Why are you still here?

[Khairn]

I don't put myself in that camp exactly, but...

... not switching doesn't mean I'm not interested, academically, in what happens with the new edition. And that means I am interested in discussing and reading discussions.

... part of me somehow hopes maybe I will be swayed or I will see something that makes me go "yipee"

... even if I don't adopt whole cloth maybe I'll see an idea that I like for my 3.x game

... if a question is asked "what do you think about XYZ" as it pertains to 4E, I think the adopters and non-adopters alike have been asked that question, and have a right and responsibility to respond. There are all sorts of polls in this forum that assume non-adopters are here, reading and responding.

Agreed.

Particularly the part about seeing something that makes me go "Yippee".

I usually play or work on 2-3 systems in a month and love to try new games. I also like to choose the system that will best support the type of game that I am looking to play. So for me, staying on top of what's happening with 4E is how I look towards the future to see if this is a game that I'll be interested in playing, and seeing what type of game it will support.

 

[Reynard]

In my case, there are two reasons why I found I could not divorce myself from the 4E forum.

The first is that with the advent of a new edition, discussions about exactly what D&D is suddenly came to the fore. Not that we hadn't had these discussion at EN World before, but they were rarer with fewer participants. 4E made them bigger, longer and occassionally uncut. Obviously, I have some very strong opinions about what D&D "is" and what kind of play D&D supports "best", but so do lots of people. And while the tendency is to believe that more people are troll-ish or spoiling for a fight than not, I think the truth is that for every [you know what, I won't say it] there's 10 other posters expressing their opinions civilly and often eloquently. And since I love D&D and I like talking about D&D, even with people that completely disagree with my preferences and opinions, 4E has been a boon in that way. yes, we've had fights and yes I have let myself get over-heated along with some others, but I honestly believe that some of the best discussions about "the theory of D&D" ever to appear here have come out of 4E (the "Why Worldbuilding is Bad" thread notwithstanding -- I miss those days, Hussar ).

The other reason is that as much as stuff we were getting told was grating on me, flying in the face of my aforementioned D&D preferences and opinions, the fact is I kept waiting for something to get me excited. The idea of "hating" the new edition of my favorite game was not something I liked. Sure, I will always have previous editions, the fact is that most people, most of the people I game with, will move on. I want to like the new D&D because I want to play with those people and I want to play with other D&D lovers at cons and (most importantly for me) I want to keep running both regular and con-style games.

A little hope has sparked here and there. Mearls' comments a couple months ago (reposted from the WotC boards, I believe) were a little heartening. Statements by Orcus that Necromancer was going to keep "old school" play alive in the new edition gave me a little hope. The new monster stat block intrigues and pleases me and makes me think that the actual game, when we finally get to see it in its entirety, will be better than it looks to me based on the previews.

I'm not there yet. I don't like the "anime/WoW" flavour seemingly inherent in the PCs; I don't like the massive reduction in many areas I think of as definitive of "old school" playstyle; I feela lot of meta/implied setting changes are pointless; I think some rule changes are just silly and arbitrary and fixing things that were never broke in the first place. But, I do feel a little better. I do think that if I pay attention and read the previews and discuss them with other people here, whatever decision I come to in June will be an informed one and one I won't regret because I had an opinion and was sticking to it, right or wrong. Without the discussion part, that just isn't possible.

Oh, yeah, there's a third reason: there's been some humdingers and they are just too entertaining to pass up sometimes.

 

[Brother MacLaren]

I'm still here because somebody thought I was too drunk to drive and took my keys.

Also, I'm looting ideas.

 

[Rpgraccoon]

I know the fluff is messed up. However, that can be fixed. I am starting to like some of 4e. However, not sure. 3.0 sucked. 1e was simple, 2e was imaginative and fluffy, 3.0 was horrible disaster, 3.5 great mechanics but still a little to complicated and fluff began to be toyed with. 4e streamline simplicity like 1e and great mechanics from 3.5. Thats good

All they need for me is
Don't delete any Outer Planes
Put the Modrons back in
Summoning fix it make it work
The Archivist Bring it Back
The Truenamer *Truenames* loved it try again
Aasimars back in please don't change the name
Kenku back in don't change the name of the race
Sea elf back in. Note will talk about on the forms I have an idea about them.
Make a good Devil Summoner class or some class that can do it well.
Half-Elves, Half-Drow, Half-Eldarin-possible ways to distinguish them.
Familiars not sucking
Possibly don't touch the fluff oh wait not possible is it.

Favorite setting Mystara, Forgotten Realms, Planescape, Spelljammer.

Of course it is all possible that 3rd will have me covered. However right now I don't like envokers. They killed the schools of magic and half-elves are in the dark. So, I am nervous.

