Is this what you went through with 3rd Edition?

[Hussar]

When threads like these pop up ("was there a similar hate and flamewars...."), i´d normally provide a couple of links to Planet AD&D to show that we really have only amateur flamewars today. It´s sad that the site does not exist any longer.

Glad I'm not the only veteran of those boards. The General boards over there were loaded with edition war style vitriol for years.

Heck, there's a REASON you cannot talk about 3e on Dragonsfoot.

So, if you think there wasn't a whole crapload of anger and resentment over 3e, you haven't been looking too hard.

 

[Kwalish Kid]

You really are missing the point here.

I've bolded the part that's not nothing. That is WORK.

If I am going to have to stat up everything that they decided to change, that's work on my part. Why should I spend money on 4e if it doesn't support the game I want to play?

I'm having a hard time understanding how you have to stat anything to get what you want out of the game.

From your list, as I remember it, all you have to do is:

1) Say that characters run into the good-aligned monsters you mentioned and never look at a single stat. If you're running an evil campaign where they're going to fight these monsters, then you're probably in trouble. Unless you move to the next point.
2) Use stats for other monsters, but change the description. "You see a red... I mean, gold dragon."
3) Tell players that only Lawful Good characters are paladins.
4) Allow players to play gnomes out of the Monster Manual.

No stats or writing here. Everything you want for "fluff" has already been written somewhere else.

If the real problem is that you can't convince your players to play in a game world with only Lawful good paladins, then you have a bigger problem and it's not 4E.

 

[GoLu]

You really are missing the point here.

I've bolded the part that's not nothing. That is WORK.

If I am going to have to stat up everything that they decided to change, that's work on my part. Why should I spend money on 4e if it doesn't support the game I want to play?

In my experience, no rpg supports the game I want to run. So I just choose something that is close, make a few houserules if needed, and run it in whatever setting I've envisioned.

Deciding if orcs have pig noses or if they are green skinned or if they don't exist at all takes so little effort (and causes so few problems with players) compared to rules changes that, while it is certainly work and not nothing, it's so little work that I'd probably refer to it as nothing in casual conversation. Same goes for wooden boobs on dryads.

That said, it sure would be awesome if WotC decided that 4th edition's default setting was my own personal homebrew world and all the rules and fluff fit in with that perfectly. At times, I kinda envy people who use one of the default settings.


edit: I'm a little amused that you wrote up this huge post and everyone responded to just the first three paragraphs.

 

[Cadfan]

Since my previous post was about MY reactions to 3e versus 4e,

From others, the only negative reaction I heard to 3e was from a group of 2e players near my university. The meme in that crowd was an absolute conviction that 3e had "sucked the creativity" out of D&D. Their reasoning was that, in their opinion, there was more creativity in a rules-light system where you accomplished cool things by describing them and asking the DM whether they worked, than in a system with actual rules to cover the cool thing you attempted.

They still believe this, and no doubt will continue to believe it through the release of 4e. I can't really argue with it. The term "playstyle" gets thrown around on this forum as a sort of impenetrable shield for crappy arguments (My PLAYSTYLE doesn't have dragonborn, so 4e sucks for me!), but this does seem to be a case where they just want something different from the game than I do, and nothing is going to change that.

 

[Psion]

Because you're not buying a setting book, you're buying a rulebook? Everybody else who DMs and isn't using purchased setting books (like FR, or Eberron), has to make up their own setting, why can't you?

Don't delude yourself. There is setting in the rulebooks, the so-called metasetting. Creatures, classes, conventions that define the game, things that don't make sense once you shift the magic system around. I've already listed some of these in a prior post; considering the nature of this objection has already been covered and you seem to be jumping into this conversation midstream, go back and check the posts that started this.

I, in my entire time DMing D&D 3e and 3.5e, referenced older artwork for both monsters and equipment.

Mine did too. But that's really very much central to what I am talking about; I won't have this portability because 4e has went far further in "reimagining" the metasetting ("fluff" if oyu will, though I consider the term imprecise.) Books and articles that have most directly supported my game like the Fiendish Codices, Planescape material, the classic 1e Nine Hells article all worked with minimal modification in my 3.5 game... all I had to do with respect to older references was to use the new stats.

