Main Subdivisions of the D&D Brand

[Falconer]

Before I begin, let me state that I am trying not to make any “good vs. bad” judgments here, just broadly philosophizing. To me, D&D’s publication history can be most broadly divided into three main categories. These categories are defined by general compatibility:

1. Original/Basic/Advanced (1974)
2. d20 (2000)
3. Fourth Edition (2008)

(No end dates are given since each game lives on.)

Obviously you could subdivide any category. As we all know, some people would say that 1975 or 1978 or 1985 or 1989 or 1995 was the cataclysmic end of their favorite incarnation of D&D. Others will take the opposite view and say that they don’t see any significant difference or compatibility issues between d20 and what came before. (I don’t think anyone denies that 4th Edition was as major a change from its predecessor as any we have seen.) But I think nonetheless that the major subdivisions listed above are essentially uncontroversial if the topic is approached unemotionally.

That said, within “#1” above, I think there are extremes you can go to, to the point where the game is less and less recognizable from the baseline. For example, AD&D 2e with the “Options” rules; AD&D 1e with 100% of UA; BECMI where the later sets (especially Immortals) are at all a major factor; OD&D without any Supplements but with a heavy use of Chainmail. Again, I am not judging any of those options. My point is that baseline pre-3e D&D, whether it be the AD&D 1e core books, or the AD&D 2e core books, or Basic + Expert, or the Rules Cyclopedia, or any edition or OD&D with Greyhawk, is going to share a lot of the same assumptions and mechanics in the rules. A PC can “travel” from one campaign to another without needing to be heavily modified, a module from one can be used in any of the others, etc.

[coffee]

The more I hear about 4th edition, the less I think 3rd edition is all that different from what came before. But it is different, and for purposes of your discussion, I can easily agree with your assessment above.

When 3e came out, we tried to convert our characters from 2e. It was okay for the Wizards and Fighters, but my Bard came out much worse for the transition. (I'd hate to see how he'd look in 4e!)

But it would have been pretty easy to convert from 1e to 2e. And I played alongside some guys who converted from Original to Advanced.

[Finarvyn]

I think that 3rd & later editions are horrible for conversion back and forth, but in many ways 4E seems to be a natural evolution of the game.

Please put away the pitchforks and torches for a moment and let me explain.

OD&D got us started. The supplements added extra classes and spell levels. AD&D organized things better. 2E brought in THAC0 and skills and kits. 3E added feats to skills, unified many of the charts, brought "d20 does it all" equations in for combat, reorganized saving throws. 4E builds on 3E with more options, saves become defenses, removes racial limitations, and so on.

I certainly won't say that 4E is a better game, but when you look at the game an edition at a time the progression certainly is clear. With each later incarnation of the game player options grow, limitations shrink, power bases are expanded. It's mostly when you look at the two ends of the spectrum that you think that the editons have nothing in common, but the more I read about 4E the more I can see how things slowly evolved to where it is today.

I suspect that much of this effect is because gamers love to tinker. The longer you're in a game the more you tinker with it and build upon it. A person who evolved with the game slowly, one edition at a time, probably doesn't feel overwhelmed in the same way that I do as I try to skip over from OD&D to 4E without doing much in the middle. That's my best guess, anyway.

The problem I see with 4E is mostly that it has become complex enough that you really want access to a computer in order to run the game effectively. Gone are the days where you could have a monster stat-block fit on one line of a module; they have been replaced with elaborate paragraphs of information. Gone are the simple templates that represent a few core classes; they have been replaced by more and more racial and class options. Gone are the days when you could just sit down, generate a character in ten minutes, and just play.

To be honest, I'm just starting a 4E game so I hate to judge whether it will be good or not until we give it a fair shot. I know that my group wasn't that thrilled with 3E when it first came out and never really tried it again, but I can't decide if it was the fault of the game or the fault of me pushing more to return to OD&D and thus biasing the opinions of my players.

[Falconer]

Yeah, but check it out, all the following are natural evolutions:

OD&D --> AiF, 1e, BECMI
1e --> 2e; Mythus
2e --> 3e; HM
3e --> C&C; 4e; PF

And that’s leaving out a lot, certainly a lot of OGL stuff, and not to mention all the less obvious, indirect outcroppings like RuneQuest, Rolemaster, Traveller.

So to say 4e is “a natural evolution of the game” is a rather uncontroversial statement, however, it doesn’t inoculate it from criticism, either in a vacuum or as a claimant of the D&D trademark.

[fnast]

I think 4e may in some ways form a circular connection with pre-D&D.

From my understanding, the prime impetus of a game like Braunstein was to provide some Diplomacy-style drama as a backdrop to a series of loosely connected wargame scenarios. In turn, the 4e material I've read seems geared to stringing a series of neatly planned tactical scenarios together via some inconsequential bits of flavorful fluff.

This analogy threatens to break down quickly, though, as the Braunstein players were so engrossed by the freeform intrigues that they often sidestepped the expected wargame engagements. An appreciation of this maverick "role-playing" impulse is admittedly tough to translate to rulebooks. But I haven't seen much encouragement for this in 4e, a system where plodding through each encounter seems to be expected by rote.

I sense that the early Arneson or Gygax sessions were not so much about using role-playing techniques to guide players into Chainmail scenarios but rather about using Chainmail scenarios to determine outcomes relevent to their players' role-playing decisions.

Which is not to say that 4e couldn't be refereed in this fashion -- but you would have to temper the expectaions of the players, who are basically expecting a serialized wargame.

[coffee]

3e seemed like an evolution to me at the time.

But somewhere along the middle of 3.5, I just got bored with it. "Ah, jeez, we don't have to save the whole bloody world AGAIN, do we? Why can't we just have a good old bar brawl?"*

That's when I started to get interested in more rules-light games, like Risus. And I dug out my old OD&D set...

I think that's why I was already predisposed to not like 4e. I did give it a try (twice) but I just couldn't see paying good money for a system I knew I'd hate. It's fine for those as like it, but I'll stay over here on the other end of the spectrum, thank you.


You want proof that I'm happy here? This is my 2000th post (just made 10th level -- Hoody Frickin' Hoo!). Not bad -- sometimes it seems like only yesterday...


* (We actually did get to have a bar brawl. But it lost some of it's flavor when the DM's brother hit a guy with a sap. It was non-lethal damage, but with all his bonuses and such he still did over 50 points (!) of non-lethal damage. If I had been running it, I'd have ruled that the guy died anyway, and let the player deal with it...)

[arcadayn]

I've played in a 4th edition game for over a year on a weekly basis. The only reason it lasted that long is that we had a very interesting group of PCs, personality wise and our DM pretty much crammed it down our throats.

From my experience, you lose almost all of your freedom in combat. You have a role that you must fulfill in order for your party to be effective. If you try to deviate from your role in any way, you will not be very effective and the entire party will suffer. People aren't kidding about the game when they say that it hews very closely to the party dynamics of MMORPGs. From that standpoint, it is much more limiting than any of the previous edition's class restrictions.

Our group decided that it was very much like busting out a board game in the middle of your rpg to resolve combat. Unfortunately, this is also the same group that turns up their noses at trying OD&D.