Backlog: The Embiggening – March, 2016
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 02/27/16 at 04:30 PM CT
Spring is sproinging, and with it comes the promise of new life and vibrant renewal. The world has been sleeping under a frozen blanket for months, and we’re ready for the hibernation to end – especially those of us who enjoy videogames. Sure, sitting inside playing games when the weather finally gets nice again is a waste, but the release slump we’ve been in since, oh, the 8th Gen started really needs to come to an end. Will it? Nope!
Shovelware is hard to come by this month. There is no traditionally licensed shovelware coming in March based on TV shows, movies, or other terrible ideas. Instead, the only shovelware being heaped upon us is a handful of annual sports releases: ‘MLB The Show,’ ‘EA UFC,’ and a PC port of the latest ‘WWE’ wrestling title.
But the ports… oh God, the ports! It seems they are becoming more and more numerous as the 8th Generation trudges on. This month, PC is getting the very old “Hitman” and the very new “FarCry Primal” …
The Good and the Bad of D&D 5th Edition
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 02/21/16 at 02:56 PM CT
The third and final part of my look at the flaws & features of various editions of the Dungeons & Dragons tabletop RPG will bring us into the present, with D&D 5th Edition, which released in 2014. I will be skipping 4th Edition entirely because, as I mentioned in a previous article, it garnered a lot of hate from long time D&D players due to being very much un-like D&D and more like the tabletop version of “World of Warcraft.”
4th Edition was an obvious failure on Wizards of the Coast’s part, as it released in 2008 and was replaced by 5th Edition in 2014 – a mere 6 year lifespan. 5th Edition, however, rectified all of the problems with 4th Edition, not to mention many of the issues that have dogged the world’s oldest RPG since the very beginning. While 5th Edition is, unfortunately, not directly compatible with any previous version of the rules, the new mechanics and behind-the-scenes workings have been streamlined to the point where it is fairly easy to convert all but …
The Good and the Bad of D&D 3.x Edition
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 02/14/16 at 02:43 PM CT
Last week, I took a look at the best and worst aspects of classic Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, the version that introduced new players to the concept of tabletop RPGs for over 20 years. This week, I’ll be looking at AD&D’s successor, Dungeons & Dragon’s 3rd Edition… and 3.5 Edition… and Pathfinder.
After TSR’s collapse as a business, Wizards of the Coast – at the time a heavy competitor to TSR focusing on Trading/Collectable Card Games instead of RPGs – bought the remnants of the House that Gygax built and went about transforming the world’s oldest RPG into a form more suitable to the 21st Century. In 2000, Wizards of the Coast released the first ‘version’ of 3rd Edition, which kept most of the flavor of AD&D while simultaneously explaining how everything behind the scenes worked, clarifying rules concepts that had previously always been foggy, and generally clearing out all of the arbitrary weirdness that commonly got House Ruled out of AD&D, while also …
The Good and the Bad of AD&D
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 02/07/16 at 02:37 PM CT
In honor of Wizards of the Coast finally doing the right thing and opening up the new 5th Edition of the world’s oldest tabletop RPG, Dungeons & Dragons, via the Open Gaming License, I’ve decided to dedicate February to taking a look back at the more long-lived editions of the game and seeing what they did right… as well as where they went wrong.
I never had the opportunity to play Original Dungeons & Dragons (or OD&D, as it is commonly called nowadays), as it was before my time. Instead, my first experience with the world’s oldest RPG came via Advanced Dungeons & Dragons (AD&D), which, itself, went through some minor revisions, that divided it into a 1st Edition and a 2nd Edition. There is actually very little difference between 1st and 2nd Edition AD&D, as the majority of differences took the form of additions, clarifications, and options rather than revisions, rebalances, and tweaks. Thus AD&D is typically perceived as a monolithic edition with an immense amount of …
View Archive
