Quote from: Abyssal Maw;436926I suspect that there are more people who own old sets of books that are tucked away on shelves, but as far as playing? I doubt it.

I don't. The 4.x crowd often suffers from this particular delusion that they own both the largest market share and larger player base of the rpg crowd. They don't. In fact, the pre-4e group is probably much larger than the 4e group, but many people don't realize it because the pre-4e player bases are more disorganized and decentralized. Think about it. Pathfinder alone (a 3.x game) has become a legitimate challenger for 4e in market share. Anyone remember how over on rpgnet, people were going apeshit about Pathfinder possibly outselling 4e?

Pathfinder Knocks D&D Out of the Top 5 http://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?t=558447

Pathfinder outselling D&D? http://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?t=557571

And really, that's just the tip of the iceberg...

I doubt PF is currently outselling 4E but I have seen the rumor-mongering in my local gaming community and I wouldn't be surprised if it's making some impact.

Quote from: DeadUematsu;437080I doubt PF is currently outselling 4E but I have seen the rumor-mongering in my local gaming community and I wouldn't be surprised if it's making some impact.

Denial is one of the first stages of the grieving process. Its OK. We're here to help you get through this and get on with your gaming.

Quote from: Justin Alexander;437037This fetishization, however, didn't have much of anything to do with what was actually published in the 3E rulebooks.

Precisely; status quo encounters are right there in the 3.0 DMG (which is actually a very good, well-organised introduction to GMing). Their rejection came from one part of the fandom, and was later canonised via bitching-based game design.

(On a tangent: if there is something 3.0 doesn't mention about creating encounters, and seems to discourage via its experience guidelines, is encounters with hordes of relatively low-powered opponents that work by overwhelming a group. 3.5 added swarms in some monster categories to address the issue, and 4e introduced minions. OTOH, the only systemic problem with hordes is the mechanical complexity of the rules, so they can be used without too much trouble.)

Quote from: Sacrificial Lamb;437068I don't. The 4.x crowd often suffers from this particular delusion that they own both the largest market share and larger player base of the rpg crowd. They don't. In fact, the pre-4e group is probably much larger than the 4e group, but many people don't realize it because the pre-4e player bases are more disorganized and decentralized. Think about it. Pathfinder alone (a 3.x game) has become a legitimate challenger for 4e in market share. Anyone remember how over on rpgnet, people were going apeshit about Pathfinder possibly outselling 4e?

Pathfinder Knocks D&D Out of the Top 5 http://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?t=558447

Pathfinder outselling D&D? http://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?t=557571

And really, that's just the tip of the iceberg...

People go apeshit about it because it's so unlikely and because they are so obsessed with the industry that they'll throw themselves behind literally anything that seems to challenge the hated Wizards of the Coast. I don't really have anythingt bad to say about Pathfinder- I played 3rd edition (and 3.5) for the entire life of the edition and wrote several dungeons for it. I don't see myself ever going back to it,  it's just too much game for me to think about right now. But if some people still like it, that's great. I'm glad the RPGA produced it.

People fighting over a dusty crown, for the tabletop rpg king.  :rolleyes:

The ever shrinking tabletop rpg kingdom, as time passes.  :pundit:

Quote from: Bobloblah;436921That's something that I never liked from 3E onwards: the mentality that Encounters had to be Balanced for the party.

Oh, it's present in AD&D. Look at what I quoted - it's not referring to 3e or 4e. Gygax tells you in the AD&D DMG not to make encounters too easy or too hard for the PCs. Moreover, by and large, the folks who are playing 3e, Pathfinder, and 4e are the same folks who played AD&D.

Seanchai

Quote from: Seanchai;437155Oh, it's present in AD&D. Look at what I quoted - it's not referring to 3e or 4e. Gygax tells you in the AD&D DMG not to make encounters too easy or too hard for the PCs. Moreover, by and large, the folks who are playing 3e, Pathfinder, and 4e are the same folks who played AD&D.

Seanchai

Very disingenuous.

That balance was hard-wired into the rules of 3e to a degree never before dreamed of is beyond argument.

3e is shit, and 4e moreso.

Quote from: 1989;437399That balance was hard-wired into the rules of 3e to a degree never before dreamed of is beyond argument.

Simply put: That isn't true. But I notice that you're so into 2E that you're self-identifying with it, so I'm willing to assume that you're simply ignorant of the way in which 2E stripped away the encounter-balancing guidelines of previous editions.

