EVE General Discussion

You must have run similar 'free range' campaigns to me. The DMs I played with made me always want to have a couple extra characters ready to go. Guaranteed in one 8 hour session you were going die horribly once or twice.

EVE is not necessarily a harsh mistress but she is more than content to watch you die repeatedly at the hands of your enemies. Kinda like a mother in law. Harsh? nah, cruel? sadistic? yes, but its more from the lack of ease in play then from any actual intent on her part. N00bs are guppies dropped into a fish tank with cannabilistic piranas. All that goes without saying and if you survive the darwinian death march that is the first 3 months then you will be hooked for life IMO.

D&D could be My Little Pony or Death Race 2000 on horses, it all depends on the DM.

If I could talk to any n00b I would say...

well just look at my sig... nuff said.

As complex as Eve is, it will never be as needlessly complex as 2nd edition.

And the true skill of DnD is being able to RPly justify your ridiculously CHA-based Hexblade/Blackguard/Thrall of Malcanthet and former Heartwarder.

The complication comes when you start piling on all the expanded rules in the bajillion source-books…

Granted, that doesn't make the system itself complicated — it just means that it didn't have quite the same “common interface” extensibility as the D20 system.

True. Once you delved into the Skills & Powers type supplements you could spend days in character generation. It made all the min/maxers have wet dreams. But D20 - I don't know. Never could get into it in the same way that 3D6 did it for me. THAC0 was a beautiful thing.

They are. I say 3D6 for attributes, that's all.

Just to clarify: what I meant was the D20 system that became the basis for 3.0 and a bunch other games, as opposed to the AD&D system.

One thing they actually did right with D20 was that, from the very beginning, it came with a reference document on how to extend and expand the system to, not just add new classes or abilities or the like, but in order to adapt it to completely different settings and still keep the system coherent. This was pretty much explicitly done to avoid (or at least mitigate) the splatbook/supplement/house-rule grab bag problem that had plagued… well… pretty much all well-expanded games up until that point.

…hell, even something as relatively simple as Shadowrun could require upwards of 6–7 books to cover all the bases for a new character up until its 4th edition (and even then, all 4th ed did was to bring many of the basics that had usually been left to the splat books into the core rulebook and the stuff in the supplements wasn't needed until you had a fair amount of Karma and ¥ to spend).

emphasis on role play? no... most people don't role play
now if they are a pirate they will say yarr or other stupid stuff, or spout slavematar nonsense but i doubt many people really role play.

Slashing/Bludgeoning/Piercing damage is optional, and didn't really come till later in 2nd Edition if I recall. Really, the system is as complicated as you want to make it. I don't remember the specifics of that myself; though the basic idea is clear.

Most of the people I played with were 1st Ed. players who still used parts of that system; and the others just didn't want to learn more than the basics. I left it alone as it wasn't that important to me. Really, the difference between hitting an Orc with a hammer or and axe is mostly irrelevent.

We did use the Critical hit system out of 1st Ed. originally. That was relevent to damage type as I recall.

I later adopted Combat & Tactics, Skills and Powers, and following that, High-Level Options. Level 10 Spells, (True Dweomers), were something to design and/or use; and I played around with Time travel and some other stuff with them.

Really, I liked the Forgottent Realms crafting system, and made use of books like Volo's Guide to All Things Magical, and Aurora's Whole Realms Catalog.

Other favorites were Pirates of the Fallen Stars, Elminster's Ecologies, Drow of the Underdark, and the Draconomicon; in addition to Menzoberranzan and Undermountain Boxed sets.

Also liked Planescape and picked up a lot of that resource material. Spell Jammer too.

I think I mostly just liked figuring everything out, while reading about the history, settings, and features. Can't really say for sure; but I rarely enjoyed playing it as much as studying it. Like I said before though; a lot of that was the people I knew who played.

Yeah, but that's cheating.

The whole point of the Storyteller / Storytelling system was to be the “not-a-system” that got out of the way and let you RP to your heart's content. I've always been a sucker for the Chaosium Basic systems — you just can't make probability any easier and clearer than a D100 and %-based skills.


Of course, it you want convoluted (at least in terms of die rolls), there's once again Earthdawn: “hey, I know, let's have ability scores that determine the dice to roll through the rule of ‘how can I get the same number by adding together the statistical averages (rounded up) of as few dice as possible” (?!) An ability score of 9? Well, that's 5 + 4, so obviously you roll D8+D6. 13? That's a D12+D10, duh!

Still, it's from '93, so that's perhaps not old enough so… Rolemaster / MERP?

I still remember the first time I got a hold of Volo's guide. Read it cover to cover. Later converted several items for use in my campaign at the time.

The Grey Box is almost cheating when I say it's a favorite.

Never had a chance to play Planescape or Spelljammer. Always wanted to. There's an officially sanctioned 3E Spelljammer fan project, which is really cool, but at the same time disappointing because it means WotC has no intention of ever going back

Like I said. I started with 3E(unless you count Baldurs Gate), but I backtracked for the fluff.



I have a copy of just about every Forgotten Realms novel out. I was that nerd in HS. Like I said, 3E fluff can't hold a candle to the breadth, depth, and insanity of 2E fluff. But oh the fun you can have munchkining up builds in 3E. Pun-Pun anyone (a Greater Deity with arbitrary stats and every ability by level 6)? Or the counter build to Pun-Pun, who drowns himself to greatness at level 3.