What D&D is to me, in terms of editions.

[billd91]

I'm liable to get attacked for this opinion, but it's (to me) a completely different game that's leveraging the brand identity build up by 1e-3e.

That's the way I see it too. When AD&D launched, it was hyped up in Dragon by Gygax as a new game and not D&D as it had existed. It's like WotC really has come up with a new game, clearly in the D&D family, but not of the same direct line.
There are people who compare 4e to the BECMI (or however that acronym goes) line. I wouldn't know since I never played it much, having gone pretty much right into AD&D. But I think that ultimately helps to underline how 4e really isn't the same game as members of the AD&D line.

 

[Henry]

That's the way I see it too. When AD&D launched, it was hyped up in Dragon by Gygax as a new game and not D&D as it had existed. It's like WotC really has come up with a new game, clearly in the D&D family, but not of the same direct line.
There are people who compare 4e to the BECMI (or however that acronym goes) line. I wouldn't know since I never played it much, having gone pretty much right into AD&D. But I think that ultimately helps to underline how 4e really isn't the same game as members of the AD&D line.

You are likely on to something here. With the difference between the 1995-2006 period, and what came before it, it's no wonder it doesn't feel like a departure. I do see 4e as a blending of elements of Original D&D, some design ideas from first edition, mixed in with a second generation of the powers system from Book of Nine Swords. However, I'm actually digging this blend, as I do really enjoy some of the things older D&D used to do in its rules that D&D from about 1995 to 2006 didn't do (the "turn between fights", monster running and prep, similar mathematics interactions between monsters and players, etc.)

I often wonder why more of the gamers who frequent places like Knights and Knaves or Dragonsfoot don't think more favorably of the mechanics of 4e, and I'm wondering if it's because they already have their favorite version of the game, and 4e seems to them like a continuation of more of the same from 3e. To me, the "feel" of the game is similar to me when I run games of 1e at conventions now, and also back when I used to run 1e years ago regularly.

 

[Man in the Funny Hat]

I often wonder why more of the gamers who frequent places like Knights and Knaves or Dragonsfoot don't think more favorably of the mechanics of 4e, and I'm wondering if it's because they already have their favorite version of the game, and 4e seems to them like a continuation of more of the same from 3e.

I also hang around a bit at Dragonsfoot and I'd say you're almost completely correct. The one thing I'd add is that not only do they have their favorite version - they want it etched in stone. They refuse to allow 3rd Edition to even be CALLED 3rd Edition (and even now that there's a 4th Edition they still can be rabidly isolationist). Mention of 3E is generally only tolerated if you refer to it - literally - as, "The Edition That Shall Not Be Named," or use the acronym TETSNBN.

Now they may have instituted that rule because at the time of the advent of 3E they wanted to keep people from clogging their forums with fanboys and disruptions regarding an edition they had no interest in - but it can get downtright rudely intolerant and myopic. They want not even the suggestion that anything after 2nd Edition has anything in it worth talking about. Not always, but it's certainly startling to see the occasional vehemence with which they defy anything published after 1999.

To me, the "feel" of the game is similar to me when I run games of 1e at conventions now, and also back when I used to run 1e years ago regularly.

People just naturally think of D&D in terms of how they first learned to play it. I started with Basic D&D and moved immediately to 1E such that I barely remember Basic. I remember 1E - but 1E as it was run by the DM's I played under, who frequently did NOT use the rules as written. It is the house rules by which they ran the 1E game that frame what D&D is to me.

I'd LIKE to play 4E if for no other reason than because I don't care to judge it without knowing firsthand how it actually plays. But at this point I have no desire to run it - OR 3E EITHER - and and am working on starting a house-ruled 1E campaign that more closely encompasses how _I_ think of D&D.

 

[Mister Doug]

Manual of the Planes was 1st edition.

1e Players' Handbook, Appendix IV predated that....

Though I always thought the Great Wheel was an odd thing to put in the PH, and an odd cosmology in general. I can't say it's something I hold a lot of love for....

 

[Man in the Funny Hat]

Though I always thought the Great Wheel was an odd thing to put in the PH, and an odd cosmology in general. I can't say it's something I hold a lot of love for....

