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Finally, a practical use for Microsoft Surface!
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Ok, maybe not so practical. But still pretty awesome.
Microsoft Surface DnD demo. --- Jon "And that must have caused my dad's brain to break in half, replaced by a purely mechanical engine of revenge!" 
Slick! But the article's author is right -- the virtual dicerolling has to go.
-- Bob --------- Then the horns kicked in... ...and my shoes began to squeak. 
Looks like 4D&D has found its natural play environment.
No, I don't like 4th edition. What gave it away?  --- Those who fear the darkness have never seen what the light can do.
My roommate and I want a Surface just for that. Sadly, neither of us has the spare moolah lying around. Maybe by the time the DnD program reaches completion
Surface will drop to a reasonable price. That said, what's your beef with 4e Dragon? 
For most its the fact that the entire engine is based around resolving combat encounters, and does so in a way that is very similar to most MMORPGs.
IOW, that its basically emulating a video game. ----------------- Epsilon
Agreed. They took out all of the economic options (aside from buying gear/selling loot), most of the utility spells, any element of chance in character
builds, half the versatility of the Wizard class, and 80% of multiclassing. They also removed most of the differences between fighters and mages- most of the variety between classes, period. I want a '3.75e', where the game has most of the streamlining of 4e, but all the choice/variety of 3/3.5: a pen-and-paper RPG with less bookkeeping, rather than an MMO adapted to tabletop. I already have a few mechanics in mind, and yes, it can be done. My Unitarian Jihad Name is: Brother Atom Bomb of Courteous Debate. Get yours. I've been writing a bit.
Some people consider a lot of those reasons positive aspects of 4e. I do, however, definitely see the issue with a lack of mechanical variety in combat between
classes. It also has a certain level of... rigidity, I suppose, lack of flexibility that 3.X had. That said, my group has enjoyed it immensely since it came out.
It's like a summer action movie- fun, but shallow, and strangely unsatisfying.
If Wizards had introduced it as an alternative to the deeper, more complex/complicated rules that have characterized every previous version, it would've been less irritating. Instead, they replaced 'classic' D&D, and alienated a (possibly significant) portion of their existing consumers. I've played 4e, as a Wizard and a Warlock, and my battle plan was essentially 1) Fire Encounter powers from range. 2) If the enemy seems to be tough, use Daily powers. 3) Spam at-will abilities for the rest of the fight. I could write a bot that could do this, and I suck at programming. My 3.5e Bard/Fighter/Thief took far more thought to use effectively, and was more fun to play. (I should mention that most everybody in my 4e group had some sort of distraction going whilst playing. One guy was IMing his girlfriend, while another built TF2 maps, I read fanfic, and a fourth modded/painted Nerf guns. None of us needed to put a lot of brainpower in to play 4e, but our DM loved how easy it was to run.) My Unitarian Jihad Name is: Brother Atom Bomb of Courteous Debate. Get yours. I've been writing a bit.
Yeah. 4e is the M&M's of D&D compared to 3.5's lasagna.
My suggestion: Invest in Pathfinder. -- Sucrose Octanitrate. Proof positive that with sufficient motivation, you can make anything explode.
I don't have any personal experience with it, but I think the Frank and K Tomes (Tome of Necromancy, Tome of Fiends, Dungeonomicon, Races of War) are pretty awesome. They basically went "fighters suck and casters
are crazygonuts, let's make everybody as crazygonuts as wizards." So the Monk can punch holes to another dimension, the Samurai can cut you in half 10 times before you realize they started moving, and the Barbarian is completely over-the-top RIP AND TEAR. Also they looked at a bunch of other broken or weird stuff (wealth by level, the widespread existence of dungeons) and reworked it to make it actually make sense.
A lot of the reasons people like 3.5 were why I hated it. I shouldn't need a math degree to play, fighters were boring, wizards went from useless to
brokenly unstoppable after a couple levels, if I didn't have all the splat books I was made to feel like I was gimping myself. The entire concept of 3.5 irritated me to begin with, why didn't you do this stuff in the first place? Complexity isn't bad, but it isn't good either. Anyhoo, didn't mean to start an edition war, just thought it was a cool little piece of tech. --- Jon "And that must have caused my dad's brain to break in half, replaced by a purely mechanical engine of revenge!" Quote: Bluemage wrote: http://www.d20pfsrd.com/Home ------------------ Epsilon Quote: Herr Bad Moon wrote:It is a cool piece of tech, and I'm sorry for getting so nerdcore about this. One thing, though. D&D doesn't need a math degree. A ledger or two, with half the pages bookmarked, sure- but not a math degree. GURPS requires a math degree. My Unitarian Jihad Name is: Brother Atom Bomb of Courteous Debate. Get yours. I've been writing a bit.
MS Surface is stupidly popular in the biomedical field. Nice 8-32Meg tables with ultra-high-res biomedical images on it? Surface *shines* here.
Quote:GURPS requires a math degree.Only if you want to design a bicycle in 3rd Ed Revised. -- Bob --------- Then the horns kicked in... ...and my shoes began to squeak.  Bob Schroeck Wrote:Yeah. Even the All The Tropes page about GURPSgets that right... now that I've edited it.Quote:GURPS requires a math degree.Only if you want to design a bicycle in 3rd Ed Revised. -- Rob Kelk "Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of the same sovereign, servants of the same law." - Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012 
It's when you design a plane and find it cannot get off the ground and you then have to work out whether increasing the engine power (taking into account
the change in fuel consumption) or the wing area (taking into account the weight and air resistance) would help more that it really becomes more effort than it's worth.
Eh, all the big things in life took what seemed like was more effort than it was worth. Look at how much trial and error went on over nuclear power and
weaponry. (Though some may dispute the use of having the latter. I think it's a nice little deterent, and an effective tactical weapon in the smaller formats. Burrowing missiles, anyone?)
Designing the power to lift ratio of the ride of a pulp adventurer should not take longer than a game session. Remember, we're talking a fictional plane
here, not a real one.
Then go with the GURPS 4e method: find a real-world one and write down its actual stats.
-- Rob Kelk "Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of the same sovereign, servants of the same law." - Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012 |
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