Is this what you went through with 3rd Edition?

[Toben the Many]

http://groups.google.com/group/rec....ca0c3ec1e7447d9

See, when I go back and look at these old discussions, I don't see the same thing going on. I think there were certainly many people who did not like the change from 2e to 3e. But I really don't remember the amount vitriol that I see now. Also, I remember the complaints coming from a smaller percentage of the folks on the boards and such. It was a few lonely criers in the wilderness. Now, it seems like there are quite a number of people who are displeased, though those people are still very much in the minority.

I think that there will be inevitably be some parallels between the release of new editions in the Internet Age. However, it's not a fair comparison to compare the release of 4e to the release of 3e. Because 3rd Edition was a massive phenomenon. It totally transformed the role-playing game industry. The only other game that I remember transforming the industry like that was Vampire: The Masquerade.

Now, WotC could just be that lucky and just be that good - but I simply don't see how they could arrange for lightning to strike twice. I'm not saying that 4e won't be a success. My prediction is that it will be a smashing success. At this point, all they have to do is show up. That much is clear based on the sales of Races & Classes and Worlds & Monsters.

However, is it going to be a phenomenon like 3e was? Sure, it's possible. But I think that's like winning the Superbowl two years in a row. It's really darn hard to do that.

So that brings me to...the difference of reactions you are seeing over 4e. I think the reactions over 3e were generally more positive because it came at the right time, offered the right things, had the right mindset, and was in tremendous demand.

In short - 3e came at a really good time. So it was more welcome than 4e. 4e is coming a bit early. So there's more complaining.

But it won't matter, because 4e will do very well, and most people will convert. It's inevitable.

 

[Kzach]

Oh, please. Nothing stops me... except for the fact that the published rules won't support it, everything published for the game will contradict it, and the players whine if you don't let them play stuff in the book.

That's not nothing.

Huh?

Nothing in the rules requires you to use the dryads as written in the MM. Write up your own dryads. Nothing stops you from saying chromatic dragons are evil. Just, you know, say they're evil. Nothing stops you from enforcing lawful goodness from paladin players either. Saying, "You must play a paladin as lawful good," does not affect the mechanics of the system in any way, shape, form or otherwise. No rule says you can't have gnomes as a player race, and in fact it has been stated that there will be assistance to do so provided in the MM. Bards are coming out in PHB2 and there will be, no doubt, a plethora of player created bards once the game comes out if you can't be bothered making your own. And there is no rule that requires the use of the planes as written in the flavour text (that we know of, admittedly).

Everything you have said so far is unsupported and, in fact, the opposite of what you're saying is supported by the available evidence.

Give an example of one of the known rules that prevents you from running your game the way you want to. And by rules I mean something hard-wired into the mechanics of the system, not some arbitrary, "The planes don't use the Great Wheel cosmology," which can be entirely circumvented in any way you choose without any effect on the mechanics whatsoever.

So far all I'm seeing from your arguments is a, "4e ruins roleplaying!" mentality.

 

[Kwalish Kid]

Huh?

Nothing in the rules requires you to use the dryads as written in the MM. Write up your own dryads. Nothing stops you from saying chromatic dragons are evil. Just, you know, say they're evil.

Even better, don't stat them up, since they aren't likely to be opponents.

 

[Jeff Wilder]

So, do you think that this furor over 4th Edition is going to turn out to be much the same sort of panic at change and then coming to like the new edition?

For some people, sure. For many, no.

Speaking personally, I dropped 2E because it grew bloated and stupid. It wasn't modular, so really the only way to add new stuff and make it "interesting" was to make it more powerful. 3E brought me back in the game. I griped a tiny bit about 3.5, but (1) I hadn't all that much invested in 3E, and (2) I agreed with nearly every change made between 3E and 3.5. So I switched immediately.

None of that holds true for me in 3.5-to-4E. Sure, there's a crap-load of stuff, and some of it is badly balanced. (And no matter what anybody tells you, additional options always make for incremental power creep.) But most of it is well done. And the 3.5 engine itself, while having flaws (especially, speaking as a DM, for me), is IMO fundamentally sound. I have every WotC product released for 3.5 and like and use (or want to use) a large majority of them. Finally, I disagree with some of the changes made in 4E.

There's a lot I like about 4E. But the more I learn, the more I grow to agree with those folks who say that it doesn't feel like D&D. When I came back to D&D with 3E, it still felt like D&D. 4E doesn't. I don't hate the fluff of 4E, in a vacuum. Some of it, in fact, I quite like. But it's not D&D fluff. Also, there are a couple of rules changes in 4E that are just so bone-headed and that feel so contemptuous of gamers that they're deal-breakers for me outright. (I also feel that way about the marketing campaign.)

So I'm not exactly the target of your questions, I guess. I don't consider myself a 4E hater, and I hope the game is successful, as WotC deserves my well-wishes for bringing me back to D&D, which I've loved (off and on) for 27 years. And I obviously never hated 3E or said I wasn't going to buy into it.

But I'll never buy 4E. If I can't find enough 3.5 or Pathfinder players for a good game for the next decade, I'll drop D&D (as I did with 2E, with no regrets, and as I did with the new edition of the Miniatures game, which is based on 4E), and find M&M or True20 or Hero or Buffy:tRPG players ... and hope in several years to love 5E as I do 3E and 3.5.

