"It’s striking how much this resembles the case of AD&D 2nd Ed. – in 95% of the text it resembled the prior edition"
Ok, I am with you on the superiority of the 1E material over the poorly thought out mess that 2E became, but you really must not have given the 2E books a solid read through or something because they were far from 95% of the original text, and in fact the presentation and everything was very different.
2E started out decently. I was one of the Gygax guys back then, very upset at the loss and still loving the game, until 2E started to really roll along. What was 2E really? It was 1E with all the rules in the Wilderness GUide, Dungeoneers GUide and Unearthed Arcana trimmed down, rewritten and clarified, put into three books, including the atrocious Monstrous Compendium idea. Some of the less than great rules were done away with, like comeliness and HUGE amounts of classes, replaced by Kits (GROAN) that were a mixed batch of powergamer goodness and roleplayer sweetness, but never the twain shall meet.
2E was much more than a reprint of the old books, as a 95% would indicate. Maybe 2E revised, sure, that would indeed be a 95% reprint of the original 2E or the revised 1E books.
As to some of your complaints:
Challenge ratings needed to be increased in some places and decreased in others, and they were. A CR 7 Dragon in 3.0 annihilated a group of 7th level pcs, when it should have been an even challenge, not having them run in fear or die. That has been fixed. Some monsters were just easier than their Challenge Ratings idicated.
Damage REDUCTION was a cool idea and 3.5 really made that idea that much cooler to be honest. I can certainly understand your problem with the changes, but when you have a party of 6th level PCs they all seem to have magic weapons and the 9CR werewolf I just sent them after was a real wuss in comparison. You complain about the removal of fantasy flavour in one sub topic and previously argue about the changes in the Damage REDUCTION system, and the changes are based on MYTH AND FANTASY. You contradict yourself man, do you want to be able to slay a werewolf without breaking a sweat even though he should be tearing flesh from their rotting corpses or do you want the mythological beast that inspires fear in both the NPCS and PCS?
Subdual Damage, non-lethal damage... semantics man. COnsider this, 3.0 and now 3.5 (especially) were designed to attract new gamers to RPGs and DnD in particular. Now the project has been a big success but mostly in attracting older roleplayers and the Storyteller fanatics have converted in droves in my area, but not a lot of new people are getting into gaming. The terminology of gaming is very thick, especially with DnD, making it hard for new players to get into the game. Lets make it a little easier to explain so we don't have to have a huge glossary. Does the common man understand the word subdual? Probably not and it is a reference to a mechanic no longer used in the game. Subdual damage was damage dealt when fighting dragons back in the pre AD&D days. Non-Lethal damage doesn't require a definition because it is a self defined word. Lethal means killing, non mean not, so NonLethal is Not Killing damage. But hell, it is a semantical arguement.
Your complaints about magic items is irrelevant because it has been there for 3 years and is actually a nice innovation. Most of my players won't create magic items because of the cost in gold and the XP cost being somewhat high. I think that the inspiration for mythologizing magic items should be the GMs job and not a books. I rarely use the random charts for creating magic weapons and armour etc. I create them using the examples in the DMG as inspiration. That is what a DM is supposed to do. The abandoning of magic items because they don't do what you need at the time or are weaker is a HUGE problem with DnD style play. You find a +2 sword and you are carrying your father's ancient +1 sword, sure, you are going to abandon the heirloom or quit using it altogether. Been a problem since 1E.
The debate on Open Gaming is really pointless unless you are a publisher, having a huge impact on games only in options available as opposed to just the WOTC material. OGL affects very few gaming groups I know of, my group the only one in my area that extensively uses D20 STL products from companies other than WOTC. A lot of groups only want to use OFFICIAL material for some reason. Wanting to protect its Intellectual Property is only natural on the part of WOTC, allowing Mordenkainen, the names of the gods of Greyhawk etc could hurt them, causing trademark loss and resulting in lack of control over that intellectual property, in much the same way that Kleenexx is no longer the property of the Kleenexx corporation. Greyhawk is still profitable, or potentially profitable. Part of my excitement for 3.0 was that Greyhawk looked to be getting more support as to me GH=DnD more so than any other world. Sadly they let that horse get away and focused on FR, but GH could easily return and become a profitable company. Taking D20 into trademark protects the license itself from being abused or confused with other less than reputable products.
Jason
