Maraudar wrote:***yawn*** Something I like or that is good about 3e? Well the pages from its multitude of books are great for starting fires in the fireplace... I like that so it must be a good thing...




Maraudar

Holy cow, you just gave me a freaking great idea.      No more newspaper for packaging things up that I sell, at least for the time being.  I will just start using the pages from the few 3E books that I do own from now on.      

I was just kidding.

Ok I'll fess up.. I also use it for toilet paper... Its softer than charmin   .. kidding.

I confess. I play on occasion a 3e/3.5 Ravenloft campaign and MotRD campaign. If anything I actually think that for those settings 3e is a good system. It meshes well with the settings.

There you happy BtB   . I have bared my soul to the internet and will now have my grognard card revoked at the next meeting and maybe even be tarred and feathered. And let me tell you thats a lot or tar and feathers to use.  


Maraudar

JohnGaunt wrote:If some players want to min/max (or whatever it's called nowadays) and emphasize the numbers, that's their choice.  If some players want to emphasize the roleplaying, then that's also their choice.  Hasn't this always been true?

I don't agree that 3.x has kept the game alive, so much as evolved the game into something completely different.  It certainly has it's appeal, albeit largely among new players or those not intimately familiar with 1E.  It's certainly a different game, and in my opinion, it's not a roleplaying game at all, except in sense of the RPG misnomer that we routinely apply to video games for the sake of convenience.  I'm not saying that as a bad thing.  Hopefully people find it fun.

Slightly off-topic:

Recently, I had a long conversation with a guy from my old roleplaying group.  When I was around 10 years old, he used to play with us about once a week.  He wasn't what you'd call a "hardcore" roleplayer -- he was just there to have fun.  A few years later he quit the group.  Consequently, he never got "indoctrinated" into the early D&D/AD&D rules mindset.  (For the record, we played Mentzer D&D at that point, but that's not really important.)

Fast-forward 22 years to the present, and he's now hopelessly addicted to the "Baldur's Gate" series of video games.  He has even gone so far as to download character editing programs off the net and give his character maximum stats, etc.  That's a couple of steps further than min/maxing, but with the same general goal.  He makes a point of always playing a paladin, but from the rest of his tales I'm pretty sure he has no idea what alignment means.  And that's ok.  He has fun, and that's what matters.  

Now for the cool part.  This is not some teenager, but a 62-year old government accountant with a four-year old child sitting on his knee, enthralled.  It's my dad, in fact.

Dude . . . it's a quote from Evil and the movie Time Bandits.  Check out my Sig Line on Dragonsfoot and you'll find I also have an understanding of Digital Watches.  

Beyondthebreach wrote:Slugs! HE created slugs! They can't hear. They can't speak. They can't operate machinery.

'ware the Dire Slug!

Maraudar wrote:***yawn*** Something I like or that is good about 3e? Well the pages from its multitude of books are great for starting fires in the fireplace... I like that so it must be a good thing...




Maraudar

You can also tear the covers off and use them for packing modules....

Okay, I've got one that's pure powergaming: Cleave and Great Cleave. I was actually introduced to these through Neverwinter Nights, and they are feats I almost always take when playing a fighter, barbarian, or some other melee-oriented character.

I understand that both feats are illogical and pure munchkin-ism, but I don't care. They are just that much fun.

Expect a rebuttal soon from DL39; Frank, the floor is yours.  

MShipley88 wrote:I have had a a high school D&D group, a college D&D group and a post college D&D group, with some members crossing over to two or even all three.

One member of my high school AD&D group visited my post college AD&D group right before 2nd edition appeared.

He was dumbfounded by all the changes in the rules, new classes and the different way the game played...and it was the same game, but altered by the appearance of Unearthed Arcana and a few other books, as well as about 1000 house rules and Dragon magazine articles.

He felt like it was a whole different game.  It wasn't, it was just the same game with more rules.

My point is simply this:  3.5 edition really is AD&D with Unearthed Arcana and other books, combined with about 1000 house rules and Dragon magazine articles with an attempt at game balance and a consistent system.

In short:  3.5 is AD&D with fewer arguments.

Mark  

If it really was, I would be playing that instead of 2nd ed.....

I can understand why 3rd ed is fun....I love the Neverwinter Nights stuff.  It's cool to have your 20th level Barbarian/Mage/Cleric with something like 500 hps (that's what I'm running now) hacking up demons and demigods.  As a matter of fact, as a video/computer game, I think 3rd ed works 100 times better than as either a P&P game, or as any of the older computer games based on the 2nd ed rules.  

But 3rd ed is really an entirely different game with the same name.  A lot of old timers can't make any sense of it (everyone I game with).  I tried to read the rules and didn't like it at all, and wasn't even sure if I could run a session (which if it was just AD&D Plus I should have been able to do this no problem, I am a DM with 25 years experience).  NEARLY every 3rd ed game I've witnessed has had the same amount of problems as classic gaming, including the arguments, time consuming stop down combats, munchkinistically impossible powers doing 300 pts of damage a hit, etc etc insert your favorite cliche.  

3rd ed isn't just the same game with more rules, as was 2nd ed. I haven't met a single gamer yet that was confused by that changeover...they may not have LIKED it, but they understood it.  In contrast, I've ran into many gamers that can't make heads or tails of the new game. Call it the generational learning curve, or whatever.  I just know I've seen it in action.

A couple of other things I like about 3rd ed:

Customizing monsters (a very natural progression) with additional abilities or skills; makes facing that "harmless" lone kobold a little more dangerous; however, having stats/abilities for EVERY monster is a waste of time and makes pick up/spur of the moment battles almost impossible (unless you have a good spare database at hand).  Who gives a flying Eff what a spare orcs stats are, he's there to be hacked in half!

Raising your ability scores at certain levels; should have always been a facet of the game. However, raising your ability scores over certain limits (ex eventually having a 26 STR or whatever) tends to totally munchskinize the game (fun when you are playing Neverwinter Nights, though).

I think as a player of D&D since 1978 or so I will always be very upset that TSR/WOTC chose to create an entirely new game with the name of my favorite game on the rulebooks, and not just tweak the game by adding the house rules and maybe changing things a little bit to make it easily playable with older versions of the game (or vice versa).  For instance Mark in your example instead of the 1000 house rules I guess I would have been much happier with just 100 house rules and a system that was more streamlined but still like the "classic" system enough that I could run a the same character through L1 Bone Hill, Ruins of Undermountain, or The Forge of Fury with little or no changes...
 I completely understand the marketing and money factors that led to the entirely new version of D&D.  That classic D&D had a 25+ year run is fantastic in itself.  But everything has to change, and I still have my old rulebooks, modules, Dungeon mags, etc.  I'm reminded of the famous author who was asked about movie versions of his books, wasn't he unhappy that so many things were changed when his works were brought to the screen?  Said author pointed to a bookshelf behind him and said  "None of my books are changed, here they all are just like I originally wrote them." Makes a good point in regards to classic vs 3rd edition gaming.....!
  And staying hopefully somewhat on target, does anyone play Eberron?  Does anyone LIKE Eberron?  I read through a couple of the modules, and I honestly couldn't understand a blamed thing....it was like they were written in another language about an entirely new RPG. Is my disconnect getting that large, or is the setting just that different that it would make no sense to someone who hasn't bought the core Eberron rulebooks?

Mike B.