If you were given a time machine with just enough power to go back in time just before tabletop RPGs really started to...

If you were given a time machine with just enough power to go back in time just before tabletop RPGs really started to become well known, would you still allow D&D to become the face on the genre, or would you make another system or company the face of it. if so, which one?

This thread is going to be terrible.

D&D isn't the problem. 3.PF is.

Despite it not being my playstyle, I respect OSR types for having their own thing that works for them and generally being comfortable in their own sub-community. 3.PF, meanwhile, popularised RPG's along with a huge number of bad habits and awful design decisions.

Having said all that? I still wouldn't use time travel to supplant or remove it. I'd just try to stop them making stupid fucking mistakes and hopefully releasing a better game that would create a healthier RPG space and not leave us struggling to get out from under the shadow of that godawful system.

I'd stop 9/11.

This.

Insert myself into the Gygax/Amerson group, befriend them, try to force them to be not shitty towards each other.

Also, look up lottery numbers while I'm at it, just in case.

>3.PF
Even more than that, the issue was that the D20 system was made open licence. D&D forever shot itself in the foot with that one.

Prior to then, when a new edition came along, the old one stopped being supported. Like it or not, the majority of players would end up coming over in order to play the new content and the supported system.

OGL meant that when the new edition came along, nobody had to change. They could play the same damned edition... forever...

If I could travel back in time I don't think games of pretend would be very high on my priority list.

I'd just go back in time a year and put in a ticket for that one really massive Powerball jackpot.

Well, yeah, I'd allow D&D to stay as the face of tabletop, because the Dark Dungeons Chick Tract wouldn't get made otherwise. I'd also go change something that actually matters, rather than something as trivial as which specific tabletop is the most widely known.

>Kids too young to figure out that lastest does not mean greatest
Don't you need to be over 18 to post here?

Pretty sure that wasn't at all his point

Oh I wish I was anywhere near that age.
Latest-Greatest well aside, when you haven't had new content for a decade, you eventually start looking elsewhere.
Maybe that's a new edition of D&D, or god forbid, something other than more generic fantasy.

What do you mean, "allow"?

They got where they are by promoting the shit out of the brand. In the 1980s there were D&D t-shirts, D&D skateboards, D&D action figures, D&D cartoons, D&D comics, D&D novels, D&D cereal, and D&D D&D. The satanic panic merely helped with brand recognition.

Wasn't AD&D/2nd Edition owned by some conniving bitch who was only interested in shilling her own products and making money, and was basically anathema to the franchise? And then later she sold the rights to WotC, which is how it became what it is today?

It's been a long-ass time, but I distinctly remember something like that being the case. That, and it being difficult to find anything about 2E AD&D online at the time, because the owners were particularly sue-happy back then.

I might be missing some details, but I'm pretty sure that was a turning point.

Yes, thats Lorraine Williams, but the designers were able to work around her too some degree. Like how Spelljammer arose from the demand to make "Star Wars but DnD".

This. It's basically just bait for this troll here.

Man, get over yourself. People like the game. No need to patrol Veeky Forums just for opportunities to sperg and lie like you just did.

The time travel stops working if you fuck with anything else besides D&D.

I'm not saying people can't like or enjoy 3.PF. I'm saying it had a fucking toxic effect on the RPG landscape that we'd have been better off without, or with a diminished version of if the game wasn't such a pile of trash.

>Like how Spelljammer arose from the demand to make "Star Wars but DnD".
You tried.

I mean, not very hard, and you just used your own spotty recollection of memes you saw on Veeky Forums as a base, but you technically tried.

It was Buck Rogers.

Well it's gonna be pretty hard to change anything then, since going back in time means you're just some fucking nobody without any kind of certification.

> "I need you to change D&D!"
> "Who the fuck are you?"
> "Uh."

I'm saying you're wrong for pushing stupid and baseless propaganda that falls apart when you stop trying to put the cart in front of the horse.

