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Message: <blockquote data-quote="aboyd" data-source="post: 5081465" data-attributes="member: 44797">For me, I just don't like what happened with 4th edition, so I'm keeping my distance.  What that amounts to is that I'll play but not invest myself to the level of DMing.  And in fact I mostly don't even play either.  I live in Silicon Valley -- homeland of the geek.  There are 30 3.5 edition games running on any given week that I can play.  So I really don't even need to play 4th at any point.  But I will if my friends are doing it.Wow, that's almost exactly me.  I was a cheerleader of 4th before it came out.  I was hoping that SAGA would be codified as the new D&D, basically.  And then it wasn't, not even close.  And then I saw that stupid gnome video.  And then I cracked open the PHB and saw all this talk about blasters and controllers and I realized that I didn't even want to know the definition of those new terms.  Every time I read them I thought about family members that are strung out on WoW and I just couldn't bring myself to invest in it.So I forced myself to read what I could, forced myself through a few 4th edition games, and found I was just generally forcing myself to enjoy what I naturally didn't.  Eventually when some 20 year-olds at Yahoo (where I used to work) told me that 3.5 was for "old people" and that they would rather roll up some dragonborn, I was surprised to note that my inner dialogue was basically, "I'd like to find the old folks!"I also like the twisty maze of character building in 3.5 edition.  I like that a bad build is possible, and that if I'm willing to read up before a game, I might unearth some gem of a spell or item that could surprise everyone.  I like a game where pun-pun is possible (though I house-ruled it away) and where locate-town-bombs are possible (though I house-ruled it away).  I like that there are unexpectedly good combinations.  While I avoid the too-good, world-ending ones, I appreciate the rest.I love that a rogue in my game was facing near-death, trapped in a keep, but had a level up between games, and so he came back into the game with a level in wizard to get the Abrupt Jaunt, and he teleported away to everyone's amazement.  I love that my NPC with an anti-magic field was able to find tons of stuff that would enable him to keep up with a traditional party -- healing feats for a guy who can't drink healing potions, awesome non-magical but still powerful weapons, extraordinary abilities that function in an anti-magic field, and so on.  Lots of things that were probably never intended for my situation, but which enabled me to make quite a villain, so long as I was willing to explore all those little nuggets hidden in the books.  And I was.So, done deal.  The horse is out of the barn.  I won't be picking up the PHB 3, and I won't be trying the basic rules, won't try the multiclassing, and I won't buy in to any other revisions of 4th.  However, I'm up for 5th edition, assuming it's still a few years off.  If 5th finds a way to be what SAGA or Pathfinder or even the SRD has been, then I'll consider it.Oh!  I also have a rule, a test of whether I will buy a game.  I have to be able to play it fully or near-fully without any battlemat at all.  No minis.  For D&D 3.5 I basically lost AOO and 5-foot steps.  Everything else seemed to work just using our imaginations.  For 4th, I didn't even know where to start when it came to how I much stuff I would have to rip out or revise in order to play without minis.  So 5th will need to find a way to make the battlemat fun but optional again.</blockquote>

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