It's not enough to say that 3.5 is D&D just because it's named D&D. The original D&D was a game of archetypes, not skills. It was also rules-lite by design, because the original creators expected each and every referee to adjudicate their own game uniquely.
For the most part, there are three types of fantasy RPGs. Archetype-based, skills-based and hybrid.
The original D&D (in fact, the original RPG) is the best example of a completely archetype-based game. There were two basic characters, the fighting-man and the magic-user. The cleric was a sub-type of the magic-user and the thief didn't even exist until the first supplement. There were no skills involved whatsoever. You rolled to hit, cast a spell or explained exactly to the referee what you were doing instead. Looking for traps? Okay, how? There's no roll to make to simply locate the trap, the player is expected to describe what's transpiring so that the ref can resolve the situation.
Runequest is one of the best examples of a skills-based game. There are no particular archetypes followed, only a list of skills that players buy up for their characters. As they progress through a campaign, characters don't rise in level, but they increase their skills at the players' discretion. I'm not referring to the new Mongoose RQ, but RQ published by Chaosium and later Avalon Hill. Mongoose morphed RQ into a hybrid game. See next, for hybrid games.
The third type of RPG, the hybrid, is a class-based game with heavy skill involvement, and it is best represented by ICE's Rolemaster game. In these games, you often have character classes: warrior, wizard, priest, thief, monk, etc, but you also have a list of skills, and sometimes gifts, feats or abilities, from which to choose. As is often the case in hybrid games, a particular class may purchase some skills at a reduced cost, but other skills may cost a bit more than the norm. The mechanics for this vary from game to game.
Really, 3.5, and likely the upcoming 4.0, has much more in common with hybrids, particularly Rolemaster, than it does with the purely archetypal D&D. The newest editions of the games labeled Dungeons and Dragon possesses both classes and skills, and Rolemaster was one of the first games to popularize this marriage back in the very early '80s. Interestingly, Mr Cook, one of the biggest mover and shakers for D&D 3.0 worked first for ICE (late 80's or early '90s I think?) before ever working for TSR/WoTC.
A good look at the rules for OD&D/AD&D, Runequest and Rolemaster, should be enough show that 3.5 is not Dungeons & Dragons, because it has many, many more points in common with Rolemaster than it does with O/AD&D. Sure, it's Dungeons & Dragons in name, but by rules genealogy, it's got way, way more in common with Rolemaster the D&D.
I agree, that if 4.0 does not deliver what the majority of 3.5 gamers want, and Hasbro wants to keep the 3.5 players and not lose them to Multimedia File Viewing and Clickable Links are available for Registered Members only!! You need to
or
, then they'll have to do some type of reverse engineering on 4.0 and release expensive supplement after expensive supplement to do so. Wait. Now there's a marketing idea.
Home
Pages: 1
Re: DnD 4th (Read 2852 times)
