Not for the D&D players who prefer DMs, campaigns, and people over systems!
ie, not all system preferences are strong ones.
D&D 5E With Respect to the Door and Expectations....The REAL Reason 5e Can't Unite the Base
- Thread starter innerdude
- Start date
ie, not all system preferences are strong ones.
And why should those people play D&D in the first place?
ExploderWizard
Hero
Perhaps because that is what a friend would like to run and they want to play in their friend's game?
I don't have a strong preference for system as a player. Instead I have a strong preference for gaming with people that don't suck. When I run a game, then I have stronger preferences since there is more investment involved of my time.
Neonchameleon
Legend
I'll second this. Classic D&D in a non-D&D RPG group is about as well regarded as Windows at a Linux users convention. And for much the same mix of technical reasons and snobbery. (That said, it's still from what I can tell better regarded than e.g. Rifts).
4e on the other hand goes down pretty well with players who play non-D&D RPGs as a whole (see either RPG.net or Something Awful's Traditional Games board). This is because as far as I know, no other game does what 4e does as well as 4e, and of the things 4e doesn't do there is almost always a system that will do the game better than classic versions of D&D.
For example 4e doesn't really do absolute zero to hero. But with all due respect 3e and AD&D aren't much good at it either. AD&D wizards get to cast spells that won't blow up in their face and 2e fighters? Ouch. If I want to run a zero to hero campaign, I'm going to break out Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay (either 3e or at least using the 2e magic rules - although even the 1e spell point system does better than D&D). It covers the "Starting at zero in a fantasy world that hates you" much better than a system with Gygaxo-Vancian Magic.
Classic (pre-4e but especially 2e and 3e) D&D has two real advantages - the first is that people already know it, and the second is that precisely because it doesn't do anything especially well it can do well enough in a wide range of campaigns.
And to the embedded user advantage. Classic D&D is good enough for a lot of things - so once you'd passed the hurdle of learning a complex rulesset (whether or not you regard this as an example of the Sunk Costs fallacy) you could use it for other things.
The amusing thing here is that Gygax himself considered class balance to be very important. And introduced a huge range of rules into D&D that are there to facilitate class balance. See, for example, the differing XP tables. Or the giving the fighters a free keep at level 9 or so when the wizards get a tower. Or even weapons doing bonus damage against large monsters and certain powerful spells having a serious danger of backlash. All things put into the game to assist with class balance. (And, not unsurprisingly, the bulk of the rules that the designers of 3.0 were kind enough to remove from the game). 1e did not, of course, go far enough so they added weapon spec to the fighter, and added Cavaliers and (ack) Barbarians.
Because Gygax considered it important, and generally did a good job complete with effectively a massive amount of playtesting, fixing things when they broke, people didn't have to worry about it so much. Gygax didn't allow Angel Summoner and BMX Bandit to happen - so the wildshaped bear with a bear companion summoning a swarm of bears to beat up the fighter was an issue that didn't arise.
As for 4e being what we'd wanted all along, perhaps, and perhaps not. It would certainly have been possible to produce a game that satisfied the D&D players who love 4e without changing quite so much - but it would still probably have made wizard and CoDzilla lovers complain because the fighters were now about on a par with them and magic took substantial nerfs. 4e went further and harder in the direction it chose than it needed to. But the GenCon audience cheered the removal of Vancian Magic with good reason. The 3.X primary spellcasters needed to be torn apart to satisfy the group that likes 4e. (For example the 3.X druid in 4e is literally three separate classes; the summoner, the nature loving healer with an animal companion, and the shapeshifter - and all are viable as classes, and the Cleric has been split into Cleric and Invoker.)
I question this assertion. Mostly because I'm not sure who D&D Next players are going to be. I don't see them being Pathfinder players - WotC is not as good as Paizo at what Paizo does. I don't see them being 4e players - WotC is busy pissing all of us off. And I don't see them being people who stuck with AD&D - no published system is going to be a match for more than a dozen years of experience. I further don't really see D&D Next as a true OSR game for various reasons. And it certainly isn't an "appeal to the Indy crowd" game or a "let's change the language used from that of tabletop wargames to that of WoW because that's what people these days know" game.
I just don't see the market segment they are aiming at.
I see rpg.net as being not very different from other places I'd expect to discuss non-D&D games. And the opinions on 4e and previous editions of D&D as being not that different from Something Awful's TG forum.
Ahnehnois
First Post
Given that I (as do many others) consider D&D to be the archetypical PnP rpg, I was not focusing on that distinction, which in this context I would consider to be a small one. The point remains that many people's games, which they would consider to be D&D (and necessarily an rpg) are quite foreign to me, which is intended to exemplify the difference in what is commonly referred to as playstyle but which really goes deeper than that.
