Reply to thread

Message

<blockquote data-quote="WayneLigon" data-source="post: 4531980" data-attributes="member: 3649">So far, I've viewed each edition of D&amp;D as an upgrade, a substantive introduction of elements that are measurable, readily-observable improvements to what was written before.We have OD&amp;D. People wanted more quantified rules. We got 1E. 2E took 1E and streamlined it mostly in ways that people were already doing. They didn't go as far as they should have, but they made baby steps in the direction that other games were going: they added more character customization and took away many of the limiting thing in 1E that most people never used anyway. 3E took it even further: much more customization, more player control, a fairly decent skill system, etc.4E, I'm not so sure. The big advance here is, of course, the death of the Vancian casting. What it was replaced with is not really all that much better, though. And we still have classes, hit points, and several other things that other games have long since given up. So it's more like the 1e-2e tune-up upgrade in some respects than the much more substantive improvements between 1e and 3e.I would say that at some point, most games have to make some primary changes to how they work in order to meet customer expectations of what a modern game is suppossed to be. In other words, to continue to make improvements, at some point a game has to become 'a new game'. The only game I can think of that has made almost no core changes at all from 1st to 6th edition is Call of Cthulhu.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="WayneLigon, post: 4531980, member: 3649"] So far, I've viewed each edition of D&D as an upgrade, a substantive introduction of elements that are measurable, readily-observable improvements to what was written before. We have OD&D. People wanted more quantified rules. We got 1E. 2E took 1E and streamlined it mostly in ways that people were already doing. They didn't go as far as they should have, but they made baby steps in the direction that other games were going: they added more character customization and took away many of the limiting thing in 1E that most people never used anyway. 3E took it even further: much more customization, more player control, a fairly decent skill system, etc. 4E, I'm not so sure. The big advance here is, of course, the death of the Vancian casting. What it was replaced with is not really all that much better, though. And we still have classes, hit points, and several other things that other games have long since given up. So it's more like the 1e-2e tune-up upgrade in some respects than the much more substantive improvements between 1e and 3e. I would say that at some point, most games have to make [I]some [/I]primary changes to how they work in order to meet customer expectations of what a modern game is suppossed to be. In other words, to continue to make improvements, at some point a game has to become 'a new game'. The only game I can think of that has made almost no core changes at all from 1st to 6th edition is Call of Cthulhu. [/QUOTE]

Verification