hey, i am wondering what percentage of warhammer players also play D&D

I've been playing it 5 years on and off, although our DM has moved to Japen for a year so back to being off again!

I dont know one percent but its pretty good. Makes me laugh how so many people make fun of people who play DnD when their epic games all owe something to DnD

its going to be about 80%

I used to play quite a bit before my group came down with a fatal case of RPGA, then that "Living (Insert D&D setting here)" and then the fething video game. What's wrong with just sitting down around a table and playing the game without needing it spoon-fed to you? I would play again if I could get in a group of people who were into the real game and not distracted by everybody's attempts to institutionalize it.

I haven't played since most of the idiots started playing WoW, saying it's a much better role-playing experience. What a load of bs. It's nothing but a treadmill that makes you fatter.

AD&D classic had its moments.

2nd editon changed the gmae, but did not change what was fundamentally wrong with it.

3rd edition basically fixed the game but made some errors.

3.5 edition fixed most of those errors and imbalances but created a fair share of news ones.

4th edition is a design disaster that makes the worst GW studio monkeys look like paragons of enlightenment in comparison. It's the Vista 'upgrade' of gaming.

Vin Diesel apparently wrote some introduction in one of those D&D books.

You can't get much cooler than that!

When do you think GW will have some action star write the introduction of their latest Space Marines book?

I hear Ah-nold is going to write the Necron codex.

I have a few of the D&D dungeon tilesets, but that's mostly for Dark Heresy. I've never actually played D&D or even owned a book from it.

Did listen to the Penny Arcade podcasts. They were hilarious.

Played it many years ago in High School.

Hated it, to be honest. Then again, I've never really liked the fantasy genre, so I probably didn't give it a fair go.

My current regular gaming group has some D&D players. They're munchkins, though (some are chronological grown-ups, but they still play like 12 year olds) and I'd never consider playing with them.

Played on and off since '84. Won't touch 4th edition after reading about the changes.

I hear the 4th edition is basically World of Warcraft without the computers.

Cheese Elemental wrote:I hear the 4th edition is basically World of Warcraft without the computers.

Meh. Who cares. The podcasts sounded like they were having fun, and if you don't take it too seriously it would work. And as for the whole 4th Ed h8ting, while I might not have any experience with either ruleset except for what I've picked up via osmosis, I really can't see what the big deal is. Everything I've heard and seen about 4th Ed makes logical sense to me.

I have followed DnD in some form or another since AD&D2E and currently play regularly.

The 4E hate is over-done. They simplified it a lot, streamline it a lot, but improved balance considerably (not perfect, but nothing is) and added some really interesting concepts. More importantly, it has opened the game up to a wider audience than ever before, meaning we now have more people to play with, and better business for Wizards. I have never DMed, but I am assured that it is now easier and more fun than ever before.

Used to play it loads as a kid in the late 70's/early 80's (I started with the 3 little brown booklets, before even the 1st ed. DMG was published). Stopped playing when I left school as I never again found the time needed to develop a campaign or play regularly.

With the right group of players, and provided I didn't have to DM I could be persuaded to get back into it again, but that's unlikely to happen any time in the next 2 decades...

I have played D&D since I was 7 when the neighbors older brother ran a dungeon , that was about 30 years ago. I also have a creative streak (read art major) so D&D supplies a creative outlet. The thing about D&D is it allows you to step back from the regular and mundane and participate in something heroic and fantastic if you have an iota of imagination. Video games are for those who want to be spoonfed. Creativity is having your party throw the cleric into the dragons mouth so he can get his "harm" spell off. Or one of your players opens a chest and as you clear your throat he looks at you like a deer caught in the headlights. Its moments like that, that can't be duplicated in a video game that you can sit back and laugh at them years later. Now if they could get a Neverwinter nights platform with good mechanics to be an easy DM tool. Then you could construct a game and LAN your players through with netbooks in realtime. Then you would see the next evolution of D&D. Neverwinter nights 1 had that capability but you had to know C+. But instead the put out Neverwinter nights 2 i with a horrible movement interface. Most people that play table tops are gamers, it still takes imagination to get excited over 40K and Fantasy.

Started playing D&D in 1976, this was BEFORE it was character driven. It was a wargame based on countries, had an economy etc. Turn based strategy with yourself as the "king". Got the first printing of all the books in my basement, couple signed by Gygax.
While AD&D was good, Second edition was bette IMO, streamlined the rules, and made it flow better.
Then Wizards of the Coast bought TSR... D&D has been dieing a slow and miserable death since then.
I did pick up a copy the the lateset Players handbook to read through it, thinking about getting a game started. Finished the book, and was sorely disappointed. This edition completely ruined the game.
Other people near my age that played in the 80s and 90s, that I know, have told me "this is not D&D". It's not. It is a joke in comparison to the richness of AD&D and 2nd Edition. There is no role playing anymore it is all based on numbers now. Worse the RoleMaster with it's massive crit tables that you had to look up EVERY strike in combat. a/crit etc.
RuneQuest was fun but it revolved around POW to much, and the armor values were way to wonky.
Champions was OK, moved to slow.
CyberPunk was AWESOMESAUCE!
GURPS was OK.
I can keep going but won't

This is only my opinion, please don't flame me.

Malika2 wrote:Vin Diesel apparently wrote some introduction in one of those D&D books.
You can't get much cooler than that!

I think it was the anniversary 'coffee table book' they released a few years ago.

I've tried it a couple of times, but just never liked the system that much. Regardless though, it did have its moments and I can see why people enjoy the game. Even at that though, I've just found other RPG systems which better lend themselves to the type of RPG I like to play.

I've been playing D&D for almost 28 years.
I played every edition of D&D from the basic box sets up through 3.5, when I abandoned it as unenjoyable.

I don't like what they're doing to the game. It's all about developing your character as a combat monster, now, and not at all about "character development."

Recently, I started an AD&D 2nd edition campaign and managed to find 7 other players (with an 8th who's now interested). That system is the BEST in D&D's history, IMO, and was the SOLE basis for my choice of "frigging awesome."

Eric

2nd Edition was when I played (and loved) AD&D. Before that I was into Tunnels and Trolls; afterwards, my group went into a homemade system that's served us pretty well for nigh-on 20 years (/aside .. OMG 20 years).

Considering taking a break and reffing some Godlike, though.

4th really isn't that bad. The options your characters have might seem limited, but honestly, it's still a bunch of guys sitting around a table pretending to be a character and rolling dice. Even with how different it is, it's really not that different. I play both 3.5 and 4th currently.

I played 2nd, 3rd, and now 3.5.

My group moved to 4th for a while, then switched back to 3.5.

I was the GM of a D&D group recently. It was pretty cool, one member of the group had acces to a litterally LIBRARY of old books, because a relative had helped to bring D&D to germany. So we played first edition and I loved it. The old books were really complicated; I remeber a tabel about the weight of certan kinds of stone in fortress walls of various length. The illustrations were great, really old fabtasy feeling, a bit grimdark as well and always funny. There was just one problem.: We looked through the books over and over again, but we weren´t able to find the rules for fighting. Everywhere where you could expect martial texts, there were links to other books! But gaming is great and has a real Fantasy-Feeling on it . Dark, Funny, Creative.

Balance wrote:

Malika2 wrote:Vin Diesel apparently wrote some introduction in one of those D&D books.
You can't get much cooler than that!

I think it was the anniversary 'coffee table book' they released a few years ago.

So? It has f'ing Vin Diesel in it! Can't go wrong with that, now it means it's ultimate bad ass!

Used to play DnD alot at school and college its what pushed Warhammer and GW in general on the back burner for me, since our group split up though i've never found like minded players to play with, he used the 3.5 ed rules but made it as character driven as possible (even tossing out sections of the rulebook that were too "rules focused" if that makes sense) every other player just likes to run around dungeons and kick the crap out of stuff, I want to be part of story and have a reason for doing my fighting other than theres orcs or gold over there.

Its an awesome game you just have to find the right people to play it with

Played DnD in the early 80's in high school. Played almost consistently every weekend since 96, with a couple breaks here and there.

Currently playing 3.5 I think while there are class imbalances ( clerics rule the game) and combat problems ( archers get more play then melee fighters), the game is fine, for any type of gaming experience you want.

I think it's a better game to play then 2nd edition. If you could bring the balance 2nd edition had to 3.5, no one would say 2.0 was better.

4th edition DND has been a colossal flop, with sales dropping off considerably, and the company in its death throes. They changed too much too fast. Tone down clerics, fix melee fighters, make wizards more viable to play and make it easier to plan encounters and you're done.

The one thing I hate about 3.5 ( and 4th) was the change in art direction, from classic fantasy to a steampunk/spikes/bad fantasy movie look.

The DnD online game was set in the steampunk world of eberron wasn't it? Hence why I never played.

Malika2 wrote:

Balance wrote:

Malika2 wrote:Vin Diesel apparently wrote some introduction in one of those D&D books.
You can't get much cooler than that!

I think it was the anniversary 'coffee table book' they released a few years ago.

So? It has f'ing Vin Diesel in it! Can't go wrong with that, now it means it's ultimate bad ass!

I was merely trying to provide some background. I got a copy of it for a friend's birthday a few years ago and it's got some fun stuff in it.

