Prediction: 3.5 DMs will *always* find players

[Glyfair]

I do agree that the "I hate 3E D&D" levels here aren't high - but that's unsurprising, these are primarily 3E (or 3.5E or however you call it) oriented boards.

There is also the fact that, in general, we tend to be somewhat of an analytical group. You don't expect to see too many "3.5 sucks" comments. You tend to see "3.5 is far too demanding for me to design for it, what can I do to fix that" or "what game might fit my preferences better."

I've been seeing more and more of this sort of thread over the last couple of years. People are dissatisfied, but are looking for something else or trying to patch it with house rules rather than crying that the game is stupid.

This I disagree with. I think if you look at a full list of 3.0->3.5 changes (particularly hundreds of changes to spells), actually that established a more radical break than 1E->2E (for which they could make a "AD&D Wizard's Spell Compendium" compatible with both games).

Thus my "except maybe between 1st and 2nd edition AD&D" comment. I could argue both sides of this.

 

[Bront]

Do the math. Think of all the OD&D, AD&D 1E, and AD&D2E grognards out there. Then think of the sheer numbers of 3.x players and add in the SRD and OGL.

They were around for the 2E to 3E conversion.

It happens. People move on, and a few people cling to the previous version because they like it better or they have more stuff for it. Eventualy, all the stuff they want will be in 4E, probably with more glitz, or perhaps some cool new way to work things, and people will move.

Of course, this ultimately depends on the differences. If 4E is as much of an overall improvement on D&D over 3.5E that 3E was over 2E, you won't have a lot of stragglers. If it's closer to 2E over 1E, it might take a bit longer. If it ends up being a disapointment, it will take a lot longer.

However, rarely does an "Edition War" hold on to the previous edition very well, and it's how survivable 3E is is probably more closely related to how compatable it is with 4E than anything, and baring some completely radical changes, I think there will be some.

Still, we won't know till it's been out for a while.

 

[EyeontheMountain]

I do agree this question has come up before, and undoubtably will when 5E comes aroun d

But in this case I do agree we will have a lot of 3.5 players, both online and not for a very very long time. It has been out a long time and there are a ton of resources for it, both in print form, PDF form and fan site form.

I play almost exclusively online these days, and I see a lot of 3.x games, 90%
or a bit less; Some 2E games 10% or so, and almost no 1E games., maybe once a year or so.

So I predit two years form now the market will still have a lot of 3.x players both for just playing and also for buying power purchases, though the relative percentage will depend on 4E.

 

[Olaf the Stout]

I think that it might be easy to find 3.5E players in the next year or so, but over time, it will be harder and harder to do. Of course, the internet has ways of bringing small groups of people together so finding a 3.5E group and playing together online will probably always be possible. Just don't expect to post a notice at your FLGS 20 years from now and get a group together in a few weeks.

Olaf the Stout

 

[Keeper of Secrets]

I suspect there will always be people who want to play 3x but the thing that comes to my mind is whether or not 4e is good enough to draw people to it in such numbers that they agree it is better.

See, I enjoyed 1e MUCH more than 2e. In fact, I hated 2e. I really did not play much of it and found enough people willing to continue to play 1e. But when 3e came out, oh, people did love that.

Its really hard to say at this point what the future holds. I have no idea what 4e will give us and as much as I am hesitant to leave 3e it all depends on how well 4e works.

 

[rgard]

You also have to think about the demographics of who all purchased and played 3x.

From all that I've read (and prior to now), D&D was at its most popular in the late 70s to mid 80s. That popularity was primarily focused among kids/teens/college aged people.

Fast forward to 2000. All those gamers from the 70s & 80s are now grown ups, never lost their enjoyment of playing D&D and many have disposable incomes. 3.0 is introduced. It fixes alot of the stuff this crowd didn't like (combat, multi-classing, magic item creation, etc.) with the previous editions and there is an OGL with the game. Wizards produces a bunch of products. Boatloads of independents pop up selling their D20 and OGL games. Just about every conceivable genre is covered from D&D to Star Wars to Conan and so on. D&D has its renaissance.

