Edition Fatigue

[fumetti]

It ani't that simple and it is definitely no fact, it is your opinion. Now I cannot speak for 1E or 2e, I never owned the rulebooks, I just rolled the dice my DM told me to role. I just had a quick look at the Basic Red Box rule books, the whole players handbook is 64 pages. There is 8 pages of games concepts explained via an adventure narrative, followed by 5 or so pages on the character. There is a page on town business and a solo adventure that goes from page 14 to page 22. Page 23 to 47 is character classes and a couple pages of charts, sample character sheets, sample characters and a sheet of graph paper. Page 48 to 52 is how to create a character and the remaining pages are about mappers, callers, order of march, alignement, dividing treasdure, combat encounters, hirelings and a glossery and 2 pages of ads.

The DM book has 2 pages of introduction, 9 of sample adventure and the reat monsters, treasure and charts.
Aside from the couple of paragraphs on ability checks and the retainer ruls there is nothing in the Basic books I would call non combat rules.

BECM is FAR more than just that red box DM's book! Oh my!

There is an abundance of non-combat material in the Expert, Companion, and Master sets. And then there are all those Gazetters (14 of them) filled with noncombat material. Plus the Almanacs.

1st Edition had two whole hardbacks dedicated to non-combat... the Dungeoneers Survival Guide and the Wilderness Survival Guide. Plus, a fair bit of the DMG.

2nd Edition seemed to have a book for everything, including all the noncombat aspects of the game. Several just on campaigns. Even a book for building and running a castle.

And I didn't just start posting after the first 4E books appeared. We've already run through most of what 4E will likely cover, and so far that we are already seeing "4.5" rulebooks (called Essentials) being done. And after all that, I just don't see much emphasis at all on the roleplaying (noncombat) side of the game.

 

[UngainlyTitan]

snip

To me, 4E reads as if it relies on a whole lot of "okay, you're there" expediency.

Some people like the ok your are there expediency and some people like to replace the cross country travel with a skill challange but there is nothing stoping a DM from doing the wandering monster thing. Unlike 3.x any 4e monster can be run straight from the monster manuals, as is. No hit points to calculate and all powers are completly described in the statblock.

The thing is (IMO) wandering momsters made more sense in pre 3.x D&D because it attritted resources but in 3.x once you have aaccess to a wand of cure light wounds, the resource attrition becomes somewhat meaningless.

In 4e the resource one is attritting are healing surges not hitpoints. So it is a bit more potent but not as dangerousc as the wandering monsters in the older editions.

 

[rounser]

Aside from the couple of paragraphs on ability checks and the retainer ruls there is nothing in the Basic books I would call non combat rules.

Spells and thief abilities alone put the lie to this, don't they? Basic didn't hive off everything non-combat into "rituals".

Oh and guys, despite game design fashion, you simply aren't likely to be going to encounter as many wandering prostitutes in a game which lacks a wandering prostitute table as in one that does, just as you likely won't have as much whimsy as in a game which lacks whimsical spells and items. This modern RPG design idea of relying on players to bring the main course whilst not even suggesting what the meal could be with some hors d'ouerves is, IMO, predictable but very shallow treatment of the subject.

Part of the job of the DMG is to teach the scope of the game in a non purely theoretical manner, else it will just get ignored. You need that scope to manifest in rules somehow (e.g. horse personality random tables, or a spell that fills a bathtub with hot bubblebath water) else people will tend towards what the rules suggest by default, it'll be reinforced by community culture, and the scope of the game will narrow except for those educated by games with wider scope suggested by the rules.

 

[Chainsaw Mage]

It is called an analogy. You know, drawing information and meaning from one subject to another. I am saying the two should, and do, follow similar logics.

Since you know what analogies are, I'm certain you know about faulty or false analogies.

There is a clear, qualitative, and easily quantifiable difference between the technology of Pong and, say, Halo.

No such difference exists between 2e and 3e. These technology analogies are about as accurate as "evolution" analogies or what I like to call "maid" analogies (ie, "D&D 3.5 cleaned up many of the messes in 3.0).

Not all analogies are useful.

 

[fumetti]

Now that I think of it, for 1E Dragon magazine published at least several dozen character classes (NPCs) that were of little or no use at all in combat. Anyone remember the Cloistered Cleric?

Or the Ecology series?

Just tons of stuff that didn't involve combat in any way.

 

[CleverNickName]

A while back, I had a "great idea" for a houserule. We were playing 3.5E, and I thought it would make everything a lot easier and fix a lot of problems if I made all spellcasters learn and cast spells the same way. Essentially, all of the spellcasters were bards who chose which spell list they wanted to use, and replaced Bardic Music with things like metamagic feats, wild shape, and turn undead. (I'm glossing over quite a bit here. Class skills didn't change, nor was all magic Charisma-based and arcane. Like any good 3.5E houserule, it was at least 4 pages long.)

It looked good on paper. Game-breaking high-level spells? Gone...all spell lists are capped at 6th level. Hours spent preparing and memorizing spells at the start of every game day? Gone...everyone is spontaneous now. Instead of a half-dozen different spell lists, we had one. Spellcasters all use the same BAT, have the same HD, and get lots of skills. It was streamlined, efficient. Everyone was excited about it.

