Is this what you went through with 3rd Edition?

[Nahat Anoj]

Where were the 2E complaints aired? I'm trying to recover some of the history of this, so if you can point me to some documentation of these complaints, I'd love it.

I think if you get the Dragon compilation cd, you can see old letters to the editor that discuss the transition from 1e to 2e. Someone pasted a few of those letters onto a forum somewhere, and some of the reactions were eerily similar to 2e->3e and 3e->4e.

 

[Darth Cyric]

And late 2E was so horribly broken with poorly-conceived splatbooks that it was best to let the new owners wipe the slate clean and start anew.

Hey, just like late 3.5, minus the whole TSR thing. Imagine that.

 

[Psion]

Hey, just like late 3.5, minus the whole TSR thing. Imagine that.

Oh, no.

I'll be the first to admit that late 3.5 supplements aren't lighting my fire.

But if you think there is the same level of broke as in late 2e, you weren't there. There might be some balance issues, some lame flavor in late 3.5 books out of the box. But at least you could play them out of the box without house rules, which is something you can't say about some late 2e products.

Now consider this: if you really think 3.5 products are that broke, look at the authors and compare it to the design team on 4e.

 

[thalmin]

I find myself in a strange position, and doubt that I am alone.
I am looking forward to 4E. I like what I have heard about the changes, and why the changes are being made. But I may not be making the change very soon.

My gaming group is currently several years into a campaign that we are enjoying. Short of a TPK it won't be ending anytime soon. The question is, can we make the transition to 4E without terribly jarring the campaign?

All of the players are looking forward to the new edition, and we will certainly try it out by playing a separate game, and try to re-create the PC's and typical encounters. If it works, great (I hope). If we don't like 4E, ok (doubtful). If we love 4E but can't make the conversion work for us, we have a problem (most likely?).

We are keeping open minds on this. Whatever, we plan to have fun. Hope you do too.

 

[VannATLC]

To be honest, I think that if you look at 'conversion' as a process of re-imagination.. So that you take the clearest aspects of your characters, their strengths and weaknesses, the roles they like to play, and their backgrounds. Then you apply them to the 4E options, and take your closest fits.

To accurately represent the power level you are now maybe be difficult, and will change, and your DM may or may not have a large amount of work cut out for him. I typically draft my encounters very lightly, so I'm not anticipating a large amount of extra work, in terms of conversion.

 

[Spatula]

There is nothing in 4e stopping you from having dryads as beautiful forest spirits, evil chromatic dragons, good metallic dragons, lawful good paladins, gnomes, bards...

...except for that, you know, pesky lack of a bard class. And druid, and monk...

 

[hong]

To be honest, I think that if you look at 'conversion' as a process of re-imagination.. So that you take the clearest aspects of your characters, their strengths and weaknesses, the roles they like to play, and their backgrounds. Then you apply them to the 4E options, and take your closest fits.

To accurately represent the power level you are now maybe be difficult, and will change, and your DM may or may not have a large amount of work cut out for him. I typically draft my encounters very lightly, so I'm not anticipating a large amount of extra work, in terms of conversion.

Yep. If I can play the same character in Baldur's Gate, BG2, BG2:TOB, NWN1, NWN2, Jade Empire and Guild Wars, conversion to 4E should be a piece of cake.

 

[Andor]

I'll say this much:

I considered every edition up to 3e an improvement over the prior.

I from what I have seen of 4e, I don't see that trend continuing.

When 3e came out I had long since stopped playing 2e in favor of other games. Fasa and White Wolf were dominant forces in the RPG world and few of my friends paid much attention to what TSR was doing.

Now I'm still happily playing 3e and those other games are lurking in shadows eeking out a living on scraps.

I'm curious to see 4e, but I'm not pinning any hopes on it. I don't need to.

 

[Deep Blue 9000]

I suspect the pro-4e arguments we are hearing now were much the same as back when 3e was coming out.

"D&D is returning to its roots"
"The new edition will eliminate the previous edition's power gaming"
"The new edition is stream lining the rules for faster gameplay with less referencing the books"
"In the new edition, low level characters are tougher and less reliant on good rolls for their stats"

I think this just shows that some things may change but the design goals and fears/desires of the population do not.

 

[Spatula]

Well much of this sort of psychology is just showing us that the person generally fears change. They do not necessarily really honestly object to certain rules or ideas presented in 4E, they merely criticize because their comfort zone is being challenged and they feel the need to lash out against the source of their discomfort, even when the upcoming change is fixing cumbersome or broken ideas.

If a player has an ingrained sense of what a Fighter's round consists of, and have been playing the same way for years, it can be a system shock (1E Con based - roll%) to have that idea radically changed. The same goes for the layout of the planes, the core classes, and whatever other things that are viewed as being a long time constant to the game. I personally love the new cosmology, but many people will hate it simply because it is different - without really evaluating how bad the old system was, or the rationale for making the changes.

Sure, some people generally dislike change, and there are others that glom onto any change because it's new. You can't say that it's true of everyone that is apprehensive (or uncritical) about 4e, though, or even most of them. It's generalization based on anecdote.

I myself was very eager for 2e - in my defense, I was very young at the time... looking back nothing really changed and there were sooo many new problems once the splats started coming out. After a while I fell out of playing D&D, missed skills&powers entirely (for which I gather I am lucky), and then was very eager for 3e, which is how I discovered ENworld. Now, I'm not a 4e "hater"... after seeing Psion's concerns I guess that I'm sort of in the same boat as he is. I like most of the mechanical changes, and dislike others. However I vehemently dislike that the game isn't just mechanically backwards compatible, but that not even the story-tools or what-have-you are compatible, either. You can't recreate an existing D&D campaign world in 4e, even one that doesn't use splats. Aside from the monk disappearing in 2e, that's never really been true before. And being unable to convert campaigns over definitely lowers my motivation to change editions.

So there is fear of change, and also dislike of *these* particular changes.