The Deadlands RPG got Bruce Campbell to do an introduction for one book. It was amusing, despite him onyl having a vague idea what an RPG is, I think.

Played DnD since I was eleven. Always loved it. I'd be playing now, but I'm not a geek's geek so I have some problems finding a group that doesn't ruin the game for me. I love 4th edition, I've only had a chance to run it and play it once. But it's just a much better game. A lot easier to play.

I could argue and bitch and moan with the rest of you. But I won't. DnD has been a good game, always. In every edition. People just don't like change.

I just started playing D&D about a month ago:

I just graduated from college, and since I didn't have anyone to play 40k against, a bunch of friends of mine got together to play D&D. None of us had played ever before, and we picked up the books and got started. I got chosen as DM. Its been fun! We've been playing online, using Google Docs spreadsheet as our 'client.' I know its really broke, but we don't want to spend $40 each on a client when this works pretty well.

I think you're right that D&D online was set in Eberron.

I've heard 4.0 is doing "as well as expected." I don't know if Hasbro/WotC releases sales numbers, but they keep putting out books for it... Keep in mind that 3.0 came out in a big boom market for RPGs and created a boom of it's own by the very open OGL terms that meant companies could market their own d20 games that essentially required a Player's Handbook for a few key items.

Unfortunately I think a lot of the 3rd part stuff for 3.0/3.5 was shovelware... Books of untested prestige classes, hasty conversions to d20 because it was all they could get companies to stock, etc.

4.0 did change a lot. Conceptually, it really breaks the game with a sort of left-brain/right-brain split. There's dungeon-delving, which is what the rules focus on: combat, treasure, exploring, puzzles. The other half is the 'role playing' and a lot feel that 4.0 dropped the ball here. I disagree: 4.0 really admits that a lot of groups roleplayed very shallowly if at all and takes the point of view of not really catering to them, but you can still do so if you want.

It's not a bad game. Not perfect, and it makes less of a pretense of being a 'universal' RPG than 3.0/3.5 tried to be, but that's not a bad thing. The new class 'philosophy' (and more restrictive licensing) mean that (hopefully) less companies will put out books of dubious quality.

It's not perfect... I think I might tire of almost every class spamming big, flashy powers and the assumed setting dependence on magic items.

KeithGatchalian, I'm a bit surprised at your comments as my group generally found ranged combat to be of limited use and clerics to be very dull to play.

Part of this is just the way things work. RPGs tend to be more 'house rule' dominated than wargames due to being built around a tigher 'group play' concept. Pick-up games really don't work as well so groups are more likely to get caught up in weird interpretations.

Typeline wrote:People just don't like change for the worse.

That's a bit closer to the mark.

Eric

MagickalMemories wrote:

Typeline wrote:People just don't like change for the worse.

That's a bit closer to the mark.

Eric

Keep crying I'm certain it will help.

Balance wrote:KeithGatchalian, I'm a bit surprised at your comments as my group generally found ranged combat to be of limited use and clerics to be very dull to play.

If I may, Clerics owned in 3.5 and are certainly decent in 4.0. I've been playing a Cleric of the Raven Queen from 1st to 7th now using the pre-made quests and I've loved it.

A friend of mine let me look through his 4th edition D&D player's manual, man it's a mess! You can't get through an entire page reading about anything without being referred to some other section of the book, and it's so much different than I remember the last time I played (I believe it was 3rd ed.) that I would probably have to get in a party with a bunch of complete noobs and have somebody explain it as we went along to figure it out. Why does it have to be so complicated? Surely not everybody who plays is an IT worker who is a whiz at juggling reams of numbers. (I suck at math, it makes my head hurt.) Even thinking about it now is giving me a headache. I know 40K is really simplistic in comparison, but surely there is a halfway point somewhere.

warpcrafter wrote:A friend of mine let me look through his 4th edition D&D player's manual, man it's a mess! You can't get through an entire page reading about anything without being referred to some other section of the book, and it's so much different than I remember the last time I played (I believe it was 3rd ed.) that I would probably have to get in a party with a bunch of complete noobs and have somebody explain it as we went along to figure it out. Why does it have to be so complicated? Surely not everybody who plays is an IT worker who is a whiz at juggling reams of numbers. (I suck at math, it makes my head hurt.) Even thinking about it now is giving me a headache. I know 40K is really simplistic in comparison, but surely there is a halfway point somewhere.

Nice troll 7/10

i played in highschool, and have played off and on in college.

been a couple years since i've had a regular game to play in though, since i became tired of running games, and the games i've found run by others have died off after a session or two.

oh....and i started in 3rd edition and a did a bit of 3.5
i've looked at the books for 4th, but they don't really interest me that much.

Havoc13 wrote:
CyberPunk was AWESOMESAUCE!

+1.

I found my niche game when it was released in the late 80s.
Ain't no "resurrect" spell in this game. Stupidity kills. Learn the lesson.

Typeline wrote:

warpcrafter wrote:A friend of mine let me look through his 4th edition D&D player's manual, man it's a mess! You can't get through an entire page reading about anything without being referred to some other section of the book, and it's so much different than I remember the last time I played (I believe it was 3rd ed.) that I would probably have to get in a party with a bunch of complete noobs and have somebody explain it as we went along to figure it out. Why does it have to be so complicated? Surely not everybody who plays is an IT worker who is a whiz at juggling reams of numbers. (I suck at math, it makes my head hurt.) Even thinking about it now is giving me a headache. I know 40K is really simplistic in comparison, but surely there is a halfway point somewhere.

Nice troll 7/10

Stay out of my swamp and I'll let you live...

I've played for 20 years now.... 2nd Ed, AD&D, Skills and Powers, 3.0, and 3.5. We haven't switched to 4th (and Probably never will), mainly because we (collectively) own 1,000's of dollars worth of books, and find nothing wrong with it. Balance problems? Do like it was always intended to be done. Fix it yourself. RPGs are the ultimate D.I.Y. game. Also looked through the 4th ed stuff and found it not 'unplayable' but not enough to justify switching.

D&D will always be my favorite game.

Balance wrote:4.0 did change a lot. Conceptually, it really breaks the game with a sort of left-brain/right-brain split. There's dungeon-delving, which is what the rules focus on: combat, treasure, exploring, puzzles. The other half is the 'role playing' and a lot feel that 4.0 dropped the ball here. I disagree: 4.0 really admits that a lot of groups roleplayed very shallowly if at all and takes the point of view of not really catering to them, but you can still do so if you want.

People like fighting monsters and scoring loot. From what I've seen, 4.0 caters to this quite well, and for that, more power to it. I don't play D&D, as I said earlier in the thread, but myself and two friends have started up a Warhammer Quest campaign, where I'm the pseudo-GM (I control the monsters and flip most of the cards), one friend is the leader (his two characters lead my two and the other friend's two), and the other friend controls the magic and events (ie. he rolls a 1, we have to fight people), and he also plays both the Elves, so we can always blame the Elves when something goes wrong.

The most enjoyment we get out of it is fighting monsters and scoring treasure. We 'roleplay' in a very non-serious style, such as how the Warrior Priest always seems to hurt the Elves when he tried to heal them, so that became part of his character. My Chaos Warrior's name is "Steve". We don't take it seriously, and just enjoy fighting stuff. Nothing wrong with that.

D&D made a good intro to gaming back in the day (About '87 for me) I played it on and off for years until v3.5 came out and I just couldn't be bothered with more books.

Then Black Industries re-released WFRP.

Now that is an awesome ruleset. I genuinely don't believe I've read better RPG rules.

If only GW would employ some of those people...

Resurrect Dragon Magazine! DEATH TO 4th EDITIO... err...wait sorry, for a moment I forgot and was about to post my usual rant from the Gleemax forums re D&D...

achem: Yes, I play D&D, AD&D, 3.0, 3.5, but I'll sell my soul to Slaanesh before I play 4e.


That is all...

Elric of Grans wrote:I have followed DnD in some form or another since AD&D2E and currently play regularly.

The 4E hate is over-done. They simplified it a lot, streamline it a lot, but improved balance considerably (not perfect, but nothing is) and added some really interesting concepts. More importantly, it has opened the game up to a wider audience than ever before, meaning we now have more people to play with, and better business for Wizards. I have never DMed, but I am assured that it is now easier and more fun than ever before.

Improved is a bit a stretch there. 4th pretty much divorced itself from the games legacy, and is a totally different game from its predecesor. Mych like GW, D&D's competition isnt of RPG games, but things that take up free time like playstation and xbox and WoW. And WotC moved in that direction.

But given the lack of attetion span, much like GW's banking on, we'll see how long they stick with it(the newer players) or will wotc have similar problems-annoying older fans, and trying to get younger ones to stay....


I've been playing since '79 and frankly 4e has no desire from me. We're sticking with and playing in 3.5 and having a blast still like we have for the past 2 years. I've been playing it longer than I have 40k.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

MagickalMemories wrote:
I don't like what they're doing to the game. It's all about developing your character as a combat monster, now, and not at all about "character development."

Disregarding 4e since I dont play it and wont comment, one could say that about a couple of editions. But its more about what the DM does for the game adn the players, then the system. We have at least one combat monster in our party, yet all the characters have complete character and style and background that unless we're actually in a fight you'd never know about that.

Recently, I started an AD&D 2nd edition campaign and managed to find 7 other players (with an 8th who's now interested). That system is the BEST in D&D's history, IMO, and was the SOLE basis for my choice of "frigging awesome."

