Why are so many D&D fans acting like if D&D was the standard...

It looks like all these little shits are being quite boisterous today. Did a mass ban just expire or something?

To be fair, 3.5/Pathfinder IS frustratingly awful once you've played something better. Complaining about it on the internet isn't going to get their groups to try something new... but I imagine it makes them feel better.

>To be fair, 3.5/Pathfinder IS frustratingly awful once you've played something better.

But I've played tons and tons of games, and I still don't agree that 3.PF is awful even if I prefer other games.

Some groups like what it offers, and there's noting wrong with that, and these trolls don't really seem to appreciate just how annoying they are.

If anything, your post is just another part of the problem, because it perpetuates a myth that there's anything inherently wrong with liking it, which is what these trolls use to fuel their perpetual butthurt.

>Even actual forgotten realms and dragonlance don't do much dungeon diving

I never really got into Dragonlance but there is a fuckton of what can generally be considered more or less literal "dungeon crawling" in Salvatore's FR novels, as well as high adventure in general. Sellswords Trilogy, for example. A lot of the arcs feature going through caves, forts ,etc. Hunter's Blade Trilogy featured what is effectively FR's Ullanor, where a few main heroes go to confront the orc leader at the center of his war camp, which imo is very D&D.

There is definitely a segment of fantasy fiction which focuses on high adventuring and meshes well in style with D&D so your assertion is somewhat to begin with, unless your criteria is exploring literal dungeons, i.e. underground cells where they chain prisoners in castles.

Implying that FR isn't very D&D is flat out lying when they literally wrote transition novels to match the new magic system / pantheon post-3.5E

> Play 5e
> Start vomiting, when people suggest playing any other edition

And super common healing magic that removes tension.

And high lv adventures being basically superman.

I can't take anyone seriously who says 3.5pf isn't awful. Between caster-supremacy, the extreme levels of min-maxing and balancing issues creating "builds" that can break the game, feat chains that every character NEEDS to have, HP bloat, magic item bloat, dump stats, and skills not even being a thing you get on certain classes (2+int points per level... really martials?)...

Look... I know it's bad to say someone is have badwrong fun... but 3.5 and Pathfinder literally drag down the quality of the entire hobby when people are introduced to it as their first tabletop game and start to think it's issues are "normal".

>forever gm is looking for suggestions for an alternative system.
>he's wrong and and obviously a troll.
You're a cunt mate. And not the good kind.

>I can't take anyone seriously who says 3.5pf isn't awful.

And, you are a silly troll that has nothing worth saying, even though you've been repeating it ad nauseam.

Why I bothered to reply to you in the first place boggles my mind.

>But I've played tons and tons of games, and I still don't agree that 3.PF is awful even if I prefer other games.

I agree.

I have played 2e, 3e, 3.5, PF, 4e, 5e, and I have also played Shadowrun, Exalted, and Traveller among non-D&D stuff. And yet I find myself going back to 3.5 like a well-worn bathrobe: everyone's wondering how I can wear something so ratty, I find it warm and comfy.

>Why are so many D&D fans acting like if D&D was the standard, basic fantasy every other fantasy rpg came from
Because it wa-
>standard, basic fantasy
oh wait nevermind yeah you're right.

I reckon that it's more that it's big and popular and thus things have been modeled after IT rather than the other way around - this includes RPGs, which in most cases owe some not-insignificant portion of their DNA to it.

It's like how Tolkien is not necessarily representative for myths and legends, yet its dwarves and elves have become the de facto standard. And despite that being probably one of the most popular fantasy franchises out there, his elves and dwarves are hardly the standard either - just look at some of the other franchises that got movies, like Narnia - there's not exactly a lot of overlap in there.

5e is amazing, although I find it really really hard to debate the people who say it's lacking in customization.

Personally, I like that the mechanical bloat of 3.5/pf has been largely cut out and left to actual roleplaying, but people do have a point when they say your characters will stop being very different on-paper after you've played each class 2 or 3 times.