The problem was, IMO, that it was so closely associated with alignment. Alignment now is NOT what it was then. They really didn't know WHAT alignment was then - it just WAS. They tried to do things with it that really weren't the best choices because they really DIDN'T yet understand what the best use for it was, or could be. Using it to dictate the cosmology would be one of those choices.

 

[Mister Doug]

Yep, as far as I am concerned, there is a certain continuity from 1e-3e. 4e skips the track in many ways.

Of course, there is a strong connection between OD&D and Holmes D&D and a strong discontinuity between OD&D and OD&D + Greyhawk. And while OD&D + Greyhawk has a close continuity with AD&D 1e, and AD&D 1e is close to AD&D 2e, there are strong play-style and and feel differences between 1e and most of 2e and 3.x. I honestly don't feel more discontinuity between 3.x and 4e than the rules of Holmes D&D and AD&D 1e from back when I was a wee lad, or between BCMXI D&D and late D&D 2e. The only difference to me is that WotC, unlike TSR, isn't producing two significantly different D&D versions at the same time and splitting their own market....

 

[Mister Doug]

The problem was, IMO, that it was so closely associated with alignment. Alignment now is NOT what it was then. They really didn't know WHAT alignment was then - it just WAS. They tried to do things with it that really weren't the best choices because they really DIDN'T yet understand what the best use for it was, or could be. Using it to dictate the cosmology would be one of those choices.

But pages 23-24 of the 1e DMG discuss alignment and ther relationship of alignment to the planes. And pages 33-34 of the PH point describe alignment pretty directly, while page 120 of the PH spells out alignment relationships to the outer planes.

I didn't like it, but the ideas of the planes as the ideal source of alignment seems pretty clear. Not developed in the sense of Planescape, but its role as a real force in the world is clear -- even without Deities and Demigods.

That said, I still never much liked alignments and the Outer Planes, but that's another story altogether....

 

[SSquirrel]

You see, I started playing with the Basic set, to which I later added all the higher-level sets, with bits and pieces from AD&D, too. It was a pretty typical early-80's mishmash, and far from unique.

So I started playing before skill systems, before any really decent multiclassing, before feats, and before Wizards had thousands of spells to pick from.

4e, to me, synthesizes lessons from these earlier editions with stuff from 3.5. It also takes lessons learned from other games that do stuff well.

Playing it, it feels like I'm playing D&D. My players agree. It reads pretty differently - but a lot of the stuff you cite as essential, has always been a sideshow to me. I can't name a single time the Great Wheel cosmology has mattered to me, for instance.

-O

This. 20 years of lots of different games and I'm glad D&D has both taught and learned from other games, even if sometimes the lesson either direction is how NOT to do things

 

[Irda Ranger]

People just naturally think of D&D in terms of how they first learned to play it.

FWIW, I first played using AD&D 2E and first DM'd using AD&D 2E w/ Player's Options, but even to me, 4E feels more like BECM (a game I only became familiar with after I couldn't take playing 3E any more).

But 4E has differences & improvements over BECM. The rule system (the "math") is far improved in many ways. The cosmology is different; I think it is more mythic than any previous generation of D&D (the Shadowfell being like Hades, the Feywild being like the various Faerie realms, the chaotic maelstrom of the Abysss and tribal demons vs. the structured hell of Dante's devils), which is cool to me because it allows so many more sources of storytelling to fit well with the system and serve as campaign fodder. The Great Wheel was somewhat interesting, but something produced by one company in the 80s just can't ever have the breadth of material that the world's mythic folklore does.

The one generally new thing for 4E is the concept of class powers for all classes, and their clear delineation from skills and feats. I think it's a huge improvement too, in class design and the ability to house rule stuff.

 

[WayneLigon]

See, I don't see a disconnect between editions. There is a straight and clear unbroken line of successorship drawn from the three brown books to 4E; if there is anything that feels like a departure, it's the Basic D&D line.

'What is D&D' is a sort of nebulous thing to me. I could do the exact, exact same things I do in D&D, in many other RPGs (and in the case of certain rules, do them better). The game rules are not something I'm married to. Chromatic dragons, trolls with pickle noses, Gelatenous Cubes, these are not deal breakers or makers for me; I've played in hundreds of games of D&D and depending on the homebrew all, some or none of the classic D&D 'bits' might or might not be present. Not having 'X' doesn't make a game 'not D&D'.