Is this what you went through with 3rd Edition?

[Primal]

Yup, that's exactly right. Everything being said about 4e now was said about 3e in 2000, and about 2e in 1989.

Maybe so. I can't speak on behalf of the whole community, but I *can* speak on the behalf of my local D&D community. I remember the whole lot of us (local DMs, five in all) being very tired with the limitations and constant houseruling back in AD&D, so the news and previews of 3E got us very excited. When the rules came out, we all embraced them with enthusiasm. Now, those same local DMs have been very leery of what they've seen and heard of 4E, and none of us is going to bring their groups into 4E. Yesterday, all of us became very excited about the Pathfinder RPG, because based on those 65 pages, Paizo's new system is closer to our idea of what D&D should be.

 

[RigaMortus2]

When 3rd Edition came out, I heard a lot of the same complaints from the people I gamed with as I do now with 4th Edition:
"They're dumbing the game down and taking away all the intricacies that I enjoyed."
"It isn't the same game as the one that I love playing."
"The new rules don't support the style of play that I like."
"There's nothing in here except fighting, fighting, fighting."
"This is soulless corporate gimmickery."
"It just doesn't feel like D&D."

You forgot...

"They are turning D&D into Magic the Gathering"

Except now it's

"They are turning D&D into World of Warcraft"

 

[seskis281]

Man, my neck aches from the back and forth.... like a tennis match with John McEnroe!

Ok, so in response to the OP's question, I offer my response:

For me, personally, no it's nothing like my experience. In watching others, it's like watching history repeat itself.


For myself, I grew up in the early 80's with B/X (Moldvay/Cook) D&D and AD&D 1e. I didn't game for a long time, then in early 90's joined a few friends for some 2e games that I just didn't like. I had moved away several times, and not paid any attention to the gaming world for a decade when around 2001 I got myself interested again, mainly due to the LOTR resurgence and unpacking some old stuff I had shoved in a closet. I sauntered over to the LGS and took a look around. On the shelf was the just released 3rd edition. I had no part or knowledge of ANY of the discussions previous to its development or release, so I thumbed through and liked it. I bought the PHB, MM and DMG. I said - nice, the AC is finally ascending (something I always wanted) and the mechanics are somewhat streamlined. The skills use and the feats trees seemed interesting, but I thought "this could get out of hand." I started my campaign and all was good. For awhile.... then all the supplements and the explosion of d20 material erupted, and a year later I had players hauling 10 splatbooks and 20-30 minute sections of gaming would turn to arguing by a player or two over the rules. I gave up with the move to 3.5, as I perceived this edition to be an even greater move towards rules crunch. ** I HOLD NO ILL WILL TOWARDS ANYONE WHO DISAGREES! - I simply relate my own preferences.

I switched to another system entirely. It is rules-lite, but it is not appropriate for this thread to really go into it or push it... just mentioning other brands can imediately spark anger - but suffice it to say that I certainly fall into the "gamist" philosophy the above poster mentioned. When I heard about 4e, I thought "let's see what they do." I agree that some of the intent of 4e has been to re-engage the gamist approach as opposed to the simulationist - which I applaud. I still disagree philosophically with the "powered" concept of gaming that it also embraces - it is designed to appeal to those who like to feel, from the lowest level, that they have a multitude of "at will" abilities, and to make it extremely difficult to die. Again, I begrudge no one who likes this sort of RPGing. It's not my cup of tea, but we are all allowed to like and champion what we prefer. I will likely buy the 4e PHB (if for nothing else so I can sit and play if ever invited to do so), but I won't spend much more on other releases.


Now, as to saying "history repeats itself." The furor running amuk on the boards is kind of interesting. After returning to gaming, I replugged myself into some of the communities and learned all about the Gygax/TSR battles of the 80's, the corporate shift and WotC buyout, the discussions of 3e as it was being developed. I first heard the term "grognard," and learned all the derogatory nick-names of 3e. I first engaged the discussion of what "D&D FEELS LIKE."

