Rolemaster vs. AD&D, or 3e vs all other D&D

[Rel]

I'm not sure I feel as strongly about it as the OP but I do think there is a bit of something to this argument.

My gaming evolution, in very broad terms, went from playing AD&D to Rolemaster precisely for the reasons specified above. RM was more open, contained skills, allowed a bigger number and wider variety of spells and there was nothing saying that your wizard couldn't wear armor or swing a sword, provided that he spent enough points on the right skills. We played RM almost exclusively for a dozen years (toward the end of that myself and a friend of mine were writing books for RMSS).

Ultimately however it became too much of a good thing. The list of skills got ridiculously huge and specific. The number of spells being big wasn't a problem but inevitably there were some spell lists that were weak and some that were overpowered and that became obvious. The added complexity of the combat system, once a major draw, caused our fights to be really slow and we began avoiding combat as part of our playstyle.

Then 3e showed up and we tried it on a lark. Never looked back. It seemed that it had captured a lot of what was great in RM and distilled it into a sweet spot of speed and intricacy that was right where we wanted to be at the time. I think we have Monte Cook to thank for a lot of that.

I think that what bugs a lot of folks about 4e is that it is hard to pigeonhole. It has many features that I consider to be somewhat "retro" compared to 3e (like a return to stronger class archetypes). But it has a ton of bells and whistles that remind me of MMO games. Ultimately I like it on its own merits. I don't think it is more of a spiritual successor to OD&D or AD&D than 3e is. I think they are both very different from each other and their ancestors.

I feel fortunate that I've had more laughs and fun than I can count with ALL of these systems!

 

[BryonD]

Early D&D was, to state the obvious, hugely successful.

However, I think there is a big mistake made when that success is presumed to based purely on the merits of the game itself and thus should be a benchmark for all future games to be compared against.

I am not speaking about individual tastes. I'm not remotely challenging anyone on their love of OD&D or 1E or whatever. That is all cool and happily embraced.

I am speaking about mass appeal. D&D was not huge because it was the awesome ruleset that everyone loved. D&D was huge because it was an awesome new concept. (And no, I don't care about a roots of D&D argument because, again, to the mass market as a whole it was VERY new.)

The idea of fantasy roleplaying caught fire and was huge. The rules were secondary. Moreso, there was plenty of complaint about the actual rules themselves at the time. That is largely forgotten, but it is true. It was commonplace when joining a new game to automatically find out the houserules. Houserules remain completely common today, certainly for 3E. But the presumption of them as defining the very basis of the game was stronger then.

There were other RPGs that followed, but most of them sucked even worse and it was a long time before serious quality plus marketing put any other games on the radar. And by then D&D was fully established as an institution.

I readily agree that 3E is very different than prior editions. But I think it was the general appeal of the ruleset combined with the name recognition that created the second "golden age" that happened. Again, if you hated 3E, cool, I'm talking about the market as a whole.

But, the mass appeal of the ruleset was critical to the success. If it had been too much just like older games, the mass appeal would not have been there. The early games got by on "this is new and cool", that isn't enough anymore.

I do not think it makes sense to lump 4E in with other editions and exclude 3E. I think there are elements of older editions that 3E removed and 4E brought back. So a case can be made. But when everything is considered it is a really flawed case because there are just as many "old school" things that 4E removed. I can see lumping pre 3E together. But both 3E and 4E each have historic elements but each also ends up being significantly removed.

 

[pawsplay]

I disagree that 3.5 is "like Rolemaster." Rolemaster has no multiclassing, zip, instead it has some wiggle room inside the classes. 3e is very close to my experience of 2e, which is to say, lots of multiclassing. I saw a lot more fighter/thief characters, with multiclassed or dual-classed, than I ever did straight up thieves. 3e is, if anything, less gritty and deadly than AD&D, which distances it further from the nastiness that was Rolemaster critical hits. The only way in which it is "like Rolemaster" is in having a unified core mechanic, which 4e also has.

Also, I think very few 3e players "hate" AD&D. What got me into 3e could roughly be summarized as, "Oh, hey! It's like AD&D except without lots of weird racial and alignment straightjackets, it has a unified mechanic, and a decent skill system." It remains a class and level system, very distinctly. I went from AD&D to GURPS, basically, and 3e was to me, very much, coming home to the experience I had as a BECMI and AD&D 1e/early 2e player. I did not like the AD&D 2.5 stuff AT ALL, and if that is what influenced 3e, I certainly didn't notice it.