I suspect the above gamers, the ones with disposable incomes, are the ones who fueled the sales that kept the game popular this decade. I fall into the above group and so do my friends. When 3.0 was first released we picked up everything, WotC and 3rd party, that was published. Even if you find a current survey that has a largish percentage of younger players playing 3x, I think you'll find a parent, grandparent or uncle who played the game in the 70s/80s and introduced the kids to the current version of the game.

Now fast forward 7-8 years. Many of us have book shelves full of 3x stuff, boxes full of D&D minis (with 3x cards) and therefore have spent a sizeable chunk of cash. And we are faced with a choice of whether to keep playing the current version or move on to the new version. Alot will depend on how compatible the 4 is with 3x. Of everything I've read so far, it doesn't sound too compatible. So, invalidate the book shelves and the minis cards or keep playing 3x? Given my investment cash-wise, and the vast volume of 3x material I've yet to use in my campaigns...I'll probably stick with 3x. I suspect there are many others like me making this decision.

Through all of this, I'm still a huge WotC fan. I like what I've heard about the yearly additional PHBs, no dead levels class concept...both sound great! I understand (business-wise) why they have to do a new version. I really want them to succeed in order for the hobby to remain robust.

So will 3x survive? Much of it depends on how many independents keep publishing 3x stuff. New material keeps people interested (hence AD&D, 2e, 3e, 3.5e and now 4e.) The other factor is how many DMs out there want to keep DMing 3x. The hardest part of getting a gaming group together is finding a good DM. If the DM prefers 3.x and people keep publishing 3.x stuff, I suspect 3.x gaming groups will be easier to find than with previous editions. I don't know, maybe I need to PDF publish all the half-written stuff I have here.

I gave version 2 a miss, who knows, maybe I'll give version 4 a miss, but start playing version 5 when I'm in the old folks home?

Thanks,
Rich

 

[Shieldhaven]

Huh. With the general community of players I have to draw from, I could probably start a game with just about any rules system (well, okay, excluding FATAL or Synnibar...) and they'd be willing to play just to see what happened. I'll definitely run a 4e game when such a thing is possible, but if I told them I wanted to start up a 3.x game (or not convert my current heavily modified 3.5 game), I have every reason to expect that they'd go along with this.

Oh, and rgard: your experiences and assertions are completely foreign to me. =) The players I know, probably some 40-50 people in two states (ages ranging from early 20s to late 30s), got started no earlier than the tail end of 1e, and many of them at the tail end of 2e or early 3e. They came to it when other friends their age introduced them... or when they wandered through a bookstore. At least for the people I know, D&D isn't an "old-folks" game, and never was.

Haven

 

[rgard]

Oh, and rgard: your experiences and assertions are completely foreign to me. =) The players I know, probably some 40-50 people in two states (ages ranging from early 20s to late 30s), got started no earlier than the tail end of 1e, and many of them at the tail end of 2e or early 3e. They came to it when other friends their age introduced them... or when they wandered through a bookstore. At least for the people I know, D&D isn't an "old-folks" game, and never was.

Haven

That's ok. Everybody's experience is different.

Thanks,
Rich

 

[Delta]

At least for the people I know, D&D isn't an "old-folks" game, and never was.

Consider the following poll taken here at ENWorld. About 55% of the respondents said they started playing in the 1978-1984 era: http://www.enworld.org/showthread.php?t=171146

 

[the black knight]

Well, in any case, the 3e crowd will know how it feels for us older Grognards when a favorite edition gets swept under the rug.

I will most likely keep 3.5 as my primary system. I'm too damn old and have too little time to run around willy nilly learning new game mechanics. Let's leave that up to the young ones and the people who get paid to diss the current system.

"Yeah, we designed it, but 3.5 sucks now! The new edition will be SO MUCH better! You'll see! We've fixed ALL the problems! The new system will be uber-fantastic! With cherries on top! No problems at all!

For now!"