This is a site for discussing roleplaying games. Have fun doing so, but there is one major rule: do not discuss political issues that aren't directly and uniquely related to the subject of the thread and about gaming. While this site is dedicated to free speech, the following will not be tolerated: devolving a thread into unrelated political discussion, sockpuppeting (using multiple and/or bogus accounts), disrupting topics without contributing to them, and posting images that could get someone fired in the workplace (an external link is OK, but clearly mark it as Not Safe For Work, or NSFW). If you receive a warning, please take it seriously and either move on to another topic or steer the discussion back to its original RPG-related theme.

When did 3rd ed. D&D jump the shark?

Started by dsivis, March 27, 2008, 05:21:42 PM

Previous topic - Next topic

GameDaddy

Quote from: Abyssal MawWell, I liked Races of the Dragon quite a bit, even the gay Spellscales. (Well, I loved the gay spellscales, actually).

The actual "bad" (or at least questionable) products in D&D3 were all quite early: The Hero Builders Guide, Tome and Blood, etc. Good ideas, but bad execution.

Yah. Like I looked through them books once... briefly... and that was it.
Wotc jumped the Shark at 3.5

Don't get me wrong, 3.5 did improve the game. While I only have the 3.5 DM screen and MM. With these two of those, you can play a fine game of 3.5 with the legacy 3.0 core books. 3.5 did have a couple of good upswings though with Eberron, just an awesome large scale setting with plenty of open space to inject your favorite genre, and let's see... what else did I like about 3.5?

Nothing, nada, zilch... unless Stormwrack, Sandstorm, and their ilk count. I already had homebrewed wilderness d20 rules, but that series filled in alot of gaps and added some major mojo to the game. Spell Compendium was also great, shining like a star sapphire in a bed of gravel, As for Magic Item Compendium, never did buy it, was always looking for Wotc to publish a decent set of magic item creation rules

Never did buy any of the BoVD, Heroes, Champions, or any of them other books. Did I mention Forgotten Forge is an awesome Dungeon? No wait, that's 3.0 isn't it?
Blackmoor grew from a single Castle to include, first, several adjacent Castles (with the forces of Evil lying just off the edge of the world to an entire Northern Province of the Castle and Crusade Society's Great Kingdom.

~ Dave Arneson

beejazz

Quote from: GameDaddywas always looking for Wotc to publish a decent set of magic item creation rules
So... you only have 3.5 monster manual and GM screen? Because pricing guidelines for custom magic items can be found at the back of the 3.5 DMG. Not sure if there are equivalent rules in the 3.0 version, as I really only started DMing after the switch.

RPGPundit

I can't remember which came first.. 3.5 or Eberron? In either case, by the time the first of either of those came along, the game had already jumped the shark.

Really, it started jumping the shark from very early on.  It was still good at the time of the FR book and the Manual of the Planes, but relatively shortly after that period it already delved deep into the level of suckitude with prestige classes being turned into nothing more than "superadvanced classes", feats piled upon feats each more powerful than the last in an orgy of RIFTS-like powercreep, and distance changed from feet to squares in order to facilitate minis sales.

RPGPundit
LION & DRAGON: Medieval-Authentic OSR Roleplaying is available now! You only THINK you\'ve played \'medieval fantasy\' until you play L&D.


My Blog:  http://therpgpundit.blogspot.com/
The most famous uruguayan gaming blog on the planet!

NEW!
Check out my short OSR supplements series; The RPGPundit Presents!


Dark Albion: The Rose War! The OSR fantasy setting of the history that inspired Shakespeare and Martin alike.
Also available in Variant Cover form!
Also, now with the CULTS OF CHAOS cult-generation sourcebook

ARROWS OF INDRA
Arrows of Indra: The Old-School Epic Indian RPG!
NOW AVAILABLE: AoI in print form

LORDS OF OLYMPUS
The new Diceless RPG of multiversal power, adventure and intrigue, now available.

David Johansen

But the separation of feats, class abilities, and skills pretty much made it inevitable from the start.  In fact the problem first showed up in third party material but when those were popular because of the power creep. (I recall an early Sovergn Stone d20 advertisment where their archer getting four attacks per round at first level was the main selling point)

The problem is that by separating these features into discrete functions they produced a system where it is very hard to cross balance them with each other and very easy to introduce new complications and unbalanced synergies.  But the designers knew this from the beginning.  It was a MARKETING decision not a game design one.
Fantasy Adventure Comic, games, and more http://www.uncouthsavage.com

KrakaJak

I would agree 3.x jumped the shark at Ebberon.

Ebberron was the proof positive that WotC was not going to cater to the D&D legacy anymore. Playing it up as the new "standard setting" for D&D. It had magitech robot PCs, dinosaurs and laser-guns. Not quite the Howard-esque fantasy that was presented before, it all became "Dungeon-Punk".

I also think Ebberron was alright, but that's about where the paradigm shifted.
-Jak
 
 "Be the person you want to be, at the expense of everything."
Spreading Un-Common Sense since 1983

Stheno

IME D&D jumped the shark somewhere around Magic of Incarnum and Weapons of Legacy - whole books dedicated to variant rules systems that added nothing interesting or exciting to the game as a whole.

