wingsandsword
Legend
When I started playing D&D, it was in the late 90's with 2e, with all the Player's Option rules, playing in campaigns that always used the Great Wheel. Every DM I knew used the PO rules and whether it was a homebrew or existing setting planar adventuring always came up and it always used the traditional "Great Wheel" cosmology and much if not all of the accumulated D&D meta-setting information that had grown over the decades. Most PC's were multiclassed (or dual-classed since it was 2e), psionics existed but it was always a small part of games with a PC or two having wild talents or the very rare dedicated psychic character. We had assassins, barbarians and half-orcs and monks held over from 1e or rebuilt with Skills & Powers rules.
So, when 3e came around and had lots of changes in mechanics, but it felt a whole lot like the same game. Still an intricate skill system, still lots of character flexibility and customization, still the same spells and spell levels and a general feel of being the same game, just cleaned up a lot. 3e still used most of the same presumed meta-setting data. 3e and later 3.5e felt like the same game, just more developed and advanced.
I think a lot of my problem for why 4e doesn't "feel" like D&D is that it's such a divorce from the gaming lineage I've always known as D&D. For many people the Great Wheel never came up, but for me it was always a presumed constant of D&D. For many people they have these hazy, nostalgic memories of simpler, better D&D, but not me. For me D&D has always been a complicated but fun game where half the fun is the "crunchy bits" like intricate character creation and long spell lists. D&D to me was never a simple game, and to me doesn't feel like D&D without Vancian casting, without a skill system that gives me a lot of flexibility, without ample multiclassing, without so many things that I just took to be an assumed part of the D&D experience that apparently so deeply offended the designers at WotC as "not fun" (the marketing for 4e that insulted 3.5 and a lot of the things I liked as "not fun" did a lot to make a very bad first impression for me though, when I was already skeptical).
What I mean by this is, that "what is D&D" is defined to me and I think others by the games we started with in terms of edition and play style, and what we played after that. For me D&D 3.5 was the pinnacle of that play style and 4e is so radically different that it seems like a totally different game with the D&D name just slapped on it. 4e may be a fun game for some people, and for some play styles it fits very well, but not for all of us.
So, when 3e came around and had lots of changes in mechanics, but it felt a whole lot like the same game. Still an intricate skill system, still lots of character flexibility and customization, still the same spells and spell levels and a general feel of being the same game, just cleaned up a lot. 3e still used most of the same presumed meta-setting data. 3e and later 3.5e felt like the same game, just more developed and advanced.
I think a lot of my problem for why 4e doesn't "feel" like D&D is that it's such a divorce from the gaming lineage I've always known as D&D. For many people the Great Wheel never came up, but for me it was always a presumed constant of D&D. For many people they have these hazy, nostalgic memories of simpler, better D&D, but not me. For me D&D has always been a complicated but fun game where half the fun is the "crunchy bits" like intricate character creation and long spell lists. D&D to me was never a simple game, and to me doesn't feel like D&D without Vancian casting, without a skill system that gives me a lot of flexibility, without ample multiclassing, without so many things that I just took to be an assumed part of the D&D experience that apparently so deeply offended the designers at WotC as "not fun" (the marketing for 4e that insulted 3.5 and a lot of the things I liked as "not fun" did a lot to make a very bad first impression for me though, when I was already skeptical).
What I mean by this is, that "what is D&D" is defined to me and I think others by the games we started with in terms of edition and play style, and what we played after that. For me D&D 3.5 was the pinnacle of that play style and 4e is so radically different that it seems like a totally different game with the D&D name just slapped on it. 4e may be a fun game for some people, and for some play styles it fits very well, but not for all of us.
