D&D 3E/3.5 Will 4e last longer than 3e?

[Mistwell]

Yes, but unlike the examples cited, we're talking about a "game" that at it's core is the childhood game "Let's Pretend" with rules, not some piece of technology that actually visibly improves from one generation to the next. I've played 1E games with the right group that were far more enjoyable than any 3E game I've ever played.

How is a game different than anything else?

I have played several board games that were fine in their first version, but significantly improved in newer editions. Sometimes they have better rules, sometimes better pieces, sometimes a better board, etc... How is the fact that it is a game different from any other improvement over time for a product?

Just because an older version can be more enjoyable with the right group doesn't mean the future versions were not improvements. You can have a blast playing your Atari 2600 M.U.L.E. game with the right group, and a bad time playing HALO 3 on the XBOX 360. Still, the XBOX 360 is an improvement on-balance over the Atari 2600.

You can rewrite the rules dozens of times, tweaking this or streamlining that, but that doesn't change the fact that the success or failure of every game depends more on each individual set of players than it does on the refinements of the rules.

Much like the game on the XBOX 360 can be bad, or the movie on the HD DVD seen on a large Flat Screen TV can be bad. Just because things can be bad on the improved version, and good on the old version, does not mean the new version is in any way not an on-balance improvement.

There is no 16-bit version of D&D (unless you're talking about one of the early video games) and the desire to keep up is fueled primarily by only two things: marketing and organized play. If you don't game at conventions and you avoid marketing whenever possible, and if your group has perfectly enjoyable games with the existing rules, why mess it up by going with what is being touted as the latest and greatrest?

I do not see how "technology" makes for a bad analogy. It doesn't have to be technology. Take ANY product and over time, if it is successful, it usually improves. Take the low tech board game "Ticket to Ride". It's a perfectly fun game in it's original version. However, since the original they have improved the play pieces, and issued additional maps that might be more to your personal tastes than the original board, and made the maps out of a higher quality ink and paper and cardboard. Or take for example the board game "Phoenicia" by Rio Grande games. The original version played fine. You could have a good time playing it. But the rules were...just OK. They released a new set of rules, and now the game is significantly more fun (on average) than the original version because of the improve rules.

Almost all long-lived products improve over time, and RPGs are no exception. You could stay with the older version, and have a good time. But the weight of your life experience concerning all longer-lived products in our economy and their improvement over time would tend to indicate that this new version will probably be an improvement. It's no different than other products, and other products also follow that pattern. I am sure you have personally enjoyed the improved products you have purchased in your life more than the older versions. So I guess ask yourself why you chose to buy the improved products in other fields, despite enjoying the older versions of those products, but not this one?

 

[Jan van Leyden]

OK, this is the first I've heard about this one. Is this technology already in place? Is this something you just made up? If this is real, who's using it? My DVD player is less than a year old and my HD TV is about three months old, and I have no problems playing a DVD on it.

At any rate, I think that any move that would make previously purchased DVDs unplayable would face severe consumer backlash and legal challenges.

I didn't seem to make myself understood.

I surely don't know about any such technology on the market or in the works. But the idea is quite simple:

Bring on a new protected file format, require a new connection for this format, push the manufacturers to produce players and TV sets which use this technology for good effect. Within a few years, people who want the best quality switch to such a setup, which delivers older media not at all or at a reduced quality. Maybe you can still play your old DVD (or VCR tapes), but you might not want to do so anymore. Will you endure the bad old ones or buy your favorites again in the new format?

I gave this as an example, an analogy. Please don't understand it as having been based on fact.

---
Huldvoll

Jan van Leyden

 

[Brother MacLaren]

I have played several board games that were fine in their first version, but significantly improved in newer editions. Sometimes they have better rules, sometimes better pieces, sometimes a better board, etc... How is the fact that it is a game different from any other improvement over time for a product?

Different pieces and different boards are in fact the ONLY way that anybody makes money off of Monopoly or Chess, since they are too well-established to mess with the rules. But's it's still a business line, it still makes money, AND you have a widely-understood game. I consider this comparable to making new modules, new settings, and new accessories (minis, battlemats, dice, etc.) for D&D while keeping the rules the same.

Changes the rules, changing the gameplay experience, is a fundamentally different thing.

 

[WayneLigon]

Yes, but unlike the examples cited, we're talking about a "game" that at it's core is the childhood game "Let's Pretend" with rules, not some piece of technology that actually visibly improves from one generation to the next. I've played 1E games with the right group that were far more enjoyable than any 3E game I've ever played.

But a game can visibly and obviously improve. It's still pretty obvious that 3E is in and of itself, intrinsically and in an objective sense, a better game in pretty much every sense of those words than OD&D, 1E and 2E, just as each of those were better than the one before it.

I'll certainly agree that a fantastic GM can create a very nice 1E game, but he'll do it in spite of the game system he's using. He could certainly entertain me for a short period of time and make me forget the staggering inadequacies of the rules. I know; I've been there. More than once. I'm sure that someone, somewhere, could run such a kick-ass game of [any game I don't care for mechanically] that I'd be blown away. For a time.