3.PF doesn't encourage bad habits. In fact, if you read through the manuals, you'll see they go out of their way to encourage good ones. But, people will be people, and there will always be those that just take the worst parts of anything and exaggerate it. You're going to find bad players in every game, and anyone could argue that those game encourage those bad players, and it would all be equally baseless and meaningless. It's worse than anecdotal evidence, it's blatant misinterpretation of cause and effect.

If anything, the general impact of 3rd edition has been hugely positive, since it doubled the amount of roleplayers by being easy to introduce but having enough depth to promote retention, provided a fertile and expansive foundation for collaboration and creation, and had so much material and design concepts that it is one of the most impressive catalogs of game mechanics and fantasy ideas. It's a game that basically ushered in a brand new population of players and it has been a cornerpiece of modern game design philosophy.

It's a game with many flaws, but it's an important and positive part of gaming history that shouldn't be villified just because you want to act like the small minority of bad players are an exclusive result of playing a game that turned out more good players than any other of its time.

I feel like you're entirely missing the point.

3.PF is a bad game- Its rules and structures do not assist the players or GM in achieving the goals the system lays out. They do not support you, they actively undermine you.

This is the root of the bad habits, the idea that to actually run and play a system you need a huge amount of investment in it. It creates a false impression that a similar process is required for every game (Not that only D&D requires it, but many games do not) which encourages insular thinking and the clusterfuck like the OGL, where people took already weak core mechanics and tried to adapt them to styles and settings they were completely inappropriate for.

All the positives you list have nothing to do with 3.PF as a game, it's all about its place as a product in the right time and place, with a strong marketing push behind it. None of that would be worse, and in fact it might all be better if it had actually been a good game beneath all the ideas and extra content. Especially if more than a tiny fraction of that content had actually been good and usable.

>3.PF is a bad game- Its rules and structures do not assist the players or GM in achieving the goals the system lays out. They do not support you, they actively undermine you.

I disagree. You're really just exaggerating at this point, and rather poorly at that.

Read through the DM's guide. It goes out of its way to help DM's as much as possible, and supporting them through the entire process. We've advance since then, but for its time it was easily one of the better systems available, and the DM's guide still remains one of the better sources of game advice available (though the later DM's guides have built upon it and in my opinion are better).

We've come a long way since 3rd edition, some seventeen years or so, but it's still an impressive system that helped DM's take baby steps through a game with very tangential mechanics that made playing with them fun and rewarding. It might not be to your taste, but it's what helped the game achieve the popularity that it did.

And, stop with the "Durr, everyone who played 3rd edition thinks every game is like 3rd edition." It's, to put it bluntly, just a moronic line of thought with no basis. You just assume all people are idiots, and then complain about them for being ignorant in your imagination. If your complaint is just that 3.PF encouraged people to stick with it, your complaint is more about its popularity and size than anything else.

>All the positives you list have nothing to do with 3.PF as a game

What part of it being "being easy to introduce but having enough depth to promote retention, provided a fertile and expansive foundation for collaboration and creation, and had so much material and design concepts that it is one of the most impressive catalogs of game mechanics and fantasy ideas" isn't about the game itself?

I feel like you're just here to do nothing but TRY to hate the game, and frankly, that makes you a pisspoor conversation partner.

I'm here to frankly and rationally assess its qualities and discuss the impact it has. I played a lot of 3.PF, I know it's a bad game, and I can go into depth on exactly why. I'm not sure how thick the rose tinted glasses you're wearing or, or whether you're just being contrarian on purpose- It's noteworthy that you've consistently avoided mentioning any specific mechanics whatsoever, talking in vague ambiguities about things like the DMing advice which is frankly irrelevant to the discussion.

The rules don't work as intended. Core class imbalance, broken CR system, magic as the fundamental unit of design... Even simple things like the core combat system actively being detrimental to engage in beyond just hitting the opponent. It is not a well designed game at the core, mechanical, fundamental level.

Get a time machine and go back in time to fuck with D&D.

