Post originally by Richard Wells at 2003-12-24 00:59:54
Converted from Phorums BB System

Joshua Kubli wrote:
Why are other critters such as gnolls impossible to use as mutated animals?
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Do try to pay attention. Getting different results is not the same as impossible. I could sit down with a gnoll template, strip out the inappropiate cultural and fantasy campaign assumptions embedded in the template, and otherwise fix it to become more suitable for a GW game. Obviously, I would prefer not to waste the unneeded effort or to buy $20+ gaming products merely to use 2 pages just because the authors of GWD20 were too lazy to tighten up their text and rid it of all the dead wood. Do you believe that GWd20 was so tightly written that no pages could be trimmed from the text?

At its core, that is the problem with GWd20. Not that the loss of mutant animals is a crippling blow, but that what was inserted in its place was vastly less interesting. If the various new rules had been useful and actually worked in the published draft, reactions might have been more favorable. Replacing prime rib with sawdust enhanced meatloaf will not earn favorable restaurant reviews. Mutant animals for use as PCs are much more fun and player friendly than the untested gibberish of the community rules. [Great concept had the rules worked for inclusion in a GM book; but doubly wrong for the Player's Handbook.]

GWd20 was a product written in haste by authors with little interest in playing it and slapped together without effort made to revise the sections into a cohesive whole. You may believe (based on your review) that someday and with lots of work by the purchaser and the addition of an $100 of equally poor quality GWd20 supplements plus massive expenditures on other D20 product, that GWd20 could be turned into a decent game. Others are probably unwilling to stay on the fool's errand in the hopes of someday finding GWd20's fabled pony.