Things were great for about three game sessions. Then it started to get boring. Everyone spent all of those extra skill points on the same skills. They all selected the same feats. They all bought the same equipment, and quarreled over the same pieces of treasure, because they were all essentially the same characters. When the only real difference between the wizard and the cleric is their spellbook, well...characters lost their identity.

We switched back after a month, and I learned an important lesson about streamlining.

 

[Coldwyn]

BECM is FAR more than just that red box DM's book! Oh my!

There is an abundance of non-combat material in the Expert, Companion, and Master sets. And then there are all those Gazetters (14 of them) filled with noncombat material. Plus the Almanacs.

1st Edition had two whole hardbacks dedicated to non-combat... the Dungeoneers Survival Guide and the Wilderness Survival Guide. Plus, a fair bit of the DMG.

2nd Edition seemed to have a book for everything, including all the noncombat aspects of the game. Several just on campaigns. Even a book for building and running a castle.

And I didn't just start posting after the first 4E books appeared. We've already run through most of what 4E will likely cover, and so far that we are already seeing "4.5" rulebooks (called Essentials) being done. And after all that, I just don't see much emphasis at all on the roleplaying (noncombat) side of the game.

Because you mentioned the gazetters: Shouldn´t most of the non-combat stuff you´re talking about be moved from core to setting? Seriously, when you´ve got a more or less generic core and offer different settings for the flavour, shoudn´t the setting books include the parts of the rules that work with that flavour? I really can´t imagine Wilderlands of High Fantasy without brutally dangerous overland travel, wandering prostitutes and random encounters, they just don´t really fit in with my Eberron.

If WotC is to blame for something here, it´s the fact that the setting books are bland and missing the non-combat stuff, not the Core.

...... please, Judges Guild, make a 4E Wilderlands Box ...

 

[MerricB]

The thing about streamlining... is that it works some of the time. AD&D could really do with some streamlining, especially in the nonsensical initiative rules.

Probably the thing that disappointed me most about the AD&D 2E change is the change to the wizard specialist - and the loss of the illusionist. The AD&D illusionist has character. The AD&D 2E illusionist is boring and with artificial restrictions: it's streamlining gone wrong.

4E shows an abundance of good design; it's just not always design for the same goals we have in a RPG. Quicker high-level combats compared to 3E? Fantastic! (I ran three level 21 combats on Sunday, each took under an hour, which is far, far better than what 16th level combat took in 3.5e). However, combat still takes a lot of time - and the time emphasis it has takes away from exploration and roleplaying.

Settlers of Catan has simple goals, but will it last another 20 years? It's a great family game, no doubt, and will maintain that going onwards, but state-of-the-art in gamer's games is changing. Of the Top 10 on boardgamegeek, the years published are as follows: 2005, 2002, 2007, 2006, 2004, 2008, 2009, 2008, 2007, 2005. (Sitting at #11 is 1995). Is this cult of the shiny?

There is that factor, but it's also very true that the best new boardgames are much better designed than those of the 70s. (I've played a few old AH games recently, and it's incredible to see the major design flaws they have. Some are still good games, yes, but they really needed some polish).

And people's tastes change. Titan recently got republished. A well thought-of game from 1980. It just takes too long in 2010 for most people to consider it.

Cheers!

 

[Chainsaw Mage]

Now that I think of it, for 1E Dragon magazine published at least several dozen character classes (NPCs) that were of little or no use at all in combat. Anyone remember the Cloistered Cleric?

Or the Ecology series?

Just tons of stuff that didn't involve combat in any way.

This is one of the reasons that the 2e Monstrous Manual remains one of my all-time favorite monster books. Tons of material for each beastie on habitat, physical appearance, mating habits, care and feeding of young, and usefulness in chopping up body parts for spell components.

Seriously, the monster descriptions alone in 2e MM are rife with adventure hooks.

 

[billd91]

Because you mentioned the gazetters: Shouldn´t most of the non-combat stuff you´re talking about be moved from core to setting? Seriously, when you´ve got a more or less generic core and offer different settings for the flavour, shoudn´t the setting books include the parts of the rules that work with that flavour? I really can´t imagine Wilderlands of High Fantasy without brutally dangerous overland travel, wandering prostitutes and random encounters, they just don´t really fit in with my Eberron.

I would say most emphatically NO. I want my core to cover general rules including non-combat travel and exploration. I want my core rules to be a tool kit that extends beyond the encounter and beyond combat. Setting books should cover specific concerns about their settings, sure. Perhaps with more sophisticated detail when it's important like the desert setting rules of Al-Qadim.
But what if I want to build my own setting? Shouldn't the core offer me some support? And shouldn't that support be shared as part of the core rules so that the general rules for my campaign world are similar to my friend Brian's, or Rob's, or Stephen's, particularly if we are all trying to play the same basic game?
No, general rules for all sorts of things I may want in the core. Specific overrides, extensions, or gloss-overs can be put in the settings.