D&D 3E/3.5 A message to the 3.5ers

[Stormtower]

Hmm. What would you have done if 4th Edition wouldn't have been announced and 3.5 material would be continued to be published? Wouldn't you have been in the same position as now?

I guess for you, D&D 4 was a chance to see that you are trapped in this completist mode and gave you the option to conciously decide to stop it. Maybe bad for WotC or the RPGA, but hopefully good for you.

No, to my mind it's a fundamentally different position. Continuing to build/collect on an already established 3.5 system is like adding rooms to your house. With 4e I feel like I'm being asked as a customer to abandon my lovely house and build a new one, from the foundation up, on a new piece of land that I've never seen, on the word of an (albeit well-intentioned) real estate broker.

It IS good for me, but only because I'm lucky enough to have a core of three players who live with me as life partners. We only ever have to search outside our household for one or two players at most to make a complete table. If I was a DM alone with my goodies, I'd be really frackin' steamed right now, instead of annoyed and a bit sad that the game is "evolving" past where I'm willing to go.

 

[Psion]

I could 'support' Greyhawk by threadcrapping every Planescape thread but I shouldn't. I could let other Planescape skeptics know they are not alone but I shouldn't.

Which would be meaningful if the situation were equivalent. But it's not.

1) Say what you want about anyone else's posts, but I do not "threadcrap", thankyouverymuch.
2) Unlike the D&D system at large, there is little threat that Planescape will supplant Greyhawk as a playable setting because Greyhawk groups are swiftly moving to Planescape because of a feel that support for the the latest Greyhawk books is vanishing and there is a perception of need to adopt forthcoming Planescape books.
3) There is no such thing as a Planescape skeptic in a Planescape forum.

Yeah you can do both, you can criticise 4e and praise 3.5. But it's not the best way to achieve your stated aim.

Simply put, I do not agree with your conclusion here. You expect me to behave in ways that I find illogical and I would be surprised to see you do if you were in my position.

 

[Psion]

Are you saying that you're actively criticizing 4e in an attempt to keep people from playing it?

Rather than subscribe to an alternate characterization, I'll merely restate what I have already said about my motivations:

My main reason for my limited involvement is solidarity with fellow would-be 3.5 holdouts. If the perception takes hold that "everyone is converting to 4e" or "nobody else sees problems in 4e", some players that I might otherwise play with will throw in the towel... and give me less people to play with. I feel obligated to make my presence known, so that we can continue to exist as a body.

 

[Kunimatyu]

My main reason for my limited involvement is solidarity with fellow would-be 3.5 holdouts. If the perception takes hold that "everyone is converting to 4e" or "nobody else sees problems in 4e", some players that I might otherwise play with will throw in the towel... and give me less people to play with. I feel obligated to make my presence known, so that we can continue to exist as a body.

How productive is this on a giant anonymous D&D messageboard as opposed to the gamers in your local area?

 

[CanadienneBacon]

How productive is this on a giant anonymous D&D messageboard as opposed to the gamers in your local area?

It's plenty productive.

I'm a member of a local community of gamers. In the 4+ years I've lived in my current area, ALL six of my players--save for my husband--have been located via the internet. I would also argue that EN World is not as "anonymous" as you allude to in your post. I know several of the posters here in person. Likewise, I am often influenced by the posts that I read on this site. I come to EN World to be part of an internet gaming community, but I freely confess to pillaging other members' ideas for use in my own game. When I read others' posts that they're doing a certain thing a certain way, I have in the past been apt to ape them, if I agree with their method(s). To that extent, EN World has been a wonderful influence on my games.

With regard to Psion and other "grognards" continuing to post in the 4E forum, more power to you. None of your posts, Psion, that I have read in this forum have seemed to me to less than productive, nor have they been less than interesting. I'm part of the bits and pieces of EN World that likely won't be swapping over to 4E but I certainly won't stop reading, enjoying, or posting in the 4E forum. Nor would I want to read a 4E forum that was purely pro-4E in its posting attributes.

Respectful dissention is healthy. Anything that is not respectful in tone should be and to date has been promptly addressed by EN World's staff.