Become that weird guy who hangs around the game store who won't stop talking about weird shit like Talislanta and also making pained faces whenever someone talks about how current events will play out.

Everyone is turned off by the greasy hobo who desperately attempts to get people to join his stupid niche RPGs. Obviously AD&D is the only normal RPG that non-losers play.

End up scaring people away from anything but D&D, making the future you tried so hard to prevent inevitable.

>I know it's a bad game

You mean you think.

>things like the DMing advice which is frankly irrelevant to the discussion.

Wait, I thought you said something about rules and structure to support a DM.
Did you just never read the DM's Guide? Go read it and then come back and try to lie about it not going above and beyond in helping support DM's.

>The rules don't work as intended. Core class imbalance, broken CR system, magic as the fundamental unit of design

We can argue about each of those parts to death, but I'll do you a big favor by sparing you what's very likely going to be a circular discussion of me explaining why you might be wrong about something and you firmly clinging to your set ideas. Why? Because, it doesn't even really matter if you were right on those points, because that's nowhere near enough to try and claim the system is bad.

Those few pieces are really nothing compared to things like it having a fantastic set of core mechanics that tied a gigantic system together and was so readily adaptable, that some people are even lead to complain about people preferring to reuse the core mechanic rather than learning new games. Moving on from there, it's got so much material and so many interesting design mechanics that even if isn't close to balanced, DM's went out of their way to rebalance them themselves because they liked the ideas so much. We're looking at a game that inspired passion because its underlying mechanics were actually fun to use and play with, something that's actually not all that common.

You're right in that it had issues. A lot of issues. But, all games have issues, and I definitely feel you're being excessively critical of the system, likely because you aren't really that familiar with how bad other games can be. You can go ahead and try and say I'm wearing rose tinted glasses, but while I'm willing to acknowledge the games flaws, you are clearly incapable of seeing the tremendous good things about it.

>Those few pieces are really nothing compared to things like it having a fantastic set of core mechanics
>fantastic set of core mechanics
>3.PF

No.

>I'm here to frankly and rationally assess its qualities and discuss the impact it has.
You mean bitch and moan while pretending to be rational?
Anyone can write ten pages of why literally anything is bad. It's really easy to be a cynical douchebag who hates things.
You want to be frank? Want to be rational? Then quit being so one-sided and trying to dismiss anything good about the game just because you have a hate boner for it.
Also, can I ask what you think the best game is? Kind of want to see what horse you're backing, since it sounds like the only game you'd consider not to be bad would have to be damn near close to perfect.

>Wait, I thought you said something about rules and structure to support a DM.

Yes. As in the fundamental rules and structures of how the game works. I'm not talking about GMing advice, I'm talking about the system doing what it says it will and not forcing you to work to keep it all functioning.

>We can argue about each of those parts to death, but I'll do you a big favor by sparing you what's very likely going to be a circular discussion of me explaining why you might be wrong about something and you firmly clinging to your set ideas. Why? Because, it doesn't even really matter if you were right on those points, because that's nowhere near enough to try and claim the system is bad.

So you can't actually counter any specific points, you're just going to keep on insisting its great because vague, ambiguous bullshit.

Being a bad game doesn't mean it's completely without value or that you can't have fun with it, but it's an important thing to acknowledge if you want to really understand the system. 3.x was a result of shoddy playtesting by people who didn't understand the mechanics they were building on top of extremely misguided design principles like the whole 'ivory tower' thing. The end result was a broken mess, with a core combat system that actively punished any attempt at creativity on martial players parts by making any non-attack actions pointlessly punishing and rarely worth it, while casters went from strength to strength as the update removed a lot of the limits on their power.

I'm mostly speaking about core, because core defined so much of the system that it's really hard to get away from it. Even in the best possible game, with a GM who knows their stuff and proper content restrictions, you're still going to be struggling with some of the bad mechanics laid down in those books.

