Monte's 3.5 Review

[Azrai]

The 3.5 Edition is out, the first reflections and reviews are around.

Take a look at

http://www.montecook.com/review.html

This is really frightening and depressing. So far I was convinced that the change of game mechanics make sense. Now I'am not so shure about it.

Especially the comment:
"Even before 3.0 went to the printer, the business team overseeing D&D was talking about 3.5....." is depressing....

Maybe we should already plan the 4. Edition Birthright......

[Raesene Andu]

The only thing that shocks me about 3.5 is the fact that WotC actually puts on the cover that it they are version 3.5 of the rulebooks, rather than just leave it as core rulebooks. Everything else I either predicted or assumed they would do.

I'm beginning to learn that when it comes to predicting the future you find the most unbelievable, unlikely rumour and focus on that one as it usually turns out to be true...

[Ariadne]

Originally posted by Azrai@Jul 13 2003, 02:32 PM
The 3.5 Edition is out, the first reflections and reviews are around.

Especially the comment:
"Even before 3.0 went to the printer, the business team overseeing D&D was talking about 3.5....." is depressing....

Maybe we should already plan the 4. Edition Birthright......
If you ask me, we should NOT buy the 3.5 Edition, but wait till the 4.0. Three years are gone very quickly...

[Lysander]

Which is one of the reasons (other than the now-inactive gaming group I'm in still uses it) I've stayed with a modified version of 2e/S&P.... :lol:

[Magian]

lready plan the 4. Edition Birthright...... [/QUOTE]

> If you ask me, we should NOT buy the 3.5 Edition, but wait till the 4.0.

>Three years are gone very > > quickly...





I am glad that I made the choice to not invest anything in 3.0 and will most

likely not invest anything in 3.5 either. It is obvious that these books

they are "re-selling" is a marketing tactic to make sales. Sure that is

what a business is about, they need a profit in order to sustain their

business and make some progress. However, as an owner of all the previous

D&D products prior to 3.0 (OK there is a handful of things out there that I

don`t have yet) I would say that my purchase power has been lost under the

profit margin for WoTC because of my mistrust of how they are handling their

sales strategy. The goal seems to be more of a money thing than for lucky

group of gamers employed by a company to write creatively and make new ideas

come to life. A counter argument could go that for every older gamer lost

two or three newer gamers have been gained with the new marketing. OK but

for how long? Obviously the plans they had have not panned out so they are

stepping up production of new "essential" products since sales are down. My

interest is still here but those 2-3 new players are probably off in college

now and consider D&D only as a childhood game they will never play again.

Losing a loyal fan base for a larger group of buyers always runs the risk of

fizziling out due to short interest. They played the its new thing already,

now they are recycling it again and I think it will have the same results as

3.0 did regarding longevity of sales and it may not even be so effective.



I would like to disagree with Monte Cook`s review on one point that he made.

In the end he made an appeal to loyalty to the D&D game itself. I don`t

think a D&D player need buy poor quality product made by poor choices in the

admin department of WoTC simply because we need to support D&D. If there is

no market for D&D even with the marketing strategies employed to sell the

books, and this will cause the death of the game from sales, then let it

die. There are plenty of old D&D products out there that are useful for a

D&D game and there are even more games that are out there with new ideas and

can fuel the desire to explore new things for gamers. There will mostl

likely always be a market for gaming, just because it does not attract big

marketeers like Ted Turner for profits margin does not mean we need blindly

fill his pockets just to keep the company alive to produce more poor quality

books.



BTW, by poor quality I don`t mean the art and material of the 3.0 books,

they are wonderful to the point of extraordinary, I am refering to content.

The strategy for D&D has always been adventure, and sure that is great for

beginning players but it gets old as a gamer gets older. They should have

developed Birthright to allow for a more dynamic gaming system for players

interested in more than just playing the adventurer role. Since they refuse

to change this adventure-centric strategy I think they will never truly

evolve their games to the level of sales they would like.



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[spehar]

I just spent $60 buying three books I'll use once a week, at least. Lets say these books last me 3 years, until 4.0 is released. For $60 I'll use the books approxamately 150 times wasting roughly up to 1000 hours I should be using to study mathematics and physics. What else could I do for so long that I enjoy for so little cost? Not much.

