D&D 3E/3.5 AD&D vs 3e?

[cjosephs1s]

While I've only ever played AD&D 2e and 3.x editions I've seen good and bad things about both.

AD&D: Campaign settings were abundant from TSR. While its great to create your own world its time consuming and having a pre generated world for you is very nice. So this could easily give the game a different feel just by getting a new campaing setting.

Limited advancement options. Pick a class and stick with it and your pretty ordinary. Multiclassing was hard due to the xp penalty for it and with the massive amounts of xp needed to level it just didn't seem practical.

Long campaings were fun. Given the massive xp you needed you really could develop your character over time. They could grow and change in personality.

You did have to quest for what you wanted most of the time which is nice but also what do you do with all that gold if you can't hire a wizard to make you a new weapon?

Thac0 and other game mechanics were difficult for new players to master

3.x This is probably my favorite of the two I played. Many more option and the mechanics are much simpler (most of the time)

Until Tome of Battle there wasn't really a great fighter class option even with prestige classes..

Too many fluff feats that are for character background or extremely specific uses. The books have tons of these. While interesting as they are I think most can be incorporated using roleplaying or other measures.

Spot Listen Search as class skills for like 3 classes. So my human fighter can't see or hear or look around for that brick that opens the secret door as well as your human rogue? why? That's like saying fighters have innately worse hearing, and eyesight than other classes, yet they spend years on guard duty. That makes sense. Needless to say after this same discussion my DM house ruled these as class skills for everyone.

Fun to just think up new character ideas and combos. The ideas are endless and can be done by yourself.

Encouraging miniatures in combat. This was great and gave combat a more realistic feel.

Open gaming for everyone! The OGL opened up creativity to numerous people and countless ideas blossomed into print

 

[GreyLord]

There was more hatred of 3e then anything you've ever seen with the 3.X vs. 4e thingy. I saw things so vile spat between gamers on forums, and even worse in real life over what WotC did with 3e then anything I've seen since. People ended friendships, banned people from their homes, and other things all over 3e. It was pretty nasty. Now days those who felt that bad about 3e normally don't even mention their RPG days to the RPGers these days, which I find ironic. Some have healed half broken fences, others won't allow you to speak about TETSNBN in their prescence.

Much of this entire Retrogaming scene had it's roots born in the anti-3e crowd before being retro was even popular.

You won't find most of them here, they skipped town and don't even frequent the same places as the 3.X or even the 4e crowd normally. 4e did garner a few of those 3.X haters however.

3e did appeal to many that had left D&D over the years because they didn't like the system...in fact it got millions to come back to try D&D again.

At the same time it drove off many who played AD&D...not that they were buying anything, most were happy with books that were already over a decade old at that point.

Most seem to forget the dire hatred for 3e that spawned. Didn't help that TSR/WotC was working with Blizzard at the time and actually had Diablo supplements to both AD&D and 3e. In fact it sort of supported the idea of Diablo inspiring much of what came to be in 3e.

Not that it much matters anyways, as I said, most of those that didn't like 3e aren't here, and don't frequent any of the same areas as the new gen people do (new gen being 3.X and beyond).

So, I think your suspicions are correct in that there were more 3e haters over it's timespan then there are against 4e (though some of the 4e hate also came from those who got burned with 3e then 3.5 and couldn't believe yet another edition was coming out so drastically different so soon).

However, I don't think you'll find those people here.

ENWorld has not traditionally been kind to the AD&D lover. I'd suggest Dragonsfoot but 3e talk (or TETSNBN) is sort of kind of banned there. There are other places to go as well, lesser known to 3e lovers, but not certain you'd get a warm welcome there either if you mention anything dealing with 3e.

It's kind of a taboo subject these days I think.

On the topic of edition wars however...I recently played the 4th edition of Axis and Allies, otherwise known as Axis and allies Anniversary edition. At least I think that's the 4th edition...has nothing to do with D&D though.

 

[irdeggman]

3.5 hands down.

I did like the Player's Option series for 2nd ed, espeically the magic options.

The main cause of any hatred when 3.0 came out was I believe based on the fact that the company had gone belly up just prior and there was essentially nothing new coming out anyway - so people felt extreme frustration over the lack of support and the in general poor quality of the products "rushed" out just prior to the folding.

I do believe more people felt anger when 3.5 came out because it was so close to 3.0 (based on revision history). Even though in the modern fast paced, fast feedback, internet world the 1/2 life for a game system is drastically reduced over the past.

 

[Water Bob]

There was a time when "new" attracted me just because it was new. I didn't want to be playing a "dead" game.

Then, one day, a little fairy flew down out of the clouds, tapped me with her wand, PRANG, and I realized that "dead" games many times have a lot more to offer than newer games.

