If they'd just go back to 2nd Edition and clean up some of the stupidity and lapses and contradictions, it would be a relatively good system. Body of work, the whole nine yards, yada yada.
Here's the thing. Do any of the versions after 2nd E make the game play better? Speed up action? Add a bit of zest and fun? If yes, then maybe add that change, maybe. If not, then all the company is doing is justifying making everyone pay out bigly for new manuals and conversions and supplements and modules and and and.
The more I think about it, Wizards of the Left Coast are like Scientology. New editions that end up costing the end user huge amounts of money. And when one gets to the top of the system, well, here comes yet more changes to bleed the suckers.
So glad I stopped playing long ago. At least my gaming stuff went to someone who could use it.
I looked at 5th Edition once when I was out in California---my nephew played/may still play it. I didn't care for the new PC races, among other things. (Tieflings? Wha'? Dragon-kin look like they got taken into the game from the Dragonlance world.) The fact that 5th edition is about all that I can find in TTRPGs played in my vicinity, while GURPS and WFRP languish on the shelves, convinces me that there is no god. ---Technomad
2e is like an edited and understandable version of Ye Olde AD&D. Definitely recognizable and playable.
When I was converting my Wemic Cleric to GURPS I needed to dig into the 2e rules hard to do a proper conversion.
FuzzyGeff reports that 4th Edition is decent and an actual system... That 5e discarded because people were pinin' for some missing element from 3rd Edition.
He also reports they're pretty much just playing Pathfinder now. He might even come along and comment that I've gotten it all wrong.
I barely touched 2e, but our local group used 3 and 4 for quite some time. Both were actual systems, in a way that AD&D never was. Also, there were meaningful character design decisions to be made after first level, without the bizarre mess that is changing classes or becoming a bard in AD&D.
4e had some interesting differences from the other D&Ds, which I liked but the market apparently didn't. My favorite was that the classes were power balanced against eachother at all levels, which is utterly unlike AD&D.
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If they'd just go back to 2nd Edition and clean up some of the stupidity and lapses and contradictions, it would be a relatively good system. Body of work, the whole nine yards, yada yada.
ReplyDeleteHere's the thing. Do any of the versions after 2nd E make the game play better? Speed up action? Add a bit of zest and fun? If yes, then maybe add that change, maybe. If not, then all the company is doing is justifying making everyone pay out bigly for new manuals and conversions and supplements and modules and and and.
The more I think about it, Wizards of the Left Coast are like Scientology. New editions that end up costing the end user huge amounts of money. And when one gets to the top of the system, well, here comes yet more changes to bleed the suckers.
So glad I stopped playing long ago. At least my gaming stuff went to someone who could use it.
I looked at 5th Edition once when I was out in California---my nephew played/may still play it. I didn't care for the new PC races, among other things. (Tieflings? Wha'? Dragon-kin look like they got taken into the game from the Dragonlance world.) The fact that 5th edition is about all that I can find in TTRPGs played in my vicinity, while GURPS and WFRP languish on the shelves, convinces me that there is no god. ---Technomad
ReplyDeleteSee, I went to "Highlander" with that and they'd REALLY like there to "be only one"... But alas, that djinn has long since escaped...
ReplyDeleteI''ve said it here before. If I was going to play D&D again, it would be 1st Edition AD&D. Warts and all.
ReplyDelete-swj
2e is like an edited and understandable version of Ye Olde AD&D. Definitely recognizable and playable.
DeleteWhen I was converting my Wemic Cleric to GURPS I needed to dig into the 2e rules hard to do a proper conversion.
FuzzyGeff reports that 4th Edition is decent and an actual system... That 5e discarded because people were pinin' for some missing element from 3rd Edition.
He also reports they're pretty much just playing Pathfinder now. He might even come along and comment that I've gotten it all wrong.
I agree about 2e cleaning up 1e. It was a needful thing. But after that, meh.
DeleteI barely touched 2e, but our local group used 3 and 4 for quite some time. Both were actual systems, in a way that AD&D never was. Also, there were meaningful character design decisions to be made after first level, without the bizarre mess that is changing classes or becoming a bard in AD&D.
ReplyDelete4e had some interesting differences from the other D&Ds, which I liked but the market apparently didn't. My favorite was that the classes were power balanced against eachother at all levels, which is utterly unlike AD&D.