D&D 3E/3.5 3e/4e as Operating Systems: An Argument for Grognardism

[Psion]

I find it disconcerting and disappointing that most RPG companies assign such a low priority to backwards compatibility. The question therefore becomes "is switching going to buy me more than I give up?"

In the case of the 2e to 3e switch, the answer was yes for me.

But then, I am much more satisfied with 3e than I ever was 2e (indeed, I used variant systems like HERO for my game world long before 3e came about), and had significantly less material I would want to carry forwards from 3e.

So unless 4e blows my socks off, there's a good chance I'll continue to use 3e for some time to come.


It's not as hard or fraught with peril to achieve backwards as some are suggesting. Heck, I can run most Classic or Mega Traveller material with Traveller D20 with minimal conversion, and it's an entirely different system.

But I can tell when they say levels 4-14 in 3e are going to map to levels 1-30 in 4e... it sounds as if I am going to have a lot of trouble using many great current supplements. Am I going to trade that for a "core only" game, even an improved one? I'm dubious.

 

[GVDammerung]

To summarize the point of this ramble, I think there will be plenty of gamers out there to play 3e forever because they either: 1) love 3e, 2) have too much invested in it to switch or 3) don't care what "OS" they're using, they just want to play Dungeons and Dragons.

It's just a pity, IMHO, that they didn't make 4e backwards compatible. Because if I *could* run my 3e software on the 4e OS, I'd make the leap in a heartbeat.

I agree entirely.

An additional thought that has occurred to me, to continue the computer analogy, is that 3x was highly mod-able, what with templates, PrCs, racial substitution levels etc. If 4e is not as mod-able, some may stick with 3x because 4e won't let them mod to the same degree. For the moders, 4e may not be an upgrade at all.

 

[jasin]

It's just a pity, IMHO, that they didn't make 4e backwards compatible. Because if I *could* run my 3e software on the 4e OS, I'd make the leap in a heartbeat.

I don't really get this. How do you imagine a 3.5-compatible 4E would look like?

Wouldn't that be... you know, 3.5?

 

[Elder-Basilisk]

That part of the analogy actually works too. Without a gaming group and ruleset (analogous to the computer and OS), you are cut off from most gaming.

Now, with a computer you can be behind by several OS revisions and still function just fine (I write on my computer running Windows 2000 PRO that was running Win 98 and working just fine until two years ago). You may not be able to run the latest games and applications, but early adopters often face the same problem in the first year or two after an OS comes out. Similarly, with a gaming group, you can continue to play the old system and get by just fine. You may not be able to play the newest modules from WotC but early adopters will find that their selection of modules is also quite limited. Really, the big thing that you'll be missing out on is the RPGA's Living campaigns (and the 3.5 ones will be continuing for some 6 mo or so after 4e comes out so you don't have to switch immediately even there). Since a lot of people can take or leave them, you're not necessarily missing out on anything. (As the writer of a number of Living Greyhawk modules, I think you'd be missing out on something worthwhile right now, but I don't yet know whether 4e will support the kind of adventures I enjoy, so I can't rate how valuable that is, even to me).

With a computer, the only real reason to upgrade the OS is because
A. the new OS offers features and support that your current one doesn't
B. There are some great new applications/games on the new OS that your current one doesn't support
C. You're getting a new computer anyway and might as well get the new OS as the old one.

Within the analogy, C won't apply unless your collection of books is lost, stolen, or destroyed--and perhaps the rest of your gaming groups' books as well.
A. Only applies if 4e actually turns out to be significantly better than 3.5
B. Only applies if some incredible module is released for 4e, all the commercial offerings switch to 4e, or your gaming group as a whole decides to switch to 4e.

My own take is that from 2e to 3.x, there was an extremely strong motivation A to switch. My own experience and those of others from the boards seems to be that no-one was running 2e without tons of house rules, most of which were rendered unnecessary by 3.x. Thus it was that most people appear to have made the switch quite quickly and created a very strong motivation B for adopting the third edition ruleset for the remainder of the gaming populace.

My impression of the current situation, however, is that there is not really too much of a motivation A for the switch. Other than the epic 6 houserule set (which will still be a houserule set under 4e since designer comments indicate that 4e is still going to retain the features of 3.x that epic 6 is designed to eliminate), I don't see extensive lists of houserules in peoples' 3.x games. (I have used a number of houserules in my own campaign, but they are for flavor rather than balance and gameplay reasons and I don't forsee 4e eliminating the need for them, unlike 3e which I saw and thought "wow, it's like it's got all my houserules built in and done better). Thus my impression is that, unless 4e is even better than the considerable hype and marketing-speak suggests, there won't be much of a motivation A for the switch. Some people will switch early, but I expect there to be a substantial community of 3.x players for some time; the community will probably persist long enough to still be strong when WotC decides to release 5th edition.

At that point, a lot of people may be ready to make the switch, both from reason A (as 5th edition should incorporate all the fixes that 4e needs as well as the ones 3.x needed), and reason C (since peoples' books will be getting worn out by then), and 5th edition will probably stand a chance of gaining a majority share of the D&D marketplace. For the moment, however, my money is on 4e turning out to be the Windows ME of the RPG world--it gets a bit of traction, but doesn't displace the previous systems as home users, by and large, continue to use Win 98 and later switch to the Windows XP product while business users largely maintain the use of Windows NT and then upgrade, piecemeal to Win 2000 or Windows XP.