But in the long run to make me actually happy, he'd have to include a lot of house rules and make significant changes to that system for me to have a good time, even though he might be a storyteller on par with the greatest of our generation. Very soon, he'd find he was barely running that system at all. This is demonstratably what happened with 1E and 2E, and I've heard of it happening with 3E.

Back in the 1E days, things were cool until, say, RuneQuest came out. Then you heard 'Hey, how come we don't get skills?' and 'Huh; they can do magic this way and that way and even this here other way. What a cool idea. How come D&D doesn't do that?'. We saw different, better ways of doing things with many games that came out.

A lot of people don't have superlative GM's to make them forget the inadequacies of the system (A more accurate phrase might be 'blind them to'), so they will call for change.

 

[Scribble]

Different pieces and different boards are in fact the ONLY way that anybody makes money off of Monopoly or Chess, since they are too well-established to mess with the rules. But's it's still a business line, it still makes money, AND you have a widely-understood game. I consider this comparable to making new modules, new settings, and new accessories (minis, battlemats, dice, etc.) for D&D while keeping the rules the same.

Changes the rules, changing the gameplay experience, is a fundamentally different thing.

Chess has been around for what? Close to a thousand years? During which time it's changed from the original middle eastern forms to the chess we know today. (and I'm pretty sure castling is a relatively recent addition...)

In roughly 1000 years if D&D is still around, then maybe we can talk about the rules being "perfect" and no longer in need of modifications.

 

[Mistwell]

Different pieces and different boards are in fact the ONLY way that anybody makes money off of Monopoly or Chess, since they are too well-established to mess with the rules. But's it's still a business line, it still makes money, AND you have a widely-understood game. I consider this comparable to making new modules, new settings, and new accessories (minis, battlemats, dice, etc.) for D&D while keeping the rules the same.

Changes the rules, changing the gameplay experience, is a fundamentally different thing.

Most of this is taken from Wikipedia, but some from my own research (most of which was just me calling my Monopoly history fan friend and asking him about rules changes throughout the various versions, all of which mostly went over my head aside from "minor change to rule" or "major change to rule or rules").

Monopoly 1.0: In 1903, the Georgist Lizzie Magie applied for a patent on a game called The Landlord's Game, which is the first version of Monopoly.

Monopoly 1.5: In the UK it was published in 1913 by the Newbie Game Company under the title Brer Fox an' Brer Rabbit, with some rules changes.

Monopoly 2.0: A shortened version of Magie's game, which eliminated the second round of play that used a Georgist concept of a single Land value tax, had become common during the 1910s, and this variation on the game became known as "Auction Monopoly."

Monopoly 3.0: Magie moved back to Illinois, married and moved to the Washington, D.C. area with her husband by 1923, and re-patented a revised version of The Landlord's Game in 1924 (under her married name, Elizabeth Magie Phillips). This version, unlike her first patent drawing, included named streets (though the versions published in 1910 based on her first patent also had named streets). There were various other major rules changes.

Monopoly 3.5 Daniel W. Layman then produced a version of the board based on streets of Indiana. This he sold under the name The Fascinating Game of Finance (later shortened to Finance), beginning in 1932, with various rules changes (but relatively similar to the 3.0 version).

Monopoly 4.0: Ruth Hoskins learned the game, and took it back to Atlantic City. After she arrived, Hoskins made a new board with Atlantic City street names, and taught it to a group of local Quakers. It has been argued that their greatest contribution to the game was to reinstate the original Lizzie Magie rule of "buying properties at their listed price" rather than auctioning them, as the Quakers did not believe in auctions. However, it didn't return to all the original rules, and really was a morphing of the 1.0 rules and the 3.5 rules and the addition of some new rules.

Monopoly 4.5: Charles Darrow then began to distribute the game himself as Monopoly, making several rules changes mostly to the board. Darrow received a copyright on his game in 1933,

Monopoly 5.0: Monopoly was first marketed on a broad scale by Parker Brothers in 1935. A Standard Edition...these were based on the two editions sold by Darrow. George Parker himself rewrote many of the game's rules, insisting that "short game" and "time limit" rules be included.

There were other minor changes thereafter, such "Rich Uncle Pennybags," who was introduced in 1936. But for the most part the official Parker Brothers rules have remained largely unchanged since 1936. Ralph Anspach argued against this during his conversation with Maxine Brady in 1975, calling it an end to "steady progress" and an impediment to progress. Several authors who have written about the board game have noted many of the "house rules" that have become common among players, although they do not appear in Parker Brothers' rules sheets. Gyles Brandreth included a section titled "Monopoly Variations," Tim Moore notes several such rules used in his household in his Foreword, Phil Orbanes included his own section of variations, and Maxine Brady noted a few in her preface. When creating some of the modern licensed editions, such as the Looney Tunes and The Powerpuff Girls editions of Monopoly, Hasbro included special variant rules to be played in the theme of the licensed property. Infogrames, which has published a CD-ROM edition of Monopoly, also includes the selection of "house rules" as a possible variant of play. The first major changes to the Monopoly game itself occurred with the publication of both the Monopoly Here & Now Electronic Banking Edition by Hasbro and Monopoly: The Mega Edition by Winning Moves Games in 2006.

