Favourite D&D edition that’s not 5E

Tony Vargas · May 27, 2019

pemerton said:
I have to confess that I didn't read your treadmill word-for-word, I'm sorry - more of a quick skim to get the gist.

Then you may have missed the best part, as I rapidly ran out not-hilarious ways of saying even-more-improved Sleep.

But, yeah, it was a literal treadmill, copy, paste, increment the numbers. No real change in the fiction, no net change in the mechanics, no expansion of possibilities in either...

...And, that last was hard, BTW, because D&D is loaded with expanding possibilities. So that example is not true to any edition of D&D. It has some in jokes from 1e & 3e, but in no edition does a wizard start & end a long career casting nothing but (Greater Improved Superior True Death-Like) Sleep and Magic Missile, nor however much it felt like it, a Cleric, Cure (Increasingly Gruesome Sounding) Wounds.

I guess I don't think layering meaningful fiction over the maths of a RPG is an illusion. I tend to just call that playing the game!

I think I can articulate it a little more concisely, now: the meaningful fiction isn't really the illusion, taking the maths as being the fiction, instead of modeling the fiction, is.

So perhaps illusion is the wrong word..

dagger · May 27, 2019

1st all the way but 2e a close second. You can mix and match from both on the fly with no work. For example, we allow people to play the 1st or 2e thief and we use the 2e monster manuals. People can use secondary skills from the DMG or NWP from the 2e pub. It all works...,

After all these years 1e/2e are pretty much the same to us.

Third would be 5e then PF/3.0/3.5 and last 4e. We played it for a year but everyone hated it. Thankfully we didn’t invest much time or money except in the character generator.

Tony Vargas · May 27, 2019

Aldarc said:
I was a veteran of 3e (and a smattering of 2e), and 4e felt like D&D to me.

But not of 1e.

Old school D&D varied radically from region to region and, most importantly, DM to DM.
So, for some of us old-timers 4e or 3e (or even 2e) wasn't enough like 'real D&D,' while for others one or another or all were - because "real D&D" was what DMs back in the day made of it.

5e is what the DM makes of it, too, but, in our connected world, regional variations are presumably less, and it also has an anchored standard mode of play in AL. Yet another way in which 5e achieves an adequate level of acceptability to those who might otherwise have initiated edition hostilities against it.

For old-schoolers, 5e is, once again, the DMs game to run, /caveat ludenor/. For powergamers, there's a stable system to master, with class tiers and optimization opportunities, so their SorLock or whatever can pretty dependably outshine all the Bobs at the table. For the casual players there's organized play, published adventures and encounter guidelines.

Hexmage-EN · May 27, 2019

I think one hurdle with 4E is that it focuses on tactical-thinking rather than strategic-thinking thanks to how mobile it can be and how many one-use powers there are. I know sometimes when I ran 4E there would be players who would take forever to decide what to do, whereas I largely haven't had that problem from players in 5E.

Aldarc · May 27, 2019

Tony Vargas said:
But not of 1e. Old school D&D varied radically from region to region and, most importantly, DM to DM.

Sadly not. No one was playing 1E at my high school. 2E was on its way out and 3E was on its way in. But it may be for the best. I think that the OSR movement has produced something better than 1E (if not 5E): old school sensibilities with more contemporaneous design.

Zardnaar · May 27, 2019

Tony Vargas said:
Then you may have missed the best part, as I rapidly ran out not-hilarious ways of saying even-more-improved Sleep.

But, yeah, it was a literal treadmill, copy, paste, increment the numbers. No real change in the fiction, no net change in the mechanics, no expansion of possibilities in either...

...And, that last was hard, BTW, because D&D is loaded with expanding possibilities. So that example is not true to any edition of D&D. It has some in jokes from 1e & 3e, but in no edition does a wizard start & end a long career casting nothing but (Greater Improved Superior True Death-Like) Sleep and Magic Missile, nor however much it felt like it, a Cleric, Cure (Increasingly Gruesome Sounding) Wounds.

