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Thursday, November 18, 2010
In Praise of D&D III
My longest stretch of not playing D&D occurred during the 2e era. Between about 1996 and 2000, I didn't play D&D at all, after having been involved in a long-running campaign since Summer 1992. The end of that campaign was partially due to external factors, but a good part of it was unhappiness with the way TSR was shepherding the game. Even the best D&D products of the 90s have an "autumnal" feel about them -- brightly colored leaves whose beauty signalled the inevitable coming of winter. And the latter half of the 1990s definitely was a "winter" for D&D, at least as far as I am concerned. I gave up playing the game entirely and might well have never returned to it at all had it not been for a wholly unexpected turn of events.
That turn of events occurred in 2000. At the time, I was writing for the now-defunct InQuest magazine and was given the opportunity to produce an article on the then-upcoming Third Edition of Dungeons & Dragons from Wizards of the Coast. As part of my research for the article, WotC sent me a large number of playtest files for the game, including the entirety of the Player's Handbook. I was initially quite unenthusiastic about the assignment, but, reading through the files WotC sent me, I slowly found myself becoming rather impressed with the way that my favorite game of old had been given a revamp. I liked it so much, in fact, that I decided to start a D&D III campaign once I was given the OK to share the files with my friends, several months before the game was released. I was thus what you'd call an "early adopter" of 3e.
And so it was that I was reunited with my first love, thanks to Wizards of the Coast. Lest anyone find this implausible, let me reassure you that, from the first, there were things I disliked about D&D III -- the unified XP table, ascending AC, and, most of all, its obsession with "balance." I learned to live with the first two and simply ignored the other one, running the game the way I'd run 1e and 2e in the past. Unsurprisingly, I had few problems with this approach. Indeed, it was remarkably easy to use old materials with the new edition; hardly any conversion was necessary.
That was what I found most impressive about the new edition, actually: though it was clearly rebuilt from the ground up, the old foundations were still there, as were a myriad of little details. I once did a comparison of spell descriptions from OD&D through 3e and what's amazing is just how much continuity there is, not just in conception but even in verbiage. D&D III contains a surprising amount of Gygaxian text -- not mere echoes of his words but the actual words themselves. That's why, for me, despite the dropping of the word "advanced," I still look on Third Edition as Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, Third Edition. There's simply too much continuity, both mechanically and, especially, flavor-wise to think differently.
This isn't to suggest, by any means, that 3e is the game Gary would have written had he retained control over the game into the 21st century. Given the direction he was already taking the game in the late 1e era, I'm not certain I would necessarily have enjoyed what he'd have done with latter day AD&D anyway. But I think it's important to point out that, for all the clear deviations from what had come before, D&D III still recognizably possesses Gygaxian "DNA." I thought that in 2000 and I still think that now, after several years of examining and playing the original game. This is an undeniable truth, as anyone who's used the 3e-derived D20 SRD to retro-clone old school rules can tell you. If there weren't a lot of similarity between D&D III and its predecessors, games like OSRIC and Labyrinth Lord would have been impossible.
Which brings me to another important point: the Open Game License and SRD. Together, these two things "freed" D&D forever, making most of its core concepts and ideas the property of us all. Looking back now, a decade later, as piles of D20 shovelware clogs up bookshelves and (no doubt) landfills across the world, it's hard to remember just how amazing things felt back then. To a lot of us, it felt, if only briefly, like we were on the cusp of a new Golden Age, one where gaming was every bit as vibrant, varied, and imaginative as it had been back in the heady times of my youth. Sure, there was a lot of junk being made, but there was also a lot of amazing product being released and, best of all, shared. For several years, it was 1979 again, at least for me, and I'm glad I got to experience that.
But it was no new Golden Age but rather a Gilded one. The advent of v.3.5 -- even its self-designation is awful -- presaged a shift in tone, content, and business plan that slowly lost me. I continued to play D&D, of course; I was involved in two very lengthy campaigns, including the continuation and conclusion of the one I'd begun in early 2000. I had a lot of fun and my love for D&D had been successfully reignited. And thank goodness for that, because, if my love had not genuinely returned, I probably would have again dropped the game, thanks to the endless churn of splatbooks, rules expansions, and increasingly ridiculous material WotC was producing in the wake of v.3.5. I stopped buying D&D books entirely and felt ever more strongly that many of the things I first disliked back in 2000, particularly the obsession with balance, would be the death of what was, at its roots, a very good iteration of Dungeons & Dragons.
During 2006-2007, I started casting about for alternatives, a path that ultimately led me to where I am today. Had things been different, had D&D IV not shed its Gygaxian heritage and fixed the things I actually thought were wrong with 3e, I might well have never taken up OD&D. Consequently, I feel I owe a debt of thanks to D&D III, first, for having restored my love for D&D and, second, for having taught me what it was I loved about it in the first place. Without 3e, I probably would never have played Dungeons & Dragons again at all. And while I now look back on it as a game I would never choose to play again if other alternatives are available, I cannot say it was a bad game. It's a game with some serious flaws, chief being its balance fetish, but I enjoyed it for quite a few years and whose design does more than pay lip service to the game's past.
So, here's a tip of the proverbial hat to Third Edition.
63 comments:
I like 3rd edition, never played 3.5. After finally reaching 10th level, over a nearly 10 year long campaign, I can say that the combat gets verrrrry long. That's it's chief downside.
Minor things I don't like are the skills, which eliminate a lot of opportunities for player innovation, since it all boils down to a roll of the dice in a skill you may not have many points in. I also mourn the loss of save-or-die poison. There's just no worries about getting poisoned anymore - it's just a few hit points lost.
It's pretty much D&D with feats & skills pasted on, and works pretty well, aside from hours-long combats.
4th edition, the game designers decided they could "do better" and rewrote the game from scratch. I don't think you can reasonably call it D&D, it has so little resemblance to what came before.Since older editions of D&D use a roughly quadratic XP formula in their leveling tables, separating them by class really only matters in the first few levels. As a campaign progresses, PC levels should clump together given any typical spread of XP awards, making the variation among leveling rates much less meaningful. And if you aren't concerned with fine-tuning "balance" between the classes anyway, then you might as well consolidate the tables for ease of use (IMHO).
In light of these facts, I think keeping supposedly different rates of advancement is one of the few cases where tradition and nostalgia are primary motivators. Of course, there's always an opportunity cost involved in adding house rules to a campaign, so keeping the tables in order to be "by-the-book" isn't unreasonable, but I'd use a unified XP table in any edition of D&D, especially if new players are involved.I also hadn't played D&D for a few years prior to 2000, but I had basically the opposite reaction to 3rd edition. I bought the three core books as soon as they were released, sat down and read them all through, and then actually laughed out loud at the idea that I would ever actually run or play that thing. I hated 3rd edition thoroughly and comprehensively with a sense of revulsion that continues to this day. I got rid of the books on Ebay within a week and never supported WOTC with any more purchases of anything, nor will I ever run or play anything they publish. I despised 3rd edition that much.
ReplyDeleteThanks for sharing the memories James. For me the biggest thing about 3rd edition was the OGL and the abundance of material it encouraged. Since I have never played any version of D & D, all of it is just resource material for Dragonquest. Real life kept me away from much material during the 2nd edition era, but I did end up buying a lot of Starjammer & Planescape stuff just to read. 3rd edition ushered in a lot of new magic colleges, professions and skills to Dragonquest.
ReplyDeleteInteresting, James, my D&D history is somewhat similar. I started in '79 as well and ended up quitting for a while around the time of 2E. This was in part due to life circumstances, but also the way TSR dealt with my hero Gary Gygax. I got back into the game with 3E and indeed stuck around for 3.5E (because my friends bought me the books). I also feel the third edition has the flavor and feel of D&D despite having qualms with some of the iterations of the rules. Having said that, our group still uses 3.5E as our D&D ruleset and I doubt we will go back to an older edition (or a clone thereof). Most of our group is happy enough, and I have found a release for my grognardian ways with a 1E Gamma World campaign.
ReplyDeleteIt's funny, as I was first brought in to the hobby through AD&D 2e, and being the newb that I was, I think 3e was just like 2e, only better (heck, it was a higher number!). After player in a 3e campaign for two years without any fun, I quit, and ran a highly successful AD&D 2e game.
I later tried my hand at running a 3e campaign, and it failed miserably in the first session. I gave away my 3e books the next week to another player.
I still love old D&D, and was pretty "meh" over 4e, but I'm starting to get in to the Essentials line that is coming out. It's certainly not the "same" D&D; but to me, neither is BECMI/LL D&D, or LotFP. They are all different nuances of the same basic game, and I must say, I am getting rather fond of this variety.Third Edition did much the same thing for me. I'm sure that without it, I probably wouldn't have gotten back into gaming either. I think the SRD was the BEST thing that has occured for the hobbyist gamer since the early TSR/Judges Guild days. The offerings of the 90's just felt like a wasteland for gaming to me. I might not agree with all of the choices made by the 3e team, but it felt like a corner was turned.
ReplyDeleteYou will be unsurprised that I mostly agree. I thank 3e for helping me understand what I want from D&D by giving me what I thought I wanted. Indeed, the fact that I used to call (A)D&D "too combat oriented" is hard to believe in the face of what it became in 3e. ^_^
So many of us trod such similar paths here. This is--I believe--what puts the "renaissance" in OSR. Yes, there are grognards who never stopped playing classic D&D or AD&D--who "got it" the first time, but a lot of us have found our appreciation for the older games through having earnestly tried many of the alternatives.Yeah... I don't get that comment from Rach's Reflections. 4E is so far from the origins of AD&D that if you took a person who had never seen a 2E or 3E/3.5E book and then showed them a 4E rulebook with the D&D name obscured, I doubt they'd recognize it as the same game.