I'm not just saying the game sucks though, I gave several reasons why it has problems. It's not "trolling" to bring up legitimate issues as a reason for disliking something. Even DnD itself has tried to address many of these issues with releases of it's later versions... just a shame alot of the fof people seem to have the "THEY CHANGED IT, NOW IT SUCKS!" attitude.

Except everything he said is true.

It's a shame 3.5 fans in general aren't interested in criticism. They just dismiss everything as trolling and keep convincing themselves their system is the greatest thing ever. Like North Korea.

D&D is really destroying the hobby.

Fantasy became super popular in recent years. Millions of people started to love it thanks to LotR or GoT.

Then these people hear about rpg games and some decide to try them. But 90% of the time they are introduced to the hobby with D&D, hate it and leave.

Dungeon World is really destroying the hobby.
Fantasy became super popular in recent years. Millions of people started to love it thanks to LotR or GoT.
Then these people hear about rpg games and some decide to try them. But 90% of the time they are introduced to the hobby with Dungeon World, hate it and leave.

O D & D
D
&
D

Embrace the skilless system and actually bounded accuracy, kohai.

Except Dungeon world isn't 90% of people's first experience with the hobby, and would probably not turn 90% of them away.

Veeky Forums is really destroying the hobby.

Fantasy became super popular in recent years. Millions of people started to love it thanks to LotR or GoT.

Then these people hear about rpg games and some decide to try them. But 90% of the time, after they are introduced to the hobby, they visit Veeky Forums hate it and leave.

Seriously, you guys are just toxic. Lighten up, learn to leave each to their own.

Lol if you think people who are new to fantasy in general are even going to have Dungeon World on their radar, senpai.

Shit's a niche-ass product in a niche-ass market where Dungeons & Dragons, Warhammer 40k and Vampire are the only games that have actual brand recognition outside it.

I like DW and i smirked.

>TFW when I literally didn't know what Warhammer 40k was until I started visiting Veeky Forums.

>something something normie reee
You're fine user. There are 7+ billion people in this world, less than 1% of them know or play 40k. Same with most games. It's okay.

Yeah, D&D is the big famous one while Vampire's brand is mostly just running on vintage fumes from the nineties when it was really big.

40k's got some fairly high-profile games out there, though, like Dawn of War and Space Marine. Warhammer proper also has Total Warhammer and some other stuff out.

Of course, the big issue there is finding out that there's 40k RPGs. Which are all called various things that aren't "Warhammer 40,000", like Dark Heresy and Only War, while the big noticeable 40k tabletop thing that you can find in non-gaming stores is, well, the miniatures.

So since Vampire isn't as big as it used to be, and 40k's RPGs aren't as obvious as their wargame, the go-to thing for newcomers is to google around for Dungeons & Dragons. Maybe they talk to a buddy who's already into the whole D&D thing and hear about Pathfinder, but chances are that a new player will end up with something like 5E's beginners box.

And most people who start out with 5E, or 4E, or 3E, probably don't immediately hate it and leave the hobby forever. Remember, Monopoly is one of the best selling board games ever and I can go out and buy a copy of Snakes & Ladders in my local supermarket if I want to. Hell, people will actively defend Monopoly.
People can handle shit rules, they'll just do what most people do and make a bunch of spot houserules and ignore complicated shit and maybe put in some stuff that makes things more "fun".
So Monopoly, basically.
Fuck money on free parking.

>snowflakes
how the fuck is "the fighter dude, the wizard dude, the cleric dude and the rogue dude" snowflakes? Specially since in the vast majority of editions their classes aren't exclusive. Every NPC that fights likely is a fighter. Every caster is likely a wizard or a cleric too. What makes them "snowflakes"? Are we really in the age of Veeky Forums where if you're not a dirt poor peasant you're a "snowflake donut steel"?

