I've figured it out.

[freebfrost]

Why then, do so many people want to switch to C&C, basic, or 1e rules to play their game?

If those rules aren't as good as 3e, why go back? What do they hope to capture by playing an earlier edition of the game that they can't do with the 3e rules? I'm baffled by this.

Where do you get the impression that a large amount of people want to switch?

I'm curious about that.

Right now I'm not actually running any D&D games. The games on my plate for 2005 are Conan campaign, a d20 Star Wars game, and a Mutants & Masterminds game. No "pure" D&D at all.

As much as I love D&D and its settings, sometimes you just want something different. Where others go to other games, I choose to do d20/OGL varients simply because my players already understand the basics of the game, thus it is easy for them to move to a new genre and advanced ruleset. Now, I am planning a big return to 3.5 with a grand Forgotten Realms campaign in 2006, so I'm not turning away forever.

Does that put me in the "switching" category?

Regardless, maybe some of this feedback you are seeing is a reaction similar to mine - maybe it's something new and intriguing, or just a change of pace, that makes people want to play C&C, Hackmaster, or an older version. Perhaps they want a more roleplaying-focused game and that option give them an easier way to do that?

There are many potential reasons that you may see this reaction right now, but is that necessarily indicative of a "movement" away from D&D?

That is the real question.

 

[Henry]

I am also not so sure about this, and not becuase I have played 10,000 games of OD&D

Where is your fact or facts?

Basically the trends of purchase by consumers, and the trends of release cycles of various publishers. Apart from TSR, most publishers only wait a few years (about 3 to 5) to release new editions of their games. West End Games Star Wars - 1987 to 1991, then to 1995 or so; White Wolf games - about once every 3 to 5 years; Steve Jackson Games 1st through 3rd edition GURPS, same kind of time range. In fact, GURPS 3rd to 4th is the first time there's been such a long lapse, and even then it was purctuated by the Compendiums.

Also, every year sees "the next big thing," First it's D&D, then nintendo, then White Wolf, then Magic the Gathering, Then Pokemon, then 3E, etc. etc.- the further you get from a new product's release, the further it goes out of the public mindshare. We as a public keep moving on to new things.

And the fact that you post to this forum and visit regularly means you're one of the diehards like me. I'm more speaking of the general customer base; any time one speaks of the typical or majority D&D player, holding up one's self as an example is using a subset of a subset as an example. All the regulars to ENWorld, Dragonsfoot, Kenzer forums, etc. are not usually in the main market for what the average customer buys.

And 2nd edition seemed to coincide with a veritable flury of new popular games--Vampire, Shadow Run, Cyberpunk, Ars Magica, many others--and it didn't seem to hurt their market share.

As time went on, and the network shrunk, it may well have - but no one knows for sure because the marketing studies by the major players at the time were nonexistent.

 

[Garnfellow]

So, if I'm to get the gist of this thread it is this:

that, Diaglo notwithstanding, most people agree that 2nd edition was an improvement over 1st edition, and happily ported to it. And that most people agree that 3rd edition is an improvement over 2nd edition, and by proxy, an improvement over 1st.

Well, keep in mind that parallel to 1e and 2e there was a strong, fully-featured, and yet also simpler engine for playing D&D: the Basic/Expert/Companion/Masters/Immortals systems developed by guys like J. Eric Holmes, Tom Moldvay, Zeb Cook, and Frank Mentzer. In many respects, this engine was actually much better than the clunky, creaky AD&D engine and had its own, separate fan base. I think when a lot of folks talk about going back to the good old days, they’re really hankering after plain old Basic D&D, rather than 1e AD&D.

Why then, do so many people want to switch to C&C, basic, or 1e rules to play their game?

3e is a great system; the unified d20 resolution system is a tremendous advance over past incarnations. But 3e is very complex. Character generation, to say nothing of monster and NPC generation, takes a long time.

A simplified ruleset has a lot of benefits. It’s nice to be able to just slap together a character in five minutes, or teach a new player the game in a half hour, or completely improvise an adventure with just a couple lines of notes.

A simplified ruleset also pushes a lot of control back into the DM’s hands, which many find very liberating. If the DM is a good at improvisation, enthusiastic, and has a innate sense for fair play, than this can make for some lively, rollicking fun. 3e is highly codified; almost every action in combat has a rule that clearly governs it. A simplified ruleset can allow DMs to be more creative, spontaneous, and descriptive when running their combats. You can fudge things on the fly to make them fit the spirit of the game.