I think I can articulate it a little more concisely, now: the meaningful fiction isn't really the illusion, taking the maths as being the fiction, instead of modeling the fiction, is.

So perhaps illusion is the wrong word..

Somewhat disingenuous, there was the cure spells and 3E had a level 3 sleep spell with a higher HD cap.

4E was a literal treadmill, every power was similar to the previous one if it delt damge the main difference being a singe dice of damage, maybe a few more it it was an encounter or daily power.

Art and Arcana is an interesting read. It outright tells you about the MMO influence on 4E, something that its fans have tried to deny for years. Its right there in presentation and in a book published about D&D's history.

Immortal Sun · May 27, 2019

Zardnaar said:
Art and Arcana is an interesting read. It outright tells you about the MMO influence on 4E, something that its fans have tried to deny for years. Its right there in presentation and in a book published about D&D's history.

Woah woah woah, slow down there buckaroo. Speak for yourself if you'd like, but that's an awfully broad brush you're painting with.

Immortal Sun · May 27, 2019

Paul Farquhar said:
Because in a story telling game it is only presentation that matters. What goes on under the hood is relevant only to engineers.

So it wasn't your lack of understanding the rules that was an issue as you only momentarily ago argued.

You just didn't like it.

Which is fine you're free to not like it. But pick a position, was it the rules that felt comfortable and safe? Or was it the presentation that felt offputting?

Paul Farquhar · May 27, 2019

Immortal Sun said:
So it wasn't your lack of understanding the rules that was an issue as you only momentarily ago argued.

You just didn't like it.

Which is fine you're free to not like it. But pick a position, was it the rules that felt comfortable and safe? Or was it the presentation that felt offputting?

Eh, no, I certainly didn't understand the rules in the way they where presented, nor where the "role-playing" came in. It may be if the same rules had been presented differently I would have liked it. I've seen it stated that 5e rules are very similar to 4e rules, and I'm not in a position to dispute that. But the way the 5e rules are presented makes sense to my 1st edition trained brain in a way that the 4e rules did not.

Zardnaar · May 27, 2019

Immortal Sun said:
Woah woah woah, slow down there buckaroo. Speak for yourself if you'd like, but that's an awfully broad brush you're painting with.

Well its usually a come back.

Art and Arcana page 353

On its art styles (age 357)

"unbridled action, exaggerated poses, extreme often distorted angles"

Translation 4E art wasn't very gopod (I hated it, don't like Pathfinder WAR art either).

Same page

"D&D had been reforged into a game system that MMO players would find familiar"

and

"a clear decision was made to skew 4th ed toward a more fantastical, super heroic World of Warcraft infused experience".

Page 368
"asking the right questions but came up with the wrong answers"

and

"but 4E had dictated a narrow and sometimes cumbersome style of play"

"the game struggled to find support from the 3E and 3.5 community" (who were plaything Pathfinder)

Presentation and playstyle are everything IMHO, mechanics don't really matter. The book also claims 3.5 and 4E failed to find new players (context in numbers that mattered).

Tangent to the clone 4E threads, you have to package stuff in a way players will understand/enjoy it. If you used 5E to clone 4E but rewrote the classes and monsters to a more 4E ascetic that might help. 1W,2W,3W etc could be baked into the class (or multi attacks), so a [power just layers the status effect or bonus or whatever else it does into its description.

Favourite D&D edition that’s not 5E

Favourite D&D Edition

OD&D

AD&D 1E

AD&D 2E

D&D 3E/3.5

D&D 4E

Other (not 5E)

Tony Vargas

Legend

dagger

Adventurer

Tony Vargas

Legend

Hexmage-EN

Legend

Aldarc

Legend

Zardnaar

Legend

Immortal Sun

Guest

Immortal Sun

Guest

Paul Farquhar

Legend

Zardnaar

Legend

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