The Great D&D Schism: The End of an age and the scattering of gamers

[GMforPowergamers]

The problem is they over exaggerated the issue to an almost ridiculous level. The books contain an index for god sakes. I could understand if that was your first game, happens in "every" edition, but most people at that age are aware of an index.

I'm sorry but I only think the 'exaggeration' is the comedic effect... and if anything shorten to the length of a you tube vid. It was WORSE in my experience in play...

Also, what they focused on became a hell of a lot worse when 4th edition arrived, unless you had DDI.

I think I said that a post or two up... I'll look...

Grapple was a core rule that generally effected everyone so it was a rule that should have been written down, or bookmarked for easy reference.

it was so complicated we just ignored it 9 out of 10 times... infact we would even at the table say things like "Damn, I'ld grab him but were not pulling out grappling rules here..." and that was YEARS BEFORE THE AD....

 

[Ahnehnois]

now to all four of you, have you never seen any of that in play?

Not really, no. (That includes the last part, BTW).

 

[GMforPowergamers]

If a rule is barely used then of course you are not expected to memorize it and need to look it up.

I can tell you in 4e to just make an unarmed attack roll to grab.... it takes 8 words... slightly more if you add unless you have a special power... so add 6 more words... 14ish...

 

[Cadence]

I guess those lads have never heard of an Index.

Seriously!

--

now to all four of you, have you never seen any of that in play?

Clearly it was over-the-top exaggerated though -- childish impatience and lack of attention, inability to use an index, knowing none of the rules, having no social skills to the nth degree with none of the good.

I get the idea of the teaser and can see someone having thought it was a good idea in an over-the-top way, and maybe they were even poking fun at themselves and how they first played those editions as part of it.

However, unless they didn't think that anyone would still like those older editions and not want a new one, then I think the teaser is caricaturing people who disagreed with them... which I'm pretty sure is definitionally an insult. Even if they were trying to portray how a first session would go on release day for each of the games, that would only excuse the not knowing the rules part and not the others.

 

[GMforPowergamers]

Not really, no. (That includes the last part, BTW).

you never saw

1) Anyone confused with 2e intitative
2) Anyone confused with 2e Thac0
3) Anyone need to search a book for a rule in 3e
4) Anyone abandon a grapple because it would take too long OoG
5) someone use non standard minis (eraser, candy, pawns form another game) and get confused by it

wow, I am surprised. I have seen all of that and then some

 

[Obryn]

Oh holy crap it's back to those commercials again. Clockwork, ENWorld, clockwork.

Time to ignore this board for a few more months again.

 

[XunValdorl_of_Kilsek]

Grapple:

1: If an AoO is provoked then settle it. (Some feats allow a grapple without drawing an AoO)

2: Make melee touch attack.

3: Maintain hold by making opposed grapple checks (Roll your BAB + Strength + any relevant feats + size mod.) vs the grappled. Do damage.

4: For later rounds.

Not that hard really.

 

[Ahnehnois]

you never saw

1) Anyone confused with 2e intitative
2) Anyone confused with 2e Thac0
3) Anyone need to search a book for a rule in 3e
4) Anyone abandon a grapple because it would take too long OoG
5) someone use non standard minis (eraser, candy, pawns form another game) and get confused by it

wow, I am surprised. I have seen all of that and then some

I have seen people confused with 2e initiative and THAC0 and 3e grappling, but I've never seen it hold up play in that manner. I've certainly never seen someone abandon an attempt to grapple because the rules were also too hard. I've seen occasional use of combat grids but never any question as to what marker stood for what.

More to the point, I've also never seen a group cruising through a 4e battle without any issues (or in any other manner, for that matter). It's easy to criticize a problem, but hard to do anything about it. WotC criticized plenty, but they missed the real problems, and didn't do anything about them.

By the tail end of 3.5 (pre 4e announcement) we had pages of house rules to work around the system, and even then were not always happy with the game. A friend just pulled up and printed a copy of our old 3.5 house rules to bring to a game tonight...(See my pathfinder thread about trying again) and it is 9 pages long. These are not campaign specific either they are classes and spells and feats and skills and books...

I have a lot more than that. One might see it as a feature that the system is amenable to that. I certainly never knew of anyone playing 2e without a ton of houserules. It's part of the game.

But even to the extent that 3.5 had problems, again I've yet to see any of them addressed (certainly not by WotC anyway).

 

[XunValdorl_of_Kilsek]

I have seen more people ignore the fiddly mods during battle in a 4th edition game than anything else.

 

[Remus Lupin]

now to all four of you, have you never seen any of that in play?

Oh sure, but my problem with the ad at the time -- and still -- is that it talks down to me as a gamer, suggesting that the fact that I actually like this game means that somehow I'm having badwrongfun. It's not that the rules couldn't be cumbersome, but in the grand scheme of things, it didn't negatively impact my gameplay, and I found the rule in general very pleasurable to manage.

This was by no means the only reason that I didn't come over to 4th edition. I was also incensed at the attempt to kill the SRD and the Open Gaming Licence. And, in conjunction with that, the reconfiguration of core races (dragonborn, Elderin, Teiflings as core races, but no gnomes). Obviously, other peoples milage varied considerably. But under the circumstances, WOTC made several strategic moves, in marketing and in design, that lost me as a consumer.

And, to relate this to the original point of the post, that initial period of 3.0, and to a lesser extent after 3.5 (which always felt like an effort by WOTC to make me buy the same books again because of minor rules changes, which I nonetheless did), it felt like there were 1,000 flowers blooming, and they were all part of the great D&D revival -- whether it was Conan d20, True20, Arcane Unearthed, etc. I didn't see these games as schismatic, but as part of a great resurgence of interest, and I bought them all.

But I reached my saturation point when 4th edition came out, because it felt once again like WOTC just wanted me to buy the same books yet again. Of course, I ended up doing just that with Pathfinder, but I didn't feel like they were talking down to me.