Tuesday, January 17, 2012

Simple-yet-Wahoo? Seriously?

Based on everyone else's post I read the Full Monte post and have two questions:

1. Why the hell would I want to play a character that didn't match what the DM wanted to do with their game/campaign? That doesn't seem like very good gamesmanship.

2. Say for example you have a group playing largely new school characters and an old school character. What the hell are you going to do when the group decides they want to search something? Do you have one player role-play while everybody else asks what the difficulty check is and wants to roll dice?

While I'm at it, here's a quote from The Full Monte in the Ivory Tower:

As D&D players, we shouldn't allow rule preferences to separate us. In the end, we have a lot more in common than we have differences, even if some of us prefer the simple-yet-wahoo style of old school Basic D&D and others the carefully balanced elegance of 4th Edition—or anything in between.

Seriously? Why the need for off-hand comments? "Simple-yet-wahoo" games must be played by "simple-yet-wahoo" players. Yeah. Thanks for that.

"Simple-yet-wahoo" - is that how WotC wins hearts and minds? Is this the great goodwill campaign at work? It amazes me how they just cant help themselves. This just confirms suspicions. Was that comment really, really necessary? What a jerk.

6 comments:

  1. «Why the need for off-hand comments?»

    You mean like «The Full Monte in the Ivory Tower»?

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  2. I'm with Greg here. "Simple yet wahoo" may be a slam, and it may just be a tin ear on Cook's part... but "carefully balanced elegance" is just embarrassing butt-kissery.

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  3. Wow ... Is it really necessary that you take anything as a personal attack?

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  4. Yeah, I'm not really sure what is wrong with "simple yet wahoo". Isn't simplicity of rules one of the selling points for OSR stuff? And the lack of rules is supposed to make it more open and "try anything"? And as for the 4e part of it, again, that's 4es thing. Balance in the game experience, and if you appreciate that it does it's job rather well (I think elegantly is a bit flowery a descriptor but, whatever)

    I guess... if you are looking for offense you'll find it, but it's probably not worth your time to go looking for it.

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  5. I enjoy your blog a lot, but seriously; stop whining. What WoTC is doing is probably misguided and greed-driven, but the designers obviously mean well, and we don't have to buy their stuff if we prefer our Red Box D&D .

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  6. I understand what folks are saying, but this kind of thing bugs me. It's very similar to making all the 3E folks feel like idiots because they weren't playing 4th when it came out. Is it needed? No it isn't.

    I don't have the podium, they do. I'm just responding in my own way, on my own blog. If there no off-hand comment, then I wouldn't be defensive.

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