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A Sword Without a Hilt: A Song of Ice and Fire/D&D 3.5 Crossover

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Takesis said:
@DragonParadox, Viserys' thoughts on publicly curing Sandor's facial burn as a reward for the awesome showing?

Basically sending a message to the East and West: the True King has the hands of a healer.
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We're all mostly in unilateral agreement to let Sandor ask for it himself. We've made no secret that we can repair that kind of damage, up to maimings, the only reason Sandor was disbelieving the first offer from a mageling is he thought she was ridiculing him.
 
Duesal said:
Sandor has dibs on killing Gregor, but I call the corpse for us!
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Ugh. Phone typing went nuts.

Edit: does Ellis not have dibs tho? Anyway, I'm seeing this less as a battle and more as a execution
Edit: no doubt that this has been discussed, but I'm curious. If someone is a Kinslayer (Gregor's sister) does than mean that they are fair game in the eyes of the OG for kin (Sandor) to go out and kill them?
 
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Goldfish said:
I know very little about 5e, just what people I trust to know what they're talking about have shared. It doesn't seem like I would enjoy it much at all.

D&D lost me with the clusterfuck that was 4e, and then I found Pathfinder. So long, WotC.
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Eh, the problem isn't that it's baaaad per se. It just seems to be intended as a gateway ruleset. Which means they have removed all of the complicated parts of building a character as well as removing most of the sorts of rules confusions that would trip up a new DM.

I think people just expected it to build on 3.5, but WOTC decided that instead it would be more valuable to pull in inexperienced players and take advantage of the current cultural upswing. It just isn't really intended for players looking for a deep mechanical experience with complicated rules that need to be pored over. It is perfect for newbies and those who prefer a streamlined style. I personally see the appeal and the complaints. I mean I have friends from my hometown that only got into it because the simplicity of 5e meant that they and the novice DM could easily learn as they went.
 
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Hang on a second, dragonpens. Strategic assets we want to keep control of, so only party member level trusted people have them; that's my view of general thread view on them.

Apologies if this includes people that have them, but should we ask Hermetia, Wyla, Yarel, Uthero if they want one? (Relath and Sann also(?), Myr woman... Eh.)

Seems like the time for it would have been during our formalisation of the titles, but it wasn't included (unless it's been done already, in which case ignore all this) :(, but tbh, we can just have Viserys' say "on further consideration, I should have done this when we spoke a moment ago" to the subordinates being asked if they want one. Or w/e.

Point is, I think Hermetia will really benefit from a Dragonpen.

Goldfish said:
clusterfuck that was 4e.
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*Hsssss!* you speak so lightly of dark creations of horror and fail. Have a thought for those who have suffered such a creation!

(I mean, Not me, I've just read about it, and. Ewe. Looks so, so bad. I would hate to be reminded of it if I had played it :p)

;)
 
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Personally I prefer 5e precisely because it's less overly complex. It makes it easy to use the rules as a framework for telling a story, rather than getting in my way by forcing me to pour over rules and splat books and niche options to try and simulate all aspects of the world within the rules on order to make things make sense.
I also love it that the numbers are more sane. Example: Viserys is able to reliably make checks well over 100 in social situations. Sure as a player that is awesome (big numbers! Yay!) But as a DM its a ridiculous pain in the ass. So much so that even in this thread where 3.5 is king we've had to rip out the system wholesale and input an entirely new system just to make ourselves not win forever.
That's one example, but that sort of problem crops up in every part of the system.
 
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I think the chief complaints aren't about it not being complex enough. When I complained about people pushing Pathfinder, people pointed out all it does was simplify some things, with no obvious downsides. I mean, there's probably some, but the point being the argument boils down to some simplification and streamlining being good.

5e is bad because it veers too far in that direction, but it also creates some serious world building issues by having no real sense of scaling, whereas 3.5 for example has pretty clear linear progression, the only jarring thing, the thing that causes E6 campaigns in the first place, is that the difference in scale from level 1-5 to 6-10 is pretty huge, and the difference from 6-10 to 11-15 is like night and day.

16-20 is basically a completely different game with the possibility of geopolitical implications and other complex issues that can't be modeled very well without additional rules being made.

This whole argument is about different demographics demanding different things out of a system. You can already hatchet down 3.5 into a smaller scale game. 5e doesn't give you any choices about it.
 
When I want to play a simple game, we play Everyone is John over drinks. The best things 4chan has ever produced: the rules are quick and fit in one page, it's flexible and fun, and it even uses my million d6 effectively!

