Poll: D&D

[ExileNZ]

Technically I don't actually play right now, but that's because most of my RPG friends are quite literally at the other end of the world. I have found a group in my city though and every now and then I'm tempted to join them. But first things first - I need to suss out a job for next year. Then I'll play.

 

[ExileNZ]

When I get the chance, yes.

Started playing with the Basic Set (1981 Red Box) back in ... oh, I guess it would have been late 1981, I believe.

Moved on to AD&D , then 2nd Ed. then 3rd.

4th Ed. isn't D&D. It's a miniatures combat game into which you can insert RPG element if you like. (WoW meets HeroQuest.)

~Cheers!

7

I hear that from a lot of people about 4th Ed. Someone else (who I used to game with regularly) said it was more like pick-a-path d20. Never played 4E myself, I'm more of a 3.5 man, but I've also done the generational shift from first to third. Good times...

The less said about THAC0 the better, but still, good times...

 

[GrinningManiac]

I'm intruiged by it

Turns out my dad used to play it when he was a lad, which is how he knew about Warhammer and introduced me to it.

My Dad's Teh Cooolz

 

[OmegaXzors]

I have the 3.0 D&D books because a friend of mine gave them to me. I just looked at the cool pictures in the Monster Manual. I went to "D&D parties" with friends before. They were boring as fuck. Seriously, hand me a controller.

Imagination is for the artists and book readers.

 

[Nocta-Aeterna]

Yes, I've only started playing a few months back and it also happens to be the first time for our DM as a DM.

We're currently playing a 4th edition prefab campaign. Though it involves some railroading, it's a nice way to ease into the game.

 

[QuickDEMOL1SHER]

Yes, but mostly just Campfire. Oh, I also LOVE LARPing.

 

[katsabas]

OOOh yeah, 3.5 minis. They jumped the shark with 4. I mean come on. How can you compare a stat card that looks like it originated from the middle ages and really gives a mythical feel

with something that looks like it was pulled from Bladerunner?

There is less text on the cards, the minis look like shit and the rules got unnecessarily complicated. Area effects? Champion abilities instead of commanders? The factions also suck. Boarderlands? Wild? I thought I was playing D&D, not Risk. The only positive thing, EVER, to come out of the 4th edition of minis, is this guy:

for whom I will probably make a 3.5 stat card of my own.

Waiting on my Mounted Paladin, Vlaakith and Couatl.
Oh and my Marut. 32 AC? Get ready to miss.

 

[Tom Phoenix]

I have tried playing it online and it can be good fun at times. The problem is that very often, Dungeon Masters tend to underestimate the amount of work a single campaign requires. For that reason, a lot of the games end up either cancelled or outright abandoned.

Also, if you arrive late in a editions lifecycle, you will generally have trouble finding games that do not include heaps of additional material. This guy wants to play in the Forgotten Realms setting, that guy wants to be a class from the Monster Manual III, that girl wants to include Psionic powers etc. Overall, it is a bit overwhelming.

Of course, that is assuming you managed to actually choose an edition. Since there has always been a group that decried any changes made by every new edition, you preety much have active communities for every single edition of the game. And naturally, players will defend their editions with an almost religious fervour and will mark any new editions as the devil.

It also doesn't help that a lot of the books are insanely expensive (but then again, all books are) and that it is hard to make sense of SRD's.

In spite of this, though, I might again give it a try sometime later since I can see the appeal. But for now, I pace.

 

[Sigel]

Twice a week. Sundays and Wednesdays, but with different groups. Both are using 4th edition, but the Sunday game rotates between our 10th(I play a fighter warforged) level characters in a Forgotten Realms setting and our 7th level(I play a warden warforged) characters in a home brewed world. Wednesday games involves 1st level characters in a package adventure. I play a barbarian in that one.

 

[imaloony]

I've personally only played two different styles of D&D. AD&D, and a little bit of 3.5. My friends tend to spite 3.5, and I can easily see why. Feats aren't done all too well (Especially since Monkey's Grip is totally broken) confirming crits is a pain in the ass, bards suddenly because totally suck, and there were a few other slightly annoying things here and there.
I've had great fun playing AD&D though.