PF is just a thin coat of paint on the same thing, with basically the same problems, some of them shuffled around a bit to be less immediately obvious.

>Yes. As in the fundamental rules and structures of how the game works. I'm not talking about GMing advice, I'm talking about the system doing what it says it will and not forcing you to work to keep it all functioning.

Yes. That's also what I'm talking about. Games not perfect, but compared to other systems it does its fair job.

>So you can't actually counter any specific points, you're just going to keep on insisting its great because vague, ambiguous bullshit.

You sound like you just want to act petulant and argue about little details, and that sounds like a grand waste of time for both of us. But, let's just go ahead and say I agree with you so you don't get hung up about little things that really aren't as dramatically important as you want them to be. What you are calling "vague, ambiguous bullshit" is actually me talking about the large and important things about the game, the grand scope. I'm sorry that you're looking for an audience who's willing to listen to you complain about magic in a fantasy game, but it's a pretty big game.

What's your favorite game.

So, basically, the core mechanics of the system are non-functional and indefensible, but the game is still good because it has lots of stuff? You can't really argue with that kind of irrationality.

Cute little insults with the 'petulant' by the way. It's an excellent way of making me seem petty for asking you to actually defend the system instead of just excusing it with non-specific statements.

>So, basically, the core mechanics of the system are non-functional and indefensible

What?
How can you even argue that the game is non-functional and indefensible? Have you been living under a rock, and didn't notice the millions of people playing the game for the better part of two decades?
If its core mechanics don't function, how could they play? I mean, fuck playing, how could it end up the most popular game of its time if people weren't able to play it?

And, I'm sorry, but I don't want to get into an argument about the CR system, because as a guideline for a giant game with such tangential mechanics, I believe it does a commendable job, especially compared to what I've seen in many other games. I don't think I can convince you that the CR system does work as a quick way to get a sense of around how strong an opponent is, or to convince you that a game with so many moving parts is always going to have to require the DM to make their own assessments, so why bother? We're just getting sidetracked about something that's really not that important, so much so that I'm perfectly willing to just say "Sure, let's say the CR system doesn't work. That's not really as game breaking as you think it is."

Look. How many times do I have to say I understand the game has flaws? Regardless of all that, it's still a system that didn't simply "function", it worked so well that much of its foundation and design philosophy helped make 5e one of the most critically acclaimed and popular games of all time. Even something as simple as "Stop making a thousand tables for everything" was a huge step in a good direction.

Hey.
What's your favorite game.

>Have you been living under a rock, and didn't notice the millions of people playing the game for the better part of two decades?
"Shit is great, millions of flies can't be wrong"

>If its core mechanics don't function, how could they play?
not him, but if I understood him correctly it's that the mechanics don't support the thing it should be doing

Analogy: Imagine if you had a game about fluffy slice-of-life adventures, where people solve the problems of their neighbourhood through negotiation and friendship.
Now imagine that this game had 90% of the book dedicated to combat rules and let you level up by collecting the skulls of your fallen enemies
In a game about brutal war this might fit, but for the game it's bundled with it's useless

That people can make the mechanics work doesn't mean the mechanics work RAW, which is what you need to assess when it comes to system design. The systems and structures given are not conducive to a good experience, requiring work on the GMs part to pull it all together, and this deserves to be noted as bad design.

You keep saying 'I acknowledge its flaws' as a way of handwaving and dismissing them. That you bring up 5e is even more ridiculous, as how 5e is designed makes it very clear that they knew 3.PF was a bad system, given that they went out of their way to fix most (not all, but most) of the issues. They lost a lot of interesting mechanical depth in the process, but the final result still works a hell of a lot better out of the box.

Hey.
What's your favorite game.

Hey.

Hey.

Hey.

What's your favorite game.
I want to see what game's so close to perfection that even you wouldn't call it a bad game.

My favourite game is actually a bad game too. I'm just aware of that and am able to discuss its weaknesses without feeling compelled to defend it. I love enough of what it does that it's still my favourite, and over time I've managed to fix most of the glaring flaws, but it's still a bad game.

