Quote from: Baulderstone;932834Thinking more on this topic, the whole "Campaign Setting" model has always been underwhelming to me. I remember excitedly buying the World of Greyhawk boxed set as a kid. I was expecting this vast sandbox for players to explore, but it was mostly zoomed out above the scale at which PCs engaged with the world. The encounter tables were cool, but the rest was mostly just fluff. Compared to something like Griffin Mountain from roughly the same era, it wasn't a good value.

I've felt that way about most campaign setting books.

Yup, think a lot of modern hexcrawls are too zoomed out and they're a lot more ground level than campaign setting books. My sweet spot would be a hexcrawl with one page of information per hex.

I have to say Dragonlance. I loved the novels and the hardback book, but in actual play, we used the railroady adventures, and it did not go well.

Dragonlance and Maztica.

Wait, there was more than one?

#Kidding

Quote from: Christopher Brady;933247The issue with Eberron is Keith Baker not understanding that D&D doesn't work with Pulp,

That makes WotC selecting Ebberon as the winner of their setting search competition even more interesting, as for what it's worth I agree with you.

Quote from: Anon Adderlan;933420Wait, there was more than one?

#Kidding



That makes WotC selecting Ebberon as the winner of their setting search competition even more interesting, as for what it's worth I agree with you.

I think that they were trying to draw out the crowd that was starting to lean toward more narrative games, but the effort was weak. I also recall that the Dragonmarks were really weak and nobody I knew were willing to spend/waste a feat on them, nor were they interested in the prestige classes centered around them. This was disappointing as the Dragonmarked Houses were supposed to be a big deal in-game and the ability to be Dragonmarked was being played up as being something awesome--it was not.

Quote from: Christopher Brady;933247The issue with Eberron is Keith Baker not understanding that D&D doesn't work with Pulp, and Action Points wouldn't even help.

I find that earlier editions of D&D work well with pulp. I didn't find that 3e did pulp well (too heavy and slow and particular for my tastes), but I admit that I only played it a couple years, and then returned to TSR D&D.

QuoteAnother issue is that D&D is a game about niches and specialists to the point where you NEED teams of at least 4 to have every base covered..

I think that is somewhat campaign (and DM) dependent. Heck, original D&D didn't even include a Thief class (it was added in the Greyhawk supplement).

QuoteA lot of people here hate things like 'Mook rules', and often have this misconception about them (one on one they're no threat to Pulp Heroes, but 2+?  Yeah, you could be down for some hurtin'!), but they are a staple of Pulp, they are in fact mandatory.  But D&D (until 4e) has never been built for that in mind.

I disagree with that. Original D&D had its own "mook rule" for Fighting Men, where a Fighter gets 1 attack per level when fighting "non-fantastic" enemies (i.e., "normal men" or enemies with 1HD or less). So a 4th level Fighting Man (a "hero") gets four attacks vs. average warriors or orcs or goblins, and an 8th level Fighting Man ("superhero") gets 8 attacks when facing such foes. One might say an 8th level fighter is the equal of 8 men in a given round of melee. This rule was also carried into 1st edition AD&D, modified slightly so that it affects enemies of less than 1 HD, rather than 1HD or less, but note that AD&D also makes regular soldiers 0-level (with the AD&D DMG specifying that regular 0-level men-at-arms have 4-7 hit points), so it works out similarly.

Quote from: Philotomy Jurament;933445I find that earlier editions of D&D work well with pulp. I didn't find that 3e did pulp well (too heavy and slow and particular for my tastes), but I admit that I only played it a couple years, and then returned to TSR D&D.

The earliest version of D&D I've ever played, and it was a one shot, was a game of Rules Cyclopedia.  And in that game we needed a small army to clear through the room past the Ogre in Keep on The Borderlands.  And the Goblins through that secret passage, sorta secret.

Quote from: Philotomy Jurament;933445I think that is somewhat campaign (and DM) dependent. Heck, original D&D didn't even include a Thief class (it was added in the Greyhawk supplement).

Healing, from 2e on, was very needed, and having magic spells for those high levels (like 7 on up) was most often than not the deciding factor in an encounter.  But yeah, it's definitely a 3.x thing.

Quote from: Philotomy Jurament;933445I disagree with that. Original D&D had its own "mook rule" for Fighting Men, where a Fighter gets 1 attack per level when fighting "non-fantastic" enemies (i.e., "normal men" or enemies with 1HD or less). So a 4th level Fighting Man (a "hero") gets four attacks vs. average warriors or orcs or goblins, and an 8th level Fighting Man ("superhero") gets 8 attacks when facing such foes. One might say an 8th level fighter is the equal of 8 men in a given round of melee. This rule was also carried into 1st edition AD&D, modified slightly so that it affects enemies of less than 1 HD, rather than 1HD or less, but note that AD&D also makes regular soldiers 0-level (with the AD&D DMG specifying that regular 0-level men-at-arms have 4-7 hit points), so it works out similarly.

Whether you agree or not, and whether or not there's evidence that D&D did have mook rules (of a sort, I'll freely grant), there is a significant portion of posters on this website who have expressed a distaste for the idea of Mook/Minion rules in their D&D. But for pulp, mooks are everything that isn't a named or major villain, and D&D has too many creatures that simple won't fit, especially in 3.x where Eberron was first introduced.

Quote from: Christopher Brady;933446The earliest version of D&D I've ever played, and it was a one shot, was a game of Rules Cyclopedia.  And in that game we needed a small army to clear through the room past the Ogre in Keep on The Borderlands.

Yeah, I don't think B/X or BECM/RC included the "mook rule" I'm referencing from original D&D and AD&D. Under those rules even a higher level Fighter would want men-at-arms supporting him. I forget it's not included in those (I tend to run original or 1e AD&D). I guess there's the "weapons mastery" system in the Masters set (and the RC, if I recall correctly), but I was never of fan of those rules.

