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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Tony Vargas" data-source="post: 5971674" data-attributes="member: 996">There are a number of obvious ways in which 5e's design so far has been hearkening to the past and abandoning any progress the game had been making.  Character progression, for instance.  In classic D&D, every class had distinct progressions, including different experience charts, so everyone leveled at different times and got wildly different things from leveling, and being multi-classed meant splitting experience and progressing in different classes in parallel.  In 3e, everyone was on the same experience chart, but each class still got quite different things, though there was more structure and commonality to BAB and hit dice (everyone got one HD/level, instead of some starting with 2 and each class ceasing to gain HD at some level) and everyone gained feats and stat boosts at the same rate, while  multiclassing was done level-by-level instead of in parallel.  In 4e, everyone is on the same advancement chart, gaining hps, powers, stat boosts, feats, etc at the same rate for the same exp, but with features and power choices varying with class, race, theme, and multi-classing.  That's clear progress that could, ultimately, perhaps, lead to a classless system (maybe around 13th ed <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" /> or something). 5e is back to the 3e model of advancement, with each class having different progressions, though it remains to be seen if they retain 3e's innovative multi-classing or go back to some sort of parallel advancement system.The 2e/3e roll was in 1999 and the internet wasn't the same, but it was certainly here.  Usenet was full of 3e, there were D&D mailing lists, and this site, here, though not as smooth, was created for it!  WotC had their own forums, too.  Usenet isn't what it used to be, and mailing lists arent' the thing anymore, but there was and is a lot of on-line community.There were a lot of AD&D hold-outs who rejected 3e.  The important difference was that they had no one making a 2e-clone like Pathfinder for them.  The closest thing was a near-parody, in 'Hackmaster.'  There was no AD&D OGL to let 3pps clone the core of the system.  Without ongoing support, people kept playing AD&D, but they faded away from the broader community for lack of anything new to hold their interest.  That's what made the 3e/4e split so brutal, the 3.5 holdouts got ongoing support via the OGL and Pathfinder, and stayed involved in the broader community as a result.Maybe, for a bit, but it faded as the hold-outs just retreated to their insular groups for lack of anything to attract them to the broader community.   And WotC does not have any obligation to 4E fans to continue feeding them new material.  4E's time has come and gone as far as active publication is concerned, and that's just the way it is.  It's natural, non-malicious, expected (no "edition" lasts forever), completely not personal, and nowhere near the realm of depraved indifference. That's because there were no on-line tools.  Frankly, you're really grasping at straws with that one.  The OGL was very robust - and unrevocable - support for 3.5, and 4e's GSL is just the opposite, it gives WotC the ability to kill any 3pp support at will.  Yet, that minority got what they wanted:  4e is dead, in half the time it took for prior eds to run their course.  WotC has shown themselves willing to cater to the hater, so they can probably expect a lot more of the same from their (remaining) fanbase going forward.That's the spin they're putting on it, sure.  But the design direction doesn't begin to back it up.  I think most fans would /like/ to be part of it, but there's little indication from what WotC is actually doing with 5e (vs promising), that such is the case.  Rather, 5e is clearly pointing at what WotC thinks the classic D&Der wants: a game something like AD&D, if a bit less convoluted and messy.</blockquote>

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