(RPG) Examining the Rose Colored Glasses
Ever since I first got into MtG, I picture Sunglasses of Urza when someone mentions rose glasses.
Well, with recent reading making me think of Dungeons and Dragons, I've been thinking back. Third Edition (or probably the 3.5 revision if getting technical) stands as my favorite to date, but I wouldn't call it perfect. I've looked back at some of the defining characteristics of AD&D and AD&D 2nd Edition. And, as I said there, I didn't much use the first edition rules as rules so much as rough guidelines mixed with non-advanced D&D and such.
When 2nd Edition came out, I thought it was pretty great. It consolidated and cleaned up a bunch of previous material. It had a lot of rules deliberately flagged as optional - something I appreciated. I won't say it was perfect, but I don't recall feeling the need to change the rules all that much, and I was comfortable adding classes, races, and other things as campaigns needed. Making a little NPC block took up only a fraction of a page and didn't require a whole lot of research on my part past checking saving throws and double-checking my Thac0 notes or occasional spells. While I made use of proficiencies, a whole lot of miscellaneous actions came down to a little roleplaying, a roll against an attribute, and winging it. And I was fine with that. Against other games I was exposed to in the day, it fared well. GURPS was neat in concept, but too convoluted for my taste. The Palladium system felt like a a spin-off where numbers and power creep went out of control (though I loved those books for ideas and artwork). White Wolf games were too specific to settings I wasn't really interested in.
Then 3E came along and... there was a lot; I liked about it, mostly in how it unified systems that had been all over the place. Task resolution was always a d20, higher being better. Attribute tables were integrated so the stat bonuses weren't different. Experience for advancement was evened out between the classes. There were skills to cover most every action, so I didn't have to shoehorn things in under "uhh...make a Wisdom check." A lot of this felt to me, and still feel to me, like improvement. Of course, it wasn't perfect. The grapple rules were a resounding mess to start. The addition of skills and feats made character creation more complicated. The move to include more tactical positioning rules was not really to my tastes. But overall, it was good in my view. Yet it was a net positive in my book.
4E... 4E... Well, I have to be honest and say my experience with the system remains limited. I've played in only a few 4E games and they didn't run all that long. But when I look over the system, I'm hard pressed to find a change I consider good. In fact, the only one that has come to mind in the last 24 hours is the effort to level things out between the classes with abilities - such that a mage-type can have a "normal" magic attack to fall back on the way a warrior can keep using his sword and other classes can do "neat stuff" at higher levels rather than that being the sole province of magic. Unfortunately, I feel the power system as a whole makes PC/NPC generation too complex. The sections about encounter design may have some benefit, but they struck me as too strict. On the whole, it feels like there is too much CRPG/MMO influence, which makes for a system that would work better if you had a computer to keep track of everything.
So how much am I biased by my experiences playing the games, and where I was in my life at those times? I really don't know. I try to be rational when looking back, and 3E stands out so much to me. It seems to hold up when I consider and critique, but I can't remove all bias.
What was your favorite, and why?
Well, with recent reading making me think of Dungeons and Dragons, I've been thinking back. Third Edition (or probably the 3.5 revision if getting technical) stands as my favorite to date, but I wouldn't call it perfect. I've looked back at some of the defining characteristics of AD&D and AD&D 2nd Edition. And, as I said there, I didn't much use the first edition rules as rules so much as rough guidelines mixed with non-advanced D&D and such.
When 2nd Edition came out, I thought it was pretty great. It consolidated and cleaned up a bunch of previous material. It had a lot of rules deliberately flagged as optional - something I appreciated. I won't say it was perfect, but I don't recall feeling the need to change the rules all that much, and I was comfortable adding classes, races, and other things as campaigns needed. Making a little NPC block took up only a fraction of a page and didn't require a whole lot of research on my part past checking saving throws and double-checking my Thac0 notes or occasional spells. While I made use of proficiencies, a whole lot of miscellaneous actions came down to a little roleplaying, a roll against an attribute, and winging it. And I was fine with that. Against other games I was exposed to in the day, it fared well. GURPS was neat in concept, but too convoluted for my taste. The Palladium system felt like a a spin-off where numbers and power creep went out of control (though I loved those books for ideas and artwork). White Wolf games were too specific to settings I wasn't really interested in.
