Its not an issue with Rappan Athuk. If anything its been better than the Adventure paths. Lull the players with a few easy fights, then bam!

From the get go, its been a pretty constant and consistent increase in play time as the players progress in level. More effects, more spells, more microeffects, and their interactions with the battle.

Interesting note. At PAX this weekend, the WOTC booth had Magic...and that was all. No D&D if any kind. They were running that completely separately in a different location and only ran Next and a few board games. Sad.

Can't imagine what they could put in any Wotc booth till 2015. Except Magic

Didn't they already grab that money??

I have a suspicion that 4e is going to leave a bit of bad feeling at WotC - both from those that supported it, and are now irate that it is being abandoned, and those that were against it from the beginning, and probably vocal about it.... (Those four words that mean so much - 'I Told You So.')

The Auld Grump

4e will be the scar that never quite goes away, tru dat.

Eventually Wotc will produce a combat complexity option for DMs. Something of an optional set of combat rules to plug in on top of the core rules. Many people enjoy 4e combat. Wotc seems to be embracing older combat complexity styles. d

Wonder if they (Wotc) will blend editions for a single complexity option or split into separate "options" that give 4e fans a taste, 3/3.5 fans a pathfinder upgrade, and AD&D fans an oldschool option.

Personally I like the idea of the "core" rules with plug in options. Expanding into Fate type rules, Social encounter rules, insanity rules, etc, would truly grow the D&D table experience and be good for the brand. IMHO

WotC lost me at 3.5. Though I will admit Pathfinder fixed many of the problems I saw with it, though many of the problems I had with WotC was just the mining of my money. The perpetual $40 a month and having to memorize that book every month to play with others bothered me. Especially with a rule set that I found too heavy to drag around every week, even if the game was at our house. There were other games out the there with a better flavor and no bitter after taste. Besides, I can play dnd with a piece of paper and pencil. Don't need a six foot stack of books to make me play the game "right".

Don't forget Gary Gygax quote: "The secret we should never let the gamemasters know is that they don't need any rules."
--- Attributed to Gary Gygax by Allan Varney in a sidebar to a review of the Amber Diceless Roleplaying Game: "AMBER DICELESS ROLEPLAYING: Thoughts at Non-Random" in Dragon Magazine #182 (June 1992)

Gary was right, we don't need a bunch of rules. After playing, DnD, AD&D, 2.0, 3.0, 3.5, I took the rules I found in Star Frontiers, and the fantasy ideas of TSR and put them in a one page rule set that I ran almost 20 years. Have been able to teach role playing to six year olds and 60 year olds. Gary was right. Rules hinder the creative side of role playing. Rules assist rules lawyers and people who need to know what they can do, or people who need to be allowed what to do, or power players who want to know the loopholes well enough to win. Please don't suggest that I am saying that anyone who uses these rules is in some ways lame or missing some social or intellectual functions. I am just saying we really don't need a bunch of rules to have any amount of fun we want to have. You read any more into that you are missing my lame excuse at expressing myself with the English language.

As for my experience at 4.0, it was with my son and with at least a foot tall stack of 4.0 and a bunch of accessories my wife and I bought him until he decided to go back to his five foot tall stack of 3.5. He still hasn't gotten back into them as he has moved on to the Warcraft rule set for a short time and then to Pathfinder. Actually, he is now memorizing my Song of Ice and Fire stuff. The only RPG stuff he is doing now is our weekly Game of Thrones at our FLGS. He is my go to guy for rules interpretation and "is there a rule for that?" guy, since he has mostly memorized the rules. As for me, I have been flying by the seat of my pants with my one page rule set for so long, I think I am still using it while I am trying to use Green Ronin's quite excellent rules. Though I will admit the grammatical errors and editorial flaws are annoying, almost as much as the disorganization of the rules book.