WHile I'm glad you have found players and are playing and having fun, you, frankly, are wrong. Flat out wrong. 2nd ed was a trainwreck that required too many house rules to make right. not even close to the best.

I´ve played since the late 80s and feel that 4th ed is too much restrictive to RP than before. I like wading into fights screaming and waving my sword, quickrolling to hit and to dam rather than start counting squares, opportunity attacks, actions and minor actions that 4th ed is so keen for. But I`m having fun so can´t complain.

M.

warpcrafter wrote:A friend of mine let me look through his 4th edition D&D player's manual, man it's a mess! You can't get through an entire page reading about anything without being referred to some other section of the book, and it's so much different than I remember the last time I played (I believe it was 3rd ed.) that I would probably have to get in a party with a bunch of complete noobs and have somebody explain it as we went along to figure it out. Why does it have to be so complicated? Surely not everybody who plays is an IT worker who is a whiz at juggling reams of numbers. (I suck at math, it makes my head hurt.) Even thinking about it now is giving me a headache. I know 40K is really simplistic in comparison, but surely there is a halfway point somewhere.

Really? Most people wouldn't fault a book for pointiung out links to other sections.

The main 'trick' is to make or buy power cards (or a similar reference sheet). All your math is on them and can be pre-calculated, and during play they an be discarded/turned over to show what has been used. It's a bit fiddly (some find the idea of arts & crafts in D&D to be some horrible thing, but are probably the same people who'd love to see the 'artifacts' like aged-looking maps some GMs like to make.

KeithGatchalian wrote:


4th edition DND has been a colossal flop, with sales dropping off considerably, and the company in its death throes. They changed too much too fast. Tone down clerics, fix melee fighters, make wizards more viable to play and make it easier to plan encounters and you're done.

Ok I'm no fan of 4e, in fact I really dont like it, but really you have no facts to back up that statement. 4e hasnt been a flop, and the company is not in its death throes.

Ive played since 3.0

now a days i tend to be the GM as no one else seems to care for it.

i must say i do not get why people are crying about math and links like that for me and my players the math was always more of a "in case it can't be rp'ed" kinda thing
i only own the 3.0 books and i havn't noticed any imbalance but that might be that my players are good at rp'ing.

i think it is in the 3.0 dungeons master book where it says that the GM is god so why not just take what you like at leave the rest behind, thats what i do.

but i to have heard that the 4th is bad but reading this tread i think i might read them to see what all the fuss is about, though i have heard the art in 4th is great and that alone would be anough for me to buy them.

carmachu wrote:

KeithGatchalian wrote:


4th edition DND has been a colossal flop, with sales dropping off considerably, and the company in its death throes. They changed too much too fast. Tone down clerics, fix melee fighters, make wizards more viable to play and make it easier to plan encounters and you're done.

Ok I'm no fan of 4e, in fact I really dont like it, but really you have no facts to back up that statement. 4e hasnt been a flop, and the company is not in its death throes.

Um, as someone who owned stock in WotC before it was acquired by Hasbro, and having seen their latest filings with SEC... um... maybe not 'death throws' but she sure isn't healthy.

And yes, their sales have been declining. d20 3.0 and 3.5 enjoyed a larger audience due to the relative ease of the D20 licensing system at the time. However, WotC has adopted a heavy handed approach with 4.0 which has resulted in fewer third party developers producing material for it, which serves to shorten its lifespan as a viable IP (something TSR ran into.) This has been further complicated by many old school RPs like myself being either A) Really pissed off about them forcing Paizo to cease publication of Dragon Magazine, or B) irritated by not being able to buy a single DMG,MM, and PH but rather a Time-Life style series of books (at premium prices) as they stretch out classes and rules that used to be issued in a single book into as many as WotC thinks they can convince the players to buy.


I like the power cards thing... "I use the power of Black Lotus to regain three ability uses..."

My only experience is Dark Heresy, a.k.a. "no you don't want to be a psyker unless you like peppering us in your bone fragments and hot marrow".

BrookM wrote:My only experience is Dark Heresy, a.k.a. "no you don't want to be a psyker unless you like peppering us in your bone fragments and hot marrow".

Hmmm.... to explain my view of D&D 4.0e:

Take the DH rulebooks, and split them into 1/3 chunks, and then sell one set of those fragments each year at the same price as the whole book was before.


Though my last pysker in DH was surprisingly long lived, actually... made it five whole sessions before the TPK. But I have noticed they tend to go off like fraggers, don't they?

BaronIveagh wrote:And yes, their sales have been declining. d20 3.0 and 3.5 enjoyed a larger audience due to the relative ease of the D20 licensing system at the time. However, WotC has adopted a heavy handed approach with 4.0 which has resulted in fewer third party developers producing material for it, which serves to shorten its lifespan as a viable IP (something TSR ran into.) This has been further complicated by many old school RPs like myself being either A) Really pissed off about them forcing Paizo to cease publication of Dragon Magazine, or B) irritated by not being able to buy a single DMG,MM, and PH but rather a Time-Life style series of books (at premium prices) as they stretch out classes and rules that used to be issued in a single book into as many as WotC thinks they can convince the players to buy.

Yes, because every other edition of D&D has been 100% complete purely with the books included.

Game companies release books to make money. The core of the game is the same as it's been for several editions: The PHB, the DMG, and a Monster Manual. The group needs at least one of each of these or a suitable alternative. The PHB2, etc. are all add-ons. A few classes got moved into and out of the core books, but that happens every edition. In this case, some (like the Druid and Barbarian) may be a lot more interesting now: The Barbarian has multiple unique 'rages' and the Druid is a bit more than just a Wild-Shape chassis.

BaronIveagh wrote:I like the power cards thing... "I use the power of Black Lotus to regain three ability uses..."

It's not really like that, though. The cards are merely markers an an alternative for the old standby of check-boxes on a character sheet or numbers that get erased and re-written so much the sheet wears through. They made 'spell cards' for previous editions for similar purposes. THe big change is every 4th ed. character has eough limited powers that everyone has cards, not just the spell-casters. Stereotyping it as 'M:tG in an RPG' is inaccurate as it's more like the 'wargear' cards I hear older versions of 40k used. There's no 'deck' and such.

BaronIveagh wrote:

Um, as someone who owned stock in WotC before it was acquired by Hasbro, and having seen their latest filings with SEC... um... maybe not 'death throws' but she sure isn't healthy.

And yes, their sales have been declining. d20 3.0 and 3.5 enjoyed a larger audience due to the relative ease of the D20 licensing system at the time. However, WotC has adopted a heavy handed approach with 4.0 which has resulted in fewer third party developers producing material for it, which serves to shorten its lifespan as a viable IP (something TSR ran into.) This has been further complicated by many old school RPs like myself being either A) Really pissed off about them forcing Paizo to cease publication of Dragon Magazine, or B) irritated by not being able to buy a single DMG,MM, and PH but rather a Time-Life style series of books (at premium prices) as they stretch out classes and rules that used to be issued in a single book into as many as WotC thinks they can convince the players to buy.

I pretty much know about the GSL debacle. And their "everything is core" idea.

However(and granted its according to them) sales of the PHB have been better than the 3.0 one. I'm not exactly sure how your tracking their "declining sales". Its not like GW's charts where you can see unit sales shrinking, unless you have data some of us dont have.

BaronIveagh wrote:

BrookM wrote:My only experience is Dark Heresy, a.k.a. "no you don't want to be a psyker unless you like peppering us in your bone fragments and hot marrow".

Hmmm.... to explain my view of D&D 4.0e:

Take the DH rulebooks, and split them into 1/3 chunks, and then sell one set of those fragments each year at the same price as the whole book was before.


Though my last pysker in DH was surprisingly long lived, actually... made it five whole sessions before the TPK. But I have noticed they tend to go off like fraggers, don't they?

Our games are best summed up in this chart here, which is a realistic representation of most games played:

I Love D&D! Cleric of lolth FTW! i have a Dark elf fetish used to play religiously for about 6 years then was asked to leave the roleplay group because of angry Girlfriends.l now i just look longingly at rule book and monster manual remembering the joys.....*sigh*

D&D is high powered, but lacks detail. The new encounter based powers really take the strategy out of the spellcasting classes. I also don't care for the morale aspect of the hit points- if a goblin hits you with a spear, you will keep that wound for weeks, or until the cleric performs a miracle on you.

That being said, I started on Hackmaster. This variant of the DnD system apparently blended the most hardcore aspects of 1st and 2nd edition while introducing a dash of satirical humor. Your armor fell apart, you couldn't even hope to carry all the treasure out of a dungeon, and your bags of holding were liable to tear if you put sharp objects in them. Overall, your character would have a grim, short life which would hopefully end in a blaze of glory. It was the only game I've ever played that had a last will and testament on the free character sheets. When something came at you in the middle of the night, the fighters and thieves handled it because if you woke the mage or cleric, then they had no spells the next day.

DnD reminds me much more of Streetfighter. It is a very amusing skirmish game. You fight, you loot, you win over the forces of evil again. The sheer power level is heady. I just find the challenge level in settings like that to be too small. The experience of DnD 4e was similar to oh, let's say going from 'Ard boyz back to a friendly escalation league for new players.