I started playing around '81 or '82 with Moldvay Basic and AD&D (we didn't know at the time that you weren't supposed to combine them), and, like James, had a LONG absence from the game from about 1989 until 2001. I actually purchased a lot of 2E stuff to read but never played or ran a campaign during that time.
When 3E came out, a bunch of us got together to play, and two of those campaigns are still going strong. I actually still like the system. We've successfully converted our campaigns to Pathfinder but everyone seems happy. We like the customization and the skills and feats and the unified XP tables and ascending AC. None of that bothers us.
But, thanks to this blog, we've also gotten back into some "Old School" play and are currently playing through "Expedition to the Barrier Peaks" using OSRIC. It's a blast![removed the previous post due to typos]
3e felt more old school to me than 2e, despite the differences in mechanics. Half-orcs were back, assassins were back, and dungeon crawling was re-embraced. Hell, by many of the current definitions, my current 3.5 campaign is more old school than my AD&D games ever were.I ran D&D in middle and high school with 2E, with 3E coming out the summer after I graduated. My new college buddies and I (who are still the guys I game with) started up a 3E game, ran by our group's main GM. He hadn't been too much into D&D, or fantasy in general, but he had a blast running it. It lasted nearly a year, which is pretty long for our attention span. There were a lot of house rules, to the point that some people might think we were 'doing it wrong' - biggest one being, level-ups were done much more arbitrarily, when we were ready to 'fight tougher stuff' - but we had fun. Personally, though I'm sure there are 4E people who will dispute this, it feels like 4E just doesn't leave enough room for a DM to change up his game.
We'd stopped playing long before 3.5 came around the bend, but I was a bit sour about what I saw - attempting to jury-rig something to hold together what felt like a critical mass of extra classes and rules. Admittedly, my biggest complaint about 4E is more a matter of aesthetics, and I've recently discovered that the roots of that shift in tone and theme started during 3.5 (and were supported by Paizo - see the execreble 'Savage Tide' Adventure Path - which is why I have no interest in Pathfinder).
But, yeah, I'll agree that 3rd Ed. was fun, but squandered its promise in several ways, eventually going off the rails. The few times we've tried 4E, we had fun, but in a board game kinda way, and never really had an interest in continued play. I'm actually going to be playing in a 4e beer-and-pretzels game tonight, which might involve the 'Essentials' rules, so we'll see if maybe I'm wrong about it.
Oh, and one last thing - quick shout-out to Inquest! My best friend in Middle and High School had a subscription in the late Nineties, and I was a big fan. Among other things, it was the first place I got to hear about guys like Fafhrd, the Gray Mouser, and Elric, so I owe it for that, even if there were a few too many Pokemon covers.
Word Verification - Sishazom, which is awesome.This really resonates with me. I too abandoned D&D during 2nd Edition's reign, and when 3E came out I was instantly curious, wondering what had become of the game. I wondered if the game had been able to shed any of the aspects of 2E that had caused me to leave the game behind. I never actually played by 3.0/3.5 rules, but I certainly used it as part of my house rulings when I gamed again. Ultimately, it did for me what it did for you: brought me back to the game...even if I never really played that version. And like you, I will be eternally grateful to 3E for that!
ReplyDelete- AnonymousNovember 18, 2010 at 3:18 PM
This post is spot-on.
WotC absolutely revitalized the moribund AD&D, and if it wasn't for their efforts, which were obviously and genuinely made out of love for RPGs and for the D&D their staff started with, D&D would only exist now in the hands of the older generation of gamers; and only a small subset of us would be playing it.
Most of the retro-clones directly owe their existence to WotC's love for the game and desire to see more people playing it. And (arguably) their generosity in allowing the OGL to be interpreted in such a way that it covers rules much closer to OD&D in form than to 3E.
In disagreement with Rachel, I personally think 4E draws as much from RC, Mentzer & Moldvay D&D as it does from AD&D, and that 3E is the obvious descendent of AD&D. 3E is very much akin to AD&D, but fleshed out, rationalized, and systematized. In 4E there's a clear drive for simplicity and a greater relation to wargames.
Obviously both games are complicated by the layers of additional "support"/detail that the nature of being in the publishing industry more or less forces them to endeaver upon.
Many grognards dislike and disagree with the design choices WotC has made for 3E and 4E. Some of them are so passionate in their love for the old and antipathy for WotC's designss as to use words like "hate" and "revulsion". Posters on Dragonsfoot use acronyms for The Edition That Shall Not Be Named & The Abomination That Shall Not Be Named.
All that said, and their feelings not discounted, they are in error when they attribute ignoble motives to the designers at WotC. And even they, even the ones who have managed to keep an ongoing game of an older edition since the pre-3E days, owe a debt to WotC for the renewal of interest in D&D and for the emotion and impetus WotC has given them too, even if it is a reaction to their dislike of 3E & 4E, and a determination to show the fun of and expand the appreciation of older D&D. "Since older editions of D&D use a roughly quadratic XP formula in their leveling tables, separating them by class really only matters in the first few levels. As a campaign progresses, PC levels should clump together given any typical spread of XP awards, making the variation among leveling rates much less meaningful."
The only version of the rules I have with me at the moment is Labyrinth Lord (which is of course a B/X clone) so I'll use those numbers.
At 10,001 XP a cleric is 4th level with a little way to go to get to 5th. A dwarf, fighter, or halfling is 4th level with a fair way to go to get to 5th. An elf is 3rd level and still needs quite a few points to get to 4th. A magic user has just barely reached 4th level and has a long way to go to get to 5th level. A thief has just barely reached 5th level and has a long way to go to get to 6th.
At 100,001 XP a cleric or thief is 8th level. A fighter, halfling, or dwarf is 7th level and has a fair way to go to get to 8th. A magic user is 7th level with a long way to go to get to 8th. An elf is 6th level with a long way to go to get to 7th.
The spreads of levels (three) is the same in both cases, and the relative levels of the different classes is nearly so. At 12,501 and 100,001 they are exactly the same.
"In light of these facts, I think keeping supposedly different rates of advancement is one of the few cases where tradition and nostalgia are primary motivators."
To reach "name level" (9th) a cleric needs 200,001 XP. A dwarf needs 280,001. An elf needs 400,001. A fighter needs 240,001. A magic user needs 300,001. A thief needs 160,001. Thus the thief needs the least, a cleric needs 25% more than a thief, a fighter needs 50% more than a thief, a dwarf or magic user needs almost double what a thief needs, and an elf needs two and a half times what a thief needs to reach ninth level. Maybe it's just me, but that seems like a pretty big difference to just shrug off as irrelevant nostalgia. 240,000 XP (the additional amount an elf needs compared to a thief to reach name level) is a lot of monsters killed and treasures seized. And by the time the elf achieves this, the thief will be 11th level. When the elf reaches his maximum level of 10th at 600,001 XP, the thief will be 12th level and well on his way to 13th. The different in the rate of advancement between the two classes remains about two levels until the elf maxes out.
I don't have my first edition books with me, but the cleric, thief, fighter, magic user, and elf (assuming the elf is a fighter/magic user) have about the same rate of advancement in those rules. If anything, the multiclassed elf advances a bit more slowly. Dwarves and halflings actually get treated a little more favorably, assuming they don't multiclass, because they still have racial abilities not shared by human fighters but advance at exactly the same rate. I think this is why no one ever plays a human fighter in my AD&D campaigns - they either play a dwarf fighter or a ranger.
So basically I would disagree on two counts: the difference in rate of advancement in older editions is real, not supposed, and it remains more or less constant through name level rather than becoming irrelevant at higher levels.It must be our ages, but my experience was roughly similar. I was so burned out on *D&D by 1994 or so that I gave up on it. I bought Ravenloft materials, but that was it really. I was ready to quit it completely till I was also given a set of the play test rules for 3.0. It was February and 3.0 was out that later September and I was there at my game store when it was released.
3.0 saved D&D and the OGL kept it going.I started with the Basic box in '81 or '82 and quickly moved on to 1e. 2e lost me fairly early on, about 1991 or so, for a variety of reasons. I dropped it in favor of the BECMI version of D&D.
When TSR dropped (non-A) D&D as a supported line in 1993, they lost me as a customer. I wasn't going to buy more 2e products. I kept playing with what I had happily enough for quite some time.
At some point in the early '00s, I started checking the Internet for some ideas on a Known World campaign I wanted to run and found the Mystara Mailing List. I quickly realized, after seeing all the various conversion to 2e and conversion to 3e threads, that what I really loved wasn't the setting, but was the old rules.
That realization got me to look back at the B/X rules and 1e, and also got me to acquire a copy of OD&D, and really got me interested in the older stuff. So much so, that I completely missed 3e when it came out.
Later, right when 3.5 was coming out, a buddy of mine wanted to run it and I went out to get a copy of the PHB. My first reaction was, "This is D&D written by someone who didn't like D&D for people who didn't like D&D." I mean, it was D&D, but it seemed to emphasize all the wrong things, make all the wrong choices.
When 4e came out, I came to a shocking realization. I was holding the PHB in my hand in the game store thumbing through it and thought, "I just don't care." I realized then that I would never buy another multi-volume core book rpg again. I just had no interest whatsoever in another 800 pages of FRPG rules. I just couldn't be bothered. I didn't want it. I didn't need it.While I started a bit earlier (77), and my time away from the game was a bit shorter (about 18 months), my experiences were similar. Except...
