D&D 3.x 3.5 is the REAL reason everyone is angry

[Umbran]

Threads merged

 

[Sanguinemetaldawn]

Threads merged

Yep. Apologies for the redundant post.

 

[Sunderstone]

Am I the only one? Or am I right about this?

you are not the only one.

 

[Atlatl Jones]

For example, if you're a DM that has spent about $3000 so far, it means you have spent 600 a year for the 5 years until 4E...Which is only $50 a month.

No offense, but in terms of hobby/entertainment, this is WAY better than anything else I know of....

The problem is, you can see where your money has gone and it never goes away. When I go clubbing and to the movies, I easily will spend more than this in a week. At the end of the month though, that money is gone and all I have are memories.

Definitely. Compare it to going to a movie. If you see one movie a week, you've spent the same amount

Besides, only a small minority of D&D players have spent that much. $3000 is about 100 books, and only the most die-hard gamer has that many products for a single game. I'd guess that the majority of gamers (casual gamers) have only the the PHB and a few other books. Most intense gamers probably only have a dozen or two books.

 

[AllisterH]

Definitely. Compare it to going to a movie. If you see one movie a week, you've spent the same amount

Besides, only a small minority of D&D players have spent that much. $3000 is about 100 books, and only the most die-hard gamer has that many products for a single game. I'd guess that the majority of gamers (casual gamers) have only the the PHB and a few other books. Most intense gamers probably only have a dozen or two books.

That honestly is what I don't understand.

Most DMs I know of would've spent at most $1500-$2000 between 3.5 and 4.0 and that's a DM. How much money are we really having to repend?

 

[SavageRobby]

This is the reason for the anger. It is way to much re-rules learning and re-buy-in, too quickly. Its not 3.5 per se, it is the deeper underlying mentality that it reveals. I have talked to people who aren't planning on getting 4E because they are waiting for 4.5 to come out.

And they aren't joking.

This is a thing unheard of, at least in D&D. People not buying one edition because they are anticipating the edition after that. It has a feeling of bizarreness nearing surreal. I suppose for people who started with 3E, it may be different, but at least for me and some of the people I play with, the relentless pace of constant rule overhauls, and and "game resets/startover" is strange, frustrating, and ultimately, creates anger.

Am I the only one? Or am I right about this?

I think you're spot on. I don't ever buy a first version Microsoft product, because its always buggy and incomplete. Wizards is teaching us the same lesson about their products, too.

 

[Altalazar]

When 3.5 came out, I was on hiatus due to law school, but even if I had not been, I think that 3.5, in the end, was a good thing. Looking at my shelf full of 3.5 stuff and looking at my shelf of 3.0 stuff - which basically is the three core rulebooks and the thin class books, it is apparent that almost all of the 3.x material is 3.5 material, not 3.0. I think 3.5 fixed a lot of things that needed fixing. Better they fix it sooner, I thought, then later - the later they did it, the more 3.0 books there would have been to replace.

So I'm not angry about 3.5. I'm still a bit shell-shocked that 4.0 came out so soon. I think I was mentally prepared for it to come out in 2009, based on what Wizards had been saying. That makes the 2008 dates feel more like an ambush.

I don't feel like I'd be wasting money to buy the remaining 3.5 books. I like that they are putting out a rules compendium - in a way, that is the one book that I'm glad is coming out when 4E is on the way - that way I know that the 3.5 Rules Compendium really will be the last word on the rules and there will be no further additions to 3.5. It is a capstone. And aside from a few adventures and elder evils, there really isn't too much 3.5 specific stuff coming out between now and the end of the year anyway.

I've probably spent as much on minis now as books, and I really like the minis for roleplaying (I"d never play the mini game). I like having a large selection of monsters to match whatever PCs may encounter, as a player or as a DM. And those will be fully compatible with 4E, so in that sense, half of the money I've spent on D&D carries forward to 4.0.

