Define "___-edition feel"?

[Mystery Man]

I knew this would turn into an "Edition Wars" thread sooner or later, with all the usual arguments like "3e is more rollplaying than roleplaying!" and "3e modules are nothing but mindless dungeon crawls!"

This is why I never read these threads......aw damn.

*sound of glass breaking as he jumps out window, sound of helicopter rising up from the side of building, hangs on to landing rail for dear life as he flies away*

 

[Belen]

Throw me in for 3e is more video-gaming for a 1000, Alex.

 

[jasper]

1. Rules is good but we don't need no stinking rules. (but if you travel alot lots of heart ache learning that group rules)
2. Rules is good but here are some prefab story lines and worlds. (but if you don't like how the story lines develop tough).
3. You WILL follow the rules. See our ex employees for flavor and modules. (good but dry).

I have seen and been in all types of feel mention here hack steal repeat, to topple the crime load, to cool a +3 vorpal weapon everyone be on alert because some in this floor is going to need this.

 

[Sir Whiskers]

The faster leveling of 3e was intentional. WotC's research found that the average D&D campaign lasts for 12-18 months, with about 4 sessions per month. So, if there are 4 combat encounters per session, the players will level up at a rate of about 1 level per month, and will be able to expirience a wide range of levels before the campaign ends.

An interesting side-effect of this decision - combined with the density of the 3.0/3.5 rules system - is that many players haven't mastered a class before they level. I suspect many of the complaints about high-level play are prompted by this lack of familiarity with the classes and their abilities. With the white box/1E rules, a player could master a class, as advancement was much slower, and the classes were much simpler.

I'm not saying either way is inherently better - just noting one effect of the new edition.

 

[diaglo]

I'm not saying either way is inherently better - just noting one effect of the new edition.

you don't have to say it. but i will.

OD&D(1974) is the only true game. All the other editions are just poor imitations of the real thing.

 

[woodelf]

the paladin pokemount being the most egregious example of this i can think ofthe paladin pokemount being the most egregious example of this i can think of

To be fair, that's 3.5e not 3e.

And it aggravates you enough that you have to list it twice.

Anyway, i'm still of two minds over whether or not to lump D&D3E and D&D3.5E together when talking about broad things like feel or mechanical complexity or the like. On the one hand, WotC likes to pretend they're the same game, and there *are* a lot of samenesses between them. OTOH, there are some significant differences, even if they are small in their direct impact, that might add up ot significant overall differences--things like animal companions (druid, ranger, and paladin), instant-death spells, etc. So, for the most part, i think they should be lumped together, even when that "unfairly" taints 3E with a 3.5E stupidness. After all, plenty of people blame AD&D2, as a whole, for the Complete Elf's Handbook.

 

[woodelf]

double post--snip

 

[woodelf]

Levelling is more rapid, and hence more common, in 3E. Consequently, high level characters (PC and NPC) are more common. 18th level archmages capable of casting meteor swarm are more common. Hence they are less "special" and valuable. In 1E an 18th level archmage was really something special; in 3E they do not seem that special at all.

Agreed. I ran an 8+yr AD&D1/2 campaign, weekly games, 8+hr sessions. I used goal-oriented XP awards, rather than monster&treasure XP, but i pegged the totals to be as high or higher than they'd be getting from the latter (and for really significant opponents, added monster XP on top of that). And over the course of the last year of play, most of the PCs went from 6th to 7th or 8th level--and that was just typical rate of advancement, IME. [In fairness, if any character had actually been there for the entire campaign, she probably would've reached at least 13th level over those 8 yrs, but there was enough character turnover (much of it voluntary) that i don't think anyone hit 10th.]

And no one complained. Now, maybe this was partly because it was what everyone was used to, but no one really wanted to level any more quickly than that. Once they reached around 5th level (and thus were fairly competent), they mostly seemed to be much more interested in in-game gains (allies, magic items, spells, equipment, reputation, money) than levelling.

But you are quite right that an advantage of 3E is that different groups can adopt different rates of progression to suit their needs. So it is possible for DMs to impose some "fiscal prudence" to their campaigns' power levels.

