Love it or hate it, 3e style

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

Out of interest, I find the two spreads of votes in both the 3e and 4e threads interesting. 4e is completely polarized (how's the anti-bell curve on that sucker), whilst the 3e spread is at least at this stage heavily skewed (towards the positive). Does this say anything interesting? Or are online polls meaningless?

Best Regards
Herremann the Wise

4E gamers rock and can also appreciate other systems, especially those that lead the way to their favorite game?

 

[Ahnehnois]

The toolbox system. You can do anything with it. It's certainly anachronistic and convoluted in places, but it represents a massive step forward from previous editions without killing the spirit of the game. The SRD is fabulous (and sells books). The whole package, while hardly flawless, is IMO the best thing out there.

 

[delericho]

Love it.

But...

There are some very significant weaknesses inherent in the 3.x design. The balance is off at high levels, preparation takes too long, and there's too much emphasis on "system mastery". Also, while 3.5e is on balance a better game than 3.0 (IMO), a lot of the so-called improvements were nothing of the sort (notably weapon sizes, weapon familiarity, and the increased emphasis on the grid).

I also consider it one of the great tragedies of 3.x that while there is a really simple, elegant design at the core of the game, it was never made available in this stripped down form. Star Wars Saga Edition comes close, and is a wonderful game for it, but for D&D one would need to do quite a lot of mechanical hacking to get at the 'lite' version of the game.

All that said, 3.5e remains my "D&D of choice". 4e really isn't to my taste, and while Pathfinder is on balance a better game (IMO), I don't feel it is sufficiently better to convert over wholesale.

 

[Dannager]

4E gamers rock and can also appreciate other systems, especially those that lead the way to their favorite game?

This. I was cool with 3.5, and it was my favorite game while we were playing it. 4e is just plain better, but I'm more than willing to acknowledge that 3.5 is a good game.

 

[FireLance]

4E gamers rock and can also appreciate other systems, especially those that lead the way to their favorite game?

Humor aside, I think there is an element of truth to that statement.

If you prefer the current edition, the lack of support for older editions doesn't bother you as much.

 

[Blackbrrd]

I like it, but I love 4e.

 

[BryonD]

4E gamers rock and can also appreciate other systems, especially those that lead the way to their favorite game?

Tongue in cheek aside, this would be easy to demonstrate.
Run another poll to demonstrate that 3E fans don't appreciate any other systems. It should be simple enough to show that 3E fans don't appreciate HERO, GURPS, WHFRP, etc...

Tongue back in cheek, if the results are purely a function of player willingness to be appreciative, then the results have nothing whatsoever to do with the merits and flaws of an given game. All systems are implicitly equal. Since 4E fans are so much more appreciative of 3E than 3E fans of 4E, WotC should stop producing 4E right away and return to producing the intrinsically equivalent 3E which both the open minded 4E fans and closed mined 3E fans will embrace.

 

[Derulbaskul]

I love it... but I don't think I will ever run it again because of the lack of electronic support. I just don't have the time to prep like I used to.

I'm also in agreement about enjoying it more with friends. I have one group who prefer a low magic game so playing until 23rd or so level actually went quite well. For other groups, getting past 12th level or so become problematic for the reasons regularly mentioned here and elsewhere.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

Tongue in cheek aside, this would be easy to demonstrate.
Run another poll to demonstrate that 3E fans don't appreciate any other systems. It should be simple enough to show that 3E fans don't appreciate HERO, GURPS, WHFRP, etc...

Tongue back in cheek, if the results are purely a function of player willingness to be appreciative, then the results have nothing whatsoever to do with the merits and flaws of an given game. All systems are implicitly equal. Since 4E fans are so much more appreciative of 3E than 3E fans of 4E, WotC should stop producing 4E right away and return to producing the intrinsically equivalent 3E which both the open minded 4E fans and closed mined 3E fans will embrace.

I didn't say anything about 3E fans. Well, except those that are also fans of 4E.

 

[Bluenose]

A mixed bag.

The worst edition of D&D ever.

Yet the OGL allowed some excellent derivative system (M&M et al) to be developed, and gave some companies (Green Ronin et al) a chance to grow to the point where they coudl start doing interesting things themselves.