>And high lv adventures being basically superman.
Where did this nonsense even come from anyway.
High level adventurers are nowhere near invincible like superman, unless you're talking about meme shit like pun-pun but that only really applies to D&D 3e anyway, and even then, those builds are pretty much charop fanwank no one ever plays them.

Have you seen Pathfinder General any time in the last year? The snowflakes refer to all the kitsune, catgirls, magical girls, and other anime bullshit that's invaded the hobby over the years.

At least DnD had the sense to distance itself from that garbage... although unfortunately Pathfinder seems to have embraced it wholeheartedly because it sells expansion books to autists looking to legitimize their magical realms when pitching their snowflakes to GMs.

In before bitching about anime on a weeaboo culture website.

>mfw OD&D is too simple for my players to enjoy
>and 4e is too complex for my players to wrap their head around

I fucking love both but my players are the terrible combination of
>can't improvise for shit, and thus if there's nothing in their character sheets saying otherwise they will just "I roll to attack" forever
>cannot remember all the rules like feats and paragon paths and thus make combat take 10x longer trying to remember all the shit they can do in 4e

I need a middle ground
something more complex that gives my players mechanical options because they're too dumb to think outside their character sheet and also something that isn't TOO complex that will make them spend forever every turn trying to remember how to use cleave

lv 20 fighter can destroy an army of low lv enemies. And lv 20 casters are gods.

>Pathfinder
not D&D though
my point still stands

I mean I realize pathfinder is totally D&D 3.75 but actual D&D editions don't have that much snowflake bullshit. The worse that it got was 4e with dragonborn and tieflings being core. When people think "average D&D party" they don't think snowflakes, they think "human fighter, halfling thief, elf wizard, human cleric, dwarf fighter".

>arguing with trolls

For fuck's sake.

That's not superman level invincible, there are plenty of threats to those characters that can easily fuck them up. And the "lv 20 casters are gods" meme is again, only relevant in one edition of D&D, and only in char op fantasies because actual games don't really work like that.

Also, I call bullshit on "fighters can decimate armies" and "casters are gods". In the edition where casters are gods, fighters are fucking garbage and cannot, in fact, decimate armies, and in the editions where fighters can decimate armies, casters aren't gods.

STOP ARGUING WITH A TROLL.
STOP BEING A TROLL.

I CANT
I DONT HAVE ANYTHING BETTER TO DO WITH MY LIFE

>"the lizardman fighter dude, the immortal loli wizard dude, the vampire cleric of Palor dude and the chaotic good half-succubus rogue dude" are snowflakes?

Yeah, they are.

What dnd system even has rules for that shit in core?

Hey man, Lizardman fighter dude was just my character from Skyrim, OK?

Damn racist slaver Dunmer.

To be honest I doubt that "immortal loli wizard dude" would be a special snowflake in a high magic setting. If anything they would be pretty common.

Who the fuck cares about core? The only groups that are going to be completely core are the ones where the GM is sick of bullshit or if the group is 100% new players and a new GM.

It's okay I had a Khajiit pirate who was a running armory.

At least you gave actual reasons for it, see? These are all issues worth discussing. Unlike flat-out shitposting.

Fans of GoT are more dangerous to the hobby than D&D.

>Who the fuck cares about core?
People who actually play the game instead of just shitposting on Veeky Forums. The actual average D&D party doesn't use half a dozen different splatbooks. In fact, vast majority of people just make humans in pretty much every fantasy game out there. That remains true even in video games.

>can't improvise for shit, and thus if there's nothing in their character sheets saying otherwise they will just "I roll to attack" forever

DM [to player]: Before rolling, how do you imagine your character attacking?

^This really works. The attack doesn't have to be epic elaborate all the time, "I stab the orc horizontally in a straightforward manner," but it facilitates and encourages improvisation. If you do this consistently, you can take the training wheels off after a few sessions.

How's that?

Core only is the fucking worst in 3.PF though.

