Is 4E still D&D to you?

[Hairfoot]

I really expected there to be a wider gap in this poll's results.

In which direction?

 

[Coplen]

Yes.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

4E is the best D&D yet IMO. My wife got bored of 3E after playing almost nothing but 3E w/my friends and I for several years. I did too really. We had both come from playing a multitude of RPGs over the years and having only 3E to play since no one was interested in trying all the other games we liked sucked and we got burned out a few months after 3.5 came out.

Cue 4E's rampup and me telling her all kinds of stuff I'm reading about 4E and sharing the pdfs w/her after they get released. By now she's really excited and interested in the game. She has been so desperate to role play lately that she was starting some ideas to run Arcana Evolved. Now she's instead talking about how she wants to run 4E. She's never DMed in her life and this game is making her want to. I'm very excited and can't wait. Naturally I'll be the walking rulebook to help her out along the way when she asks for a rules clarification, but that's what good gamer geek husbands do

I think that might show as interesting insight into what D&D is, for D&D fans. D&D is the version that you had the most fun with, where you had the greatest emotional investment. SSquirrels wife wants to DM for the first time, with 4E? This might indeed be the best D&D ever for Ssquirrel and his wife.

Now imagine for a moment this game was not called D&D. What would this say about "what is D&D". "What is the best D&D"? Or imagine she would have DMed Arcana Evolved instead of D&D 3.5? Is that still D&D? Or is it just a "side effect" of D&D? What does this tell us about the question "What is D&D"?

 

[EATherrian]

I think that might show as interesting insight into what D&D is, for D&D fans. D&D is the version that you had the most fun with, where you had the greatest emotional investment. SSquirrels wife wants to DM for the first time, with 4E? This might indeed be the best D&D ever for Ssquirrel and his wife.

Now imagine for a moment this game was not called D&D. What would this say about "what is D&D". "What is the best D&D"? Or imagine she would have DMed Arcana Evolved instead of D&D 3.5? Is that still D&D? Or is it just a "side effect" of D&D? What does this tell us about the question "What is D&D"?

If that's the case, 2nd Edition will always be D&D to me. I'm different than most of the other not-completely-behind-4E people, in that I also didn't really like 3E. Still, in thinking back it was more the fluff I enjoy anyway, and once I really get into trying to make my own game in 4E I might enjoy it more. Of course I'm not buying any other books, I don't like the idea of forced purchase to get what you used to have in the 3 main books. So there're a lot of things I need to create.

 

[SSquirrel]

I think that might show as interesting insight into what D&D is, for D&D fans. D&D is the version that you had the most fun with, where you had the greatest emotional investment. SSquirrels wife wants to DM for the first time, with 4E? This might indeed be the best D&D ever for Ssquirrel and his wife.

Now imagine for a moment this game was not called D&D. What would this say about "what is D&D". "What is the best D&D"? Or imagine she would have DMed Arcana Evolved instead of D&D 3.5? Is that still D&D? Or is it just a "side effect" of D&D? What does this tell us about the question "What is D&D"?

My wife made a couple of attempts at 2nd Ed, played a lot of 3E w/our friends and prior to that played a lot of White Wolf and such. A few other systems over the years like occasional games of CoC and Paranoia. I've been playing since the BECMI series of D&D back in '87. I've played all the editions of D&D since then, plus a whole lot more.

If I looked back to most emotional investment, I would likely peg 2E as mine, but 3E was mechanically superior and ditched a lot of things I thought were silly from earlier editions. Other games like AE ditched more and introduced more interesting things and 4E picked up on lots of those.

For me anyway, 4E is a culmination of lessons learned from various editions of D&D and other games over the years. Would I have liked to see some more classes in the core book? Sure, more classes are always good, but I see 8 perfectly good classes and races which will keep me more than busy for awhile.

I like the idea of making settings a limited series. That way you dont' fall into the 2E trap of actively supporting 8 or 10 campaign settings at once. You focus on one for a period, then bring out another. White Wolf has had some great success w/this in the past 5 years. A setting book, players guide and a big adventure or 2 sounds like a perfect amount of material to get a good campaign going. As more come out we can switch worlds or just have someone else DM another world in a different game.

Maybe I've just learned to embrace change over the years. I used to work at MCI, which we always joked stood for Many Changes Instantly due to how often procedures and policy switched around, and dealt w/change all the time, so a new version of one of my preferred game systems having something different is fine. A friend of ours always plays Rogues, so my wife said that for her upcoming game, no one could play the same race or class that we're playing in the KotS adventure this week. Our Rogue friend is happily designing a Cleric right now I'm content to wait to try the other options in later books and just enjoy the ones I have right now. I just wanna play.

 

[Razuur]

The ultimate failure... for me. Thanks to the complete reliance upon minatures and battlemaps and the fact that character options are so limited.

For WOTC.. probably a success.

Though their is something wrong with the whole thing.

By the time I wrot ethis 312 people were calling it DnD and 242 aren't.

That is losing 43% of the audience. That is really telling.

Financial success, yes.

A success for loyal fans... yes for 57% of them.

But I am shattered that DnD left me behind.

Thank goodness for True20.

Razuur

 

[Ambush Bug]

It's got an arbitrary class system that channels you toward a predetermined play style.

It's got a robust, innovative combat system.

It's got too many kinds of elves, and ripoff hobbits.

It's got a wide array of unique monsters with neat powers.

It assumes you're going on dungeon crawls.

It doesn't stop you from ignoring the blankety-blank dungeons and exploring the world, if that's what you really want to do.

It ignores the political and cultural aspects of the game world, which is annoying.

It ignores the political and cultural aspects of the game world, which is good since thinking that up is the DM's job anyway. And the players' job, if you're lucky.

And most importantly, it has people bickering over whether it's really D&D, or whether a previous version was D&D-er.

So yep, that smells like D&D to me.

 

[JoeGKushner]

Well, better time to answer this poll now then when it first appeared 10 months ago.

Hit points? check
XP & Levels? check
Classes/Races? check
Fantasy? check
Polyhedral dice (especially that d20)? check
Sitting around a table with friends being heroes slaying monsters?

Still sounds like D&D to me.

HARP? Is that you HARP?

Palladium? Must be you.

Rolemaster? Rolemaster? Don't you recognize me?

D&D has a lot of elements to it but those are relatively generic ones listed above and are common to many games.

 

[Crothian]

By the time I wrot ethis 312 people were calling it DnD and 242 aren't.

That is losing 43% of the audience. That is really telling.

You are assuming that those 43% where part of Wizards audience to begin with. Hard to tell if that's true or not.

4e is D&D to me, just in a different way. D&D in my mind was never so much about the rules.

 

[Page]

It's got an arbitrary class system that channels you toward a predetermined play style.

It's got a robust, innovative combat system.

It's got too many kinds of elves, and ripoff hobbits.

It's got a wide array of unique monsters with neat powers.

It assumes you're going on dungeon crawls.

It doesn't stop you from ignoring the blankety-blank dungeons and exploring the world, if that's what you really want to do.

It ignores the political and cultural aspects of the game world, which is annoying.

It ignores the political and cultural aspects of the game world, which is good since thinking that up is the DM's job anyway. And the players' job, if you're lucky.

And most importantly, it has people bickering over whether it's really D&D, or whether a previous version was D&D-er.

So yep, that smells like D&D to me.

This.