2E vs 3E: 8 Years Later. A new perspective?

[PapersAndPaychecks]

in this case, PapersAndPaychecks is right

You forgot the "as always" in this sentence!

 

[AllisterH]

Even in 2E, there was a hierarchy of usefulness in the NWP system. Pretty much all fighters took Blindfighting and Tumble was a popular choice as well while weaving wasnt exactly in much demand.

In 3E, all rogues max tumble and rogues/rangers max spot, listen while spellcasters max concentration as these are the combat skills.

 

[Spell]

To be perfectly honest, this argument just doesn't hold up.

neither does yours. you know why? because there is not a universal law governing people's perspectives and preferences!

First off, 2e wasn't balanced to begin with, at least not in the same sense that 3e is supposed to be balanced.

first off, as i pointed out some post before, 3e needs to be much more balanced than previous edition, at least for allowing such liberal multiclassing AND to have all the classes progressing on the same XP table.
so, the fact that 2e is not balanced "in the same sense that 3e is supposed to be" is like claiming that lemons are not as orange as oranges.

Hence, if you were perfectly okay with the 2e way of doing things, losing the 3e version of balance should be of minimal concern.

Hence, if i was perfectly ok with the 2e not telling IN THE CORE MANUALS: "hey people: this is how a good campaign should be! this is what your PCs should expect at each and every level! this is what a balanced encounter is like!", i might have more than a minimal concern with a game system that makes those assumptions crystal clear, because, you know, new players might not get that the DM is meant to have fun, too; that the DM is on their side, so to speak; that the DM doesn't have fun by killing their character and being unfair and "not following the rules" to abuse PCs.

since i had to move to another country for work and study reasons, i had to find new players. hence, i actually had much more than minimal concern is preparing adventures (which, by the way, was more time consuming for me than it used to be... for no other reasons that i couldn't run 2e modules that i had run so many times that i didn't even need to read them through to remember what was in "room 25", or what has you), for players that i had never played with before, and might have had more than a minimal concern with a DM whose assumptions about what an enjoyable D&D game is are so different from what is "in the rules".

Second off, having no guidelines doesn't "free" you.

Second off, it does. just read my post about published adventures.
did you actually read what i said before, or are you just replying to a simple post, without putting it into perspective with what was said before?

Is it easy to convince a player to vary from the 3e assumptions? Sometimes yes, and sometimes no. It usually depends on the player and the variance you want to make.

But that's not the issue.

is it not?!?!

what are we talking about, then???? the sex of the angels?

maybe that's the point.
i am talking about how the rule heavy/ completely integrated/ combat oriented/ "these are the right assumptions" 3e effectively made me stop role playing. for this reason alone, to me, no matter how much more sense the new system made to newbies and old players alike, it is inferior to the 2e. then, i also added more reasons why 3e is inferior to me, which basically boils down to: it's not a system that makes me run my games as i want or in a way that i find enjoyable.

how much more clear do i have to make it? if you want to dispute such a point, please, don't go into how much easier it is to understand what will happen in the system if you touch rule X. it's disputable (as i and other people have done in this thread) and it's really not the point even if it was true: even if i could anticipate perfectly what the effects of changing a subsystem would be, it doesn't make any more simple to balance the system back once i changed it.

some people are ok with that. i am not. not because i want a balanced game (as you nicely pointed out for me, 2e wasn't), but because i feel that it has to be, given how the system is built (multiclassing, same xp table, players assumptions on CR, and so on.)

 

[Spell]

I'm going to call it what it was: a hasty, poorly done patch thrown together in the face of developing skill based systems like GURPS, HERO, and even Rolemaster.

so, you know GURPS and HERO, and still think that the ruleset in 3e is easier to tailor to anyone's tastes? this is surprising to say the least.

 

[Spell]

I'll take these in order:
1. The 3e PHB or the 2e PHB?
The 3e PHB: 27 pages.
The 2e PHB: 23 pages, plus another 4 pages convering "Encounters" that covers material covered in the 3e Combat chapter.
2. About the same for both editions.

so, you're saying that 27 pages of chatty, fluffy 2e combat rules (which have also to explain different "illogical" and "arbitrary" subsystems, and give definitions to more and much less intuitive saving throws, by the way) are the same as 27 pages of dry, "let's get to the point" 3e combat rules?

mmmh, i don't know, man.

3. At most, the same number as the number of noncombat related skills in the 3e PHB, primarily because almost all of the noncombat NWPs can be replicated with Profession, Knowledge, or Craft skills. Listing them seprately doesn't get you a cookie. It just means you have used a couple dozen words to say something you could have said with a quarter as many. Literary surplusage is not a virtue when writing.

quoted for truth, especially when reducing the impact of the already existing skill hierarchy! who needs to build a fire, or farm a land, or know about etiquette, when you are down in the dungeon killing monsters? this certainly has not a place in anyone's game table. well, maybe some wuss, tender hearted player would like it that way, but we are playing dungeons & dragons, not emos & sillies!!!

sorry for the irony... i felt that just repeating my point in a serious tone *once again* was not going to make any difference.