I am a bit bummed to think of everything on my shelf being "obsolete" and of the thought of yet another conversion, one completely different, but I also am curious what they've done with the system. And it hit me that the amount of 3.5 material I have could last me many lifetimes, given my play frequency (which is once a week, sometimes twice a week, for 4-5 hours at a time). So anyone with all of the 3.5 books, like me, could play 3.5 til the end of life and never run out of material. So there's no reason to be bummed out about a new edition. If anything, if you really don't want to do 4E, then you can consolidate all of your 3.5 stuff and master it, knowing that it will never be increased in size from Dec 2007 onward.

So I am very curious to know what 4E holds. I don't know when I'll play it, but I probably will eventually. I don't know if I'll get all of the books, but I'll at least get the core (and probably the rest, given that I'm a book whore who buys all wizards books generally).

The one thing that gives me pause is the notion of 4.5E - I hope they don't do that this time around - they have had their experience with 3.0, 3.5, and now two to three years of playtesting 4E, so they should not need to do that this time around.

 

[Tharkun]

I'm not angry because I've spent maybe $80 USD on 3.5 (no not the core books either, a third party book and a few supplements) IIRC. So I'll get 4E when it comes out and wait to get the books that really interes me.

 

[JoelF]

Actually, I wish 4th edition would be more like 3.5 II. From what I've heard at Gen Con and read about since coming home, 4th to me looks like D&D lite, which is not what I want. I would have loved a 4th edition which made evolutionary changes, fixed things (magic item creation, grapple, etc.)

 

[Gargauth]

I think it is clear that a lot of people are angry about 4E (to put it mildly). There are a lot of arguable reasons for this anger.

Some reasons include:

Taking Dungeon and Dragon from Paizo, and changing it to an online format

Killing Living Greyhawk, and substituting Living FR

But the core reason is different I think: too many editions too quickly. There are two factors here: learning the ruleset and financial investment.

Few people enjoy learning new rules. Many of us started with first or second edition AD&D. essentially, from the late 70's to the late 90's the rules stayed the same. Yes, there were some differences between editions, but they were minor. Silly things like Ranger class abilities, making Thac0 an official standard, rather than unofficial, etc. But the rules were essentially unchanged.

I've heard all the arguments about 1st AD&D, vs Unearthed Arcana, vs 2nd edition, vs "2.5". As someone who played during the entire span, I can say from personal experience that the portrayal of these installments as splintering the rules is spurious and false. In all three groups I games with, the result was the same: the ruleset was based on 1st AD&D, and used elements from Unearthed Arcana and 2nd Edition we liked. Or switch the roles of 1st and second (used 2nd as a base, include stuff from 1st). "2.5" was largely ignored. The point is that the "different" core sets were so similar and compatible that they essentially functioned as one large single edition, with variant or optional rules.


This community was willing the tolerate the massive change from 1st/2nd to 3rd for several reasons. The game hadn't changed significantly in a very long time, but the RPG community had. Things standard in AD&D were feeling stale. The AD&D community was also rather disgrunted for reasons of management, and so on. The change was seen as a good thing.


Then came 3.5.

WAY too soon. Full price this time around. A lot of small changes. With it came new classbooks, etc. Suddenly we have to spend more money on more books to be playing the standard version of the game.

3.5 was like 2nd Ed to 1st AD&D. But in three years instead of 10/11 years. And now we have 4E "Don't bother converting from 3E" D&D. 4E is to 3E what 3E was to 1st Ed.


This is the reason for the anger. It is way to much re-rules learning and re-buy-in, too quickly. Its not 3.5 per se, it is the deeper underlying mentality that it reveals. I have talked to people who aren't planning on getting 4E because they are waiting for 4.5 to come out.

And they aren't joking.

This is a thing unheard of, at least in D&D. People not buying one edition because they are anticipating the edition after that. It has a feeling of bizarreness nearing surreal. I suppose for people who started with 3E, it may be different, but at least for me and some of the people I play with, the relentless pace of constant rule overhauls, and and "game resets/startover" is strange, frustrating, and ultimately, creates anger.

Am I the only one? Or am I right about this?

You've essentially restated my original post in more detail, so no... you aren't the only one