[EDITION WARZ] Selling Out D&D's Soul?

[MerricB]

There is definitely more of a "DM versus player" vibe than "a group of friends all trying to have fun together" vibe from a lot of what I read online...

The trouble is that you only hear of the problems online, not of all the groups that were happily playing along. If the 'net had been around during 1E, you'd had heard related talk.

Look at Gary Gygax discussing the problems of Monty Haul DMs and Killer DMs in the AD&D DMG! The issues of player vs. DMs have been around for a long, long time. Hackmaster, with its DM vs Players set up isn't aping 3e... no, it's classic AD&D, I'm afraid.

The difference now is that people have quick and responsive forums to air their grievances.

3E codifies its rules to a greater extent than AD&D, certainly, but AD&D itself is the result of a greater codification of its rules than oD&D. When you have tournament play, then a rules base that everyone can agree on is paramount! It's fine for the DM to make up rules for his or her personal group, but once that DM is running a group of strangers, having a rule to resolve if a fighter can climb a cliff is suddenly useful.

Then too, D&D has always been an evolving game, with new subsystems being added (and discarded) ever since it was released. AD&D is something really strange in that it represented something that Gary put together with a lot of suggestions from his friends, but never played -as is-. (I have a feeling that 2E's initiative system is a lot closer to what Gary used!)

Cheers!

 

[Thurbane]

Okay: coherent + comprehensive = more fun

Sorry, should have posted valid mathematical formula, rather than a subjective personal opinion formatted as a mathematical formula.

I'm sorry, I just don't see that more comprehensive and coherent rules automatically equals more fun. It certainly helps, but does not automatically equate. That would be like saying Chess has more complex rules than Checkers, therefore must be more fun.

Perhaps coherent wasn't the right word. Gah, I always have trouble getting my point across properly.

 

[Crothian]

Sorry, should have posted valid mathematical formula, rather than a subjective personal opinion formatted as a mathematical formula.

I'm sorry, I just don't see that more comprehensive and coherent rules automatically equals more fun. It certainly helps, but does not automatically equate. That would be like saying Chess has more complex rules than Checkers, therefore must be more fun.

This is all subjective personal opinion, and that equation doesn't even represent mine. I think you are getting hung up by the marketing words as if they are fact. It's like any commercial on the TV not a scientific conclusion.

 

[Thurbane]

Merric, very good points.

Crothian, also good point - but actually I wasn't referring to the ad campaign, rather the opinion I see from some people here and elsewhere that there is some definable way of proving 3E is superior to earlier editions.

I will readily admit I'm a little defensive of 1E & 2E, since they were my bread and butter for more than 15 years - it just irks me when some people complain about the problems in earlier editions when these problems are from a totally subjective point of view.

Classic example - awarding XP and arranging encounters in 1E/2E and the CR/XP system of 3E/3.5E. I constantly see people saying how terrible the older systems were, whereas I find the new system much worse for my groups purposes. Again, highly subjective.

 

[Crothian]

Crothian, also good point - but actually I wasn't referring to the ad campaign, rather the opinion I see from some people here and elsewhere that there is some definable way of proving 3E is superior to earlier editions.

So what? In the end you are not going to convince them that they are wrong. Just like if I tried my darnest I could not prove to Diaglo the greatness of d02. There are thousands of different thoughts on D&D and here on EN World there are twice that because it is the internet and people make things up and act with out consequance here. I've played many editions of the game, had fun with all of them. And no one can ever take that away from me. Until I get alzheimer's that is.

 

[Destil]

Firelance, wonderful rewording, even though I don't entirely agree with it. Well done!

Dungeondelver, you've about got it right with the "now now now" idea.

One other big difference is in how the party is "supposed" to be built. Older editions didn't seem to care if you had 4 or 14 characters in the party, or if each player played 1, 2, or 5 PC's at a time; there seemed to be more of a drop-the-puck and go to it mentality and the DM could figure out the rest. Now, the game is designed around a group of 4 players running a party of 4 characters, preferably one of each main class (Fi,Wi,Cl,Ro), having 4 or 5 encounters a day before resting...feels much more like prepackaged engineered fun.