Shadowrun
Yes it is dumb
Yes it is unrealistic
Yes it is hard to comprehend in some parts
But it helps emulate what it wants: Being freelance black market operatives committing crimes for money.

>which is what you need to assess when it comes to system design

Nah, you need to assess the game as it's played, because if you get hung up on little issues that people quickly patch over, you get stuck discussing something that's largely irrelevant. Kind of like discussing early 4e math. Sure, a point against it, but not enough to call the entire system "bad."

But, for your sake, let's call it 3.pf+, to distinguish it from 3.pf RAW.

3.pf+ is such a great game, it's no surprise that it's still retained enormous popularity, to the point where the only game that has more players is 5e.

Okay, I get it.

You're just using a stupid, pointless definition of "bad" because you're retarded.
You should have said so ages ago so people wouldn't argue with you.
You exist in a world without any good games? I guess 3.PF would have to be bad then.

But assessing a game 'as its played' is frankly meaningless, because no two groups will play it the same. It removes any and all ability to actually discuss or analyse system design because what the designers wrote becomes entirely irrelevant.

I like 4e, and early 4e math was a problem. It would have been a better game without it, and it remains a flaw in the system that has to be addressed, as without being told about it someone playing it for the first time might have a significantly less enjoyable experience.

This is why talking about RAW flaws are important. Because through discussing and analysing them is how your each the 'as its played' experience, which is generally the optimal one. But if a system does very little to actually teach you the 'right' way to play it- as 3.PF does- then it only needs more criticism, analysis and discussion to properly highlight the problems and the best ways around them.

Nope. There are good games out there, games which work out the box with no meaningful mechanical flaws and directly support the GM in creating the experience they wish to. My favourite game just happens to not be one of them.

So what, are you defining bad as everything you don't like?
Wow what a great definition

> It removes any and all ability to actually discuss or analyse system design because what the designers wrote becomes entirely irrelevant.

Nope. If I explain what rules I'm using, we have a common frame of reference. And, it's far more important to actually discuss games using our actual experiences, rather than just discussing hypothetical and theoretical games that no one's ever played.
Why discuss 3.pf RAW if you have zero experience with it? Tell me about 3.pf+, because that's really what game everyone loved.

>But if a system does very little to actually teach you the 'right' way to play it- as 3.PF does-

3.PF goes out of its way to say "hey, change what you want." It's got lists and lists of tools to help DMs, ranging from variant damage systems in the DMG, to how to build custom spells in Tome and Blood, to templates in the MM, to custom planes in the Planar Handbook. Most of it isn't as balanced right out of the book as most people would like and it can be a bit scattered, but it repeats, over and over and over and over again, that the DM should exercise their ability to change whatever they want, while providing them tools to do so.

When it comes to games?
If your definition of a "good" game includes "a game that meets certain design goals but isn't fun to play", I prefer to define "good" as "a game that's fun to play."

Like, what? How fucked up must your entire system of analysis be if you are calling bad games good, and calling good games bad, all because you value irrelevant shit more than everything that actually matters?

It sounds like your definition of a good game is as meaningless to you as it is to everyone else.

>a game that's fun to play
for some people RaHoWa, FATAL or other such games are fun to play
would you call them good?
Maybe you dislike simulator systems.
Are they bad?

Your definition of good and bad is worthless because everyone may find other things fun. A definition which is different for everyone is a shitty definition
>inb4 games most people like are good
Argumentum ad Populum

>would you call them good?

Me? No.
Is that it?

What?
What point were you trying to make? That's some random, hypothetical caricature of a person can be wrong about something, so I need to create a retarded system of evaluation that results in unfun games being called good while fun games get labeled bad?

>Your definition of good and bad is worthless because everyone may find other things fun.
It's got far more worth than calling games no one would want to play good, and games that you personally have experience having fun with bad. Like, what? What? What are you even arguing here? That you've brilliantly cobbled together a system of analysis for a subjective topic like games, that's absolutely indifferent to people's actual experiences with the games?

