The Great D&D Schism: The End of an age and the scattering of gamers

[Olgar Shiverstone]

Not to worry ... all this has happened before, and will happen again.

There will come a time when virtually everyone looks back upon the 3E-to-4E era with the same warm nostalgia we feel for the OD&D-to-AD&D era, when the differences between editions matter less because "It's all good, they're all D&D."

 

[Bedrockgames]

You do realize that not everyone was alive in the early '80's, right? That was thirty plus years ago.

If D&D was a pop culture phenomenon in that time, memory has faded no more for that than for anything else from the same time. I find it hard to believe that the "golden age" could be pre-internet.

I was born in the mid 70s, so was a kid in the early 80s, but do remember D&D being pretty big, especially among those a few years ahead of me. There was also a cartoon, which i watched, action figures with playsets, and it was even referenced in ET. Plus you had the backlash like with Mazes and Monsters (which was made into a TV movie staring Tom Hanks). I do not know how it compares to the d20 boom in terms of numbers. Both were pretty big at least they both felt big. I do recall the early 80s D&D seemed to have a wider presence.

 

[TerraDave]

D&D was biggest in the 80s
The worst fights were on the usenet
You are a grognard when you know that the best all time edition was already published, however recent that was
D20/OGL brought all the gamers together, then let that all go their separate ways
RPGs are always under mortal threat
There are more devoted gamers playing more good games that are easier to find then ever before
The best D&D is yet to come, why wouldn't it be?

 

[billd91]

I have to wonder why people's memory's are either

1. So forgetful...

or

2. Different than what happened.

Different experiences and different perspectives are different. Watch Rashomon.

 

[CleverNickName]

I'm still a little bit sore over the "Basic" vs. "Advanced" versions.

The best thing to happen to the hobby, in my opinion, was the Open Gaming License. This was more than just a game...it was a toolbox that gamers could use to build the exact game they wanted to play...and build it in a uniform and standardized way. If a product had the D20 Logo on it, you knew that it would work in your game. And the D20 Logo was everywhere in the mid-2000s. Forgotten Realms D20, Ravenloft D20, Oriental Adventures D20...it was like a high school class reunion for the "old guard," and things like Eberron and Ghostwalk were bringing new gamers to the hobby in droves.

When 4th Edition was announced, all of that changed. Third-party publishers shelved their projects, waiting for word on the new edition and whether or not it would also have an Open Gaming License toolbox for them to use. Only Pathfinder and a tiny handful of others kept printing under the current license...a decision that would make them very, very wealthy. Then 4th Edition was released--and it didn't come with a toolbox.

4th Edition didn't "kill D&D" as some people proclaimed. But Hasbro certainly tried to kill the OGL, and the way that D&D material was being produced at the time. I remember reading dozens of articles, game blogs, and commentaries about the legality of the OGL, and the struggle from Hasbro to reign in the booming third-party industry, and their ultimate decision to restrict the license for 4th Edition. It was a dark time. Some bridges got burned. Talented people lost their jobs. A lot of publishers walked away.

Fortunately for gamers like me, the OGL survived....thrived even, largely due to the hard work, creativity, and old-fashioned good luck of Paizo. Which is awesome, because we will never see anything like it ever again in this hobby.

So when people talk about a "Golden Age" of D&D, I don't think about high school and the Moldvay Basic/Expert rules and the Isle of Dread, even though they were the best gaming experiences of my life. Instead, I think about the Open Gaming License and how it saved our hobby from fading away forever after TSR went under.

 

[XunValdorl_of_Kilsek]

I have heard it argued that the same can be said for 1e and 2e the same amount changed.

ok compaired to 1e and 2e

yes but most of those got better the farther they got from basic D20...

once again I'm just saying 3e was awesome and huge, but so was 1e. The fact is that a lot of retro clones try to harken back to 1e the same way pathfinder does 3.5

There is no argument about it. At the beginning of the 3.5 PHB it clearly states it's not a new edition but a revision.

 

[Yora]

They also clearly stated "the game remains the same", and that doesn't make it true either.

 

[Ace]

People have been sharing anecdotes about the doom of D&D probably since 1976 or so (with Holmes) and the scattering since 2e Its nothing new and IMO nothing worth being unduly worried about.

Even with the crud global economy lots of D&D is played by many a group.Heck as worthless as anecdotes are I can say In the last few months, my group 20's to 40's have played Pathfinder and that weird black D&D basic starter box and a host of other games, I suspect many groups are doing the same thing. Besides D&D is cheap and with everybody tight these days its a great social hobby. Just recruit some players and the hobby will grow,. Its not super easy, maybe not as easy as in the days of the FLGS but its not hard either

That said Hasbro might have a few worries with people switching unless 5e production is more interesting than the playtest. I liked the game well enough but it might be a tough sell and other than the imprimatuer of officiality I don't see any reason to prefer it to the retro-clones or even Pathfinder.

 

[GMforPowergamers]

There is no argument about it. At the beginning of the 3.5 PHB it clearly states it's not a new edition but a revision.

ok well it is at least a huge revision, the size that none WotC D&D would have called an edition.

 

[Bedrockgames]

ok well it is at least a huge revision, the size that none WotC D&D would have called an edition.

I think it wasn't quite a new edition. It is more like the revisions of 2E released in the mid 90s with the black covers. The core components stayed the same. It wasn't like 1E to 2E where you switched from attack matrices to THAC0, made NWP a major option the core book, removed classes, made signif cant changes to classes, rewrote pretty much all of the text and took out large chunks of the exploration rules. 2E was backwards compatible but it was a much larger shift than 3E to 3.5 (which honestly wasnt all that noticeable until you dug around a bit).