So, in a nutshell, it's not really worth me keeping my 3.0 core rule books. If I'm gonna keep core rule books from that era, I should be getting a set of 3.5E.

Anyone know if you can play the whole game with just the Rules Compendium?

mbassoc2003 wrote:I know there are many writers involved in WoTC's version of D&D, but for each writer on WoTC's staff, there must be 50 or 100 supplemetary staff employed by WoTC, and I'm sure while a chunk of them play, the number of staff who have the passion and dedication to producing playable product is limited to those core writers etc. that you mantion. I'm talking percentages here, and about a company employing thousands of people with only a small amount of inhouse talent.

True, like most other companies, the support staff far outsizes the core design/production staff. But does it matter if Joe Schmoe in IT or shipping knows how to run a good game?

I don't know exactly who gets to make the call to produce a new version of the rules, or how well they do or do not know the game itself - if you want to take them to task for messing with a good thing, or churning out a new version just to boost sales, I have no problem with that. I never gamed with any of the suits, so I cannot attest to how well they can or cannot run a good game.

It just seemed like you were taking the people who actually produce the content (designers/writers/editors) to task, the ones with real knowledge and passion. If I am mistaken, my apologies.

Personally, I started with the Holmes set and then 1E when that hit the shelves. We eventually took up 2E, and added a lot of house rules (we developed skills and skill points, tinkered with classes, etc). and ran with that for many years. When 3E came out, we adopted that and never looked back. Not to say it is perfect, but it works for us. We currently run a 3.5 campaign, and are happy with that. I got the group to give 4E a whirl, but we found it actually slowed our sessions down, so back to 3.5 we went.

We only use the three core 3.5 books, with the exception of some FR books, but only because we run a FR campaign.

Overall, our games have always rode on the back of our creative and intelligent DM, no matter what rule set we played.

I wonder how many people who dismiss a given version have actually played that version enough to form a solid opinion, and how many read a few books and decide it's junk?

FormCritic wrote:Before flogging WOTC and lauding TSR it would be well to remember...

TSR published Unearthed Arcana.

TSR published The Dungeoneer's Survival Guide.

TSR published The Wilderness Survival Guide.

TSR published Barbie's Magic Playland (also known as 2nd Edition AD&D)

TSR published the whole series of brown cover 2nd Edition splat books.

TSR published Dragonlance.  In fact, it was EGG's idea.

TSR published the SAGA game system.

TSR thought Star Frontiers was a good idea.

TSR published the Birthright series.

TSR split the Dungeons and Dragons line into separate, competing game systems.

Remember Marvel Super Heroes?  Gangbusters?  Top Secret?

It was TSR that used a giant chunk of every DRAGON magazine to give us the ARES science fiction section.  

You may or may not agree to the relative disastrous nature of each of these decisions.  Point is: Loyal as I am to TSR and its creative staff, they were not perfect.

Why must you rain on their parade, FormCritic Stormcrow?

Like most good ideas, it started out well and eventually became too commercialized to be a good idea anymore.
The problem with D&D from a sales/marketing perspective is that you don't NEED much beyond the core books for any of the systems. A good DM is capable of making rules and adventures on the fly, and usually is better off doing so, since it leaves the game wide open to most possibilities.
I don't play the systems much anymore, I use a classless system that is about as flexible and open as possible, so I never have to go out and buy the latest book on new feats, creatures, etc. However, I have seen and participated in many campaigns from all of the different versions, and one thing sticks out:
GM's as a whole have gone downhill from the "old days". Most of the ones I see now are surrounded by rulebooks and accessories, as are the players. It really is a shame, the game as I understand it was never supposed to be about having a shitload of ancillary rules and add-ons. I attribute it to the lack of imagination which is endemic to the new generation, and is a product of a digital society.

bbarsh wrote:At the time, I think Ares was actually a better magazine. Still think that to some degree. But I am a closet boardgamer at heart...

I had a great time when TSR included a customer survey in DRAGON.

The questions all had to do with "What other games do you want us to cover?"  (I guessed they were trying to get us to say we didn't care about AD&D anymore.)

"Remember, if we use more space for one game we have to reduce the space we use for another."

In one section, we were given the chance to write what other games we would like the magazine to cover.  There were spaces for three suggestions.

