[X] My Assistant

[Yerameyahu]

Haha. THACO was never *that* bad, it's just annoying to have to do the math, use the lookup table, and/or roll 'backwards'. It's much nicer if the players are always trying to roll high, or low. There was some trouble related to this principle in the earlier (pre-3rd?) versions of Eclipse Phase.

[almost normal]

Eh... the 'Living' stuff bores me to tears with 4e. It's all senseless combat, which puts the focus on 4e's horrible combat system.

[KarmaInferno]

I played TSR/WotC/RPGA Living games from back when they started at game conventions to shortly after 4E appeared.

I had a blast in 1E & 2E (Living City started just before 2nd Edition appeared), and 3E was still pretty fun. 3.5 for various reasons started seeing many of the campaigns focus more on combat, but it was not so bad that it didn't hold my attention.

I gave 4E LFR campaign a serious shot. Really. Off and on, I played a few characters for over a year. I can honestly say the campaign eventually bored me to tears. It was so much more like just playing a board game rather than a roleplaying game.

It wasn't just the rule system, though. The LFR campaign managers didn't seem to realize the strength of a Living campaign is continuity. You have a character that, unlike standard convention one-shot games, you keep and grow and evolve. As such it's important to afford the character opportunities to integrate with the world, for the player to become emotionally invested in the setting and have a sense of belonging.

Previous campaigns generally centered around a particular locale, and attempted with varying success to flesh out that place as a living breathing society. They had local organizations to join, local institutions that became familiar, and more or less served to provide a feeling of "home".

Instead, in LFR, you more or less had the character randomly appearing in locations around the world, solving some problem, and then wandering off again. There was little sense that you were a part of the setting, instead being the perpetual outsider. You quickly saw a huge number of players and characters both that really didn't care about the people they encountered, going through the motions merely to collect loot and experience points.

I also thought that destroying the existing world setting was a stupid plotline decision.

I got one wizard to level 16 I think and just quit. It wasn't bad, necessarily, it just wasn't particularly engaging.

I still play other living campaigns, just not anything offered by WotC.



-k

[Bigity]

THAC0 isn't hard. If you couldn't grasp it, you probably weren't going to enjoy 1st edition anyway, it was pretty cryptic in places. I think they left it in as a nerd check quite frankly.

[fistandantilus4....]

1st edition's attack system was a table, never really explained. Find your class level, find the beastie's AC, there, now you know what you need to hit. THAC0 was at least based on something that was explained. It was "To Hit Armor Class 0" - THAC0. Sutract their Armor Class from your THAC0 score. And yeah, it still seemed very much a geek thing. I remember an exchange my wife had with a friend of hers years ago.
Wife:" You named your dog THAC0? You're such a geek."
Friend: "But you know what it means." *knowing look*
Wife: "Damn."


I was going to have a chance to playtest 5th edition. A friend of mine was getting a packet for it, I have no idea how. But now work has me out of country for a while, so that's going to be a little more difficult. Never tried D&D via skype.

1st edition had afeel to it that I somehow can't explain. It just felt different. There's certainly some nostalgia to it, but maybe it was the type of creatures you were prone to encounter, or random rolls for disease. I'm not sure. Green Ronin did a great job with Rappan Athuk trying to get that feel, IMO. Still haven't finished that damn dungeon. About 1/3rd through if anyone's played it.

I do agree that Pathfinder is more a D&D 3.75. If you hated the whole system, you probably wont like Pathfinder. If you liked the system but hated the holes, you'll probably love it. A lot easier than learn something from scratch that's for sure.

[Wounded Ronin]

Instead, in LFR, you more or less had the character randomly appearing in locations around the world, solving some problem, and then wandering off again. There was little sense that you were a part of the setting, instead being the perpetual outsider. You quickly saw a huge number of players and characters both that really didn't care about the people they encountered, going through the motions merely to collect loot and experience points.

LOL, that's like Knight Rider!

[fistandantilus4....]

LOL, that's like Knight Rider!

(IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)
Thank you sir for that flash back.

[StealthSigma]

1st edition's attack system was a table, never really explained. Find your class level, find the beastie's AC, there, now you know what you need to hit. THAC0 was at least based on something that was explained. It was "To Hit Armor Class 0" - THAC0. Sutract their Armor Class from your THAC0 score. And yeah, it still seemed very much a geek thing. I remember an exchange my wife had with a friend of hers years ago.
Wife:" You named your dog THAC0? You're such a geek."
Friend: "But you know what it means." *knowing look*
Wife: "Damn."

Oh, I know what it means and I'm sure if I spent any amount of time with it, it would be fairly trivial to grasp. I like to joke about THAC0. There's not much purpose to memorizing or learning things you aren't using. More so the problem was a lack of players. I lived in a rural town and the "card and RPG" hobby shop was literally off the access road used for semis to get to a grocery store and it didn't last forever. I really didn't have the opportunity to play PnP RPGs until college.

[fistandantilus4....]

Yeah unfortunately I've seen a lot of those hobby shops come and go as well. It's probably even harder these days although I still try to buy from my Friendly Neighborhood Game Store. It's hard though when they sell Street Legends for $45, and when we went to pick it up, even my 12 year old daughter said it would be cheaper to just buy it off Amazon. Just sad.

BUT they do at least have a great Pathfinder selection. That's another great thing that I've seen from they're so far, they've got a ton of material out there.