Sometimes, I just like the older mechanics. But also, a game that has run its course already has a ton of supplements and support for it out on the market--many times from third party companies, too. I'd rather buy that and get a bunch of stuff that I'd like to have to support my game than to play a new game that has only the core rule book and a few supplements out on the market.

With the "dead" game, you don't have to wait. Buy what you need/want, then rock-n-roll. New games are many times a waiting game. "Man! They've announced that they're releasing the Blah-Blah sourcebook this Christmas. That's 8 months away, but, I can't wait! I need it today!"

So, yeah, I no longer judge a game whether it's "new" on the market or not. I play what I like, and many times, that's a game that is no longer in print.

Take my current Conan RPG campaign. I love the Hyborian Age, and I love Conan stories. So, I went out and bought the entire game line--much of it at a discount, because I got it right when Mongoose announced that they were killing the line. So stores were discounting and getting rid of their Conan inventory.

And, now, I've got more than what I need to run a multi-year campaign.

I don't need a "new" game at all.

Even if a new Conan game came out, I'd wait for a long while before deciding on whether to make a jump to new rules.





As far as D&D goes, I like all the editions that I've played (1E AD&D, 2E AD&D, and 3.5E D&D...well, really, it's Conan, but close enough to call it 3.5).

I've logged more time with 2E AD&D than the other two, and if I were to change today, I think I'd go back to 1E AD&D to run a game with those rules. Back in the day, I never ran a 1E AD&D game "by the book", and I'm curious how that would work.

I have no real interest in 4E, based on what I've read about it. But, if I saw a neat 4E game that I wanted to play, I'd check it out. I'm sure that there would be things I like about it.

 

[Man in the Funny Hat]

Warning: long post. You may disagree with me for any number of reasons. The OP asked specifically for opinion - this is mine.

So, I half want this thread to become an edition war, but not with 4e, it's just a theory I have that, unlike popular belief, there were just as many 3e haters as 4e haters, or more then once thought...

Nope, there were indeed fewer haters of 3E at the time of its release than of 4E at the time of its release. Some of that the 4E rules are directly responsible for, some of it is simply the result of the times themselves.

When 3E was released D&D had spent a SIGNIFICANT chunk of time being quite dead. The publisher, TSR, had been managed into the ground and the only new material it seemed you were ever likely to see was what you wrote yourself. There were no third party publishers of anything, no retroclones, and TSR had seen to it that gamers were paranoid of putting ANYTHING of their own devising up on the internet lest TSR sue them or at least whack them with another of their infamous Cease & Desist letters.

When WotC came along and pulled D&D out of the wreckage they began by releasing materials that TSR already had in the works at various stages of completeness. Problem was they quickly determined that TSR's approach to the business was fundamentally flawed. They also knew that there were fundamental issues that had accumulated against the rules themselves - failures, missed opportunities, etc. They determined to create a new edition of rules and proceed forward with new material for that, rather than carry on with new materials for older editions.

There were objections. There was a segment of players even then who were staunchly advocating that 1E was the better ruleset, or even OD&D, not 2nd Edition. On internet forums they were commonly derided as Luddites, or just predictable statistical variations... oddballs. Thanks to the growth of the internet as a medium of communication and the well-known playtesting program for the new rules THIS edtion change, unlike the one from 1E to 2E, would be quite visible. Thanks to ENworld, whose very existence arose as an effort to gather information about the new edtiion as it became available, we gamers were not simply presented with a fait accompli. We could comment, critique, and suggest. Some of it may even have been taken to heart in the development. Certain people, even if not staunch fans of a given older edition were VERY resistant to change. Since many elements of 3E were based on concepts learned about RPGs as they had developed over the years some changes were quite "radical" in appearance to someone firmly grounded in 1E/2E.

My own perception is that they were still more of a vocal minority than true sampling of a large resistance. Most people were still happy that D&D was alive AT ALL.

One of the drawbacks to WotC's release of 3E was THEIR approach to selling the game. Their primary experience had been collectible card games: Pokemon, M:tG. It seems undeniable to me that their approach to the rules and how the rules should be presented to the consumer was heavily colored by their success with CCG's. In a massive, but little noticed shift in philosophy I believe they set the stage for the far greater objection to 4E.

1E was a highly organic development - it wasn't really planned or managed. It just sort of happened. It was a collation of new and variations of rules from many sources that Gary assembled into an edition. People still were learning what an RPG could be and should be. One thing that was WELL understood by both "designers" and players was that the rules were just a starting point. You could do with them and TO them whatever you wanted. It was expected. 3E was built from the ground up as a set of rules that demanded to be adhered to. Oh, you could make changes and additions - heck the rules were made open source for that very purpose. But everything else about the rules said that there was a right way and a wrong way. Sage Advice was not about what you could do to solve rules problems but what you were SUPPOSED to do.

