{Hypothetical Thought Exercise} A cosmic being annihilates your favorite version of D&D...

[Campbell]

If 13th Age or Dungeon World counts I'd go for one of those. If not, I'd probably go with BECMI - it lacks quite a bit of what I like about 4e, but also doesn't have a lot of the features of AD&D and 3e that I adamantly dislike. I'll play Basic any day, particularly if I'm actually in the mood for dungeon crawling. Pound for pound I find the game more thematic, better balanced, and and more adept at the sort of games I want to play than AD&D or 3e (far less focused on dungeon crawling past initial stages of play).

 

[Li Shenron]

My favourite published edition is 3.0, but I am probably going to run/play 5e when released, since 3e requires too much game mastery.

If either or both ceased to exist, there would be plenty of substitutes... BECMI (or B/X as a second choice) is the one I'd probably pick because of simplicity, otherwise 3.5 or even Pathfinder if I had more time.

AD&D 1e and 2e are still quite interesting, and so is OD&D although that's a bit too blunt for my tastes.

Then there would be also the retroclones, as well as near-D&D games such as C&C.

This leaves only one edition out, that I simply would never ever play again.

 

[Celebrim]

Really? 3.0 (classic)? I'm not saying it isn't a good game (I've never really played just 3.0 - I've done 3.5 stuff with 3.0 to fill in some holes). Is there a reason why you play 3.0 over 3.5 or PF for example? I'm curious if it is a specific mechanical thing that convinces you 3.0 is better, or if it is just cost (didn't feel like spending the money again on basically the same game)?

3.5 was almost entirely straight up inferior to 3.0 in every respect. Many of the things that were broken in 3.X were the result of ill-thought out spell wording changes in 3.5. For every spell they 'fixed' (Haste, Harm) they broke 5 others. Overall balance declined significantly, playability at higher levels declined, and 3.5 accelerated the problems of power creep that were plaguing 3.0. 3.5 didn't actually address any real problems with the system, and instead saw a proliferation of things that were actual problems - like PrCs. It's just amazing how worse edited and worse thought out the 3.5 rules are than 3.0, particularly given that you'd think that 3.5 would be nothing but a thoroughly play tested version of 3.0.

Most of all, 3.5 continued the player centered design that led to fantastic and unbelievable rules bloat with rules spread across literally hundreds of source books in a completely disorganized manner, most of which was centered around infinite variation in character building options where you had multiple rules for the same concept. It quickly became an almost unplayable and unrunnable mess. 3.5 ultimately became the game that killed itself in the long run in order to gain short term profit. Sell books now was more important than maintaining the coherence, integrity, and reputation of its rules set. I stuck with 3.0 core and never bought a single 3.5 book. Later on, I took the 3.0 and 3.5 SRD's, put together the best parts of each and started editing it based on my own desires and play testing.

PF has some good ideas - I may eventually have to incorporate some of Pathfinder's cleaned up terminology on maneuvers and attacks of opportunity for example - but it doesn't really address the problems of character building that made 3.X so complicated and prone to rules bloat. PF seems to have also done a better job of rules organization, with splat books that are more DM centered and more unified in theme. Most of all the people at Pazio recognize what WotC didn't - that they are wholly reliant on DM's to sell their game and that IP is more valuable and more important to create than rules.

 

[lutecius]

If I couldn't play our heavily houseruled 3e I'd probably go for Pathfinder (assuming that counts as a different edition) or maybe stop playing altogether. Yes, cosmic being, system matters and I've become picky like that.
I certainly wouldn't consider committing to 4e or some retro edition on the long term and I can't speak of 5e because even though I don't dislike it, it's still too bare bones and subject to change.

 

[steenan]

My favorite version of D&D is 4e. If it was suddenly destroyed, I probably wouldn't care much. While it is my favorite D&D, it's far from being my favorite RPG. The loss of a game would be compensated by improved tone of many discussions on RPG fora.

My favorite D&D-like game is Dungeon World. If it was destroyed, I'd get irritated and I'd kick the cosmic being's ass. While I don't play DW much typically, it's a go-to introductory game in my eyes. I haven't seen an RPG with as clear description of how to run and play it as DW.

 

[tuxgeo]

"I didn't vote: I couldn't find any poll options at all!"

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Actually, I would go with 5E Next, because it is playable even in its current though incomplete form. (Next is certainly not my favorite edition -- its incompleteness keeps it from being that.)

Having said that, however, I'm of a mind to add that if such a cosmic being did destroy one edition of D&D, we would be having other discussions and panics about how to deal with such an invasion from the Far Realms. . . .