As I mentioned in another thread I was very active in playing 3E and then "real life" pulled me away from role-playing games from about 2005 until now. I'm really psyched about getting back to D&D and 5E looks like it will be extremely cool.
Welcome back!
1. How did everybody (or most people) here react to the news of a new edition in the first place? Excitement or trepidation? Didn't 3.5 still have a good amount of momentum in 2007? Or were people ready for an overhaul?
3.5e had a LOT of life left and a lot of people were caught by surprise. 3e books hadn't been doing *that* well, but WotC wasn't doing themselves any favours by releasing some really clunkers and odd choices of books.
Near the end they released a lot of products that suspicious people said were test products for 4th Edition, but most posters dismissed those theories. But then 4th Edition was announced and everyone realized the speculated test products actually
were test products.
Feelings were mixed. 4e followed really closely after the transition from 3.0 to 3.5 so a lot of people were not ready to switch. But 3e as a whole had been around for a while and a lot of people had grown tired and played enough to see the flaws and rough spots in the edition.
2. How impressive were the early sneak peeks? Were people shocked at some of the changes from the get go? Or were people who didn't like the new game mostly blindsided once they picked up the core books?
The sneak peaks were few and far between. WotC really kept a lid on things for a long time. They previewed more world lore than mechanics for the longest time, which did cause some debate. We didn't see previewed pages so much as snippets of text scattered powers. And a lot of the previews also had to do with changes to the Forgotten Realms and the digital tools. The digital tools were a real focal point of the initial releases and every interview on the editon really included discussing the tools and hyping the tools.
There was also a lot of selling 4e by slamming the past. A lot of "X was bad so now we're doing Y". Sometimes it worked and sometimes it didn't. For example, grapple took a LOT of heat during 3e and took a lot of shots during the transition, but "Grab" really wasn't worth doing in 4e and seemed to exist only in the rules so they could show how simple it was. And a couple metallic dragons were not included in the first two
Monster Manuals (bronze & brass, and maybe copper) because they were "samey" and people got them confused so they wanted to do them right, but come
Draconomicon 2 they were... kinda samey and really easy to confuse.
WotC was really focused on surprise and controlled releases of information. They didn't reveal the cover of the Core rulebooks until after a preview book was released because that revealed the existence of dragonborn.
Lots of players did not see the game until players at the Winter Fantasy (February 2008) convention copied the provided rules and posted them online. We knew a heck of a lot less about the state of the game.
A lot of people were surprised by the final product.
I read all the previews and saw the pregens but was still surprised. It's one thing to see all the first level characters and pregens look a lot alike, it's another to see the symmetry across all classes and levels.
There was also a lot of denial and confusion floating around. Early on they posted monster stats from a creature on a card, and people assumed it was for the miniature game not the RPG. Or they looked at the previews and assumed they were only seeing a small potion of the statblock or flavour text.
3. I see that that having the option of playing "Pathfinder" fragmented the fanbase somewhat. Was that a good thing or bad thing for this forum? Or did it have a minimal effect at all?
It's been... mixed.
There were always pretty heated edition wars between 3.5e and 4e. But those slowly died down as the 3e fans migrated away from the 4e forums. Pathfinder really reignited those wars and prolonged them.
Paizo slowly gained traction and grew in support but it's been divisive. When Pathfinder started selling better than 4e, the 4e fans were a little irritated and denied everything. Then it became clear that 4e was in trouble and the 4e fans switched to blaming Pathfinder.
4. What else was noteworthy about 4E? Was there some product that was particularly awesome or infamous?
I'm a pretty big 3e/Pathfinder guy so I can't speak for 4e fans... but a lot of the later books had a nice mix of flavour and mechanics making them more interesting for people who aren't going to play the edition.
Heroes of the Elemental Chaos and
Heroes of the Feywild for example. The
Dungeon Master Guide 2 was a pretty solid book for running games for any edition.
The first four DM environment books (
Manual of the Planes,
Plane Above,
Plane Below, and
Underdark) were decent but not particularly comprehensive. 4e had pagecount limit on mosts books of 160 pages and a large font, so a lot of books just got started on a topic and then moved on. So I always wanted more and never felt like I had just read the definitive book on a subject. But they were a good starting point.
If any of my questions trigger memories of frustrating times then that's not what I'm going for. I guess I'm more curious about reading a bit of a forensic breakdown of how the whole thing played out. Just for my own curiosity. Thanks in advance for anyone who indulges me.
Hope I helped.