I don't want 5E, I want a definitive D&D (the Monopoly model)

[Hussar]

I have to admit BryonD, I have very little idea of what you are trying to say in your post, or how it is meant to reply to what I was saying... Sorry.

At a guess, I'd say that he's saying that 4e is so different that it isn't recognizable as D&D.

Funnily enough, if you took NFL football from, say, 1970 and put it side by side with 2011 NFL football, virtually every single element would see some change. Rules changes, formation changes, formation rules changes, materials changes - a 1970 football and a 2011 football are NOT the same ball, nor are the stadiums the same, prevalence of dome play, number of teams and make-up of those teams, on and on and on.

Honestly, I doubt if you took someone from 1970 and plunked them down during a game this year if they would recgonize much of it at all. They'd certainly be as confused as any gamer going from, say, 1e to 4e without any steps in between.

 

[TwinBahamut]

At a guess, I'd say that he's saying that 4e is so different that it isn't recognizable as D&D.

I suppose so. I can't really agree with that sentiment, though. 4E and 3E have their differences, but they are still awfully similar in a lot of fundamental ways.

Funnily enough, if you took NFL football from, say, 1970 and put it side by side with 2011 NFL football, virtually every single element would see some change. Rules changes, formation changes, formation rules changes, materials changes - a 1970 football and a 2011 football are NOT the same ball, nor are the stadiums the same, prevalence of dome play, number of teams and make-up of those teams, on and on and on.

Honestly, I doubt if you took someone from 1970 and plunked them down during a game this year if they would recgonize much of it at all. They'd certainly be as confused as any gamer going from, say, 1e to 4e without any steps in between.

This reminds me of the oldest version of football I've ever seen, from a stereotypical "young freshman becomes the football hero of his college" movie that happened to be a silent film from the 1910s. It was recognizably football in that they had a football and the goal was to make a touchdown, but very few people of today would look at the characters in the movie and think they were football players... Of course, that movie illustrates that no matter how much football changes, football movies tend to stay the same, but that is a different discussion.

 

[Hussar]

I suppose so. I can't really agree with that sentiment, though. 4E and 3E have their differences, but they are still awfully similar in a lot of fundamental ways.
/snip

Oh, hey, I totally agree. Most of the mechanics of 4e are pretty much directly descended from 3e. There are some very large differences, primarily breaking the paradigm of the self contained round (I act, I complete my action and then the next person can act and, by and large, nothing is going to happen on my turn to act other than whatever I initiate), and the obvious change of the the powers.

So, yes, the two games will play differently. But, the idea that the game has become so different that it's no longer recognizable is ridiculous, IMO.

 

[GregoryOatmeal]

And, why should the game be stable? Gaming is still a VERY new hobby - it's only about 30 years old or so. We've learned and continue to learn new things about what works and doesn't work in a game all the time. Things that seem like a really good idea now become the problems of next year.

There's some truth to that but I think we're at a fairly mature stage now. I still think if WOTC stopped tinkering with the core they could produce something with a lot of mechanics that a lot of people agree on. Obviously it won't be perfect or generate complete consensus. But in this case perfect is the enemy of the good.

You're talking about a stagnant game with rules mired in a single mindset.

No, I'm talking about a stagnant core system. With that in place designers can go nuts.

Nothing, absolutely nothing is stopping anyone from playing any edition of D&D for the rest of their lives.

Except finding people willing to invest in those rules and and that system. I live in a fairly small college town. That did stop me from playing 4E and Castles and Crusades. But running a system that is not my favorite is better than trying to convince people to buy books and learn rules and acclimate them to a very different beast than they're accustomed to.

If the people near you are not playing your edition of choice, there's always the online option.

Just doesn't do the trick for me. Now what?

I want fifteen different versions of D&D all competing. It makes for better games.

Really? This works if you play with one or two very steady groups, but I game with college students that travel and relocate and switch jobs and schedules. And I run very casual games at a comic shop. So I'm constantly teaching and learning and gaming with new people. If you have fifteen editions there's almost no probability those students will have resources for the game you happen to play unless they pirate them. And they won't have familiarity with the rules either. And they'll mix the rules up because there's so many slight variations on the rules that are really all driving towards the same thing. Would that situation not bother you?

 

[GregoryOatmeal]

I would call that a noble goal, save that for genuinely shared experiences, you need to not just regulate the edition, you need to regulate individual games. Even in the days of 1st edition AD&D, there were the people who played modules, and those who didn't.

That's not what I meant at all by experiences. Editions divide people, different modules and gaming worlds don't. A shared experience with rules allows people to jump into games more easily with fewer barriers and start sharing experiences. So past experience playing D&D allows players to jump into a game without barriers. Barriers prevent people from sharing the experience of gaming together.

Also if you have common rules you can give people the experience of a campaign world or module more easily since it doesn't require translation into a specific edition. I can't share Keep on the Borderlands with a 3.5 player without converting the module or forcing him to learn AD&D.

I guess you could make the same argument about "Learning Eberron", for example, but settings are less divisive and smaller barriers to entry than editions. But hey, Paizo does it with Golarion and people seem to like it.

