The Nature of Change (or, Understanding Edition Wars)

[Spatula]

One of the reasons that 3.5 works for me is that the system was flexible enough that you could make changes like this with relatively little difficulty (to me at least, your results may vary). 4E feels a lot more rigid to me, even if the assumed power level is back on track for what I consider fantasy normal.

The funny thing is, a lot of people here have said the same about 3e (too rigid, didn't like elements of it but was afraid to tinker with it). I don't see it in either case. Especially if you're an old-school D&D player, tinkering should be in your blood.

Personally I think 4e is even easier than 3e to tinker with (and 3e was pretty easy) because you know exactly what the system is trying to achieve with the numbers. Whereas 3e was still largely constructed on a "make stuff up" basis.

 

[Lacyon]

One of the reasons that 3.5 works for me is that the system was flexible enough that you could make changes like this with relatively little difficulty (to me at least, your results may vary). 4E feels a lot more rigid to me, even if the assumed power level is back on track for what I consider fantasy normal.

Um, drop monster attacks and defenses by 1 per 5 levels? Cut monster hp by an amount I can't calculate right now (probably around 2 per 5 levels)?

I mean, you probably have a lot of experience modding out 3.x, so I'm not surprised it's really easy for you to do the modding there, but I'm really seeing 4E as being difficult.

EDIT: On the increasing side, for every 5x multiplier you put on PC wealth, increase monster attacks and defenses by the same amount.

 

[Darrin Drader]

Um, drop monster attacks and defenses by 1 per 5 levels? Cut monster hp by an amount I can't calculate right now (probably around 2 per 5 levels)?

I mean, you probably have a lot of experience modding out 3.x, so I'm not surprised it's really easy for you to do the modding there, but I'm really seeing 4E as being difficult.

There's no question in my mind that 4E is easier in that respect. DMs really get it easy in 4E, and that's one of the strengths of the system. Player-side modding is where I see the rigidity. Suppose I wanted to reintroduce Vancian magic to 4E. How would I do that? Say I wanted to ditch powers and go back to traditional class abilities? How would that work? Exactly how much work would be involved in creating a new class? If the system as a whole worked the way I like, maybe I'd find it easier, but I did make the decision not to get too heavily invested in it based on my opinion of the way it actually plays. I think it's easier to take the stuff I like and mod it in to 3.5 than it is to take the stuff I don't like out and mod the stuff I do like from 3.5 back in. Again, your results may vary.

 

[diaglo]

Thats why I said maybe I was misunderstanding... Because it seemed like he was saying he was on their train but only because 3pp he bought from were associated with WoTC in some way, and not because he was buying actual WoTC books?

when they cut the other companies loose it pretty much made me realize my hope of getting anything for OD&D(1974) was not gonna happen.

i asked. and they confirmed it.

i wasn't on the train b/c of the 3pp. i was on the train for WotC coming thru for me.

 

[ExploderWizard]

Perhaps someone can point you in the direction of MerricB's breakdown of the 1e modules from a few years back, wherein magic items were neither rare nor particularly mysterious.

Modules? A completely different animal from a well judged campaign to be sure.

Magic items had gp values in 1e DMG, and yes we (and many other people) used those values in the 80's to buy items in interdimensional bazaars. And all you needed to make items (per RAW) was raw materials, time, gold, and some percentage checks and presto - a magic item.

Emphasis mine. Magic item creation isnt something that should never happen but a degree of uncertainty helps keep it from feeling so much like automated production. The MMO part is the guaranteed success.

Artificer class, 3e Eberron Campaign book.

A lot of things started in 3E that were taken farther in 4E. Never got any Ebberon stuff, didn't know about that one.

...don't exist in 4e (but did in 3e! in the Knight class, PHB2). Monsters still have free will and aren't computer controlled. Defender types provide disincentives for opponents to attack other targets; otherwise intelligently-played monsters skip over the tin cans and eat the wizard, and there's nothing that the tin-can can do to stop it.

Technically correct but a "disincentive" without an acceptable explanation is customarily known as BS to a lot of people.

What about "bad" decisions that looked like fun but turned out not to be? "Sorry, you made a mistake, you're stuck with it for the life of the character." "OK, I commit suicide and introduce the character's previously unrevealed twin." It's a game, the purpose is to have fun, not to suffer.

It really depends on the nature of said "mistake". If the mistake was not taking feat X at level Y because they had no idea that the Splattboox of Uber-pwnage would be coming out so soon and they cant get the powerz of dooom without that feat at level Y then I wouldn't be having fun at that game. Why should they?

That move happened in 3e, if not sooner.

To certain degree I think you're right.

 

[Lacyon]

There's no question in my mind that 4E is easier in that respect. DMs really get it easy in 4E, and that's one of the strengths of the system. Player-side modding is where I see the rigidity. Suppose I wanted to reintroduce Vancian magic to 4E. How would I do that? Say I wanted to ditch powers and go back to traditional class abilities? How would that work? Exactly how much work would be involved in creating a new class? If the system as a whole worked the way I like, maybe I'd find it easier, but I did make the decision not to get too heavily invested in it based on my opinion of the way it actually plays. I think it's easier to take the stuff I like and mod it in to 3.5 than it is to take the stuff I don't like out and mod the stuff I do like from 3.5 back in. Again, your results may vary.

Fair enough. That is an issue I may have, as I'm building some 4E classes now. To be honest, I had no idea in 3.x what kind of thing I should even be shooting for as a baseline of power since it seemed kinda all over the place, whereas in 4E my plan is to basically rip powers I like from existing classes and reskin them at first. After a while of doing that I expect to be proficient enough to create my own.

