Razz said:
What parts of the 3.5E system would you want WotC to explore to make the game evolve and more fun without requiring a whole edition change
There are some fiddly bits I'd change, but most of the changes I'd really be most interested in would require a new edition, and possibly an edition after that. I like 3E/3.5E well enough to play it without changing much, but I can see where it could improve even more.
Razz said:
Another interesting question would be do you think D&D would dry out if 4E never came?
I think so, eventually. Every system must change, to meet the changing expectations of the fanbase. For a long time, D&D was stuck in the dungeon, then people started to ask about the wilderness, city adventures, adventures in other cultures or non-human ones. People's expectations about what a roleplaying game was and could be changed, and the game evolved along with it to include rules and spells and such that mirrored these new concerns. A lot of potential D&D players turned away to other systems because TSR didn't listen to their fans and after a certain point continued to produce the same old stuff.
The market will change, and if D&D doesn't change with it, it will die. This is true of all things and fans need to get ready to embrance change rather than shun it. It still stuns me that the people who suppossedly play a game based on imagination seem so resistant to changes in it.
Razz said:
What is stopping the current edition from evolving in its current state? Is it our fault or WotC's?
Right now, it's the need to more gradually drag the aging and conservative parts of the fanbase into the modern era without scaring them off. I see 3E/3.5E as 'a good start', a baby step to get the millions of D&D players to accept the changes that need to happen -
must happen - but can't be implemented just yet. I'd look for about 5E when the game is finally able to stand up among modern game systems. It's a sad case that it has to take that long to break down people's resistance.
Razz said:
Let's not all forget, the only reason 3E came was because D&D really needed a complete overhaul from what TSR did to it.
Well, not as such, no. TSR didn't do anything to D&D, as much as they did
not do things to it. 2E really should have been called 1.25E, simply because they didn't change all that damn much. They simplified and brought some order to the chaos the system had become, but they didn't truly change all that much. And it needed it badly at the time, especially to really compete with the games that had moved on and innovated.
They seemed to think that they didn't need to change all that much and could simply keep putting out the same products for it ad infinitum. They didn't listen to the market or their fans, and they were bleeding customers because of it.
Now putting out product itself wasn't the problem, though for some reason people seem to think it was. If anyone thinks a game line can survive by simply reaching a certain point and then not releasing any more books of rules or settings, they're just fooling themselves. Businesses need an influx of new product. There will always be new books and new releases; this is simple fact. If some other game system doesn't do this, it ain't because they think 'you know, we don't need to require the fans to buy anything else', it's because they don't have the money to do it, or have had a faiilure of imagination and can't figure out the next thing they should do.
3E needed to come about to move D&D closer to a more modern game system, to update it according to more modern expectations of what an RPG is and how it should be done. TSR had not done this. Something with the level and scope of changes 3E wrought should have been in place before 1980. Updating a system once every ten years is laughable.
No other game system does this, though in D&D's case it needs to be somewhat longer just to have time for a majority of the fan base to get and use it.
The changes of 3E brought far more people back to D&D than it ever drove away.
