Plans to upgrade/switch?

[Thurbane]

It's good to see no one is quitting D&D, but I am surprised no one had chosen the "I play pre 3E D&D". I would have thought there was still a chunk of OD&D/1E/2E players out there, at least on these forums...

 

[HellHound]

I will play 4e, I will still probably play 3.5e, just like how I still play B/X

 

[Laman Stahros]

*sigh* POsting a poll always leads to such pedantry - if you don't like the word "upgrade", just pretend it says "switch to" or "change my primary gaming experience to".

I wasn't being pedantic. I understood what you meant. I will not give up 3.5e at all. I can mod 3.5e to fit what I am looking for so easily that I can't imagine (at this time) how they can improve upon it.

I may run 4e campaigns also, but I won't decide that until I see the rules. I already know that I don't like what I have heard of the skill rules. We'll see what else I don't like about 4e. If there is too much more that I don't like, meh, buh bye 4e.

 

[KarinsDad]

I may run 4e campaigns also, but I won't decide that until I see the rules. I already know that I don't like what I have heard of the skill rules. We'll see what else I don't like about 4e. If there is too much more that I don't like, meh, buh bye 4e.

I remember when 3E came out.

There were quite a few gripe posts on the boards (which for the most part had just recently started back then). What do you mean there is no facing? What do you mean that someone can spin around and do an AoO with a longspear on someone coming up behind him? What do you mean there is no backstab? No THAC0? Invisibility went from 24 hours down to 10 minutes per level. Bards and Thieves are no longer great at climbing. Fighters need to take a feat to get followers. Initiative is no longer random from round to round. That's stupid.

Within a year, that had mostly changed. People accepted it and moved on and even came to like it a lot. I suspect the same will happen with 4E, 5E, 6E, and beyond. Many of the things people are badmouthing about 4E will mostly be accepted by many of those same people within a few years. Sure, people will have house rules if they play 4E, but within a few years, most DND players will probably be adapting their 3.5 material to 4E and playing it instead of the other way around. At least if history is any indication and as long as 4E has decent rules (which I suspect will be the case for the most part).

 

[preacher]

My first reaction was: Cool!

My first reaction was: Damn! :\

Mainly because I've only started playing D&D again in the last 2 years, and being a bit of a collector, I've spent a lot of money on 3.5 splatbooks and on the Eberron setting. However, I view the money spent much the same way as KarinsDad:

As a lump sum on the surface, that sounds like a lot of money. But in reality, it's $0.60 a day. A lot less than I spend on soda each day.

But I moved house last year and had to downsize my games collection. There was stuff there going back more than 20 years, and I ditched it. With a bit of a pained wince, sure, but not too many tears were shed. I had copies of games I hadn't played in decades, and even games I'd never played but just thought were cool. I'd kept them for reasons of nostalgia, but frankly I never looked at them and they were just taking up space.

That's not to say it wouldn't be disappointing to ditch the 3.5E books I've amassed in the last 2 years, but if our group does switch, I'll happily spend more money buying more books, and if I have to buy one less soda a day to do so, I can live with that. I can probably even recoup some of the money by selling my old 3.5 stuff off.

I like good game mechanics. I loathe poor ones. And although 3.5 improved upon 3E, it still left a lot of clunky mechanics like Turn Undead in the game system.

Again, agreed. I haven't GMed for over 10 years, but starting to play D&D has got me thinking about it again - hence the Eberron collection. But one thing holding me back is the size of our group. We have 8 players when everyone's present. I GMed RuneQuest for that many, so I've done it before, but D&D is slower and clunkier in combat - at least the way our group plays - and I'm not confident I know the rules well enough yet to run fast moving melees. I think that could take some of the fun out of it. Running a game for large groups is challenging enough, trying to keep everyone involved and engaged, without struggling with the rules.

Also, while I appreciate the greater flexibility 3.5 offers over 1E for character creation, I still feel constrained sometimes, and I know the other players do as well. We're used to classless games and D&D feels confining - and multiclassing has its own problems. I'd much rather be able to create the character I want without having to hunt down an obscure prestige class that fits.

4E has got me thinking - they're trying to improve and streamline combat and character creation/development, and both of those things appeal to me. Partly for personal reasons, because it'll answer some of my concerns as a player, and partly because it sounds like it will make it easier for me to put on my DMing hat again.

I'd much rather play a better designed game system and ignore most of my old books than play a clunkier system, just to save entertainment money that I will just go spend on some other form of entertainment

Agreed - but I have to acknowledge that I have a decent disposable income and can afford to spend a reasonable amount of money on leisure. 4E sounds like it could make playing more fun, and answer some of my concerns about DMing. All in all I'm hopeful that it'll fulfill those promises, but only time will tell.

 

[Angel Tarragon]

I'll buy the three core rulebooks (the PHB is coming out 2 days before my B-Day). Anything I like I'll convert to my 3.5 homebrew.

 

[gamecat]

I've been playing "3.25".

Essentially, I've picked and chosen the best bits of 3.0 and 3.5.

I'm not spending a wooden nickel on D&D 4, but anything that seems grabable and pulling back into "3.25" is only going to make my game better.

 

[Thurbane]

It's interesting to see how the poll ties in with this thread.

 

[(un)reason]

Within a year, that had mostly changed. People accepted it and moved on and even came to like it a lot. I suspect the same will happen with 4E, 5E, 6E, and beyond. Many of the things people are badmouthing about 4E will mostly be accepted by many of those same people within a few years.

Hmm. Are there any games where that didn't happen. Mage 2nd to revised certainly had a lot of holdouts, and still provokes flamewars to this day. Runequest also seems to have a big chunk of people who prefer 2nd ed to 3rd or MRQ. Shadowrun 4th had a lot of people complaining about the change to wireless thing. There still seem to be more OWoD LARPS than NWoD ones, 3 years on.

 

[KarinsDad]

Hmm. Are there any games where that didn't happen. Mage 2nd to revised certainly had a lot of holdouts, and still provokes flamewars to this day. Runequest also seems to have a big chunk of people who prefer 2nd ed to 3rd or MRQ. Shadowrun 4th had a lot of people complaining about the change to wireless thing. There still seem to be more OWoD LARPS than NWoD ones, 3 years on.

These appear to be exceptions.

The majority of gamers advanced to the subsequent versions of GURPS, the subsequent versions of HEROES, the subsequent versions of Rolemaster. Even HARP was well embraced and HARP was a Rolemaster/DND hybrid. Ditto for most computer games.

It's totally dependent on whether the game system is actually improved upon. I thought Neverwinter Nights II was pretty sucky, so I only played it for a few hours and stopped. Other people probably loved it (I dislike how the controls work with it).

On average, people over the short period do not like change. Over the long period, change is accepted. It's really no different no matter what change one is discussing, as long as it is perceived overall as a definitive improvement, people will switch over to it: be it a computer game, a cell phone, an RPG, their favorite cereal. New Coke was not perceived to be an improvement, hence, most people did not switch to it and it became a marketing disaster.

I suspect 4E will be viewed by the majority of DND players as a significant improvement and hence, a majority of DND players will probably switch over. And as time goes by and little new 3E product becomes available, even naysayers might be tempted to switch over when the only DND games in their neck of the woods are 4E games.

That's just my prediction based solely on the amount of work being done on the game, the advances in SWSE, and the information that WotC has given us so far. It shouldn't be a flop, but who knows? It could be, but I doubt it.