Balance wrote:
Yes, because every other edition of D&D has been 100% complete purely with the books included.

Game companies release books to make money. The core of the game is the same as it's been for several editions: The PHB, the DMG, and a Monster Manual. The group needs at least one of each of these or a suitable alternative. The PHB2, etc. are all add-ons. A few classes got moved into and out of the core books, but that happens every edition. In this case, some (like the Druid and Barbarian) may be a lot more interesting now: The Barbarian has multiple unique 'rages' and the Druid is a bit more than just a Wild-Shape chassis.

Ooh... I get a roll on the Witty Reply to Sarcasm table...

No, but previously they have not actually set out to make an incomplete book as a model to force increased sales. Most previous releases at least contained a full set of the basic classes. Bard for some reasons springs to mind as the most glaring example of this. They also tended to include the basic races in the initial release, rather then telling people that they had to wait a volume to play a gnome.

Balance wrote:
It's not really like that, though. The cards are merely markers an an alternative for the old standby of check-boxes on a character sheet or numbers that get erased and re-written so much the sheet wears through. They made 'spell cards' for previous editions for similar purposes. THe big change is every 4th ed. character has eough limited powers that everyone has cards, not just the spell-casters. Stereotyping it as 'M:tG in an RPG' is inaccurate as it's more like the 'wargear' cards I hear older versions of 40k used. There's no 'deck' and such.

True, it would be more accurate to call it World of Dungeons & Dragonscraft. But that's a personal opinion.

carmachu wrote:

I pretty much know about the GSL debacle. And their "everything is core" idea.

However(and granted its according to them) sales of the PHB have been better than the 3.0 one. I'm not exactly sure how your tracking their "declining sales". Its not like GW's charts where you can see unit sales shrinking, unless you have data some of us dont have.

I'd be interested to see a comparison between it's sales and, say, the current Shadowrun or GURPS books, or better, Pathfinder when it comes out. Further, is that overall units sold in a given time frame or current sales of 3.0 vs 4.0? (And yes, I've seen big companies use a metric where they compared sales of a product they no longer sold to one that was on the shelves to make the current one look more popular.)

Hasbro's profits fell 20% overall last year, according to the SEC, and 47% last quarter when compared to the same time a year ago. WotC was one of their less profitable product lines, though they anticipate that additional revenue will be generated by movie tie-ins with GIJoe and Transformers, as well as their cut of the proceeds of each of those films and are forecasting a turn-around for overall corporate profit in the second Quarter.

BrookM wrote:Our games are best summed up in this chart here, which is a realistic representation of most games played:

Oh, my. Our last one was against genestealers. It ended when someone fumbled the demo charge in a spectacular way.

I play a LOT of D&D. 40K and D&D are basically my 2 big games. D&D is my winter game, usually, since you don't have to cart as much through the snow to get together with friends (also people are lazier during winter). 40K is great for summer. Of course, I'd play either anytime, but both are well loved by me.

I run a D&D game once a year (usually 12-15 sessions) and as a point of trivia, my preference is D&D 2nd Edition.

Note: I am trading and selling various OOP D&D Books:
http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/237809.page

Been playing D&D on and off for like 15 years. I'm mostly a DM rather than a player.

My favourite edition was 3.5. Looking forward to the new pathfinder rule book coming out by Paizo. 4th Edition doesn't really appeal to me, I'm not going to bag it out but its just really not what I want D&D to be.

As an overall trend D&D has become very combat focused with each edition. The magic of D&D for me is that even though that is where the rulebooks are heading, as a DM you can do whatever the hell you want. And thats always been the magic of D&D. That some people don't see that is a shame. They seem to think of the rule books Wizards puts out as the only way to play the game.

In the end it can really come down to the players you have, and what kind of DM you have. Our campaigns are usually a mix of story, combat and non combat challenges.

In a couple of months I will wind up this current campaign we have going and start a new one where all the players start off as NPC classes lol. Commoners basically, with farms, shops etc. They want to see how well they would do against some classic D&D monsters as simple folk of the world.

Typeline wrote:Played DnD since I was eleven. Always loved it. I'd be playing now, but I'm not a geek's geek so I have some problems finding a group that doesn't ruin the game for me. I love 4th edition, I've only had a chance to run it and play it once. But it's just a much better game. A lot easier to play.

I could argue and bitch and moan with the rest of you. But I won't. DnD has been a good game, always. In every edition. People just don't like change.

Sorry I have to disagree with your comment. Changing a game for the worse is not a good thing. In comparison to ealier versions of D&D, 4th edition just blows. There is NO roleplaying involved just number crunching.
The whole tone of your post is arrogant and trollish, maybe you should edit it so you don't sound so.

It's okay... Been too dumbed down for my tastes and there are better games out there.

-J.

I had to check the closet for that hideous old red box (the cheap dice and yellow crayon that came with it were still inside) and have a nostalgia moment.

We're all going to quibble about what is good and bad about the game. 4e would garner a lot less abuse if it wasn't part of the D&D brand given how much a deviation it is from its predecessors. All versions of all Roleplaying Games have their flaws.

D&D in any of its iterations is a game system, and the system is *not* the only tell if you're going to have a good time. Only the group you're playing with can determine that. The worst that could happen is you eat up an afternoon and not enjoy it - the same opportunity cost for a boring date or bad matinee. Go try it out.

I prefer AEG's 'Legend of the Five Rings' over D&D for the depth of the environment. It is extremely deadly though, and not suited for every group.

BaronIveagh wrote:

I'd be interested to see a comparison between it's sales and, say, the current Shadowrun or GURPS books, or better, Pathfinder when it comes out. Further, is that overall units sold in a given time frame or current sales of 3.0 vs 4.0? (And yes, I've seen big companies use a metric where they compared sales of a product they no longer sold to one that was on the shelves to make the current one look more popular.)

Hasbro's profits fell 20% overall last year, according to the SEC, and 47% last quarter when compared to the same time a year ago. WotC was one of their less profitable product lines, though they anticipate that additional revenue will be generated by movie tie-ins with GIJoe and Transformers, as well as their cut of the proceeds of each of those films and are forecasting a turn-around for overall corporate profit in the second Quarter.

D&D, much like GW, is the book dog on the porch. If PATHFINDER sells 50K of books come August at Gencon release and a couple months to come, its a smashing success. If WotC only sells 100k of 4e? Thats a failure. Acccording to Wotc folks, their on their third or fourth printing....

Yes Hasbro's profit fell that much, but unlike GW and ist IP, D&D is a tiny tiny slice of its brand. Hell ifyou read Habro's fiancial release, they'll mention say my little pony or such brands-GI Joe or Transformers and I havent heard word one of 4e.

Unfortunately Hasbro's finacials and GW's are two very different things.

I've dabbled with it. I still have some old books. I don't see myself ever playing it again but I understand that the face of gaming would look a lot different without it. You can't give it all of the credit, though. J.R.R. Tolkien is the one that really put everything together and started to inspire people.

You can't really say a game "has" more or less role-playing. That's all up to the group, as is the type of game, how much action, etc. Unless the rest of your group doesn't suck, it won't be enjoyable. Regardless, all editions of DnD involve rolling dice and playing a character. If you took a random person off the street and gave them intro to 4.0 and an intro to 3.5, they'd hardly be able to tell the difference (though I'd voyage to say 4.0 would make more sense at first).

Chimera_Calvin wrote:Then Black Industries re-released WFRP.

Now that is an awesome ruleset. I genuinely don't believe I've read better RPG rules.

If only GW would employ some of those people...

Hey, I tried (I wrote half of the award-winning "Old World Bestiary" supplement for WFRP), but GW didn't want to pay me enough for me to move to Nottingham...

I like WFRP a whole lot -- I think that any Warhammer Fantasy player should at least give it a shot. I've not played Dark Heresy yet, though.

My other favourite fantasy RPG is Dragon Warriors (recently re-released). It has some similarities to WFRP, in that it's low-fantasy, kinda gritty, and very British. The setting is like a 12th century Europe where folklore is real. Loads of fun. (Note that, in the interests of full disclosure, I helped revise the new edition, but I had been playing the game and raving about it for 25 years before that.)

I agree with earlier posters that you can't beat Cyberpunk for an SF RPG.

BaronIveagh wrote:
No, but previously they have not actually set out to make an incomplete book as a model to force increased sales. Most previous releases at least contained a full set of the basic classes. Bard for some reasons springs to mind as the most glaring example of this. They also tended to include the basic races in the initial release, rather then telling people that they had to wait a volume to play a gnome.

Bard is a core class? Really? I don't think it was remotely a core class until 2nd edition AD&D. (It was a weird uber-class in 1st edition, where you had to be high-level in a couple other classes.)

The 'core classes' of D&D have pretty much always been 'fighter, wizard, magic-user, thief' at least since AD&D 1st. Everything else tends to be a variant on these.

Your complaint about the gnome is slightly more valid, but again: the class and race roster has been tweaked every edition. For example, half-orcs were lost from AD&D 1st to AD&D 2nd.

BaronIveagh wrote:
True, it would be more accurate to call it World of Dungeons & Dragonscraft. But that's a personal opinion.

That's a more valid point, but I would note that you're complaining about a game (D&D 4th) drawing inspiration from a game (WoW, or effectively most MMOs) that was, essentially, based on the previous version of the previously referenced game (MMOs being derived from D&D in many cases).

