The purpose of D&D's evolution?

[diaglo]

oD&D was a very simple system - and somewhat incomplete. d6 hit dice for everything. No initiative system in the original set. Only three classes. Things like that.

initiative system was in Chainmail. Chainmail was required not an option to play OD&D.

With the supplements, it quickly evolved into a different system, and the game of oD&D + supplements was vastly different to just oD&D.

with the introduction of supplements and The Strategic Review articles designers were more able to influence their creation. with supplements... and tournaments... and more magazines ... you get the same thing happening over and over again with each edition. what to include and what to leave out of ideas from others. that's why i like to leave most of them out. ideas should come from those playing the game with you. they are the only ones who can understand what fits in the campaign.

 

[Turanil]

Diaglo, do you own the original, brown D&D boxed set?

Mmmmh... I think I must begin a thead only on that subject: who owns it...

 

[diaglo]

Diaglo, do you own the original, brown D&D boxed set?

Mmmmh... I think I must begin a thead only on that subject: who owns it...

i own one. but my first one was the Original Collector's edition white box. the box is long gone.

 

[TerraDave]

One of the chief reasons the rules get revamped is so that more supplements can be sold.

I'm not actually saying that 3.5e came along so that S&F (etc) would be made obsolete...

No, what is actually happening that the rules develop to a point that the framework of the last set of core rules isn't good enough to hold them anymore, and they must be revised to take into account all the design work that has come before.

oD&D was a very simple system - and somewhat incomplete. d6 hit dice for everything. No initiative system in the original set. Only three classes. Things like that.

With the supplements, it quickly evolved into a different system, and the game of oD&D + supplements was vastly different to just oD&D.

When you publish a new book for oD&D, can you assume that everyone has all the supplements and also uses them? You can't - not with any set of core rules. (And oD&D was also hugely house-ruled).

Thus, AD&D. oD&D cleaned up, combined with the supplements and other material, with the odd bit of material that didn't work (see Eldritch Wizardry and its initiative system) thrown out.

Ten years later, AD&D was in the same state. (Actually, 6-8 years later with the release of Unearthed Arcana!) Once again, clean it up, put it all back together and release it so that everyone is on the same page.

AD&D 2E quickly ran off the rails, in fact. The Complete Books kept adding optional material that just wasn't quite a good fit with the basic rules. (The Complete Priest's Handbook is the best example of that - a woeful effort). Player's Option really confused the issue when it came about. Great ideas, occasionally brilliant execution, mostly problematic execution.

D&D is a game where for all of its history, people have been designing new options for it. There is never been a time when some aspect of the game hasn't been tweaked. (And Gary Gygax was one of the biggest tweakers.)

D&D 3E was necessary because of the mess 2E had become. Player's Option had pointed the way forward, but the structure of 2E didn't allow its expansion any further. (The Proficiency system was the biggest problem, btw - see how that gets used in Player's Option and then compare to the Feat/Skill system of 3E. That's the ancestor of today's system).

And 3.5E? Well, 3E worked well, but it had a lot of rough edges. Any system so big is going to have them. From the problems with haste and harm, to the rocketing DCs of spells, to the deficiencies in the weapon size system exposed by Savage Species, and to the overly complex monster generation system (also exposed by Savage Species, as monster characters were being made more feasible), it got overhauled and the problems ironed out. Consider also the importance of the wilderness adventuring sections in the 3.5e DMG and how they then integrate with Frostburn and Sandstorm...

Is 3.5E "the system" then, and there will be no 4E? Not at all. 3.5E has displayed more problems - rocketing caster levels in relation to Holy Word, the ongoing problems with polymorph, an incomplete weapon sizing system (reach & missile weapons need better definition), and so on.

Then too, there are more fundamental questions to be answered. For instance, how should Diplomacy be handled?

However, I do believe that the future of D&D is in very good hands.

Cheers!

Exactly....good elaboration on what I said above....

 

[Thornir Alekeg]

I think that's rather cynical, to be honest, and proposes a significantly larger disconnect between the designers and the audience than actually exists. I have no doubt that the people who help build D&D really do care about the game and want it to improve; making money is merely a significant beneficial side effect.

I doubt that most people get into the business for the money, really.

I see others have already defended my post (thank you), but I just wanted to comment that it was not intended to be cynical, it is reality. Making money and making a good product are not exclusive of each other. Quite the opposite in fact.

I think many, if not all, of the RPG publishers who fequent this site would probably confirm that if they produced a product that was very popular, and over time they saw that it could be improved, reach a wider audience and thereby make more money, they probably would do it.

