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Any D&D/D20

Shadowrun

World of Darkness

Palladium

Other (feel free to post about it)

[MrRoboto75]

You used to have a fairly-generic fantasy world, Grayhawk, which was the default at least for 3rd edition, if not before.

If anything, forgotten realms was raped pretty hard with the retcon dildo from 4th onward in order to be the defacto default setting, as now you need to figure out how the new default races and such suddenly fit into forgotten realms.  Even old fans of forgotten realms hate forgotten realms now.

I think a real problem with official adventures these days is, at least with pathfinder if not D&D, they're built from the ground up for pathfinder society/organized play.  Not that I hate PC/OP in-and-of itself but it does force a certain design paradigm for adventure, I imagine.  It needs to be fairly boilerplate or straightforward for the average DM to run with little improv needed on their part, it needs to be fairly easy, at least to avoid character death, and the whole thing needs to be more-or-less doable in one night.

Not that old school was necessarily better.  Tomb of Horrors was also for organized tournament play.  It had the opposite design paradigm, as a tournament it was more a question of how far can you get instead of could you do it at all.  Like an arcade game.

[Kadzar]

I think a real problem with official adventures these days is, at least with pathfinder if not D&D, they're built from the ground up for pathfinder society/organized play.  Not that I hate PC/OP in-and-of itself but it does force a certain design paradigm for adventure, I imagine.  It needs to be fairly boilerplate or straightforward for the average DM to run with little improv needed on their part, it needs to be fairly easy, at least to avoid character death, and the whole thing needs to be more-or-less doable in one night.

I don't know that really describes most D&D 5e modules (though I haven't run them myself), but it does describe the Adventure League (5e organized play) modules pretty well. Hell, I could probably stand that "doable in one night" thing for the regular modules, since it sometimes gets kind of tiresome having to play through the same adventure week-after-week, or your character having reached high level and spent all that time on single adventure that lasted maybe a couple weeks at best.

[Cruxador]

If anything, forgotten realms was raped pretty hard with the retcon dildo from 4th onward in order to be the defacto default setting, as now you need to figure out how the new default races and such suddenly fit into forgotten realms.  Even old fans of forgotten realms hate forgotten realms now.

It was already pretty well out of fashion before that, at least by what I know – that was the height of the opposition to DMPCs and the idea that the important things to do in a setting designed for tabletop play should be available to the PCs to do, or else it doesn't serve a purpose. That mindset clashes heavily with FR's complex and elaborate network of pantheons and high level canon characters.

[Enemy post]

I was helping a friend's kids learn to play their D&D starter set. One of them got especially excited about casting Burning Hands in particular and was waiting the whole session for a good opportunity to do so. When he finally did, he rolled 16 on 3d6 and took out three goblins at once. That was fun.

[Cthulhu]

Dragonlance is bad but it's not as bad as Forgotten Realms.  I don't know much about Greyhawk but I was under the impression it was a more sword and sorcery style.

I was talking about this the other day, somebody trying to figure out why all the gods and superpowered NPCs of forgotten realms weren't dealing with a world-ending threat by themselves, and it reminded me of my headcanon for Sisyphus from That Which Sleeps (that which will never be released).  Now I'm thinking about making that my big villain for my campaign, but I dunno if I'll actually go with it.

There's an arbitrarily large number of Material Planes, and the multiverse is basically a feeding ground for cosmic predators (calling them the Devourers for now).  They swim through the astral plane, or embed themselves in worlds like parasites.  When a world is ripe, one of the Devourers appears, feeding on the chaos and terror of its arrival and leaving the world barren.

Each world is different, but they have three universal constants.  They all have humans, who are special.  They all have a Chosen One, who fights his world's Devourer, and they all have Sisyphus, who is cursed with knowing the fate of the world and being unable to stop it.

Humans, playing on the way humans are always the main protagonists in fantasy stories and the other races just kind of sit there, have some secret essence (Humanity, Determination, whatever you want to call it) that gives them their striving, rebellious spirit.  Elves and dwarves and even gods are creatures of fate and can't fight against it, while humans tell fate to go fuck itself.   The Chosen One is always human.  Sisyphus is always human.