So, 5 major rules changing editions over 33 years, with many minor ones as well, and now more rules changes in modern times. And that is just a board game with a set of rules that fits on both sides of a single smaller piece of paper.

 

[Brother MacLaren]

So, 5 major rules changing editions over 33 years, with many minor ones as well, and now more rules changes in modern times. And that is just a board game with a set of rules that fits on both sides of a single smaller piece of paper.

Rules changes in the nascent stages of a game are normal (also see baseball); but once a game is established, they normally slow down to an imperceptible pace. Monopoly has been ONE set of official rules with two minor house rules for the entire time that I've been playing it. D&D seems to be accelerating the rate of major rules changes back up to what it was in the OD&D-BD&D-AD&D transition. D&D, unlike Monopoly, is trying to keep the same name, which is telling people "this is the same game, just revised." It's not.

Your own text notes that the official rules for Monopoly have been basically unchanged since 1936. The game "improved" in its formative stages, then hit massive success with one version of the rules, and now is too entrenched for any official revision.

 

[Mistwell]

Rules changes in the nascent stages of a game are normal (also see baseball);

What nascent stages?! This is a board game that underwent major rules changes an average of every 7 years. Which...is a bit similar to D&D actually!

but once a game is established, they normally slow down to an imperceptible pace. Monopoly has been ONE set of official rules with two minor house rules for the entire time that I've been playing it. D&D seems to be accelerating the rate of major rules changes back up to what it was in the OD&D-BD&D-AD&D transition. D&D, unlike Monopoly, is trying to keep the same name, which is telling people "this is the same game, just revised." It's not.

I disagree. Relative to Monopoly, we are still in the "nascent stages" as you called it, for D&D. And there is no acceleration...it's the same time frame as the last major rules changes. 1e to 1.5e to 2e 2o 2.5e to 3e to 3.5e to 4e. The time frame between each is pretty similar, and this change is not significantly different from those.

Your own text notes that the official rules for Monopoly have been basically unchanged since 1936. The game "improved" in its formative stages, then hit massive success with one version of the rules, and now is too entrenched for any official revision.

Yes, EVENTUALLY it fixed on a set of rules, which has caused controversy for failing to evolve ("Ralph Anspach argued against this during his conversation with Maxine Brady in 1975, calling it an end to "steady progress" and an impediment to progress."). Indeed, modern board games are really eating into sales of Monopoly because Monopoly hasn't kept up with the innovations in balancing luck and skill, the time frame of 2-3 hours, and the number of players. And that "eventually" was at version 5, and there was a lot of time between the versions. The same kind of time as between these versions in D&D.

Sorry but Monopoly is a good example of a game where major changes in the rules happened every 7 years or so until eventually they found a better set of rules, and even then that eventually harmed the game by not evolving with other board games. And that is just a simple board game. You would have to multiple those number of variations exponentially for a game like D&D, given how many rules are involved.

 

[Brother MacLaren]

Sorry but Monopoly is a good example of a game where major changes in the rules happened every 7 years or so until eventually they found a better set of rules, and even then that eventually harmed the game by not evolving with other board games. And that is just a simple board game. You would have to multiple those number of variations exponentially for a game like D&D, given how many rules are involved.

I look at as a game that standardized its rules AS SOON AS it went into mass production, and has since become an extremely popular board game. You see "rules changes every 7 years"; I see "NO official rules changes since it went big 70 years ago." I think that consistency has been a huge factor in its success.

Let's say D&D were some hugely popular game with very broad appeal. People from anywhere could drop into a game, already knowing the rules, and have a great time. People who hadn't played in years could break out the dice and get right back into a local game. The copyright owners could try to continually tinker with the rules, but this would increase the barriers to entry, fragment the fanbase, and eventually kill the hobby. So, they'd content themselves with making new settings, new modules, and new physical accessories, without changing the rules.

D&D is in an unfortunate middle ground. It isn't so successful that it can consider its existing rules "well-established" the way they are for chess, Monopoly, or Scrabble, but it DOES have a broad enough fanbase that major rules changes will make people unhappy. Do you think Parker Brothers really cared that one small group of Quakers in Atlantic City had played a vaguely similar game a few years earlier? Of course not. The game hadn't had enough prior widespread success.

 

[The Little Raven]

I sincerely doubt that.

Are you calling Charles Ryan a liar?

I think Gary mentioned the numbers of AD&Din one of his threads, some enterprising person should look it up. I believe AD&D sold exponentially more than 3e. Of course, the game was still new then.

That's great that Gary provided numbers... except that he lost control of the company a few years after AD&D's launch and was no longer privy to their sales records, so he has no knowledge of how well AD&D 2nd edition and 3rd edition sold. On the other hand, Charles Ryan, being Brand Manager during 3rd edition, had all of TSR's sales records as well as WotC's and was in the perfect position to determine which edition of D&D sold the best.