Menu
News
All News
Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
Pathfinder
Starfinder
Warhammer
2d20 System
Year Zero Engine
Industry News
Reviews
Dragon Reflections
White Dwarf Reflections
Columns
Weekly Digests
Weekly News Digest
Freebies, Sales & Bundles
RPG Print News
RPG Crowdfunding News
Game Content
ENterplanetary DimENsions
Mythological Figures
Opinion
Worlds of Design
Peregrine's Nest
RPG Evolution
Other Columns
From the Freelancing Frontline
Monster ENcyclopedia
WotC/TSR Alumni Look Back
4 Hours w/RSD (Ryan Dancey)
The Road to 3E (Jonathan Tweet)
Greenwood's Realms (Ed Greenwood)
Drawmij's TSR (Jim Ward)
Community
Forums & Topics
Forum List
Latest Posts
Forum list
*Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
D&D Older Editions, OSR, & D&D Variants
*TTRPGs General
*Pathfinder & Starfinder
EN Publishing
*Geek Talk & Media
Search forums
Chat/Discord
Resources
Wiki
Pages
Latest activity
Media
New media
New comments
Search media
Downloads
Latest reviews
Search resources
EN Publishing
Store
EN5ider
Adventures in ZEITGEIST
Awfully Cheerful Engine
What's OLD is NEW
Judge Dredd & The Worlds Of 2000AD
War of the Burning Sky
Level Up: Advanced 5E
Events & Releases
Upcoming Events
Private Events
Featured Events
Socials!
EN Publishing
Twitter
BlueSky
Facebook
Instagram
EN World
BlueSky
YouTube
Facebook
Twitter
Twitch
Podcast
Features
Top 5 RPGs Compiled Charts 2004-Present
Adventure Game Industry Market Research Summary (RPGs) V1.0
Ryan Dancey: Acquiring TSR
Q&A With Gary Gygax
D&D Rules FAQs
TSR, WotC, & Paizo: A Comparative History
D&D Pronunciation Guide
Million Dollar TTRPG Kickstarters
Tabletop RPG Podcast Hall of Fame
Eric Noah's Unofficial D&D 3rd Edition News
D&D in the Mainstream
D&D & RPG History
About Morrus
Log in
Register
What's new
Search
Search
Search titles only
By:
Forums & Topics
Forum List
Latest Posts
Forum list
*Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
D&D Older Editions, OSR, & D&D Variants
*TTRPGs General
*Pathfinder & Starfinder
EN Publishing
*Geek Talk & Media
Search forums
Chat/Discord
Menu
Log in
Register
Install the app
Install
Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.
Enchanted Trinkets Complete--a hardcover book containing over 500 magic items for your D&D games!
Community
General Tabletop Discussion
*TTRPGs General
Hypothetical Question about future D&D
JavaScript is disabled. For a better experience, please enable JavaScript in your browser before proceeding.
You are using an out of date browser. It may not display this or other websites correctly.
You should upgrade or use an
alternative browser
.