TRUE! Not only that, but also the false assumption that "D&D" always means either 5th Ed. or Pathfinder. Some of us REALLY DO play 1st, 2nd, or OD&D.

That is true
but did you notice D&D has 5 editions (if not more?)
How about when people say "D&D be like this" they specify "3.PF be like this?"

For a decade of running/playing 3.5 and four years of PF that has never been true.

>For a decade of running/playing 3.5 and four years of PF that has never been true.

I play since OD&D and that has always been true. It was even true during 4e and humans were really under-powered before essentials.

>DM [to player]: Before rolling, how do you imagine your character attacking?

>my players
>I dunno I just attack
or
>uhhhhh I attack him with my sword

If I didn't remind my players during shadowrun that they can do full automatic bursts they would grab machineguns and use them single shot every single time

That's a gross assumption on your part. My group, plus 3 other DMs I talk to IRL are like, "I don't use OP supplements because it unbalances my campaign." I skip the splatbooks because I want more money for minis. Players like it when other players come in who aren't trying to be more "special" than the rest of the group. So yeah, time to take the blinders off. Not everyone plays like you do.

They will bring their normalfaggotry and bad taste with them.

When someone mentions 'core only' in relation to Dungeons and Dragons I assume 3.PF because people almost never talk about older editions or 4e, and 5e basically doesn't have anything but core and it will probably stay that for the foreseeable future.

D&D is already completely normalfag infested. And you can't have worse taste than hardcore D&D crowd.

Because it is what people hear about first, and then decide to play. The best decision to match the said stories would be to of course use systems tailor fit to them. Instead of trying to play LotR in D&D, just play The One Ring (MERP is old and busted). Instead of trying to play Game of Thrones in D&D, try A Song of Ice and Fire. Even GURPS would be a better decision as it is very customizable, and it does have an official Discworld book if that is more up your alley.

If you however are interested in some crazy shit like Eberron, then of course D&D would be a smart system to look at.

Warhammer 40k

They must be stuck on pure mechanics then, like a video game or something.

If that were me, I'd start docking 25 XP for every non-descriptive button mashing command they give. My god, your players are sucking the life out of what an RPG is supposed to be.

>unironically complaining about normalfaggotry

Great pal. OD&D was a different game and attracted different people. The vast majority of players today got into D&D through 3.X and it has left a lasting effect on what a 'normal' D&D game and character is. Combine that with the influence of media like anime, Harry Potter, Twilight.

That wasn't an assumption, it was personal experience. The dozen FLGS that I've played in for 10+ years are filled with game like I have described.

And it's because of 3.PF and its impact on the hobby.

>When someone mentions 'core only' in relation to Dungeons and Dragons I assume 3.PF because people almost never talk about older editions

here on Veeky Forums every single time someone mentions D&D they will mention the various different editions m8.

I honestly have no idea what to do, other than just not playing RPGs anymore since I have zero other group options.

>Great pal. OD&D was a differ
buddy, pal, friend. I said "SINCE". And considering I specifically mentioned 4e, why did you get impression I only played OD&D, I have no idea. Besides, the current D&D is 5e. Pathfinder ain't named D&D.

And the vast majority of people playing pathfinder still plays humans. Maybe you play online too much or with people from Veeky Forums, but that is just how fantasy games work, universally. People will see all sort of options and play boring humans. I'm not even saying this is a good thing.

>The worse that it got was 4e with dragonborn and tieflings being core.
What, not 3.5 with all its half-X templates and weird psuedo-templates and alternative races and mix-and-match multiclassing and so on and so forth?

At least dragonborn in 4E are some kind of cool warrior race dudes with an actually pretty rad history, rather than 3E's unbirthing transformation fetish. At least 4E's tieflings had some culture and shit rather than being the generic-ass special snowflakes 3E set them up to be.

I mean, 3E had fucking Level Adjustment. You want to talk about special snowflakes, talk about the system where you can play as an actual dragon in a party of half-ogre mongrelfolk barbarian/fighters and illumian truenamers and warforged monk/psychic warriors and dragonwrought loredrake kobold sorcerers and human wizards.