However, I did like the tome focus idea till they edited it out of there article. sigh...

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

I've been gaming for 30 years, and my first RPG was D&D, of course. So I'm interested in where its going, whether or not I'm going there with it. I went through the same thing with Champions when they tried out a Fuzion incarnation. I bypassed most of that and waited until the next incarnation before getting back into the system seriously.

I've also played somewhere around a hundred other RPG systems in a variety of genres, so I've learned that any good game can contribute to my RPG Player/DM skillset.

I have faith that 4Ed will have some elements that will be quite well thought out and designed, but its becoming increasingly clear with each passing set of press releases that its probably not going to supplant 3.XEd in my personal preferences. Still, that doesn't mean there won't be something I can't mine.

Finally, I want to learn a bit about the system just in case I'm invited to be a player in a 4Ed campaign. It may not be my personal cup of tea, but I'm willng to play almost any RPG in a well run campaign. I have no love of GURPS (beyond my respect for their excellently researched historical supplements & sourcebooks), but I played a lot of it when I gamed with some guys who were real GURPSophiles (and they played D&D or HERO when I was behind the screen).

So regardless of whether I actually DM the game, I'm sure I'll find some value in ownership, if only for inspiration or counterexample.

(For the record, I've already bought my 4Ed Core books- the question is more whether I'll buy anything else from 4Ed.)

 

[Lanefan]

Pretty much the same here as what others have said: I'm here for the discussion of the greater game, of which 4e is about to become a part. Hell, I'm not even much of a 3e fan, for all that!

Every time I start getting my hopes up for 4e, something comes along and whacks 'em right back down again. The most recent hammer was those unfathomable magic rings rules; yet since then my hopes have started to creep back up from the playtest reports we've been seeing.

That said, I've already made one 4e purchase - that being the Worlds and Monsters preview...not because I'm slavering at the mouth for 4e and just can't wait, but because simply glancing at the artwork in it gave me about 6 adventure ideas!

And, like others, I'm looking for ideas to poach for my own 1e-hybrid game.

Lanefan

 

[bonethug0108]

I actually posed this question myself and got some pretty good(and a couple not so good) responses:

http://forums.gleemax.com/showthread.php?t=983206

I has actually given me some real good insight into things I partially or fully overlooked.

I still don't like the trolling aspect of it, but trolling is determined by individual post and not by user(most of the time). Very few users are straight trolls(usually the ones who make one very rude post and never show up again), and very few users who troll only do so once in a while.

Alot of it is genuine concern. Maybe highly negative concern, but genuine.

 

[megamania]

My saying "I won't buy into 4e" is more out money reasons. Doesn't mean I don't want to know more about it.


Plus I'm curious at how they plan to make it that one can quickly slap together interesting and changing encounters so much quicker than 3e.

 

[Edena_of_Neith]

I am curious, interested in the evolution of the Hobby I loved and played for so long.

Edena_of_Neith

 

[Terramotus]

I think there are a few factors going on here that can explain why some people are posting in thread after thread about how they hate the upcoming changes. This isn't directed towards anyone in particular (I don't pay enough attention to names, except for where I really like the poster, to do that if I tried, to be honest), and most of the people posting in this thread aren't covered by this either - these reasons are really about the people mentioned in the parent post: those who have already decided that they will not purchase 4E.

So anyway, here are some reasons I've surmised about many of the constantly negative posts.

1) Things change. Sometimes things that you love change, even to the point that you don't really love them anymore. That's always really a sad thing to have happen. I personally think the mature thing to do in those cases is to just walk away and let the other people have their fun. But some people haven't gone through things like this before, or aren't ready to let go. Sometimes they just can't stand things moving on without them. In many of these cases, I think we're seeing the stages of grief writ across the 4E forum.

2) There's always resistance to change, especially to things people have emotional attachment to. D&D is often intensely personal, so there's a lot of emotional attachment. This will go away once the new edition becomes accepted and the status quo.

3) Some people just don't know what they like; they have blind spots. And I think this is different than just resistance to change. In RPGs, this is not a problem I have, but in other hobbies that I'm into, I've found that things I was sure that I hated, that made me seethe in fanboyish wrath, were actually pretty darn cool when I saw them in person. This surprised me the first time, shocked me the second time, and I finally realized what was going on the third time. Somtimes I just don't know what I like.

4) Some people have an agenda. They may thing RPGs are best played in a certain way, have a hate on for anything later than X edition of D&D, or whatever. But they're either here to change minds, so that the new edition fails, to stand and be counted so that their opposition to the changes is at least recognized, or they just can't stand to let wayward thoughts go unaddressed.

5) Some people are addicted to the discussion / community, and they can't help but go where most of the discussion is going, even if they hate the subject matter.