Call me deviant, but I like all 5 editions, plus basic D&D variants. I've played since the late 1980s. Most editions. Even the 4th edition had some great quirks!

Quote from: HappyDaze on August 10, 2022, 10:55:56 AMI'll also note that 4e was easy to run, while 3e and 3.5e could quickly become a monstrous pain in the ass for the DM. 5e is, again, a compromise but closer to the ease of 4e (IMO).

Yes, for all its 'verbosity' and a lot of deviations from the earlier editions, the fourth edition played very easily.

There are parts I like about all the WOTC editions but for me it's been 5e, followed by 3e, followed by 4e.

3E quickly became the character build game.

4E was more of a combat boardgame than an rpg.

5E was the best until it too until it became character build game II the sequel.

Quote from: Exploderwizard on December 29, 2024, 09:27:04 AM4E was more of a combat boardgame than an rpg.

Only if you chose to play it that way.

It had as much in the way of non-combat mechanics as the TSR-era D&Ds did, but no one calls them combat board games.

The people who stuck with 4E played it much like I hear people talk about playing all the variants on BX and AD&D.

I played in several campaigns that were mostly non-combat exploration and investigation focused with combats happening maybe once every other session.

The deliberate absence of game-breaker "I win" spells for PCs like divinations, mind control, flight before level 16, and unlimited teleportation (instead limited to opening portals to or between known artifact-like permanent circles or short range line of sight)meant the players actually had to engage their brains to solve problems.

I get not liking it; everyone's got their preferences; but at least dislike it for what it really is and not just because you're repeating what you heard second-hand*.

To be fair; the first modules WERE horrible and not written to play to the system's strengths, so GMs using them rather than designing their own adventures would be putting the system's worst foot forward, but even so, most of the system's issues were worked out within about 15 months of its release (which Hasbro insisted on being pushed out a year ahead of when the devs wanted to release it... which is another reason for much of the same-iness; they'd planned different power structures for different classes, but ran out of time to implement them).

It had a perfect storm of bad timing (coming right into the middle of the 2007-8 financial meltdown and too early for any but early adopters to want to buy in on a new edition) and unforced errors heaped onto it by all the departments not actually working on the game (marketing's foot in mouth, Corporate insistence on killing the OGL to maximize sales of their books, murder-suicide in the software department), so it's not at surprising it ended up as it did.

But it's been a dozen years since a product for it was released and the vitriol hasn't diminished an iota whereas normally flops and failures, after the cooling of emotions, get a fairer look at what good ideas were present and might be salvaged.

* From my perspective having been semi-involved in the third-party dev scene at the time, a lot of the anti-4E talking points originated from said third-parties angry at the decision to not put 4E under the OGL and believing they'd be out of a job due to loss of the primary support for their supplements.

Many people forget, or never learned, that Pathfinder/Goleron was originally going to be Paizo's default 4E campaign setting for the Dragon and Dungeon magazines. They were all-in on 4E until the GSL dropped and WotC didn't renew their licenses for Dragon and Dungeon.

4E was what everyone in the third party outfits was wanting (time for everyone to rebuy all those setting books now updated to 4th Edition) until it wasn't, and the reason wasn't the mechanics, it was the licensing (specifically the part of the GSL requiring them to torch all their unsold 3e product and not make any more of it).

I call it a combat boardgame from experience. I ran a campaign with 4E and it was ok at first. Once 5th or 6th level was reached, a single combat took the lions share of a session. I expect big boss fights to  be special and more time consuming, but when every fight was turning out to be half or more of a session  the combat board game was dominating play. Players futzed over which power to play from their deck (literally) and routine engagements all urned into set piece battles that used up most of the session. It wasn't a bad combat game, just not what I was looking for in campaign play.

I liked 3rd or 3.5. Its what I grew up with. Pathfinder made it even cooler. We wanted to be the cool kids so we played a lot of Pathfinder. But 3.5 Dnd should get a lot of credit for taking Dnd into the new century.

I would prefer either early 3.0E or early 5E.  WOTC has never really improved upon those moments.  They just added more rules and more options. 

Quote from: Chris24601 on December 29, 2024, 11:39:34 AMI get not liking it; everyone's got their preferences; but at least dislike it for what it really is and not just because you're repeating what you heard second-hand*.

Interesting that you immediately assume that he is just repeating second-hand criticisms rather than basing his opinion on his own experience even though there's nothing in his post to indicate that.  I have gotten the same thing when I criticized 4e.  I commented that combat felt like someone made a boardgame based on MMO (mainly WoW) mechanics.  I was told the same thing.  You're just saying that because people on the internet told you to say that and so on.  It was actually based on running the game and being a very active WoW player at the time.  I was someone who made OGL products that was butthurt that it wasn't OGL.  I don't even know where the hell they got that one.  It's not like I was selling OGL products.  None even attempted to address what I said about the game.  They just dodged and dismissed until I gave up.