But in 4e, archons won't exist anymore, succubi will be strangely absent (and daemons/yugoloths strangely present) in the homes of the demons, erineyes gone and replaced by succubi in my hells, and so forth.

And my halflings have always been hobbit-like, both in appearance and culture, despite what the 3e books described. It wasn't much work, really.

Did I say anything about hobbits/halflings being out of sync in 3e? Nope. That's not me; you appear to be arguing with someone else. I don't even think my players noticed, and it was never a problem for me. It's certainly insignificant in comparison to the sudden initial absence of a foundational race and permanent insertion of 2 others, with attendant rules support.

As for designing new versions of monsters, given the guidelines that are supposed to be present for designing monsters, it sounds a lot simpler in 4e than in 3e, and yet I managed in 3e.

That's nice. Whole families of monsters I know will be absent in 4e by design are already there in 3.5. That monster statting may be easier (part of the reason it will be easier has to do with another one of my objections to 4e, but that's another thread) is irrelevant because with a few exceptions, I don't have to make new monsters up for 3e at all.

DMing is work. 4e stands to lower the amount of work involved, but it'll still be work. I don't understand why that would be an issue.

Waitaminnit... just a second ago, I was being assured there was no work here. What changed.

DMing is work. I've done that work. The design team has decided that a "reimagining" of the metasetting was fair game, and in doing so, requiring rework for things I've already worked on.

It was great fun working up my campaign during college and my days before kids, and it was an effort that paid off. I was never at a loss to come up with adventure ideas and campaigns because of it. But to get to that place with 4e, I have to re-do that work because they have compromised the underpinnings it was built on. Now I have 3 kids and other interests, I don't have the time or inclination to re-do that work.

Someone else who is in the same place now I was during 1e&2e when my campaign setting was being put together may find 4e a good fit for them. But that's not me, and I really wish that you and Kzach would come to the simple realization that I am in no way blinded or not cognizant about what 4e has to offer and I am in the best place to decide how 4e would impact my gaming experience.

 

[Set]

It was the opposite for our group. The Dragon previews of 3E had us excited, and the game looked like it was going to have *more* options and be the exact opposite of 'dumbed down.' (At the twilight of 2nd Ed, kits and such were getting pretty darn annoying. Then again, PrC proliferation is doing the same these days, and we've just stopped using Prestige Classes, so that is a point of similarity.) Thanks to Dragon, we were all ready and eager to get our 3.0 PHBs, and then kinda pissed off when they reprinted them with errata a few months later and we had to buy them all over again... (Which we did.)

With 3.5, we were a little leary of whether or not the game *needed* a new edition (and I don't think it really did), but we still greatly enjoyed the new Druid, Ranger, Monk, Barbarian tweaks, and the occasional new spell like Scorching Ray.

With 4E, the game is evolving even more radically than it did between 2E and 3E, and the direction it seems to be going in doesn't suit our playstyle. We do play and love Warhammer Quest as a beer-and-pretzels game, but D&D has always filled a different niche for us, and a session doesn't have to have a combat, and rarely ever used maps or minis, which take up valuable pizza-holding place on the table.

 

[Brother MacLaren]

3E also held the appeal for many AD&D veterans of bringing back elements of the game that they had liked in 1E but that 2E had taken away. Most notably: barbarians, monks, half-orcs, assassins, and demons/devils in core.

 

[Psion]

I'm having a hard time understanding how you have to stat anything to get what you want out of the game.

From your list, as I remember it, all you have to do is:

You can stop right there. My list was examples, just what I could think of off the top of my head in a 30-second post. The scope of metasetting changes between 3e and 4e are extensive; there are others I could list, and most likely, many we aren't even aware of yet.

If that was all I had to do, it would be a manageable task. But just browsing through the two previews book made it pretty clear to me that this is a different D&D than the one my game was grown around.

 

[Steely Dan]

3rd Ed was more like a mathematical exercise, great in theory (and on paper), but poor in practice/execution, IMO.

 

[Cadfan]

Psion- the reason you are having trouble explaining this to people is:

Many of us do not and have not ever played in the D&D default setting. Because the D&D default setting did not appeal to us, we played in homebrews that contained significant changes to the baseline assumptions about, amongst other things, D&D monsters and classes. Apparently the default D&D setting did appeal to you, but now it does not. I can see how that might feel like a loss. However, from our perspective it just puts you in the same position we've been in for years.