The comparison between D&D and Windows makes me depressed

There is also one thing you forgot: without a computer and its operating system, you're cutting yourself off from a lot of things. It's hard to say "no" to owning a computer nowadays. And if you want a computer, you must have the latest Windows (I know, there's Linux, but that's not so common among people that aren't very much into personalizing their computers) or most of the software won't work properly. That is not the case with D&D... you don't need the latest to be able to play. Plus, you don't even need D&D to play a RPG, there are hundreds to choose from!

 

[elijah snow]

I don't really get this. How do you imagine a 3.5-compatible 4E would look like?

Wouldn't that be... you know, 3.5?

Yes, my point exactly. (Sorry, that's the grognard in me coming out.)

Another issue further comments have made me realize is that 4e as currently described actually removes a number of popular features from the OS:

1. Prestige classes
2. Monster classes
3. Some core classes and races
4. Psionics

1 and 2, which I really, really love (thanks Monte, Sean, et al.) would be very upsetting for me as a DM to lose and the logic of taking them out of the game, especially PrCs, as they are so heavily supported in 3e is almost mind boggling.

3 and 4 might be coming back later, but that puts some DMs and players in the difficult position of removing gnomes, psions, etc. from their current games for an indeterminate amount of time. Maybe that's where the logic of 4e breaks down a bit.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

I find it disconcerting and disappointing that most RPG companies assign such a low priority to backwards compatibility. The question therefore becomes "is switching going to buy me more than I give up?"

In the case of the 2e to 3e switch, the answer was yes for me.

But then, I am much more satisfied with 3e than I ever was 2e (indeed, I used variant systems like HERO for my game world long before 3e came about), and had significantly less material I would want to carry forwards from 3e.

So unless 4e blows my socks off, there's a good chance I'll continue to use 3e for some time to come.


It's not as hard or fraught with peril to achieve backwards as some are suggesting. Heck, I can run most Classic or Mega Traveller material with Traveller D20 with minimal conversion, and it's an entirely different system.

But I can tell when they say levels 4-14 in 3e are going to map to levels 1-30 in 4e... it sounds as if I am going to have a lot of trouble using many great current supplements. Am I going to trade that for a "core only" game, even an improved one? I'm dubious.

The unfortunate truth is that backwards compatibility and innovation are opposing each other. When making a new edition of a RPG or a new edition of a software (especially an OS), you have to make trade offs between these two.

I recently checked out some details on a Microsoft Research Project called "Singularity". It's a OS that is based entirely on managed code, designed for system security and correctness instead of performance. The OS is entirely experimental and it on itself will never be available on the market. The cool thing about it: It is safe, dependable and "very" correct. And thanks to this feature, they suddenly also manage to get a system that is pretty fast (faster than Windows or Linux) (the reason for this is that current systems also need a lot more safety/security and correctness, and can only achieve this with "expensive" work-arounds).
Unfortunately, the system is absolutely not backwards compatible. Old software will not work on this system, because the way it is created is at odds with the foundation of the system. Which means, the system is totally innovative and leaps above most the things we have today, but only on a very fundamental system level. You don't have any kind of Office software for it, no game runs on it, even the simplest notepad is rendered uselss and in fact every frigging hardware driver has to be completely rewritten (a lot more work than the companies probably had to do for switching drivers from XP to Vista, and you might know that this seemed not to go as fast or easy as one would whish). No patch can fix an old application to work on the new OS. It has to be rewritten. Which is possible (and might actually make the software itself better, too.), but takes a lot of time. In the mean while, all you have is the OS. Which isn't particularly useful for anyone except tinkerers.

It's hard to make a fair comparison for a game, but maybe this works:
Instead of modelling D&D fantasy games, the new role playing system strives for great gameplay balance. It achieves this goal, and as a cool side effect the system is still very versatile and allows you to play any kind of character (like a spellcaster and a mech pilot in the same game). But the game system itself doesn't provide the exact rules for these characters. You still need to design the classes yourself, and you also have no adventures or campaign setings that go with it. Sure, they will all come, but they aren't there in the beginning.

I don't really know if it is realistic to assume that such fundamental change would ever work. I don' get the impression that D&D 4 will be that bad. Personally, I don't really care wether I can import my old characters into the new system, because in 8 months, all current on-going D&D campaigns will probably have ended already, and even if not, it's not as if I couldn't run both systems a while together.

 

[Eric Tolle]

The comparison between D&D and Windows makes me depressed

Damn straight! Don't give me any of this GUI crap, it's DOS command lines all the way!

(Substitute your favorite and later versions of D&D for the above.)

 

[SSquirrel]

But I can tell when they say levels 4-14 in 3e are going to map to levels 1-30 in 4e... it sounds as if I am going to have a lot of trouble using many great current supplements. Am I going to trade that for a "core only" game, even an improved one? I'm dubious.

No what they mean is that the experience of those levels, how the math all works out properly and the game is generally viewed as clicking properly, is what will be mapped to those levels. I think your supplements will be fine after you remake npcs in teh same idea as they are currently

 

[SSquirrel]

Another issue further comments have made me realize is that 4e as currently described actually removes a number of popular features from the OS:

1. Prestige classes

I thought that PrCs had been confirmed as back in 4E already

 

[Nifft]

Damn straight! Don't give me any of this GUI crap, it's DOS command lines all the way!

Take that newfangled DOS crap away (and its calculator CPU, too).

sh is the one true shell. All others are a pale imitation of the real thing*.

Grognardierly yours, -- N

*) Except bash, which is also the one true shell, except more so.