Hmm, I don't recall those guidelines being all that much, and certainly not much followed in the rules, and the MM of AD&D hardly gives much in the way of support, either.

Granted, there were 'random monster' charts assigned by level, but there was a pretty good range of difficulty there. And other charts had no such restrictions--a party of level 1 characters walking around a city at night could run into a type IV demon, after all.

Quote from: Justin Alexander;437415Simply put: That isn't true. But I notice that you're so into 2E that you're self-identifying with it, so I'm willing to assume that you're simply ignorant of the way in which 2E stripped away the encounter-balancing guidelines of previous editions.

Never played 3.0 but I like the way 3.5 rules work.  I think everything just works well (and I have played a combat character and a magic character)

Quote from: 1989;437399That balance was hard-wired into the rules of 3e to a degree never before dreamed of is beyond argument.

Yes and no. There were rules for designing encounters in every version of D&D (although not as many in 2E as I recall) and most talked about balance. However, earlier versions of the game concerned themselves more balance across the adventure or the campaign and not as much with having every encounter that might result in combat be balanced for the party having the encounter.

Balance guidelines in older editions (even 3e, but less so 3.5) assumed that players would learn to avoid combats that were obviously too much for them or that would not yield some type of useful reward so were more considered with helping the GM understand how strong or weak the opposition was compared to the characters than they were with setting things up so each possible combat encounter was winnable by the PCs let alone balanced for the party. The "all encounters must be balanced so as to be winnable by the current party" nonsense seems to be a demand from players who both mis-read the the guidelines in 3e and who wanted to fight everything and therefore expected everything they encountered to be beatable by them in combat now.

Quote from: Daedalus;437425Never played 3.0 but I like the way 3.5 rules work.  I think everything just works well (and I have played a combat character and a magic character)

My chief complaint with 3.0e and 3.5e is the fiddly record-keeping that falls on the DM's shoulders, especially when managing encounters with high-level characters and/or multiple characters.

I also dislike the structure of the Feat subsystem (I think 4e got it right by downplaying the importance of picking the right Feats).

Hell, I've even adapted concepts (like monster "templates") to the previous editions I usually play.

The "Linear Fighter, Quadratic Wizard" thing is hardly exclusive to 3.x.

Quote from: The Butcher;437487I also dislike the structure of the Feat subsystem (I think 4e got it right by downplaying the importance of picking the right Feats.

I think the whole "picking the right feats" thing in 3.x is overstated. It's only important to players who think having the most powerful character possible is the most important thing. If having the character customized to match your vision is the goal they work fine provided the GM's campaign doesn't assume that every character is the most potent possible.  Designing lame feats as traps for players who haven't "mastered" the rules should not have been done, however. That's just the rules designer being a dick.

My main problem with feats in that too many of them took stuff that almost any person might be able to do (like "Bull Rush") and made it something that only those who bought the feat could do. Feats like Bull Rush should have simply provided a bonus to their activity, not the ability to perform the action (e.g. a Bull Rush feat should mean you are particularly good at doing a Bull Rush and get a +2 when doing one, not that you just know how to do one and therefore need the feat to be able to bull rush others).

Quote from: RandallS;437492Designing lame feats as traps for players who haven't "mastered" the rules should not have been done, however. That's just the rules designer being a dick.

That's what I meant.

Quote from: RandallS;437492My main problem with feats in that too many of them took stuff that almost any person might be able to do (like "Bull Rush") and made it something that only those who bought the feat could do. Feats like Bull Rush should have simply provided a bonus to their activity, not the ability to perform the action (e.g. a Bull Rush feat should mean you are particularly good at doing a Bull Rush and get a +2 when doing one, not that you just know how to do one and therefore need the feat to be able to bull rush others).

This is the #1 reason I dislike Feats as presented in 3.0e and 3.5e, and Powers in 4e. Much like the old controversy about Thief skills, over time, anything not expressly permitted becomes forbidden.

The OSR has been moving from straight retro-clones (OSRIC, Labyrinth Lord, Swords & Wizardry) to "tribute games" which experiment with and expand on the "classic D&D" format (Spellcraft & Swordplay, Stars Without Number) for some time now. I'd love to see something similar applied to 3.5e; pruning down the Skill list (a la 4e), reforming the Feat system to excise "trap" Feats, and to make some Feats (like the afore mentioned Bull Rush) additive rather than prescriptive, and so forth.