An edition that has literally dozens of varieties of elves, and half a dozen mechanically distinct varieties of humans. An edition that literally lets you make a half-angel half-devil half-fairy cat-centaur shota.

Most of that is irrelevant on account of humans being the best race for most cases and level adjustment meaning that any fancy templating is going to be a fucking joke, but god damn there's a lot of silly stuff in that edition. There's way too much freedom in character creation, and the culture around that game is almost hostile to restricting options to fit to a campaign - understandably in some cases, since some commonly-allowed options are fucking broken whilst some commonly-banned ones are fixed, but in some other cases I don't want a fucking Kobold in my game.

I don't give a shit what you have personally played. Doesn't change that OD&D attracted a different kind of person than 3.X did. That's the part you seem oblivious too, probably because you only play with the same small local group in an isolated community.

Most 4e and 5e players started during 3.X jumped to PF after 4e sunk then back to 5e.

Most IRL players I have run for, for 10+ years, almost never play humans or pointy eared humans or shorter humans. They want to play vampires, humanoid animals, half dragons, half demons, half angels. And this nightmarish trend has continued into 5e.

It's why I jumped to GURPS and Savage Worlds. People never ask if they can play anything other than the list I provide them for those games, and I don't have to deal with neckbeards trying to flip my table at the FLGS for not letting them play a half dragon wizard monk in Dragonlance. Even with 5e I still had to deal with enraged autists who were mad I wouldn't let them have their snowflake race that they horribly 'converted' from 3.PF

Calm down sperg, he said that they were in the player's handbook, that was his complaint. Not that they existed period. The most exotic thing you could play from the player's handbook in 3.5 was half-orcs. Sure 3.5 had crazier shit with all splats considered, but none of it was a default option like in 4e.

I don't agree or disagree btw, I'm just clarifying his point.

3E core lets you do most of those no problem, really. Most of them suck, but them's the breaks.
>Lizardfolk are in the monster manual, two racial hit dice and +1LA and not really worth it.
>Immortality is actually really fucking tricky to get in 3E for whatever reason, and I can't remember a core trick off the top of my head, but hundred-year-old lolis are a vampire bite away.
>Vampires need five hit dice before being turned and a ludicrous +8 LA, but alignment change is a thing so becoming a Cleric of Pelor isn't too tricky. Otherwise 3E has worshipping abstract concepts as a core option, so go worship The Burning Hate all you want.
>Half-Fiend is LA+4 and literally has a redemption option written into its fluff - "All too rarely, though, one learns from and takes on the characteristics of its nonfiendish parent, turning from its evil heritage." Rogue is also one of the recommended classes, and you get bat wings. Still not worth it 'cause of level adjustment unless you're starting at fairly high levels, though.

A surprising amount of the silly stuff in 3E is from core, really. There's also some conventional wisdom in the worst-balanced classes being in core (on account of them not fully understanding the game at the time), and there's some measure of truth to it - also, something like half of the most world-breakingly powerful spells in 3E are in core. There's a bunch outside it, but you need to go for shit like Ice Assassin to get near the brokeness of Gate.
Also, Color Spray.

>same small local group in an isolated community.

says the guy that thinks that humans aren't the most common PC race. Like seriously, there have been studies about this shit.

The problem is the lack of elitism in society and everyone hugging because they dont want to hurt each others feelings

and overpopulation

>The most exotic thing you could play from the player's handbook in 3.5 was half-orcs.
From the player's handbook, sure. But that doesn't even have half the core 3.5 races. Most of those are in the Monster Manual, a book that you probably want players to have access to on account of all the summoning spells and animal companions and familiars and polymorphs and alter selfs. Unless you like handling all that shit by yourself as a DM, in which case good on you?