Perhaps my mistake was putting the word improved into quotes. I did that because I knew there would be much dissent over what "improved" meant.

 

[Thornir Alekeg]

Which came first, the chicken or the egg?

The egg. Mutants that would eventually become known as chickens emerged from the egg of another species.

Why did the chicken cross the road?

To get to the other side, you answer that yourself in the next question, duh!

What is the other side?

Ahh! The other side is a metaphor for a paradise where there are female chickens to breed with and no carnivores.

If a chicken dies on the road, and no one else is around, does it become an undead?

Only if the vehicle that stuck it was wight.

Are undead evil?

Of course not. People need to eat so they kill chickens to eat them. That does not make people evil. Undead chickens also need to eat, so they kill people to eat them.

If undead are evil, why is people enjoy watching movies like "Ghost?"

Are there undead chickens in "Ghost?"

If Whoopi Goldberg were a D&D character, what would she be?

She would be a cleric/bard. Didn't you see Sister Act?

 

[Psion]

And 3.5E? Well, 3E worked well, but it had a lot of rough edges. Any system so big is going to have them. From the problems with haste and harm, to the rocketing DCs of spells, to the deficiencies in the weapon size system exposed by Savage Species, and to the overly complex monster generation system (also exposed by Savage Species, as monster characters were being made more feasible), it got overhauled and the problems ironed out. Consider also the importance of the wilderness adventuring sections in the 3.5e DMG and how they then integrate with Frostburn and Sandstorm...

Is 3.5E "the system" then, and there will be no 4E? Not at all. 3.5E has displayed more problems - rocketing caster levels in relation to Holy Word, the ongoing problems with polymorph, an incomplete weapon sizing system (reach & missile weapons need better definition), and so on.

Then too, there are more fundamental questions to be answered. For instance, how should Diplomacy be handled?

Oh, definitely.

But herin lies the rub: as I see it, a full revision edition is more like to try to fix what wasn't broke, and break it in the process.

In fact, I'd say that the better the game becomes, the more likely any revision will create bigger problems. No revision is purely an improvement: a certain percentage of the fixes will be for the worst in the eyes of some or many of the fans.

Let's pretend for a moment that these are all the same things for all fans and we can make an objective judgement. Let's say that a given revision fixes 90% of what was broken and breaks 10% of what was not.

If you have 100 things that work fine and 10 things that are really broken, then the revision breaks 10 things and fixes 9. You are sliding backwards once your game is really good to start with.

Add the inherent burden of making things incompatible, it become really hard for me to see revisions as a good thing.

However, I do believe that the future of D&D is in very good hands.

I think (now) that the right folks are now employed by WotC to guide the D&D ship. Now if the wrong folks can just stay out of their way...

 

[Desdichado]

But the cynicism I was referring to wasn't in the idea that designers do it for money -- of course they do, else why do it for a living? It's in the implication (which I may just be reading into the post) that there is a wide gulf between designers and the audience, and that the designers are perhaps arbitrarily adding incremental changes to the game largely to obtain more money from a perhaps unsuspecting audience who want a new and different thing. I think it's important to realize that the designers are (or, perhaps, were) part of the audience, and really do have some sort of desire to make a "better" game, however they might think that should be implemented.

Ah, well that would by cynical. I didn't read that into the post to which you responded, but maybe that's just me.

 

[Desdichado]

Its great that so many people loved 3E. That it is "proveably" "better than" or "superior too" any prior version of the game is IMO a dubious proposition.

Despite a certain "wonkish" fixation with "game balance" or "stream lining" or "builds" that has come with 3E, an RPG, IMO more than any other type of game that is rules dependent for every interaction, must be "fun" in a way that drives player interaction both within, but equally outside, the rules - ie "role assumption" - that is governed by no mechanic however perfect or imperfect.

Well, I don't "know" bout "proving" that it's a "better system," but it's certainly easy to "prove" that it's "a" more elegant "one," and one that is "more" consistent and flexible.

Fun is a matter of taste, and to some--as difficult as it is for me to believe--that may mean that older editions of D&D are better than 3e. Great. Fine. No dispute from me there.

But there are some objective measures by which 3e is superior, even if that doesn't necessarily mean that it's more fun for all players.

 

[Numion]

What... it stayed the same?

Reminds me of Ahnulds Last Action Hero: "Now you pull a three-sixty on me?!"

That was actually pretty funny in the movie, even if the movie wasnt.