Our funniest moments involve one person who doesn't game with us anymore, let's call him "Bob". Bob FAILS at role playing. I'll give you one situation he was in, and maybe I'll post the others.

This one, my friends and I call "Two Gold, One Cup".
Essentially we started a game in a bar. Of course, like 80% of the party was like "I sit in a dark corner, slowly sipping down beer while looking like a hardass"
Bob, however, decided to sit at the bar itself, drinking a cup of water he brought in. Fair enough.
So, over comes this barmaid with a huge... personality. Anyways, she talks to him and somehow convinces him to pay two gold for the glass of water he brought into the bar himself. The DM mentions this to him, explaining what happened and why he was an idiot, so Bob decides to try to pickpocket his gold back.
What Bob doesn't know is that the barmaid placed the gold in her... "Personality". Now, Bob could have pulled this off if he had rolled high enough. Bumped into her, slip it away, apologize, leave. He, however, does not.
He is left standing in this bar with his hand right in the middle of this barmaid's rack. The bartender (The barmaids father) quickly throws Bob to the ground and starts wailing on him.
Sick of watching this anymore, one of our guys gives the bartender 5 gold to piss off, and then proceeds to throw Bob through a window of the bar for being so goddamn stupid.



I've played two other forms of role play games too, one was a system my friend created, and another is a system a group of friends an I are currently creating, neither of which I'm at liberty to talk about.

 

[bam13302]

YES

 

[Jfswift]

I've played it up to ver 3.5 (haven't tried four yet) as well as most white wolf games, battletech/mechwarrior and shadowrun 2nd ed.

 

[Acaroid]

I ama big fan of 4th ed, it really is alo tmore balanced, no class is really useless and iut is great to play against powergamers! I hate powergamers so much >.<

If you need to switch rulesets to get rid of powergamers, they you've got a poor GM. A good GM can always bring about the Wrath of God in a believable manner ingame, then simply quip offgame that 'powergaming makes Solar, the servant of overgod, angry'.

A good GM quickly can get rid off, or cause trouble for powergamers that go over the line.

You see, rules go both ways. And those rules and 'legal loopholes' that they exploit can be easily turned against them.

Personally, I feel the 4th edition to have taken too much from MMOs. It may very well be better suited for D&D / RPG beginners, but for a RPG veteran with 15+ years of DMing and playing various games, it is too simple. Perhaps later addons will change this, but for now 3.5 is the only D&D I will play.

Ive played 3.5, 3 and ADnD, also played promethean (WoD) and a few others.

A power gamer is always going to be a power gamer, no matter what the GM does. 4th ed has plugged the loop holes and made a well rounded balanced combat system, which 3.5 just doesn't have. we have a group of 5 playing atm and all of us have had a decent amount of RPG experience (we did originally have 2 newbies playing, but their life got in the way so dropped out), 2 of which have 15+ years experience as you do, and we all enjoy the system just as much as any of the systems.

The thing I don't understand is how people keep comparing it to an MMOs. I hear this thrown around a lot and for the life of me cant understand why they say that. The combat system, because the miniatures are needed, leads to less of a story telling type of fighting, and more of strat side of playing (Yes I know other RPGs have it, but this just has more of it). Where you position and move is very important and adds so much more to the game. It also adds more interesting combat in the fact melee classes now do more than "basic attack", each class as all sorts of unique and interesting powers, each has its place. I guess in someway it is a bit mmoish, the fact that each class as "powers" but other than that I don't see how. in 4th edition you have so many different powers, feats, encounter powers to pick from, it really lets you customise your character really well. Seriously how boring is it to basic attack for 20 levels of gaming :|
Seriously I love just making characters for 4th editions... it is crazy how many I have, because they are all so different XD Im not sure about you but im sick of the tables of pre-set things. you really get no choice in 3.5

Some people say the "Healing" system, but when you play it, it becomes obvious that that comment makes little sense.