Yeah, I don't have much experience with 4.0, even though I had high hopes for it. It was leaked that it was a game for those who like to use minis, and I'm all about minis and the terrain we play on. But I found 4.0 to be really a game about rules. It was slow and clunky. Even more so than 3.5 and all it's previous generations. It was not a role playing game, it was a board game, and anyone who knows me knows that I have a difficult time playing a board game. Board games tend to on the largest part to be a "Winner/Looser!" game. They are generally not a collaborative effort on the part of a group. One person wins and everyone else looses. I don't really enjoy seeing my friends as the enemy, to be tricked, conned, abused, or beaten. The early days of DnD where we got together to beat the game was fun. Was such a relief when I found RPG's. As a kid I had do deal with my Rules Lawyer, Power Gaming, father, who never lost a game he played. From the game of dice on his Army cot, to the blackjack on the casino floor, or our dinning room table Monopoly game. He never lost, and he taught me that I always lost. And we all know that personality type. I even have them in my GoT game I am currently running. People who have never played face to face, they learn to RP in WoW or other online games. They have to win. It's a game about them winning against everyone else. RPG's gave me the fun of games back, but 3.5 and then 4.0 took all of that fun away again. There are other games I can play and have fun with.

So you have never played with rules lawyers. Those who really know the rules. Those who use this rule to boost that rule while using another rule to mitigate another rule. Or power players who can build a character who can easily cause at least twice the damage per hit than anyone else in the game. Or the munchkin who has to have the biggest wand in play.

The more rules you have the more someone will find a way of breaking the game to their advantage. The bigger advantage they present over anyone else playing tonight, means, they win. They have to win, every night, or the game is lame. Me using my father as an example of a power games was just that, an example. He was the type A personality. Type A personalities have that type of behavior given the chance and the drive in this environment. Not trying to bash type A personalities, because we need them as a society, but rather trying (looks like very poorly) to explain my impression of a weighty rule set. It is driven by a corporation in search of profits. If they do not provide a book of the month, they make no money that month. It is not driven by the desire to build the best role playing game out there. That game is the one that you and your friends play in high school with just three dice and a stack of paper between you. It costs you no money and wasted way too much time, and stays with you the rest of your life.

Grey, sounds like your problem was with the GM. The rules for the most part didn't seem as arbitrary as you make it sound, though I do agree they were far from perfect. Maybe the GM should have over turned some of the arbitrary rules with some arbitrary thinking skills. K.I.S.S. Sometimes one page of rules and a fair mind and some imagination is better than the 3000 pages of rules.

Sure, I've played with rules lawyers. And I'm one, myself, often. I don't mind them so much. You can stick to the rules and know them all without being a jerk about it. It sounds like most of your experiences have been with people that are jerks. And that's too bad, 'cuz it doesn't have to be that way. I like knowing the rules 'cuz I like knowing what to expect when something happens. When I play with a GM who doesn't know the rules well, I've found that oftentimes he'll make something work one way today and then next month have it work totally differently.

Here's an example: About two years ago, I played in a campaign that was a mish-mash of 3.5 and 4.0. The GM liked certain things from each system, so he combined them. Well, we were adventuring and several of us got poisoned and it reduced their Dex or Con or something. A few of the players asked how to get that Dex or Con back and the GM just skirted around the answer like it was trying to craft magic items in 1st edition. I was expecting him to start saying that we needed to collect the tears of a dragon or the sound of silence or some such thing. So, I spoke up and explained that 3.5 handled it by allowing you to regain 1 point in each lowered ability score per day if you got a regular 8 hours of rest. But I pointed out that the GM could change it to whatever he wanted to as long as he was consistent with it.

Here's a different example: I play and GM in Pathfinder Society Organized Play around here. It's Pathfinder's version of the RPGA. There's been a discussion of late on the forum boards around how GMs should handle knowledge checks regarding monsters. How should the GM handle how much and what details of a monster's abilities to share with that PC to simulate what they know? Some use a rule of thumb based upon allowing the player to ask 1 question for each 5 points they beat the DC by. Some don't like that 'cuz it seems to easily abused. One guy who used to be our local Venture Captain a few years back spoke up and was just a jerk about it, saying things like, "Well, the rules say that you have to provide a piece of USEFUL information for each 5 points that the PC beats the DC by, so you MUST provide something that is USEFUL to them in that particular situation." I can't fathom why the rest of the GMs put up with behavior like this, but this is clearly someone who is just trying to use the rules to be a jerk.

So, my point is that people who like a rules system or who like structure to the game aren't automatically dinks looking to exploit the system. Sometimes they just want rules so they feel they're being treated fairly. It really comes down to the person, themselves.

