Favourite D&D edition that’s not 5E

[Myrhdraak]

I love 4e.

 

[Aldarc]

It doesn't matter if you accused me personally or not. That's not the point, and wasn't what I was asking. You said it brings out a lot of 4e haters. So prove it. What are all of these comments that "a lot" of people are making that show they are haters.

You also assumed a lot about what I meant by my statement. Furthermore, you did not initially ask me anything when you launched into your assumptions. Being pulled into your game of "proving it" does not seem prudent for discourse in this thread especially not when you are being needlessly hostile.

 

[Sacrosanct]

[No message]

 

[Aldarc]

So that's a no then, you can't support your claim.

Please don't equate my "won't" (for the sake of the thread) for "can't".

Awfully convenient to make a statement that so many people are against you without showing it. Certainly ironic that you keep accusing me of making assumptions about you while at the same time assuming I'm in an "incensed rage" and upset. I'm not upset at all. I just want you to support your claim. Who knew that asking someone to support their claim makes them "needlessly hostile" and in an "incensed rage." shrug...

Okay. I apologize that I misread your tone. Yes, Sacrosanct, statements like this are an assumption about what I was meaning:

Edition warring against 4e is stuff like "That's not real D&D, it's an MMO". It's not "Warlord fans can't seem to agree what they want because in all of these threads, everyone who is a fan wants different things" or "You can still achieve the warlord concept in 5e by doing x, y, and z. Not exactly like 4e, but that would be impossible based on the core design differences."

Or this:

There seems to be a lot of, and Tony's response to me and attacks on me prove, attitudes that if you don't praise 4e, then you're a 4hater. That's simply nonsense. Criticizing 4e doesn't automatically make one a hater any more than criticizing 3e for numbers bloat make one a hater of 3e, or criticizing the wonky rules of 1e makes one a hater of 1e.

Or rude dismissive comments like this:

"OMG, you disagreed with me! You're just a hater! Stop grave dancing! We're such victims!"

But nowhere here did you ask for me to support my claim when you initially responded. You launched into a rant assuming what I wrote while raising your hostility.

 

[Umbran]

Folks,

You are making it personal. Please stop. Thanks.

 

[Tony Vargas]

Lobbing bombs at people not the game is the core of the edition war.

More like the fallout, the collateral damage - and what made forums blaze in the flames of hell, and gave mods all over the internet ulcers, of course. Not to mention the undiagnosed tragedy of Post Traumatic Edition War Syndrome.

This. But not so coincidentally, 5e Warlord threads are also what attract a lot of 4aters. Again pointing out how the Edition Wars have transitioned into the 5e era and the contrast between 4e fans and 4aters with 5e.

Sure, you do see continuations of the edition war in those threads, it's inevitable when you think about it. The Warlord was introduced in 4e, and it's a valid enough poster boy for some of the stand-out abominations 4e perpetrated: classes balanced via Martial types having dailies (and casters at-wills, but that's OK, cf 5e cantrips), embracing Gygaxian hp rationalizations, formalizing roles, surge-based healing, 'dissociated mechanics,' etc. So, all those complaints get re-hashed, it's almost like Edition-War re-enactment.
But, it's also where you see the community coming closest to anti-5e edition warring, and I don't just mean the empty threats of rage-quitting. Sometimes the discussions will devolve to the point that someone starts insisting that 5e /can't handle the warlord/, like, the concept/function, at all, that it would somehow break the game - at that point it's an existential attack on 5e's foundational goal of inclusiveness, and just on it's quality as a system. Warlord threads get tiring because I find myself defending the class concept, retro-defending poor dead 4e, /and/ having to defend 5e.

I would not mind if WotC polished and more cohesively integrated what they have in 5e first: class, subclass and feat balance, ability checks (and skills), inspiration/bonds, and other knickknacks (expertise). But I am unconvinced that WotC would do a 5.5 rework for 5e.

