Favourite D&D edition that’s not 5E

Tony Vargas · May 20, 2019

Sacrosanct said:
Those of us around back in 2012/13 are more than aware of the number of 4e fans who were very upset and engaged in edition warring. Most warlord threads to this day turn into edition warring pretty quickly.

Edition warring, in the brief 4e era, during the playtest, and right now, in this thread, has generally been initiated /against/ 4e. This is no exception. 4e is dead, you got to help kill it, you got to dance and spit all over it's grave. But, now, with 4e taking a /slight/ lead, in a trivial little 2nd-favorite-edition-after-5e poll, you're at it again.

Why? What possible threat could 4e be to you now, that you need to lash out at it, and anyone who ever played it?

How many times did how many people keep saying "I get it, you hate 5e, so why do you keep posting over and over about how much you hate it on a 5e forum?" How many times did how many people say "WoTC isn't fracturing the player base, you still have your books and can still play 4e, right?"

Not nearly as many times, as: "I get it, you hate 4e, so why do you keep posting over and over about how much you hate it on a 4e forum?" How many times did how many people say "you still have your books and can still play 3e, right?" Something which never made the least impression. But, hey, let's try it again:

"I get it, you hate 4e, so why do you keep posting over and over about how much you hate it on a 5e forum?" "You still have your books and can still play 3e. Or Pathfinder. Or OSR games. Or even 5e. Right?"

...

But even that's a false equivalency. The edition war was a tidal wave of negativity. Any trickles of negativity you see dampening 5e's parade may also be made of metaphorical water, but they're not comparable...
...and more than fair share of what negativity there is flows from veteran h4ters, for whom 5e is still too 4e-ish.

I don't think fans of any edition are more willing or accepting of 5e than any other.

Based on what? Based on this little poll, fans of 2e & 4e are clearly pretty accepting of 5e relative to fans of 3e or 0e.

But, seriously, being inclined to adopt a new edition - each new edition, 6e if it ever happens - if it is in any way a matter of personality traits rather than strictly in-the-moment - is something you would need to have had in generous measure to even /try/ 4e into the teeth of the firestorm that accompanied it's release, not to mention the general mishandling of that release by WotC, let alone give it a fair enough chance to actually form a positive opinion of it.

Maybe the OSR fans because they've gone so long being officially unsupported that they had no expectations of being officially back in the mix so to them, after ignoring 3e and 4e (literally over a decade), what would one new edition mean? We all long ago came to the acceptance that we'd just stick with our current stuff.

That's tending to reject new editions, obviously. And, yeah, OSR fans had a lot of experience rejecting the current ed. Heck, some of them rejected AD&D and defected to Arduin Grimoire. The didn't have internet forums to edition-war on, though, c1979.

I don't need to tell anyone that there was plenty of edition warring and anger back in 2012-2014 from 4e fans.

Clearly you do feel the need. But, you are talking about the Next playtest, and, yes, everyone was shouting to get their favorite thing included, afterall, it was a playtest, feedback, both formal, in polls, and shouting the loudest in the forums, was clearly to be expected. That's hardly the same thing as edition warring - there /was/ edition warring, against 4e, all through the Next playtest, though, just as there is, right now, in this thread.

Completely superfluous though it may be.
That horse really is dead. The ed is out of print, the tools that supported it obsolete, there's no OGL, no PF or OSR-like clone. It's dead.

Calm down, 4e can't hurt you anymore.

Yaarel · May 20, 2019

Saelorn said:
1. Lots of character customization options, if you're into that sort of thing.

2. Unified character creation and advancement rules, which make it just as easy to build an NPC or a monster as it does to make a PC.

3. The possibility of describing damage as largely physical, such that you can still feel it the next day.

3.

I am unconvinced that 3e describes physical damage. There are no consequences for being ‘severely wounded’. A person with 1 hp can still run a marathon, no difference from an athlete in top shape.

Personally, I subscribe to the serious injury happening at 0 hp. I impose a level of exhaustion each time a person reaches 0 hp. To represent the injury that occurred, and describe the nature of injury, and sometimes modify the exhaustion to represent it.

1.

I love character optimization, and this is part of 3e that I like. At the same time, because I care about balance, I consider subpar options to be nonoptions. So sometimes, it is difficult to build an effective character with a certain theme. In any case, swapping features and traits is a great way to give more options, and I hope to see more of this in 5e too.

Radaceus · May 20, 2019

well, the last few pages have convinced me that though we (our group, about 10 players total, who all still play together F2F in various campaigns) started with red box, evolved into AD&D and then used much of the plethora of material from 2e to supplement our rule system, I must un-vote 1E and vote 2E, to prove a point.

After 2E, and certainly after the corporate takeover and almost death knell of TSR in the 90s, it was not until 5E that our heads were turned; oh we looked up, and sniffed the air, but the meal we already had set for us was a far better choice. I wager this is the case for a majority of the community.