I did play a bit of 3.5. While I never bought the books, I DM'd and allowed my players to include any 3.5 content that they found interesting. Which, btw, was a sure recipe for disaster. Eventually though, the game became completely much too cumbersome.
Like 2e (near the end) the splat books put out were effusive and never seemed to end. Which eventually caused me to throw my hands up in the air and call it quits. I've never DMd a 3.X (or Pathfinder) game since. Nor will I ever again.
I have since played Pathfinder. And am even now currently playing in a Pathfinder game (Kingmaker), which, if truth be told, is quite fun. I'm trying very hard to ignore the rules and "just play".
But I couldn't agree more with your statement that 3.X and the SRD opened the door to the current OSR resurgence. (Is that repetitive?) I would not now be playing AD&D w/ my eldest daughter, nor Swords and Wizardry w/ both my daughters, if not for the SRD and WotC's generous decision to open source the rules.
I've played all versions of the game. Inclusive of LBB...and I can truly say that 4E is as far removed from the original "spirit" of the game as chess is from Chutes and Ladders. I'm not attempting to denigrate the game in any way, but after a year and a half of playing it, I can attest to the fact that it is truly a game of a different stripe.I really respect this blog post. I can kinda understand where you are coming from. Right now, we play 3E, simply because that is what we have. No one has any extra money for $90 in rule books. Regardless of the edition or the game. For us, 3E is an economic one, and with the amount of stuff we already have, it will take us forever to get to the end of it. So maybe in ten or twelve years, we'll start a different game, but not right now.
ReplyDeleteI really can't completely agree with this particular topic on all things.
I gave 3E a chance, but something was nagging at me for some reason. Even after a play session, something didn't seem right.
Then I remembered.
A 20 page conversion booklet.
That's right, 20 pages.
Is that you're idea of "compatibility"?
Not mine.
What else changed?
saving throws
increasing AC
Feats (UGH!)
"balance", as in it went right into the lap of the player
shall I continue?
The only thing I like about it is through the OGL, it gave many people who hated 3E (like me) an opportunity to make or play something better.
Labyrinth Lord
Swords & Wizardry
Yes, it revitalized the gaming industry...But in a way for many to find something else BETTER than TETSNBN."My first reaction was, "This is D&D written by someone who didn't like D&D for people who didn't like D&D." I mean, it was D&D, but it seemed to emphasize all the wrong things, make all the wrong choices."
"The only thing I like about it is through the OGL, it gave many people who hated 3E (like me) an opportunity to make or play something better."
100% agree with both of these statements. The fact that 3rd edition does bear some resemblance to earlier editions just makes it worse for me - sort of an "uncanny valley" effect. Probably for that reason, I consider 3rd edition to be an actual abomination and find 4th edition merely laughable.I started with the original books a friend's brother brought back from school in Wisc. We played all the iterations through A D&D like lunatics until we discovered Dragonquest and ultimately the Hero System. The combat could drag but the adventure based experience system and the fact that a lowly kobold could kill a high level fighter appealed to some sort of vision of "reality" my group and I sought.
But all this OSR stuff just make me long for the simple days of 1979 and a well rolled character, the cheap dice and a stack of laboriously drawn dungeons on graph paper.What Shadow said. Truth be told, after I played Runequest in 1981, I never played any form of D&D except grudging because my friends had chosen it. I checked out 3E and even 4E and neither are games I'd DM. Far from being a unifying design, the "d20" format is a formula for uncountable special case "bunny" rules (ie feats). This completely dissipate any interest on my part.
What appeals to me about the OSR is stripping D&D back to its core paradigms and rebuilding it "as it should have been - but never was".- AnonymousNovember 18, 2010 at 9:45 PM
I must have read it a hundred times, but to this day I honestly don't understand why some gamers write "3.0 is pretty cool, but 3.5 is awful." [Or vice versa.] They're like Pepsi and Coke to me--I couldn't even describe the difference if I needed to.
ReplyDelete I must have read it a hundred times, but to this day I honestly don't understand why some gamers write "3.0 is pretty cool, but 3.5 is awful." [Or vice versa.] They're like Pepsi and Coke to me--I couldn't even describe the difference if I needed to.
The differences are subtle and are as much about tone as about mechanics, but, to my mind anyway, v.3.5 is where 3e's nascent "More! More! More!" tendencies and obsessions with balance are given full vent. Feats and prestige classes are generally much weaker in vanilla 3e than they are v.3.5, for example, while, conversely, a lot of spells and magic items are weakened in v.3.5. It's a combination that really affected the feel of the game for me, a feel that later v.3.5 supplements ran with in directions that agreed with me even less (Book of Nine Swords, I'm looking at you).One of your best posts ever James.
As you know I am no fan of D&D in any of its forms. I have more issues with it than interest or fond memories. And yet...like you D&D 3rd Edition brought me back to it after a stretch of time perhaps a bit longer than yours.
By the mid-80's I was already barely playing D&D and never running it myself. It wasn't until I met my ex-wife and we started dating that I realized D&D was the perfect game to get her interested in RPGs. She was already an avid fantasy fan but simply never had an opportunity to play.
I started her with AD&D 1st Edition. Since I had long since stopped playing D&D by the 2nd Edition era, I had none of that material in my collection. It was her idea to go to GenCon for the release of 3rd Edition. I hadn't been to GenCon in years. She, and I, really liked the unified systems, the feeling that you really only needed one book to play (the Player's Handbook, mostly) and we had a great time at the convention which helped the cause a lot as well.
3.5 was both interesting to us and somewhat unnecessary. It felt like WotC was trying to fix something we didn't feel was really broken.
With my wife now my ex-wife and us no longer gaming together (though we are still great friends and occasionally do get to talk gaming from time to time), my motivation for playing D&D is gone as well. I stopped liking it before we met and I have no real reason to pursue it now. For a brief time inbetween, I did like playing D&D and the D&D I liked was 3rd Edition.I am with you on this one.
Early 3rd Edition was a) exciting and b) as if all those late-2E splatbooks had never happened.
3E felt like a return to AD&D v1 roots, but with more consistent mechanics--which I didn't mind a bit--and (well, except for the grapple and attacks of opportunity) a welcome simplification in the combat system.
Hell, 3E brought me back from GURPS to D&D.
Sure, then it grew a bunch of baroque excrescences, but I really thought (and think) straight-up 3E was a clean and elegant design.
Even though I play a houseruled Microlite74 now.
AdamI like 3e (3.0, actually) and I still DM it. In many respects, it brings back to the game many things which were removed from the 2e core books, like assassins, half-orcs, barbarians, demons, devils. The separate spell lists for many character classes are a clear tie with 1e. And actually, I find it easier to convert 1e stuff to 3e than 2e stuff.
I never used any of the splatbooks and the game worked (and works) fine with just three core books. I play it when I have players who are willing to devote time to character creation and development, and are willing to cope with its complexity.- 3.5 also increased the obsession with fine tactical positioning. Just look at how much space is devoted to showing how to move miniatures on the grid; how movement is described (diagonals counted differently than horizontal/vertical spaces); the exact spell templates for placement on the grid; when I (rarely) use minis with 3.0, I use hex grids, so all that stuff in 3.5 is simply wasted space.
- the explosion in the number of feats (many feats in 3e were split into 2 or more feats in 3.5e) and the introduction of pairs of skill-augmenting feats (whereas in 3e there was only Skill Focus). In 3e the feats were very focused, and each one addressed and augmented one specific aspect of the rules.
- monsters are considered characters in 3.5e, so all of them have feats and skill points which strongly depend on hit dice. Instead, in 3e only a few monster types had feats, and far fewer skill points. This makes monsters easier to modify and run in 3e than in 3.5
- In 3.5 there are no more class-specific skills, so everyone can access any skill. In 3e some skills were special, and they helped maintain a sort of niche protection.
All these facets easily add up to make for a much more (and needlessly) complex game, without any practical returns.
Oh, and paladins invoking their horses out of thin air? How LAME is that?Whatever subtle tone or feel each game had seems most likely to be completely subsumed under the much greater impact of the groups taste and preferences. In my group, there was no change from 3e to 3.5 in tone or feel.
My dissatisfaction with the change was that, while it did indeed fix a few rough patches of 3e (a very few) it broke as many as it fixed, and it changed much, much more that was neither better nor worse; just different, so you could never quite remember what the "correct" rule was and you had to look it up all the time. And it left glaring problems like grapple and whatnot unchanged.
Plus, I was really quite irked to have to go "rebuy" a bunch of stuff just because they were now rereleasing it all updated. I never did pick up a PHB or DMG because almost everything I'd need there is in the SRD, but I rebought the entire Complete series. Because they were much better than the books that they replaced (Sword & Fist, Song & Silence, etc.) I more or less forgave them over time and embraced the 3e->3.5 change. But I still don't see it as substantial, nor do I think it needed to happen from any design perspective.
Of course my history was similar to the original post, and yet also radically different. I too had left D&D and came back to it via 3e back in 2000, and I too was put off by 3.5, although for different reasons. But I left D&D long before 2e came out, because I was frustrated with all the various D&Disms that "held me back" from playing the game that I wanted to. 3e still had a lot of those, and I struggled with them for a time, but one of the strengths of 3e was that it allowed a lot of flexibility, too. While many of the folks posting comments here have talked about using 3e in an old school way, what I liked about it was that I could play games that never heard of dungeons, didn't use any of the cliched D&Disms or D&D archetypes, and I found that the game was robust enough to support it still.