Lanefan

No. The older editions didn't give you any advice at all. This is a point I see people constantly making about 3E and it's just wrong, the same thing with the idea of a standard GP wealth valve.

Old Editions of the game gave you almost nothing. You'd know that the adventure was for however many players of whatever level. That's it. No information on class, no information on how many magical items they should have.

The CR & GP systems in 3.X does not say "You must have 4 PCs in each class." It lets you know that a CR 12 encounter will take about 1/4th of the resources for such a group at 12th level. That's it! I never get how people campaign about this. It's information, not adventure design for morons. You can’t just drop 2+1d4 CR encounters of EL (Party Level-2 + 1d4) into an area expect a good adventure. All the system is designed to do is to let you know the relative power of various monsters.

The same thing for the GP valve. The DM is under no obligation to give out treasure based on the tables. But it's nice to know that "hey, when we say this encounter / adventure is balanced for a 4th level party we assume they have 1,500 GP of magical items each, just so you know".

The ‘problem’ only arises when there's an expectation by the players that there will be so much treasure, that they will face encounters designed for the classic 4, that they will gain levels so fast... These are all play style decisions. These are issues within a gaming group, flaws in the system. I'll be the first to amid that issues with player expectation are worse by these assumptions, but all the info given on how the system works in the DMG makes it very easy to change these to suit your group.

I'll agree that the way the rules are presented can lead to powers with "Player Over Empowerment", and this is part of them. But I really get sick of people reading to much into these assumptions: knowing what assumptions went into CR and EL are not a flaw in the game, they're a huge strength. There's a lot of room, I think, for a product that looks at the basic assumptions made by the core rules and tries to guide a DM through adventure/campaign/world design if they change them (does the DMG2 cover this at all?).

In earlier editions if you had a party with no magical healing can you throw more back to back encounters at them than a party all made up of mult/dual class clerics? Absolutely? Can you do the same in 3E? Absolutely!

 

[FireLance]

Is that something you just wrote? If so, I am in awe.

No need for awe. I wrote it a couple of years ago in response to this thread.

 

[Silver Moon]

No. The older editions didn't give you any advice at all.....Old Editions of the game gave you almost nothing.

I'm afraid I'm going to have to disagree with you about that. The vast majority of the first 60 issues or so of Dragon Magazine are primarily advice. The AD&D1E DMG is packed full of advice. Gaming conventions and gaming stores were also great sources for advice as well, especially given the limited number of modules initially available. It was very easy to find somebody who had run the slaver series, giant series or drow series before who would give you tips and suggestions.

 

[Glyfair]

The trouble is that you only hear of the problems online, not of all the groups that were happily playing along. If the 'net had been around during 1E, you'd had heard related talk.

In fact, if you read the letter columns (and later forum column) in Dragon magazine from the time, you'll see the related talk.

 

[Hussar]

I'm afraid I'm going to have to disagree with you about that. The vast majority of the first 60 issues or so of Dragon Magazine are primarily advice. The AD&D1E DMG is packed full of advice. Gaming conventions and gaming stores were also great sources for advice as well, especially given the limited number of modules initially available. It was very easy to find somebody who had run the slaver series, giant series or drow series before who would give you tips and suggestions.

The problem with that is, there are vastly more gamers that have never been to a convention than those who did. There are also a large majority of gamers whose only contact with other gamers back then was in the pages of Dragon. If you happened not to subscribe, then, you were pretty much SOL trying to find anyone who knew anything about the game other than the people you already played with.

While the 1e DMG is packed with advice, it is written in such a dense and almost erratic manner that trying to plow through it is a chore in and of itself. While I loved 1e in the day, I was never a fan of Gygax's writing style. IMO, one should not coin new terms in a rulebook without defining them at least once somewhere in the book.

Maybe it's because I didn't live in an area with lots of gamers. Unless you had access to some pretty select areas of the country, there was pretty much no help forthcoming.