Then 3E came along and... there was a lot; I liked about it, mostly in how it unified systems that had been all over the place. Task resolution was always a d20, higher being better. Attribute tables were integrated so the stat bonuses weren't different. Experience for advancement was evened out between the classes. There were skills to cover most every action, so I didn't have to shoehorn things in under "uhh...make a Wisdom check." A lot of this felt to me, and still feel to me, like improvement. Of course, it wasn't perfect. The grapple rules were a resounding mess to start. The addition of skills and feats made character creation more complicated. The move to include more tactical positioning rules was not really to my tastes. But overall, it was good in my view. Yet it was a net positive in my book.
4E... 4E... Well, I have to be honest and say my experience with the system remains limited. I've played in only a few 4E games and they didn't run all that long. But when I look over the system, I'm hard pressed to find a change I consider good. In fact, the only one that has come to mind in the last 24 hours is the effort to level things out between the classes with abilities - such that a mage-type can have a "normal" magic attack to fall back on the way a warrior can keep using his sword and other classes can do "neat stuff" at higher levels rather than that being the sole province of magic. Unfortunately, I feel the power system as a whole makes PC/NPC generation too complex. The sections about encounter design may have some benefit, but they struck me as too strict. On the whole, it feels like there is too much CRPG/MMO influence, which makes for a system that would work better if you had a computer to keep track of everything.
So how much am I biased by my experiences playing the games, and where I was in my life at those times? I really don't know. I try to be rational when looking back, and 3E stands out so much to me. It seems to hold up when I consider and critique, but I can't remove all bias.
What was your favorite, and why?
Hmm. I think my favourite was the Red Box set. There are things I'd drag in from other editions, but the clean, simple setting did it for me. Pathfinder's also good, which is effectively 3.5 with some trimming as well. A bit more complex, but that's the trade-off. Note, Monte Cook's left WotC, and is no longer working on 5E, due to 'creative differences' with the higher ups. Also, you've got a markup error.
ReplyDeleteUhh... like old, old, old "red box" D&D Basic edition or the recent "red box" D&D Essentials? I considered weighing Pathfinder, but the simple fact is I've even less experience with it than 4E and couldn't point out more than a couple deviations from 3.5 without serious research.
ReplyDeleteOld, old red-box. And Pathfinder's cleaned up a lot. They removed Dead Levels, and made Sorcerer and Mage more distinct, while adding things to all the Classes which I find I like.
ReplyDeleteNot to pull a One True Scotsman here, but ... man, disguising that D&D Essentials set to look like it was the older edition game was practically blasphemy. I played 4E for a few months, heavily tweaking it to fit my campaign concept. It really doesn't take long to get old. Since there's nothing else to do but fight it's like playing an MMO at the highest levels -- you put together a combat rotation for your character and only do anything new if something goes wrong. Except there's no action element, so very little ever goes wrong.
