Just Not Feelin' It...

[Nifft]

"Play something else" (for a while at least) is a good anodyne for burn-out.

So "move on" can be considered helpful advice.

Do hope you come back feeling refreshed, though!

Cheers, -- N

 

[Zaruthustran]

It's sort of like playing a video game when you reach a point and realize that you've made a mistake in your character development and that if you want to reach the end you need to start over with a new character, but instead you just say why bother and don't play the game anymore.

The irony is that the exact situation you described is one of the things they're specifically fixing in 4E. James mentioned that, and how the emphasis on roles (and the ability to re-spec your character) is very much a big part of fourth edition.

Anyway: I recommend you and your group stick with 3E for a few months after 4E's launch. It's not like your existing books will dissolve or cease to work.

Then, after a time, flip through the 4E PHB. If it's to your liking, buy it and play 4E. If it's not, don't buy it and keep playing 3E.

 

[WayneLigon]

So how did you feel at 2E? 3E? for all that 1E or 2E stuff you had?

 

[Arkhandus]

Sure. Seems to be the gist of it these days with WotC, anyhoo. :\

Why not find some folks to just keep playing 3E with for a while, try to find some good uses for what you've already paid for and get something out of it all? If nothing else you can still find folks on the EN World play-by-post forums, or the OpenRPG forums and servers, or the WebRPG forums and servers, or other virtual tabletop programs, or other PbP forums, who intend to keep on truckin' with what books they've already got, and just have fun with it rather than craving the 'latest and greatest' just because it's new. Or even try play-by-e-mail.

Or move on, sure. There's still E-Bay if you want to try recouping some of the money you spent. And other d20 games, or other systems altogether. Shadowrun. Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay. Wushu. Spirit of the Century. Burning Wheel/Burning Empires. HERO/Champions. Mutants & Masterminds. Midnight. Castles & Crusades. True20. Traveller d20/T20. Classic Traveler. d20 Modern/Future/Dark Matter/etc. Even Monte Cook's d20 book on the World of Darkness.... Or the nWoD.

 

[Arkhandus]

So how did you feel at 2E? 3E? for all that 1E or 2E stuff you had?

I think those editions stayed in print and with little change for longer than 3E. At least longer than either part of 3E. More time to get use out of them, and more fluff books/setting books anyway to keep the game interesting. 3E's pretty heavy on the crunch.

 

[Arashi Ravenblade]

Maybe going with some 3rd party publishers and thier 3e books is what you should do, though is there any word on the nature of the 3e OGL/SRD for those that want to suport the older game?

 

[F4NBOY]

Do you want a cheer up? Since you talked about video games...
Think about all the poor souls that spent thousands of dollars in the Play Station 2 and its games, thousands of dollars. And then, that money grabber Sony released Play Station 3. How could it? WHY? Wasn't Play Station 2 good enough? Do we really need a new console? Or is the only purpose behind Sony is to take all our pennies?
What in heavens will all those poor people do with all those obsolete games and that obsolete console?
I really have no idea, but think that you probably spent less money than them, maybe. But at least you are not alone in this evil capitalist world. Much more suffer like you.
Good luck.

 

[Darth Shoju]

So how did you feel at 2E? 3E? for all that 1E or 2E stuff you had?

Personally I didn't have a lot of stuff prior to 3E: I had the D&D that my parents bought for me at a garage sale when I was too young to know what it was, but I didn't start playing until around 1990 so the books I used were the 2nd Ed AD&D PHB, DMG, Monstrous Compendium (binder baby!), a few of the "Complete..." books and a handful of boxed-set campaigns and adventures. The campaigns I ported over to 3ed with no trouble, while the PHB and DMG had been used so much they were being held together with hockey tape.

My feelings over this new edition are mixed. I have been long lamenting the weaknesses of 3ed and have wished for something similar but more streamlined. From the initial information, 4ed seems to be going in that direction and looks interesting. However, my group has pretty much unanimously decided they can't afford to buy a whole new edition worth of books when many of the 3ed books we have haven't even seen a minute's worth of use. As someone pointed out, much of 3ed is so crunch-heavy that getting much use out of the books in the next edition seems unlikely.

So, the bottom line for me and my friends is that we are at least somewhat interested in 4ed, but just can't afford it.

 

[Thurbane]

I feel just like the potplant from Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy: "Oh no, not again!"

...and just for the record, we found it extremely easy to keep using 1E materials in 2E. The conversions were simple and intuitive.

 

[Darth Shoju]

Do you want a cheer up? Since you talked about video games...
Think about all the poor souls that spent thousands of dollars in the Play Station 2 and its games, thousands of dollars. And then, that money grabber Sony released Play Station 3. How could it? WHY? Wasn't Play Station 2 good enough? Do we really need a new console? Or is the only purpose behind Sony is to take all our pennies?
What in heavens will all those poor people do with all those obsolete games and that obsolete console?
I really have no idea, but think that you probably spent less money than them, maybe. But at least you are not alone in this evil capitalist world. Much more suffer like you.
Good luck.

Well the next-gen consoles are at least backwards-compatible (mostly). That, plus video games don't generally have as much replay/re-use value as RPG books so it is often seen as less of a waste if you have played your old games already.