Did someone declare January "Edition Wars" month?

[tx7321]

Q: "So lets hope ENWorld can take those steps and become a bigger and stronger internet community because of it. It is literally up to us individual posters to make it happen."

Well said! This is not a site only for 3E. All versions are and should be welcome, and I think the vast majority of 3E players have recently proven to be very welcoming to us "outsiders" in this way. I hope more 1E players find ENworld and start calling it there home. Not to create a camp to cause friction, but instead to solidify an identity and a place to create bridges between the players of different D&D versions. There is no reason DF posters should feel unwelcome at ENworld, just as there is no reason to expect ENworld posters to feel unwelcome at DF. If 4E becomes the smash its likely to, we will all soon be OOPs (to WOTC anyway) and at least will have that in common.

 

[Treebore]

Depends on what you mean by "many." WotC has stated before that all the other roleplaying game systems combined aren't enough to constitute a meaningful blip on their radar compared to D&D.

I think that was before the release of C&C, but I've certainly never seen anything to convince me that C&C has been a runaway success that's significantly eating at D&D's market share.

The thing about market surveys is that they are only as good as the responses you get. So people that didn't stay with 2e, or jump onto the 3E bandwagon, could not be reached for comment, literally.

Plus even I have been shocked at how many websites, and groups, that are about other edtions of D&D. Those sites and groups are completely ignorant of 3E, because they see no reason to buy something they have no interest in.

Plus I know thousands are playing C&C. I was kind of bumbed for a while because only a couple of dozen of us post at the C&C boards. Then one of the board members showed me links to a bunch of sites where groups were playing C&C and having nothing to do with the messageboards, so I felt better. Then people started sporadically showing up on the boards saying how they have "discovered C&C". Like just yesterday a guy did just that, and then two or three more jumped into his thread to announce their existance.

The only other evidence to suggest a lot of people is I know the Trolls are making more money off of C&C then they ever did on anything they did for d20. Just to buy the printers they bought would have required thousands of copies of the C&C PH and M&T to have been sold. Many thousands.

So yeah, it may not be a blip big enough for WOTC to worry about or pay attention to. But it does exist, and how big it is cannot be determined, only estimated.

 

[The_Old_one]

I always felt that the (hollow) "Greyhawk as default setting again!" and cosmetic touches like reusing the dungeon from the DUNGEON MASTER'S GUIDE and other little things were just...bluh. I mean if that was their idea of "reaching out" to old school gamers then...well, thanks for the cookie, I guess.

I don't see it as reaching out to old school gamers, so much as they were using the stuff from earlier editions that they figured newer gamers would like. WoTC made the right call by trying to appeal to new blood and revitalise the gaming hobby IMO.

Little things like that irritate the hell out of me about WotC. I mean, they recently published the maps from G1, G2 and G3 on their own website like they're these cool, awesome things - and there is absolutely no context given for them at all. Not "These maps were originally used in ... " or "Gary Gygax designed these fiendish giant lairs for the ... "

Well, that's because they are meant to be 'generic' maps for use as the DM sees fit when posted on the site. There's no need to mention the original purpose, especially since the original adventures just dropped random monsters on the maps anyway.
It would have been courteous to mention Gygax and his original adventures, but they chose to present the maps as a tool for anyone to use, not a reprisal of the G series.

As evidenced by many people in this particular forum, there's folks who didn't start playing D&D until far, far later than a lot of us, and I think things like reposting the maps without any background is a huge disservice to them, because they are totally without any context at all.

Naah, it's not a disservice, just giving gamers another toy to play with.

I've said it before, d20 D&D doesn't "feel right" to me as a rulesystem because it isn't really a bridge back to my style of gaming. It's a bridge to bring in your Forgotten Realms/Dragonlance/started-playing-with-2e folks. While I recognize that they can't be shut out (folks bought a lot of FR stuff - myself included if you count a couple gold box games for my C64!), I wish there'd been a hell of a lot more for me in d20 D&D.

This final point is something that's often bothered me about old school gamers...how does the system affect your playstyle? My games using 3.5 are still run with the same sense of fun, adventure and style as my 2e games, and even my old basic D&D campaign from waaaay back when.
The only real difference is that 3.x is much more effective mechanically when it comes to resolving conflicts, and less fidgety and reliant on DM fiat.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

It will be interesting to see how many 3E players jump to 4E and leave 3E behind as an old memory. I wouldn't be surprised to see an upswing in the popularity of C&C and 1E either once 4E pops in...to the point that it equals the number still playing 3E? Probably not, but the 2 groups will move closer in number as 4E gobbles up the market.

