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Why do people still play older editions of D&D? Are they superior to the current one?
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<blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 7573007" data-attributes="member: 4937"><p>As a practical matter, few players of 3.Xe edition had regularly fired fireballs or longbows at things 100's of yards away. Large distances like that existed solely because in real life, we know longbows were used in combat over great distances, and rarely did anyone try to game them (if they did, they probably ended up changing the rules). One thing that 4e did is that it dropped any attempt to simulate anything - the part of D&D at low levels that one writer had called 'casual realism'. Now, for most players this probably didn't matter much - they'd never used D&D for anything of the sort. But what 4e did was it took away the option for those that had previously cared about such things. An entire aesthetic of play disappeared, which for some players was I suppose welcome. But it was far from the only aesthetic of play that disappeared.</p><p></p><p>This is why 5e reversed itself and went back to trying to be all things to all people, rather than trying to be the perfect game for some. I wouldn't be surprised if 5e is, even for people who aren't playing it, almost everyone's second favorite edition. For example, if I wasn't happy with my homebrewed 3.X (which among other things greatly reduces the range of fireball and greatly changes the spot rules so that they work better at long ranges), 5e would probably be the edition I'd play.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>I certainly can understand the problems people have with 1e and 3e. If I didn't think those editions had problems, I would have never written as extensive of house rules for them as I have. But every edition and every rules set of every game has tradeoffs. There is no such thing as the one best set of rules. There are only rules that work for what you want to do. Even my house rules, while I think they reduce the pain points of 3e (or 1e) are only reducing what I consider the pain points, and different people might experience frustration over different things. Indeed, I can even see how some of my changes - say banning all PrCs - might, especially on first hearing them without seeing what I've done, strike many players as killing the best part of 3e, since there are indeed players who most enjoy 3e for its CharOp minigame of mixing and matching powers to do something creative. It's just for me, planning and creating novel characters shouldn't be one of the best parts of the game. And to the extent that you want to create a novel character, IMO the path to doing so should be more straight forward, involve fewer steps, and result in something of more predictable power given the level of the character. But that is a subjective preference.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Celebrim, post: 7573007, member: 4937"] As a practical matter, few players of 3.Xe edition had regularly fired fireballs or longbows at things 100's of yards away. Large distances like that existed solely because in real life, we know longbows were used in combat over great distances, and rarely did anyone try to game them (if they did, they probably ended up changing the rules). One thing that 4e did is that it dropped any attempt to simulate anything - the part of D&D at low levels that one writer had called 'casual realism'. Now, for most players this probably didn't matter much - they'd never used D&D for anything of the sort. But what 4e did was it took away the option for those that had previously cared about such things. An entire aesthetic of play disappeared, which for some players was I suppose welcome. But it was far from the only aesthetic of play that disappeared. This is why 5e reversed itself and went back to trying to be all things to all people, rather than trying to be the perfect game for some. I wouldn't be surprised if 5e is, even for people who aren't playing it, almost everyone's second favorite edition. For example, if I wasn't happy with my homebrewed 3.X (which among other things greatly reduces the range of fireball and greatly changes the spot rules so that they work better at long ranges), 5e would probably be the edition I'd play. I certainly can understand the problems people have with 1e and 3e. If I didn't think those editions had problems, I would have never written as extensive of house rules for them as I have. But every edition and every rules set of every game has tradeoffs. There is no such thing as the one best set of rules. There are only rules that work for what you want to do. Even my house rules, while I think they reduce the pain points of 3e (or 1e) are only reducing what I consider the pain points, and different people might experience frustration over different things. Indeed, I can even see how some of my changes - say banning all PrCs - might, especially on first hearing them without seeing what I've done, strike many players as killing the best part of 3e, since there are indeed players who most enjoy 3e for its CharOp minigame of mixing and matching powers to do something creative. It's just for me, planning and creating novel characters shouldn't be one of the best parts of the game. And to the extent that you want to create a novel character, IMO the path to doing so should be more straight forward, involve fewer steps, and result in something of more predictable power given the level of the character. But that is a subjective preference. [/QUOTE]
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Why do people still play older editions of D&D? Are they superior to the current one?
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