Blue Orange
Gone to Texas
Dug up the original quote, it appears to be from Heraclitus, one of the pre-Socratic philosophers:
As with most very old things nobody's quite sure what the original version was, but seems to be some version of "you can't step into the same river twice". The bit about not being the same person seems apocryphal, though it's still very much true.
The Zocchi dice in Dungeon Crawl Classics seem to be an attempt to get some of the experience of playing with 'weird dice' back by coming up with more 'weird dice'. I'll let anyone who's played it comment on how effective it is, but it strikes me as at least a creative attempt to resurrect one of the tactile elements of the experience.
But...yeah. It's not the same game. I wasn't really expecting it to be after all this time. One thing I haven't seen commented on that may be causing some of the resistance is the confusion of the various rule changes after you've seen enough editions. How many feats do I have again? What's my BAB? Oh wait, that doesn't exist anymore. What does a spectre do? Remove levels, give negative ones, or cause exhaustion? What do you call the class with the spellbook that uses Intelligence as its prime requisite--ah, SAD-- again? There's a row of 6 numbers written down here, what comes after Strength, Intelligence or Dexterity again? How does Drow magic resistance work? What's the damage cap on a fireball? I cast Fire Shield and jump into melee--oh wait, it doesn't do any damage anymore. I've got AC 10--oh well, that's always bad.
Heraclitus (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)
plato.stanford.edu
The Zocchi dice in Dungeon Crawl Classics seem to be an attempt to get some of the experience of playing with 'weird dice' back by coming up with more 'weird dice'. I'll let anyone who's played it comment on how effective it is, but it strikes me as at least a creative attempt to resurrect one of the tactile elements of the experience.
But...yeah. It's not the same game. I wasn't really expecting it to be after all this time. One thing I haven't seen commented on that may be causing some of the resistance is the confusion of the various rule changes after you've seen enough editions. How many feats do I have again? What's my BAB? Oh wait, that doesn't exist anymore. What does a spectre do? Remove levels, give negative ones, or cause exhaustion? What do you call the class with the spellbook that uses Intelligence as its prime requisite--ah, SAD-- again? There's a row of 6 numbers written down here, what comes after Strength, Intelligence or Dexterity again? How does Drow magic resistance work? What's the damage cap on a fireball? I cast Fire Shield and jump into melee--oh wait, it doesn't do any damage anymore. I've got AC 10--oh well, that's always bad.