 

[Stormtower]

To go along with what CanadienneBacon said, I too used the 'net to find a new gaming group when we transplanted from Florida to D.C. in 2005. I answered a random ad looking for 3.5 players in January '06 and stumbled into a rotating roster of about 12 gamers who are just terrific D&Ders and lovely people, to boot. So the tenor of discussion here does carry over into the real world at times.

There is a purpose to speaking one's mind constructively re: 4e skepticism in this forum. Flaws are inherent in any sufficiently complex rules system (3.5 is no exception, but ya'll knew that) and discussing flaws in WotC's marketing, business plan, rules or any other aspect of D&D seems logical and relevant. Once 4e was announced, my perception is that the WotC designer blogs worked like an echo chamber effect and suddenly a bunch of "fundamental flaws" were discovered in game we were all aware was imperfect, but a heck of a lot of fun. I see no harm in Psion's well measured counterarguments to that echo chamber.

I hope once 4e is released that both communities can give-and-take productively and make both editions stronger, much in the way that the C&C folks have houseruled the best bits of 3.5 into their C&C games.

I know Morrus has mentioned that a dedicated 3e forum will exist here sometime in the future. Perhaps accelerating that plan would allow the 3.5 crowd to claim a space of our own (make it indented and navigable from the front page, just as the 4e subforum is).

 

[Mistwell]

You might care about the direction that the game is going in, even if you don't intend to buy a particular editions, because it may affect

(1) future editions (which you might be interested in purchasing),

Oh come on. You are posting negative stuff about 4e in hopes of influencing 5e 8+ years down the road? Really?

(2) the health of the game, and how your edition of choice relates to it,

You think posting negative stuff about 4e helps the health of the game, or you want to hurt the health of the game? If health of the game is an issue, I don't see how this helps the health of it.

(3) what 3rd party publishers might do with your edition of choice,

They saw your opinion the first time. 15 times later doesn't help. Besides, directly telling those third parties, rather than posting negative stuff about 4e over and over again in hopes a 3rd party publisher might happen to both see it and take your negative comment as a positive for them somehow, would be a lot more productive.

(4) what bits and pieces of the new edition you might want to houserule into your edition of choice,

No need to post negative stuff about 4e for that.

(5) the ease by which you can convert new edition products (such as adventures) to your edition of choice, and

No need to post Negative stuff about 4e for that.

(6) the currently dominant memes of the gaming population at large (which might affect your ability to get together a group to play your edition of choice, and may also affect how that edition is approached by those individuals).

RC

No need to post negative stuff about 4e for that.

So, why post negative stuff about 4e if you have no intention of buying or playing it?

 

[Mistwell]

That's true too.

I've thought more about how various editions tried to solve certain problems in the last month than I would have thought possible. And I have been hearing how other people approach those problems. It is, at the very least, enlightening to be (effectively) discussing design philosophy. I just wish that WotC was giving us more of the "why" behind certain changes, and how they think those changes will address the problems they are meant to.

Even if I don't switch, that kind of conversation is never without merit.

IMHO, anyway.

RC

They are publishing two books specifically on the "why" about the new edition rules.

 

[Mistwell]

Not to mention, it seems to me that recently the posts crying out for a ban on these negative posters seem to out number those made by said negative posters.

Of course this may just be a perception on my part and not actual reality.

Ban?

This isn't the meta forum. He is asking people to voluntarily reframe from that behavior. It's an appeal to the people doing it, not the mods. Let's not mischaracterize this with an exaggeration.

 

[Mistwell]

Indeed. I'm a Batman fan, and like the Tim Burton movies just fine. I don't like what Joel Shumacher did to the series. Many people complained (and voted with their wallets), and voila! Batman Begins arrives and blows us away.

It may be too late to change 4e, but I believe it is still worth voicing complaints we can lay a decent foundation for 5e.

A movie sequel is a bad analogy. 8+ years separate editions. If that is your motivation, it will have zero effect. It won't likely even people the same people working at that company when the next edition comes around. Heck, they may not even be playing the game yet!

Come on, are you being serious with us that a motivation for your negative 4e posts is because you have realistic hopes of influencing 5e some day with those posts now?