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[Ben-San]

So, yeah. D&D 4th Edition got pirated in the past couple days; there are scans of the core rulebooks floating around the Internet. (They appear to be from copies snagged before binding.) Many people with nothing better to do are working themselves into a frothing lather about how it's either the best or the worst thing ever.

Of course, because I would never illegally download pirated documents, I can't comment on these proceedings. But if I were that kind of person I strongly suspect I'd say something like "it's pretty good but a little too much like a wargame and not enough like a roleplaying game for me, and some of the cleric powers skeeve me out."

[CortJstr]

Apparently Order of the Stick has already started riffing on it. Which is what's important to me, really.

[Ben-San]

Apparently Order of the Stick has already started riffing on it. Which is what's important to me, really.

Yeah, half-orcs were taken out of 4E because they "imply a very ugly backstory we don't want to dwell on".

[littlefallsmets]

Though I was never a role-player, beyond playing Dragon Warrior 3 on the ol' NES, it fascinates me that paper-and-dice roleplaying has survived as anything other than a museum piece, played for nostalgia or irony or something like that.

The set-up and the dice thing just seems so... tedious... when there are games on computers when you're through all that stuff in, like, three clicks.

What's the appeal?

[CortJstr]

Though I was never a role-player, beyond playing Dragon Warrior 3 on the ol' NES, it fascinates me that paper-and-dice roleplaying has survived as anything other than a museum piece, played for nostalgia or irony or something like that.

The set-up and the dice thing just seems so... tedious... when there are games on computers when you're through all that stuff in, like, three clicks.

What's the appeal?

Well the actual role-playing is part of it for some people. For others it's the free form aspect. Let's say you've killed a cockatrice (which turns creatures it touches into stone). If a pen and paper game you can tell the DM that you want to wear gloves, cut its head off, and attach the head to a hook on a rope, then swing that head-rope as a weapon. There are very few computer games that have been coded to handle that particular idea but a human DM can run with it.

[Ben-San]

The appeal is that you're playing a game with your friends. I love console RPGs as much as anyone but they're not the same kind of thing, and MMOs allow very limited forms of interaction.

[jaydub]

Yeah, half-orcs were taken out of 4E because they "imply a very ugly backstory we don't want to dwell on".

"comic way too wordy for chief grugruk sometimes"

QFT

[littlefallsmets]

cockatrice

...really?

[CortJstr]

...really?

You got a problem with the Bible?

[Bobby Isosceles]

Well the actual role-playing is part of it for some people. For others it's the free form aspect. Let's say you've killed a cockatrice (which turns creatures it touches into stone). If a pen and paper game you can tell the DM that you want to wear gloves, cut its head off, and attach the head to a hook on a rope, then swing that head-rope as a weapon. There are very few computer games that have been coded to handle that particular idea but a human DM can run with it.

'cept Nethack

[CortJstr]

'cept Nethack

I know Nethack will let you swing a cockatrice corpse like a club, but I wasn't aware it would let you make a swinging rope of stoney doom.

[Bobby Isosceles]

I know Nethack will let you swing a cockatrice corpse like a club, but I wasn't aware it would let you make a swinging rope of stoney doom.

No, but it's pretty complex. You can't be overburdened when you go between floors or you'll fall on it. You can touch it to meatballs and turn them into rocks for slings. You can dip it in potions and make stones. You can turn metal rings into granite rings, etc.

[Ben-San]

Nethack is the specific reason I said "very few", and the reason it does that is that for many years now it has effectively had a human DM for that, albeit not in realtime. The reason Nethack has so many things like that is because of people asking the devs "hey, what if I want to (xyz)?"

This incidentally makes Nethack a coding nightmare, I'm told; the whole thing runs on a morass of special cases and exceptions. But it is good fun, and Nethack is the closest you'll find to replicating the experience of playing D&D with a human DM using the Random Dungeon Generation Tables.

[Bobby Isosceles]

Nethack is the specific reason I said "very few", and the reason it does that is that for many years now it has effectively had a human DM for that, albeit not in realtime. The reason Nethack has so many things like that is because of people asking the devs "hey, what if I want to (xyz)?"

This incidentally makes Nethack a coding nightmare, I'm told; the whole thing runs on a morass of special cases and exceptions. But it is good fun, and Nethack is the closest you'll find to replicating the experience of playing D&D with a human DM using the Random Dungeon Generation Tables.

Nethack is a morass of special cases and exceptions, but it is exceptionally well written and commented code.