Has 3E become too much like 2E yet?

[Gothmog]

And good riddance.

Just as a thought though. How could you possibly call a 3e book convoluted in comparison to, say, the 1e DMG? I do not think that word means what you think it means.

Convoluted in this case means that the rules and wording are often overly complex, and take three times as many words to convey the point as is necessary. I write and review scientific journal articles for a living, and trust me- those can get bad, and much of the 3E text in the books rivals long-winded researchers describing their results. The 1E DMG prose was flowery and somewhat stilted, but it had a certain kind of charm. The 3E books read like very badly written textbooks.

While its true people have different ideas what makes good literature, there is substantial disagreement. I find Hemingway, Fitzgerald, and Thoreau complete crap for example, but they are lauded as masters of the English language and great authors- go figure. Anyway, there is a large degree of variance between tone of RPG books- compare 3E books to the masterfully written Classic Deadlands, Savage Worlds, Ars Magica or Fading Suns for example. The difference is like night and day- those books inspire the imagination by their prose and cool ideas they present.

I know WotC is going to do what sells, and right now clumsily written textbooks of crunch with no or lame background info sells. I know there was a kneejerk reaction at the end of 2E when EVERY book had an excess of background info, but the pendulum has swung too far in the other direction. Even the art in 3E books takes out the background and setting- in most cases its a character against a blank white page, and only in a few recent books (mostly the environment series) are we starting to see full-page artwork showing characters in a world and interacting with it. Its fine to be able to detail a character to the nth degree with skills, feats, and prestige classes, but without some context or focus on his place in the world, its just a cumbersome list of facts and details that encourages players focus on their "builds".

 

[Gothmog]

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.

Blackwind for the win!

I agree with Blackwind- when 3E and even 3.5 came out, I loved it. I'm mostly a homebrewer too, and I thought 3E gave me what I wanted to build exactly the reality for my world that I envisioned.

However, the more I played 3E, the more I realized it had WAY more assumptions built into the system than 1E or 2E did, while at the same time stripping out the charm and context of previous editions. Weath per level, assumed magic levels, the CR/EL thing- they all made D&D cumbersome to use unless you followed the assumptions in the books.

The more I used 3E, the less I liked it, so I tinkered and messed with it to try and get what I wanted. It worked ok, but it added even more complexity to an overly complex engine- and that eventually collapsed under its own weight. I also enjoy worldbuilding and designing adventures more than statting out NPCs- but 3E forced you to spend excessive amounts of time making those NPCs if they were assumed to be on somewhat equal footing as the PCs and provide adequate challenges.

Yes, I know- many of you will say "wing it and don't tell the players." That can be done, but it also cheapens the experience, and points out a major flaw of 3E- its excessive complexity for the sake of complexity. A system that almost necessitates the use of computer programs to design NPCs in a timely manner is severely flawed IMO. Some people love this detail and spend hours statting out NPCs, but to me that is tedious and dull in the extreme. And every new splatbook that comes out focusing on crunch makes it worse. Yes, new materials can be restricted, but if a player or DM buys a new book, they will want to use it, which only adds to the rules bloat and complexity. All games suffer from this to one degree or another, but none like D&D 3.x. And adding another book full of spells, or feats, or PrCs doesn't make me think "oooh, I know the perfect place to use this crunchy bit, I'll make an adventure or NPC around it"- inspiration for me comes from presenting interesting ideas to use in a campaign, not a textbook of toolkits for characters.

So yes, 3E and 2E have some similarities. 3E has more balanced crunchy bits, but lame fluff. 2E had some really wonky rules, but good fluff. And at the end of the day, its the "fluff" that counts- the world, cool ideas, and context of the characters in the world that make a game memorable- not the game mechanics of how you get there.

 

[hamishspence]

I'm fairly friendly to most WOTC products, but not all.

When I read the books, I look for fluff, crunch, usability, imaginativeness, etc. The worst product I've got, I think, is Weapons of legacy. It seems like the penalties each weapon bestows seems to outweigh the bonuses. And, being tied to one weapon throughout the G.A.M.E is a mistake when the monster variety is halfway decent. No real fluff AT ALL, and the concept seems a bit medicocre.

