Alzrius said:
It's always hard for me to get involved in 2E vs. 3(.5)E debates. I think 3(.5)E has the better mechanics system, but I strongly prefer 2E for everything flavorful, since it seemed to be more involved in the worlds it supported.
Aha!
I think Alzrius might have hit just the point of the problem here between 2e and 3e fans.
There are very few IMXP (although there still are...) who say "2e has a better mechanic", everyone who hates 3e or prefers older version is mostly displeased by what? By the
flavor or lack of it. What is exactly "flavor"? In theory it should be totally up to you, the DMs, to make up your setting just as you like it, but the PHB alone is already dictating or railroading A LOT of the setting flavor.
To make an example, look at the Monk. Oh... it's a core class. A CORE CLASS! This fact on one side is good because it provides a playable character that many like. On the other hand, because it's a core class... paf! You suddenly have that ALL following supplements just HAVE to support the Monk, and here comes the flood of martial-arts weapon, feats, prestige classes, etc... suddenly your setting automatically includes some oriental stuff and has a distinctive flavor. You can choose to ban the Monk and everything oriental if you want, but you would be the responsible for taking something away from the core material, and the majority of the gaming groups won't follow you.
For this kind of reason, it's not even so clear what 3e "is" when we argue about 2e vs 3e.
If you can think of reducing 3e only to its very core, you can basically leave the combat system, how races work, how classes work, xp, multiclassing, BAB, saving throws, skills as a system, feats (in general, not necessarily the specific ones), how weapons & armors work, the spellcasting system, and more...
Which are the specific races, classes, feats, weapons/armors, spells, magic items, etc. is kind of up to the setting. But still there is a core group of them in the PHB to dictate the general flavor of every setting, unless a setting specifically bans something.
This is what I think when I hear people arguing between what's best between 2e and 3e, that most of the time 2e fans actually dislike what 3e has made core or how it was made core and therefore "the standard", even if the very core of the rules itself, with so much more attention to balance, consistency and flexibility, is very hard to honestly think it was better before.
However inappropriate my specific example was, my point is that the material in PHB, although it is definitely more "generic" than the material in supplementary books, already gives the wholoe game a distinctive feel. Since every edition has different material (or the same stuff but done differently), the result is different feel.
Boooooooooooooring, but with worse editing. When I finished reading it, I wanted to go to a cinema.