It occurs to me that I've never yet been too pleased with a half-ed.

 

[Lanefan]

ENWorld has a pretty active group of 4e fans. How that compares with the broader D&D community is anybody's guess. Exactly how representative the boards are of the broader community is always a question due to selection bias, so don't assume any poll is indicative of the broader gaming community.

A glance at the stats they publish here every so often as to what's being played in the online tabletops (e.g. Fantasy Ground, etc.) gives at least a bit of insight into what's actually being played; and though it's an open question as to how reflective these numbers are of the overall community, they're pretty much all we have to go by.

If - and I know this is a big jump, but I'll try it anyway - one can assume people are more or less playing their favourite edition or system, then it would seem to generally go in order 3e, 4e, 1e, 0e, with 2e sometimes nowhere to be found.

Lump PF in with 3e and its lead here becomes quite large. Lump some close-hewn OSR games (DCCRPG, Hackmaster, et al) in with 1e (and-or 0e?) and they'd about match 4e. I'm not aware of any systems that are as closely derived from 4e as these other examples are from their respective editions.

Another consideration is that end-of-life-era 2e is so much polymorphed from release-era 2e that they're almost two completely different systems - it would be interesting to know from the 2e voters here whether you're voting for 2e as first released or 2e as it ended up becoming, or something in between.

 

[cbwjm]

A glance at the stats they publish here every so often as to what's being played in the online tabletops (e.g. Fantasy Ground, etc.) gives at least a bit of insight into what's actually being played; and though it's an open question as to how reflective these numbers are of the overall community, they're pretty much all we have to go by.

If - and I know this is a big jump, but I'll try it anyway - one can assume people are more or less playing their favourite edition or system, then it would seem to generally go in order 3e, 4e, 1e, 0e, with 2e sometimes nowhere to be found.

Lump PF in with 3e and its lead here becomes quite large. Lump some close-hewn OSR games (DCCRPG, Hackmaster, et al) in with 1e (and-or 0e?) and they'd about match 4e. I'm not aware of any systems that are as closely derived from 4e as these other examples are from their respective editions.

Another consideration is that end-of-life-era 2e is so much polymorphed from release-era 2e that they're almost two completely different systems - it would be interesting to know from the 2e voters here whether you're voting for 2e as first released or 2e as it ended up becoming, or something in between.

My vote was for pretty much all of 2e, start to finish.

 

[Sacrosanct]

Well that's weird. I made a post. Aldarc quoted the post. And then the text disappeared. I didn't even think you could have a blank post. If Aldarc has some strange voodoo magic going on, it's be nice to know

 

[Parmandur]

A glance at the stats they publish here every so often as to what's being played in the online tabletops (e.g. Fantasy Ground, etc.) gives at least a bit of insight into what's actually being played; and though it's an open question as to how reflective these numbers are of the overall community, they're pretty much all we have to go by.

If - and I know this is a big jump, but I'll try it anyway - one can assume people are more or less playing their favourite edition or system, then it would seem to generally go in order 3e, 4e, 1e, 0e, with 2e sometimes nowhere to be found.

Lump PF in with 3e and its lead here becomes quite large. Lump some close-hewn OSR games (DCCRPG, Hackmaster, et al) in with 1e (and-or 0e?) and they'd about match 4e. I'm not aware of any systems that are as closely derived from 4e as these other examples are from their respective editions.

Another consideration is that end-of-life-era 2e is so much polymorphed from release-era 2e that they're almost two completely different systems - it would be interesting to know from the 2e voters here whether you're voting for 2e as first released or 2e as it ended up becoming, or something in between.

2E representation on electronic tabletops might be somewhat lower due to the edition not being super-mini dependent: the same applies for "0E" and 1E, but those sold more at the time than 2 E ended up doing.

I voted for 1E, because I bought 1E books to use with 5E and have enjoyed them more than my experience with 2E, 3.x or 4E.