Reply to thread
Message
<blockquote data-quote="Akrasia" data-source="post: 2504827" data-attributes="member: 23012"><p>It's a pretty radical break. While it keeps certain 'core features' -- classes, levels, hit points, Tolkien-esque races, alignment -- it also includes a lot that breaks with previous versions of D&D. Some of the most significant changes include: feats, skills (though simpler skill systems were in RC D&D and AD&D), easy multiclassing, more common magic items (and much easier crafting rules), completely different combat system (3e is much more tactical and detailed than ealier editions), a very different power scale (level advancement is much faster in 3e; also, in pre-3e versions of D&D, the power increases per level tapered off significantly after level ten or so, whereas they do not in 3e), prestige classes (though antecedents existed in 1e and RC D&D), and many other things.</p><p></p><p>In my own view, D&D 3e is effectively a <em>new</em> game -- a new system with an old label. My 'simple test' for this is that it is <em>very</em> difficult to convert pre-3e material into 3e rules (it requires <em>a lot</em> of work), whereas it is very easy to convert material between different versions of pre-3e D&D (e.g. 1e AD&D to 2e AD&D, or 1e AD&D to RC D&D).</p><p></p><p>This is <em>not</em> a bad thing (despite the fact that people strangely freak out on these boards whenever I make this point). Rather, my point is that the similarity between 3e D&D and pre-3e D&D is about as strong as the similarity between AD&D and Tunnels and Trolls or MERP. Or, to put the point in another way, when I first read the 3e books I thought: "So, they revised D&D to be like Rolemaster!" (Note: different people had different associations when reading 3e -- e.g. some people thought it obviously borrowed from Runequest, others GURPS, and so forth. 3e borrowed from many different games, but it was clearly a radical departure from pre-3e D&D.)</p><p></p><p>Again, the fact that 3e is effectively a 'new game' IMO is not a bad thing, especially since there were many systems back before 3e that I preferred to AD&D (e.g. MERP, Rolemaster, Runequest, etc.), and some of my favourite features from those other systems were incorporated into 3e. (Despite that, 3e is still not my favourite version of D&D -- I prefer the RC version, or C&C if it counts, but my own tastes are neither here nor there for the purposes of my point.)</p><p></p><p>In short, the changes were pretty radical. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f60e.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":cool:" title="Cool :cool:" data-smilie="6"data-shortname=":cool:" /> </p><p></p><p>As for Rasyr's question, It'll be interesting to see if the 3e diehards join the people who still play 1e and OD&D over at Dragonsfoot.org once WotC 'upgrades' to 4e. Today's hip gamer is tomorrow's grognard. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink ;)" data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" /></p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Akrasia, post: 2504827, member: 23012"] It's a pretty radical break. While it keeps certain 'core features' -- classes, levels, hit points, Tolkien-esque races, alignment -- it also includes a lot that breaks with previous versions of D&D. Some of the most significant changes include: feats, skills (though simpler skill systems were in RC D&D and AD&D), easy multiclassing, more common magic items (and much easier crafting rules), completely different combat system (3e is much more tactical and detailed than ealier editions), a very different power scale (level advancement is much faster in 3e; also, in pre-3e versions of D&D, the power increases per level tapered off significantly after level ten or so, whereas they do not in 3e), prestige classes (though antecedents existed in 1e and RC D&D), and many other things. In my own view, D&D 3e is effectively a [i]new[/i] game -- a new system with an old label. My 'simple test' for this is that it is [i]very[/i] difficult to convert pre-3e material into 3e rules (it requires [i]a lot[/i] of work), whereas it is very easy to convert material between different versions of pre-3e D&D (e.g. 1e AD&D to 2e AD&D, or 1e AD&D to RC D&D). This is [i]not[/i] a bad thing (despite the fact that people strangely freak out on these boards whenever I make this point). Rather, my point is that the similarity between 3e D&D and pre-3e D&D is about as strong as the similarity between AD&D and Tunnels and Trolls or MERP. Or, to put the point in another way, when I first read the 3e books I thought: "So, they revised D&D to be like Rolemaster!" (Note: different people had different associations when reading 3e -- e.g. some people thought it obviously borrowed from Runequest, others GURPS, and so forth. 3e borrowed from many different games, but it was clearly a radical departure from pre-3e D&D.) Again, the fact that 3e is effectively a 'new game' IMO is not a bad thing, especially since there were many systems back before 3e that I preferred to AD&D (e.g. MERP, Rolemaster, Runequest, etc.), and some of my favourite features from those other systems were incorporated into 3e. (Despite that, 3e is still not my favourite version of D&D -- I prefer the RC version, or C&C if it counts, but my own tastes are neither here nor there for the purposes of my point.) In short, the changes were pretty radical. :cool: As for Rasyr's question, It'll be interesting to see if the 3e diehards join the people who still play 1e and OD&D over at Dragonsfoot.org once WotC 'upgrades' to 4e. Today's hip gamer is tomorrow's grognard. ;) [/QUOTE]
Insert quotes…
Verification
Post reply
Community
General Tabletop Discussion
*TTRPGs General
Hypothetical Question about future D&D
Top