The biggest 'MMO' element I see in 4th edition is that it defaults to a pretty 'magic heavy' setup and expects lots of magic weapons to be used. The first is that nearly every class has a bunch of powers that explained by default in ways that evoke imagery of big particle-effects special MMO abilities. Also, the game expects a regular stream of ugprades.

However, the latter has always been something D&D has done. It's something I've never been fond of: I prefer games where magic weapons are interesting and detailed, and the fighter doesn't toss Stormcutter The Blade That Kills in the back of the closet because he found a sword with another plus in a trash can somewhere. That's more an issue with setting and, like many problems, can be solved by a good GM. My only issue is that it can require some rebalancing as 4th edition's guidelines on building encounters expects the party to have a certain amount of magical gear after a certain point, and you really only need so many 'utility' items like Decanters of Endless Water.

D&D 4th isn't my favorite game... But it's fun.

BaronIveagh wrote:
I'd be interested to see a comparison between it's sales and, say, the current Shadowrun or GURPS books, or better, Pathfinder when it comes out. Further, is that overall units sold in a given time frame or current sales of 3.0 vs 4.0? (And yes, I've seen big companies use a metric where they compared sales of a product they no longer sold to one that was on the shelves to make the current one look more popular.)

No clue... Not sure if SJG or the current publisher of Shadowrun publishes sales info.

One thing to consider is that SJG has trimmed the GURPS line down a lot in the current edition. Admittedly, the GURPS line was huge when you counted all the historical books, but most of these have gone to PDF only, which suggests it wasn't felt they would be profitable. I think only the 'core' is now printed.

BaronIveagh wrote:
Hasbro's profits fell 20% overall last year, according to the SEC, and 47% last quarter when compared to the same time a year ago. WotC was one of their less profitable product lines, though they anticipate that additional revenue will be generated by movie tie-ins with GIJoe and Transformers, as well as their cut of the proceeds of each of those films and are forecasting a turn-around for overall corporate profit in the second Quarter.

Last year was The Suck for most companies, though. As I believe I said earlier, there was a period in the late 90s when RPG lines were expanding at what was probably an unrealistic rate. A bubble, essentially. White Wolf would release a game, a revised version a year later, and a dozen add-on books and they sold. A lot of people complained about 'meta plots' then: story lines that ran through tons of books, providing an incentive to purchase the whole line and possibly changing the setting in weird ways.

The dot-com bust, September 11th, and the economy have really changed the market and it's never really recovered. Some companies are clawing their way back, but I don't think we'll see the days of massive RPG lines again. Companies are going for smaller, leaner games.

Typeline wrote:

MagickalMemories wrote:

Typeline wrote:People just don't like change for the worse.

That's a bit closer to the mark.

Eric

Keep crying I'm certain it will help.

Yeah, well.... if you don't have a reasonable defense against the comment, I guess the ad hominem CAN BE a last line of defense.


The bottom line is that your statement was wrong. Not everyone dislikes change. It's change for the worse (based on their opinion) that people have problems with.
I think you should try realizing that people sometimes have opinions that differ from your own, and that it's acceptable.

I like D&D in general. I wish it well.
If they could get back the charisma of 2nd edition and mix it with the easier flow of d20, while losing the "combat monster' mentality for characters, I'd give it a shot.

Eric


Automatically Appended Next Post:

carmachu wrote:

Recently, I started an AD&D 2nd edition campaign and managed to find 7 other players (with an 8th who's now interested). That system is the BEST in D&D's history, IMO, and was the SOLE basis for my choice of "frigging awesome."

WHile I'm glad you have found players and are playing and having fun, you, frankly, are wrong. Flat out wrong. 2nd ed was a trainwreck that required too many house rules to make right. not even close to the best.

PoTAYto.
PoTAHto.

I respect your opinion, but disagree.

Personally, I've never had to make a house rule to fix anything in the 2e game. Mind if I ask what you had to fix?

We have house rules for other things... things we wanted to try or to change (like, for character creation), but nothing that was due to the system and nothing that we didn't also use in our AD&D 1st Ed and 3.x games.

Eric


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Roze wrote:I Love D&D! Cleric of lolth FTW! i have a Dark elf fetish used to play religiously for about 6 years then was asked to leave the roleplay group because of angry Girlfriends.l now i just look longingly at rule book and monster manual remembering the joys.....*sigh*

Maybe you should've flirted with the DM... or... maybe... SHOULDN'T have?
; )

It's a shame, Roze. Insecure women.
If you ever move to the states, you can game in our group.

Eric

I played D&D in all of its incarnations from my early teens until about 6 years ago. It has steadily been leaning towards a table top battle game a little more with each addition(which is ok by me since I love table top battle games). Every edition began leaving you to find your own level of comfort with role palying, with less and less guidance on telling you how much you have to rolepaly. I'm okay with that approach as it lets you make what you want of the game, and has rules to cover the mechanics. The group I played with liked characterful interactions but was let down by and bored by complicated intrige stories, etc. So 3.0 and 3.5 fit us wonderfuly. I havn't been in touch with them for a while, so i'm not sure if they have switched to 4th or not.

If you want a game where roleplaying is a must, play Harn. If you can get past all the complications of building a character and figuring out just how much armor your knee caps have, you will enter a world where your character is scared of everything. You'll try to talk your way out of a fight with a little kid weilding a knife, and be in mortal fear if the little brat takes a swing at you. Wounds stay with you and actually have to heal, magic is present but rare and special, settings are realistic and suitably mediveal. The time it takes to implement the mechanics do interfere with the suspense of disbelief though, but like any game it is easy enough to take the parts you like and dispense with the rest. I still have the re-released binder of the basic rules, some old scenarios, and a couple city and castle packs that are simply stunning in their detail in capturing a realistic feel iof fuedal low-fantasy life.

Meph

Balance wrote:

warpcrafter wrote:A friend of mine let me look through his 4th edition D&D player's manual, man it's a mess! You can't get through an entire page reading about anything without being referred to some other section of the book, and it's so much different than I remember the last time I played (I believe it was 3rd ed.) that I would probably have to get in a party with a bunch of complete noobs and have somebody explain it as we went along to figure it out. Why does it have to be so complicated? Surely not everybody who plays is an IT worker who is a whiz at juggling reams of numbers. (I suck at math, it makes my head hurt.) Even thinking about it now is giving me a headache. I know 40K is really simplistic in comparison, but surely there is a halfway point somewhere.

Really? Most people wouldn't fault a book for pointiung out links to other sections.

The main 'trick' is to make or buy power cards (or a similar reference sheet). All your math is on them and can be pre-calculated, and during play they an be discarded/turned over to show what has been used. It's a bit fiddly (some find the idea of arts & crafts in D&D to be some horrible thing, but are probably the same people who'd love to see the 'artifacts' like aged-looking maps some GMs like to make.

Now that sounds like a good idea. Where do you get them?

Orlanth wrote:(...)
4th edition is a design disaster that makes the worst GW studio monkeys look like paragons of enlightenment in comparison. It's the Vista 'upgrade' of gaming.

That goes into my quotefile.

I registered pretty much to say just that, but since I'm here, I might as well say something that's on topic. I started playing DnD in the summer of 2006, with 3.5e. It is at the same time my beloved and most hated system. I hate twinkery cheesefests, official material lawyers, morons who think they can do any old gak just because they're playing DnD, ding level ups, the secondary importance of skills, save-or-dies and many other, minor things. I love the early settings, the DnD-specific playing mood, seeing my characters grow and laying the smack on donkey-caves who think that powergaming beats a good idea.

4e is not a very good system in my eyes. It keeps much of what I consider the flaws of the game, adds some more stupid crap, and excises much of what makes the game magical, to boot. I'll be sticking with 3.5e or Pathfinder, which actually still feels like DnD.

AbuDhabi wrote:

Orlanth wrote:(...)
4th edition is a design disaster that makes the worst GW studio monkeys look like paragons of enlightenment in comparison. It's the Vista 'upgrade' of gaming.

That goes into my quotefile.

I registered pretty much to say just that, but since I'm here, I might as well say something that's on topic. I started playing DnD in the summer of 2006, with 3.5e. It is at the same time my beloved and most hated system. I hate twinkery cheesefests, official material lawyers, morons who think they can do any old gak just because they're playing DnD, ding level ups, the secondary importance of skills, save-or-dies and many other, minor things. I love the early settings, the DnD-specific playing mood, seeing my characters grow and laying the smack on donkey-caves who think that powergaming beats a good idea.

4e is not a very good system in my eyes. It keeps much of what I consider the flaws of the game, adds some more stupid crap, and excises much of what makes the game magical, to boot. I'll be sticking with 3.5e or Pathfinder, which actually still feels like DnD.

Let me hear an AMEN!

That said, as the player of a Necromancer (LM) I suppose I'd be a cheesefester as I don't make the monsters you slay, I make the monsters you slay better.

DM: A long shadowed hall stretched ahead of you.

ME: I have five of my skeletons carry the bags full of mice I brought with me down the hall. (Our party was without a trapsmith.)

LOL Bagorats fighter ftw!

Green DM: Why'd you Bring a Bag of Rats?
Me: I drop the bag or rats, and attack, then GREAT CLEAVE my way through the enemy!

BaronIveagh wrote:Let me hear an AMEN!