When one looks back, there has ALWAYS been disagreement on "what the game should be." Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson, both venerable co-creators, split very quickly in the 1970's over their arguments on what D&D was supposed to be and where it was to go. There have always been tensions between the RPG industry as a "business" and as a "hobby for enthusiasts," which led to the infamous Gygax/TSR split. When 2e came out, there were plenty of 1e enthusiasts who were appalled. When 3e came out, 2e devotees suddenly joined the 1e group in complaint. 3.5 further developed the rift - "old school" vs "new school," etc. I have read now about the disagreements between the various designers (Monte Cooks paradigms vs. Tweet, Adkinson, etc.) Put ANY two RPGers in a room, and they WILL disagree on something about the game they're playing.

Now comes 4e, and many 3.xers are now the "grognards" in the debate against those who want to know why everyone can't just get on board with "what's happening now." I myself have gotten into a discussion with some where people attacked my defense of a desire to play, oh say Basic D&D, by asking "why do you want to drive an Edsel when the new car is so much better?"

I will say this - there is NO such thing as a game system that is "perfect" or even "better" in any inherent way. There is simply taste and a like in one type of mechanics, feel, style, or even small things like artwork (does the shape of the ampersand matter here? lol) that is individual to all of us.

What exasperates the situation is the business of the industry - when a company is as large as Hasbro/WotC then their intent will always be to service product that is most profitable. My own largest complaint about everything from 3.5 through now is less about the "concept of the game" than the need to make it so that players MUST continually buy expensive supplementary product -- unless I'm mistaken, I may be wrong in saying if I pick up the PHB I will be able to sit and play a 4e game -- I'm supposed to buy it, the PHBII, III... oh, and I MUST join Gleemax to play as well. I don't hate WotC - they're just running a business. I don't dislike the 4e designers - they're doing their best to meet the corporate desires of the company they work for while pushing their own individual tastes. There is definitely a strong connection between modern incarnations of official D&D and the myriad of other fantasy/sci fi genres and modes - from anime to video game.

This is the most important thing: NONE OF THE EDITIONS WERE EVER "BROKEN," --- they simply are what they are. There is NO rules set that, "out of the box," will play "perfectly."

There are only systems that are "closest" to our individual tastes.

When you look at editions as trying to "fix" what was wrong with an earlier model, you will always insult at least some who loved what they played to begin with.

When you hear others say "this fixes what I didn't like" from 3.x, or 2e, or 1e, it is always easy to feel like your own tastes are being assaulted.

Finally, we must all step back and take a breath -- the vitriol and snarkiness really boils down to a very common personal thing - when we love something, we get angry when it's attacked. So we jump to defend it. This is usually out of fear that that which we love might be "lost." -- in RPGing terms, the reason many have screamed "treason!" against Paizo is because of the fear that by one 3rd party publisher rejecting 4e, then the dominos could fall and if the edition isn't a titanic success it could be dropped. 3.5 devotees are now feeling the loss that earlier devotess of 1e, 2e felt as newer editions came along -- to many, the system only feels "alive" if active published support is occurring.

So,

Yep. History repeats itself.

And one day, those who are devoted with 4e will go through this once again when 5e is developed. Don't laugh - it will happen, unless D&D is dropped altogether as a brand name. The "business" model will demand it. Given the average separation in editions, and factoring in the "yearly" core rule expansions on 4e, I'd predict around 2015 for the 1st rumors to start to fly.

 

[bramadan]

First of all I have to say I find it really odd how people (in this thread for example) are attempting to convince intelligent articulate man who has clearly decided he does not like something that *in fact* he likes it after all
Let it go folks - fact that you think you will like DnD4 (and I certainly think I will) does not get diminished by someone else not liking it and for a whole lot of people - Psion for one - there may well be excellent reasons not to like it.

