Why did you stay with an earlier edition?

[haakon1]

I picked the Rules. Mostly because the rules I prefer were better at modeling the types of characters I enjoy, and allowed me to play the type of game I enjoy.


I'm a Storyteller/Method Actor that prefers as realistic and plausible an environment as possible.

Yup, me too.

The only edition updates I did were AD&D to 3e, and 3e to 3.5e.

We tried 2nd Edition for maybe a year, but we liked the flavor of AD&D better, and after trying 2nd Edition for a while, went back to AD&D, which supported all the PC's (like my LE half-orc assassin, triple not allowed in 2e) and therefore "felt right" as being "the real thing".

We eventually upgraded to 3e -- but there were specific rules on how to update (from 2e to 3e, but close enough for AD&D), so we were able to continue the same characters, the same stories in the same world -- our version of Greyhawk that I'd been running for 5 years when we switched.

Then we upgraded to 3.5e. No sweat, easy-peasy as it was almost the same as 3e.

Then we saw 4e. Two of players, who also DM their own campaigns and who are more early adopters/tech people than I am, checked it out and said "No, this isn't compatible with our campaigns, so we don't like it." I tried playing it with a different DM who liked it, but it didn't work for me.

And even if I DID like the rules, I wouldn't have switched my campaigns to it, because conversion isn't easy/isn't supported. The recommendation to kill off your old campaign world and start over doesn't work at all for me.

So: lack of backwards compatibility/convertability of PC's to the new rules, and lack of backwards compatibility for the setting. The rules need to Greyhawk/AD&D friendly, or there's no point to them for me.

Which means our next upgrade, if we ever do it, is most likely to Pathfinder, not 4e, because of compatibility.

 

[Arytiss]

The reason I stayed with/moved back to 3.5/Pathfinder can be summed up with an action I took in a game today.

The party was being hit hard by a ghost. In desperation I decided to use my racial ability to cast Daylight on it, reasoning that if it was only able to appear at night this might work to banish it.

I tried it. It worked.

The reason it worked was not because the ability says "banishes ghosts", but because of the implied freedom within the system to be able to use abilities in ways other than that which was the original intent.

Yes, you can do it in 4e, but the implied freedom isn't the same. You have an ability. It deals damage, or grants a status effect. Many GM's who would feel free to respond positively to such uses of abilities in other systems feel restricted in 4e, and won't allow such uses unless the ability specifically allows it.

 

[Mercule]

I stayed with 1e because 2e was inferior (IMO). Rangers w/ TWF and no wizard spells? That's just crazy (still my opinion, BTW)! I did grab the 2e thief abilities, though. In truth, I ended up running a hybrid game, since the two editions were 99% compatible. I always considered 1e to be the base game, though.

I spent some time playing WoD until just before 3e was released, so I missed all the 2.5e stuff. A friend was running a 2e game, so I joined. I advocated for the switch to 3e mainly because I wanted to play a sorcerer and ditch the stupid spell slots.

I was all ready for 4e because of what a pain 3e is/was to GM. 4e did bring some great ideas, but it felt so hollow and, frankly, amateurish that I wasn't too upset when my group revolted after a few months. Eventually, I started up a 3.5 Rappan Athuk game -- after pitching 1e, Savage Worlds, Aces & Eights, and nWoD (the only one that got traction).

If 5e turns out to capture the 1e feel, streamline play, and maintain some flavor, I'll be a huge fan. If not, I'll play out RA and then look for something w/o the D&D brand on it to finish out my gaming days.

 

[Mercule]

Yes, you can do it in 4e, but the implied freedom isn't the same. You have an ability. It deals damage, or grants a status effect. Many GM's who would feel free to respond positively to such uses of abilities in other systems feel restricted in 4e, and won't allow such uses unless the ability specifically allows it.

This is probably the biggest single factor in me giving up on 4e -- too codified. If the GM doesn't have anything to arbitrate, there's no point. Gygax often referred to the GM as the "referee", and it wasn't just a hold-over from war gaming.