When I want another RPG, we play D&D 3.X
 
TalonofAnathrax said:
When I want to play a simple game, we play Everyone is John over drinks. The best things 4chan has ever produced: the rules are quick and fit in one page, it's flexible and fun, and it even uses my million d6 effectively!

When I want another RPG, we play D&D 3.X
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Basically this. D&D with granularity isn't necessarily bad.

D&D that's been cut down from many of its essential components does nothing but drive off the people who played before. You are trading up one demographic for another.
 
Well I have apparently helped in creating the derail anyway, let's dive in.
Crake said:
16-20 is basically a completely different game
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I agree, the difference is I don't think that's a good thing.

Crake said:
D&D that's been cut down from many of its essential components does nothing but drive off the people who played before. You are trading up one demographic for another.
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Speaking as someone who's played for the majority of my life, ranging on editions from 2-5, I disagree with a bunch of this. 1. A bunch of those components are far from essential (as evidenced by the fact that 5e runs perfectly well without them), and 2. I don't feel driven off in the slightest.
 
Sqweaktoy said:
Well I have apparently helped in creating the derail anyway, let's dive in.

I agree, the difference is I don't think that's a good thing.


Speaking as someone who's played for the majority of my life, ranging on editions from 2-5, I disagree with a bunch of this. 1. A bunch of those components are far from essential (as evidenced by the fact that 5e runs perfectly well without them), and 2. I don't feel driven off in the slightest.
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Now to be fair to literally the entirety of my argument, I posited that it is a demographic issue. People demand different things from the system.

This type of thing clearly cleaves along certain lines. People have expectations from the system, and when they aren't met, they go back to the older editions. Deny it, whatever, but it's patently true.
 
What makes me view 5e with a lot of apprehension is the fake depth. It's still the rules heavy and constraining system of D&D, but they cut down on a ton of options, leaving me a lot heavier constrained then 3.5, which has a splat-book and thus a rules conform way to achieve almost everything.

It's like... training wheels D&D, offering a lot of it's problems in granular character design and none of the depth that 3.5 and Pathfinder have. And I hate constraining systems.

If you want to play mainly story focused game, I would suggest to try out FUDGE, which leaves your with a system so light on rules that you can explain it in 15 minutes.
If you want an engine heavy game, I turn to something like D&D 3.5 or Shadowrun, where the engine has many, many options.

But 5E looks like neither fish nor meat.
 
Crake said:
Now to be fair to literally the entirety of my argument, I posited that it is a demographic issue. People demand different things from the system.

This type of thing clearly cleaves along certain lines. People have expectations from the system, and when they aren't met, they go back to the older editions. Deny it, whatever, but it's patently true.
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It is true, but that was also the point of the new edition. The older players are unlikely to truly leave the world of D&D/tabletop gaming, and the new players are the next generation and newblood of the scene who can later be pulled down the rabbit hole of 3.5 or whatever your personally preferred variant is.
 
Crake said:
Now to be fair to literally the entirety of my argument, I posited that it is a demographic issue. People demand different things from the system.

This type of thing clearly cleaves along certain lines. People have expectations from the system, and when they aren't met, they go back to the older editions. Deny it, whatever, but it's patently true.
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Oh that's entirely fair. I know I went stomping back to my 3.5 nerd cave when 4e came out railing about blasphemy and how they made it into a video game and how it was too streamlined and simplified and etc.

I've been where you are, I'm just not there about this. Also DMing 4e was awesome because it was super easy, I just hated playing it.

Edit: my new phone's autocorrupt is insane. Entoront? Really?
 
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5e is designed for settings that fit the "points of light/swords and sorcery" descriptors. 4 PCs can wander around, have random encounters and then sleep in towns that are basically "medieval, but with a few magical ribbons on".

However 3.X was a very different game. The basic rules and cosmology (remember levels 16-20?) weren't like that. D&D was a game where easy access to Teleport was a thing, where proper preparation buffs could and did swing entire encounters, and where thinking mattered beyond what the GM gave you with terrain and whatnot.
In 5e, that's mostly gone. Social shenanigans and terrain shenanigans are still possible (but still depend on GM making it possible in-setting) but the "brain" part of combat is gone. It feels like a loss. We sacrificed that on the altar of simple gaming, without even making the game simple enough to explain to a beginner within 15 minutes !

It's a failure on both counts. Failure at providing an engaging game (fewer options all around) AND failure at providing a simple one.

And of course the strong decrease of the "D&D is high fantasy" thing is a huge problem for me. That was one of the things I loved about D&D, and now you took it away ?!?
 
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