now I have been working on a book set in
the world of the Trojan War for Roble
gaming and I wanted to use the real
quest system but actually for commercial
reasons I have gone with something
called the d20 system the d20 system is
based on Dungeons & Dragons 3.5 edition
a 3.5 Edition ok yes
it's thicker again substantially thicker
and it still has microscopically small
print so the these were expensive books
are they're heavy as well when you have
to carry these around as I end up having
to do so quite often you really know how
heavy they are but I'm I was with
annoyed that they then ditched this for
4th edition so there's now a yet another
version of Dungeons & Dragons and this
is 4th edition which is even more
expensive and here are just two of the
core rule books the Dungeon Master's
guide and The Player's Handbook I
thought in my my naivety that I would
just have had to transfer all the stats
from without written for the 3.5 into
fourth edition it would involve a bit of
work converting but then I bought these
books and oh dear
pretty soon after starting reading these
I realized this is not a roleplay game
at all this is some sort of weird I've
heard it described as World of Warcraft
on the tabletop that's not actually a
bad description it's a sort of weird
miniatures skirmish game an incredibly
slow one
recently I played a game of this in four
hours we had one thing happened we had
to fight with five Cobalts that's five
very you know fairly weedy monsters and
the fight had actually started before
that sits up at the end of the previous
session so the entire session was a
fight with fireballs that's it it took
us four hours now literally we know
exactly veteran seasoned players but no
system should be that slow and
system absolutely demands miniatures you
can't really play this game very easily
at all without floor plans and
miniatures and so forth which is a bit
of a faff and it also takes away from
the thought of describing what you're
doing which is really what role playing
is largely about the very first time I
played fourth aired I was rather
unimpressed one thing that rather failed
to impress me was that no one at any
point said anything in character
it really was treated as a skirmish game
a tabletop skirmish game and the system
doesn't enforce no role play gaming but
it makes roleplay gaming extremely
difficult and now my character I thought
had a rather good idea my character was
actually a thief but he was pretending
to be a wizard
he went around in a roach and staff and
and so forth so he looked like a wizard
right only the pretense lasted no time
at all because as soon as anything
happens the game started I had to
announce to the referee which one of my
powers I was using and of course I had
thief powers so all the other players
knew immediately that I wasn't a wizard
I was actually a thief I couldn't a role
play the Guinness system got in the way
of role play gaming the system should be
the servant of role-playing never its
master it got in the way of role-playing
and uh okay so now does the thief who's
dressed a bit strangely and then for us
the game I just every every turn and now
so I'm going to use this power to kill
the monster I'm on why there was this
weird sort of ant like scent or creature
and it had a stone of power on its back
then we did we had encounter some of
these stones before and we knew that if
you smash them they lost their power and
that they powered the creatures so what
I did is I use my turn to just run
around the creature the other members of
the party who knew the system quite well
thought that was mad and they were
actually bit annoyed with me for not
having used one of my fifi powers to
sling it off whatever but the next round
is they have master stroke I said to the
referee right I leave on its back and I
smash the stone perhaps that no you have
to tell me what you
powers you're using well I'm leaving all
the college stuff strike back on just I
don't know come up with a die roll that
seems reasonable but now no there was no
power that my character had for leaping
on the back of his weird animated
creatures and smashing the magical stone
so I couldn't do it now you could say a
good ref could have could have come up
with something on the fly and yeah
actually I think a better ref paps would
have but the system got in the way
Heath well I'm playing this game I know
the rules and you can't do that in this
game so power void that this this is
just an otter roleplay game system at
all there are loads of bizarre things in
it it's silver all the weird stupid
abstract concepts like class and level
what the hell is level you get more hit
points what are hit points in a D&D no
one really knows
well isn't adventure in which a world in
which a load of catwalk models seem to
go for no explicable reason down into
subterranean caverns and kill monsters
in a skill your skill you're either
trained in the skill or you're not so
you can't individualize your character
by deciding I'm going to be really good
at this particular skill because know if
you're X character class you can you
choose to be trained in something or not
and and that's it
saving rules by a large saving rules are
like tossing a coin it's 50/50 Oh
healing surges this is perfect in this
game after a fight you can use up
healing surges and these bring you back
up to full hit points so you go into a
fight you get mangled in the fight and
after a fight have a little rest all
right expend for healing surges each of
which killers a quarter of your hit
points and you're perfectly all right
again well what's the world is this one
you can go into a fight and get bashed
up very very badly and then a couple of
minutes later your big fight it's like
being a cartoon world it's like it's
like why coyote after being blown up by
his own ACME dynamite for the 15th time
the duck in the cartoon is completely
black and hairless but in the next scene
he's fine again just like all these
pictures in the in the rule book I
notice there's not a scratch on anyone's
clothing
frayed end now of course the most likely
people to leave civilization and go off
into the wilderness down into monster
infested phenomenally dangerous
subterranean labyrinth full of Filth ah
these would be young thin and uncommonly
attractive women don't you think oh no
wait wait no I'm wrong therefore they'd
be the least likely and no wrong again
I'll take no babies that's right the
least likely people to do that would be
babies and I think young thin uncommonly
attractive women probably secondly
slightly the characters are shoehorned
into their into their battlefield roles
in the current game that I'm playing I'm
a wizard and essentially I'm just
artillery I've got lots of spells but
they're all the same all my spells are
zapped just eyes at view I SAP you a lot
as I view and the guy next to you as I
be with flame I've liked exactly with
coal that's up there just zapped I'm the
guy stands the back and Justins apt them
ooh
where's the plot where's the character
where's the interest so there you go D&D
as a role-playing game I never was a
great prop Lane again you could say that
even in the early days it was just
advanced Ludo but well it's certainly
dead now
you