To be perfectly honest, much of 3.5 flirted a bit much with over-codification and the line was crossed well before 4e hit the shelves. 4e just had nothing to dilute it the way late 3.5 did.

 

[Endur]

The Poll doesn't fully capture my position but its close.

The poll suffers because if you have gone through multiple upgrades, you might have different reasons during each upgrade.

4e made some improvements, but it also has some drawbacks compared to previous rule sets.

Investment, whether group related, financial related, or simply time related is important.

 

[jsaving]

Our gaming group split in two when 4e was released, with about half the players opting to stick with 3.5 (now Pathfinder) and half moving on to the new edition. I was the only one willing to play in both campaigns, and what strikes me about the poll in this thread is how closely its conclusion -- that almost everybody (claims to) evaluate editions on the merits -- corresponds to what my friends on both "sides of the aisle" say they do.

The 3.5/Pathfinder group genuinely believes they gave both rulesets a chance and opted for the objectively superior choice. They see the 4e guys as followers who just accept whatever tripe WotC chooses to release.

The 4e group genuinely believes they gave both rulesets a chance and opted for the objectively superior choice. They see the 3.5/Pathfinder guys as grognards who wouldn't have accepted any replacement for their beloved 3.5 no matter what it had contained.

Because I think both groups are sincere, I think there is hope that a new edition embodying the best features of its predecessors can potentially reunite the now-fractured RPG community. But also because they are sincere, I think there are big trust issues to overcome along the way...

 

[GM Dave]

I'm a hybrid!

I've picked up and played every version from 3 book original DnD to 4e (and have all the editions in some state around the house).

My current main group that I GM refused to switch to 4e. Personally, I still gamed with a couple of 4e groups and had some of my funnest battles in the last five years playing 4e.

My current group switched to PF when it came out with Beta and the playtest.

My current group that plays characters using the Core, Advanced Players, and two Ultimate Books has me as the GM.

I use 4e rules to run monsters and encounters. I just don't tell my players and they for the most part don't look behind the screen to see how the magician is pulling the rabbits out of the hat.

The hardest thing I have to do in the next 24hrs is to stat up 7 NPCs for my players to use on my Saturday night game. If I was just running the NPCs myself then they'd need very little to work (4e guidelines). To allow my PF players to use them, I have to actually work through more of the math. Luckily, two sets of 3 of the NPCs are mostly identical 1st level (some differences in skill and feat choices).

 

[Lord Mhoram]

Whups - voted for 7 and other things, because I voted before I read the original post. But I'm not Chaotic Nuetral - honest.

I went with Rules, nostalgia and every new edition.


I play D&D solo with the wife (she usually DMs). In a group we play a different game system. One that I prefer to play with the group, but I still like the play experience I get from D&D as well.

So I buy each new D&D when it comes out. Basic, AD&D, 2nd, 3rd, 4E... (never played OD&D). I play them for a while each. But, as I play solo, there has to be a way I can tweak the system to my preferred playstyle - and as D&D is a second game, we don't spend a whole lot of time prepping the adventures - so we tend to use pre-made ones (as opposed to Hero where we home build everything). So the D&D system itself needs to be flexible enough to be bent to allow a solo character play in a module built for a group*


I've played each iteration of D&D - when 2nd ed came out, it took out things I liked (Demons, Devils, Monks) and left stuff we had house ruled away (demi-human level caps). So we played 2nd, for a while but went back to 1st.
3rd I fell in love with - I love the options for characters and world-building with mechanics. And it was eminantly modifiable to solo play. Gestalt class (or even 3 class gestalt) and some +EL templates or races tended to do it.
4E I loved the symmetry of the ruled (I'm on of those that disliked Essential for the changing of that structure), the balance and the way characters balance. But... the game is designed for group play - and I never found a way to make it work solo, so I went back to third.
When D&D Whatevertheycallit comes out - I'll grab the core books and see what happens. But if it doesn't fit my needs as well as our houseruled 3rd does, I won't be playing it after a year or so.

