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[Tiberious Thessalonia]

I dunno, I quite liked 4th ed.  It was certaintly easier to set up and run a game with it than it was in 3.5, 3.0, and 2nd, and my friends and I had a lot of fun actually playing it.

I've heard they are going back to Vancian casting and Wizard Supremacy, which I do NOT like.

[Wanoah]

I never see anyone else saying this, so maybe I'm alone in this opinion: I preferred the basic D&D to AD&D. Maybe this is misty-eyed, but I thought that AD&D was for people that wanted to argue over overcomplicated rules all evening while; the basic set had the emphasis on jumping right in and (role)playing, with the DM making common sense judgement calls on things not covered by the rules.

[Tiberious Thessalonia]

TBF, the basic D&D game also had elves as a class.

[Safai]

(e; basically everything i know about d&d comes from baldurs gate :U)

[Saede Riordan]

any of you familiar with the Fate system? I rather like it for how flexible it is. The DM can basically modify it fairly easily for pretty much any setting.

[Ulphus]

any of you familiar with the Fate system? I rather like it for how flexible it is. The DM can basically modify it fairly easily for pretty much any setting.

I've played several campaigns of it (or variants), stretching over several years of weekly games. I do like it, but basically it's too rules heavy. In the end, people I know who are happy to play rules light want to play rules light, and most player characters still didn't have their skill tree, or sometimes all their traits, sorted out a year after the campaign started, and that was with a base of 4 traits and a tier 3 skill pyramid, when the actual game rules suggest up to 10 traits and a 5 tier skill pyramid.

I've never seen it done actually figuring out the numbers when you roll the dice according to the rules (Although I tried it once as GM, the players never really cottoned on). The character generation gives a character impression, and the fudge dice tell you whether you're wildly successful, stupendously fail, or somewhere in the middle, and the GM/Players narrate from there.

If you're happy with that, then it's fantastic. If you're not, then it's not.

[Graanvlokkie]

I never see anyone else saying this, so maybe I'm alone in this opinion: I preferred the basic D&D to AD&D. Maybe this is misty-eyed, but I thought that AD&D was for people that wanted to argue over overcomplicated rules all evening while; the basic set had the emphasis on jumping right in and (role)playing, with the DM making common sense judgement calls on things not covered by the rules.

I have never played basic, but my feelings with everything from 2nd ed onwards is that the rules got more strict and more tactical, taking away a lot of DM discretion. I found that roleplaying under each system got progressively more difficult as the combat systems got much more tactical.

Some people enjoy the tactical, and balanced,  combat system in 4th ed. I don't think that I did. I hate tabletop roleplaying with a grid and figurines. For tactical combat I play Warhammer 40K! Playing 4th ed without a grid was next to impossible, but our group managed quite well.

The reason my group loved the White Wolf RP games was the roleplaying flexibility. Once we discovered the d10 system we quickly discarded the d20 system and only had brief encounters with 4th ed when it was first released.

DnD next seems like a step backwards from the tactical system in 4th ed, more towards what is was like under 3.5, with optional modules to add the tactical layer on for those who want it.

[Natalcya Katla]

Quite a lot yes.

However and since I am far from an expert in tabletop games, I still find some games that have extensive rules actually making sense and pushing in the direction of realism and immersion, rules that have an actual meaning and that are not just here for the sake of being obnoxious to the players, can be very interesting.

Then it is always to the GM to keep what is good and triage everything to make it more enjoyable and keep his players immersed instead of spending time with shitloads of dices and math.

Oh, definitely. Rules-heavy games can be just as fun as rules-light ones, as long as those rules support the general feel you're aiming for, and don't get in the way of immersion.

Table-top RPGs have been my primary hobby for the past twenty years. I've played a contraptionton of different games, and enjoyed most of them. Sometimes I'm in the mood for a dungeon crawl, in which case I can have a blast playing some shape and form of D&D (including Pathfinder, which I agree with Graelyn is an excellent stepping-stone up from 3.5). Sometimes I'm in the mood for dark modern fantasy drama, in which case the various WoD games are excellent places to turn. GURPS, Ars Magica, 7th Sea, Blue Planet, Deadlands, WHFRP (earlier editions, oh, and the new WH40K RPGs too), Rolemaster (incl. MERP), Earthdawn, FADE (playing in a forum game using that system right now, actually), Shadowrun, Cyberpunk 2020 (which needed better armor rules and a completely different cyber-tolerance system, but hey), Call of Ctulhu (as long as the focus is on RP and not on puzzles, which I thoroughly detest in RPGs), Mutant Chronicles, and several other games and systems too obscure to name. I've played all of them, I've enjoyed most of them, and they all have a different feel, created by the setting, the rules and most importantly the kind of characters and drama that thrive within them. Incidentally, I'm of the opinion that the best game to ever come out of the TSR/WotC camp (and I've enjoyed D&D in its various incarnations and settings from Basic up to 3.5 and on to Pathfinder, which is still D&D in all but name) was Alternity.