Sure 3.5 has problems, it has a lot of problems; on the order of 100 errata and it's been out only a couple of days. 3.5 is a much better system then 3.0, and 3.0 blew 2nd Edition away. So I'd go buy the 3.5 books, convert your favorite character over with your favorite conversion manual and enjoy Birthright in a whole new way if I were you ;)

[Raesene Andu]

As I see it, 3.5 is primarily of use to those who buy a lot of D&D material, or use material from Dungeon and Dragon. If, like me, you create most of your own gaming material, then you probably shouldn't buy it. I know I won't be, at least not yet.

[Magian]

lems, it has a lot of problems; on the order of 100

>errata and it`s been out only a couple of days. 3.5 is a much better system

>then 3.0, and 3.0 blew 2nd Edition away. So I`d go buy the 3.5 books,

>convert your favorite character over with your favorite conversion manual

>and enjoy Birthright in a whole new way if I were you ;)

>

>



Ah...no thanks.



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[Green Knight]

on`t want to spend any money on 3.5, just dowload

the SRD v3.5. WotC even improved the formating and included propper

tables this time. Not too shabby for a free download ;-)



Cheers

Bjørn

[ConjurerDragon]

br />


>> Sure 3.5 has problems, it has a lot of problems; on the order of 100

>> errata and it`s been out only a couple of days. 3.5 is a much better

>> system

>> then 3.0, and 3.0 blew 2nd Edition away. So I`d go buy the 3.5 books,

>> convert your favorite character over with your favorite conversion

>> manual

>> and enjoy Birthright in a whole new way if I were you ;)

>>

>>

>>

>

>

> Ah...no thanks.



Perhaps when a revised version with the errors corrected would be

published in a year or so, then

I would purchase 3.5.

bye

Michael

[Birthright-L]

dition by then silly gamer. ;-)



j/k ya. :-)





Tony





----Original Message Follows----

From: Michael Romes <Archmage@T-ONLINE.DE>





Perhaps when a revised version with the errors corrected would be

published in a year or so, then

I would purchase 3.5.

bye

Michael



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[Osprey]

The goal seems to be more of a money thing than for lucky
group of gamers employed by a company to write creatively and make new ideas come to life.

TSR is engulfed by WOTC, who is then swallowed by Hasbro...

At each step, the pressure for profit grows, and the wallets of loyal fans suffer. :(

Why are WOTC super secretive about putting out revised material? So they can sell off as many of the 3.0 copies still on shelves as is possible. But wouldn&#39;t you be pissed if you went out and bought the three 3.0 core rulebooks, only to have 3.5 come out a week later?

I&#39;ve been through all of this before. Having started roleplaying D&D about 20 years ago, I ended up by most of the hardcover AD&D books (TSR, 1st ed.). Then they came out with 2nd edition - which was really just a prettier, more kid-friendly version of 1st edition, and had the benefit of compiling a lot of the better stuff from supplements into core rulebooks.

Well, having invested hundreds of dollars in 1st edition, I refused to buy any 2nd edition books. And honestly, there were very few rule conflicts or necessary conversions, so it wasn&#39;t a problem. I did buy a few campaign sets (Birthright and Dark Sun), but that had nothing to do with the edition.

However, 3rd edition represented a giant step forward in revamping the game mechanics and making a far more modular RPG system. Having dropped D&D altogether for a good 8+ years in favor of more sophisticated games, 3e actually impressed me so much that I decided to get back into D&D again&#33; I think that says a lot for the improvements that 3rd Ed represents. Sure, it has some problems (like all rangers having 2-weapon fighting and no archery), and I am glad that 3.5 was geared towards addressing some of these issues.

But is it worth &#036;90+ to get the core rulebooks again? Not likely. The things I didn&#39;t like I&#39;ve already changed in my own games, and some of them are so common-sensical that I can convince almost any reasonable DM to adopt such changes.

But to be fair, I haven&#39;t been able to go through the 3.5 books in great detail, so I&#39;ll refrain from making final judgements. However, echoes of the 1st to 2nd edition move keep haunting me, and I find myself a bit grudging...

Osprey