Second is Mysteries of the Moonsea. I got this mainly to fill out backstory on the geographical areas described: OK, but poor compared to City of the Spider Queen, which at least had some interesting monsters and items if the adventure wasn't to be played straight away.

 

[Greg K]

I found that 3.x works for me if I do the following
a. eliminate alchemical items, halfling riding dogs, spiked chains, etc.
b. ignore nearly every WOTC supplement*
c. utilize certain third party material for both rules replacements, additions, and inspiration*
d. utilize my own creativity*


*I actually find these work best for me when applied to d20Modern as well.

 

[balterkn]

The main difference between my 2e and 3e experiences with the multitude of books?

Player involvement in crafting the whole game experience.
(and i concur with the OP, my 3e collection is looking rather like my 2e collection on the bookshelves - lots of books! About the same volume – note what follows are statements of observations, none are statements of “good” or “bad” things about the two editions)

The 2e groups understood many of the splatbooks were broken, thus we'd have great pre/post game discussions about a new splatbook, what parts were broken (and would be ignored) and which parts enhanced the game the players and DM wanted to play. However, this required players who understood the differences between meta-gaming out of session and playing in session (and also considerable reading time and a desire to learn how to balance a game). Also, despite the product brokenness, we generally revisited many of them for more of the evocative ("fluff") text to get inspiration for characters and adventures (inspiration != use as written).

In 3e, generally the splatbooks are considered to be cannon-consistent more often. Hence, the only discussion is "do we let the whole book in" - no detailed discussion about the finer points of portions of each book. The rules in the book are generally internally consistent, thus it is hard to take anything piecemeal from a book. The (general) simplicity of the rules integration makes the products generally more accessible to all players (less experience with game balancing needed to evaluate a book). Many books, if determined to be "out," are never revisited. The "fluff" text has been generally less inspiring to me and my players.

Ultimately, while mechanically the game is easier to execute with the plethora of 3e books, the quality of the involvement from the players in shaping their game seems to have decreased. I attribute that to spending more time on rules than descriptions that inspire imagination. Looking at adventures, the ratio of stat blocks to adventure text seems to be declining (more spent on stats than setting), similar with the splatbooks - higher ratio rules to description (more rules and description). I didn't have much a problem doing sufficient prep work for adventures in 2e such as looking up stats in the monster manuals or building the occasional more interesting replacements for the “Ftr 4, AC 4, HP 32, #Atk 3/2, THACO: 15, D: 1-8+3, longsword+1” (forgive errors in this line, it's been a while) line in an adventure.

Some may say that not discussing the rules is a good thing. My observation is that by discussing the rules, we were continually evolving the game into what we wanted to play, as opposed to feeling like we were having all-or-nothing rules points. Thus the players “owned” their campaigns more, by deciding that they want the rules for equipment maintenance in one campaign, but not another, because that's what they wanted. Of course, this meant that 2e groups were not as easy to move between mechanically.

FWIW - YMMV

 

[Hussar]

Convoluted in this case means that the rules and wording are often overly complex, and take three times as many words to convey the point as is necessary. I write and review scientific journal articles for a living, and trust me- those can get bad, and much of the 3E text in the books rivals long-winded researchers describing their results. The 1E DMG prose was flowery and somewhat stilted, but it had a certain kind of charm. The 3E books read like very badly written textbooks.

I'll see you and raise you the initiative rules as written in 1e.

As far as poorly written fluff, I'm not really sure if that's valid considering the recent releases. Tome of Magic has more flavour than a Greek smorgasborg. Both Fiendish Codexes have been incredibly well received.

However, the more I played 3E, the more I realized it had WAY more assumptions built into the system than 1E or 2E did, while at the same time stripping out the charm and context of previous editions. Weath per level, assumed magic levels, the CR/EL thing- they all made D&D cumbersome to use unless you followed the assumptions in the books.

See, this is a nice collection of the myths that get tossed about in Netspace. You can fold, spindle, maul and mangle the every one of the things in that list and still have the game work fine.

I run the World's Largest Dungeon. Have for the past year and a half. The party is now 15th level. In that time, they have not crafted, or had crafted, a single magic item. Not one. There's no one in the WLD who can. The party wealth is about half what it should be. That means a lot of encounters are a fair bit tougher perhaps, but, y'know what? They still work.