Fuck. That's the saddest, most pathetic thing I've heard yet.
Call me when you've figured out the formula for love and get married to your right hand.

Tools, sure. Guidelines? Haha, fuck you.

You can't even use existing content as a basis because, as you mentioned, it isn't balanced.

That isn't a trait of the system either. It can be applied equally to any game under the sun, and a lot of games do it better by actually providing a reasonable set of guidelines for how to balance things and having good examples already existing.

3.5 is a system the GM needs to fix and rebuild themselves, and it does nothing to make that job easier or to make them aware of what the actual problems are without having to play the game a lot until you finally figure it out.

Unless, y'know, people freely discuss RAW flaws and acknowledge the issues so people are better informed, rather than kneejerk defending it every damn time.

3.5 is only hated because it was popular
Your regular fa/the/uy will express hate towards anything that is popular and liked by the majority of people because that makes them feel special.

A good game is one that supports the experience of the group, making the GMs job easier. A bad game is one that makes it harder.

I feel like you've just descended into incoherent rambling disconnected from the original point.

I would beat Gygax, Arneson, and Kuntz over the head with the need for everything to be properly explained, because people will buy the game that don't have access to somebody who already knows how to play.

I feel like you got smacked pretty hard.

>that supports the experience of the group

That's a pretty stupid way of mangling the phrase "is fun". How much of a fag do you need to be to even try to say "supports the experience of the group" and pretend that means anything.

Because they're completely different things?

Any system can be fun, no matter how awfully designed. Using the completely wrong system for a game can still be fun.

But a well designed system makes the GMs job easier. Using a system that is appropriate for the premise of the game makes the GMs job easier.

If by 'smacked' you mean 'confused into not being able to respond', I guess? I've got no idea what you were even trying to convey or what you were trying to argue, for or against, with that last diatribe.

>But a well designed system makes the GMs job easier.

But the "GM's job" is to run a fun game.

>Using a system that is appropriate for the premise of the game makes the GMs job easier.

Using a system that's fun is the most important thing though.

The you must be pretty stupid if you can't understand pretty basic English. A point against you, but here's a point for at least admitting you're stupid.

Here's it in toddler talk.

>a game is good if it is fun
>you say fun games are bad, and not fun games are good
>you judge games dumb

Do you really need anything else? Your whole problem seems to be that you are stupidly hoping to pretend that your personal subjectivity is somehow objective and more important than other people's opinions, when it in fact is just a weak set subjective criteria that doesn't actually provide anyone with any useful information.
Your definition of a good game doesn't help people have fun. Your definition of a bad game actually works against people having fun.

Exactly. The GM's job is to run a fun game, so a system that supports them in that is good. A system which doesn't support them, making their job harder, detracts from the game and means the GM has to work harder to make it fun.

>Using a system that's fun is the most important thing though.

This is a meaningless statement out of context, and in context it's just an overly simplified version of what I said above.

My problem is that you're not actually replying to any points anyone has made at any point in this thread. Are you just wilfully misunderstanding people?

>Exactly. The GM's job is to run a fun game, so a system that supports them in that is good. A system which doesn't support them, making their job harder, detracts from the game and means the GM has to work harder to make it fun.

So, 3.PF is not just a good game, it's a great game. Sure, they've got to put some effort into it, but overall the system supports them and makes their life a lot easier. In fact, a lazy DM can really just play one of those premade adventures with premade characters, and that's about as easy a job as it can get.

And that's where you completely fail to understand the point and indulge in wilful ignorance and falsehood. But I guess there's nothing more to say.

What points? He is trying to come up with a bullshit definition of what a good game is that excludes his favorite game.

That either means his definition is flawed because it means fun games are not good, or its a Catch-22 situation where by his own admission he has shit taste and his opinion on what a good game is should be discarded.