 

[GregoryOatmeal]

Just in case this hasn't already been corrected, the original American football rules had field goals worth 5 points, and touchdowns worth 4.
Later, when the original situation changed to make this no longer true, the rules were changed.
I also dimly recalling reading a board game history (some 30 years ago) that suggested that Monopoly added the $200 when you pass go very late

That's interesting, but that's not a total revamp eight years after another revamp that divides the community. I can't imagine football or Monopoly or any other game has seen so many controversial and audience-dividing changes as D&D. Show me a football or Monopoly retroclone and maybe I'll think otherwise

 

[GregoryOatmeal]

An old Guinness Book of World Records says that Monopoly sold 80,000,000 copies between 1935-1974. When they can sell 2 million copies a year of the same PHB, year-in, year-out, then we can talk about selling it like it was Monopoly. But that's not remotely what D&D does.

Was selling two million PHBs annually ever even considered remotely possible by anyone? I'd call it a success if they just improved their total sales

A steady edition could bring back the old fogies and improve the D&D brand image. Edition changes definitely hurt brand image and cause players to leave.

Now they wouldn't make as much money reselling the same core books to the same crowd on the edition treadmill. However they can always think of new accessories for the PHBs. Selling those accessories to the players that would otherwise be alienated by edition changes could boost total sales.

 

[GregoryOatmeal]

you have no clue whether a simpler game might attract more people; you haven't tried it in the least.
...
If you're going to feed them the "oh, you don't need to worry about those books" line of BS
...
Do you understand that? Do you have a clue why blowing off every non-D&D RPG as indie games might just tweak someone off a little?
...
By definition, you're demanding

Those are some pretty strong words ya know.

And all of us who left the editions we grew up with for good reason, we should just have our feelings ignored.

That's what happens every time an edition is discontinued. I'm trying to minimize that

 

[prosfilaes]

Was selling two million PHBs annually ever even considered remotely possible by anyone? I'd call it a success if they just improved their total sales

Err, that was the point. That's why Monopoly is sold the way it is and D&D is sold the way it is.

A steady edition could bring back the old fogies and improve the D&D brand image. Edition changes definitely hurt brand image and cause players to leave.

Unproven. D&D 3 seems to have brought back a lot of people who had stopped playing D&D.

Now they wouldn't make as much money reselling the same core books to the same crowd on the edition treadmill. However they can always think of new accessories for the PHBs. Selling those accessories to the players that would otherwise be alienated by edition changes could boost total sales.

D&D 3.5 didn't come about to sell more core books. It came about to erase the old splatbooks and sell more splatbooks. You can't always add new accessories for the PHBs.

Those are some pretty strong words ya know.

Gee, when I wrote "Do you understand that? Do you have a clue why blowing off every non-D&D RPG as indie games might just tweak someone off a little?" I didn't know what I was writing. But go ahead, don't listen to what I was saying.

That's what happens every time an edition is discontinued. I'm trying to minimize that

What happens every time an edition is discontinued? I didn't quit AD&D 2 because it was discontinued; I quit because it was an inflexible mess that wasn't very well reasoned out. The state of the art in RPGs moves forward.

 

[Hussar]

There's some truth to that but I think we're at a fairly mature stage now. I still think if WOTC stopped tinkering with the core they could produce something with a lot of mechanics that a lot of people agree on. Obviously it won't be perfect or generate complete consensus. But in this case perfect is the enemy of the good.

If you asked three gamers what D&D was about, you'd get five answers. And, of those five answers, three would be completely contradictory. How do you reconcile that?

What you're essentially talking about is a Savage Worlds model for D&D. One core generic system that is then modified for any given game. The problem is, D&D has never been a generic system. It's D&D. It's its own thing and that own thing is quite often very, very different at every table.

No, I'm talking about a stagnant core system. With that in place designers can go nuts.

Except finding people willing to invest in those rules and and that system. I live in a fairly small college town. That did stop me from playing 4E and Castles and Crusades. But running a system that is not my favorite is better than trying to convince people to buy books and learn rules and acclimate them to a very different beast than they're accustomed to.

Just doesn't do the trick for me. Now what?

Just because an option doesn't work for you, doesn't mean that the option is not there. "I can't find anyone to play with me" is a pretty lame excuse anymore. There are just SO many options. I'm pretty sure that if you were to go online and do a bit of hunting, you'd find gamers in your area playing your game. It's not 1992 anymore. I've moved 11 times, including three countries on two different continents in the past fifteen years and I was still able to find games. I play online now because of my work schedule more than anything.

Really? This works if you play with one or two very steady groups, but I game with college students that travel and relocate and switch jobs and schedules. And I run very casual games at a comic shop. So I'm constantly teaching and learning and gaming with new people. If you have fifteen editions there's almost no probability those students will have resources for the game you happen to play unless they pirate them. And they won't have familiarity with the rules either. And they'll mix the rules up because there's so many slight variations on the rules that are really all driving towards the same thing. Would that situation not bother you?

Why would it? That's the situation right now. There are currently, depending on how you count, at LEAST, seven official versions of D&D in play. Yet, finding a game isn't that difficult. Google is your friend. And, if you're willing to run games, I've never, ever had a problem getting a group. And I grew up in a small town with 800 people.

I think you're working from a false premise - that there is this big, huge wall of knowledge between editions. I've never found that. If you have a decent working knowledge of any edition, playing a different edition isn't all that much of a jump.