Dungeons & Dragons Legacy Edition
If it was up to me (and I know it's NOT), I would create an edition of 4th Edition core rulebooks that combined a lot of elements of the past editions. This wouldn't necessarily be a "5th Edition", but it could DEFINATELY buy WotC some time before the pressure was on.
How would I do this?
I would make all of the artwork VERY old school - kind of like what they did with the Red Box. I would also go back and make sure the interior layout of the books were more like 2nd and 3rd Edition. I know it SHOULDN'T matter, but the 3rd Edition book's aesthetic really SHOWED me what this game was about before I read one word. Subtext: parchment paper!
I would also poll as many D&D fans as I could from different versions and find out which Races and Classes were their favorite. I would then take these into consideration when putting them into the PHB. I would try and put in TEN races and TEN classes - boom! I would also include the NINE alignments. BONUS: This would also give WotC an opportunity to put the updated 4e rules back into a CORE book - not just a paperback compendium (which we use HEAVILY at our table - thanks!) I would also do a character sheet that SHOWED all of the old skills, but sub-categorized them under the one skill that they pertained to. Example: sense motive, etc are all under Insight now.
I would then do the same thing with the DMG and MM. Keep the updated 4th Edition mechanics, but make sure that everything else is sort of a "greatest hits". The Legacy DMG would also give you the opportunity to put in the updated Skill Challenge rules.
Giving D&D players of all ages and all editions a say in some of this stuff would be an amazing PR strategy. It would be a way to say, "Look, we're not going back. There's just no way. But, we haven't forgotten you and we still want you to feel welcome to the table in 2011. Just TRY 4th Edition." Because frankly, right now, Wizards is doing nothing to reach back out to the thousands of people who have dropped D&D for Pathfinder. You would think someone would say, "Hey, we need to do something to appeal to all of these old school gamers or we are going to lose them to Paizo FOREVER."
Like I said, this would be a HUGE undertaking to release three new books, but that's all it would be -- three books. WotC would go on as usual after that. Personally, I would pay whatever I had to pay to get my hands on some limited-edition retro junk like this.
How would YOU do it?
I like 4e just fine and don't want to even discuss a 5e or some other modified version of this game. Give me more adventures to play, more campaign settings. There is nothing wrong with 4e, most people enjoy the way it plays.
If people love 1e, 2e, 3e, or 3.5e then they can play those older versions of the game. Plenty of older books from previous editions floating around there if that is what you want. Nothing stopping you.
I spend a lot of time hanging around Dragonsfoot, I play in a B/X campaign and 4th ed has absolutely zero appeal to me. I also don't think anything Wizards could do would bring me "back to the fold" as it were, and with the OSR still going strong through OSIRIC, Labaryth Lord, Basic Fantasy Roleplay, Castles and Crusades, and other retro-clone systems I'm set for life really. Really, unless Wizards were to release a PDF of the Moldvay Redbox and Expert set (because my copies are getting pretty torn up) and some other old OOP books I have no reason to spend any more money on D&D.
Wizards should focus their time, money and effort on drawing new gamers into the fold, not trying to bring back lapsed grognards like myself. A lot of stuff that I like in D&D just plain isn't popular anymore and would do more to drive current players away than anything else. I like stuff like save or die effects, random attribute generation, the quirky sense of 'balance' that existed in pre Wizards editions, and all that sort of stuff. I know that things like that just wouldn't fly in a modern RPG. I'm not saying that my 'version' of D&D is better or worse than 3rd ed, or 4th ed or anything like that, it's just different and I don't think it would be very popular anymore.
Now if you'll excuse me I have some hexcrawling to do.
Dungeons & Dragons Legacy Edition
How would YOU do it?
Not at all.
Why do you think people differentiate between, say, 1e and 2e? The mechanical differences between these editions were rather small copmpared to other edition changes. However you might design your legacy edition, the differences to 1e and 2e would be much bigger than those between 1e and 2e. So why would anyone playing 1e or 2e convert to LE?
When you take ideas from several different editions the result will be rather bland; noone would find his favourite version in it.
Roleplaying gamers tend to be very convinced of their personal tastes and extremely discriminating concering systems.
The whole thing behind this post is that Christopher Perkins said in an interview on my site that Wizards is looking for ways to unite players of all ages and editions. So, I suppose the sub-question to all of you guys might be...
How would you do THAT?
Obviously, a "throwback" edition of the game probably isn't the answer. So, what WOULD you do if you were in charge of creating a community that spanned all ages and editions?