Our group had many similar experiences, players taking advantage of the DM and arbitrary AD&D games, rules lawyers (brothers, one of which is now a lawyer) that interrupted 3-3.5 momentum, and, at times frustratingly long 4e combats...

I am the kind of DM that likes to play checkers and have rich improv and on fair but quick rolls and mechanics. So core rules are just fine for me.

My DM on the other hand is a chess kind of guy. He LOVED 4e combats and will embrace a hearty set of combat complexity rules.

What Wotc delivers in the future I can only guess, for now I need to deal with Balders Gate. I think I have it figured out...

One thing that my players and I have noticed is that while the pile of books for Pathfinder is steadily growing each of the books add something to the game, aside from new classes and feats. (And now archetypes - and I would be willing to bet that we will see more Story Feats....)

And, because of the way that Pathfinder uses the SRD, most folks don't need to buy the books to use the options, and can print up the bits that they need for their characters.

I am the only one that lugs around the full pile, but I am the GM... we do that kind of thing.

I gather that Paizo has a policy of not trying to copy the books that WotC came out with for 3.X - so Advanced Races is not the same as Savage Species - while some of the same ground is covered it also adds the rules for creating and modifying races.

Mythic very definitely isn't Epic - a very different way of handling super powered characters, in a completely different framework.

Pathfinder is still evolving.

I... think that WotC might need to take a similar path - they can't just keep feeding the status quo.

Paizo has three major releases a year - WotC tried for twelve, and glutted their own market.

WotC decided that there is no money in adventures - Most of Paizo's money comes from Adventure Paths.

WotC decided that hardcovers were the only books worth printing - Paizo has dozens of $13 pamphlets.... (Impulse buys... gamers like making them.)

WotC decided to get out of prepainted plastic minis - Paizo started licensing out prepainted plastic minis to WizKids - WotC started making prepainted plastic minis again.... (They likely did not want to lose yet another line to Paizo.)

And each of these is being handled in a different way than WotC did when they were supporting similar products. Even the Pathfinder Battles line is being handled differently that the DDM line was - with releases coming out for Adventure Paths, targeted marketing all the way. Still random, but if you are running that Path then the miniatures will all be useful.

The sad thing is that Paizo's business plan was the plan that was originally in place for 3.0 - it is the one that Dancy came up with to accompany the OGL.

For me... Feats are what allow customization in 3.X - in Pathfinder they go a lot further, since a character has more of them on the average.

What I consider the 'right' way to use feats is to create a concept, then choose feats that establish and support that concept.

Pathfinder largely deconstructs the classes with the addition of archetypes - between archetypes and feats I never see the cookie cutter that was so much of a problem in AD&D first and second editions.

I have a river ranger for example - traits, feats, and archetype all supporting that role. (He owns a tidy little craft at first level - A fast batteau, but will be expanding into a narrow boat fairly soon.)

The Auld Grump

I will throw this out about Pathfinder, though. They've continued releasing their small Player Companions each month, but they are so not worth the money. The last several I've bought (Faiths and Philosophies, Champions of Purity, Demon Hunter's Handbook, Dragonslayer's Handbook) really haven't given much in the way of worthwhile PC options. And they generally either rehash campaign setting information that's already been published or they just discuss the challenges or options in roleplaying a particular type of character. I've been fairly disappointed in those, so I'm going to stop buying them. They're only around $9, but I worry that they're pushing out too much material--much like 2nd edition was doing before TSR went belly up. They're also producing 3 or 4 lines of minis each year. That seems a bit much. WotC seemed to be flooding the market with their minis when they did that many each year.

A bookstore? Do those still exist? All the ones around me closed....

But seriously, I do wonder how much farther paizo will be able to go with their player options line.

Adventure path/modules and campaign setting books I can see a continued demand for, but at this point how much more do they really need for player options. It seems like they have hit all the major enhancements to the core system already. Can anyone really think of areas of the system that haven't been hit already?

Weird as it may sound, Paizo, at least at one point, actually does view the hardcover player books as finite - and they have already gone at least one book over their original plans (and skipped another... for now... I have no idea what Ultimate Skillmonkey will eventually be titled) - Mythic was not originally planned, then started shaping up a few years ago. (Looong pipeline there....)

They also planned on rounding off the monster books... but then Mythic gave need to Mythic Monsters....

The Auld Grump