QuoteWhether you agree or not, and whether or not there's evidence that D&D did have mook rules (of a sort, I'll freely grant), there is a significant portion of posters on this website who have expressed a distaste for the idea of Mook/Minion rules in their D&D. But for pulp, mooks are everything that isn't a named or major villain, and D&D has too many creatures that simple won't fit, especially in 3.x where Eberron was first introduced.

What I was disagreeing with was that the design of D&D (prior to 4e) didn't include any rules with mooks in mind, not that others dislike mook rules in D&D. I grant that others may not like mook rules in D&D. I'm happy with the rules I cited, though. In original D&D, a higher-level Fighting Man is like a force of nature when in melee with regular soldiers or goblins or orcs. He goes through them like a whirlwind. Combine that with the morale rules, and you get classic pulp-like action where a Conan or John Carter type warrior can smash into a whole horde of foes, mowing them down until they flee before him and he hears the lamentation of their women. (Best in life!)

For higher HD creatures, I don't sweat it, I just assign them really low hit points if I want them to be mookish. For example, give that 4+1 HD ogre 5 hp, and he's essentially a mook: a glass cannon that's going to be eliminated quickly. I also freely assign NPCs whatever abilities I think they should have. For example, I might give a specific 0-level NPC the ability to throw knives like a 7th level fighting man, but he's still a 0-level NPC (there's an example of something like this is the T1 Village of Hommlet module).

I agree with you about 3e not being a good fit, though. Part of that is the rules, themselves, and part of it is also the mindset the game encourages (e.g., NPCs and monsters all being strictly built according to the same basic rules structure used for PCs, et cetera).

Quote from: Philotomy Jurament;933447In original D&D, a higher-level Fighting Man is like a force of nature when in melee with regular soldiers or goblins or orcs. He goes through them like a whirlwind. Combine that with the morale rules, and you get classic pulp-like action where a Conan or John Carter type warrior can smash into a whole horde of foes, mowing them down until they flee before him and he hears the lamentation of their women. (Best in life!)

Even better, IME, is Gronan's variant of that rule: An 8th level fighter can kill 1d8 creatures of 1HD or less per round (1d6 for 6th level, 1d10 for 10th, etc ...). Much faster than rolling 8 attacks, and worked really well when I was running AD&D.

Quote from: Sable Wyvern;933452Even better, IME, is Gronan's variant of that rule: An 8th level fighter can kill 1d8 creatures of 1HD or less per round (1d6 for 6th level, 1d10 for 10th, etc ...). Much faster than rolling 8 attacks, and worked really well when I was running AD&D.

Yeah, Gary used that rule, too. I like that variant best for Fighters of Hero level and above (i.e., 4th).

Quote from: CRKrueger;932553Like the least?
Anything Forgotten Realms after 1e.  Time of Troubles. Elminster, Harpers and the rest becoming Mary Sue GMPCs, Gods getting assassinated and the powers of their "Portfolio" getting traded and stolen like sets of clothes, endless Mystra/Magister shenanigans, 73 Campaign Shattering Events...and that's all before 4th came along and dragged the setting down the toilet with wonders like the Shadowfell.  Movie series, TV series, Comics, all get reboots, if there's ever a setting that needs a reboot, it's the Forgotten Realms.

Ravenloft.  Now don't get me wrong, there was a lot of interesting stuff in there, just so...hokey in it's implementation.  It's a very rough-hewn setting that has toolmarks of the designers all over it.

I was doing to say this almost exactly. Ravenloft as a module was fine. But afterwards... just UNGH. Realms for me is 1e and then I just use it as my punching bag for the last two-decades to do what I want with it. I've killed off all the "chosen", Mystra, most of the shit they shoe-horned into their product line so I can keep it nice and useful.

Not a fan of Dragonlance either. BOOOOOORING.

Quote from: Anon Adderlan;933420That makes WotC selecting Ebberon as the winner of their setting search competition even more interesting, as for what it's worth I agree with you.

I think they just realised there's a kind of settings that they're not covering yet, and he offered them one:).

Quote from: Philotomy Jurament;933447For higher HD creatures, I don't sweat it, I just assign them really low hit points if I want them to be mookish. For example, give that 4+1 HD ogre 5 hp, and he's essentially a mook: a glass cannon that's going to be eliminated quickly. I also freely assign NPCs whatever abilities I think they should have. For example, I might give a specific 0-level NPC the ability to throw knives like a 7th level fighting man, but he's still a 0-level NPC (there's an example of something like this is the T1 Village of Hommlet module).

I like your approach.
Now if we could just get this advice in the DMG2 for the current edition, it would be great;).

Quote from: AsenRG;933578I like your approach.
Now if we could just get this advice in the DMG2 for the current edition, it would be great;).

I'm not familiar with the DMG2 from the current edition. If it offers similar suggestions, I approve of those pieces of advice.

I never could really enjoy Eberron.  I don't know, sometimes 'High Fantasy' can be fun, but it just seemed... wrong.  Even though playing a Warforged Juggernaut was a hoot, it just didn't work out so well.

Ravenloft used to irk me, because it was presented to me by a guy whose entire inspiration was 'Castlevania', and the entire thing just seemed lame.  Now I have a better appreciation for it.

I never cared about Forgotten Realms.  Even though everyone swears by it, I didn't think it was all that.

Quote from: Philotomy Jurament;933637I'm not familiar with the DMG2 from the current edition. If it offers similar suggestions, I approve of those pieces of advice.

I don't think it's out yet, so I suggested it would be a good thing if it offered similar advice when it's out;).