D&D has ALWAYS had wealth guidelines built in. Look at any publication and you will see a 5th level fighter with a magic weapon. Every time. A 10th level NPC will have a fair collection of magic gear. Why? Because the assumptions of wealth have ALWAYS been in the game. They've just never been called out before. Look at the encounter tables. You find gargoyles in and around 4th level. Because that's about the time most PC's had some magic weapons.

Why people continue to bash away at this after so many years just boggles my mind.

Given the choice between great fluff and crap mechanics and great mechanics and crap fluff, the crowd has spoken. 2e got dropped like a sack of tomatoes. WOTC has just stated that 2006 was their best year since the Silver Anniversary. I would say that they've done something very, very right.

It might not be right for you. But, that's fine, that's personal preference. But the masses have spoken. Scarred Lands dripped with flavour. But the mechanics were pretty poor. Where's SL now? Dustbin.

Flavor doesn't make for a great game unless it is backed up by solid mechanics. Games where you are constantly fighting over mechanics are bad games. It doesn't matter how glowing the prose is in the rulebooks if, during gametime, the players spend a large amount of time arguing whether or not their Priest of Tyr uses Cleric or Druid xp tables.

 

[RFisher]

Flavor doesn't make for a great game unless it is backed up by solid mechanics. Games where you are constantly fighting over mechanics are bad games. It doesn't matter how glowing the prose is in the rulebooks if, during gametime, the players spend a large amount of time arguing whether or not their Priest of Tyr uses Cleric or Druid xp tables.

IME, no set of rules can prevent arguments over rules, whether they fit some (dare I say arbitrary) sense of solidity or not. The participants have to choose not to argue over rules.

 

[an_idol_mind]

I went through two phases with 2nd edition.

First, I went through a phase where I bought every new thing that hit the market - or tried to, at least. This was a combination of me getting my first job (thus having real spending money for a change) and me just starting down the role-playing path.

After the Player's Option series, I was routinely going to games with over a dozen books, just for one character. I got overloaded on the optional rules, and ultimately shaved things down to just the three core books. The problem there was that the core rules for AD&D had gaping holes in it that made the game obnoxious to play without supplements.

In 3rd edition, I generally stick to core rules only. It's not that I hate the wealth of material out there, just that I want to keep things simple. That said, I think there are two main differences between the current rules and older editions.

First, the supplements generally contain some consistency. While there are exceptions, most of the books seem well-balanced against each other, and only a few bring about entirely new systems of running the game.

Second, the gaping holes that existed in any version of AD&D have been patched in the 3rd edition. There aren't massive areas of the rules that shout out for an overhaul or require me to spend significant time houseruling things. The rules still aren't perfect, but they're very solid now. That makes running a core only game easy, since I don't have to buy supplements to fix broken rules. It also makes adding material from other books, should I choose to do so, much easier, since it's adding options to the game rather than rewriting the rules just to allow options.

 

[Elemental]

3e holds some of the most horrid writing style and platitudes I have ever seen anywhere, let alone not even being written in English (the s/he his/her thing really gives me the creeps) by what appear to be feminist fanboys or feminist management. Don't know which, don't care!

It is all too repetitive in style, too boring, too generic, too "tries to be all things to all people" and too feminist pinkoe...

I've been on the Internet for a few years now, but it never ceases to be funny when someone spends two paragraphs ranting about how much they don't care about something. Still, at least you didn't hideously misuse the term "political correctness" to excuse your views.

 

[Hussar]

IME, no set of rules can prevent arguments over rules, whether they fit some (dare I say arbitrary) sense of solidity or not. The participants have to choose not to argue over rules.

Heh, I understand this. YMMV.

I play with strangers. I almost always have. From playing with people I met at the FLGS who responded to a players wanted ad, or now playing over OpenRPG, I've always played with strangers. So, we really have no inherent background in which to choose not to argue over the rules.

However, I've noticed that, despite a rather large number of gamers that I've gone through in the past few years, my arguments around the table are very few, far between and very, very short. Unlike in my 2e days when rules arguments would drag on interminably. I point to a coherent, simply written ruleset done in plain English as the prime reason for this.