 

[Henry]

I tend to agree with the original poster; looking with 20/20 hindsight, I see ways in which 3E is definitely different in scope than 1E, 2E, or 4E. I would actually call OD&D a different game from everything that came after it, making "feel" branches of:

OD&D
1E, 2E, 4E
3E, 3.5E, & Pathfinder
BECMI D&D

Each with its own different feel. I'd have to elaborate, because there are many things in common among each group, but I'd have to do it when I have a chance, to give proper thought.

 

[Diamond Cross]

You can't play a warrior duck in 3e.

 

[Imaro]

I guess my take on this is that I feel 3e was very much an evolution from the previous iteration of AD&D... 2e. Regardless of whether one liked the direction or not... 2e with it's Skills & Powers, Combat Options, etc. at the end, had already firmly placed itself as going in the direction of 3e. I believe 3e refined the rules with the d20 system and may have even taken this direction further than 2e by applying these customization rules to monsters... but I don't see 3e as having veered off in a direction D&D wasn't already headed in. I also think that 3e, like 2e before it, also maintained the classic campaign settings and feel of AD&D and even made Greyhawk (arguably the first campaign setting) as it's default setting, all of this made 3e "feel" more like D&D, than 4e did to me.

IMO, 4e seems to be D&D that was specifically designed for people who didn't like D&D... See I tend to think there were people who enjoyed many of the tropes (alignment, LG paladins, rangers with magic abilities, Vancian magic, the Great Wheel, The Blood War and so on) that made D&D... well D&D. Perhaps they didn't like all of them (but then again if they had continued playing D&D for years, as opposed to something else, they probably had found ways to deal with those things that did bother them without messing up the things they liked), but that didn't mean they wanted everything stripped out or changed. To me 4e is the edition that stripped out or changed a multitude of mechanics and D&D tropes to make a new D&D game... This might have worked better if they had perhaps taken the past and kept most of it but tweaked... Something like new BSG vs. old BSG... but I feel like what we ended up with is more akin to Star Trek DS9 vs. Star Trek the Next Generation.... yeah it's got some familiarities and similarities... but they're not so much an evolution since they are outside of cursory trappings... pretty much different shows at heart. YMMV of course, since it really is all oppinion.

 

[billd91]

I would actually call OD&D a different game from everything that came after it, making "feel" branches of:

OD&D
1E, 2E, 4E
3E, 3.5E, & Pathfinder
BECMI D&D

I would agree that there are branches, but I'd arrange mine differently:

OD&D
1e, 2e, 2.5 (PO versions), 3e, 3.5, PF
4e
BECMI D&D

 

[steeldragons]

I would agree that there are branches, but I'd arrange mine differently:

OD&D
1e, 2e, 2.5 (PO versions), 3e, 3.5, PF
4e
BECMI D&D

I'll throw mine in as:
OD&D
BECMI
1e, 2e
3-3.5e, PF
4e

And don't even get me started on:
KFC, KLF
TNG, BVS or DS9
BMWs, ATVs, and SUVs
ATMs
NKOTB
or GLBT.

Now I need a refill...can I get anyone else a drink?
Happy Friday, all.
--SD

 

[UHF]

Is there a question or something in here somewhere?

 

[JeffB]

IMO, 4e seems to be D&D that was specifically designed for people who didn't like D&D...(snipped a bunch of good stuff)

It is very funny how we all perceive things- as I've always felt that 3.X was written by all the kids growing up playing 1E or what have you that moved along to Rolemaster, RQ, GURPS, HERO, and other more "realistic" games. The people who didn't like D&D as a rule set,the "rules lawyer" type, and those players who suffered at the hands of poor DMs and felt the need for everything to be codified and clarified to the 9s. I certainly got that feeling from the 3E design team (Monte, and Tweet in particular). I think this is precisely why I never have been able to come to terms with 3.X (and lately PF).

I'm a big 4E fan (though will admit its far from perfect), and I also love (and cut my teeth on) the LBBs, MCM and AD&D. I also like 2E (core).Then again I was never a big stickler for "realism" or simulation in my RPGS (though admittedly I was a big RQ2 fan). Being that 4E is more gamist than 3E, maybe that is why I find it similar in many more ways to the O/D&D games than 3.x.

:shrug:


As you say of course though- it's all opinion and E(veryone's)MMV.