Why did you stay with an earlier edition?

[Grazzt]

Poll missing.

4th Ed is the first time my group and I didn't switch. (Playing since AD&D v1.) And we tried it, but just didn't care for it. (We will admit to being somewhat prejudiced by the pre-launch marketing dissonance.)

Same here. Played since pre 1e days, switched to each new system at some point. Tried 4e. Disliked it a lot for various reasons and stayed with 3.5.

And we'll give the 5e rules a look. Try 'em. If they don't work for us, we'll simply keep on with what we're doing.

 

[TerraDave]

Its sort of embarrassing to admit but:

"I have always adopted the latest version of D&D as soon as it came out."

And DMed it pretty much as soon as I could.

Of course, I have done things "my way", and done a lot of gripping about whatever edition I am running...but still.

 

[paladinm]

I've played them all.. I find myself favoring BECMI for its simplicity and old-school-ness; and it seems a much more polished and complete product than B/X. I like 3.x multiclassing, but find the feats system and prestige classes are out of control, and Pathfinder is the same with a Lot of power creep. 4e is.. well.. 4e.

If I could have BECMI as a base, plus a 2e race/class split, plus 3.x multiclassing and Some feats (especially for fighters), plus Some 4e at-wills (especially for casters), I would be all set.

I'm not asking for much.. lol

 

[Janx]

I was actually surprised to see that "didn't like the rules" was strongly leading the race.

Though it has been plenty evident that many people don't like 4e.

That was never a strong reason with me or my group.

We'd all bought heavily into 2e during it's 12 year run. When 3e came out, we switched.

When 3.5e came out, we had a mixed adoption. Some fully converted, some just used the newer add-on books with their old 3e PH.

By the time 4e came out, good or bad, we were pretty much done buying new editions. 4e offered nothing but an expense. One that we'd already paid too many times.

 

[Vyvyan Basterd]

The only new edition I didn't adopt immediately was AD&D 2E. I chose rules as my reason, but that's only because it most closely fit. I disliked how same the 2E rules were to my 1E. I saw no reason to adopt something that was functionally identical to what I was already playing. I've discovered more recently that the changes made from 1E to 2E were mostly rules we ignored when we played 1E. Also, the changes made to appease the "D&D is the devil" crowd rubbed me the wrong way back then.

 

[hanez]

So what should we select if we moved to the latest & greatest each time, spent two years+ kicking the tires on the latest and then switched back to a prior edition?

This describes our group perfectly

 

[Blacky the Blackball]

I went for "People I play with" and "Rules", but it's a bit more complicated than that.

Firstly, it wasn't staying with an older edition instead of moving to a new one. It was reverting to an older edition (BECMI) after having moved to new ones (3.0, 3.5, 4e).

Secondly, while our group enjoyed 4e and generally had no problem with the rules; one player (who is on long-term morphine after complex surgery and just isn't as "with it" as she used to be) just couldn't cope with it and would take up to 20 minutes each round to decide which power to use in combat.

So we switched back to an older version with simpler (i.e. situationally better, not objectively better) rules because of one of the people I play with.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Just buying a bunch of books to read doesn't count IMO, because while it helps the hobby in the short term, it doesn't help D&D in the long run as much as actually running and playing the new game.

It's not my job to help the hobby or D&D. If game companies want my money, they can sell products that interest me.

 

[Bluenose]

I'm sure 3e is a perfectly good set of rules, but it doesn't play like D&D, doesn't fit my setting, and doesn't play like a game I want to play. So I dropped off the D&D treadmill there. 4e is a better game, without necessarily being D&D-like, so I've got more material for it and play some. I still prefer BECMI, to be truthful, but that's hard for newer players to get hold of.

 

[Nikosandros]

I can't find the right option for me. I stay with AD&D because of the rules, but that doesn't mean that I dislike newer rules. I'm currently playing PF and I've also run some 4e recently, but since they are different games, I also want to play AD&D.