ReplyDeleteI like 3.x for the ways of 'building' a character for fitting into prestige classes. Taking combinations of skills and feats to become a Master Samurai, or Shadowdancer or Purple Knight, etc, etc. The PRestige classes really honed and defined character archetypes, now instead of just being a druid, you could be a druid/bard Fochlucan Lyrist and do all sorts of combination stuff. I like 4E for the nitty gritty tactics element of movement about. It brings D&D full circle into its miniatures origin with squares and push/pull/slides. Also is the fun of 'building' characters. Selecting the Paragon Paths and then Epic Destinies to find neat spells and abilities to make a character really stand out. What 4E sacrifices is, unfortunately, one of the annoying/best parts of 3.x to me. Skills and skill ranks. I like 4E's simplified list of skills. I hate how little role-play it encourages. I love the depth of 3.x skill sets for use in a variety of situations, I hate how few skill points some classes get or their limited skill selection. I do like that 4E also "balanced" casters versus other classes. Letting everyone have "kewl tricks" at higher level instead of having the clerics, druids and wizards dominate with their array of spells while barbarians and fighters sort of had one or two "good" attacks and then whiffed with the other two or three each turn. Book of Nine Swords was a step into 4E's direction to make those melee guys have a trick at every level, and I do like the casters having some "at-will" spells at low level instead of running out and being forced to shoot a cross bow or flail miserably with a staff or dagger. (Unless you are a cleric. Clerics were decent meaty types in 3.x)
ReplyDeleteThat's an aspect that I thought about more, but only really mentioned in one line or so. Previous editions had casters built around the "glass cannon" concept where they were heavily limited by resources (spell slots) and when those ran dry they were so much less effective than absolutely anyone else with worse attacks, hit points, armor, etc. But at higher levels, their magic could do things that were not only better than non-casters, but extended totally into other areas. They didn't just clear/soften up rooms of bad guys, they could fly over otherwise impenetrable walls, teleport, scry, mind control, polymorph... A high-level caster could do things that made the badass warrior's "I swing my sword five times" positively boring and sometimes even useless. 4E seemed to even that out some in both directions. Non-casters become a bit more "special" and casters become a bit more reliable/less resource dependent. It's a shift in paradigm, though, and I haven't even remotely seen how it really looks at high levels. I didn't really like being "forced" to use miniatures with 3E to track stuff like attacks of opportunity, but once I got into it, it didn't bug me too much. It does make it harder to play on MUCKs, though. >.>
ReplyDeleteSo... wow. Really talking about the old Basic Set rules with levels 1-3 and things like Elf and Dwarf as classes? Dang. I had (maybe even still have) those books, but I don't think I ever actually played that version of the game, honestly. Hmm... Pathfinder did add the bloodlines to sorcerers, right? That was sort of neat. But my experience with that system ended pretty much after making a character, so... yeah...
ReplyDeleteI thought they were re-releasing the old Basic Set as some anniversary stunt ot something when I first saw it. I was a bit out of the loop on that one. Heh. As to your point on 4E... 3E did make some effort to say "hey, we give XP for overcoming challenges, not just murdering everyone in front of you" and the broad skill set allowed the rules to cover a lot of non-combat things. But looking back, combat's always been central to the game. The genre sort of assumes the PCs go and fight evil and that's the majority of it. The earlier editions certainly didn't have much else. It's strange to think about, but... I really must have been just making modified Charisma and Wisdom checks all those times outside combat in 2nd Edition...
ReplyDeleteWe always had a pretty big variety of activities, and a lot of the time we just roleplayed things out. Or we'd roleplay it out and then there'd be a roll with a bonus for good play. It's not so much that 3.5 and earlier had good rules for non-combat activities. It was that they had them at all, and thus gave you something to build on. And spellcasters had a ton of utility stuff to lean on, stuff that was super useful outside of fights. With 4E ... I still ran the same kind of game I always did. Something like three-quarters of the time the rules just flat out did not exist for what my players were trying to do, or an entire encounter would come down to nothing but dice rolling if I didn't bend the rules. A good game master can use any system for anything, but a good game system works with the game master. I felt like 4E was fighting me tooth and nail every step of the way -- it was kind of like an additional player at the table, a pushy jerk who yells "BORRRR-ING" any time five minutes goes by without him taking a combat turn.
ReplyDeleteWell, part of my point there is that I don't recall any non-combat rules in the pre-3E systems either. 2E had (optional) non-weapon proficiencies that covered a handful of things. AD&D... I don't think even had that in the core books, though they got dropped in sometime later.
ReplyDelete