Understandably , if one came into the scene in the last two decades, from scratch and nobody from previous editions to coach them along, they probably would not side with my wager, and arguably, would have a one sided opinion, having not experienced the previous editions

ccs · May 20, 2019

Satyrn said:
Unless we assume that everybody's favorite edition is 5e (a rock solid assumption if ever there was one), in which case this poll is saying exactly what our second favorite is.

Well MY favorite edition is 1e.
My 2nd favorite is 5e.
running very close in 3rd place is PF1/3x
4th place = 2e
5th comes B/X, BECMi, & OD&D

The Crimson Binome · May 20, 2019

Yaarel said:
I am unconvinced that 3e describes physical damage. There are no consequences for being ‘severely wounded’. A person with 1 hp can still run a marathon, no difference from an athlete in top shape.

This is a topic for another thread, but suffice it to say, you can play it that way if you want to. While someone with 1hp may technically suffer no penalties on their skill checks, it's highly unlikely that they'll attempt a marathon in that condition, since they could easily suffer fatal damage from tripping. I'm perfectly fine with the game doing a less-than-stellar job of modeling tasks that were never going to happen anyway.

Whether or not you see it as primarily physical, though, the fact remains that you can still feel it the next day (unless you use magic or something to heal it). It's not like 4E or 5E, where you can be beaten within an inch of unconsciousness, and have no record of it after you take a nap.

Sacrosanct · May 20, 2019

Tony Vargas said:
*snip*.

My argument was that fans of 4e are/were no different than any other fans because they acted the same as every other fan when their favorite edition ended, and your response was to portray me as if I'm attacking and being unfair to 4e and it's fans? Thanks for doubling down on the reasons why I shouldn't even bother discussing this with you, and ironically proving your initial post wrong about how 4e fans react. The fact that you think me pointing out how 4e fans reacted (that you deny despite the evidence) is me gravedancing on 4e tells me all I need to know about your biases and disingenuous argument. Nothing in my post remotely was celebratory about 4e ending.

ccs · May 20, 2019

Yaarel said:
I’m curious, what does 3e have for you that 5e lacks?

A rule for everything & then a few more for things you don't need rules for.

Yaarel · May 20, 2019

Tony Vargas said:
Not to mention liking 4e and some prior editions (I was a straight-up 4venger, but I'm also one of those old guys for whom nothing will ever match what I had with 1e, for instance - and more on that below, since you bring it up...).

THE biggest reason for preferring one older edition is that it's the edition you started with. It's just a powerful emotional connection, I guess.

The 1e books graphic design elements were, well, ingenuous, they evinced the enthusiasm-over-experience development of the early game (many early RPGs, in fact). I got the impression that everyone involved in rolling out a 1e book was prettymuch a fan of the game. So it was a sort of charming amateurism, for me, and one I still like seeing, now and then, in some indie RPGs.

Mechanically, 2e didn't change 1e much, so you could - and I often did - go ahead and play 2e because it was there, often, I'd be playing a character that I started in 1e, for that matter. At first. But as the system bloated it became, IDK, less familiar, not worth the effort, more and more clear that TSR was just churning books out to move product? Plus, I'd never been big into setting material, and 2e pushed out so much for so many settings, so hard. It was the only edition of D&D to just outright lose my interest (though I certainly never hated it).

Describing the upside of 1e/2e as ‘enthusiasm’ and ‘charming amateurism’, resonate with me too.

Also, the fluidity of the system is a plus, where each DM can reappropriate whatever rules were useful for whatever setting was of interest.

The 1e/2e really was the edition where it was true, "The only limitation is your imagination". All the other editions require system mastery, often with a baked-in setting.

Yaarel · May 20, 2019

Sacrosanct said:
My argument was that fans of 4e are/were no different than any other fans because they acted the same as every other fan when their favorite edition ended, and your response was to portray me as if I'm attacking and being unfair to 4e and it's fans? Thanks for doubling down on the reasons why I shouldn't even bother discussing this with you, and ironically proving your initial post wrong about how 4e fans react. The fact that you think me pointing out how 4e fans reacted (that you deny despite the evidence) is me gravedancing on 4e tells me all I need to know about your biases and disingenuous argument. Nothing in my post remotely was celebratory about 4e ending.

I am a 4e fan. I never slandered 5e. I felt ‘betrayed’ by the loss of 4e, especially because 4e failed to provide an OGL. But I pretty much immediately understood that 4e was over, and spent my energy constructively during the 5e playtests. And even now, spend my time constructively with 5e.

I have to agree with Tony. Where 3e fans launched a tidal way of negativity against 4e (and now apparently a tidal wave against Pathfinder 2), the 4e fans are largely innocent of this.

3e has its good guys. For example, I have never perceived spiteful negativity from [MENTION=6775031]Saelorn[/MENTION], and others. But 3e sure has its share of reactionaries.