I have not ever played any edition BtB, and find the very idea of it anti-D&D. My favorite version, though, has AC going down like its supposed to, no grid, no limits to race/class/level, specialization and skills, but not overdone...I guess it might be 2E with the training wheels off...
What's your favourite version or variation of D&D?
- Thread starter Morrus
- Start date
5th Ed (really).
The reason is: It's shaping up to be the 2.5 I always wanted (with bits of 4th Ed).
Nice to see some 2nd Ed love in here. that is the edition I have spent the most time with, and DMing, as I have rarely been a player in my many years of playing this game.
3rd Ed is a blast to be a player, but can be tedious to DM (higher level spells, fiddly, broken math, etc), 4th Ed can be too dry and operational for me, lack of depth/soul, somehow, but can be loads of fun (we had a blast the first 4 or 5 sessions, but after that something was missing for me).
I also heavily dig (house-ruled) SWSE (was hoping they would have leaned more that way, rather than ToB for 4th Ed).
Basic and 1st Ed are still the Dog's Bollocks.
The reason is: It's shaping up to be the 2.5 I always wanted (with bits of 4th Ed).
Nice to see some 2nd Ed love in here. that is the edition I have spent the most time with, and DMing, as I have rarely been a player in my many years of playing this game.
3rd Ed is a blast to be a player, but can be tedious to DM (higher level spells, fiddly, broken math, etc), 4th Ed can be too dry and operational for me, lack of depth/soul, somehow, but can be loads of fun (we had a blast the first 4 or 5 sessions, but after that something was missing for me).
I also heavily dig (house-ruled) SWSE (was hoping they would have leaned more that way, rather than ToB for 4th Ed).
Basic and 1st Ed are still the Dog's Bollocks.
saskganesh
First Post
BFRPG. Lots of options, easy to house rule, easy to expand. Free and well-written. Suitable for new gamers and old hands.
My favorite for playing D&D-esque adventures is my GM's homebrew: http://hastur.net/wiki/Action, which has very different mechanics, but picks up D&D/Pathfinders adventures, settings and mood real well.
That said, Parthfinder has surprised me favorably as a player. There are enough oddities and quirks to inspire lots of agitated discussions with the GM and other players, and quite a bunch of house-rules, but so far has been fun to play, in spite of the creaks and leaks; The archetype system is a godsend for adapting classes to get just the class variant you want, especially if the GM (@Starfox) helps out by adding an extensive list of his own: http://hastur.net/wiki/Apath
That said, Parthfinder has surprised me favorably as a player. There are enough oddities and quirks to inspire lots of agitated discussions with the GM and other players, and quite a bunch of house-rules, but so far has been fun to play, in spite of the creaks and leaks; The archetype system is a godsend for adapting classes to get just the class variant you want, especially if the GM (@Starfox) helps out by adding an extensive list of his own: http://hastur.net/wiki/Apath
Balesir
Adventurer
Covered.
My own favourite is 4E, with 13th Age looking very interesting (but finishing a Masters' dissertation means I haven't played it, yet).
Warning - nostalgia digression ahead, feel free to skip...
I have played RPG since OD&D, but during the AD&D "epoch" I drifted away because (ironically, as you'll see) it wasn't "realistic" enough. I dabbled a bit with 2e (as someone said - CRPG!) and with 3e it looked like D&D actually had some of the structure and simplicity of underlying system that I had been playing with elsewhere (RuneQuest, Bushido, Daredevils, HârnMaster, DragonQuest, Call of Cthulhu were all major features, together with what I can only describe as a "homebrew" based very loosely on OD&D with all the actual systems removed, written by a bunch of Cambridge mathematicians in the late '70s). With 3.x I actually took to defending D&D against the disaffected legions that were playing GURPS, C&S and such - but in the end I came to the conclusion that trying to meld a "realistic" fantasy game with levels and classes really doesn't work that well. Which is why 4E came as such a breath of fresh air. It didn't try to do a "realistic" game and deep immersion while working around the strange, artificial artefacts of class, level and hit points. It embraces those and finds a game style that I think really suits them. 13th Age seems to couple the same approach with some of the "player authorship" mechanisms and ethos that I have found in games like PrimeTime Adventures, Universalis, Burning Wheel and the like. That sounds very appealing.
Celebrim
Legend
My own D&D 3.0 'off ramp'. Basically, its the game that lets me play the game I wanted to play in 1E but the rules limitations kept getting in the way. It's based off of the best of 3.0 and 3.5, tightened up to what I feel I need for my world, with some tweaks to improve balancing. In fact, through 3 years of play it has been far and away the most balanced RPG I've ever played, which owes as much to how close to right 3.0e got it (sans a few sanity checks they should have made when departing from 1E's assumptions) than me. It's close relationship to 3.X means that most 3.X and Pathfinder supplements are compatible as written if needed or with the most minor of tweaking if desired. But it is informed by things as diverse as GURPS and 4E.
In short, having gotten off the road on my own terms, I've sadly felt little need to go back. I've got a tailored suit of clothes that fits my needs perfectly. Occasionally I'll look at what Pathfinder has done to clean up combat maneuvers language or AoO language, and think I should revise for clarity, or occasionally I see a feat or spell worth borrowing. But I'm not much into books, and hence find myself at some level contributing to the demise of my own hobby.
But I don't blame myself. D&D left me; I didn't leave D&D.
In short, having gotten off the road on my own terms, I've sadly felt little need to go back. I've got a tailored suit of clothes that fits my needs perfectly. Occasionally I'll look at what Pathfinder has done to clean up combat maneuvers language or AoO language, and think I should revise for clarity, or occasionally I see a feat or spell worth borrowing. But I'm not much into books, and hence find myself at some level contributing to the demise of my own hobby.
But I don't blame myself. D&D left me; I didn't leave D&D.
That didn't come off as nostalgia, more saying pre-4th Edition does not work well, but 4th Ed and 13th Age do (pimping those two games).
Balesir
Adventurer
Sorry if it came over that way - my intent was actually more nuanced.
The irony is that I originally drifted away from D&D because I didn't think it was "realistic" enough, but then became enthused with it again because the new edition specifically eschewed "realism". I think the real issue with the earlier editions was that I had missed the point - missed what was actually good about them. Admittedly, many others seem to have focussed on just the "realism" aspects that I thought were covered better elsewhere, but that's not really any sort of excuse for me having missed what D&D was actually good at. Just because 300 people say 1+1=3 doesn't mean arithmetic has suddenly changed - it just means 300 people (including, in this case, me) were wrong.
Do I think 4E does the hp-class-level deal better than older editions? Yes, I do, but that's a taste thing, and not something everyone needs to - or even ought to - share. There's even a strain of taste that desires class and level mixed with some level of "realism" and accepts that mixing the two will involve some level of compromise - again, not a taste I share, but a perfectly valid one.
My post was intended really as a (nostalgic) reflection on the follies of fixating on one specific thing that makes roleplaying "good", and how it leads the mind astray. After over 35 years of play, it's clear to me that no version of D&D was a "bad game" because it "wasn't realistic" - something my 20-something self would have taken as an article of faith. I have a clear idea of what games work well for me and why, nowadays, but I don't imagine that there is any game that doesn't work well for *somebody* - and thus there is no such thing as an unambiguously bad game. Just ones that are not to my (or others') taste.
Gotcha, right on, I have never entertained D&D as too realistic (always aware that it is an absurd game).
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