So I have a general idea of how the osr community feels about 5e, which is understandably negative, but I've wondered what they thought about 3e, which is what I'd consider the afterbirth of  the fall of osr gaming.  I've seen a video by dungeoncraft, who's been playing since od&d, and he described 3e along the lines of being groundbreaking and revolutionary, which was pretty surprisingly positive given how drastically different it was from the traditional rules of ad&d.  So I wanted to know if this sentiment is shared by anyone else in the community.

The original OSR was founded by ex-third edition players who became disenchanted with that edition, switched to Castles & Crusades, had a falling out, and then created OSRIC and then later Swords & Wizardry.

Quote from: Alea Iacta Est on August 20, 2021, 01:05:42 PM
So I have a general idea of how the osr community feels about 5e, which is understandably negative, but I've wondered what they thought about 3e, which is what I'd consider the afterbirth of  the fall of osr gaming.  I've seen a video by dungeoncraft, who's been playing since od&d, and he described 3e along the lines of being groundbreaking and revolutionary, which was pretty surprisingly positive given how drastically different it was from the traditional rules of ad&d.  So I wanted to know if this sentiment is shared by anyone else in the community.

Other people in the community share positive views of 3e. It is still played quite a bit.

5e is a great game if one sticks with the core three books. The DMG (specifically DMG workshop chapter) is underrated. After the core books, and maybe Xanathar's if I am feeling saucy, the rest of the edition begins to wash together. Like overpainting a canvas.

D&D 3E / 3.5E / PF

The final realization that Ascending Armor Class made things easier.  Why the hell was Descending Armor Class ever used to begin with?

Hit Point Bloat for Monsters and PCs jumped from 2E to 3E.

Some Great Books were produced for 3E.  One could have collected a library full of printed resources for 3E.

So Many Rules.  They tried to publish Rules for Everything.  Who could possibly remember All of those rules?  Back to the Library....

I'm from the 1e days personally and it is my favorite edition.

With that out of the way, my friends and I played plenty of 3/3.5/pf

I would say that overall the game is ok just requires players to really think about how their character is going to evolve. There are plenty of dead end choices that can make a player feel like their character is no longer useful.

There are a lot of not well thought out synergies in there for both the gm and the players. as read a half undead troll is like cr 4 and yet will dominate a party several levels higher.
The ever classy roguearian (rogue with 1 level of barbarian so he can use a great sword and rage) using just the basic book will swing way outside of his weight class until the mid levels.

It wasn't perfect but that era did revitalize the industryand gave us OSR eventually.

Quote from: Alea Iacta Est on August 20, 2021, 01:05:42 PM
So I have a general idea of how the osr community feels about 5e, which is understandably negative, but I've wondered what they thought about 3e, which is what I'd consider the afterbirth of  the fall of osr gaming.  I've seen a video by dungeoncraft, who's been playing since od&d, and he described 3e along the lines of being groundbreaking and revolutionary, which was pretty surprisingly positive given how drastically different it was from the traditional rules of ad&d.  So I wanted to know if this sentiment is shared by anyone else in the community.

I doubt my opinion will be particularly helpful, but I've honestly liked every version of D&D so far. Including 3e. I found the reduction down to the d20 mechanic for 3e to be a superb change.

Quote from: Alea Iacta Est on August 20, 2021, 01:05:42 PM
So I have a general idea of how the osr community feels about 5e, which is understandably negative, but I've wondered what they thought about 3e, which is what I'd consider the afterbirth of  the fall of osr gaming.  I've seen a video by dungeoncraft, who's been playing since od&d, and he described 3e along the lines of being groundbreaking and revolutionary, which was pretty surprisingly positive given how drastically different it was from the traditional rules of ad&d.  So I wanted to know if this sentiment is shared by anyone else in the community.

3e was a natural step after 2e Skills & Powers (and Kits from before that) and about a decade and a TSR bankruptcy since the last truly nee edition.

3e's biggest issue was it borrowed a bit of the "mastery vs. traps" mentality from WotC's other big property MtG (the basic idea is that you reward players mastering the system by including various trash/trap options that new players will think look good, but actually underperform while only masters will pick the good options) and an overly fiddly character/monster creation process and spent 4E and 5e trying to course correct to a level that would work for most people.

Personally I think 4E had the right level of "per level" complexity (one choice at each level up), but botched it by having about twice as many levels as was needed for most campaigns and so ended up with about twice the complexity most players would be comfortable with (and not having some good simple options until more than two years in didn't help either).

I would not expect anything like a community consensus on that question, but I can give my one data point. I cut me teeth with OD&D before moving on to a blend of OD&D and AD&D 1e. Then I left the hobby for many years and came back to find 3.5. I was appalled. The new game (3.5) was bloated with unnecessary complexity at every level. Yes, there were positive innovations there, but I could not appreciate them, as buried as they were in the dross. It seemed to me that one needed to be deeply dedicated to the game to have a grasp on it all. Worst of all, it seemed that power at the table had shifted away from the DM to players who had spent all their time mastering the system. At the one table I experienced, the DM was being browbeaten by smug players who could quote rules, and everyone else seemed ok with this. That was shocking to me and I walked away from D&D again until I finally noticed the OSR happening. Maybe my experience was unusual, but it colored all my views of 3.X. It was not until I tried 5e that I realized that "modern D&D" had indeed improved certain systems over what I had been using.