It is sitting right there, under your nose. You just missed it in your indignation.

yes! i'm mad with indignation! from the moment i saw the cover of PHB 3.0, my hat of d02 knew no limits! heck, i was so narrow minded about the new edition that i even spent 200$+ to get differnt books, and valuable leasure time to try and make some sense of it!

 

[Spell]

Well, there is one thing to note. 3E seems also a lot more "rules-heavy" as a whole. Which means the assumptions affect a lot of rules, which makes changing the assumptions even harder.

ah, i see you are full of indignation, too!

So, the "best" way might be a very rules-lite system that describes all assumptions.

not necessarily. you can have rules heavy systems (GURPS is the example i know best) that are desgined to be modular.
this doesn't just mean that you can run a fantasy adventure with cyberpunk PCs, but also that you can pretty much throw away the rules you don't like, because they don't sit well with your style of playing.

it's worth noticing that this is not implicit in the presentation of the rule set (two combat systems, talk of cinematic vs. realistic play, with clear indication of what rules are designed for what style of playing, etc.), but it is also openly advocated in the core rules.
in other words, if i am a newbie and i pick up and read GURPS, the second thing* that i am aware of is that it's MY game and i can do whatever the hell i want! (*the first, probably, is that there are a LOT of rules! and i mean A LOT!)

There is no perfect solution. Each has its advantages and disadvantages, and you must decide what your focus is.

i completely agree. 3e might work wonders for players and DMs who favour the assumptions clearly stated in the game books. i'm not one of those, and it doesn't work too well for me, that's all i'm saying. that and "there was no need for it to be so difficult to customize".

i don't completely agree with your idea on stating assumptions, but that depends on the specific case, i guess.

 

[Spell]

Is 2e really a rules light game though?

no. it's a rules medium game. BECM is light. and OD&D is even lighter.

The DM was told to come up with formulas and the like in order to make creating potions part of the campaign. In 3e, the formula is set and the DM doesn't really have to do any work at all.
In this case, I would actually say that 3e is rules lighter.

only if you like specific formulas tied to the rule system. personally, i can't remember one time in which my "formulas" made much sense, rule wise. i always tried to capture the "mumbo jumbo" part of magic, rather than make if a science. (so, yes, that meant that if two players were trying to create the same magical item, i would have probably came up with two different sets of requests... unless time constraints were important for some reason (say, they were making a magic duel of sorts)).

i agree with you, though: if you wanted "hard" rules on magical items creatin in 2e, you would have been pretty much left on your own.

this might be the time to remind the reading public that i never advocated that 2e was perfect. i don't think so, and i am sure that there would be many things i would change if i had to DM a 2e game tomorrow.

 

[Spell]

While Non-weapon profs might not have been the most elegant solution, they at least went some direction into normalizing a number of situations that came up with some regularity - can I swim? read a book? ride a horse? All pretty straight forward things from gaming.

my main issue with NWP is that unless you spend a slot on one, you are not supposed to know anything about the subject. that doesn't always make sense, unfortunately. for example, i might not be a farmer, but it would be reasonable that i would know something about farming, in a medieval game world, even if i was a nobleman.

i can wig these things, but i'd rather have NWP with defaults, a la GURPS. that way, or the unskilled use that is enforced in 3e.

 

[Spell]

Even GURPS (when used just as a fantasy game) is significantly more rules-light than 2e D&D.

?????!!!!!!!
have you ever tried and run a GURPS advanced combat with all the rules in?
or do you think that, as long as the rules follow one set of logical assummptions (e.g. rolling high = good) it doesn't matter how many of them are out there?

 

[Spell]

All this rule mongering simply amazes me. I find it a bit weird that we are now in 2008 and still trying to come up with a rules system to make everybody happy from a game that was created in 1974.

well, i don't find it that strange. those system that are out there that are rules heavy (to please that kind of market), but that can be "ruled down" to please those that want a more freeform experience, that are realistic or cinematic, that are completely modular, those system are NOT compatible with 3e or older editions.

that means that you have to invest money and time to learn a new system and then convert stuff... hoping that it will still retain the same feeling that you liked in your game.
it's not something for the faint of hearts. or for people who don't have enough time/money to make that investment.

god knows how much i would love to port AD&D and warhammer into GURPS and just use THAT system for everything. but i don't do it, because part of the flavour would be lost in the translation, if you know what i mean.

Most of you guys seriously need to play a few good games of Castles & Crusades.

i have that, and i like it quite a bit. if the new GM book goes in the direction i hope, in terms of skill system and giving me more information about creating classes that i could find in DMG 2e, that *will* be my system of choice (plus some house rules, of course... but they are so easy to import in C&C!!!)

The whole reason Gary left DnD was the rules were getting way to complex.

maybe it's because i'm getting older, but i'm agreeing with him on many more things today than what i did, say, 10 years ago. go figure. (his feeling about the rules is just ONE example)

because nobody likes to play an RPG like a ding dang chess game

unfortunately, some of my experiences contraddict yours. there are players out there that love playing by the book, and by the book only, surprisingly as it is.