That said, as the player of a Necromancer (LM) I suppose I'd be a cheesefester as I don't make the monsters you slay, I make the monsters you slay better.

DM: A long shadowed hall stretched ahead of you.

ME: I have five of my skeletons carry the bags full of mice I brought with me down the hall. (Our party was without a trapsmith.)

Hardly cheesing. Cheesing is what Gwar! just described.

<(^^,< ) I only did it once, when I was teaching the DM how to DM and how to deal with Gitz (I'm a experienced DM, so I have to pass the Skillz on!)

I'm currently playing two seperate campaigns, one 3.5 and one 4, although my 3.5 char was just crushed by a level 20 Paladin/Cleric (I was level 4). Most of the people I play 40k with also play DnD so, sometimes things will intertwine with interesting results.

I'm my group's designated game master... I basically had to do so in order to actually get to play. My current game is sort of on hold as the last session was a total-party-kill and I haven't had the motivation to get everyone together again (since I have to be the organizing force, too).

I first played D&D in late 2E. When 3E came out, I ran a few abbreviated campaigns for people so we could get a handle on the rules, as well as played in one relatively long-term game. Then I started what is (to date) my longest campaign, running a Forgotten Realms game that actually ran (with a few stop-and-starts) from the release of the Big White FR Book right up to the launch of 4E. Unfortunatly, one of the party's key players got married and moved away so we haven't been able to finish it up and convert that world to 4th.

I also have a totally home-brewed world that I've been working on, and that campaign is where the TPK mentioned above occurred. The main issue with getting it restarted is that I'm trying to introduce the players to the concepts of the world slowly, and I'm not sure how to do it again without just saying "OK, you're at a similar location to last time, and here we go".

My opinions on the rules are pretty bland; I'm not a rules junkie and I like whatever makes the gaming accessible for the people sitting at my table. My sister, for instance, who is definitely NOT a gamer by nature, had a difficult time figuring out 3E but really has grasped 4th to the point where she WANTS TO RUN A GAME. That alone shall make 4th Edition considered a success in my book.

As far as it being a Good or Bad system... I just don't really care. I try to make my games as much as possible about the interactions between the characters, and there's not much need for die rolls there. As such, I just need rules for combat, and will pick based on what's needed for the environment. I have plenty of other rulebooks on my shelf, and they'll probably all get used at some point (I keep meaning to start up a Star Wars d6 game...)

AbuDhabi wrote:

BaronIveagh wrote:Let me hear an AMEN!

That said, as the player of a Necromancer (LM) I suppose I'd be a cheesefester as I don't make the monsters you slay, I make the monsters you slay better.

DM: A long shadowed hall stretched ahead of you.

ME: I have five of my skeletons carry the bags full of mice I brought with me down the hall. (Our party was without a trapsmith.)

Hardly cheesing. Cheesing is what Gwar! just described.

How about using feats and magical items to make my skeletons into an unliving legion of 1 hit dice self healing self destructing str buffed magical sword wielding skeletons at lvl 15? (if it was not for the end of the campaign, I was well on my way to shrouding the Kingdom in eternal darkness... Or whatever Chaotic Neutral shrouds people in... Bwa ha ha ha HA!)

Dude, you can hardly be a Necromancer without being Evil!

Gwar! wrote:Dude, you can hardly be a Necromancer without being Evil!

Requirement: Non-good. (LM)

Though all the best feats for undead creation require Evil.

Exactly. It's like trying to be a 3.5 Lawful Good Rouge. technically Possible, but not effective

-Shakes Fist at 4e-
I cant be a Chaotic Neutral Sorcerer any more? Fork That Sheet!

Yeah, why'd 4th get rid of the awesome alignment system and replace it with a good-to-evil meter instead?

It's a shame Gary Gygax upped and died. I wanted him to sign my Monster Manual.

Cheese Elemental wrote:Yeah, why'd 4th get rid of the awesome alignment system and replace it with a good-to-evil meter instead?

It's a shame Gary Gygax upped and died. I wanted him to sign my Monster Manual.

It's no coincidence they waited for him to pop it. When 3e came out, and people were crying their heads off, WotC had to ask Gary to help them fix it, and turn it into the pinnacle of D&D (IMO, having Played AD&D, 2nd ed and 3rd ed).

Now he is gone, they can go about ruining it just like they wanted. 4e is just WoW on Paper.

I play D&D more than I play 40k, as I find the latter horribly unbalanced and very much lacking in any requirement of thought.

I started out with 3e (2nd, if you want to count the Baldur's Gate computer games), and loved them, loved 3.5 more. Since 4th has come out, though, I have discovered something about 3.5:

4th edition is better.

Yes, I am a huge fan of 4th edition, and to me, 3.5 is clunky, boring, unbalanced, and generally crap in general. I sold off the bulk of my 3.5 books (sans Eberron books, for fluff) so I could better afford 4e books.

Prior posters have commented on the criticisms of 4e. Pointing out how drawing inspiration, although I would love to see exactly *what* was lifted, from WoW is just the cycle coming around, as WoW has the whole fantasy thing going on, which D&D is a part of.

As another prior poster has said, criticisms of a lack of roleplaying in 4e is rather foolish. The system does not determine the ability to role-play, the GM and group does. If your DM subjects your party to a near-neverending barrage of encounters, your party will not be able to roleplay because you'll be too busy killing things. If your party has no interest in roleplaying and just moves on to the killing (followed by a light salad), you will not be able to roleplay. It's as simple as that.

Now, i find 4th edition to be more streamlined, balanced, dynamic, and frankly, interesting to play or run than 3.x. In 3.x, the wizard would wrinkle his nose and UNMAKE THE WORLD, and the fighter could....swing a stick 5x a round. Oh, and probably not hit 3 times out of those 5. In 4e, it's far more balanced, and when you attack, you do something else. You have tactical choices to be made to add to the team effort of the fight. If you listen to a 4e group, you will hear them working together to take advantage of party synergy, each contributing something to the whole. Which really doesn't happen in 3.x, in my opinion.

Thinking about it, I remember one time when I played in a game of 4th edition and 3.5 in the same night. The 4e game was dynamic, fast-moving, had RP, and was, for me, a hell of a lot of fun.

The 3.5 game was slow-moving, clunky, had RP, and was, for me, not fun. The 3.5 game even had a hottie playing in it (intelligent slender blonde, my traditional weakness, with a low-cut shirt. Mmm.), and I was playing a class I hadn't played before (Duskmage).

When I told this story on the Wizards board, all of the 3.x neckbeards accused me of countless crimes, from heresy to not being a true D&D player. What will you, oh righteous 4e hater, accuse me of today? Frankly, I am quite content to leave you playing your clunky, bloated cesspit of a system if you would leave me the hell alone to play my nectar-and-ambrosia of a system. However, I doubt that is going to happen, and I'm going to have to remain being somewhat of a prick to all of the people who either blindly hate 4e without playing it, or went into a 4e game with pre-conceived notions of how it would suck, and weren't disappointed; after all, you will see what you want to see. If you honestly gave it a fair chance and didn't like it, I apologize for lumping you in with the other sort. I, however, cannot see how people could like 3.x more than 4e; doubtlessly, there are people who cannot see how I like 4e more than 3.x. I seriously doubt that anybody's mind would be change, so frankly, I think that discussions about the virtues and vices of the respective systems be tabled, to avoid more pissing contests.

Well, they Killed off the Sorcerer and Monk and bard.
That Alone is enough to hate it.

They raped the Alignment System.
Another Point Against 4e.

The removed Spell levels...
Seriously, why remove something that has worked for so long and replace it? Why?

And the whole "OMG THERE ARE 4 CLASSES LAWL!"....
No thanks, I'll stay to the edition that Gygax actually Inspired and helped refine, not some crappy WoW clone.

I think it is safe to to say you are one of the 0.00089% of 3.5e players who move to 4e. 4e will otherwise only be played by people new to the game.

I'm pretty sure Gygax had NOTHING to do with either 3.0 or 3.5, other than that some of the writers had doubtless read & been inspired by earlier editions of D&D.

Gygax did write the occasional 3rd edition-compatible book, like Mongoose Publishing's _The Slayer's Guide to Dragons_, but I'm almost 100% certain that he didn't write anything for WotC at that time.

No, but during the development of 3.5e after the messup that was 3e, they actually asked Gygax what he would fix, and damn well fixed it

D&D with a good group and DM on any given Sunday (or whatever day) can be one of the greatest gaming experiences ever! Sadly, at least in my experience, those conditions are fairly rare (or not maintained for more than six months to a year as adults). I would continue to play if I knew of a good group with an opening. I don't like what they did with D&D 4th as they have (which many others have pointed out) made it a video game on a table top with plug and play characters. They feel they are evolving the game to survive, I get that I just don't like it and don't feel that will work. I'll keep my 3.5edition and the ludicrous Hackmaster books forever. They will have to pry them from my cold dead hands!

Anyone in Vegas know of a good D&D group looking for an old player?

At least you live in a Proper City. I live in a Poxxy little Town of 16,000 people and have no way of leaving (being poor and Unemployed has it's downsides )

Gwar! wrote:No, but during the development of 3.5e after the messup that was 3e, they actually asked Gygax what he would fix, and damn well fixed it

Do you have a source for that? It's not mentioned in his entry on wikipedia (which, admittedly, isn't exactly the be-all and end-all of info!), and I don't remember reading about it at the time (and I was working full-time for Mongoose Publishing as a d20 game designer during the development of 3.5, so I did try to stay pretty well informed -- I actually edited some of Gygax's work for Mongoose around that time, for example).

