30 November 2011

Old Testament Gaming


This would have been completely accurate if it was something old school instead of Pathfinder, where you're almost as coddled and babied as in 4e. "Remember to get your equal CR encounters for the day!"

No, fuck that.

How about there's a dungeon that you have to go through, because you're dirt broke and if you don't scratch up some money you're going to starve to death on the streets while arisocrats trample your corpse with their carriage. How about if you don't get the gold the minotaur's guarding, than hangover you got from blowing last week's dungeon haul on booze and women is going to be the least of your problems, because you borrowed money from the wrong guys and they're going to come kill you if you don't pay up. Did I mention that the minotaur will kill you in three hits? Because it will.

Your players have feasted on Pathfinder's generous optimization options and roll-to-win skills and feats. And they have grown fat. It's all loaves and fishes.

Not in here. This book is floods. And plagues. And motherfucking pillars of salt.

8 comments:

  1. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  2. You're carrying a sword without scabbard because you have the scars to prove that it only gets in the way. A sword forged in a fire stoked with pig fat by your father who lived and died by it's edge and you remember the first taste of blood was of the man who killed him.

    You were 13 and the sword has been in your hand ever since.

    Now you stand at an opening and could swear there are a pair of shining red eyes above the entrance to the dungeon because it feels like you are walking into the mouth of Hell.

    Yeah, you wish you had loaves and fishes. You'd be grateful for a quick death...

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  3. I suppose the next iteration is "Your players have feasted on B/Xs so called 'rules', and 'character classes', and they have grown fat!" ;-)

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  4. My brother & I were commenting on this strip earlier today in much the same way. Especially since we're currently in a LL (BX) campaign of Night's Dark Terror.

    The idea that any 3.X is somehow a "fix" for power-gaming is patently ludicrous. I've never played 4e, but I shudder to think where it sets that bar if PF was the cure.

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  5. "Silly Penny Arcade! That's not the cover to any known Gygaxian D&D."

    And we all know that AD&D1E by-the-book is D&D hardcore mode. (unless you're on a boat, there its BECMI that will drown you as quick as blinking.)

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  6. Actually the solution to starving to death and having your corpse trampled into the road by Aristocrats in carriages...was apparently banding together with the other hundred or so peasants led by your Parish Priest to loot the Archbishop's Estate of its thousand Sheep and Cattle rather than risk life and limb battling a Dragon for a pile of Gold.

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