Saturday, February 15, 2014

Day 15: First edition of D&D I didn't enjoy

Well, I guess that was 3.0.


The book itself was beautiful.  Extremely high production values.

I guess the part I didn't like was how "fiddly" it was.  So many choices to make.  Buy this feat (?) now so that you can unlock these other ones later.

You needed software to keep track of it all.

Nah.  It wasn't for me.

I enjoy the organic nature of character development over time.  I didn't want to conceive of my character, in its final form, in advance.  Too much work and it takes the fun out of it.

I don't dislike "character concepts" or even backstories (I do like those less now than I used to,) but there's something about growing as you go.

That's more real in my mind.

2 comments:

gregarious monk said...

I have much the same opinion, about the "fiddliness" and advance planning. I played 3e for a few years because it's what was on the table, but I've always enjoyed the older, simpler (D&D) fantasy rules more.

Some of my friends swore that 3e "fixed" D&D, but I had a hell of a lot more fun playing our old houseruled AD&D games.

I ran some of them through a few sessions of S&S WB last year and they were amazed at how much fun it was considering the five minutes they spent creating characters.

Filcha said...

Interesting...

I'm, an old timer too and I LOVED 3.0 and 3.5. Still play mainly 3.5.

However another friend who has played with me from (almost) the beginning likes 1 & 2. He is a story teller and likes the extra freedom 1&2 give him while I find it not well defined enough. I like the improved consistency and clarity of the 3/3.5 rules (in general, there are exceptions of course).

I agree with your friend who thinks 3/3/5 'fixed' D&D. my friend would agree with you.

And I LOVE the fiddliness of charcter generation but I don;t really find that you need to plan ahead that much... On only a few occasionas do we pick feats/skills for a later prestige class. I like that there can be different types of Rogues, Fighters, eetc. My rogue may have a vastly different skill set to a previous rogue. This was much less the case in 1 & 2.

I did try 4E. I didn't mind it as a game but it was a different game. We've not played it since. I remember buying the book, looking through it and NOT getting excited. that about sums 4E up for me.

Anyway, enough of my ramblings.