Gwar! wrote:LOL Bagorats fighter ftw!

Green DM: Why'd you Bring a Bag of Rats?
Me: I drop the bag or rats, and attack, then GREAT CLEAVE my way through the enemy!

Gwar! wrote:<(^^,< ) I only did it once, when I was teaching the DM how to DM and how to deal with Gitz (I'm a experienced DM, so I have to pass the Skillz on!)

I hope he caused your sword to break as you cleaved directly through the first rat into the stone floor....

Cheese Elemental wrote:Yeah, why'd 4th get rid of the awesome alignment system and replace it with a good-to-evil meter instead?

It's a shame Gary Gygax upped and died. I wanted him to sign my Monster Manual.

Gwar! wrote:They raped the Alignment System.
Another Point Against 4e.

Wait, from what I've veen the version he wrote had a very simple single-axis system as well. Good/Evil was a later add-on to Law/Chaos.

I agree removing it seems a bit odd, but Alignment has always been kind of goofy in D&D as it's either a carte-blanch IFF system for the Paladins and such (which means any town with enough Paladins to work the gates should have a ridiculously low level of serious crime, as well as making a lot of 'mystery' plots difficult or unnecessarily convoluted) or a club to use to railroad the PCs. Morale situations are complicated.

Gwar! wrote:
Well, they Killed off the Sorcerer and Monk and bard.
That Alone is enough to hate it.

Ah, Sorcerer: a 3.0 invention. Not very Gygag inspired, as you seem to prefer. Bard is a lot different, too, as a 1st edition AD&D Bard is completely different from a Bard of alter editions. Monk began life as a weird supplement and was only later briefly moved to a core class, removed from core, then re-added, and removed again for 4.0.

Gwar! wrote:
The removed Spell levels...
Seriously, why remove something that has worked for so long and replace it? Why?

It really didn't work that well. Spell levels were an abstract derived number (Essentially, a caster's level divided by 2, +1). The current structure is restrictive as well, but means that spells can become available at every level.

Gwar! wrote:
And the whole "OMG THERE ARE 4 CLASSES LAWL!"....
No thanks, I'll stay to the edition that Gygax actually Inspired and helped refine, not some crappy WoW clone.

So that means you only actually use the AD&D 1st edition and thereabouts? As he left before AD&D 2nd edition was released...

Gwar! wrote:
I think it is safe to to say you are one of the 0.00089% of 3.5e players who move to 4e. 4e will otherwise only be played by people new to the game.

As with other games, things change over time and attracting new players is important.

Balance wrote:As with other games, things change over time and Dumbing it down to new players is important.

Fix'd for ya. it happens to everything, yes I know. Doesn't mean I cannot be bitter about it.

Lordhat wrote:

Gwar! wrote:LOL Bagorats fighter ftw!

Green DM: Why'd you Bring a Bag of Rats?
Me: I drop the bag or rats, and attack, then GREAT CLEAVE my way through the enemy!

Gwar! wrote:<(^^,< ) I only did it once, when I was teaching the DM how to DM and how to deal with Gitz (I'm a experienced DM, so I have to pass the Skillz on!)

I hope he caused your sword to break as you cleaved directly through the first rat into the stone floor....

Nah I learnt the first time someone tried that. I always Cleave Sideways now

Gwar! wrote:

Balance wrote:As with other games, things change over time and Dumbing it down to new players is important.

Fix'd for ya. it happens to everything, yes I know. Doesn't mean I cannot be bitter about it.

Lordhat wrote:

Gwar! wrote:LOL Bagorats fighter ftw!

Green DM: Why'd you Bring a Bag of Rats?
Me: I drop the bag or rats, and attack, then GREAT CLEAVE my way through the enemy!

Gwar! wrote:<(^^,< ) I only did it once, when I was teaching the DM how to DM and how to deal with Gitz (I'm a experienced DM, so I have to pass the Skillz on!)

I hope he caused your sword to break as you cleaved directly through the first rat into the stone floor....

Nah I learnt the first time someone tried that. I always Cleave Sideways now

Ah so by leaning over and focusing solely on the rats you expose yourself to a coup de grace from the real enemies.

Lordhat wrote:Ah so by leaning over and focusing solely on the rats you expose yourself to a coup de grace from the real enemies.

Are they Bum Pirates again? One DM was clever like that

Gwar! wrote:

Lordhat wrote:Ah so by leaning over and focusing solely on the rats you expose yourself to a coup de grace from the real enemies.

Are they Bum Pirates again? One DM was clever like that

I'd have made it so that you had accidentally captured one Epic Level rat with 21hd.

Hmm, that's good. I'll steal that one for later use. or perhaps the rat Deity suddenly decided to make it it's avatar.

Tiny Creature with 50 HD and 30 Epic Levels

Gwar! wrote:Hmm, that's good. I'll steal that one for later use. or perhaps the rat Deity suddenly decided to make it it's avatar.

Tiny Creature with 50 HD and 30 Epic Levels

Hahahahaha! Avatar of the Horned Rat!

I played D&D off and on for a couple years. What makes D&D fun is the group if you got a good group its a blast. And when i say group i mean the real people

skullspliter888 wrote:I played D&D off and on for a couple years. What makes D&D fun is the group if you got a good group its a blast. And when i say group i mean the real people

Agreed. It's the players that make the game, but all games are not made the same. Good players can quickly become frustrated with a bad system. We tried 4e for three sessions and voted to go back. From what we could tell, it was very geared for the Dungeoncrawl/Monte Hall sort of campaign, but seems to suffer somewhat if your goal goes beyond kill people and take their stuff.

Clthomps wrote:its going to be about 80%

I've always found that wargamers and roleplayers are quite different crowds - closer to 20%

BaronIveagh wrote:

skullspliter888 wrote:I played D&D off and on for a couple years. What makes D&D fun is the group if you got a good group its a blast. And when i say group i mean the real people

Agreed. It's the players that make the game, but all games are not made the same. Good players can quickly become frustrated with a bad system. We tried 4e for three sessions and voted to go back. From what we could tell, it was very geared for the Dungeoncrawl/Monte Hall sort of campaign, but seems to suffer somewhat if your goal goes beyond kill people and take their stuff.

My experience running a 4e game was, literally, 180 degrees opposite. Again, roleplaying isn't determined by the system, it's determined by the group and GM.

Ogiwan wrote:My experience running a 4e game was, literally, 180 degrees opposite. Again, roleplaying isn't determined by the system, it's determined by the group and GM.

My experience has matched this: 4E has essentially distilled D&D down to what it's always been best at: a pretty decent system for running combat encounters. D&D has NEVER had effective rules for the roleplaying aspects of adventuring, and I've never found a need for such rules beyond "OK, the NPC seems to be responding to the idea, give me a roll and add your CHA mod to see how well it worked". I can certainly understand disliking the combat system, since that's a matter of taste. But disliking D&D because it's not an effective roleplaying system would be disliking a Toyota Prius because it can't handle the Corkscrew: it's simply not built for that.

Even still, the most awesome thing about tabletop gaming is that you can (get this) change things you don't like (I know that's really hard for people on a 40k board to understand, so I'll give it some time to sink in.... OK, here we go). It'd be really easy to, say, run a game using 4E for everything revolving around combat, while tacking on the roleplaying rules from another system. For instance, AD&D (first edition DMG in-hand, yo) has a metric ton of tables for adjusting NPC attitudes, detailing the effects of failed diplomacy, loyalty checks for henchmen, etc. It's fairly trivial in the internet age to track down a copy of those rules (I got mine for $20 at my FLGS's former used game rack), and they are even totally compatible with current rules (there's even still a CHA stat!) While they're still not totally wonderful for true roleplaying, they at least give a novice GM somewhere to start with running NPCs.

Meanwhile, 4E did away with some of the last few annoyances of the old D&D system that I hated. Vancian Magic can suck a fat one, for instance, and the alignment system was always a crutch for bad roleplaying. While I appreciated the flexibility that 3E multiclassing allowed, in reality it often ended up with some powergaming player taking 27 different prestige classes (plus 1 level of fighter) to exploit some obscure combo. Even one of my better players suffered from that compulsion and would often whip out something that even HE didn't fully understand, making my life miserable when he either blew everything up or was completely useless due to a miscalculation.

Magc8Ball wrote:

Meanwhile, 4E did away with some of the last few annoyances of the old D&D system that I hated. Vancian Magic can suck a fat one, for instance, and the alignment system was always a crutch for bad roleplaying. While I appreciated the flexibility that 3E multiclassing allowed, in reality it often ended up with some powergaming player taking 27 different prestige classes (plus 1 level of fighter) to exploit some obscure combo. Even one of my better players suffered from that compulsion and would often whip out something that even HE didn't fully understand, making my life miserable when he either blew everything up or was completely useless due to a miscalculation.