Bet you didn't know that core 3.5 has four dwarf subraces, six subraces of elves, and three each for halflings and gnomes. Also, no entry for "human".

Fuck if I know how many LA+0 races there are in there, though. There's a few, I know - kobolds and goblins, for instance. Maybe I'll make a list or something, I dunno.

You are listing options that require special DM approval, ie. things outside the PH.

You're also generally an idiot, one who does the impressive feat of taking information and being dumber as a result of it.

>study's about the most commonly played race in a niche hobby
I'm sure you have loads of credible sources.

Thanks for confirming I hit a nerve though. Try playing outside your group of old men for once. You'll see the horror show that is modern roleplaying.

What do you think of Fantasy Craft's Species Feat system? Basically, you can use your level one feat to modify your characters background. That way, there is no need for LA.

Swords & Wizardry Whitebox and other OD&D / B/X D&D retroclones have made me actually enjoy playing D&D again. Feats, skills, and combat abilities just get in the way and are completely unnecessary for a dungeon delving and wilderness exploration game.

I don't really know much about Fantasy Craft, sorry! That system does sound like it could work well in a system that isn't burdened by trap feats, feat taxes and overly long feat chains.

I fucking love OD&D, it's just a shame that a bunch of what makes it so unique just vanishes down a hole as the supplements come out and meld it into the more modern form we know today.

I sincerely think that Thief skills were a mistake, and that modern RPGs would be better off without skill systems. And yes, this includes Basic's rudimentary "roll under attribute" system.

>TFW moved to 4e after hearing about it during a troll thread
>Loved it, group loved it
>tried 5e
>None of us could stand it for more than two months
>Went back to 4e

Nothin' wrong with sticking with what works for your group, fampai.

To me it feels like the Thief was poorly communicated and executed as an archetype. The abilities presented with it should have been explicitly marked as a supernatural second chance to attempt those tasks listed rather than a rudimentary skill system only one class has access to.

>Nothin' wrong with sticking with what works for your group, fampai.
If more people thought like this, there'd be no more edition warring. I'm all for it.

...

>no more edition warring.
kek. Not here it wouldn't.

This guy is right, 5e is perfect for people with the brain capacity of a fruit fly.

and the taste of a house fly: dog shit.

Really nice. Really nice.

I suppose it's the privilege of the fleas to complain that the dog smells.

>I sincerely think that Thief skills were a mistake, and that modern RPGs would be better off without skill systems. And yes, this includes Basic's rudimentary "roll under attribute" system.
I agree with you on Thief skills, but I kind of like the roll-under thing on ability scores. How would you resolve attempts at something where both a success and a failure would result in a fun continuation of the game?

Blame the owner for never washing their dog.

Because those two things, games based on D&D and popular fantasy stories, are unrelated.

>shitting on obscure indie games is fadora.
What?
Shouldnt it be the opposite way around?

D&D is weird. On top of dungeons and loot everywhere, everywhere outside a city is filled with insane monsters, dinosaurs live in the jungle, there's always a giant cave underneath you, and cthukhuesque abominations are lurking pretty much everywhere.

This, and D&D has influenced so many contemporary fantasy writers it basically *is* the standard.

Game of Thrones is low level D&D in a pseudo historical setting (the MacGuffins are dragons for fuck's sake). Abercrombie's stuff internalized Caster Supremacy to the point they are implacable forces of nature that make martials feel small in the pants. Mistborn is mid level D&D where everyone who counts has magic and tech is deliberately forces to be anachronistic because D&D.

If you're talking YA fantasy, that's a different genre with different conceits.

1. Players attention spans are less than an ant's and
2. they don't have the patience to wait 5 minutes for another encounter.

In terms of feel it's actually pretty close to the fantasy stories that were popular when it came out, but they aren't popular anymore.
D&D is best described as an insane mishmash with races stolen from Tolkien, magic stolen from Vance and all kinds of monsters and magic items stolen from everyone. They even stole the name for the githyanki from an old GRRM story.