Man in the Funny Hat
Hero
I would disagree, though for partly technical reasons. Once upon a time we WERE united, even though we played a couple different flavors of D&D - out of the original D&D we were given Holmes, Moldvay, and AD&D in addition to it. We played our chosen game, enjoyed ourselves, and seldom if ever tore into other players for the version they were playing or how they were playing it. We all got along.
I think there were two factors that changed that. One, is that those other versions ceased publication for one reason and another, and then we were given a SINGLE, actively published version of D&D to play.
Second is that we were finally given a technology that allowed us to freely and "instantly" communicate with each other rather than by mail or meeting at conventions - the internet.
It is those two developments either singly/in combination that really started the formal split among the fanbase, but the catalyst that sped up the reaction was when the publishers of that lone version of D&D began to tell us that ONLY the current version was the correct choice for anybody, and in fact the previous version was specifically the stupid choice because, well, it was CLEARLY such a bad choice and the new version with the go-faster stripes was so obviously superior.
I think the division in the fanbase was largely inevitable, but the speed of it, the form which it's taken and even the occasional vehemence of the reactions are all the result not of OUR natural choices as gamers, but of the choices that were forced upon us by game manufacturers and the ill-considered and intemperate opinions of DESIGNERS. The natural state of the hobby was initially one of openness, cooperation, and acceptance of different versions of the game, different play styles, and even different RPG's altogether. I really think that it is the publishers and designers who have created this bed of intolerance and divisiveness that they now find uncomfortable to lie in. We have come to accept and believe that X is (or can be) demonstrably superior to Y because we have been told so strenuously and repeatedly by the professionals with their names on the title page.
Not "will be" but certainly can be. I harbor the sad suspicion that may indeed have finally come to the point where there will be no 800# Gorilla of RPG's and that means that no version will ever again enjoy the dominant position in the market.
Ditto. An 800# gorilla is what DDN will have to be if it is to actually succeed in RE-uniting the community. See, they are not proposing to RE-unite the community in terms of changing our collective attitudes about what we each play, how we play it and why. They are proposing to unite us by convincing us all to play the same game, albeit with widely different "rules modules". DDN may turn a profit, but I SERIOUSLY question whether it can succeed in its goal of community unanimity by getting us all to buy and play the same game. They have a highly laudable goal but they have misidentified the actual problem and therefore the feasable solution to it.
Ahnehnois
First Post
Wait, monopolies are a good thing?
RangerWickett
Legend
I see no reason to be hostile to one game or another.
3e & Pathfinder give you lots of options and made sure the rules parsed with a fictional reality.
4e gives you a variety of interesting tricks so that combat is fun as a game as well as as a story.
Take those two elements, make them compatible, and make them toggle-able, and you'll have a great game. Then write great adventures for it, and it can sell.
3e & Pathfinder give you lots of options and made sure the rules parsed with a fictional reality.
4e gives you a variety of interesting tricks so that combat is fun as a game as well as as a story.
Take those two elements, make them compatible, and make them toggle-able, and you'll have a great game. Then write great adventures for it, and it can sell.
D&D has never been a monopoly in that sense - the game has never had the strength to push around others in the marketplace.
Instead, we could say that big D&D was a leader in an ecology. One can argue pretty well that the existence of one major game made it *easier* for small games to get into the marketplace, rather than more difficult, by raising consciousness of both players and retailers.
TwinBahamut
First Post
You know, from my perspective I'd probably phrase this one as "you were united", rather than "we were united". You see, you're ignoring the generation gap here. Younger players like myself got into the game well after the fanbase had ceased to play the same game. I started playing non-simplified versions of the game with 3E, and have never played either version of AD&D. I don't particularly want to try playing any version of AD&D, to be honest.
This period of "we all got along" simply doesn't exist for many gamers, because the entire time we've been playing D&D has been marked by older fans dragging us into edition wars and telling us that our way of playing is bad for all kinds of reasons. I honestly can't even imagine a D&D culture where people got along and played the same game, because I've never seen it. I can't imagine getting along with people who have never once made any attempt to get along with me.
This is exactly why it is incredibly hard for me to buy into WotC's dream of creating an edition to unify fans.
Similar Threads
AD6_gamerati_skyscraper
Recent & Upcoming Releases
-
April 16 2024 -
May 31 2024 -
June 3 2024 -
June 4 2024 -
June 18 2024 -
July 16 2024 -
September 17 2024 -
October 1 2024 -
November 12 2024 -
February 18 2025