On the other hand, if your DM is not good at improvisation, or has a God complex or something, then a simplified system can make for a much worse experience.

If those rules aren't as good as 3e, why go back? What do they hope to capture by playing an earlier edition of the game that they can't do with the 3e rules? I'm baffled by this.

I think some of this is just pure and simple nostalgia, which is a powerful and perfectly legitimate motivation in and of itself. And if you're on a nostalgia kick, those wonky mechanics are all an important part of the experience; the wonkier the better.

Sometimes I get a craving for a good old fluffernutter sandwich, as awful as that might sound right now.

Some of what goes on with those real, hard-core Dragonsfoot zealots is just . . . a willful stubbornness or something else that I just cannot fathom, and maybe it’s my loss. The whole Hackmaster experience, for example, leaves me personally stone cold. But Hackmaster has plenty of fans, including lots of folks here at EnWorld whose opinions I value highly.

 

[der_kluge]

Ok, so my "so many" was probably out of line. Perhaps it is a vocal minority of people. My GM did this, and I'm baffled as to his reasoning. We play a d20 game set in Harn every other week, and on off weeks when I couldn't attend (being as how the wife only lets me out of the house every other week), they were going to play C&C rules in the WLD. Playing in the WLD I can totally understand, but I'm baffled at his reasoning behind wanting to use the C&C rules. I'll be playing in that game this week, and I asked him if it would be ok if I made a half-elf paladin/sorcerer who specialized in shield bash and bull rush attacks.

Some of what goes on with those real, hard-core Dragonsfoot zealots is just . . . a willful stubbornness or something else that I just cannot fathom, and maybe it’s my loss. The whole Hackmaster experience, for example, leaves me personally stone cold. But Hackmaster has plenty of fans, including lots of folks here at EnWorld whose opinions I value highly.

I have to believe that this is a big part of it. Though, when I expressed that very same opinion in a previous thread, it was promptly closed.

 

[Ridley's Cohort]

A lot of 1e diehards have 5000+ hours of experience with that system. But they do not play 1e. They are playing a super-customized house system that has evolved over many years, and they know those rules intimately.

Fast forward to 3e. They spend a few dozens of hours reading the rules and running a few short test campaigns. Then they throw up their hands and come to boards like this one and say: "3e is too hard to learn!" "3e has too many numbers!" "3e is too difficult to customize!" "3e has too many charts!" "3e is too hard to run!" "3e saps my creativity if I do not wear a tinfoil hat!" etc. etc.

The fact that "most" of the criticisms leveled against 3e are more true about 1e does not seem to occur to the 1e diehards because the thousands of hours invested in the system overcoming its suckiness is something they take for granted.

 

[TerraDave]

Burn Out and why experienced games like simple rules

So, if I'm to get the gist of this thread it is this:

that, Diaglo notwithstanding, most people agree that 2nd edition was an improvement over 1st edition, and happily ported to it. And that most people agree that 3rd edition is an improvement over 2nd edition, and by proxy, an improvement over 1st.

Why then, do so many people want to switch to C&C, basic, or 1e rules to play their game?

If those rules aren't as good as 3e, why go back? What do they hope to capture by playing an earlier edition of the game that they can't do with the 3e rules? I'm baffled by this.

I think a few different things have been blurred together...

The Gamers

in terms of who played what: There where people who played through each adition, seeing improvements along the way--these are the majority of the Enworld crowd. There are people who never switched and where happy with the game in its early 80's golden age--a minority here, 'cause this is a D20 focused site, but I know of these people in Brooklyn, and Boise, and I think many other places.

What you do not have is a lot of 2ed die hards who still play it: it is the least loved edition, and reasons for that have been posted over and over. And you do have a few people who just skipped over that edition.

Your question

BUT, what you are really interested in is the combination of 3edition BURN OUT and D&D nostalgia: people who like the flavour of D&D--which does really come from its early years, but don't want to keep up with all the rules for 3.0/3.5, and have an easy time playing earlier editions since they have long since gotten use to there little quirks.

One thing TSR did learn from market research back in the day (according to the 30th aniversary book) is that it was not new gamers who really liked things like the old basic set or other "rules light" games. It is experienced gamers who like to wing it and have no problem with a lack of rules for specific situations.

