wingsandsword
Legend
A thought.
I'd long heard it said, before 4e, that when people talked about 1e, they would say something like:
"In my game, there's this dungeon. . ." where the game was reputedly focused on huge, sprawling dungeon crawls, with fiendish traps and sometimes nonsensical dungeon ecologies. To this day, vast dungeon crawling seems to be referred to as a sort of retro-1e feel.
Then, for 2e, the stereotype was that people would say:
"In my game, the setting is. . ." where 2e was known for its focus on big, vast, lush settings. This was the age that gave us Forgotten Realms becoming so truly vast, that gave us Planescape, and in my experience at least a lot of monumentally large homebrew settings that had buckets of backstory and lore, so much that most campaigns would never get to use most of it. In later edition eras, it still seems like bringing back 2e settings is popular and evocative of that 1990's gaming era.
Then, for 3e, the stereotype seemed to be something like:
"In my game, we've got this feat/prestige class. . ." where 3e was known for its huge amount of very modular rules "crunch" where it seemed like every single setting, official or homebrew, in that era was known (and somewhat defined) by its feats and prestige classes. Every homebrew setting game I joined, the DM had a few classes and feats that were unique to their setting. Every official setting, the book (or Dragon article) was sure to have a couple of each. The popularity of these elements really helped fuel the spread of d20 gaming it certainly seems.
So, with 5e dawning, and 4e about to go into the history books of D&D lore, what will it be known for? What was unique to it, what was the aspect of it that set it apart from prior and future editions?
I'd long heard it said, before 4e, that when people talked about 1e, they would say something like:
"In my game, there's this dungeon. . ." where the game was reputedly focused on huge, sprawling dungeon crawls, with fiendish traps and sometimes nonsensical dungeon ecologies. To this day, vast dungeon crawling seems to be referred to as a sort of retro-1e feel.
Then, for 2e, the stereotype was that people would say:
"In my game, the setting is. . ." where 2e was known for its focus on big, vast, lush settings. This was the age that gave us Forgotten Realms becoming so truly vast, that gave us Planescape, and in my experience at least a lot of monumentally large homebrew settings that had buckets of backstory and lore, so much that most campaigns would never get to use most of it. In later edition eras, it still seems like bringing back 2e settings is popular and evocative of that 1990's gaming era.
Then, for 3e, the stereotype seemed to be something like:
"In my game, we've got this feat/prestige class. . ." where 3e was known for its huge amount of very modular rules "crunch" where it seemed like every single setting, official or homebrew, in that era was known (and somewhat defined) by its feats and prestige classes. Every homebrew setting game I joined, the DM had a few classes and feats that were unique to their setting. Every official setting, the book (or Dragon article) was sure to have a couple of each. The popularity of these elements really helped fuel the spread of d20 gaming it certainly seems.
So, with 5e dawning, and 4e about to go into the history books of D&D lore, what will it be known for? What was unique to it, what was the aspect of it that set it apart from prior and future editions?