Anyway, the Chosen One fights the Devourer and even if he wins it'll just come back in a thousand years.  Sisyphus has a plan, to distill the essence of humanity into a New Man, requiring the blood of millions of humans and essentially sacrificing the world, then join the Chosen One's soul to create a supreme being of pure Determination, which can kill the Devourers and end the cycle forever.

But he has to get the Chosen One to go along with destroying the entire world, which always fails.  Sometimes the Chosen One kills him, sometimes he kills the Chosen One, but without his consent the world is doomed.

Dunno how I'd do it, or if I'd do it at all, it's pretty weird and awkward since my party has no humans in it at all (minotaur, kobold, dorf, tiefling) but maybe that's the hook.  They're all the Chosen One, and they're all non-human, and Sisyphus recognizes this as something unique and redoubles his efforts.  I don't see them going along with his plans to kill everybody in the world, but of course the entire theme is bucking against fate so it would be appropriate if Sisyphus's plan wasn't really the only way to save the cosmos.

[scriver]

Nah, Dragonlance may be less generically generic than FR, but Dragonlance is also much less interesting and fun than FR.

It also has kender, which needs nothing more said about it, and is the origin of the Dragonborn, which are completely boring and awful and something that should never have been added to FR or spread to any other DnD setting or content.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

There should be a retroclone that is intentionally designed to bring out and encourage the worst grognard player instinct. All the races have bad traits like the kender. Your alignment is a rulebook you have to follow. You can force other PCs to do things with skill checks. Paladins get more powerful the more lives they end. All major artifacts are sapient and played by other players.

[Cthulhu]

Kender aren't that bad, people just don't play them right.  The description makes it clear they have no sense of property and no sense of value.  Which means they shouldn't be exclusively stealing valuable, useful shit, and they shouldn't have any qualms about giving things back or sharing things they stole from elsewhere.  I will never play terrible stock settings so I'll never have a game with kender, but if I did I'd give them houserules for "quantum kleptomania" effects.

They can make a luck check to produce a small item needed for the situation (like a waterskin, lockpick, bell, whatever), assuming that they stole it previously.  And if they need to use a consumable like a potion that someone else has, in combat or while separated, whatever, and the owner consents to them using it, we just assume they borrowed it earlier and they have it, without needing the other player to go give it to them.

[Cruxador]

That's still pretty damn bad.

[scriver]

There should be a retroclone that is intentionally designed to bring out and encourage the worst grognard player instinct. All the races have bad traits like the kender. Your alignment is a rulebook you have to follow. You can force other PCs to do things with skill checks. Paladins get more powerful the more lives they end. All major artifacts are sapient and played by other players.

Grognards and Dickwads

[Persus13]

Will this retroclone also bring out the worst in DMs, or do they just get to watch the chaos? DMPC designation for NPCs, etc.

[Rolan7]

Instead of filling party gaps with a utility DMPC, DM's are encouraged to make an evoker/warlock or a summoner.  Or all of the above!  PCs mess up carefully crafted stories, so why should they get the glory?  Or the action economy heh.

Spoiler: Joking aside but actually still joking, I saw this yesterday and laughed (click to show/hide)

[wierd]

Look, what's the point of having a character that can cling to a wall, and roll up it, if you don't do it!?

I mean, sure-- there's STAIRS-- but that's what people WITHOUT special powers use!

[Cruxador]

Look, what's the point of having a character that can cling to a wall, and roll up it, if you don't do it!?

I mean, sure-- there's STAIRS-- but that's what people WITHOUT special powers use!

If stairs count as difficult terrain, I wouldn't be surprised if there are plenty of climb speed builds where taking the stairs is inconvenient and slow in comparison. Which actually potentially makes sense, now. I'm thinking about it.

[MrRoboto75]

Next star wars game I'm going to roll up Claptrap and complain about how stairs are impossible to use.