Maybe too robust, as I've heard lots of people complain about feeling stifled by the rules, but I always took WotC at their word when they said "tools, not rules" (and it's my style with every game I play or run anyway; I have no problem handwaving or changing aspects that don't suit me) so to me, the robustness of a skill system and feat system wasn't stifling and out of control, it was a tool that could customize and define characters in ways that prior editions of D&D could never have dreamed of.
Anyway...- AnonymousNovember 19, 2010 at 8:14 AM
I've always believed that AD&D2E, at its core (PH, DMG, MC - using none of the "optional rules" listed within), is a super-solid game - which I find runs as fast & as smoothly as any version of "Classic" D&D out there. If my group wants a change-up from "Classic" D&D (Mentzer/Rules Cyclopedia), AD&D2E (core) is our "go-to" game.
Although I ran a 3.5 campaign for around a year, it just didn't feel like what I thought D&D should feel like. What it DID do, however, is brought me back to both "Classic" D&D & AD&D2E (core). I hold no animosity towards WotC, but I find that their particular flavor of D&D just wasn't (& isn't) for me. Too each their own.
However, I DO have to give WotC credit. If it wasn't for my brief flirtation with D&D 3.5, I probably would have never have regained interest in my favorite hobby after a decade-long hiatus. Or met my wife, for that matter... @Joshua
I agree with the "tool" perspective. This point is repeatedly stressed in the 3e DMG, in particular when it deals with campaign styles. In one of them there is the suggestion to completely scrap the combat system if it does not fit the expectations of the players!
I suppose the main "fault" of 3e, is the fact that they provided rules for everything, so that many players felt "authorised" to quote the rulebook on the DM. Obviously they did not read the DMG, where it clearly says that the DM is the sole responsible for what enters into the game...My experience was slightly different probably because I'm younger. 2e was the first edition I played, and I got into it when it was pretty new. Though I stopped playing as much in high school, I still kept up with what was out at the time. I was excited about 3E when it came out, and I got the 3 core books and read them. I even got the starter game to try to get into it, but something about the aesthetic of Wizards just rubbed me the wrong way. "Dungeonpunk" as they call it - but not just that, the whole framing of the artwork seemed to change. As cheesy as the 2e art was, it was still a lot of small people exploring a big and mysterious world. In 3e, the art is all superhero splash pages. I think that kind of sets the tone for the style of play regardless of if the text says you can or can't leave out rules. It just sort of felt "not for me". Mind you even though I came into the hobby at 2e, I had an immediate affinity for all the 1e stuff that belong to older cousins and brothers of peers and friends. When 4e came out, I read the books, but didn't buy them. The criticism is how video-gamey it is, and I think that's a culmination of how WotC have thought of the game itself as software since they bought it (open source licensing, .5 version numbers, etc.) Again, not a bad game, just not for me.
Another sort of unrelated thought though, I always thought the very nature of the 1e books - the density, the complexity - I found it very evocative of the "old-school" in the same way that the art in 3e was of the "new-school". You had to DELVE into the old game. It felt ancient and secret. Now it feels slick and new and plastic-y - just like a video game.
Anyway, as usual James you create a weird mix of both nostalgia and reflection that give me a new perspective on old, unvisited thoughts. :)Over my groups 25 year D&D career we have gotten many more gaming hours and gaming fun from 3E (specifically 3.5) then any other version of the game that we have played. As many of the posters here have already indicated 3E to us was a better version of AD&D. Clearly great pains were taken by the designers to make the two games close siblings yet still make great improvements in the 3rd edition. 3E did not bring us back to D&D (we were regularly playing 2E at the time) but it felt like it brought us back to 1E in spirit and we have never looked back (or forward to 4E). To us 3E is mechanically superior to and spiritually connected with 1E, so we don't need anything else.
As a side note I also believe that each successive version of D&D is PLAYED more then the previous. I don't mean each successive version sells more units or has a larger audience. I mean each version (regardless of sales) actually gets PLAYED more. I think every version of D&D has customers that buys and reads the products but never plays them. I think this happens less and less as each version comes out. Many people talk about what a great game AD&D was but I remember very clearly during that time that not many people were actually playing it or played it often. My group did play 1E, a lot, and we never saw any other groups spend nearly as much time as we did playing the game. Each successive version of the game seemed to move the needle more toward playing the game then the previous. I suspect today that the 4th edition crowd has the highest "buy and play" ratio of all the previous versions. I would guess the all time highest would be Pathfinder. If I had to list the percentage of people that bought AND played a D&D product by version it would look like this:
D&D 1e---35%
D&D 2e---40%
D&D 3e---60%
D&D 3.5e---70%
I believe for each version of D&D that came out it was LESS likely to be bought by people that were NOT planning on playing it regularly. So if you read a lot of 1E but didn't play it much you had less interest in 2E. If your read a lot of 2e stuff but never played it you didn't have any interest in 3E, and so on. The break in this pattern comes with 4e and PF. When the PFRPG was published it allowed the D&D base to fork and (I believe) resulted in the highest "buy and play" percentage in the games history. For the most part you are not buying PFRPG or 4th edition stuff unless you are actually playing the game.
So what do I think this means? Over time I think the game has been "designed" by and for the people that were actually playing it most. I think this is why each new incarnation of the game has been thought of as mechanically superior but perceived as spiritually inferior."Many people talk about what a great game AD&D was but I remember very clearly during that time that not many people were actually playing it or played it often."
What on earth are you talking about? Unless you've got some kind of genuine data somewhere, this is generalizing your rather unusual personal anecdote.
I don't believe your experience was even remotely universal, and your numbers are made up out of whole cloth.Back in the early 80's literally everyone I knew who owned any AD&D books, or even expressed the slightest interest in the game, also played. I can't speak for the rest of the world, but the idea that overall only a third of the people who owned 1st edition books actually played the game strikes me as comically unlikely. D&D was everywhere in the early days.
ReplyDeleteA pattern that we've seen many times (though not very strongly among this group, it seems) is that people tend to skip an edition. People who started with 1st Ed. often skipped 2nd, came back for 3/3.5, and are skipping 4. Many who started with 2nd skipped 3rd and are coming back for 4th. Maybe people who started with 3rd will skip 4th and come back to the OSR.
Steve- AnonymousNovember 19, 2010 at 2:04 PM
I started after the blogger and most of the commenters but had a broadly similar experience. I started playing in 2nd ed AD&D after the class books had been out for a while, and never did like the system (though I liked getting to play). Even as a new player I could tell that the options weren't balanced and there was an arms race going on - a kit was just flatly better than a base class, and you needed to powergame just to pull your own weight. After my initial run with 2E I played Rolemaster and considered that a better system.
So when 3E first came out I loved it. It was a clean, "fair" version of D&D, which was something I had never seen before. Then, of course, the splatbooks came out and if you used them all you needed to powergame again just to pull your own weight. But I think core 3.0 is still a pretty clean system until you start hitting high levels. (Though I'm playing other games at the moment.)
So I've only started to follow the OSR after the fact. I did get to play in an AD&D campaign only after 3.5 came out and enjoyed that. But my understanding of the "deep structure" of OD&D and AD&D has mainly come from reading blogs and forums about the OSR. Which I think is okay, it would not have been self-evident to me otherwise. And it did take 3.0 and the OGL to get us there. - AnonymousNovember 19, 2010 at 2:27 PM
"The differences are subtle and are as much about tone as about mechanics..."
Well that explains why I don't understand the differences; I'm tone deaf. ;) People who started with 1st Ed. often skipped 2nd, came back for 3/3.5, and are skipping 4. Many who started with 2nd skipped 3rd and are coming back for 4th. Maybe people who started with 3rd will skip 4th and come back to the OSR.
Bad breakup --> disingenuously/huffily swearing off dating for a while --> 'maybe this time it will be DIFFERENT'
Not that complicated, really.- 3.5 also increased the obsession with fine tactical positioning. Just look at how much space is devoted to showing how to move miniatures on the grid; how movement is described (diagonals counted differently than horizontal/vertical spaces); the exact spell templates for placement on the grid; when I (rarely) use minis with 3.0, I use hex grids, so all that stuff in 3.5 is simply wasted space.
Like the Whore Encounter table, and the ten pages of ludicrously detailed hireling/henchman information, and the obsessive compilation of 'varieties of mental illness,' all ballooning the 1e DMG to breathtaking length?
The difference between WotC D&D's complexity and TSR AD&D's complication is night and day. Gygax didn't know the difference because there were no other RPGs to build off of. That's his excuse. People today need to find their own.It seems to me that editions 3 and 4 tend to make D&D more of a wargame and in the case of 4th edition even more like a board game with it's obsession with balance.
I have played D&D since 1981 and I loved each successive edition of the game, though I stopped playing in 1995 during 2nd edition because I thought that things were just getting out of hand with all the rules additions.
I was a firm 3.5 e convert until a buddy of mine ran a 1st edition game (heavily houseruled) and we all had an awesome time playing. It was then that I realized that it wasn't the game that mattered, but rather the gamers.- AnonymousNovember 19, 2010 at 6:41 PM
All these comments by people saying D&D 3 got them back into D&D suggest to me that the thing that really drove people away from D&D was AD&D. I too returned to the D&D fold through 3rd edition, having given up on AD&D and moved on to rolemaster (amongst other things). I didn't come back to D&D3 by accident either - a friend recommended it as "so much better" than AD&D.