On one hand, 3E codified the d20 mechanic, developed skills and introduced feats, and could be fun to play.

If you played as one of the creator's pet classes, that is.

People joked about 'linear warrior, quadratic wizard', but 3E's action-economy system completely fucked that. It turned it into 'linear warrior, logarithmic wizard'. Rumor is that this was the brainchild of Monte Cook, who actually wanted archery nerfed harder because he thought it outgunned spellcasters.

(One wonders what kind of spellcasters Cook was playtesting.)

I don't know how everyone else played 3rd but my group enjoyed devils being devils again, were wowed by the OGL/D20 explosion, and liked the new energy that seemed to be in the revival. However...we played it as a sloppy table top tactical board game with a lot of optional bits to experiment with and role playing definitely gave way to hacky party builds, arguing about optional materials. and roll playing.

So for us it was a mixed bag. 5th felt like it was kind of hard to die normally. compared to 3.5

4 was more of a multiplayer board game than 3 and the monsters had nice cues for the DM to lean on about how they'd handle conditions but the DM had to start ignoring the AI bits because it made monsters you recognized predictable even if you weren't being told meta stuff like how many hit points the thing probably had left.

A decent but flawed edition. Tried to streamline AD&D, went a bit over the top with the caster supremacy and complex iterative attacks. Not impossible to fix. Ascending AC is a decent innovation, I like unified XP (makes things a lot simpler) and trying to unify all mechanics in a "d20, roll high" fashion works well enough that I have a hard time breaking away from it (and so did 4e and 5e). You could improve the implementation, but the ideas are fine.

BTW, I think 5e is also a decent but flawed edition, overall I like it more than 3e (although 3e does weapons better IMO). TBH I like the 5e PHB better than AD&D because it has more options but not much added complexity (not even Gygax played AD&FD as written).

I've also heard of OSR enthusiasts that like 4e, BTW. No, really. Gives them that wargaming vibe.

My own OSR clone mixes B/X(my favorite) with bits and pieces form 5e and 3e.

DnD 3.0 and PF are a couple of my favorites. They are fun to play, include skills (which I prefer in games), and demonstrated a wellspring of unique and wonderful settings for themselves. Their drawbacks are that it takes some time to create a character (or unique NPC) and there is a lot of crap to wade through to get to the Good Stuff with the remnants of the d20 Glut still out there.

I really liked 3e when it came out.  Good layout, lots of player options, etc.  As I played it for a while, though, I realized that it was too crunchy for me.   I use to love crunchy, even spent 5 years co-writing and GMing a Shadowrun clone with my buddy based on the d12 that was trying to be hyper crunchy because we loved that stuff back then.  I've swung the other way.  Give me light or light-moderate rules now.

I also saw the rise of the power gamer with the people that I played 3e with.  We called it min-maxxing.  Still hate that to this day - but if it works for your group - great!

Jam the MF said, "The final realization that Ascending Armor Class made things easier."

       Yes.  Elegant.

"So Many Rules.  They tried to publish Rules for Everything.  Who could possibly remember All of those rules?"

      I had this feeling as I started to play 3e that it was tough to remember everything.  I recall being a kid and knowing all sorts of rules and stats for B/X and 1e.  3e made me feel like I was getting older and my memory wasn't as sharp - but also it really was so many rules and the concept that you need to have a rule to do everything and less reliance on the DM just making a call.  . . . and I was getting old too.

3e fixed a lot of the problems with ADnD by adopting many of my house rules that I was already using to patch the previous edition.  It streamlined the rules and helped to get rid of the patch work of sub systems bolted onto ADnD.

I am still torn on the Multiclassing rules but Prestige classes added a lot of flavour to the game.

Quote from: Vidgrip on August 20, 2021, 03:08:41 PM
I would not expect anything like a community consensus on that question, but I can give my one data point. I cut me teeth with OD&D before moving on to a blend of OD&D and AD&D 1e. Then I left the hobby for many years and came back to find 3.5. I was appalled. The new game (3.5) was bloated with unnecessary complexity at every level. Yes, there were positive innovations there, but I could not appreciate them, as buried as they were in the dross. It seemed to me that one needed to be deeply dedicated to the game to have a grasp on it all. Worst of all, it seemed that power at the table had shifted away from the DM to players who had spent all their time mastering the system. At the one table I experienced, the DM was being browbeaten by smug players who could quote rules, and everyone else seemed ok with this. That was shocking to me and I walked away from D&D again until I finally noticed the OSR happening. Maybe my experience was unusual, but it colored all my views of 3.X. It was not until I tried 5e that I realized that "modern D&D" had indeed improved certain systems over what I had been using.

Yes.  3E requires investment and dedication, in order to become awesome.  It's not a casual game, at all.  I like White Box style OD&D better.