and I didn't really seem to want to play the same type of game), and if figuring out what was intended required dredging through acres of Gygaxian prose printed in tiny print and way too many charts. It also didn't help that Unearthed Arcana's status was so uncertain. Was it an official expansion to the rules, or was it optional bits the DM could pick-and-chose from? And that it came out just a few years before the 2nd Edition revision didn't help either. I never thought UA was /bad/... just not necessary and not particularly well thought out. I had a lot less respect for "Fiend Folio". ;-) * I'm gonna make this phrase happen, just you watch.