Our group ran a low magic 4E campaign that was pretty successful. You need to use the inherent bonus option, which avoids having to have magic items to keep up with monster stats. Then we chose classes that were not magic based, and avoided (or reskinned) powers with obvious magical effects. There was one new subsystem that we created, other than that 4E was actually great for low-magic. Sense of wonder at magic? Hell, we had a sense of wonder when we found weapons made of steel.
I played with THAC0 for many years. It's not difficult, it's just needlessly obtuse. I'm well over 30, fwiw.
There are plenty of people who like 4E, but the haters are very vocal.
The two main problems with 4E are that, especially at higher levels, combat becomes slow and boring. You can say the same about the other editions, though.
The biggest thing, for me, is that codifying everything into powers, most of which are only useful in combat, takes away a lot of the freeform creativity that's a big part of the game. In older editions, we'd combine spells and create elaborate plans that resulted in ridiculous and fun things happening. That's not impossible with 4E, but the way the game is built tends to work against that kind of play.
The people who work on D&D at Wizards of the Coast love gaming. They want D&D to succeed. They want it to be awesome. Trust me when I tell you that no one there is feigning anything.
What goes on in the corporate/Hasbro side is anyone's guess.
I haven't had a chance to actually play Savage Worlds yet, but I really like the flexible concept and the opportunity to play in a ton of different genres.
That really is the problem in a nutshell. One of the ways Paizo has had success is by releasing groups of linked adventures, sort of like seasons of a TV show. Every few months a new "season" starts, so it gives the hardcore fans a stream of relevant new stuff to buy, and it gives newbies easy points to jump on the train.
Sorry hoss, argumentum ad ignorantiam doesn't work. Never has.
I feel like the Enterprise is granting de facto invitation to enter any place it beams stuff to.
Alternately, if the house was owned by someone who explicitly refused the Enterprise permission to beam things into, perhaps the transporter signal containing the vampire would be blocked at the threshold of the house. Unless you had a highly skilled transporter operator, you'd lose cohesion and have a vampire destroyed by a weird transporter accident.
Alternately, if the house was owned by someone who explicitly refused the Enterprise permission to beam things into, perhaps the transporter signal containing the vampire would be blocked at the threshold of the house. Unless you had a highly skilled transporter operator, you'd lose cohesion and have a vampire destroyed by a weird transporter accident.
Some day you should write a post about a metal band. Then all day you can read about how it isn't really metal, or not metal enough, or it's pussy metal, or can't be metal 'cause the guys in the band were once in a band that wasn't metal, or that metal is dead, or that you don't understand metal.
And then reader comments will never bother you ever again because you've already been dragged through the broken glass studded depths of a fiery internet hell. :-D
And then reader comments will never bother you ever again because you've already been dragged through the broken glass studded depths of a fiery internet hell. :-D
The synopsis on my cable channel guide for this movie a few years ago described it thusly: "Archaeologists discover a vat of liquid Satan."
Related to "Villain Cameos" (which I think is a great idea), I'd like to see "Mastermind Villain with some costumed D-list henchmen." This is like the Masters of Evil approach. Baron Zemo and...some randoms the heroes can beat up on. Justin Hammer and...a bunch of mooks he hired and gave weapons to. They get a couple of good lines, chew some scenery, let the hero show off his or her powers, then get webbed up, carted to the special supervillain prison and we never worry about their backstory or motivation.
Of course we need to get Bill Cosby to wear the sweater (and probably destroy the universe).
Personally, I'm waiting for the Wil Wheaton version.
Personally, I'm waiting for the Wil Wheaton version.
One of my favorite things about these videos is how much the narrator sounds like Phil from Better Off Ted.
White Wolf is still around. Wizards never took them over. They still make World of Darkness books. In fact, they make some of the highest quality RPG books I've ever seen. Their werewolves and vampires are still badass.
Deus Ex? No. Honestly, if a game doesn't have the words "Fallout" or "Civilization" in the title, I never buy it until about two years later when the price has come down.
Anything that makes baking Christmas cookies more fun. One whiff of vanilla extract and she goes wild.
Weirdest fetish I ever heard of: people who are exclusively into vanilla 1-on-1 sex. Freaks.
Because I only sometimes review video games, I don't usually get review copies from publishers, so the video games I review end up being ones I purchased myself, ones io9 specifically assigned to me, or, as in this case, the rare time when I did receive a review copy. Deus Ex did not fall into any of those categories, sadly.
When I cover games here on io9, I try to approach them less from the hardcore gamer point of view than a general sci-fi fan's point of view. Though it's true there can be a lot of overlap.