I took considerable glee in writing:

1)  AD&D
2)  AD&D
3)  AD&D

(In the text of the survey they had made clear that 2nd Edition was going to come out no matter what.)

"What should we take out of the magazine."

My answer:  "Stop wasting my time and money with the ARES section just so you can sell your crappy superhero and space games!  Go back to covering AD&D!"

To my considerable glee, that was the last issue of DRAGON that featured the ARES section.

Then 2nd Edition was published.  

bbarsh wrote:
Agree with you on a couple points here. Marvel RPG was an absolute piece of crap. The rule system was horrible, and the concept of actually playing Marvel characters was terrible. I can't think of an RPG where the players do not create their own characters that is any good. TSR gets a license to do a Marvel-based rpg and they come up with that garbage. I always found that somewhat insulting.

From what I understand, Marvel was the one that insisted on this (never comprehending someone would want to play anything BUT a Marvel character). Steve Winter elaborates on this in his blog; or you can ask him this summer at NTRPG Con (plug).

Ares was a SPI flagship that was completely torpedoed by TSR. TSR space games, first of all were a joke compared to most others. Ares became some half-assed publication that pimped Marvel Super Heroes, Gamma World and Star Frontiers.

Also, the original Ares was not specifically a space game magazine - it included games like Barbarian Kings, Ragnarok, Arena of Death, etc. If you ever get a chance to pick up an issue (they generally run about $20), take a look. It really was a nice magazine.

The original Ares mag was great. Mark is right though that TSR tried to cram this down our throats by dividing Dragon mag into basically two magazines, one I could use and one I had very little use for (since I generally didn't play SF RPGS).  Very frustrating to get the mag in the mail each month and basically only read half the content.

For the life of me I'll never understand the hatred of 2E, AS A GAME, for as long as I live. Virtually indistinguishable from 1E, and adventures can be switched back and forth this absolutely no problem.  By contrast, 3E adventures, characters, spells, etc, are NOT backwards compatible (or even forwards compatible, as seen by the mess they made of trying to convert adventures such as White Plume Mtn) and truly represent a real break from what is known and loved.   AS A CONCEPT I can understand the dislike for 2E, because it represents the line between pre and post Gygaxian rule at TSR, and a "new beginning" for the company.  

I still DM 2E and we usually don't use the books; I guarantee if you sat in on one of my sessions you wouldn't detect a difference between it and a 1E game except in very few instances (which you would chalk up to houserulings).  By contrast, I'd like anyone on earth to try to DM a 3E game and convince me it was 1E; the first half ogre ninja monk dragonborn assassin and it would be game over......

Mike B.

As somebody who played 3.0 AND 3.5 pretty extensively, I'll pretty much agree with what has been posted so far about the differences. The basic points:

General spell fixes. Durations on stat-buffing spells were reduced, spells were brought down in power level; basically, if you thought wizards were OP in 3.5 (well, they were) if the spells had stayed the same, but the mechanics implemented (feats and such) the way they were in 3.5, whooo boy.

Class buffs. Bards sucked in 3.0. Rangers kinda did too. They redid a bunch of the core classes for 3.5, so as to TRY and balance things out. They succeeded at early levels, but the game literally breaks apart around level 12-15. Wizards are simply retardedly powerful.

So, yes, 3.0 to 3.5 was pretty needed. I was in the unfortunate spot of running a serious game at that time, and yes, I did need to buy all new books and yes, I was annoyed. But, after reading the new rules and seeing how they fixed things, I got less steamed. Honestly I'm not 100% sure how the 3.0 rules set got past the testing phase as it was, but, that's all ancient history now, so, I'm over it.

As for 4th Edition, Mandalaymoon, I'm one of the few who love it on these boards. I've actually put a lot of thought into how it differs most, and I think I've got the answer.

Compartmentalization.

Hmm. Long word. To explain! In past editions, the PCs growth, in XP, was like a cup, that you could fill in drips and drabs or tons at once. Say....you search a room and a spider jumps out of the closet! Fight one spider! Yay! Get 35 xp! Or, fight a dragon, get 10,000 xp! In 4th Edition, they hang on the idea of an "encounter" as a balanced entity that forces the party to expend an amount of their resources, and is rewarded by 1/10th of a level in xp. This is where healing surges come into play as sort of a limiting resource, like spells used to be in past editions.