That said here is my history with DnD:

I started with 1st Ed before UA and *loved it* it is probably rose-tinted glasses now because I did not know better then but early ADnD are some of my most cherished DnD memories.
Then UA came and we had a big campaign under it and while it was fun it was such a massive power-creep that it shook our perception of what the DnD is supposed to be like. (It did not help that I have had most idiotic stroke of - witnessed - luck rolling the character for that campaign making me significantly more effective then the rest of the - rather effective - party, memory of which always makes me leery of the roll-up-stats rule)

After that campaign we played Rolemaster and some Warhammer (1st ed) for a while as we were not sure if UA made game better or worse. ADnD 2 came about that time and we switched reluctantly though the flavor of it felt very disappointing at the time. I remember feeling very much how they are killing DnD with the 2nd edition. Gone was a quirky Gygaxian world, replaced with bland lawsuit-proof 1980ies fantasy. In particular I remember being offended at the sidelining and renaming of demons and devils. I also very much did not like what they did to the official settings. Gone was Greyhawk which I loved and Forgotten Realms changed from the very sparse but atmospheric "Old Gray Box" to the new overly detailed, hyper powerful, little bit of everything world dominated by the 2-dimensional pulp-fantasy NPCs.

Strangely enough, most of what we got from the 2ed turned out to be in the fluff department. We have barely switched over when they came out with the Greyhawk "From the Ashes" which to this day remains one of my favorite RPG products of all times and the excellent line that followed it. While I was primary DM for Greyhawk I ended up a player in likewise amazing Birthright setting. Mixture of politics, adventure and mythology that Birthright offered impressed us quite profoundly and we played it a lot (and still have full set of all the BR published products). Strangely enough I remember very little of the specificities of 2ed rules, they were imperfect for sure but they did not bother me much. We avoided the whole series of "Complete X" splatbooks as they did not really fit either Greyhawk or Birthright and this missed out on the UA-type powercreep in the second edition. By the late 1990ies my big Greyhawk campaign was over and we played RPGs somewhat less alternating between DnD/Birthright, RuneQuest and Rolemaster. Arrival of the DnD3 pulled us back to the "mother-game" and I started a new Birthright campaign this time under DnD3 rules.

Our relation to DnD 3 was about the exact opposite to that with ADnD 2. Initially we were full of enthusiasm. I loved the new simplified mechanic and was very happy with combat rules that encouraged miniatures play (I love painting the little buggers and have very many) system looked mathematically sound and robust and I was sure that it will support us much better then 2ed ever will.
Turned out it was not really so. I managed conversion of BR to 3ed without too much problems initially (there was some excellent support for that back then) and first 4-5 levels went on without difficulty. However, faster progression of the PCs under DnD 3 coupled with the incredible power-curve of the magic using classes meant that already by level 7-8 I had to go out of my way to deal with the party wizard. Many standard tropes of pseudo-medieval world such as Castles, armies and intrigue (all integral parts of Birthright setting) were pointless in the face of the wizard with improved invisibility, fly, locate object, clairvoyance and enough fire-power to sink a battleship. Very early in the campaign I had to remove the PCs from the main zone of the Birthright world where I was originally planning to involve them into the high politics, and dump them into much more "classic" DnD wilderness-questing sort of campaign. Even then, wizard (and to lesser extent cleric) vastly overshadowed the rest of the party in their importance. By the time party was level 10-11 I was already experiencing the problem that anything that could survive 1-2 rounds against wizard will be powerful enough to destroy the party. Party has become ultimate glass cannon, or rather, party has become irrelevant addendum to the glass cannon that was their mage. By this point no-one other then the mage player was having too much fun and we decided to scrap that campaign and start with something else.