In all honesty you could do simuliar to this 2nd, especially with the Skills and Powers ruleset. Especially with a DM like I was... I allowed pretty much any humaniod race as long as you had a valid reason for being away from you "normal" are/skills. I also took the time to create my own world, with political strutures, variation on normal themes (Psychic elves, not magical), hell I even detailed the wether patterns that would have been accurate. Filled up 20 something notebooks, and 10 or so folders with the world. It ws great...
I can't see that happening with 4e though.

Havoc13 wrote:I also took the time to create my own world, with political strutures, variation on normal themes (Psychic elves, not magical), hell I even detailed the wether patterns that would have been accurate. Filled up 20 something notebooks, and 10 or so folders with the world. It ws great...
I can't see that happening with 4e though.

No reason it wouldn't work with 4E as it stands. I'm currently doing the same thing with a world that I've been sketching out for a couple years now. I started designing the background before I even knew 4E was coming, and while I had to make a couple adjustments to the way magic works, rules-wise, I didn't really have to do all that much to migrate. A good setting is entirely rules-neutral (beyond rough genre classifications like "high fantasy", "hard medieval realism" "sci-fi", or whatever).

Magc8Ball wrote:

Ogiwan wrote:My experience running a 4e game was, literally, 180 degrees opposite. Again, roleplaying isn't determined by the system, it's determined by the group and GM.

My experience has matched this: 4E has essentially distilled D&D down to what it's always been best at: a pretty decent system for running combat encounters. D&D has NEVER had effective rules for the roleplaying aspects of adventuring, and I've never found a need for such rules beyond "OK, the NPC seems to be responding to the idea, give me a roll and add your CHA mod to see how well it worked". I can certainly understand disliking the combat system, since that's a matter of taste. But disliking D&D because it's not an effective roleplaying system would be disliking a Toyota Prius because it can't handle the Corkscrew: it's simply not built for that.

Even still, the most awesome thing about tabletop gaming is that you can (get this) change things you don't like (I know that's really hard for people on a 40k board to understand, so I'll give it some time to sink in.... OK, here we go). It'd be really easy to, say, run a game using 4E for everything revolving around combat, while tacking on the roleplaying rules from another system. For instance, AD&D (first edition DMG in-hand, yo) has a metric ton of tables for adjusting NPC attitudes, detailing the effects of failed diplomacy, loyalty checks for henchmen, etc. It's fairly trivial in the internet age to track down a copy of those rules (I got mine for $20 at my FLGS's former used game rack), and they are even totally compatible with current rules (there's even still a CHA stat!) While they're still not totally wonderful for true roleplaying, they at least give a novice GM somewhere to start with running NPCs.

Meanwhile, 4E did away with some of the last few annoyances of the old D&D system that I hated. Vancian Magic can suck a fat one, for instance, and the alignment system was always a crutch for bad roleplaying. While I appreciated the flexibility that 3E multiclassing allowed, in reality it often ended up with some powergaming player taking 27 different prestige classes (plus 1 level of fighter) to exploit some obscure combo. Even one of my better players suffered from that compulsion and would often whip out something that even HE didn't fully understand, making my life miserable when he either blew everything up or was completely useless due to a miscalculation.

Quoted for utter truth.

Balance wrote:

Gwar! wrote:
And the whole "OMG THERE ARE 4 CLASSES LAWL!"....
No thanks, I'll stay to the edition that Gygax actually Inspired and helped refine, not some crappy WoW clone.

So that means you only actually use the AD&D 1st edition and thereabouts? As he left before AD&D 2nd edition was released...

To be fair, 2nd edition wasn't a true "edition." It was, simply, first edition, streamlined and altered.
It really was more like 1.5 Edition with more classes.

Had you said "*2nd* edition and earlier", I'd agree.


Eric


Automatically Appended Next Post:

skullspliter888 wrote:I played D&D off and on for a couple years. What makes D&D fun is the group if you got a good group its a blast. And when i say group i mean the real people

Thread.
Win.
You.


Eric

Loved D&D. Played in the 80's.

What a ride it's been since then...

$$$ per hour entertainment, nothing beats it.

MagickalMemories wrote:
So that means you only actually use the AD&D 1st edition and thereabouts? As he left before AD&D 2nd edition was released...

To be fair, 2nd edition wasn't a true "edition." It was, simply, first edition, streamlined and altered.
It really was more like 1.5 Edition with more classes.

Had you said "*2nd* edition and earlier", I'd agree.

Balance wrote:
That seems like the beginning of a very hair-splitting discussion about the meaning of 'version.' I'd agree that there was less 'change' from 1 -> 2 as from 2 -> 3, but I'd consider it a new version as the writers pretty much hit the reset button. A lot of optional bits were made standard, some well-liked elements were lost (No more assassins or cavaliers), and some simplification.

And you know what?

People complained then, too. I don't remember hearing as much, but then again that was before I had access to the internet and such. I still remember some people complaining, and some of the friends I game with would much rather game with 1st edition AD&D than 2nd, despite favoring 4.0 currently. Me, I'd really hate not having access to at least the rudimentary skill system of 2nd or have to deal with combat chart lookups (or memorization).

I think it would be splitting hairs.
: )

I agree that it was a new edition, in it's most basic form... but I just can't agree on it being a "reset button." Third ed. was definitely a reset button. If you knew how to play first edition, then you already knew the basics of 2e. It was just built on the existing foundation of 1e.
Some stuff was lost. It's true. Not a lot, in the long run... Pretty much every lost class was turned into a kit. The bard was simplified. Psionics were made far more understandable (eventually lol). I really liked it.
I'm not surprised that you heard complaints. As has been said, some people complain about change, regardless. Nobody I knew complained, though. We loved the fact that it was, at its' core, a streamlined version of the game we already knew.

Later,
Eric

Mainly play 2nd edition + a few houserules. Mainly as that's what I've got a $%^&ton of books/supplements for.

Of late been running a d20 Star Wars campaign, which has been working out pretty well, and I also run an online Dark heresy game.

Vaguely at topic...how awesome is this !

I'd love to play in a room like that.

Started playing D&D in 1978, never stopped. Started playing Warhammer 40k in 1999. Stopped for about a month after I sold my army, then missed it and started a new army.

Sticking with the D&D 3.5 rules. As long as the rule system isn't broken you'll have fun no matter which version you play. 3.5 isn't perfect but it's not broken. Plus I spent too much money on 3.5 books to change quickly to 4th Ed.

Wish I could Vote on the Poll, but alas.
I've been playing for about 11 years now, and I love D&D. Period. I don't care whether I'm playing 4th or 3rd/3.5 (never got to play 2nd or earlier, sadly) I've been DMing that entire time (Yay on being the only guy willing to read the DMG and MM!), and have only recently (in college) been able to find groups in which I could just play the game. IN fact, D&D got me into 40k. (That's slightly inaccurate. D&D made me friends, who played the first Dawn of War game, which lead to Dark Heresy, which lead to 40k.(And people wonder why I picked Daemonhunters. "Finally, Perils of the Warp can never hurt me again!" )

As to the whole, "4th versus 3rd" argument, here's my stance:
I started on third, so that's what I know best. But the thing had gotten clunky. My players couldn't suggest a concept without me knowing 6 ways to get there, springing from sourcebook to sourcebook. And remembering where all that info was later was a giant pain. On the other side, it allowed me to have characters with just enough oddities to build character. ("Why do you have 2 ranks in Profession(Shepard)?")

4th, on the other hand, is clean. I have to say, personally, that I like 4th edition. I think of it as "D&D, Cinematic Style". Your characters heal quickly, everyone is pulling their weight, (I'm looking at you, full casters from 3rd. Let the fighter have his fun.) and it's ridiculously easy to explain.

Having done both, I can't help but laugh at people who say that 4th sucked out the RP that 3rd provided. Or accuse it of number crunching. 3rd had far more numbers and weird stuff going on.

A comparison: 4th level wizard
3rd: Skill ranks, how did he distribute them, what level spells can this guy cast, what's his effective caster level (feats might have changed it) Based on his intelligence modifier, how many bonus spells does he get?

4th: If's he's 4th level, he can cast these spells, once per day/fight/time he feels like it. He is trained in this many skills. What's half his level plus ability modifier?

I got a guy to make a character, and play 4th, in 15 minutes. And he understood everything on his character sheet. In third, that would have taken at least twice as long.

4th even lets you RP out because it gives you an easy and simple system for rolls the system didn't cover. 4th gave you a PAGE per race, telling you what they were like.

Now, it may seem like I'm singing the praises of 4th edition, but that's just because I love playing Devil's Advocate. I still love 3rd edition, but some many people are stomping on something that has the chance to be just as good.

(Oh, and Gwar? If I had been offered bards half as cool in 3rd ed as they are in 4th, I'd have sold body parts for them.)

It's funny how imp[ortant 'version' numbers are to RP'ers.

Myself and friends have played RPG's since..

D&D Basic Edition..Red Cover...

D&D Expert-"Blue cover for Extra toughness"!!. Got the Dice in the Box still..

When Advanced D&D came out, we all virtually exploded in Nerdy Extacy!!

Played Taveller, MERP, Runequest, Call of Cthulu, CyberP*nk(Rocks), etc etc..

When it gets down to it, "Role Play" is much more important than "Roll Play".

Rules in this regard are Third to Imagination and Judgement.

Rules/Books change, however good DM's and Players always make the Game.

Typeline wrote:I'm not a geek's geek.

dude, how did you find this website because you obviously don't play warhammer.