The little idiot is actually trying to argue that games aren't subjective and that there are objective criteria that we should establish to determine what games are good and which are bad, but his choices on what makes a game good have been rendered worthless because they manage to exclude games that people enjoy, when that's the primary goal of a game.

Ahh, so you're just angry, unintelligent and missing the point.

is the definition you're looking for, by the way.

What's the issue?
3.PF supports a GM to have fun and run a fun game.

You're going to call that wilful ignorance somehow? Falsehood? Because my opinion differs from your own? An opinion that is generally shared by the majority of players who played the game? Is that sort of where your whole issue with game analysis being subjective comes from, that more people disagree with your opinion than share it?

> But I guess there's nothing more to say.
About time you learned when to shut up. Hopefully you'll stay quiet for a good long time about this topic.

Then, by that exact definition, 3.PF is a great game. Glad we cleared this whole issue up.

Because imbalanced core material, broken CR systems, wonky skill rules etc etc all make the GMs job that much easier, right?

Fuck, you admitted it yourself in >Sure, they've got to put some effort into it

GMing always takes effort. If the system makes that job harder, then it's a bad damn system, regardless of how well it works once you've eventually mastered it.

A game should work out the box. Sure, a GM might get better at it, but the basic tools you're given should let you run a game without much problem.

3.PF lies to you. It tells you character options are equal when they aren't, it tells you monsters are equally threatening when they aren't, it piles on layers upon layers of mechanics that are not fit to task and do not support the game in achieving its goals.

Can you get past this? Sure. Does this mean you can just give the game a pass on it? Fuck no.

see

>Because imbalanced core material, broken CR systems, wonky skill rules etc etc all make the GMs job that much easier, right?

Tons of monsters, spells, items, a versatile and adaptable core mechanic that readily lends itself to on-the-fly decisions, and cool classes with fun abilities with a lot of varied mechanics that present tons of different play styles? Yeah, it makes things easier.

>3.PF lies to you. It tells you character options are equal when they aren't, it tells you monsters are equally threatening when they aren't, it piles on layers upon layers of mechanics that are not fit to task and do not support the game in achieving its goals.

What? The game right out tells you that there are lots of things you need to consider, and that the game can dramatically change depending on what decisions you make, with plenty of rules and advice on how and what to watch out for. It doesn't pretend it isn't a gigantic, sprawling system, because it's a gigantic, sprawling system. Hell, some of the earliest books available for players were guides and additional rules on how to build characters in different classes.

It's a huge game, so imbalance was not only expected, the game even went ahead and highlighted that some options are stronger than others, like its advice on how invisibility is one of the more powerful 2nd level spells and serves as a good benchmark for the upper tier of power for that level.

You're trying REALLY hard to say the game doesn't support the GM, when it provides tons of material for them and plenty of advice and rules on how to use that material.

What your mental failing seems to be is that you fail to appreciate the tangential depth and size of the game, two elements that greatly contributed to it being fun at the cost of balance. You're really, really hung up about the question of balance, when most DMs are more than flexible enough to treat it as an afterthought in comparison to all the inspiration the game provided.

I'm assessing the system from its core traits, because those underline all content for the system. And all that content is garbage if most of it is either so weak or overpowered to the point it should be banned.

And the system never fucking tells the GM, anywhere, about the huge systemic issues present in that very fucking core material.

So much of what you're saying is post-facto justification for 3.PF. It's not things the system does or tells you about, it's things you can do for yourself or figure out later. All the advice you speak of never tells you of the actual problems, and being told 'there might be problems you have to fix' in no way excuses the enormous fucking problems the system has.

I make sure all gloassaries are full of science and future stuff. Thereby changingfuture through dnd.