Saying that you can run the game without having much combat doesn't really answer criticisms about the combat system being slow and feeling like a boardgame.  If anything, it backs them up.  It doesn't say much for the system if the solution for its perceived shortcomings is to use it less.

I'm looking at this from the outside.  I didn't start with D&D.  I played Palladium Books RPG's.  Nowadays I tinker around with rules lite stuff, but still don't play D&D.

But, I've looked into them.  I even own most of them as PDFs, and 3.5 and Legend of the 5 Rings D20 (aka 5E) as books.

So, out of the bunch I've got access to, if somebody wanted to ask me to start playing I would want to try 3.5.  I don't like bloat, and 5E seems overly complex. 

But the real answer is that I would want to try an OSR like Shadowdark, Olde Swords Reign, Shadow of the Demon Lord, or Chanbara (samurai and ninjas). 

In the end it's a personal choice.  What you hate about a game maybe what someone else likes. 

3.0 or 5E pre Tasha's

Quote from: yosemitemike on December 30, 2024, 04:26:54 AM

Quote from: Chris24601 on December 29, 2024, 11:39:34 AMI get not liking it; everyone's got their preferences; but at least dislike it for what it really is and not just because you're repeating what you heard second-hand*.

Interesting that you immediately assume that he is just repeating second-hand criticisms rather than basing his opinion on his own experience even though there's nothing in his post to indicate that.

I assume that because it was the complete opposite of my experience with 4E across multiple campaigns with multiple GMs. Lots of exploration and investigation with some combat that typically took half an hour-ish and where GMs encouraged creative solutions (because p.42 and "terrain powers" were things).

Also because most of the critics I know in real life never actually played it, they jumped right to PF and extolled it's virtues.

The "plays like a board game" particularly feels like nonsense to me because a full three-quarters of the 4E campaigns I played in were run using theatre-of-the-mind for combat. I know many say that's impossible, but it was no harder than doing it for 3e (which also based all its combat on a 5' grid) and people do that all the time.

So, yeah, when a description clashes with my experiences (again, from several different DMs so it's not just a "this one GM was really good" thing) then I'm going to provide a counterpoint.

My question would be, did you start with the assumption it would play like a board game and get proven right because you played it that way, or did you go in with the idea that you can do everything you'd normally be able to do in an RPG?

Because I know for me and those I played with, we treated it like any other rpg and ran it as such (built PCs based on what sounded interesting rather than charop nonsense, established a setting and adventure hooks we could pursue or not, the GM built dungeons like he usually did with mixes of puzzles, traps, and monsters... including ones that could be parlayed with) and so it felt like an rpg and not a board game.

Well I did start a regular campaign with it. Everything did run fairly smooth and quick for the first four levels or so. Then things began to bog down. You admit that you ran a loose ToM combat. That isn't playing the system as written. Of course if the combat is played loosey goosey and distances are just guesstimated then it will be quicker. Praising the fact that you had a fast paced experience by ignoring some of the published rules means that you had an enjoyable campaign in spite of the rules, not because of them.

Quote from: Jam The MF on August 09, 2022, 11:53:42 PMIf you were going to play a WOTC Edition, which one would it be?

I would not play a WotC edition if I wanted to play "D&D", but I think 4e would work pretty well as a set of "fantasy skirmish miniatures combat" rules. I just wouldn't think about it as "D&D."

Quote from: Exploderwizard on December 30, 2024, 11:57:27 AMWell I did start a regular campaign with it. Everything did run fairly smooth and quick for the first four levels or so. Then things began to bog down. You admit that you ran a loose ToM combat. That isn't playing the system as written. Of course if the combat is played loosey goosey and distances are just guesstimated then it will be quicker. Praising the fact that you had a fast paced experience by ignoring some of the published rules means that you had an enjoyable campaign in spite of the rules, not because of them.

With all TTRPGs, but particularly with D&D editions, there's the problem of whether the true test is:

1) Playing exactly by the rules as written

or

2) Playing using the rules as a resource for the GM

Essentially no one plays the OD&D or AD&D1 rules as written - what with +1% per pound of weight overbearing and such. But that's often called a feature rather than a bug, because advocates say that the DM is supposed to use rulings rather than precisely following the rules as written.

I'd say just be clear in discussion if you're referring to #1 or #2.

Personally, I never tried 3.5E and only briefly tried 4E, but I played the 4E-based board games (Wrath of Ashardalon). My favorite is 5E, which I ran close to rules as written but not precisely so.