ReplyDelete - AnonymousNovember 21, 2010 at 12:08 AM
I'm new to tabletop gaming. I was brought up on video games and exploring the tabletop game has been an interest of mine over the past couple of years, mainly because I have many ideas for games I would like to create, and D&D seems to be the perfect creative tool no matter the edition. I have haunted many "old-school" blogs and other resources such as this and found all of it fascinating. This post caught my eye because I recently bought all of the Pathfinder books, and I do own the 1st edition core books also. Long-winded intro but the point is, I get geeked on discussions like this - how this system or that one got me back into gaming, what system turned me off, etc. This is the type of discussion that will intrigue people like myself and make them want to explore the hobby. So, thanks guys.
ReplyDelete Feats and prestige classes are generally much weaker in vanilla 3e than they are v.3.5, for example, while, conversely, a lot of spells and magic items are weakened in v.3.5.
That's something occurring across all the editions. The classes started out minimalist, but could find stonking great spells and intelligent swords made of instant win just laying about the dungeon (amongst some incredibly unfair traps).
The editions (and sub-editions) slowly moved from OD&D's "30 second" Wizard with 1d6 hp (and a dagger doing 1d6 damage) casting a sleep spell which knocks out half the dungeon level, to 4e's "3 hour" Wizard with ~22 hp (and three pages of special-case modifiers for their useless cantrips) casting a sleep spell which might slow down a small rat or two for a few seconds.
The numbers fool most people though, thinking a 2d6+4 "at will" 4e power better than the old 1d6 dagger, despite the target hit points being over ten times what they were.I played 1st ed when it came out, as a young 'un and can remember the astonishing vaults of possibility opening before me. However it wasn't long before the system felt cramped. We ended up adding the Rolemaster combat system to the game, which worked quite well, and then making the leap to Rolemaster in toto (ah, rolling 60 percentile dice to work out stats! ah, doing algebra to work out skill bonuses!) in various permutations.
3e bought me back to it, just as James described, and we had a fine old time with it before running into the higher level doldrums of the game. I started a 4e game half as a joke, and it became our main game within a few months.
It's a lovely system, made by people who deeply care about D&D's past and future. It has its flaws (long combat, mainly... a lack of flavour in magic items perhaps) but those flaws are rarely the ones identified by edition warriors.
I think we're lucky to have so many options actually. Play on, my geeky buddies.I join those in not understanding the value of a disunified XP system, especially if we disregard balance. From above "At 10,001 XP a cleric is 4th level with a little way to go to get to 5th. A dwarf, fighter, or halfling is 4th level with a fair way to go to get to 5th." What's the victory in trying to split the difference between the cleric and the halfling in a sublevel way? Even a larger difference, like the elf, would be adjustable by tweaking the levels, instead of using a sublevel metric like XP.
It's funny; not having unified XP and having descending AC would be two of my biggest turnoffs for a D&D. Completely unnecessary complexity, IMO.I loved reading this one, thanks for sharing. It reminded me my obsession for 3e, the waiting for its release...good times! I agree with what you say about continuity from 2e: statistics-wise they did nothing but to convert AC from descending to ascending, unifying the mechanics under the "roll the d20" and introduce the new ST (which is another merit imo) but it's AD&D at its core. I have a question if I may...when you say "running the game the way I'd run 1e and 2e in the past." I bet you mean you completely got rid of feats and found out it didn't break the game at all, isn't it so? This is my point as well btw and I'd love to find someone else who proved it true. Thanks for your time!


text:
General Dynamics Robotics Division
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covers through Q3, 2011
Lobbying On Behalf of General Dynamics Robotics Division
Names of Lobbyists
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subset: commoncrawl


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The Detroit Tigers' Miguel Cabrera became a baseball legend last night: He took the first Triple Crown in 45 years and joined the likes of Ted Williams and Mickey Mantle as the 15th player in history to win it.
The stats that got him the most coveted mantle for a hitter? A .330 batting average, 44 home runs and 139 RBIs. (You win the Triple Crown if you lead the league in those three measures.) Boston's Carl Yastrzemski was the last player to achieve the feat, back in 1967.
The AP reports that once the moment became official at the end of the baseball season, Tigers Manager Jim Leyland had tears in his eyes and club General Manager Dave Dombrowski reminded people to savor the moment.
The AP adds:
"Cabrera had slipped away Wednesday night to the visiting clubhouse at Kauffman Stadium where he waited out the final moments in his bid for the Triple Crown. Once everything transpired, all the other possibilities played out, he could finally revel in the feat." 'It was like, everybody said to me it was unbelievable,' said Cabrera, who was joined in the clubhouse by Prince Fielder, Justin Verlander and a few other teammates. 'They were excited to see this, enjoy this, be a part of something big, and winning, I feel better.' "
As The New York Times points out, this hasn't been a strictly meteoric rise for the 29-year-old.
He certainly was a standout as soon as he came on the scene. He played his rookie year in 2003 as a Florida Marlin and that same year became the team's cleanup batter, helping the young, inexperienced team to an unlikely World Series championship.
But "over the years," reports the Times, "Cabrera struggled with alcohol and his weight; fought to find an established position in the field; and was traded, at age 24, from the Marlins to the Detroit Tigers. But Cabrera never lost what everyone agreed he possessed like few others: a discriminating eye at the plate and a sweet, timely and fluidly powerful swing."
Yastrzemski, by the way, issued a statement about the feat.
Copyright 2016 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.


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Make Your Wall With Waterfall Wolf paint by numbers
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text:
The decision to embalm the body of Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez so that it could be put on permanent display in the country's Museum of the Revolution was made too late, acting President Nicolas Maduro said Thursday in Caracas.
So, The Associated Press reports, it is now highly unlikely the late leader's body will be on view indefinitely — like those of Vladimir Lenin in Russia, Ho Chi Minh in Vietnam and Mao Zedong in China.
The 58-year-old Chávez, who had cancer, died on March 5. Two days later, Maduro said the body would be embalmed and put on view. But the body apparently had not been chemically treated within hours of Chávez's and hadn't been kept refrigerated. According to the AP, as of Wednesday it was still on display at a military academy.
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We have found that when a prospective tenant is warned that the landlord may report positive and negative information affecting the tenant's credit, the rent becomes a priority. We let all applicants know that if they value their good or clean credit, they must make the rent a top priority. We ask the tenant not to sign a lease with us unless he or she is absolutely sure that paying the rent in a timely manner will not be a problem. We tell them that we would not want to see them ruin their excellent credit standing and damage their future creditworthiness when it comes to applying for a mortgage or other credit. Once a tenant knows that his or her own actions will determine what information will go on his or her permanent record, the importance of paying the rent and honoring the lease agreement will be seen in a whole new light.
Below is a sample of a tenant history reporting page:
This LPA feature is designed to make it easy for landlords to report on tenants. Whether the information is positive or negative, it can be used as a source of reference for prospective landlords. It is important to make the tenants aware of the fact that their performance as your tenant can have an effect on their record. The fact is, tenants are more careful with payments that will reflect on their record. As a landlord, you are now in a position to give the tenant a good incentive to prioritize the rent and have it paid before other bills.
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ruby-prof is a fast code profiler for Ruby. It is a C extension and therefore is many times faster than the standard Ruby profiler. It supports both flat and graph profiles. For each method, graph profiles show how long the method ran, which methods called it and which methods it called. RubyProf generate both text and html and can output it to standard out or to a file.
Homepage Rubygems Documentation Download
gem install acunote-ruby-prof -v 0.9.2


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I know about complicated relationships with complicated people and complicated endings. There are some things that helped me... and continue to help me.
I had to acknowledge that for me, a heartbreak of any kind is a death, the loss of something or someone present, yes, but also the loss of the future I will never get to have. Letting go of that future and the life I had imagined for myself was incredibly difficult. I was left without that future and left without a direction. Like the loss of an arm, I will never be the same but I have learned how to live with the loss and how to get around in the world with one good arm. That phantom limb syndrome is a bitch, though – sometimes even twenty-five years later.
It can be gut wrenching to hear the word, "no," whether you are hearing it come from your mouth or a mouth that you love. Bad timing is another way the universe has of saying "no" or "not now" and the what-ifs and second-guessing that go with that are treacherous country.
People may tell you that time, just time, will help. I have not found that to be true. I have had to work at it. I worked at re-framing the experiences little by little. I allowed myself to be sad about them and know to some degree, I always will be. My experiences in loss have made me a more vulnerable person and this in turn has made me a better woman. The life I have now is amazing and I would never have gotten here if things had played out even a tiny bit differently.
Therapy helps. Friends and family help. Faith helps. Writing helps. Dark chocolate helps. And thank God for sad songs and anti-depressants. If you are in a bad spot right now, I believe the universe does not want you to be lonely. The universe wants you to be happy. You will be happy, but first you won't be. This I believe with all my mended heart.


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Sunday, November 9, 2008
Sunday Sweets; Fondant Free!
Sunday, November 9, 2008
As usual with my Sunday Sweets, I don't have the credits for all these photos, so if you recognize a cake please let me know who made it so I can link to their site. Thanks!
First up, a cute-as-a-button Strawberry Shortcake Cake from Pink Apron:
I like that she used sugar cookies instead of solid fondant for the name (and probably the strawberries, too, although I can't be sure); I'm always in favor of a cake being as edible as possible. The colors, the little flowers - it all just works. Love it.
Next up is a super fun cake that's surprisingly easy to make, considering how cool it looks:
See, I know it's easy, because I actually made one before. Yeah - me. (This is not it.) You can also make the popcorn using fondant, but it's much easier (and yummier) to make it with icing.
This next one uses a nifty icing technique where you dab it on with a brush or sponge:
Sad looking, worn-out teddy bears = unbearable cuteness, in my book. This little guy is by Sarah of The Little Bakehouse.