But really, you know the main thing I have found in my opinion, it doesn't matter at all what system you use, 3.5, 4th, 1st, because they are just really combat systems, the real joy of the game is the story telling and character interaction. As long as the system doesn't get in the way of good story telling then there is nothing wrong at all with the system.

But really, you should join a group of 4th ed players (if you haven't) and you will find it is just as fun as any other form of RPG, it is different, I enjoy it, you might not, it is all personal tastes. Honestly, I heard the same sort of comments coming from people when 3.5 came out. It is to simple la de da de da, made for power gamers etc etc.

To me, the MMOish comes from the 'encounter' type system, as well as the figurine side of things. I've always preferred story-orientation.

I am not saying that 4th ed is bad. Just that as an experienced gamer (read into that whatever you wish), 4th ed doesn't hit me. Sure, they plugged holes in game mechanics and balance, but with house rules that has never been a problem for me or my usual group of gamers. Balanced characters are just as easy to create the D&D 3.5, in my humble opinion.

Perhaps part of this is because core 3.5 has been around for so long, we've made it into a game that we like, discarding idiotic rules, most of the overpowered stuff, and we've always had a good GM to balance things out. None of us have been afraid to say 'thats BS!' if we feel a powergamer is taking things too far, and the GM at the time usually puts his foot down.

We've also played several epic levels in natural progression, beginning form lvl 1 or 2 and continuing until along the lines of lvl 25-26. And let me tell you, even a 'basic' fighter is a force to be reckoned with, if you simply play your character correctly and have a proper party to act as backup. Same for thieves, our (nerfed) mages and priests etc.

Indeed, RPGs are about having fun. For me, 4th ed is not fun. Too player friendly at parts, too simplistic in others, what the heck happened to my Thief/Cleric of Talos, 'wait, healing works like what?' etc. It may change with time, if we give it a few more go's or expansions come out to make it more interesting or whatnot. But at the moment, we are having much fun with Blossoms Are Falling, Mage: The Awakening and Exalted.

I guess ive just played 1 to many RPG's with power gamers, it is especially bad when the GM is the worst power gamer of the lot. You cant always count on having a decent GM when playing these games and to expect that every DM is going to be like that is a bit absurd.

Close combat classes of course are a force to be reckoned with in 3.5, i know that. What i was saying is that they tend to be really boring to play in terms of the actual fighting, as it is all just a case of "I hit it with my axe, roll" where 4th ed it adds so many powers to each class, with so many choices to pick from, it is like they made each class as interesting to play as a magic class in previous editions.

Im not sure what you mean my "encounter" system, encounters work just the same as 3.5 as in 4th ed. You play along, bad guy appears, you beat the crap out of them :| Yeah you have "encounter" powers, but you don't have to use them only in encounters, they work on the rule of thumb of an encounter is 5 minutes, so your power can be used every 5 minutes. It is no different to a wizards powers in 3.5 really. Yeah that comment left me a little confused.

I guess i've played other miniature based RPG systems (best example is battletech RPG), so using figures when playing isn't that new to me and the fact they have added so many new and interesting combat elements because of this change, I tend to like it a lot.

as for your Thief/Cleric, it depends on what you want to do with your class. You can multi-class or you can hybrid class. Depends on what you want out of it, the multiclass is just a feat you can take to basically take one of the starting powers of the other class, but hybrid classing is where you literally morph the two classes together, giving you bits from both. We have a Bardbarian (bard/barbarian) in the current game we are playing LOL, he is so damn funny.

But really if you like 3.5 more than 4th, that is your choice, I don't see how the system could stop you from having fun, our group consists of 6 players, 4 of which have been playing since 2nd Ed (one of them has been playing from 1st, that guy has a crazy knowledge of monsters and lores of settings, we are playing atm a campaign that he ran in 2nd ed and converted it to 4th) and all of them basically say the same thing, you have to play 4th ed to get a feel and understanding of what it is like, as it is quiet a bit different from the previous editions you don't appreciate a lot of the changes by reading them in the rules, you have to play them, but once you start playing it, it has a lot of elements in it that are better, but it all comes down to taste.