[MUD-Dev] Maintaining fiction.

[shren]

On Sat, 2 Jun 2001, Michael Tresca wrote:

> Speaking of which, look closely at what's happened the Third Edition
> Dungeons & Dragons.  There are now articles in Dragon magazine that
> tell players how to "maximize their characters."  That is, abuse the
> hell out of the system to be killing machines, be the most powerful
> in a fight, and generally, be what Dungeon Masters DON'T want.
 
> In the new supplement, "Sword and Fist", the book goes into detail
> about combat tactics.  Not, "A fighter should keep his weak hand
> away from his opponent," but details on how much damage each attack
> does, which weapons should be used to inflict the most damage, etc.

You're missing part of the story here.  In second edition, really the
only way you could tweak your character was in the core stats.  By
adjusting the character's level of str,dex,con,int,wis,com, and cha,
you could make your character more powerful.  Because this was just a
little numerical shifting, it was named min/maxing.

In third edition, making a character involves a thousand different
choices.  Sometimes it isn't clear which of these choices should be
made to get a certain type of character.  There's about 20 pages of
feats in the core rulebook alone.  Some of them arn't worth taking,
while some of them are necessary.  Sometimes there are ones that are
necessary to make a really good fighter at higher levels, so you need
to be able to have the stat requirements for them by the time you
reach the level.

The one time I played third edition, after flipping through the feats
endlessly, I was ripping out my hair and mumbling over and over "I
just want to make a good archer *whimper*" while rocking back and
forth.  I eventually ended up making something more of a
non-combatant, a brilliant diplomat who knew a little bit of
everything - and let everyone else rip thier hair out over the combat
system.

In second edition, min/maxing was number shuffling to abuse stat
cutoffs.  In third edition, it can be quite necessary to wade through
the complexity of the system and actually make the character you want
to make.

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