So in
PlzBreakMyCampaign's thread on 5th Edition, a few posts veered into unrelated territory. I decided to make a new thread for it in case there's still interest.
As I was rather involved in the conversation, I'll repost relevant quotes along with my responses (which are not in quotes).
I feel like I'm going to repeat this till the day I die. How is this a 3E thing? Is there really some story out there in the world that gamers only became a hidebound fractious lot willing to argue till the wee hours over a minor rules thing b/c of 3E D&D?
Yes. There's a viewpoint that 3E D&D promoted player empowerment at the expense of the DM by codifying more and more things into rules.
There's also the fact that Frank Trollman was a big name in 3.X circles for a time, and he and many folks the Gaming Den had an annoying tendency to deride even light DM Fiat as tyrannical or "Magical Tea Party" and start flame wars on other forums.
5E and its "natural language" is viewed as a return to leaving more things up to DM Fiat when the rules are unclear. Which is why it's so appealing to the OSR.
On another level, I find it amusing that 5th Edition, which has a lot of 3Eisms, was successfully sold to many OSR gamers.
Personally, 5th hasn't really grabbed me for several reasons:
One is the free Basic rules packet didn't have anything substantially unique to draw me to it that other Editions and retroclones can't provide me.
Second is the fact that buying the 3 corebooks will set me back $90, and I don't want to spend that much money on a game I'm not as keen to try out.
Thirdly is the fact that for quite some time Mearls and co. ignored complaints about two design consultants who said and done really nasty things to other people who didn't deserve it, including several peole who I like and respect, so I can't play 5E without feeling uncomfortable about this.
Fourth is the fact that the Edition not greatly designed in places, like a return to unbalanced martial/caster divides that 4th tried to go away from.
Fifth is the lack of interest so far in non-Forgotten Realms settings.
Sixth is a fanbase who gets really teed off when you get rapid-shooting crossbowmen or warlords or other cool non-magic things.
Yes, I realize that the PF fandom mirrors the last point of contention in places, but at least they have Path of War.
I'll certainly believe that people think this way. I'm in no position and not nearly as plugged into RPG culture to really dispute it. However, it's incredibly untrue. There were long, vehement debates about every picayune issue you can imagine in previous editions of D&D. Just crack open any old issue of Dragon Magazine and you'll see extensive debates about the relative merits of scimitars vs. longswords and how this spell works or interacts with that spell or magic item.
D&D has never been particularly free-form. I can't really remember any statement in an older iteration of it about DM fiat or empowerment that does not have a nearly identical parallel in 3E. In other words, there was no sense or statement to the effect of "you, DM, are the lord and master of all you survey, and you should feel free to run roughshod over your players with the rules at your whim." No more so than was contained in 3E, at least, basically the Rule 0 type of thing.
And, I don't think it would have mattered one way or the other. Just imagine if there were. Would that make you feel any better about a DM that made what you perceived as systematically mistaken, arbitrary, and contrary to the rules as written game rulings?
EDIT: it's possible that these observations have gotten lost in either nostalgia or just b/c many fans did not participate in or witness those earlier brawls. Whereas they can see, say, long-winded sharp debates regarding later editions.
And, I don't think it would have mattered one way or the other. Just imagine if there were. Would that make you feel any better about a DM that made what you perceived as systematically mistaken, arbitrary, and contrary to the rules as written game rulings?
EDIT: it's possible that these observations have gotten lost in either nostalgia or just b/c many fans did not participate in or witness those earlier brawls. Whereas they can see, say, long-winded sharp debates regarding later editions.
That is definitely a factor. In regards to OSR folks, one of their biggest proponents, James Maliszewski of Grognardia blog, actually only played old-school D&D relatively recently, and although he did a good job of researching the hobby's history, he did have some personal biases. Like a negative viewpoint on Dragonlance on how it marked the end of a golden age of dungeon-crawling goodness when at the time the adventure series was competing with Forgotten Realms in sales figures.
There's a similar strain of thought, where certain things within OSR get popularized to the point that where "authentic old-school" ends and "personal preferences" begins can be hard to tell by a newcomer, or be contradictory at times. For example, I don't recall as many early AD&D modules containing Weird Fantasy Body Horror tropes (see Lamentations of the Flame Princess and Teratic Tome for popular OSR stuff). Or the fact that many OSR folks actively shy away from the complicated rulesets of 1st and 2nd Edition AD&D and stick with Basic D&D. On another note, they tend towards the lower level of the power spectrum, with hardly any support for adventures and campaigns beyond 9th level. Dreams of Ruin got attention by selling itself as a high-level apocalyptic horror scenario of a growing sentient forest of malign intentions.
(minor tangent, though connected ...)
Anybody have an idea about how big the Retroclone market is ??
Sales and/or $$ of say 1e 2e and similars.
Depends on whether you count Pathfinder as a retroclone or not. A thing to keep in mind, however, is that OSR focuses heavily on Original and Basic D&D, with scant support for AD&D. There's a growing movement of "O5R" of folks creating 5th Edition adventures with old-school sensibilities or dual-statted, but as of now there's not a lot of them out yet.
It's not Official D&D big, or Pathfinder fandom big, but in terms of sales figures and sheer product it's a pretty good size. There are about 1,500 OSR/retroclone products on OneBookShelf (Drive-Thru RPG/RPGNow), which is nearly double the amount for Mutants & Masterminds (about 800), less than Pathfinder (about 5,000), and a lot more than FATE (344) or Apocalypse World engines (343).
Several Kickstarters for OSR products have been rather successful, and they congregate heavily on Google Plus, so it's not hard to find an eager market if you tick all the right boxes and do something to set yourself apart from the Low Fantasy Settings and "go into the foreboding ruins" adventure types crowding the marketplace. According to James Raggi (Lamentations of the Flame Princess), his first print run of core rules was 2,000 and sold out. Vornheim, White Star, and Scarlet Heroes are all at least Best Gold Sellers on either DTRPG or RPGNow.
But back on topic, I will say one thing:I'm actually interested in seeing how O5R types change and accommodate 5th Edition mechanics and tropes to fit their desired implied settings, if at all. On a surface level examination, I don't think that a drow blade pact warlock would mesh well with an LotFP-like setting. But if they're someone whose magic is Lovecraft-level dangerous to their soul, then that can totally work as an adequate explanation for why they're an adventurer seeking out forlorn realms and arcane lore in the first place.
Danka.
That Grognadia guy comes to his grog via a rather strange route.
Almost like Star Lord discovering Ain't No Mountain High.
Some of the 1e stuff, has no class features at all.
And should be ~easy "grog-proof" conversions.
