Has 3E become too much like 2E yet?

[Cactot]

Speaking as someone who *consistently* drops 10-15 pounds in two months when he eats mostly fast food rather than mostly home-cooked or, -gulp- sit-down restaurant food on a regular basis, I find this downright laughable. The food at McDonald's may not be terribly healthy, but the portions are about a third of what you would get at a sit-down restaurant; because of the way food is packaged in grocery stores, you face a similar situation there if you're buying for 2-3 people.

Anyway, my biggest problems with 2e were inherent to the core rules, specifically to the poor fit of the AD&D mechanics to the kind of game 2e seemed to want to be. I like the kind of game 2e seemed to want to be. It made for some wonderful settings, produced some great sessions/stories, and the basis for the kind of electronic games I prefer to tabletop RPGs (specifically, JRPGs); but, the AD&D rules were pretty much antithetical to that style of play. When 3e launched with its back to the dungeon, 1e style with modern rules flavor, it was a breath of fresh air because the game was actually designed to meet its design goals.

Comparing 3e and 2e, the sheer volume of material isn't even close; I wager that's the case with just core/Greyhawk content even if you excise the other settings.

wowzers, you must exercise a LOT, be a big fella, or eat a ton when your at normal eateries = ) that is an AVERAGE of 625 cal/day - 937.5 cal/day deficit to lose that much weight in 2 months.

an average meal (quarter pounder w/cheeze, medium fries, medium coke) is 1100 calories, significantly more than that if you dont put a lot of ice in your soda. In order to be at a 625-937.5 cal defiict per day, you must either eat only one meal per day, or you must regularly do something that involves a huge energy expenditure.




Back to the topic, although there was lots of garbage for 2e, it was all worthwhile as there were some awesome things also... combat and tactics, complete paladin, planescape, deitys and pantheons, etc. The same holds true for 3e, all the other things are worth it if just for the Tome of battle, PHB2, and a few others.

 

[Seeten]

I have a feeling your experience with fast food is far from typical.

In any case, my criticism (by way of hyperbolic analogy) was actually directed at WotC, not McDonald's (I'll leave that to Eric Schlosser). My complaint is not so much that WotC are publishing books full of rules that I will never use, but that they *aren't* publishing books that I *would* use -- which is to say, books that are primarily concerned with the elements of the game I am primarily interested in: setting, story, and character development, as opposed to the, er, "statistical optimization" of characters.

A lot of folks have been chiming in here to say that the 3E splats have better rules content than the 2E splats ever did, and I certainly don't dispute that. I, on the other hand, am mostly concerned with fluff, and find that aspect of the 3E splats unimaginative and boring. YMMV.

Happily, they are, instead, publishing books designed for me.

I am more than capable of using my imagination to come up with setting and fluff, but making up rulesets and systems whole cloth? I might be good at it, but no one is paying me to do it.

Therefore, keep up the toolkits, and keep the fluff to a minimum, please.

 

[Blackwind]

Happily, they are, instead, publishing books designed for me.

I am more than capable of using my imagination to come up with setting and fluff, but making up rulesets and systems whole cloth? I might be good at it, but no one is paying me to do it.

Therefore, keep up the toolkits, and keep the fluff to a minimum, please.

Oh, yes, happily indeed... You make an interesting point, though -- obviously there are a lot of DMs who use the 3.x rules supplements and homebrew settings, plots, NPCs, et al., some of whom are not interested in buying other people's fluff. On the other hand, there are a lot of DMs who really enjoy using published settings and adventures.

As a DM, one of my issues with the 3.x ruleset is that its rules-heavy and statistics-intensive nature means that the 'rulesy' aspects of game prep (statting out NPCs, calculating ELs, etc) take up way too much of my time -- and they're not very much fun, either. This leaves me with less time and energy to work on the aspects of game prep that I do like: the aforementioned setting, plot, and character development. That's why I tried using Eberron (and published modules for Eberron) in the first place. Needless to say, I burned out on that pretty quickly because it took all the fun out of DMing (for me). Now I'm back to homebrewing.

In other words, I too "am perfectly capable of using my imagination to come up with setting and fluff," but I also like to read other people's work for inspiration. I do not find poorly written, rules-heavy splatbooks to be terribly inspiring.