That was the end of my playing 3ed as it was written, making it - as far as I was concerned - least successful edition of DnD. I am sure that in retrospect it was possible to guard against the sort of thing that happened there and that someone with more 3ed experience would be able to modify the setting and enemies and prolong the shelf-life of the party for a bit longer, but I was not really in the mood to be creating the setting that accounted for stealth-flying fireball spewing platforms of death in its basic premisses.
The BR 3ed campaign was a great success in a sense of getting together a wonderful gaming group but in terms of the rules and their effect on the game it was a disaster.

For the next campaign I created a setting of my own that differed very much from the standard DnD premises. Magic was practically non-existent and the core activities of the PCs were to involve detective work, assassination and espionage, with a generous helping of political intrigue. Originally I intended to use basic core of d20 rules (sans magic using classes of any kind and with more then generous helping of my own house rules etc...) by the time campaign was getting of the ground the rules would have at the most generous have to be considered an entirely separate OGL game. Neu Ungren campaign proved a great success (and great joy in world-building) but it was despite more then because of d20-ish rules. Entire mechanical system felt jerry-rigged and by the time campaign fell apart due to RL reasons (around level 16 or so) I was very much ready to ditch the d20 entirely and make my own rules from scratch. At this point I thought I am done with DnD and its derivatives for good.

After the Neu Ungren campaign our RPGs again got reduced somewhat but not for too long. Reprinting of the Warhammer came somewhere arround this time and I was curious as to the applicability of those rules for future Neu Ungren campaigns. I picked them up, liked them and, having remembered our old Warhammer days had the urge to DM in the Empire.
I collected the old "Enemy Within" campaign and despite not being particularly fond of pre-written adventures had a blast GMing that to a slightly changed crew for the next year or so. By the end of the Enemy Within I was a bit spent on GMing and wanted to work on the rules for Neu Ungren so I passed on the baton to my old Birthright DM (and best friend) who decided he will run us through Great Pendragon Campaign (which is still current). In the mean time another of our old players was getting ready to move away to England so I hurried up with my Neu Ungren rules so as to be able to GM a farewell mini-campaign in Neu Ungren under the new rules. That campaign ended day before yesterday. People have also picked Dark Heresy and there is interest in giving those a try at some point in the future.

In the light of all these things to do vis RP and the fairly bitter taste that DnD last left in my mouth, I was fairly uninterested when I heard DnD4 announcement while at Gen Con last year. However, as the information trickled out I became more and more enthusiastic.

Most of my main gripes about DnD seem to be addressed, from overemphasis on magic-users, through degenerate fighter strategies to setting shattering spells at trivially low levels. DnD 4 looked more and more like my sort of heroic fantasy game. What pushed me from curious to interested was the introduction of Warlord - class I wanted to play ever since my 17 intelligence 11 strength, Henry V wannabe 2ed Birthright fighter, prince of Roesone. When I heard about Warlord I decided to buy the books and play at least in RPGA LFR if nowhere else. That lead me back to these boards and more and more information that made game seem ever more appealing. I now intend to run a 4ed campaign with heavy props (I actually plan to assemble the Dwarvenforge Maze to go with my minis for it) in the 1st edition style of heavy monster bashing and sword-and-sorcery plot line.
It must have struck some heavy nostalgia chords with my folks as the response so far has been most enthusiastic. We even seem like we will be getting one or even two brand new RPG players into the mix with that new campaign.

The game very much goes on.

 

[PeterWeller]

And I'm not questioning your decision. I was stating the basis for mine.

It also sounds like you already made the world, have all the stuff to run that world, and enjoy the system in place. There really is no reason for you to bother switching.

I will say, though, that while 4E's metasetting has changed, I don't think it's changed as much as you seem to think. Most of what is absent will come back, and most of what's been changed is going to see a throw-back version published by a 3rd party at some point (probably Necromancer).

Should you change? Doesn't sound like it.

Could you change? Sure, and I bet it would be a lot easier to do it than you think.

 

[Kwalish Kid]

To be honest I don't know what you mean here.