To further back this up, they give the PC 3 types of powers, At-Will (swing your sword), encounter (once per encounter, do something cool) and Dailies (once a day, do something REALLY cool). In a perfect world, at the end of an encounter, you expend all your encounter powers, some healing surges, and maybe a daily.

This is how it ties together, time spent, I think. The popular idea today is that people have less spare time. So, the current iteration of the D&D game allows you to roll out of the gate, guns blazing, take out a few encounters, then go home. You feel like you did a good bit of "gaming", killed some bad guys, and now you can get back to your life. Like any game, there are going to be lots of expansion books. Honestly, you only really need the core 3, plus the PHB2 and MM2 (I always loved new monsters).

I'm leaving out a ton of stuff, obviously, like how EASY it is to sculpt encounters in 4E, how balanced the game as a whole is, and how nice it is to bring new players up to speed. Also, the game's combat mechanics really are more board-oriented. Positioning, and tactics on the grid are FAR more important than in past editions.

Sorry about the long-ish post. Every once in a while I gotta get on board the train, the "Don't hate on current D&D" train. It gets new people involved in a hobby we ALL love, so it can't be ALL bad, right?  

Zenfinite

As always, PMs for further input/opinions is always welcome.

bbarsh wrote:
The presentation sucked. When I first opened the PHB and saw that absolutley hideous artwork, I nearly puked. As time went on and TSR started printing supplement after supplement after supplement, I really could not stand 2e. I never liked the expansion of 2e to begin with - way too much everything for everybody going on. But I am a simpleton, so for me, less is more.

Yeh but man if I based my games likes/dislikes on artwork I wouldn't read much of the OSR now, and I love most of that.  The supplements were add-ons and you can use as many or as few as you like.  But then again we are two different gamer-types, as I voraciously read Dragon mag back in the day and added whatever "NPC ONLY" character class they had to my games, so I was used to that...at one time I believe I ran the U-series with a archer, a samurai, and an alchemist in the party (all Dragon mag classes).  And I used a anti-paladin and Deathmaster as baddies, etc.  What I've always loved about the game was the ability to add or subtract whatever necessary to make the game your own.

Before 2E pretty much anything cool and new from Dragon mag made it into our 1E games, including monsters, spells, magic items, combat variants, and of course "NPC only" character classes (which inevitably became PC classes of course). That's why the expansion of 2E never bothered me much I guess.

As to what RFTD said, the plethora of rulebooks takes something away from the game, which is why I like DMing from my laptop now. No books on the table, the core rules are on my screen, and actually I think it helps a lot in presenting the game. Plus in my games I consider a successful session one in which book references are kept down to very few or none during a session.  I think time before last my face to face session we looked in the books once, and that was to reference a non-standard druid spell.  Those are the best sessions, where the action keeps flowing and nothing stops down...which was a lot of my problem with 3/3.5.  It seemed every game I observed there was a ton of page flipping. Or was I just watching beginners every time?  Maybe the more experienced gamers kept the book referencing to a minimum.

Mike B.

Zenfinite wrote:The popular idea today is that people have less spare time. So, the current iteration of the D&D game allows you to roll out of the gate, guns blazing, take out a few encounters, then go home. You feel like you did a good bit of "gaming", killed some bad guys, and now you can get back to your life.

Are you saying that this advancement is guaranteed, assuming you don't die?  By participating in a set number of encounters, do the characters gain a level?  Please clarify if that was merely a handy example, or an actual rule.

The only reward for putting in time in old-school D&D is fun itself.  Advancement in D&D cannot be taken for granted.  Just showing up at the table doesn't cut it.  It requires skill, effort, and more than a bit of luck.  

Every once in a while I gotta get on board the train, the "Don't hate on current D&D" train.

Well, just because you can't find a cure for cancer doesn't mean you should tell kids it's ok to smoke.  If WotC is pandering to the modern crowd and their sense of entitlement rather than taking a stand against it and promoting good play, we have a responsibility as experienced players to combat that.  Many of us are survivors of this sort of "cancer" ourselves, after all.

Entitlement isn't a new problem in D&D it's always existed.  Once we became aware of it, we fought very hard to prevent "munchkinism", "monty haulism", etc.  If that nonsense is being codified into the rules, we need to continue to combat it.  Or I'm a four billionth level lemur god wielding a +26 yellow participation ribbon.