3E to 4E Gripes (Was: What Did You Want Fourth Edition to be Like?)

[WalterKovacs]

Personally, if 4e was just a much improved 3.5 ... I might have checked it out, but likely I would have just stuck with 3.5. No matter what it was, it would still have suffered from some of the problems 4e had. Namely, it would be comparing a ton of character options to a single PHB worth of race and class combinations.

 

[Imaro]

Is there a purpose to threads like this, other than to perpetuate the echo-chamber mentality that sows community division in the first place? It's not something we haven't seen here dozens of times before.

And yet, not only do you feel compelled to post in a thread you see no purpose too... You continue to read it and, surprise...surprise... post again...

Alcoholic's Anonymous doesn't advise blaming your issues on the beer.

of course without any relevant content whatsoever...

 

[Keefe the Thief]

A couple of years ago, the bottle of whine was "you did just a revision and sold me that again. Why? Angry!" Oh, how i remember the 3.5 flamewars. This year its "you did change the whole game, where you could have done just a revision. Why? Angry!"
And i am a bastard, because i´m happy with that: new concepts / revision / new concepts / revision is exactly the cycle i want out of a game.

 

[Aberzanzorax]

@Ferratus

What I had meant was not that conversions for older materials couldn't be undertaken...of course you can convert a 1e module to 3e or to 4e. 4e might even be easier.

What my gripe was, was: the huge changes of fluff and retrofluff. I don't mind huge changes in rules...and I think we can all agree they've been huge.

What I do mind is that I'll get no more "compatible fluff". Sure I can convert the old stuff and play the old forgotten realms with new 4e rules. What I can't do is continue to play the old forgotten realms with new fluff added. I would have to play a very different realms. This is true for the planes, certain races added or changed, the whole demons, devils, paragon elementals, etc.

I guess what I meant is that with the 3e fluff, I could intersperse 1st, 2nd, and 3rd edition adventures with minimal fluff changes. If I want to also intersperse 4e materials, major fluff changes need to happen.

That bums me out, and was not, in my opinion, a necessary part of the changes in making a new edition. Change the rules, but don't change the story.


What defines D&D? Is it the rules or the story or both? If you change both, is it still D&D? (This is a philosophical argument, not a claim that 4e isn't D&D. It's akin to the Ship of Theseus, wherein the boards of the ship gradually rot and are replaced over time. Eventually, the boards are all new. The question becomes, is it the same ship? This is complicated by variations of, what if you built an identical ship out of new boards; what if you took all the old boards and built an identical ship, etc). I don't know, I'm not outraged that they did this, but I wish they had added without wiping the slate clean so dramatically storywise.

 

[ProfessorPain]

A couple of years ago, the bottle of whine was "you did just a revision and sold me that again. Why? Angry!" Oh, how i remember the 3.5 flamewars. This year its "you did change the whole game, where you could have done just a revision. Why? Angry!"
And i am a bastard, because i´m happy with that: new concepts / revision / new concepts / revision is exactly the cycle i want out of a game.

I think they are different things, but both justified in their own way. The revision thing was much worse, because they made minor changes that forced many DMs to buy the new handbooks once their places started buying 3.5 products. And it was obviously deliberately planned (Monte Cook wrote a pretty good article on the subject at its release). In addition, it was simply too soon. I felt like I had just bought 3E. It wouldn't have been so bad, if 3E was like other RPGS where you just buy the core books and the other material is all modules and setting stuff. But you also had to replace every splat book you bought because those apparently weren't compatable with 3.5.

The complaints about 4E are just taste prefrences. It came out, some people loved and some people hated it. Both sides are entitled to an opinion on the matter. But there was nothing wrong with Wizards releasing a new edition of the game after 8 years.

 

[Aberzanzorax]

ProfessorPain brings up some interesting points.

I would bet that if there had been no 3.5 at all and 4e came out 1 year earlier, people as a whole would have been happier.

 

[xechnao]

And i am a bastard, because i´m happy with that: new concepts / revision / new concepts / revision is exactly the cycle i want out of a game.

I think, from what I have seen around here, this has to do with individual investments. Some people have been investing for the 3e game system thousands of dollars -I guess- to feel they are in line with the development of the system and so you can understand how a reset may taste bitter. Especially in front of the idea that the new edition is superior in some ways than the older edition.
Hopefully with the subscription model of 4e Wotc would provide a solution to this problem for the future.

 

[Stalker0]

I'm curious to know what the reaction would have been to a "3.75" version of 4e.

I mean the reality of 3.5 was, people by the dozens were screaming about having to pay more money for small updates....while they went online and to gaming stores and laid down more money for small updates. 3.5 was a solid success sales-wise regardless of how much anger was seen on message boards.

Would people have done the same thing again? I don't know. I personally do think a brand new edition should be a big big change from the previous system, but as always change for change sake isn't useful.

 

[ProfessorPain]

I'm curious to know what the reaction would have been to a "3.75" version of 4e.

I mean the reality of 3.5 was, people by the dozens were screaming about having to pay more money for small updates....while they went online and to gaming stores and laid down more money for small updates. 3.5 was a solid success sales-wise regardless of how much anger was seen on message boards.

Would people have done the same thing again? I don't know. I personally do think a brand new edition should be a big big change from the previous system, but as always change for change sake isn't useful.

Honestly, by the end of 3.5 my biggest complaint was the expense of staying current. So what really made me decide not to stick with 4E after buying the PHB, was knowing they would be releasing one PHB a year and various powers books. To me this is just a smarter way to market the splat book concept by making it more essential to the play of the game. What I was hoping was they had finally reached the total number of splat books possible, and would move on to focus on things like modules, settings, etc. I kind of miss the old DM focused model from D&D and AD&D. I didn't have to buy nearly as much material then to stay on top of things as a DM. Just bought the modules I needed, or the supplements that I thought would be helpful. I realize this doesn't work as well as a business model. But as a customer, I got sick of feeling like I had to buy every book that my players did.

 

[Ariosto]

Well, it's a done deal; speculation as to what might make a good "5E" is at least remotely in the realm of possibility!

A modest proposal: How about starting with something stripped down largely to the lingua franca that all D&Ders (regardless of edition) understood before 3E? Go ahead and keep some conventions from 3E that have become familiar; there are (thanks in part to the OGL) now plenty of options for "old-school" purists. Just keep it close enough so that you're not throwing in a wholesale Tower of Babel disjunction with the core books.

Castles & Crusades seems a pretty good example along those lines, apparently not a lot of trouble to use with material from across 30+ years of D&D.

Then, you can publish supplements warping that basic framework into "2E" and "3E" shapes -- and beyond!

If even 3E fans consider WotC's latest effort to use the D&D trademark "something entirely different," then I think it's best treated as just that. So much of the designers' emphasis has been on what they consider "wrong" or "not fun" about D&D, that it's pretty clearly not aimed at people who actually like D&D.

People who don't like D&D are certainly a worthy market for the company to pursue, but I don't think it ought to be an either/or proposition. Why give up to other publishers so much market share that's largely based on the appeal of material you own?

With 4E, there's a product that seems primed for board-game and computer-game implementations: figurines, square-gridded "dungeon tiles," cards, online services, and so on and on. Why not spin it off as an additional revenue stream, rather than replacing what has been a proven flagship product for so long?