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Message: <blockquote data-quote="wingsandsword" data-source="post: 4446275" data-attributes="member: 14159">When I started playing D&D, it was in the late 90's with 2e, with all the Player's Option rules, playing in campaigns that always used the Great Wheel.  Every DM I knew used the PO rules and whether it was a homebrew or existing setting planar adventuring always came up and it always used the traditional "Great Wheel" cosmology and much if not all of the accumulated D&D meta-setting information that had grown over the decades.  Most PC's were multiclassed (or dual-classed since it was 2e), psionics existed but it was always a small part of games with a PC or two having wild talents or the very rare dedicated psychic character.  We had assassins, barbarians and half-orcs and monks held over from 1e or rebuilt with Skills & Powers rules.So, when 3e came around and had lots of changes in mechanics, but it felt a whole lot like the same game.  Still an intricate skill system, still lots of character flexibility and customization, still the same spells and spell levels and a general feel of being the same game, just cleaned up a lot.  3e still used most of the same presumed meta-setting data.  3e and later 3.5e felt like the same game, just more developed and advanced.I think a lot of my problem for why 4e doesn't "feel" like D&D is that it's such a divorce from the gaming lineage I've always known as D&D.  For many people the Great Wheel never came up, but for me it was always a presumed constant of D&D.  For many people they have these hazy, nostalgic memories of simpler, better D&D, but not me.  For me D&D has always been a complicated but fun game where half the fun is the "crunchy bits" like intricate character creation and long spell lists.  D&D to me was never a simple game, and to me doesn't feel like D&D without Vancian casting, without a skill system that gives me a lot of flexibility, without ample multiclassing, without so many things that I just took to be an assumed part of the D&D experience that apparently so deeply offended the designers at WotC as "not fun" (the marketing for 4e that insulted 3.5 and a lot of the things I liked as "not fun" did a lot to make a very bad first impression for me though, when I was already skeptical).What I mean by this is, that "what is D&D" is defined to me and I think others by the games we started with in terms of edition and play style, and what we played after that.  For me D&D 3.5 was the pinnacle of that play style and 4e is so radically different that it seems like a totally different game with the D&D name just slapped on it.  4e may be a fun game for some people, and for some play styles it fits very well, but not for all of us.</blockquote>

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