EDIT:Link added so the title makes sense...
Batimus Prime!Had 'im. Back when I worked for GameTek, when Beast Wars had just come out, and Doug and I would randomly head off to Greasepit Du jour for lunch. Good times, good times...
ANYhoo...
For the past several days, I've been doing the New Computer Shuffle. Got me a quad-core with 4 gig ram, 1T Had space, and an 8800GT graphics card. (Or maybe it's a GTS. Or a GTX. It's something. It runs "Crysis". That's all you need to know.)
There have been...issues. My wireless adapter doesn't work properly with it, so I ended up running 60' of Ethernet from the computer room to the temporary computer home. I want to keep my old machine for my PC World reviews, so I had to buy a switchbox. Now I have one mouse, keyboard, and monitor for two machines, which is pretty frickin' sweet (Peter Griffin voice), except that it gest very confused if both machines are booting at once and randomly flicks between them. Moving data has been the usual nightmare, but I have EQ2, WoW, Office, Thunderbird, and Firefox over, and that's about 95% of my daily computing. Just need to move Eclipse from the laptop, and it's my main development machine. (Got to get ConnectedText on there, too, since all my game notes are there...and Campaign Cartographer so I can do maps, though, of course,
with my current game world, Google Maps works fine...except I have no wireless access at Tony's place. Foo. Anyway...)
I got it with two 500G hard disks, then noticed one of them wasn't formatted. No big, I formatted it into two partitions, as I plan to put Linux on the second half. Then I rebooted.
BOOT DISK ERROR.
The frack, says I?
It turns out, after I hauled my new doorstop back to the shop, that poor dear sweet Windows Vista gets it widdle bwain all confuzzled when you add or delete active drives. It decided my newly formatted drive was drive 0, and so, looked for boot.ini there, couldn't find it, and ran away and cried. Augh! In any event, that was easy enough to fix.
The more annoying problem is that FireFox, every 30 seconds or so, decided to freeze for a few seconds. This happens while scrolling, typing, moving the mouse over buttons, etc, etc, etc. I can't find any solution. I've run scans for spyware, keyloggers, etc, checked plugins, examined running processes, and so on. It doesn't happen in other apps -- I'd notice instantly in WoW or EQ2 or Crysis, obviously. It doesn't even seem to happen in Thunderbird. I'm wondering if it might be something to do with the switchbox, because I'm noticing a little stuttering -- not so much as on my other machine -- even as I type this. Firefox on my laptop, also Vista, is perfectly smooth. I've looked at Opera, but I've become VERY used to Firefox and I'd hate to give it up. I might try Netscape 9, though, it's pretty Fox-like, evolving from the same code base and all.
It's a sign of the times that I'm not very compelled to mover Agent, my Usenet reader, over. Once, Usenet was my life; now, if I remember to log in once a month, it's a miracle.
On other issues...reading the design&dev articles in the new, downloadable (But where are Phil And Dixie?) dragon magazine has half-assuaged me about D&D 4e and half annoyed me. It's easier if I view it as a new game, rather than as a continuation of D&D; then I can look at the rules systems more objectively.
Things I like:
Racial traits mattering across all character levels.
"Attack vs save", rather than saving throws -- one dragon rolling his 'to hit' roll for his breath weapon beats five players rolling.
The end of the 'christmas tree', with character abilities mattering more than magic items.
Action points in core.
Extensive online support.
"Bloodied" (at half hit points or less) as a trigger for conditions or abilities. It's a good, extensible mechanic I can see being used in many interesting ways.
Things I am not sure of:
The redesign of monster balance. I like the idea of balancing monsters as 'normal', 'elite', or 'solo' within a single CR, avoiding the problem of high-CR monsters as a way of adding challenge (basically, you throw one CR 6 beast against a CR 4 party, you will have one dead or maimed PC and then one dead beast as the entire party's resources are directed at it, unless it has some power or ability the PCs can't cope with, then it's TPK time). I'll need to see it in play.
'At will' and 'per encounter' abilities. They reek of a lack of attention to worldbuilding, because an ability balanced for use in 'encounters' can transform the world when NPCs turn it to peaceful uses. One example was a 'low level' unarmed attack which does 2d6 damage to objects and ignores hardness. Think what this means for construction work -- or for jail cells. Since it's a 'per encounter' ability, someone can use it many, many, times per day -- if Book Of Nine Swords is a guide, it will be usable as often as once every five minutes, probably more with the right feats.
The emphasis on every encounter being this spectacular staged battle full of changing terrain, hordes of enemy mooks, and so on. Remember this:"When everything is cool...nothing is." The current D&D design encourages a slow attrition of resources so that the boss monster fight is challenging. The 'at will' and 'per encounter' powers means that the PCs are at, according to the devs, 80% capacity *at worst* at the beginning of EVERY new encounter. This, more than anything else, makes 4e 'not D&D' to me. D&D has always been about resource management, whether its hit points, charges, or heal spells, and removing that aspect changes the game to being something else entirely.
Things I really dislike:
Gutting previously core classes and races, apparently in the admitted goal of adding them in the 'annual' PHB, DMG, MM releases as away of convincing buyers these new books are truly 'core'.
The extreme focus on 'encounters', making the game seem like a series of staged set pieces, not a smooth flowing story.
The return to the bad, bad, bad old days of AD&D 1 and 2, where monsters and PCs used different rules for their stat blocks.
Designing abilities to fit a role, instead of a role flowing from abilities.
Balance Uber Alles, where every character is good -- or at least competent -- at everything as a major design goal. Wouldn't want anyone's precious little snowflake to be forced let someone else have spotlight time.
Reduced skill list. (I know I'm a minority here, but I'm a fan of Rolemaster and GURPS. I like skill choices.)
Possibly no skill points (not confirmed).
Self-indulgent, pointless, stupid, moronic 'flavor names' for simple abilities. Here, let me give you an example. Anyone who is not familiar with D&D 4e development, but is at least passingly familiar with 3e, wanna tell me what they think the feat "Golden Wyvern Adept" does? I'll give you a hint -- in 3e, it would probably have been a metamagic feat. And the devs have confirmed this "style" of naming is endemic to the rules. Gack! This is their idea of how to lure new gamers? Add even MORE confusing jargon to the game? Feh! If I want to play Exalted, I'll play Exalted!
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