Discontinuity: 3e and D&D

[Gentlegamer]

Sorry, but, uh, where are you getting that I shunned AD&D "back in the day"?

My comment wasn't to you specifically, but to those who have said "d20 is what brought me back to the game."

 

[Gentlegamer]

What does Akrasia know? He doesn't even play D&D, so he has no ground to stand on. Why is he even arguing?

Ahem. If you're playing d20, you're not playing D&D, either.

 

[Akrasia]

What does Akrasia know? He doesn't even play D&D, so he has no ground to stand on. Why is he even arguing?

Quasqueton

What are you talking about? :\

I first played D&D in 1979. I have played every edition except 2nd edition AD&D. I have run two extended 3e campaigns (both lasted approximately a year each, and both were very successful, at least according to the players).

You don't know anything about me. Do you just get your rocks off by making ungrounded ad hominem attacks?
:\

 

[ColonelHardisson]

Eh. I don't agree. It's not a fundamentally different game.

The reason to emphasize the difference is primarily because it is easy to assume that mechanical minutia is the same (no class has more than 11 HD, and lightning bolts rebound if they strike a solid barrier, and dwarves can't be wizards, right?) When, in fact, we are still doing the same sorts of things we always were, just with a greater degree of self-consistency and less of the minutia points that were a more prevalent characteristic of prior version of the game. We're still cutting things with longswords, elves still detect secret doors, lightning bolts still do d6 per level, and clerics still heal. Still fundamentally D&D.

Drat. Of course you'd post what I wanted to say, but much better.

When I first looked over 3e, I was struck by how the core game still seemed like D&D to me, simply smoothed out - AC became the number you needed "to hit" (a no-brainer that took, what, 20 some-odd years to figure out), classes were balanced against each other to make any one of them fun to play without being greatly overshadowed by another, and the agme was made in a modular way so as to be easy to customize - which we had done all along, but now we were being helped with it by the designers themselves, who had grown up playing the game like we had, and knew what was needed.

Yeah, OK, so there are some new twists - but many of them turn out to be a return to D&D's roots in war gaming. Fundamentally different? Naw. It's the same game, just cleaned up and with more than a nod to its progenitors, like Chainmail.

 

[Akrasia]

... When I first looked over 3e, I was struck by how the core game still seemed like D&D to me ....

Heh. I was struck by how much the core game seemed like MERP to me. (Not an insult -- I loved MERP!)

 

[Dark Jezter]

Discontinuity: Hamburger and Whopper

In a recent thread on how to introduce the Whopper to a person familiar only with the traditional hamburger, many posters recommended that it would be best to advise this person to approach the Whopper as an entirely new type of food. This struck me as eminently sensible advice. Yet, much to my surprise, many people were upset by this sage counsel -- they thought that it implied that the Whopper was 'not a hamburger'.

Leaving aside the fact that this perceived 'insult' was nonexistent, I think that this advice was entirely correct -- the Whopper is a fundamentally different meal from any pre-whopper version of the hamburger (including the deluxe hamburger, the cheeseburger, the bacon cheeseburger, the Big Mac, the quarter pounder, the double quarter pounder, etc). Indeed, the sesame seed bun system of the Whopper appears to have been lifted wholesale from the Big Mac (replace the in-between bun with mayo and you have a Whopper), and IME eating a Whopper has a lot more in common with eating a Big Mac than a regular hamburger.

That quibble aside, the red ripe tomatoes, crisp lettuce, creamy mayonnaise, ketchup, crunchy pickles, etc., all manifestly demonstrate radical breaks from earlier versions of the hamburger.

In short, I think it is entirely appropriate -- and, more importantly, intellectually honest -- to point out that the Whopper is a fundamentally different type of food from the traditional hamburger. It is a different meal -- plain and simple. This is not necessarily a bad thing -- obviously lots of people (including most people who post here) prefer the Whopper over earlier versions of the hamburger. But to suggest otherwise is simply incorrect.

(And don't give me any of that "the Whopper still has a ground beef patty..." rubbish. So did/do a lot of other sandwiches!)

This is the truth. Accept it.

(Finally, this is not an 'sandwich war' claim. I happen to like regular hamburger more than the Whopper, but I would take the Whopper over a Big Mac any day... My point is an empirical one, not a normative one.)

 

[Kanegrundar]

What I find interesting is that to those who shunned AD&D back in the day it is very important that the current game "really" be D&D, as if it is a lesser game if it "isn't really D&D." Perhaps they are more attached to the name then they realize . . .

I honestly couldn't give a rat's backside about the D&D name, but that doesn't change that 3E is still D&D. I play the same types of games now as I did before my frustration with the 2E rules drove me away. The main difference now is that I'm having fun not only playing (as I did with earlier editions) but I'm having that fun with a system I don't have to patch or rework all the time.

Kane

 

[Patryn of Elvenshae]

Dark Jezter wins.

 

[weasel fierce]

Its all D&D... Its just not the same D&D.

I dont see why its hard to accept that they are wildly different games, while still being D&D. And if its all the same, why should I buy the new one ?

 

[Rasyr]

A number of people have made this point. But as Rasyr pointed out, by this logic, one could claim that GURPS is 'D&D' too, if you run it the right way (with clerics, wizards, fireballs, etc.).

Which goes back to my claim of a few months ago....

D&D is not actually any specific set of rules, but a genre or specific style of play.

I came up with the above after Taflon Billy and TGryph both made comments to the effect of "HARP does D&D better than d20 does", along with a few other comments made elsewhere and by others.

My point being that "D&D" has become so ingrained into the roleplaying community that it has transcended the rules, that it is now a genre or style of play much like Space Opera, Low Fantasy, High Fantsay or any other style/genre you can come up with.