And sometimes - quite often, in fact, I play EVE, after all - I'm in the mood to play something that has the feel of a computer RPG to it. But in those cases, I just play a computer game.

[lallara zhuul]

For a lark, my brother and I, we dug out the old D&D stuff.

We decided to go hardcore, no fudging of the dice, just roll the char, make it and head to the adventure that is in the DMs handbook.

First off there is a pile of rocks on the left side of the road there, you examine them and a insectoid beast with eight tentacles that paralyze you comes at you.

Eight characters later we had killed that fucker.

Then came the courtyard of the 'fortress' that we were investigating.

There was six kobolds with bows lying in wait there.(Those that have played Baldurs Gate know how lethal these fuckers are.)

Fifteen characters later we got the last of those bastards.

By now any character we made was completely pimped out with the loot that came from the previous adventurers so things were a tad easier. Magic was not an issue, there was none in the first level for clerics, one magic missile for a magic user was pretty much pointless. Hitting people was an issue, since the chars were done by 3d6 and the stats were not rearranged for character class, so it was a bit of a... challenge.

All in all we spent about two hours playing D&D and we breezed through that first dungeon and we breezed through about thirty characters in total, to kill about a dozen kobolds and a hobgoblin and the fucking tentacle beast.

I started my RPG 'career' with D&D, fought through the Castle Caldwell and few of the old module adventures. Proceeded to create a kingdom and had some epic times.

We played some AD&D at some point, but it never really caught on. The whole system was a bit abusable, I had really bad luck with getting HPs at levelling so I had a level 8 fighter with 28 hit points, but he was pimped out in damage dealing which pretty much meant that he could kill just about anything in one round, if he won the initiative.

The third edition was actually very good and balanced compared to its predecessors, with its flaws.

With a melee character you can pretty much keep your AC at 20+ your level at all times. Which means that nothing but magic and traps can touch you during an adventure (since the monsters are around your level) only thing that can kill you is traveling overland and the random encounters that come along.
Your damage dealing with a melee class is capped really fast.
It is the spellcasters and rogues that will be doing the damage as you progress. Which is a bit meh.
A rogue with a blinking ring has a 20% chance to shoot its arrow into oblivion, but he will be able to sneak attack on every attack. Throw on top of that all elemental damage types on the bow and they will be out damaging even the greatest spellcaster soon enough.
Don't get me started on clerics, what kind of battle monsters they turn into at the later levels is fucking scary.

4th edition, I've played WoW, don't want to play it with my mates as an RPG.

I hope the new edition will bring back the good times that was had with 3rd and 3.5, but I doubt it.

[Natalcya Katla]

For a lark, my brother and I, we dug out the old D&D stuff.

We decided to go hardcore, no fudging of the dice, just roll the char, make it and head to the adventure that is in the DMs handbook.

First off there is a pile of rocks on the left side of the road there, you examine them and a insectoid beast with eight tentacles that paralyze you comes at you.

Eight characters later we had killed that fucker.

Then came the courtyard of the 'fortress' that we were investigating.

There was six kobolds with bows lying in wait there.(Those that have played Baldurs Gate know how lethal these fuckers are.)

Fifteen characters later we got the last of those bastards.

Oh the memories. That adventure was the first one I ever ran (my debut into RPGs was as a DM, not as a player). And yeah, it was hardcore. No fudging dice, write the stats down in the order rolled, the works.

They had to start over with every party wipe, so there were no previous characters to loot. And they didn't get past the carrion crawler until one of them decided to play as a Mage, and selected the Sleep spell as his single spell for the day.

That took care of the carrion crawler, and they went happily on to get slaughtered by the kobolds.

So all three of them rolled up mages next, and loaded up with Sleep spells. The first spell put the carrion crawler to sleep. The next one took care of the kobolds. Then they went into the fortress proper, where the third mage tried to cast Sleep on the zombie that greeted them inside.

After that, they all played elves.