For me, this may come down to a general dissatisfaction with the system (i.e., the 3.x ruleset). I was very enthusiastic when 3.0 came out, and made the switch to 3.5 without too much griping. I own a good number of rules and setting supplements both from WotC and third parties. But the more I DM 3.x, the less I like it.

So, has 3E become too much like 2E? In some ways yes, in some ways no. IMO the similarity is that there are a lot of crappy supplements being published, but the supplements are crappy in different ways. In general, you could say that the 2E splatbooks had decent fluff and really, really bad crunch. The 3E splatbooks have decent crunch and very little fluff at all -- and what fluff there is, is pretty lame.

 

[jeffh]

"Japanese RPG." Technically not 100% accurate (there have been a handful of US or European-produced examples of the style, though most aren't very good), but probably more accurate than "console RPG" since so many essentially PC-style games have appeared, often first or exclusively, on the X-Box systems.

It refers to a game trading on its strong story and characterization, which are revealed to the player in a linear manner, rather emphasizing non-linearity and player choice.

Ah. I'm quite familiar with them, being a fan of the Final Fantasy series from way back, though it must be said that I like them in spite of the linear/railroaded storylines, not because of them. I just hadn't seen that particular abbreviation before.

 

[pawsplay]

3e frequently refers to and builds on other optional material, which AD&D 2e frequently did not. At the same time, it does not assume you have adopted all the optional material or own other sourcebooks very often, which AD&D 2e often did.

 

[Gothmog]

In some ways yes- there is a ton of crappy stuff coming out now. However, unlike the late 2E stuff, I have no interest in it and don't use the 3.5 stuff that comes out now.

The 3.5 stuff that comes out now either has decent rules and crappy background/plot, or rules far worse and more unbalanced than anything in 2E (Book of Nine Swords anyone?) and the same crappy level of background. Contrast that with 2E that had some wonky mechanics and rules, but some very good background/plot/fluff, which I did and still do mine and use for ideas. Plus the late 2E era gave us Birthright, the Al-Quadim material, and Planescape (which I don't care for but some people love), and its easy for me to make the statement that the current 3.5 releases are decidedly subpar to the 2E stuff if you want anything other than more prestige classes, feats, new classes, or powerups, and there is enough crunch to last anybody 10 lifetimes out there now. Dragon is the one WotC affiliated publication for D&D I still pick up since they occasionally have some interesting ideas and can afford to run them since it won't take up an entire book. This is one of the many reasons I've moved on to other systems to run my games, and I'm not looking back at D20/3.5 D&D.

 

[Dragonhelm]

So I am curious. How do you feel about all these extra rules books in 3E compared to how you felt about the similiar books in 2E?

There's a very similar feel right now, but I think it's in terms of the types of products being put out. Lots of Complete books, and now we're seeing compendiums. Sounds like the latter 2e years to me.

The difference, though, is in tone. 2e seemed to have the better flavor, while 3e almost seems like legalese at times. On the flipside, 3e is more consistent and balanced.

I've always gotten a lot of the splat books, no matter the edition. I find that they contain a lot of ideas for characters. I may have thought of them all on my own. Then again, I may not have. So the Complete books, no matter the edition, are a great way of giving some ideas for characters.

 

[Nightfall]

*still think that as long as Scarred Lands exists or at least came about because of 3.x* 3rd is good for me.

 

[Hussar]

Just as a question, what is this "Tons of crap" coming out of WOTC recently. The recent releases have been pretty highly regarded by and large. The Fiendish Codex's, Dungeonscape seems to be getting loving, Bo9S, while not to everyone's tastes, has generated a lot of buzz.

I admit that I don't buy a lot of books, but, I'm seeing an awful lot of very happy threads about WOTC releases over the past year or so. About the only one that seems to have generated a lot of negative buzz is MMIV and that FR book whose name I forget right now. But, by and large, the books being released are being hailed as some of the best in the game.

Heck, in the recent survivor threads, the Fiendish Codex were both in the top three releases ever.

 

[pawsplay]

I think Complete Scoundrel is complete crap, and Complete Mage mostly so. I do, however, like Fiendish Codexes (Codeces?). Complete Adventurer is pretty good. Dragon Magic is pretty bad.