And finally, here's a great example of all kinds of different piping techniques:
Simple, maybe, but Tammy over at The Piece of Cake knows her way around a piping bag. That basket weave ain't easy, folks!
The best part is anyone who has taken the Wilton classes can make this cake; I'm pretty sure they teach every technique used here, including the flowers. I'm not plugging for Wilton, mind you (I haven't forgiven them yet for those CCC kits) - but I've known some great Wilton instructors in my time.
91 comments | Post a Comment
Thanks for that buttercream goodness! I love to look at fondant but hate to eat it! It's good to see that there are still people that know how to make a cake without it.
Michelle-Oklahoma - November 9, 2008 at 9:53 AM
- The Queen of Fifty Cents said...
I'm almost tempted to go take a cake decorating class...almost!
- November 9, 2008 at 9:56 AM
- Sleepwalker said...
I seriously regret never paying close attention when Grandma did the basketweave on the side of a cake. It was amazing what frosting art her gnarled, arthritic but unbelievably steady hands could produce with a piping bag.
- November 9, 2008 at 9:59 AM
All of the cakes from www.buttercream.info are fondant free. And delicious.
- November 9, 2008 at 10:04 AM
I have to disagree about the basketweave cake. While yes, it is pretty, basketweave is one of the most basic techniques that they teach new cake decorators. And I think any professional cake decorator would tell you that Wilton techniques are basic in general--relying on shaped pans and pre-made accessories does not necessarily show true cake decorating talent.
- November 9, 2008 at 10:12 AM
- D.B. Echo said...
Wow. This isn't a comment on this post, but it's something you need to know...
It's an ad thing. When I came online today I checked the blogs I follow for updates, then opened all the newest ones. Then my computer started making a "ping" every second or so. I worried I had just unleashed a virus or something, so I started to shut down all windows in preparation for a sweep.
The noise stopped. I reopened the windows, one at a time, and waited for the noise to start. When I opened Cake Wrecks it started again. This time it was a whistle, a high-pitched "heet, heet" every second or so. I looked around for the culprit.
There was an ad that showed a fake "Internet Explorer" box at the bottom of the page. It informed me that I was the 999,999th visitor, and all I had to do was click on it to collect my prize. It kept vibrating for some reason.
I refreshed the page, hoping to generate a new set of ads, and the noise started again - this time it was on the sidebar.
I refreshed again and again, and the ad kept shuttling between the two positions, but the noise kept going.
So. I guess I can shut off the sound from now on whenever I visit Cake Wrecks - that's no problem, I have a "Mute" button on my keyboard. But this ad will probably annoy the hell out of your visitors.
I know that none of us have much contol over the ads that appear on our sites - this was discussed earlier on your site - but maybe you can contact Adbrite and ask them to block that particular ad, and maybe kick that particular advertiser out of the program.
- Harold from Another Monkey
Word verification word: dulchbad
- someone or something that is sweetly evil
Man, that ad sure is annoying. Whoever arranged to have it appear there sure is a dulchbad. - November 9, 2008 at 10:16 AM
- Knitty said...
Strawberry Shortcake is perfect for a little girl, or the little girl inside an older girl.
How is frosting popcorn made? I thought maybe it was chocolate covered popcorn.
The basket cake is very pretty.
There is a local bakery that has won an award a few years in a row for their wedding cakes from The Knot. They never use fondant, not liking the taste and texture.
Your blog is great, every day of the week! - November 9, 2008 at 10:24 AM
- Unknown said...
I don't think I could bring myself to cut into that sad teddy bear cake...but there's a weird part of me that's convinced toys have feelings.
- November 9, 2008 at 10:32 AM
- Ross said...
Thanks to d.b. echo for bringing up the ad thing. I just got a new computer yesterday and I couldn't figure out why it was making that noise. Especially since it's a Windows noise and this is my first Mac. I was kind of freaking out. So thanks for the explanation! I didn't think to look at the ads.
- November 9, 2008 at 10:55 AM
- Unknown said...
Yum. I like that popcorn cake.:o)
~Amy B. - November 9, 2008 at 11:00 AM
- Dawnspring said...
re: Josh's comment
Trust me, basketweave may be a simple technique, but getting it flawless on the side of a cake without gaps, sagging weaves, and no seams? That does take serious talent and paitence.
Also, you're wrong about the Wilton courses. They are the basics of decorating, but they do not teach you to rely on shaped pans or accesories. I'm a WMI, and we never use any of that stuff in the courses. Course 2 especially is all about technique. If anything, Wilton still keeps alive the old ways of cake decorating because so much of today's designs are almost exclusively fondant, and fondant takes seconds to learn.
re: the topic
YAY to buttercream only creations!! That basketweave cake looks so rich and yummy. I also am in love with the Strawberry Shortcake. - November 9, 2008 at 11:11 AM
- Jen said...
Thanks for letting me know. We just made some adjustments to our ads yesterday, which is why the new annoying one is there. We'll work today to get rid of it.
In the future, feel free to e-mail me directly with this kind of thing. When we have the issue resolved, I hope you won't mind if I go ahead and delete these comments.
Thanks again! - November 9, 2008 at 11:12 AM
Anyone who thinks it doesn't take talent to use Wilton shaped pans and accessories hasn't seen some of the many sad cakes pictured online made with them.
Creativity and skill is what makes a cake decorator talented, not the supplies they use to create their cakes. - November 9, 2008 at 11:26 AM
The fondant only craze must be regional because I have never actually seen a cake in real life that had any fondant - not even weddind cakes.
I don't think I really want to. Most look pretty as art but too much like wax that is just starting to soften to the melting point. Not appetizing. - November 9, 2008 at 11:26 AM
- Morgi said...
Thank you, thank you, thank you for this post. Yes, fondant is nice and all, but many times it seems to be a lazy (wo)man's tool--don't want to actually frost the cake? Cover it in fondant!
- November 9, 2008 at 11:27 AM
- Deborah Godin said...
Impressive,all, but that last one, with the basket weave - those flowers look as delicate as Capodimonte Porcelain. Amazing!
- November 9, 2008 at 11:55 AM
How can you make so beautiful cakes :O Theyre are amazing!!!
- November 9, 2008 at 12:05 PM
- Alicia said...
Love the Strawberry Shortcake Cake! I had one when I was young, didn't look near that pretty, but I still remember it :)
- November 9, 2008 at 12:06 PM
- Angie McCullagh said...
I didn't even know what fondant WAS before reading this blog. Am getting more "cake educated" by the day.
Angie (from over at www.HalfAssedKitchen.com) - November 9, 2008 at 12:13 PM
- Unknown said...
Thanks for the fun buttercream frosted cake eye candy! I do very amateur cake decorating with buttercream and I LOVE it! I think the point you made about the "expensive doo dads the pro's use" is the reason I shy I away form fondant...plus I LOVE using the piped frosting...it's fun. I love your cake wrecks becaue they instill me with confidence, LOL! It's like WOW, that person was REALLY lazy when I see some of these cakewrecks. Keep the fun blog posts coming! :)
- November 9, 2008 at 12:14 PM
- Das Mutter said...
Those ARE nice. I have taken all the Wilton classes except the fondant one, and I can attest that all these can be made with the piping bags or parchment. Although, I am personally not this talented! :) I would LOVE to know how the popcorn cake was made---please share!
- November 9, 2008 at 12:17 PM
You've made my (non-Wilton) cake decorating instructor so happy! She'll teach fondant techniques, but she's old school, and regrets the proliferation of fondant cakes.
I have to share that when I did my first real homework for this class--making about 75 frosting flowers--were consumed by my dog when I was out of the kitchen. The damned dog actually did eat my homework... - November 9, 2008 at 12:23 PM
Actually, morgi, you're supposed to frost the cake before you apply the fondant. And smooth the frosting. It keeps cakey lumps from showing through the fondant, and fondant, like polyester, shows EVERY lump and curve.
Personally, I think I'm going to stick to buttercream with just accents of fondant for a long, long time. You can't really paint on buttercream, especially meringue-type buttercream, and I likes me shiny. But accents are much easier to pull off than an entire covering, and much faster to make than royal icing or chocolate accents. - November 9, 2008 at 12:32 PM
- Agatha Christie said...
The last cake with the basketweave reminds me of a bakery that we always got our cakes from when I was little... owned by a little old Polish man, they used only their own recipe good quality buttercream to make the most delicious cakes ever. We once got a lamb cake for my sister's birthday because it was the day after Easter, and it was yummy albeit hard to cut into an adorable lamb!
- November 9, 2008 at 12:34 PM
- Aviatrix said...
That basket weave is amazing. I understand that the professionals say that it's a basic technique, but I can't see any short cut to doing it. Do you really have to start at the top or bottom and do every little segment one loop at a time? It would be hard to plan exactly what order to do it in not to get any seams. It would be hard to get it evenly spaced. It's not like the pie crust in sleepwalker's signature where you can actually weave it, and you an move the dough if it's not perfect the first time.
I didn't even know that the super smooth stuff was fondant, but I do appreciate the difference and like this post. - November 9, 2008 at 12:56 PM
- A Paperback Writer said...
That popcorn cake is really quite spiffy.
And it's a good thing the teddy bear cake is for someone who's old enough to realize she can't pick it up and hug it..... - November 9, 2008 at 1:06 PM
I love Sundays... thank you so much!
- November 9, 2008 at 1:31 PM
I'd also like to know how to do the popcorn...I can't see the kernels clearly enough to figure it out.
I've done 2 of the 4 Wilton courses, and haven't seen yet how they depend on shaped pans or things like that as one commenter suggested...only one of the three basic cake courses even requires a pan other than a basic round, and that's an oval, supplied in the kit.
