Post/Author/DateTime	Post
WolfBlade 02-16-04, 06:01 AM	Right, this is my first ever post so please be gentle! My question is this (and please note i have no idea whether or not this topic has been discussed before, i've had a flick through and cant see anything similar)- has anybody else over the past few years noticed that every D&D product released has just been a collection of feats and prestige classes based around some theme or another? What i mean is, all the rule books seem to be is rules. Now i'm a fan of what i think is referred to as the "crunchy stuff" but if there is nothing there to back it up then where's the fun? To illustrate my point, i recently picked up issue 315 of dragon (we get them quite late over here which is enough of a pain lol). I was really looking forward to this particular issue since it was supposed to be about all of the campaigns that i played and read about when i was younger. Man was i disappointed. All i got were more feats and prestige classes! For example the article billed as the return of Strahd - far from being interesting it was two sets of stats for the same character! there was no background information whatsoever, which for a character with such a deep and well developed background was a crime! the article gave absolutely no indication of who Strahd was, how you could use him in your games (except in the purely numbers sense), nor what ravenloft was supposed to be all about. The tiny bits of articles about the various campaigns were helpful in this respect but what shouldhave been a solid group of articles desigend to get me all misty eyed for the days of old was just one big disappointment. As a second example, the Complete Warrior. Aside from the fact that most of this was just a rehash of a bunch of books i already had (admitedly updated to 3.5, but i can do that myself thanks) there wasn't much "Complete" about it. What was given was a bunch of numbers to play just about any kind of warrior. While this is cool and had some of my players drooling in anticipation, it didn't give any idea of what it was to be a warrior. There was no discussion about what being a samurai meant - he was a warrior who just happened to specialise in the use of a katana. The chapter on warfare was nice but woefully short, coming in at about a fifth of the book i think, and a fair amount of that was once again, numbers. Now i don't want to start any kind of arguement with the people to whome rules are the meat and drink of the D&D game. I just remember a time when the game was about more than just the rules. However, i find that most of the new books that are released hold almost no interest for me. I have the core books so any other rules i need i can quite happily make up. What I'd like to see is "interesting" stuff - background, roleplaying tips, character building ideas (and not in the vein of which classes and prestige classes do you want to take in the future) and anything really that doesn't involve a new feat. Anyway, i just wanted to see what everyone else's opinion was on this matter.
SputnikCorp 02-16-04, 07:33 AM	i prefer the term "fluffy" but i know what you mean. i'm reading through the latest dragon and i find it's articles dry and lifeless. i miss the older days in where dragon was filled with alternative rules and background stories. even the core books are somewhat dull, but D&D core books have always been dull to read, like it's a school text. i would like to see a WotC publication on the finer points of roleplaying, like TSR did with the catacomb guide. i learned the finer bits of RPing from other RPGs. V:tM and cyberpunk 2020 had excellent books strickly for the gamemaster to improve his game. the stuff i read there, i brought to my D&D game.