But swapping back to a pure-vancian system (for some classes and not all) would be really problematic, especially if you were trying to keep the balance that's come out of making the classes follow the same structure. If you figure "eh, good enough is good enough" you can probably actually still use something like a 4-encounter day as a baseline (again, haven't played enough to know exactly, but I gather that's roughly when a party starts to run out of surges) and work from there.

 

[Spatula]

Emphasis mine. Magic item creation isnt something that should never happen but a degree of uncertainty helps keep it from feeling so much like automated production. The MMO part is the guaranteed success.

MMOs invented the concept of being able to build something in a game without an arbitrary chance of failure? Somehow I don't think that concept is in any way unique or distincitive to MMOs...

In WoW, there's no chance of failure when you set out to craft an item. The arbitrary chance is elsewhere in the system, in that you're usually making items to increase your crafting skill, and you won't always get the increase (in which case the raw materials, gold, time, etc. put into making the item is pretty much wasted from your point of view). However, there's no reason that the crafting has to be reliable. If it wasn't, WoW would not suddenly become not an MMO or any less (or more) like D&D. It's a mechanic that says nothing at all about the gameplay.

In 3e, there's no chance of failure when you set out to craft a magic item. That's because the designers were trying to get away from the DM vs the players mentality present in earlier editions.

Just because you take damage from falling in both games, doesn't mean that one is copying the other.

It really depends on the nature of said "mistake". If the mistake was not taking feat X at level Y because they had no idea that the Splattboox of Uber-pwnage would be coming out so soon and they cant get the powerz of dooom without that feat at level Y then I wouldn't be having fun at that game. Why should they?

It's amazing how you know what's going on in everyone's mind as they play.

 

[ExploderWizard]

MMOs invented the concept of being able to build something in a game without an arbitrary chance of failure? Somehow I don't think that concept is in any way unique or distincitive to MMOs...

In WoW, there's no chance of failure when you set out to craft an item. The arbitrary chance is elsewhere in the system, in that you're usually making items to increase your crafting skill, and you won't always get the increase (in which case the raw materials, gold, time, etc. put into making the item is pretty much wasted from your point of view). However, there's no reason that the crafting has to be reliable. If it wasn't, WoW would not suddenly become not an MMO or any less (or more) like D&D. It's a mechanic that says nothing at all about the gameplay.

Its nothing to do with gameplay or balance, or really mechanics at all. Its all about feel.

It's amazing how you know what's going on in everyone's mind as they play.

Whats even more amazing is the assumtion that such information could only be learned from mind reading.

 

[JohnRTroy]

I think one reason the 4e has caused such controversy was the time-frame it was released.

The 3e situation.

Since 1st and 2nd Edition AD&D were pretty much the same, we can say D&D used the same game base for about 25 years.

TSR was in financial trouble and might have gone under. People were actually worried about the survival of the game.

WoTC swooped in. WoTC showed a lot of respect for the fan-base. While there were controversial decisions, they did things like make overtures to the various creators, invited them to the announcements, etc. A lot of the TSR culture still existed, so you had people like Monte Cook (2nd Ed) and Skip Williams (1st Ed) working on it. D&D still had a lot of the elements we expected, such as vancian magic, etc.

WoTC tried a radical thing with third-party publishers. I'm in disagreement with the way it was done--the OGL was a little too liberal, as I agree with most of Gary's assertations in my signature--but they were working with third-party publishers, a far cry from the 2nd edition culture.

Contrast to the following 4e situation.

This new edition came only 8 years after the new 3e game. With a game as big as D&D it seems way too soon. I would say for a game the size of D&D you'd need at least 12 years before releasing such updates. There was also a somewhat mixed reaction to the "3.5" edition. I believe a lot of the fan-base saw this as completely unnecessary.

Very few of the "old guard" are left. Most went to form their own companies. There is less traditionalism left at the core of WoTC. A lot of things have been rebooted, such as monsters, cosmology, etc. It seems to be more based on brand building.

The games presentation is a lot different. It's a boring read IMO. It may be well balanced but it doesn't seem like the same thing. With 3e a wizard was a wizard, we still had the concepts of magic resistance, we still had most of the spells and magic items we grew up with.

Third-party publisher support seems to be in Limbo right now. Legal and Executive forces have ended up giving us a red-tape scenario. I agree that the OGL was too permissive, but the way they handled the GSL rollout and communication with third-parties was very poor.

So--I believe this is why you still have a lot of fighting over this stuff. With the 3e rollout the only major complaints I saw were changes in the campaign settings--Greyhawk was sort of "absorbed" into the core and changes to lore affected that setting most. I didn't see a lot of people complaining about the mechanics and the way things have gone.

 

[ExploderWizard]

So--I believe this is why you still have a lot of fighting over this stuff. With the 3e rollout the only major complaints I saw were changes in the campaign settings--Greyhawk was sort of "absorbed" into the core and changes to lore affected that setting most. I didn't see a lot of people complaining about the mechanics and the way things have gone.

I have no doubt that the relatively short time between editions was the biggest source of resentment for some, but not me.

The problems with feel and genre confusion would be present and it wouldn't matter if that happened now or another 10 years from now. Despite what the OP of this thread is asserting, there are some gamers that want to play sword and sorcery fantasy and not supers fantasy and the passage of time will see them playing other games rather than playing something that they don't want.