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Message: <blockquote data-quote="DestroyYouAlot" data-source="post: 3073538" data-attributes="member: 36618">At the risk of going a bit off-topic...  [long, slightly off-topic rant]Y'know, no matter how much folks love to knock 3e as inconsequential and sub-par (and they do), and assume 4e will sweep "lesser roleplaying sheep" along with it (because that's who plays 3e, right?) through sheer marketing gravity, there's a couple of things wrong with the assumption.  First off, there's common comparisons made between the switch from 2e to 3e, and every "edition change" before it.  And every edition has had its holdouts, those who prefer an older edition of the game to what came after.  Nothing wrong with that, far from it.  But there's a phenomenon that's peculiar (so far, at least) to 3e.  3e attracted a lot of players, plenty of them new to the hobby; however it also attracted a) players who had resisted the changeover from 1e to 2e, or even OD&D to 1e (I've talked to and played with a few, myself), and b) people who had dropped out of the hobby entirely (myself included).  Why?  Because it's a good system.  You may not like it, and everyone's entitled to their opinion, but 3e cleared up a lot of what some people never liked about D&D (THAC0 and weird save categories was just the tip of the iceberg), and did a lot of stuff that people had been house ruling in for a long time, anyway.  Add that to the d20 mechanic and CR system - which are amazing DM tools, whether or not they're "perfect" - and you've got a system that was what a lot of folks had been looking for for  years - and it works.  (Personally, I took one look at the 3.0 PhB, and - after a eight-year hiatus - picked up the dice again, just like that.)d20 and OGL is just the icing on the cake - but it's tasty freakin' icing.  There are enough quality supplements out that you could game for years without mining out the potential.  When D&D goes to 4e, WotC may or not leave d20 completely behind, or attempt to create a new OGL standard that fits with what they do with 4e, but I don't believe they've got the clout to shut the Pandora's box they opened with OGL the way it stands. That's a pretty heavy incentive to stay with 3e-based fantasy roleplaying, right there.  And if the OGL (as it stands now) goes the way of the dodo, d20 supplements on eBay get real cheap, real fast.  I know I'll be stocking up.  I guess what I'm getting at, is 3e has some pretty substantial staying power, even if it's no longer published, and not just as a "niche" for grumpy grognards.  (Again, grumpy grognards for which I have the utmost respect, and who got us where we are today, but let's call a spade a spade.  <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=";)" /> )  Don't be surprised if plenty of kids who got started with 3.0, or even 3.5 (I still haven't made that switch) decide that they like their core rules the way they are, thanks, and WotC be damned.  [/long, slightly off-topic rant]</blockquote>

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