Huh? Why is it any easier to adjust progression rate in 3E than 1/2 ed? In either case, you simply adjust XP awards up or down in some manner.

 

[woodelf]

The artwork in the 3rd edition rulebooks is about as anime as Norman Rockwell.

Well, that migth be overstating the case. There definitely has been some idea flow from Anime, through videogames, to D&D3E. But the new "dungeonpunk" D&D art style is mostdefinitely not Anime, by any stretch. It lacks almost all of the defining characteristics that i pick up on, and has quite a few qualities that are anathema to Anime as i've always seen it (lack of action being one of those).

The rest of your post is strictly opinion, and thus I won't argue with it. Personally, I find the artwork and layout of the 3e rulebooks to be far superior to the artwork and layout of previous editions. I'll take Todd Lockwood, Wayne Reynolds, and Sam Wood over artists like Earl Otus and Larry Elmore any day.

His post may have been strictly opinion, but claims that the 3E books have poor layout are not. Every book on good design and/or typography that i've read would tell you that a lot of the things D&D3E does are very poor design: underlines that are strong enough to obscure lettershapes; close textwraps around images that make for very awkward lines (which sometimes get visually lost in the image); tables and other blocks of text that are not clearly set off from the main text; text over too-high-of-contrast images; inconsistent use of chapter splash pages; and some other things that don't come immediately to mind. The 3.5E books are slightly better, but still pretty awful. And that doesn't even get into issues of organization and editing. It's really pretty shameful how someone with the money and expertise of WotC can put out such sub-par books. Oh, sorry, started to slip into rant mode. I'll just end it here.

 

[Dark Jezter]

Levelling is more rapid, and hence more common, in 3E. Consequently, high level characters (PC and NPC) are more common. 18th level archmages capable of casting meteor swarm are more common. Hence they are less "special" and valuable. In 1E an 18th level archmage was really something special; in 3E they do not seem that special at all.

The DM decides how many 18th level archmage NPCs there are or not. If the DM makes it so there's an 18th level archmage standing on every street corner, then yes, they are more common and less special than they used to be. Nothing in the 3e rules that states that 18th level archmages are commonplace.

There is nothing preventing a 3e DM from making 18th level archmages extremely rare, just as there is nothing preventing a 1e DM from hiding a high-level mage behind every tree and bush.

Similar points have been made about the differences between 1E FR and 3E FR. Terms like "magic inflation" and "power inflation" have been used to describe the differences between these editions of FR. (I never used FR much, so I cannot comment on the details here; it is just interesting to note that others have made similar observations about this difference between the editions.)

Powerful NPCs like Elminster and the Seven Sisters have been around since the beginning of Forgotten Realms.

This is a signficant difference between 1E and 3E (I guess that 2E is somewhere inbetween; aside from the Baldur's Gate games I never played it).

Consequence?

Playing 1E has a "feel" more like a Leiber or Vance novel. Playing 3E has a "feel" more like Final Fantasy (or some other video/computer game).

This does not mean that 3E rules do not make more sense. They do. And it is certainly possible to tweak 3E in certain ways to recreate the 1E "feel" in one's campaign. (And of course some people actually *prefer* Final Fantasy to reading Leiber or Vance :\ .)

Yes, yes. I've heard all the "3e feels like a video game" arguments before. It's a common line of reasoning used by 1e/2e adherents and fans of other systems like GURPS or World of Darkness to make 3e sound adolescent or silly. The rationale behind it is usually this...

1) Video games are somehow a lower form of entertainment than RPGs.
2) 3e places emphasis on internal rules consistancy and balance, much like many video games.
3) Therefore, 3e resembles a video game and is less sophisticated than (Insert RPG system of choice here).

The fact that your players are still happy to go up levels does not invalidate this point. Hell, I am still happy when I find a ten dollar bill, even though it is worth a lot less than a ten dollar bill twenty years ago.

But you are quite right that an advantage of 3E is that different groups can adopt different rates of progression to suit their needs. So it is possible for DMs to impose some "fiscal prudence" to their campaigns' power levels.

Indeed, and my fiscal prudence intends to avoid tedium and keep the game exciting by not having my players work for months to gain a single level.