What's the difference between D20 Fantasy and D&D?

[teitan]

As it should be, and a nessesary one. 3E is what 2E should have been, and it needed to have happened around 1984/1985 rather than 1990; it's a crying shame we had to wait until 2000 to get the advances we did. It's a baby step designed to gradually lift and drag the massive player base out of the 70's with the least amount of loss and shock as people get retrained to a better mechanical system; you can (hopefully) count on the next two editions pulling it further from OD&D/1E until we finally have a decent 21st century D&D game.

Ouch

 

[PapersAndPaychecks]

it does a darn fine job of emulating D&D...

Dwarf wizards and myconid samurai and feats and AoOs and square dragons are emulating D&D?

 

[Nikosandros]

As it should be, and a nessesary one. 3E is what 2E should have been, and it needed to have happened around 1984/1985 rather than 1990; it's a crying shame we had to wait until 2000 to get the advances we did. It's a baby step designed to gradually lift and drag the massive player base out of the 70's with the least amount of loss and shock as people get retrained to a better mechanical system; you can (hopefully) count on the next two editions pulling it further from OD&D/1E until we finally have a decent 21st century D&D game.

I surmise that you play D&D just becase it's the most popular game around... because otherwise, surely you could have found a different RPG more to your liking.

 

[WayneLigon]

I surmise that you play D&D just becase it's the most popular game around... because otherwise, surely you could have found a different RPG more to your liking.

Until 3E that was mostly true; it was the one game we could find players for and support for. I think 3E is a pretty darn good game; it could be better, but it cleared up virtually all of the things that I disliked about D&D. It's to the point that I can live with it now.

 

[MoogleEmpMog]

I surmise that you play D&D just becase it's the most popular game around... because otherwise, surely you could have found a different RPG more to your liking.

Absolutely. Except that, unlike WayneLegion, I reached a point where I either *did* find other games to play, or didn't play tabletop RPGs at all.

With that said, I still find Basic/RC D&D a tolerable, even enjoyable, system, on par with 3.x. It also seem more... 'developed,' if you will, than its contemporaries, as though the Basic designers were really trying to learn, not just from D&D, but from all the games on the market as they were working on it. It's really AD&D 1e and 2e that I have a particular loathing of.

 

[WayneLigon]

To me, "Call of Cthulhu" means the BRP game.

Ken Hite is curerntly rewriting Call of Cthulhu as a new version called Trail of Cthulhu, using the new GUMSHOE game engine.

 

[Gentlegamer]

It's not the fluff, it's the system itself. The "3e" ruleset is a different game than D&D. "3.5e" is really d20 Fantasy, 2nd edition. It has nothing to do with "not being worthy" of the name.

To make it more clear: OD&D and AD&D were two separate games, though very closely related. The mechanics and assumptions of past games under the D&D label were pretty close, even in the separate D&D and AD&D game lines.

The d20 system released in 2000 was a wholly new game, a new system, that used the D&D trademark. New mechanics, new goals, etc. I can't speak for others, but when I refer to d20 Fantasy it has nothing to do with a judgment on its quality as a game, just my acknowledgment that it is a different game. I sometimes have to remind myself of this when discussing d20 because since it is a different game, it isn't quite fair to apply the rationales and views associated with (A)D&D. For example, I tried to make clear this line when discussing racial class/level limits in another thread when offering rationales for such limits. The rationales offered don't really apply in d20 since it adopted different rationales, assumptions, etc.

I think this new game distinction becomes very clear when some people talk about how they couldn't stomach "old D&D" and left it to play other games, only to "return" with "3e." That is, they didn't like the mechanics and assumptions of D&D and only "returned" when these were wholly changed by a new system. I sometimes point out that they never returned to D&D, since they are now playing a different game. It sometimes comes across poorly, and I apologize.

 

[Maggan]

The d20 system released in 2000 was a wholly new game, a new system, that used the D&D trademark.

And yet, there are striking similarities in the basic assumptions that the rules themselves are derived from.

Saying that D&D3e is a totally new game than its predecessors, means that we have to invent a new language to describe the differences between, let's say, Call of Cthulhu BRP or Star Wars d6 and D&D.

There are many examples of roleplaying games that are truly different from the D&D paradigm of levels/classes/vancian magic and looking at them only drives home the message even stronger that there are striking similarities between all editions of D&D so far.

IMO and all that.

My view is that the owner of the brand can call the damn thing what they want. As long as it says "D&D" on the book, that's what I'll call it.

/M

 

[jdrakeh]

I have to wonder why so many people who hold D&D 3x in such bitter contempt have forum accounts here. If D&D 3x is such a lesser, error-riddled, piece of trash why participate in a community ostensibly dedicated to it?

 

[Turjan]

I have to wonder why so many people who hold D&D 3x in such bitter contempt have forum accounts here. If D&D 3x is such a lesser, error-riddled, piece of trash why participate in a community ostensibly dedicated to it?

This was answered further above: To get adventure material and inspiration. As there isn't hardly anything produced for older editions, the 3.x stuff can be pilfered.