Bo9S...is a sea-change in D&D, I think. To a certain extent, it no longer feels like D&D 3.5.
 

dsivis

Interesting.
I'm not quite sure myself on this topic, although I'm leaning towards Magic of Incarnum. Given, I haven't look at it enough yet to really judge, but I think it was a big departure point from what had gone before.

FYI: 3.5 came before Eberron.
"It\'s a Druish conspiracy. Haven\'t you read the Protocols of the Elders of Albion?" - clash

Last Knight

Hm... looks like I'm taking the dissenting opinion here. Okay, I can diggit.

I rather like Eberron, and I don't think that's the mark of D&D 'jumping the shark';  actually, I don't feel that D&D's quite reached that shark jumping ramp yet, as a whole. Have certain books jumped it, completely missed the point, and been an absolutely craptacular waste of resources? Certainly. Examples already listed here include "Magic of Incarnum", "Weapons of Legacy", "Dragon Magic", "The Book of 9 Swords" - hell, the list goes on and on.

I think the problem we're seeing here is that the majority of you are saying, "I don't like this, it doesn't fit with my vision of D&D, and therefore it sucks". Eberron doesn't suit every player; despite intending to be a kitchen-sink setting, it shouldn't suit every player. If you're trying to play Lord of the Rings, it's not for you. If you're trying to play Conan, it's not for you. If you're trying to play magic steampunk adventures, or 'dungeon punk', then it is for you.
"Kept my cool under lock and key
And I never shed a tear, another sign of my condition
Fear of love or bitter vanity
That kept me on the run, the main events at my confession
I kept a chain upon my door
That would shake the shame of Caine into a blind submission..."

Abyssal Maw

Eh, I kinda like Eberron too.

There are certain things about Eberron that get on my nerves ( I don't like how he designed the planes or the gods. I don't like the backstory of the Great War that much..) but otherwise I have to say Eb is pretty cool.
Download Secret Santicore! (10MB). I painted the cover :)

Last Knight

Quote from: Abyssal MawEh, I kinda like Eberron too.

There are certain things about Eberron that get on my nerves ( I don't like how he designed the planes or the gods. I don't like the backstory of the Great War that much..) but otherwise I have to say Eb is pretty cool.
And this is why we have homebrews. ^_^ Rule 0 applies to every game, even D&D. Fuck sacred cows.

In reference to your earlier; the Heroes Builder Guide and Stronghold Builder's Guide were two of the weakest books for D&D 3.X I've seen, but at least they had the courtesy of being softcover and mildly cheaper. That's one of the things that irked me most about Magic of Incarnum et al was the realization, after I bought the damn thing, that I'd just dropped $20+ on something I was never going to use, that wasn't even decent reading material. Bah!
"Kept my cool under lock and key
And I never shed a tear, another sign of my condition
Fear of love or bitter vanity
That kept me on the run, the main events at my confession
I kept a chain upon my door
That would shake the shame of Caine into a blind submission..."

Spazmodeus

3e to me started out revving its engine and shouting "Aaay!" mid-jump by not being compatible with previous editions.  I bought and read the DMG and PHB and had no interest in playing it.  It might be a playable game, but it lost the flavor of the D&D I grew up with.  My 1e/2e/houserule system works fine for me, where feats are things the players make up on the fly.
My body is a temple of elemental evil.

beejazz

I'm with the others here as far as Eb goes. I liked it, myself. In any case, very easy to cannibalize in my experience.

I do think later supplements did get consistently lame, with a few exceptions that rocked (as opposed to the reverse), so I would consider it to have jumped the shark.

ChalkLine

My only hate-on for late version D&D is the AoO. At that point it stopped being a mind-game for me, and became a dreary 'I can so move there!' wargamer's engine.

By the time you were getting whole forums built around uber-builds it had followed that dark path which Rifts blazed.

It's been said that AD&Dv1 was the opening up of the initial concept. AD&Dv2 was the compilation of that process. D&Dv3 was the transfer of control from the GM to the players. I got no idea what 3.5 is to that.
I don't believe in Forge Game Theory

Blackthorne

where it jumped the shark for me personally was when they were DONE with all the books (Complete Warrior, Arcane, Divine, Adventurer)...but didn't stop. Continuing to produce books (Compete Et Cetera) but not providing any more content. Tip: Check the font/print style of these later books. Notice that there is less page count, but the WORDS are SUDDENLY BIGGER and SPREAD FARTHER APART ON THE PAGE. We're buying more blankpage.
Then DMG 2, Then PHB 2... and I guess they decided doing another edition was easier than adding DMG 3, etc. to the pantheon.

Also: back in my day, in 2nd Edition, there was a thing called Encyclopedia Magica, which was a 4-book compendium of every magic item printed, ever.
in 3rd Edition they named a product that, but it was a single hardback and didn't collect every magic item ever in one handy, convenient place.

They jumped the shark. They forgot why.
I can't imagine enough hells for them.