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

[Spell]

What I don't agree with is your characterization of history. Gygax's leaving D&D had extremely little to do with rules mechanics and a lot to do with real world stuff. Add to that, Gygax's own additions to the game - Unearthed Arcana for example - and you have stuff that is in no way rules light.

i think he means D&D as 3e, not AD&D.

 

[Spell]

What would it hurt to keep supporting the older rules systems?

i don't see it being profitable for the copyright owners, sorry. let me explain.

wizards is coming out with 4e.

if they kept supporting 3.x, they would lose part of their workforce to support a "dead" game. this would also have the effect of making the transition between older and new edition slower. if i can still go out and buy adventures for my 3e (or 2e, or whatever) game, why should i convert to the new system? maybe i will at some point, but there's no hurry.

if they were not supporting 3.x, but gave the chance to do so to an independent publisher (like they more or less did with 2e/ hackmaster and kenzer) that would still be ineffective. kenzer couldn't use the AD&D2e name for obvious reasons even if they wanted to. plus any product that has any reference to old wizards copyrighted rules has to be ok'ed by wizards before being release.
this, with HM, caused a lot of release problems.
this system would also slow down 4e buying anyway.


so, sorry, i don't see that happening.

 

[PapersAndPaychecks]

9 successive posts from the same person. Is that a record?

 

[Spell]

I don't think they'd know, not having sold the books in print...

i think that they wouldn't want to know, given that tis' more valuable, in the long run, to develop a new system and support that. they can still rake money with the "return to..." series, to "revive" the famous products or adventures in the current edition.

having said that, i like the idea of pdfs, but the quality of said products is not always the best. i've heard that at times parts of the products are missing (can't give a proper reference, and it might very well be just a rumour). what i know for sure is that in some of the products i both the quality of the images is not too good.

it would be really nice if there was another PDF conversion today, now that PDF publishing can be really professional. the quality of the scansion would also be incredibly better. it wouldn't probably make sense financially, though.

 

[Spell]

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.

there sure was, and, to be honest, it's obvious that way. D&D or AD&D have never been "total roleplyaing, no combat game" the way that, say, the old world of darkness games were (well... some of them, maybe! hunter and werewolf were certainly displaying a lot of muscle, too).

in that sense, the hierarchy is built in the expectations of the game... but, again, not stating too clearly what these expectations are or should be resulted in a wider variety of games being catered by a singular ruleset. (in my experience!)

 

[SuStel]

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.

Have you seen GURPS Dungeon Fantasy: Adventurers?

 

[Storm Raven]

?????!!!!!!!
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?

I haven't tried to run GURPS advanced combat - I have actually run GURPS advanced combat. And it is not at all hard to do. Yes, you need to consult a few charts, but none of the rules are actually complicated. (Where GURPS gets complicated are in the things like vehicle or robot designs).

And the advanced combat rules are all optional. The correct comparison to vanilla D&D is the basic combat rules. The advanced combat rules can only fairly be compared to 2e if you include things like the player's option rules. And when you look at them side by side, the GURPS rules are much easier.

But the real key here is that GURPS overall, when used as a fantasy game, is a system that is more rules-light than 2e. The skills are easier to use, the magic system is easier to use, and even the basic combat system is easier to use.

 

[Storm Raven]

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?

Ah, now that your argument has been undermined by actual facts, you resort to the "well, the 2e rules were "chatty" and "fluffy"? I see what you are standing on there, and it is pretty sandy. At this point, it is obvious that you are just grasping for straws and don't have anything left to say that makes any sense.

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!!!

All of the skills you mention here are included in 3e. Survival, Profession: Farmer, and Diplomacy or Knowlege: Nobility and Royalty cover all of those things.

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

Your "point" is nonsense, because it doesn't actually match the facts on hand.

 

[Storm Raven]

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.

I didn't say it was easier to tailor than any game. I said it was easier to tailor than 2e.

 

[Storm Raven]

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.

No, it doesn't. Not any more than 2e needed to be "balanced". Because if you were happy about having the rules work in an unbalanced way in 2e, then complaining that changing 3e affects its balance is quite simply being dishonest.

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.

Its a good thing that the 3e rules don't say any of those things either. If you are going to argue about the 3e rules, you might want to stick to those things the rules actually say. Actually reading them would seem to be a good place for you to start.

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".

And? What you have described is not a problem with the rules. What you have described is a problem with you and your players. The fact that you were really familiar with 2e is not a failing of the rules of 3e. The fact that your players preferred a different kind of game from the one you wanted to run is not a failing of 3e. Did you try to tell them up front what kind of game you wanted to run? I'm guessing that the answer is no, and that you just assumed they would be okay with whatever you pulled out of your hat.

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?

Your incoherent post about published adventures? You mean the one where you say "you can lurch about and stumble into the answer after a while"? That's nonsensical at best. Far better to simply tell you what they assumed when they wrote the adventure.

is it not?!?!

No, it isn't.

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.

The system "makes" you run games a certain way? That's ludicrous on its face unless you are too weak-willed to do anything other than what a book tells you to.

3e is less combat oriented than 2e in its rules - because it actually has functional rules systems for things other than combat. 2e really didn't (no, I don't consider the poorly put together NWP system to be worth considering).

3e never says "these are the right assumptions" - it says "these are the assumptions we used". If you use different assumptions, you know that you need to account for it, if you want to mainitain the same sort of balance they came to. But if you are used to 2e where there was no balance, why do you care? Complaining that changing things affects 3e's balance while at the same time extolling the virtues of 2e is engaing in rank intellectual dishonesty.

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.

It isn't disputable, really. The people who say it is are either not paying attention or are delaing in received wisdom without checking the facts for themselves. When the system is transparent, it is easier to make changes and be able to anticipate the effects those changes will have. You may not like those effects, but that doesn't mean you can't anticipate them. I find it amusing the number of people who say "you can't predict the effects of changes! If you change X, it means that Y, Z, and Q are all affected!". What have they done if not predict the effects of a change? No, the people who say that "it is disputable" are engaging in logical inconsistency.

And it is simple to balance the system back if you don't like the effects - just change the rule back.