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Message: <blockquote data-quote="TrippyHippy" data-source="post: 6336131" data-attributes="member: 27252">I don’t think 3E was a RPG at all. I think it was a botched marketing scheme. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" />Seriously, I think 3E was an attempt to consolidate the gaming community by looking at the games that it had been competing with and integrate these influences into it’s own game. The major influence, via Jonathan Tweet’s stewardship, was RuneQuest/BRP based games although a lot of others can be cited too. Hence we saw a fully integrated skill system, multi-classing galore and the notion of a universal system that could be fitted to all genres (the D20 system and the OGL). There was also a business model founded on, yes, selling lots of miniatures and core rules books, while getting other companies to produce the less profitable things, like adventure modules. And it worked at first, but started to fall apart a bit on the grounds that a) the integration of new subsystems became convoluted, so that game as a whole felt a lot more complicated than previous editions, and b) independent publishers didn’t quite do what they were expected and started finding loopholes in the OGL contract to start producing alternative core rules and such. Some other game designers, players and companies always resented the notion of a one-size-fits-all universal system, anyway. Now we could see all this as a big corporate melt down, but it is worth remembering that - for a short time at least - 3rd Edition actually did bring a lot of D&D players back into the fold, and it was a unifying thing. The d20 drive actually got new gaming companies and products up and running, and even some websites like ENWorld lest we forget. Prior to 3rd Edition, D&D had been struggling for a few years as had the RPG hobby in totality. People were all doom and gloom - it was a dying hobby we were told (the biggest RPG success story of the 90s was the World of Darkness, which is possibly symbolic of the way gamers felt.…). Then 3E came along and got everything buzzing again. How does this compare to 4E? Well again, I think 4E was a product of it’s time - but this time it was influenced by factors such as the growing ‘Indie’ movement, as well as MMOs such as World of Warcraft. There was also the sense that the game had become very bloated with subsystems and that gameplay design should be more structured and specific in its goals. These were fairly noble sentiments, but a lot of it was rushed through in it’s marketing and play testing and did not seem to give two hoots about the game’s past legacy at all - ‘killing off sacred cows’, etc. There was also knee-jerk reaction about PDF support and the whole OGL aspect of the game, which had an impact on lots of game companies beyond Wizards. It brought to a head much of the underlying tensions in the RPG community that had existed for a while - the whole 3E/4E ‘War’’ was preceded somewhat by the bitter arguments circulating 'Indie vs Traditional' game design before, while the dropping sales around the time of the 2007-8 crash was also raising consternation. So, I don’t think 4E was evil and I don’t view it with hate. I think, like 3E, it was a product of it’s time. Thankfully however, it’s time is done. Long live 5E!</blockquote>

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