And yes, once you've completed course II, you should be able to do that basketweave cake...albeit not that perfectly without practice.
Fondant is fun to work with, but OMG is it disgusting stuff. - November 9, 2008 at 1:34 PM
The basketweave "Happy Birthday Brenda" cake is from Tammy at thepieceofcake.com - it's pictured on her site near the bottom of all of her birthday cakes. She is absolutely incredible (with buttercream and fondant) and could be a regular feature on your Sunday Sweets! I'm proud to say that a number of cakes on her website were made for my family.
Cristina-South Carolina - November 9, 2008 at 1:46 PM
- Jen said...
For those of you asking about the popcorn cake, here's the condensed version of how to make it:
Bake the cake in a bowl, and frost the sides. Don't bother leveling off the top: the mound looks pretty good when covered with "popcorn".
For the popcorn, use a large round pastry tip to pipe balls of icing all over the top, randomly placed. Then change to a smaller round tip, and make smaller balls/dots next to the large ones. Make sure you fill in the entire area, so no cake shows through, and even have some hanging over the edge and overlapping each other. Just keep going 'til it starts to look like popcorn.
Then, for that last realistic touch, use a small mixture of vanilla & brown food coloring to paint in little dots between the "kernels". This looks like the cooked/burned bits on the popcorn, and really sells the whole cake.
Hope that helps! Check Cake Central for more popcorn cakes: they had some nice ones there last I checked. (In fact, the cake I posted may have come from CC, now that I think of it...) - November 9, 2008 at 2:03 PM
- deerseason87 said...
You should check out the amazingly detailed and colorful buttercream floral cakes at Cupcake Cafe in NY: http://www.cupcakecafe-nyc.com/
- November 9, 2008 at 2:26 PM
The bear cake is by Sarah Jones on Flickr. Here's the link:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/sarahjj/2250542704 - November 9, 2008 at 2:29 PM
- Jamie said...
Once you're shown the secret to basketweave, it really is easy. I won't do a cake in fondant. All of my cakes are buttercream, with some fondant touches if I can't talk my clients out of them.
- November 9, 2008 at 2:33 PM
Aww...I want that teddy bear cake for my baby shower! =D
- November 9, 2008 at 2:37 PM
- Jeana said...
Love this idea. Fondant can look beautiful, but I've never met a single person who actually liked to eat it.
- November 9, 2008 at 3:37 PM
That's a popcorn cake? i thought it was an old fashioned bucket full of suds to do laundry in lol
- November 9, 2008 at 3:39 PM
I don't think I've ever had fondant, so I don't have any particular opinion on the taste/texture, but I guess I've always felt that it was sort of "cheating." I mean, I realize it takes a lot of time and skill, and I've seen some really beautiful cakes which used it, but at the same time, I'd rather see a cake that didn't use it, or which used very little, instead using cake, icing, and other edibles.
- November 9, 2008 at 3:45 PM
- imjustatree said...
this is an awesome blog....hilarious!
- November 9, 2008 at 3:45 PM
also...everyone seems to hate fondant. i agree that it can be pretty vile, but i homemade some (what a pain) once and it was SO good. we were eating the scraps like candy. even my mother, the fondant hating queen, loved it.
- November 9, 2008 at 3:48 PM
- fleeting said...
I'm weird - but I like eating fondant. Every year for Christmas we make a gingerbread creation (last year was Santa driving a Ford Mustang convertible, the year before was Whoville, the year before was a church, etc) and we usually use a mixture of royal icing and fondant for decorating them. They look as good as our self-taught amateurism allows them to be, and taste fantastic when it comes time to eat them.
That being said, my boyfriend's grandmother is a retired pastry chef, and both her and my boyfriend are adamantly against fondant on a cake. With how beautiful today's cakes are, I can definitely see why. - November 9, 2008 at 4:08 PM
- E(Liz)a(Beth) said...
Check out The Riviera Bakehouse at http://www.rivierabakehouse.com/. Her cakes are amazing. I've made a few of them from her cookbook and they are always fantastic.
- November 9, 2008 at 4:22 PM
THANK YOU for non-fondant cakes (which I consider fairly non-edible). They are all gorgeous!
- November 9, 2008 at 4:23 PM
- Wild Cakes said...
these are nice cakes, but I have to stand up for us "fondant" artists! LOL
If you think fondant is disgusting, you have probably tasted Wilton fondant (and I agree with you on that one!) Most other types are MUCH more palatable, though it is very sweet. The fondant I use tastes much like marshmallows.
If you think that fondant work is easier or somehow cheating, I assure you it is not. And as was pointed out above, to have a professional looking finish to your fondant, you have to have a flawless coating of buttercream under it.
I can (and have) worked in buttercream, but I prefer the range of possibilities that I can achieve with fondant. It's just a different medium (just like some painters prefer oils, and some prefer watercolours...)
I am surprised though Jen... you missed the work of an AMAZING buttercream artist: Debbie Does Cake on Flickr; most of her sculpted cakes have fondant only as the accents! - November 9, 2008 at 4:41 PM
- evil cake lady said...
YAY to an absence of fondant!! I hate having to peel off a thick layer of crap before diving into my piece of cake. Fondant may make a cake look unbelievably shiny and smooth, but to me it looks less like cake and more like plastic. Guess I'm just a traditionalist. Thanks for a buttercream celebration.
- November 9, 2008 at 4:43 PM
- templework said...
Yea! Buttercream!
Yea! Wilton!
Sorry...but I've always felt fondant was a copout for those who couldn't master real cake decorating...
The creations are beautiful - for sculptures - not to eat - November 9, 2008 at 4:46 PM
Those cakes are truly amazing. I want to reach into the computer screen and eat them.
Sadly, I have never been much of a baker. I tried making brownies from a box once, and the result can only be called Large Brown Rock.
It's a joy to see cakes not made with fondant. Fondant doesn't even look like a cake! These look real and yummy at the same time! - November 9, 2008 at 5:32 PM
Umm wouldn't it be easier to make the popcorn with realpopcorn? Perfectly edible and delicious.
- November 9, 2008 at 5:36 PM
- Chris the Yardsale Queen said...
To the person who said they think that toys have feelings - there is a word for that. Anthropomorphism - giving human characteristics (feelings, etc) to inanimate objects. So you're not the only one who thinks like that.
- November 9, 2008 at 5:49 PM
If you want to see some flawless buttercream cakes, check out Sharon Z.
Her cakes are amazing! You can't tell which ones are buttercream and which ones are fondant.
Amy - November 9, 2008 at 6:38 PM
This might be a silly question but I have never found an answer...is fondant meant to be eaten?
I've had a fondant cake once and I skipped the fondant because it tasted sort of gross but my dad ate it like nothing. - November 9, 2008 at 6:44 PM
- maggie grace said...
ok this isn't technically a professional cake, but I think it's a good example of having fun with icing!
http://www.mypapercrane.com/blog/?p=372 - November 9, 2008 at 6:49 PM
- Stephanie said...
Thanks for the all buttercream post! I appreciate the skills involved in working with fondant and I think it's beautiful, but it's not yummy! Cake should be, above all else, yummy! I work in buttercream (with a very rare fondant accent) and nobody ever complains about how my cakes look or taste!
- November 9, 2008 at 7:05 PM
- Aidokime said...
I must learn these techniques-- even if my bakery does not want me to do anything outside of 'the book'.
- November 9, 2008 at 7:33 PM
- IamDerby said...
That popcorn cake was featured in a book called collette's cakes.
- November 9, 2008 at 7:40 PM
I knew I had seen that popcorn cake before! When I searched for cake decorating classes in Wisconsin, I got this page: http://matcmadison.edu/ace/profiles/cakedecorating.shtm
- November 9, 2008 at 8:08 PM
- Kelli said...
I agree with WildCakes. Fondant is not easy, it is not a cop out. It is difficult to master and takes patience and skill! You try rolling out a dough to the perfect thickness, lift the entire thing (if you are doing an 8 inch cake, you need a circle AT LEAST 18 inches around) and then smooth it out without ripping it. And that's before you even decorate it.
I too am a WMI (Wilton Method Instructor) and I actually self-taugh starting with fondant, and later working with buttercream.
They are both excellent mediums to work with, each having distinct advantages. But, since learning how to smooth buttercream to the consistency of fondant, I do enjoy it, but once "crusted over" buttercream can crack when moved, fondant doesn't do that. - November 9, 2008 at 8:59 PM
- FreedomFirst said...
Wow, I don't see how she did that weave! That's amazing. It has to have been pre-piped and then wrapped around the cake. Right?
Strawberry Shortcake is just too cute. - November 9, 2008 at 9:07 PM
For all the fondant haters: my sister and I make our own marshmellow fondant, and it is really tasty. The kids eat it like candy. Still, I understand why people prefer to not have fondant, but I actually love the kind we make.
Also, someone already mentioned it, but the cake has to be iced almost perfectly with buttercream before adding the fondant, so in a way, it is extra work, because you have two layers that must be perfect.
These cakes were great today though! But I am one of the few that prefers the fondant, because of the look. (And now that we make our own, the taste too!... it's double the goodness!)
Kelly, Burleson, Texas - November 9, 2008 at 10:34 PM
- flourgirl said...
For some awesome buttercream cakes check out www.carriesellman.com. She used to have a place in Dallas but I guess she moved and hasn't opened her new shop yet but still has a site. It is hard to believe that some of these cakes really are buttercream. Pretty incredible.
- November 9, 2008 at 11:15 PM
How could you share such a cute popcorn-in-a-bowl cake, even TELL us you've made it, and then not give us a link to a recipe? Inquiring minds want to know more!