Kamikaze Midget identifies the "RIGHT SOLUTION" (His caps) as making certain problematic combat/game events difficult to do, though still possible. It seems that one can almost always try to do something in 4E, defaulting to Ability Score vs. Applicable Defense. In the case of the "Human Shield" example, the person trying to use the human shield might have to do a Strength vs. Fortitude against the shield (assuming the shield is already grabbed) and a Strength/Dexterity vs. Reflex Defense (or perhaps attack roll) in order to interpose the shield.

Ability score vs. Defense is going to be more difficult to accomplish compared to standard attacks and powers.

4E has the "RIGHT SOLUTION" and adds also powers and special monster abilities to make what would otherwise be out-of-bounds combat events into elements of the greater story of that D&D session.

 

[Kwalish Kid]

Let it go folks - fact that you think you will like DnD4 (and I certainly think I will) does not get diminished by someone else not liking it and for a whole lot of people - Psion for one - there may well be excellent reasons not to like it.

Sounds good. I'd like to find out why Psion doesn't like it (for my own nefarious reasons) and I'm having a difficult time straightforwardly understanding his articulated reasons. As he said, his examples don't give the correct impression.

 

[CleverNickName]

I play 3.5E now...but before that, we played with the Red Box Rules (I think it is called OD&D here?) We skipped every other edition in between the Basic/Expert/Companion boxed sets and 3rd Edition.

Of course we were aware that there were newer editions; we just didn't like them. I would buy one of the newer books every now and then and use it for ideas, but we never played under any of the newer rules systems until 3rd Edition came along. It's hard to explain why...I guess I just liked what I saw in 3rd Edition.

I imagine it will be the same for 4E when it is released. I mean, I've already pre-ordered the books for 4E, and I'm looking forward to reading them for some new ideas...but I'm not in the market for a new game right now. Unless something really grabs my attention and starts those creative juices to flowing, I'm probably just going to glean a few tips from them to enhance my 3.5E game.

 

[seskis281]

I play 3.5E now...but before that, we played with the Red Box Rules (I think it is called OD&D here?) We skipped every other edition in between the Basic/Expert/Companion boxed sets and 3rd Edition.

Actually there's a big difference there lol - "OD&D" is the very 1st, digest-booklet rules put out in the early-mid 70's. "Basic D&D" and "Advanced D&D" were separate editions that were put out several years later. And when dealing with "Basic," you have the Holmes-edited original, the Moldvay/Cook-edited Basic/Expert sets, then the Red Box through Black Box Basic through Immortal Rules as edited by Mentzer from the early 80's.

The distinctions between those sets are more akin to the 3.0 versus 3.5 differences, of course.

And people argue, sometimes just as passionately, about those as well. Indeed, AD&D (1e) is a major edition change from OD&D, probably the 1st real "new edition" in the chain (you are right in as much as B/X sets were more the direct lineage from OD&D, at least as I understand it).

 

[Clawhound]

In our game, we are going to go 4e ASAP.

3e has a problem. Our casual players do not understand 3e well enough to participate well. Just the idea of an easier to run game wins my heart over.

My own problem with 3e's flaws has to do with design logic. As I have DM'ed over the last few years, I began adopting certain tactics in design. To no small extent, I am a gamist and have always been a gamist. With 4e, I see a game going the exact same direction that I am for the exact same reasons. I like that.

In 3e, some things were always weird. For example, I played a fighter back around 2000-3, and finding any fighter-oriented material was very hard. Everyone's and their mother were publishing options for magic based characters. When WotC did publish books dedicated to fighters, more space was spent on spells than was spent on feats or fighter options! I became very jaded as the sourcebooks continued. Only with Bo9S and MIC did I see hope. I greatly admired the thought and design work that went into these publications. This is what I had wanted to see for years!

When I heard about 4e, I said to myself, "If they design 4e like they are designing this stuff, 4e should be a much better game." So far, I have liked what I have seen.