It was also overly player-empowering. It was clear that players wanted greater freedom to develop characters in ways not so strictly confined by limited options in the rules, but 3E came to be driven by sales of RULES to the players for that purpose. Over the life of 3E there came a growing dissatisfaction from DM's who saw control of their own campaigns being taken from them. The very premise of humorous cartoons like Knights of the Dinner Table was that, for better or worse, the players could dictate to the DM how he was supposed to run the game. There was also dissatisfaction from players who actually became overwhelmed, drowning in a sea of possibilities. Too much of a good thing. Too much emphasis on manipulation of the system being where the fun was at, too little mention that the game first became popular not because of what shiny new RULES said you could do, but what ROLEPLAYING allowed you to do within the rules.

The release of 3.5 rules was seen to be an inevitable step and was actually planned for. Once the rules were given to the entire gaming world there would be flaws and omissions revealed that even extensive playtesting would not. Testimony reveals that the release of 3.5 rules was... deliberately premature, however. When sales began to plataeu or slide they pushed out the 3.5 rules before they were actually NEEDED as such by the gaming consumer. THIS produced immediate backlash. Backlash not just against the new rules and their changes but against the 3E rules themselves and the changes THEY had made to the game.

Unlike dissatisfaction over previous edition changes, THIS time the dissatisfaction did not die down with time. It became a permanent fixture and even grew with time. Perception of an excessive top-down control over the game that people wanted to play. Too little appreciation for alternative approaches to rules and gameplay. Whatever the individual and collective motivations, dissatisfaction with the current rules and how they had come to be was unalterably established. And into THAT environment the 4E rules were tossed.

Whatever the merits or wrongs of 4E in and of itself are it is no surprise to me that OF COURSE the objection to it is higher than 3E. No matter how good it is, it won't be of benefit at cracking that dissatisfaction, and any failures or inadequacies it has will only serve as proof that dissatisfaction is further warranted. It is no longer a battle that can be won by sheer momentum as it has with past editions. There is too great a spread in what people want from the game for any one edtion to be the cure.

I am not going to take sides on any of the editions, but I'd like to know what you're favorite edition is and why, with facts and feelings and poetry if you really wanted, but not just AD&D and 3e, just in general, your favorite edition and why.

1st Edition AD&D. For all its failings it had the "design philosophy" that the game MUST have permeating it. The individual campaign is controlled by the DM, not dictated by the players. The rules exist to be ignored, altered and added to. You stand in the way of that at your peril, and indeed failure to advocate for that openly and consistently means you're probably doing it wrong. The fun of the game is NOT just about manipulation of the mechanics - certainly not for everyone, and not all the time. Failure to embrace that idea and openly advocate for enjoyment of the game beyond just gaming the system also means you're probably doing it wrong.

MHO

 

[Water Bob]

Nope, there were indeed fewer haters of 3E at the time of its release than of 4E at the time of its release.

From the point of view of someone who stuck with 2E AD&D when 3E came out, I tend to agree. I remember that I felt like almost everyone was adopting 3E, leaving 2E behind, and here was just this small contingent of stubborn 2E AD&Ders who wouldn't budge--but they were definitely the minority.

Then OGL and SRD hit, and it seemed like the entire world blew up with 3E compatible games. The d20 system DOMINATED the market. It didn't matter which game you played, there was usually a d20 version of it. The small fry publishers would either release their games straignt to d20 or have a dual set of rules. Games like Fading Suns and Blue Planet were released in two versions, the house version and the d20 version. If a new game title sprang on the market, chances are it was a d20 game.

As far as fantasy gaming went, you could spend your entire gaming career playing a d20 game and never buy a WotC product. Entire game universes were available, like the Conan RPG, that used the d20 rules but did not require you to have any D&D product.

So, yeah, there was a huge acceptance of 3E back in the day, and it dwarfed the acceptance of 4E.

4E came out, and games like Conan remain with the 3.5E system instead of converting over. And, Pathfinder takes a huge chunk of the market for those who want to stick with a 3.5E style game.

That just didn't happen when 3E came out. There was no massive adherence to 2E, even with the Retro Clone games--they've remained niche markets.

It's hard to ignore the fact that 3E was quite dominate in the market when it came out.

And as to the OP, I don't agree that there were as many 3E haters as there are 4E haters when either game came out.

Just look to the fact that, just after three years of 4E's release, they're already working on 5E. It doesn't look like WotC is going to ride on a decade of 4E's success the way it did with 3E. They're already moving on to another version of the rules.