This may be the answer. And it does open the door for something like C&C which try's to keep a lot of the old flavour and is comparable to older editions, doesn't have rules for all occasions, but is not quite as arbitrary or convuleted as AD&D could be.

 

[TerraDave]

Basically the trends of purchase by consumers, and the trends of release cycles of various publishers. Apart from TSR, most publishers only wait a few years (about 3 to 5) to release new editions of their games. West End Games Star Wars - 1987 to 1991, then to 1995 or so; White Wolf games - about once every 3 to 5 years; Steve Jackson Games 1st through 3rd edition GURPS, same kind of time range. In fact, GURPS 3rd to 4th is the first time there's been such a long lapse, and even then it was purctuated by the Compendiums.

Ohh sure, I am sure that Chaosium is working on the next edition of CoC as I write this.

But that makes my point, it isn't going to really be the next big thing, just a prod to people who are a few editions behind to upgrade. New editions may or may not make money, but I am not convinced that in and of themselves they really excite consumers. 3.0 D&D did that becuase it was such a break through product.

 

[Goblyn]

Um, maybe he likes PB&J more than hamburgers? Seriously, though, i'm pretty certain the point of his comparison was not that D&D3E is better or worse than AD&D1, just that they're hugely different. That's it.

I believe you are correct here.

BTW, i'm assuming you didn't intend to analogize D&D3E to an Apple II, vs. AD&D1 as an iMac, did you?

Nope. I'm retarded and got it backwards. I used to be able to construct a single coherent sentence.

 

[RFisher]

So now I'm flumoxxed. Where are all these people who decry 2e as the worst thing since the Bubonic plague? According to this, a majority of people who were playing at the time that 2nd edition came out, switched merrily!

At the time, I thought 2e was an improvement over 1e just as I thought AD&D was an improvement over classic D&D. I also thought Warhammer FRP & GURPS were improvements over AD&D 2e.

Now, my opinion is different.

It's kind of ironic, BTW, that it was actually 2e campaign started on a lark that started me down the path of reversing my preferences.

That's my one data point, FWIW.

 

[der_kluge]

I still don't see that anyone has answered my question. What is it about 1st edition, or C&C, or some other simplified ruleset that makes people want to forego 3e to play that other system instead? My GM wanted to switch to C&C rules. I told him that I wanted to play a half-elf paladin sorcerer who specialized in shield bash and bull rush attacks. Knowing full well that at least half of that was completely not doable using that ruleset.

So why? Why would someone go from a position of having options available to them, to going to where where options are not as available? Is there anything inherintly complicated about sorcerers that would make someone want to go back to a ruleset that didn't include them? Are the rules for bull rush or shield bashing so arcane and discombobulated that there would be a reason to go back to a system that doesn't include them? I don't think so. In doing so, isn't the GM going to either A) have to create the rules on the fly, or B) end up just frustrating his players in the long run? Because certainly the *idea* of being able to disarm, shield bash, bull rush, or grapple someone has been around in the game long before the rules were there. There just were no simple rules to handle those situations before now.

So why would a GM willingly go back to a position of not allowing those rules? In what world is a 18/92 strength *better* than a 20 strength. Since when are racial level limits or race/class restrictions better than having options? What *about* these old rules compels people to willingly abandon the presence of rules and options, for the lack of rules and options? Don't tell me simplicity. Because if it's simplicity you want, just ignore those rules. I could run 3e and say, "I'm only allowing the 4 core classes, and there is no such thing as bull rush in my world." Ok, that's silly, but I've just dumbed down 3e to a "simplistic" framework that might work for me.

No, I'm not saying 3e is better than any of the other systems one might choose to use. Don't misinterpret what I'm saying. What I'm saying is that there are *more* options in 3e. One can choose to ignore those options, or not. There isn't any good reason that I can think of why one would choose to use a simpler ruleset.

edit: No, scratch that. One could choose to use 1e or an earlier edition if one had no desire to *learn* the 3e rules. Or, you did not want to purchase them. That might be a reason to *stick* with an earlier edition, but doesn't necessarily validate why one would choose to leave 3e after having learned it over an earlier edition. Another reason might be that you only wanted to run original modules, and to convert them to a newer edition would just take too much time. So, if all you wanted to do was play Isle of Dread, and Sinister Secret of Saltmarsh, then that might be a reason to stick with an earlier edition. My GM is running WLD, so in using the C&C rules, he ends up creating *more* work for himself, not less. Which baffles me.

Someone explain this phenomenon to me.