So D&D for nostalgia (because it was the first RPG I ever played), 3rd for rules love, and each new edition because I like shiny new stuff.


*Yes these solo character are obscenely min-maxed and versitle in most aread. But that is sort of required.


Right now we run an unholy blend of Pathfinder, Arcana Unearthed (not Evolved), Iron Heroes and D&D 3.5 - but with rules elements, classes feats and such from 40 or 50 other 3rd party supplements. But I love tinkering with rules (Hey, I play Hero) so getting it all working right together is part of the fun for me.

 

[MoonSong]

Just to clarify, I don't hate 4e, I just couldn't grasp it. (I stil can't) I found very hard to relearn everything from scratch,not just the mechanics, but the whole setting and flavour too. From a quick glance at the core the first thing I noticed was they had a very reduced class selection and since they killed multiclassing too I was unable to build anything resembling the bards, druids and sorcerers I'm used to play. Then the extremely streamlined skill system removed the fun of the rogues as the versatile skilled class (not to mention the loss of the perform skill and the removal of musical instruments from the equip list) and the healing surge system killed any potential fun I could have playing a cleric. Then PHB2 arrived and I noticed the Sorcerers are beyond recognition, and the bards not looking unique anymore (If I'm suppossed to be musical in nature and nowhere in the rules says how can I make music or even how can I have a non-magical musical instrument then where's your identity? How can I play a Bard if one of the key aspects of them is only supported by make believe? There would be no difference If I reskinned a Warlord or a Cleric to be "musical" and call it a bard. Rogues have streetwise, wizards Arcana and clerics Religion and all I get when I ask how good is my bard with bardy stuff is "make it up", that was disapointing). That compounded with the high need for learning every single term in the jargon before being able to sit and play, and the extremely codiffied nature of powers and no longer being able to just plain suck in combat but still be extremely usefull to the group outside of it.

The only way I could enjoy playing 4e would be by severely refluffing a lot of things and houseruling away lots of things, not an easy task thank you as the system provided lots of crunch where I expected fluff and fluff where I was used to have crunch. Finally most 4e players enjoy it as is, which means that would only come at the price of disrupting soemone else's fun, so in short words I stayed with 3.5 because it was the less resistance path. Why go to the pain of retooling 4e to suit my tastes when I could just stay in 3.5 despite the miscelaneous (and sometimes awfull) problems it has? I like Pathfinder too, because I think It has the potential to be easier to teach to others and like some of the mechanical improvements, but I don't fully like the flavour it provides.

As for what I don't mention 2e and before, simply because I'm too young to have played AD&D on it's prime, and the few things I learned from 2e back then weren't my cup of tea and came to me as too complex and even strange and inmersion breaking (racial level caps for example). The only time I really got into D&D was with 3e, when i first got my hands in the SRD It really made sense to me and it was the very first time I could really envisión playing characters that mapped well to the character sheet (because to me if the fluff isn't supported by mechanics or the mechanics get in the way of the flavor, then I'd rather ditch mechanics entirely and go freeform, that is another reason I don't play 4e, If the social part is run entirely freeform and I don't enjoy the combat stuff, then why play the system at all? Perhaps It could be just a tantrum on my part for the removal of Craft, Perform and profession, but still)

But basically, I didn't see support to my playstyle with 4e and thus didn't feel compelled to make it suit my style, that is why I didn't switch. I hope Next really makes it possible for me to make the switch and bring new people to the hobby.

 

[Ariosto]

To unify players, D&D needs to accommodate varying player and DM'ing styles with a modular format.

That's a key point. I would say that in some ways, the WotC rules sets are better suited to the kind of game my usual circle these days enjoys. However, there is too much else too tightly bound in.

I've got one player who basically doesn't want to be bothered with needing to learn formal rules. I've got another who is really digging Pathfinder. The others fall somewhere on the spectrum in between -- and different people like detail in different areas.

Advanced D&D was designed for a very different game form, but 'fudged' AD&D is the easy compromise for this group.