 

[GreyLord]

I don't recall that actually. I recall there was very little bad blood when 3e initially came out, but within a year 3e had a mass exodus and edition wars beyond ANYTHING I've ever seen with 3e. vs. 4e.

It's funny how much people have forgotten or how they view it through rose tinted glasses. I only assume it's because most of those stating this were 3e fans and not the 3e haters.

There was so much hatred and vile around, entire websites devoted against the 3e movement...or more appropriately to preserving the AD&D roots...sprang up with MUCH more popularity than anything that's sprung up from the 3e movement.

Dragonsfoot was just one of the sites (but perhaps the best known) that came about.

3e seemed to attract those who hated AD&D all along, and drove off those who loved AD&D to begin with...aka...a switch of hands. The rolemaster kids finally won and changed AD&D to...whatever game it was and called it D&D instead.

I know people that still feel so betrayed by WotC and the 3.X series of games, that even stating those terms in their presence is an offense. I haven't met anyone like that in relation to 4e, there are those who say 4e is terrible and one should play 3.X or Pathfinder...but none who will drive you off at gunpoint...at least I haven't met them yet.

The change over to 4e was more like the betrayal many felt at the release of 3.5...or at least what some stated they felt it was a betrayal of. I'd probably put it a notch higher than that anger many felt...but nothing in relation to what the AD&D crowds felt in relation to 3e...at least in my neck of the woods.

Sure, 3e was relatively smooth at original release, but volatile afterwards. I think in some ways the angry reaction was partially what resulted in 3.5 overall. The statement of how broken 3e was and what was so terrible about it by the haters made a hasty release of a "revised" edition (that overall wasn't that much better as far as they were concerned anyways, and tended to make others who loved 3e angry at the revision).

I mean, it was BAD on the boards...and it didn't really die down for a while. You still had malcontents still posting when 4e was announced!

However, from a business perspective, 3e was a GREAT move. The numbers who didn't like or moved away from AD&D because they felt it was flawed appeared to be far greater than those who appeared to be playing AD&D (or at least buying rpg items...) so making a system to draw those people in to play would be far more valuable then continuing the present game. It worked and it sold like hotcakes on an early spring morning.

3.5 wasn't exactly the best thing in my opinion, but it kept up sales. It was an attempt to assuage bad feelings and show that yes...WotC was listening and would adjust things. It went over about as well as a tornado drill...some actually loved it, others just got angry...and those already angry didn't really change their opinions.

4e...I think much of the 4e love actually came from those who were venting right back at the 3.X crowd. They were saying...HA...how does it feel to get yours finally. Some of it were those who genuinely tired of 3e or looking for the next best thing, but I think some of the 4e love that drove 3e players crazy was simply a continuation of the AD&D/3.X spat continuing on.

Anyways, why are we even talking about this junk, it's already apparant that in the long run 3.X won that little war, so why not let bygones be bygones.

 

[Mythmere1]

Which AD&D are we talking about, 1e or 2e? I saw virtually no hate between 2e and 3e, but a fair amount between 1e and 3e.

As Man in the Funny Hat said, I think the very different circumstances between the 2e-3e jump as opposed to the 3e-4e jump made for a different kind of hating. 1e players felt betrayed by the 3e rules, but really not at all betrayed by the company. TSR was dead at that point, and although the 1e players didn't like the 3e rules (and would argue like anything about the quality of the rules, which was where the acrimony came in), I don't think 1e players felt betrayed, just disappointed.

Obviously a LOT of people felt betrayed by the WAY that 4e was sprung out.

My favorite edition is the 3LBBs plus the Greyhawk supplement (minus the paladin class). Also minus the weapon vs. AC chart if that's in GH, but I think it was in Blackmoor.

 

[Philotomy Jurament]

I'd like to know what you're favorite edition is and why

I consider 1e AD&D to be the de facto standard for "this is Dungeons & Dragons." Despite variations, I consider all of the TSR D&D editions to be pretty much the same game, as far as their core rules go. I think WotC D&D broke with that to some degree with 3e, and to a greater degree with 4e.

My favorite edition is probably original D&D (see here), very closely followed (or even entwined with) 1e AD&D. There's a lot of original D&D in my AD&D, and there's a lot of AD&D in my original D&D. That said, if I had to pick one edition to take with me on a desert island, it would be 1e AD&D.

I don't hate 3e or 4e, and I think they're impressively-designed games, but neither of them give me what I'm looking for in D&D.

 

[kitcik]

Just to go a bit further, I feel like 3E is a 1E variant game while 4E is a completely new game with different goals.