Elise - November 9, 2008 at 11:18 PM
- Kerry said...
...unless the only Wilton instructor in your area isn't offering Course II or III (just I and the Fondant/Gumpaste) because "nobody wants to work with royal icing anyway". WTF?
- November 9, 2008 at 11:47 PM
- Unknown said...
love the popcorn cake...MAN, I wihs I could do ANYthing that's on this site...even the really bad ones...it would be cool to have some talent like popcorn bowl cake maker.
- November 10, 2008 at 12:19 AM
Ooh, it's the Buttercream vs. Fondant wars! Who will emerge victorious? I'm gonna need some of that popcorn cake for this.
- November 10, 2008 at 12:20 AM
Just as there is good quality melt in your mouth chocolate and bad waxy chocolate, there is good delicious fondant and there is bad please don't make me eat that stuff fondant. Unfortunately the most accessible fondant sold in chain stores everywhere is the terrible stuff.
- November 10, 2008 at 12:42 AM
Jen, thanks for posting buttercream beauty, and for the Wilton plug. I'm an instructor, and the basketweave cake has techniques from 3 of the 4 courses. I teach fondant, but don't use much of it personally. Even if you don't like to cover cakes with it, its sculptural properties (and pretty flowers!) make it worth trying!
- November 10, 2008 at 1:43 AM
- DivaLea said...
Okay, the bear cake is really well done, but the lettering?
Alas, of the quality that would be mocked in daily Wrecks. It drives me nuts because it totally takes away from the bear, and it's puzzingly unprofessional. - November 10, 2008 at 2:57 AM
- kiwimusume said...
That Tatty Teddy cake is sooooo cute, but like funnycide there's no way I could cut it. Especially since I actually have some of those teddybears.
- November 10, 2008 at 6:51 AM
- The Creeper said...
I just ordered my completely fondant-free wedding cake last week and I am so excited about it after seeing her other designs. While I was in ordering, she was working on a cake for a baby shower. It had light green frosting and a pea pod on top made out of sugar. It was fabulous looking.
- November 10, 2008 at 7:50 AM
I like these. I am curious on how the popcorn cake is made.
If you need more examples of professional, beautiful, non-fondant cakes check out Cakes for Occassions by Kim Morrison. http://www.kmcakes.com/gallery.html
Kim is very talented. And her cakes are very yummy too. - November 10, 2008 at 8:32 AM
Ok, I looked further at Kim's site and she does do fondant as well, but the snowflake cake, the chocolate cake, and the green cake in her gallery are all non-fondant.
- November 10, 2008 at 8:36 AM
- Hyena Overlord said...
The only fondant cakes I've see were mine...made from recipes in the cake bible...nothing wrecktastically bad either. I love fondant, but hate working with it.
The SSC, teddy bear and popcorn are cool cakes. I don't much care for basket weave. Probably I'm just jealous.
word verification genticat has something to do with this: maintenance of genetic variation in captive popu-. lations - November 10, 2008 at 9:02 AM
Yeah! Fondant sucks!
I personally know one baker who can pull off a gorgeous fondant-free cake. I wish that I could find some photos of his wedding cakes on the web, but Google is coming up with nada.
Anyway, it's JJ's French Bistro on Waialae Ave in Hawaii. I'd highly recommend any of their pastries, and if you do go, ask to look at their cake book. Too cool. - November 10, 2008 at 9:19 AM
@divalea; Actually, the lettering is spot on. The bear is called Tatty Teddy, from the Me to You cards and gifts line, and the lettering on those cards and gifts looks exactly like that!
- November 10, 2008 at 9:24 AM
- The Courteous Chihuahua said...
If you can find Choco-Pan in your area, I highly recommend trying it, or you can order on line. I still prefer buttercream over fondant, but this is pretty good, it's very easy to work with,and the creator is a lovely person.
http://www.choco-pan.com - November 10, 2008 at 9:24 AM
- Nick said...
Several years ago, I spent my summer vacation at the Wilton School outside of Chicago. For 5 days, we learned the basics of baking, making icing, piping, decorating, using fondant, making gum paste flowers, wedding cake construction and much more. The facility was clean and spacious, the instructor was outstanding.
I had already been making wedding cakes for friends, but the course was spectacular. More than 2/3 of the class had barely picked up an icing bag before. I recommend their courses to everyone -- especially if you can afford the time and expense of doing the week-long course.
And yes, the basketweave -- I adore a well-done basketweave. I used it on wedding cakes for years. It fell out of favor from wedding cakes and was replaced by disgusting fondant. Bleh! - November 10, 2008 at 10:11 AM
- Panda said...
The sad little bear is Tatty Teddy. He's very popular in the UK, and has his own storybook.
- November 10, 2008 at 10:51 AM
- Dea said...
I love to see beautiful buttercream, because it's harder to make it as pretty, and yet SO so much tastier!
I used to work weddings, and people loathe fondant almost unanimously. Love the look - hate the taste. But frosting, YUM! So decorators who can make tasty beautiful??? My heroes!!! :D - November 10, 2008 at 11:04 AM
- Kat said...
HOORAY FOR BUTTERCREAM!! I love piping and piping techniques and there is just so much more out there then fondant! (I really don't like the stuff but will use it if some requests it). I feel like its cheating. Like playing with playdoh (and yes I know this takes time and patience), I just feel like bakers who use other technigues (gum paste, chocolate, royal(amazing stuff), buttercream, etc) are amazing artists!
- November 10, 2008 at 11:30 AM
- Unknown said...
Ohhh, so nice to see pretty and yet edible cakes. I detest trying to eat fondant.
My wedding cake was basket weave, I love the look of that design. Paired with real flower toppers it was simple and elegant. - November 10, 2008 at 11:48 AM
- Kris N said...
The strawberry shortcake can be found by Pink Apron at this link: http://www.flickr.com/photos/pink_apron/2329103824/
- November 10, 2008 at 12:16 PM
- Missy said...
Ohhh that bear is SOOOO cute! He looks so sad, I want to pick him up and give him a hug. But then he'd be just be nothing but squishy cake and frosting. :(
Cute bear cake = good, squishy cake & frosting = not so much. - November 10, 2008 at 1:09 PM
Meh, I didn't like any of these. No comparison with your regular sunday sweets.
- November 10, 2008 at 2:20 PM
- DivaLea said...
re: Tatty Teddy. Buh. Lettering straight from the merchandise doesn't make it good lettering. (Says the letterer and typesetter.)
It still looks like wreck lettering. - November 10, 2008 at 4:17 PM
- alicia policia said...
Ugh, I can't wait for the fondant craze to pass!!! I could not be more bored with it.
Although some folks can do great work with it, the majority of what I've seen done with fondant is not so great, usually sloppy, and it just seems like an overall waste of time and money to me. Especially when most fondant tastes like crap.
I would love to see more fondant free cakes featured! I know they're out there somewhere.
I'd even take gum paste decorations over fondant -- both for looks and taste. Maybe it's just me, but you don't see gum paste flowers that often anymore... - November 10, 2008 at 4:35 PM
Those lily of the valleys on the last cake are awesome! And while the basketweave may be taught as a basic in W's classes, it must take a lot of work to get it to actually look that good.
- November 10, 2008 at 5:01 PM
aww who would have the heart to CUT and EAT that poor cute teddy bear?
- November 11, 2008 at 8:29 AM
- Michelle said...
The cake with the basket weave is beautiful! I love the tiny little leaves and flowers.
- November 11, 2008 at 3:13 PM
Oh man...
I don't know what you see in them, the popcorn and the bear are definitely wrecktastic.
jane - November 11, 2008 at 8:41 PM
- CK said...
I am a believer of creating with buttercream instead of fondant myself. It taste 1000 times better! I also don't have an airbrush tool, which seems to be the other over used tool in cake decorating. While fondant cakes can be absolutely stunning, I have more respect for people that use buttercream to decorate with because it really does take skill to make it look really good. Otherwise... did you all see the monkey poop??
- November 12, 2008 at 10:10 AM
- AMKoenig said...
Nice to see the buttercream! Many thank you's from a buttercream artist! :-D I watch your blog in fear and delight, wondering, hoping, dreading the day I log on and find a wreck of my own posted! You keep me on my toes and honest! Cheers!
April, the baker at Norbury's Fine Foods, Kings Lynn... UK. - November 14, 2008 at 11:11 PM
- The Whiz Kid Forte said...
Thise buttercream-only cakes are soooooooooo excellent! It impresses many a client who is not impressed by even the best fondant brands out there (like Fondarific, its older competitor Satin Ice, or even the cheaper marshmallow fondant). I read in blogs and forums that Wilton's fondant is pretty pants.
- February 12, 2010 at 7:49 PM
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- Just in Time for the Holidays
- Undeserving of Congrats
- Supermom VS the Diabolical Decorator of Doom
- Sooo Corny
- Sunday Sweets: You "Auto" Watch
- And For That Crowning Touch...
- The Sprinkles Decorator Strikes Again
- Face Time On CW
- Maximum Irony Has Now Been Achieved
- Monkey See, Monkey Doo-Doo
- Marine Wild Life: The Big 2-3-3!
- Watch a Cake Being Wrecked
- Sunday Sweets; Fondant Free!
- I've Heard of Death Taking a Holiday, But This is ...
- Fire!
- Cake Headlines
- It's Almost Like He's Part of the Family
- Oh, Mama!
- And Remember:
- As I Wreck Elect...
- Disclaimer
- The Beginning of the End?
- Sunday Sweets: Cupcakes!


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