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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Graf" data-source="post: 1024197" data-attributes="member: 3087">There was a point, not so long ago, when someone said: "I'd used a maximized bull's strength spell" you had a pretty idea of what was going on. It was something that could happen in just about every game, and it worked the same way. Maybe someone had house ruled the spell one way or another but they were (generally) always aware it was a specific choice they had made that made their game different from most people's games.Thousands of people, around the world, were playing games that were pretty much indistinguishable from each other on a mechanical level. Published worlds tended to adhere to the mechanics with only minor changes. A shield spell, or a druid, were basically the same on the continent of Ghelspad, or in Eversink, or on Toril. Campaigns differed radically of course but it was fairly easy to figure out how far from the baseline they were. While some people (Monte Cook & Kenneth Hite come to mind) felt the profusion of similar worlds showed a lack of creativity a player could feel comfortable that they knew how to play D&D and it was generally the same everywhere. This created a huge market for products, allowing them to compete on a more or less even playing field, and supercharged the industry.It think we're on the cusp of a real fragmentation.3rd ed. -- with all the existing commonly used modifications, and a lot of errata that people are only partially aware of3.5 ed -- with a lot of people keeping favorite spells and powers from 3.0Arcana Unearthed -- with a completely different set of alterations to 3.0Furthermore new worlds seem to be more and more intent upon changing the core ruleset. While I don't own the books I understand that Midnight (which shows up frequently on the message boards of late) has different classes and magic system. I expect the new D&D world (which seems likely to include psionics) will probably tinker with some fundamental assumptions of D&D as well.Not that the designers of these worlds really have a whole lot of choice, given a lack of a clear leader.It may be that the current storm of posts about liking or disliking one of these new gaming systems is just a temporary fad, but I wonder if we've seen the beginning of the end of the unification effect produced by the original release of 3.0.</blockquote>

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