 

[trancejeremy]

I think this is quite a bit different, because back in the 2e to 3e transition, you had a lot of people who had abandoned AD&D, period, due to problems with 2e.

While not the whole reason TSR went under, it was part of the reason, I think.

3e brought back a lot of those people (like me) who left during the 2e era. And it also brought in people excited by the OGL and the whole open gaming thing. Not to mention, the new openess by WOTC was a panacea to the bad old days of TSR's net policy (which probably would have sent a C&D letter here for the rules forum, if this place existed back then).

Also, a lot of the reason people who left AD&D 2E came back to 3e, was that it still felt like D&D, which they missed. Not so much a better fantasy RPG, since there are many of those, but a better D&D.

From what I've seen of 4e, it might indeed be a better fantasy RPG, but it doesn't feel like D&D. While 3.x still does. I think that's also why you see the bitterness - it's like the bitterness of fans of the old Battlestar Galactica vs the new one - they don't like having their memories trampled and re-envisioned.

I

 

[Kwalish Kid]

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.

I looked, but couldn't find anything.

 

[FitzTheRuke]

I have no idea why people say that 4E doesn't "feel" like D&D. I've been playing D&D at LEAST once a week for 22 years and 4E feels EXACTLY like D&D to me.

Now on the subject at hand:

I have an interesting twist on the discussion:

I liked 1E, but wasn't super attached to it, then the DAY the 2nd edition books came out, I bought 'em and loved 'em and played D&D at the expense of everything. (Schoolwork, etc)

Near the end of 2nd ed's run I was just so fed up with all the problems with it (especially the last few splat books - those drove the final nail in the coffin of that editon, though many problems had been so for the whole life of the edition)

Then I heard about 3e, and I loved it! I was soooo excited. Not long after it came out, I recognised it's many failings. The core mechanic is a thing of beauty, don't get me wrong, but it really had it's problems.

So they announced 3.5 and I though "yay! They'll fix it!" and I soon found that they fixed things that weren't broken, and didn't fix a few things that still could have used work. Again, overall, it's still a very good game (I still like it better than any other RPG, so don't take my critism too hard!)

Now they've started 4E, and I love everything I've heard, and every game I've played since the DDXP stuff got out. Practically everything I didn't like about 3E is everything they stated as a goal to fix, and almost everything they kept from 3E is the stuff I thought was great (mainly the core D20 mechanic, but many other things.)

Now, it's possible that they will have changed things I liked and left things I didn't when I see the full rules. They certainly have changed things that I didn't expect (though so-far I like most of the results.)

But who knows? Maybe a few years from now I'll think this one could be better. (I'm like the opposite of "fearing change" -- more like "the grass is greener in the next field over.")

Probably.

Keep moving forward I say!

Fitz

 

[variant]

I just feel like they are ruining it. No Bard, but there is a Warlord. No Gnome, but they put in the Tiefling. I don't like what they are doing with it at all.

 

[Keefe the Thief]

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.

 

[billd91]

Huh?

Nothing in the rules requires you to use the dryads as written in the MM. Write up your own dryads. Nothing stops you from saying chromatic dragons are evil. Just, you know, say they're evil. Nothing stops you from enforcing lawful goodness from paladin players either. Saying, "You must play a paladin as lawful good," does not affect the mechanics of the system in any way, shape, form or otherwise. No rule says you can't have gnomes as a player race, and in fact it has been stated that there will be assistance to do so provided in the MM. Bards are coming out in PHB2 and there will be, no doubt, a plethora of player created bards once the game comes out if you can't be bothered making your own. And there is no rule that requires the use of the planes as written in the flavour text (that we know of, admittedly).

Everything you have said so far is unsupported and, in fact, the opposite of what you're saying is supported by the available evidence.

Give an example of one of the known rules that prevents you from running your game the way you want to. And by rules I mean something hard-wired into the mechanics of the system, not some arbitrary, "The planes don't use the Great Wheel cosmology," which can be entirely circumvented in any way you choose without any effect on the mechanics whatsoever.

So far all I'm seeing from your arguments is a, "4e ruins roleplaying!" mentality.

I think you're making something of a bogus argument. Of course you can make up anything you want. That's never been the problem. But one of the things making D&D different from other RPGs that involve undertaking risky adventures for fun and profit (which is pretty much MOST FRPGs out there and plenty of other RPGs as well) is the inherent flavor built up by some of the canonical game elements like the difference between chromatic and metallic dragons, the presence of gnomes, naturist religious types running around the wilderness, and so on.

Each edition has shifted these things around a little bit (half-orcs are there, then they aren't, then they're back or 3E shifted AC from being a mechanic based on old-school wargames to something a bit more intuitable by non-wargamers) but it really looks like 4e monkeys around with them a LOT more. To some people, that's making it a completely different game (whether a good game or not is immaterial) and no longer D&D.

If Call of Cthulhu changed core flavor elements by making all of the Old Ones products of radiation a la Godzilla or got rid of them in favor of traditional horror movie fodder like vampires, werewolves, and zombies, I don't think anybody would acknowledge it as Call of Cthulhu even if the mechanics were identical.