It'll also move them closer in number to the number of Tunnels & Trolls players.

I wouldn't assume there's going to be a noticeable upswing in C&C players. As well-regarded as that game is, it's a niche product and it's competing in many ways with True20 and other niche products in the shadow of D20, rightly or wrongly.

And as for 4E causing people to abandon 3E to go back to 1E -- I think that's a bizarre notion at best. The handful of people who do that were likely to go back to 1E anyway. More likely is that people who wanted to stay with 3E will do so, using OGL and D20 materials to do so. I imagine there's going to be a fork created when 4E comes out, as third party publishers step up and happily offer alternatives to allow groups to continue playing 3E indefinitely, much like OSRIC allows people to keep chugging along with 1E. (Pity the 2E diehards, no one loves them! )

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Well said! This is not a site only for 3E. All versions are and should be welcome, and I think the vast majority of 3E players have recently proven to be very welcoming in this way.

The real issue is the minority of people whose first posts are deliberately provocative: "Here's 10 reasons 3E sucks" and the like. If you go to a site, join the community and start off by talking about how badly whatever's most popular there sucks, you're going to be met with a certain degree of disdain at best.

The old school martyr crowd is either missing these threads or not getting that it's pretty natural they'd have the effect they do. (And there's certainly a portion of that crowd knowing full well the reaction they'll get.)

 

[tx7321]

Why would you assume this to be true?

History.

 

[Treebore]

No. I mean that it might take the strengths of various editions and wrap them up in mechanics that don't remove them. I think that the 3e combat system & bloated stat blocks remove two great strengths of 1e play -- fast adventure writing, and fast play. However, I'd hate to see the great strengths of 3e -- diverse, complex characters and greater diversity in the way creature attacks are handled -- disappear in the wash.

(I like the idea of a unified mechanic, where it seems appropriate, but have no objection to subsystems. To me, elegance is not the be-all and end-all of rpg design.)

Very much why I like C&C. Plus I am able to use as much of 3E as I want, easily. Like with the monsters. When I pull them from the 3E books I cut off what I don't want but I am able to keep what I do want. So I feel like I have the best of all worlds.

Which I do, because I am literally able to use any class variation or monster variation, spell variation, magic item variation, magic item creation variation I want to use from any edition of D&D, and with C&C it works.


What can I say? It makes me a happy gamer.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

History.

History suggests that, when an edition goes out of print, some people, instead of continuing to play that version quite happily, spontaneously decide to go back several more versions to play something REALLY out of print?

Were there a lot of jilted 2E players going back to OD&D, then?

 

[Maggan]

Maybe nothing like the million or so who may play 3E, but it is definitely in the thousands. I consider thousands to be a lot of people. So I think that is a very valid card to play. Not moot.

Well, I think that any card that is valued at "thousands" that can be countered directly by a card saying "millions" is a badly played card. The thing here is not the number of people playing what ever edition, it's the use of that unsubstantial "many" or "lots" to bolster ones argumentation.

But what the heck. Keep playing them cards.

And speaking of cards. Sure, Dragon has but a circulation of 50 000 or so. But where else would tx7321 have gotten his information about the new edition? Where did he read the "promises" of WotC that they never delivered on?

Could be online, I guess. I don't know what online prescence WotC had at that time.

The point being that I'm actually surprised that tx7321 managed to stay informed enough about D&D3e through WotC channels (ie "they promised everything to everyone") while at the same time staying totally ignorant of the changes that were being made.

He can't have the cake and eat it too. Either he read what WotC was saying, online, or in Dragon or where ever, or he didn't. And WotC was very clear in their communication as to what D&D3e was to become. In fact, it's often cited as one of the main reasons why the release was so successful.

So I could have played a weak card, but I don't think it's been countered just yet.

/M

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

I have to agree. You can dislike many things about 3E, but lack of information from WotC about what to expect seems like a strange complaint. Between Dragon, the Web site and Eric Noah, my group pretty much knew exactly what we'd be seeing the moment we opened the PHB.