"I Want My D&D" at The Escapist

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A rather amusing if somewhat scathing article about D&D's transition into computer games, and how much the author misses AD&D has been posted over at The Escapist. Here's a peek:

I've participated in a few campaigns - the last and best of them spanning almost an entire summer more years ago than I care to consider - but I never developed a knack for it. I was never able to immediately recite what rolls I needed to accomplish one particular task or another, and my grasp of THAC0 was very much like my grasp of the infield fly rule: Every time I thought I had a handle on it, it would turn around and bite me in the ass like an angry kobold (or David Eckstein). While the other players at the table were rattling off spells and saving throws at a blistering pace, I would be furiously rifling through books and papers, trying to find something to say that wouldn't make me look even stupider than everyone already assumed I was. Fun and frustration seemed to come in equal measures.

The advent of the computer RPG, then, was a godsend. Arcane number crunching was suddenly not my problem, and if I wanted to take a minute to consider my options, nobody was going to get on my ass about holding up progress. The Gold Box games and, even more significantly, the Eye of the Beholder titles cemented my love of the genre; they provided a solo approach to what was until then an inherently social form of gaming. When Baldur's Gate and Planescape: Torment arrived, my brain just about exploded; here, on my computer, was the full D&D experience as I had always imagined it, the real deal, an epic tale of high adventure that even a dice-dummy like me could handle like a pro. It was perfect. I've played a lot of different games across a lot of different genres, but since those days nothing suits me better than swords and shields, monsters and treasure, deep dungeons and soaring castles.

Clicky.

 

Heh, nice one. Fun to read and with a nice last paragraph, imho.

 

Eh - complaining about too much choice is a bit silly, IMO. Besides, AD&D had ways to customise characters as well (kits, for instance) which kind of undermines his point.

 

On one level, I see his point. The more options you have, the more things you have to think about. He strikes me as the type that doesn't care for the min-maxing that overruns some games. I'm fine with that.

To be honest, I look at powergaming as an excercise to be conducted away from the table. It is something you think about when preparing for the character. It is for thinking how you want to develop the character. It should not take up too much time.

When you are at the table, then is the time to be the character. The nuts and bolts shouldn't take that long to decide, so you can get back to the game.

He also forgot one very entertaining problem solving technique--hitting things with people!

 

I don't understand what he's driving at. He whines about too many choices (why's that a bad thing to begin with?) but then creates his simple fighter character anyway. If he doesn't like the more complex choices, why not do this to begin with? It's not as if the game forced him to play a "Half-Orc Arcane Scholar of Candlekeep". The game offers the simple straightforward classes for people who like to get directly to the action and the more bizzarre combinations for those who like to go for something original. Again, why is that bad?

 

I agree with Ziad. He's moaning that he doesn't like having too many options for character creation when he had the option to play a simple one the entire time. It makes more sense to simply play simple characters when you find you don't like complex ones, rather than go off on a badly-thought-through rant about how choices must be an evil because he happens not to understand them.

 

Strikes me as someone who's moaning for the sake of moaning. He thinks that because the option to have a half-orc ASoC or paladin etc. that he's having the option forced down his throat. Dunno about you, but here we call those kinds of people a "bloody muppet"