>Tons of monsters, spells, items
Very few of which are balanced, interesting or worth using

>a versatile and adaptable core mechanic that readily lends itself to on-the-fly decisions
1d20+mods is the most generic mechanic you can imagine and I have no idea how that latter assertion has any relation to it

>and cool classes with fun abilities with a lot of varied mechanics that present tons of different play styles?
The different playstyles of 'be a caster' or 'be irrelevant'? Yeah, that's fun alright. Especially if you pick the wrong class and get stuck with lots of interesting class feature that turn out to be fucking useless or actively disadvantageous in play.

Whoa, hot opinions there, champ.
Sounds like you're grasping at straws to try and complain even about the systems strengths.

If you just want to hate blindly, do it in a corner somewhere.

The first one maybe, the last two are fucking undeniable if you know a fucking thing about D&D and RPGs beyond it.

Probably because you're exaggerating how big the problems are? To hear you talk, it sounds like you're talking about an unplayable game so bad it's universally despised, rather than a fan favorite that was the most popular game of its time and now is sitting retired at a comfy 2nd place.

Apparently, those issues you consider crippling? Minor inconveniences to most people. Go figure.

Generic ain't bad, and there's tons of simple fixes for the caster issues, depending on what your exact issues are. Easiest is just looking at tiers, but E6 and banning certain spells also are popular quick fixes.

And now you're just putting words in my mouth, directly contradicting shit I already said.

3.PF is a bad game because it makes it harder for the GM to run. That doesn't mean it's unplayable. That doesn't mean it can't be fun. But it means that a lot of people who pick up the system will have problems with it.

And you know what? They fucking did. There is a reason 3.PF is infamous, and it's not just 'trolls'. GMs confused with accidental TPK's, parties dominated by casters while martial players felt useless, these aren't just hyperbole or system analysis bullshit. This really happened, and people had to figure out a way to deal with it with no help from the system itself.

By this point, most of that is in the past, but forgetting it is a very easy way to be doomed to repeat it. 3.PF did not work well out of the box. It was a bad game which took a lot of effort for people to hammer it into a working shape.

That something can be fixed doesn't mean it wasn't broken.

He is judging games on the point of archiving desing-goals of balance and ease of running a game out of the box, and not if you can have fun playing the game, why can't you understand that you double bigger?

But it does make the game easier. You might as well complain that the cover on the books make them harder to read.

Hell, it's certainly easier than having to basically make a game from scratch like GURPS. Is GURPS a bad system because a GM has to be extemely experienced with it to know what pieces to use and which to avoid, with very little information in the books telling you which subsytems are poorly balanced or otherwise not great?

And, 3.PF still enjoys great popularity. I don't know whether you do nothing but shitpost on Veeky Forums all day and listen to our native Veeky Forums contrarians, but 3.5 is still healthy and respected, remaining the 2nd most played game in the world, with only a game derived from it beating it.

GURPS at least properly informs you of what you're in for. 3.PF does not.

But he's not really counting how D&D helps people have fun at all. It's just one-sided bitching so that D&D somehow doesn't meet the criteria he probably coined in hopes of trying to exclude D&D, without realizing that D&D still manages to be pretty good running out of the box. He's acting like everyone except him is an idiot, and that all the people who are nowhere near as obsessed with hating the game as much as he does somehow are blind to how enormous the flaws are, rather than the flaws being just really not quite as big as he's taught himself them to be.

Why can't you understand that?

Ignoring the fact that my favourite game also fails those same criteria?

Nope. Try again.
If GURPS was upfront with how hard it is to assemble a game without online assistance, people would never bother with getting past that daunting hurdle.

What makes it easier? I'm not sure what your first line is referring to.

And GURPS is also a bad game.

I don't actually believe you have a favorite game. You haven't said what it is, and you sound like a fun-hating cynic.

I love games, and I love fun. But I express that love through wanting them to be better, through expecting them to improve and innovate and progress. It's my love of games that makes me be so harsh on those which fall short.

And your favorite game is... ?

Yeah, but while 5e is better than 3e, that doesn't mean 3e is bad though.

Oh, sure. It's bad for reasons entirely its own.

That's nice, but you seem to be avoiding saying what your favorite game is for some reason.