Pi-Con Progress

[l33tminion]

Pi-Con is going very well, and I'm looking forward to the concluding events tomorrow. I've been to a lot of panel discussions, including some very interesting ones on dystopian fiction, "reaching a post-scarcity world", polyamory, law, obscure anime, free speech and technology, and "hedonism in the modern world". I bought a book and some other things. I played some video games and board games. I played a quick game of DnD 4th edition with pre-made characters, which went all right, despite setbacks. The 4th edition rules are disappointing, they seem to have doe a rather good job of simplifying the game, then re-complicated it in a way that is not necessarily an improvement.

On a somewhat related note: Apparently geek is the new counter-culture.

Comments

[vitalycherno.livejournal.com]

4th ed is awful. Plus, the way they've dispersed the material among the books is really shady. I mean, no good dragons in the MM? Gnomes not in the PHB?

Also, geek has always been the counter-culture from what I can tell. Back in the day, it was literati and math/science geeks that were the ones fighting the system.

[l33tminion]

I can live with gnomes not being in core since they're sort of redundant with halflings for the short-joke role. Dragons on the other hand, what the hell? It's in the name.

[(Anonymous)]

Don't knock my gnomish brothers and sisters! But I see your point entirely, no one at character creation jumps up and screams "OH OH OH I WANT TO BE A GNOME!" Regardless, they're my favorite PHB race, I just get sick of everyone wanting to play a fucking elf (Which is why in my game world elves are nearly extinct and gnomes are well loved by all).

Speaking of updates to D&D, have you had a chance to check out piazo's Pathfinder? They've got the beta version of it for free as a download on their site and I'd like to hear your thoughts on it sometime.

[l33tminion]

I hadn't heard of that, but looks interesting, I'll have to check it out.

(Link for reference for those following the conversation.)