Difference From 10 Years Ago?

[Viking Bastard]

The mood on ENW is definitely different than it was 10 years ago, but I don't think the level of discourse has gone down, per say. I think ENW is a lot more polite than it used to be. Overall, the discussion feels a lot more... academic.

I mean, there's the undercurrent of vitriol between 3e and 4e blowhards, but that's not a ENW thing as much as it's a problem with the general community.

 

[JeffB]

Its the SoS, just now the people arguing about their elves and fairy princesses, are trying to act more sophisticated about it. I am more annoyed by it now than I was back then.

The 2e to 3e transition time over at Dragonsfoot...THAT was brutal.

 

[Viking Bastard]

Its the SoS, just now the people arguing about their elves and fairy princesses, are trying to act more sophisticated about it. I am more annoyed by it now than I was back then.

What's the SoS?

I largely like the academic discussion. Game theory has come a long way while I was away. But it's a bit dominating.

*shrug* Different times...

The 2e to 3e transition time over at Dragonsfoot...THAT was brutal.

Yeah, you didn't get many anti-3e people over here when 3e was coming out--the ones who did were quickly labelled as grognards--but there were a lot of very angry people on the internet.

The 3.5 transition got very heated here at times, but now it's like nobody remembers it. I assume it's because it paled in comparison to the 4e transition, which I missed.

 

[Ahnehnois]

Well, the grognard factor is one thing, but AFAIK, it was one way. There was never any really harsh judgement directed at the old games, never an assertion that they were "broken" or anything. Just old games that naturally needed some revision. If anyone has an article of a new-schooler bashing 2e/AD&D from ten years ago, that I'd like to see.

Personally, I came here to discuss 3e, but I like 2e and am quite happy to discuss its merits and how to recreate them on occasion.

The 3e-3.5 thing, the way I recall it, was all about money. People didn't want to spend for more books so soon. There was some debate on the actual rules, but it was mostly about people complaining to the company that it was a cash grab rather than arguing amongst each other about whether bards really need six skill points or whether we needed to go back to goofy formulas to determine how many feats a monster has. Certainly can't recall much debate on what was or wasn't "real D&D" or "balanced".

 

[Feeroper]

3rd ed is now the best supported version ever and in a few years via Pathfinder will be the longest lasting in print. Right now it is tied with 1st ed for that and BECMI technically is the longest lasting version of D&D (1977- 1990's) but was not really have that much support from 1991-1994 (rules cyclopedia, a few Dungeon appearances). Probably a good thing for the players, bad for D&D as a monolithic system?

I would argue that 3e is not close to becoming the longest in print as PF is not D&D. Although I know it was a spiritual successor to 3.5, after the Core Rulebook paizo made it their own and did their own thing with it.

I know alot of people consider PF to be their version of D&D and I'm not arguing against that, just pointing out that it is its own game.

 

[TwoSix]

To be fair, my account isn't quite ten years old. (And neither of us goes back as far as the initial release of 3e, which is more than ten years past). But yes, I do think so.

Historical note: There was some database issue back in 2002 that caused everyone to have recreate their accounts. It's why the earliest join date you see is January of 2002. If you see someone with that join date, they've probably been here longer than that. I signed up back in February or March of 2000, for example, if I remember correctly.

 

[Ahnehnois]

Historical note: There was some database issue back in 2002 that caused everyone to have recreate their accounts. It's why the earliest join date you see is January of 2002. If you see someone with that join date, they've probably been here longer than that. I signed up back in February or March of 2000, for example, if I remember correctly.

That does sound familiar.

Anyway, the specificity of my recollections going that far back is dubious. I don't recall exactly when I joined ENW initially, or a lot about what it was like then. I do have a pretty good memory of what the WotC forums were like (and my local WotC store, for that matter).

 

[Morrus]

Discourse 13 years ago was very positive overall here (but then everyone was here for exactly the same thing: D&D 3E). It was at its worst 4 years ago (4E) and is currently far better than it was then. Edition wars still exist, but many people have tired of them, or realised that they were unwittingly entering parody territory. Plus the worst offenders left so that they could tell folks on other messageboards that they were banned for liking/not liking 3E/4E.

Plus we're - slowly - becoming a general RPG site. Our Tabletop Gaming forum is still fairly quiet (but busier than it was years ago when it was lower down the forum list and sequentially called a variety of names, such as "Other d20 Games", "OGL Gaming", etc.) - that transition has been taking place very, very slowly over years, but more so since the hack in December; and I'm pleased that big new RPG releases like Numenera, 13th Age, Shadowrun, and Edge of the Empire are getting play here. That transition is partly by necessity, because history shows that hanging your hat on the fortunes of one company (WotC) may mean that you do well when they do, but when they're not doing so well, you struggle too; diversification helps with that. Boardgames are finding it harder to gain traction; BGG is very cool and has quite the monopoly! The D&D forums are busy as ever (though being in-between D&D editions, we anticipate a very large increase in activity there once D&D Next finally releases in non-playtest form).

I still feel very comfortable with EN World's unofficial position. Some folks choose to compare a fan site like this with official sites like wizards.com, paizo,com, and others, as though there were some kind of rivalry. If there were, then this site has never, ever rivaled any official site - especially WotC or Paizo - in terms of size, and never will. This place is a smaller, friendly alternative to the official sites, and always has been.

(Re. registration dates - yep, 2002 was a big server crash; we had to completely restart.)

 

[Andor]

D&D is not and never really has been a monlithic system. Even when it was only Chainmail as soon as you has two tables you had two sets of house rules.

The OSR started, to my recollection, with 4e. Yes some people had ALWAYS been playing BECMI or 1e or 2e, but the end of 3e made it clear that it might be time to try something else, and 4e was just not everybodys cup of tea. So a lot of people, disenchanted with what was supposed to be the way 'forward', looked back instead. The numbers grew.

And with some time and distance the spectre of badwrongfun faded and people could realize my imaginary murder puppet is not better than your imaginary murder puppet.

However gamers like conflict. That's why we have imaginary murder puppets. We like argueing, we like finding flaws in other peoples arguments, just like we like finding flaws in the NPCs plans and ruining their day.

So yes, we like to discuss what's best, but this at least is a civil board, that's why it's still around.

And just for some perspective, last night my college gaming club met and a new girl was saying how much she loves old school D&D. She meant 3.5. When I laughed I had to explain that I had dice that were coloured with the crayon that came included in the red box for that very purpose.

 

[Crothian]

10 years ago was very different. Most companies were jumping on the d20 band wagon and producing tons of material. Even companies like White Wolf who had some writers that really hated d20 were coming out with their own d20 line of books. Prices were also so different. I had one local store at the time refuse to sell any book for over $30. If the book was $35 they would just sell it for $30. That policy didn't last long though. Of course Amazon was just coming out as a great place to buy books. I had a different local game store owner yell at me for buying WLD on Amazon for cheaper then he could get it from a distributor.

Yes, there was d20 backlash but really not here. RPG.Net was filled with d20 hate as people saw their favorite games and writers go the d20 way for a little while. It was a good time to be a D&D players as it was easy at least for me to find people. I had a group break up in 2002 and it took less then a week to replace them. Then in 2004 when they disbanded again it was less then a week to find a whole new group.