But even beyond prejudice and xenophobia, different editions genuinly have different strengths and apeal to different people. Some want hack and slash, some want roleplaying, some want abstraction, some want simulation.
Probably the only thing you could do, is offer support for older editions. Like if you made a rules compendium/character builder for 1e, 2e, 3e, 3.5. The online tabletop already "supports" multiple editions.
However, I might go for a single hardback book or boxed set which was presented as a sort of Unearthed Arcana toolbox set of ideas that incorporated ways of introducing old-school stuff like no dailies/encounter pwers, vancian casting, save or die, removing healing surges, cursed items etc. and a variety of older cosmologies, player experiences, alumni style articles, and DM tips for getting an old school feel with 4e. I'd especially like it if it came with an updated old adventure classic and some updated oldie monsters, all with old school artwork and some Gygaxian flavoured writing and tables.
I'm not quite sure why WotC chose the massive system changes they did when moving from 3.5 to 4e. 3rd Edition was a WotC-designed and -owned system. After a few years of tweaks, 3.5 wound up as a very balanced system that was well-loved, as evidenced by Paizo's success with their OGL-based system. The classes covered most eventualities, and in retrospect a lot of folks asking for "new core classes" on the old forums were really just asking for more feat or spell support for a specialized version of an existing class.
At the end of the day, the previous edition of the game allowed for more personal excellence, which admittedly could cause some issues if you had a lax DM who let a player use anything and everything from a WotC-published book (and it got even worse if they started adding in third-party stuff...), resulting in fistfulls of d6s (or higher) being rolled on every attack, which was usually a near-guaranteed hit.
4e doesn't allow for as much personal excellence; even with an optimized character, the Dungeon Master usually just compensates with throwing tougher monsters at the party, which skews leveling rate and runs a higher risk of killing non-optimized characters. I remember just before I took a hiatus from the game during the last 4 years of 3.5, I was thinking, "Y'know, it'd be nice to have a campaign where the only book players could use would be the Player's Handbook..."
The people who played and loved 3.5 get their support from Paizo now. The people who play 2nd Edition are content with their books, even though the spines are probably becoming worn at this point (though I'm to understand scanned versions are becoming popular). People still playing 1st Edition... well, to be honest, I don't know of those.
I'd like to think they'd get into 4th Edition, because it honestly isn't all that bad of a system, even if it bears a ridiculous degree of similarity in execution to a certain massively popular MMO. That MMO has its own tabletop RPG, though, so comparisons needn't go further. I don't see a legacy edition working well; the Monk from 3.5 looks nothing like the 4e Monk. I guaran-damn-tee the Psion from Player's Handbook 3 looks nothing like the Psion options in the 3.5 Expanded Psionics Handbook (more's the pity, say I; I don't like psionics being another "flavor" of magic, and never have). Attempting to merge the systems is a nice nod to the older players, but it isn't going to get them to try 4th Edition. They'd come here, try out the Psion or the Monk, kind of frown a little and say "I liked the other one better." Then their shiny new 4th Edition books wind up at a used bookstore for half price, and they return to their well-loved, dog-eared, bookmarked, marked-up, page-number-memorized copies of their preferred edition, and keep on gaming, perhaps a tiny bit saddened that they lost a couple months of progression in their campaign while they tried something new.
Tabletop RPGs are much like computers when it comes to hobbyists: some will just keep upgrading old systems until they can't do what they want anymore, and others will accept that being a hobbyist means that every few years, you just have to scrap the old system entirely and start fresh with a new OS and some new programs. I shamefully remember telling a friend in 1992 who had just gotten 8 MB of RAM for his PC that "You're never going to need that much memory!" Now I'm sitting here on a computer with 4 GB of RAM, and true hobbyists are rocking 32 GB of RAM or more. Hell, my video card alone has 1 GB of dedicated video memory. I'm getting ready to buy a 1 Terabyte hard drive, and my first computer had only 100 MB of hard drive space.
Likewise with D&D: I bought the 1st Edition Player's Handbook for Advanced Dungeons & Dragons in a comic book shop in Tracy, CA that had a used copy on a rack. My friends and I had been playing around with what we called "Dungeons & Dragons" prior to that, with 36th level characters who were gods with stupid things like +36 wings of death. Once I got the PHB, I decided we would start playing "by the rules", and darned if we didn't enjoy ourselves. I can still remember making my Cavalier with the Unearthed Arcana rules ("1.5") and going through the Temple of Elemental Evil module; my friend and I were the only players, and his father was our DM. That last til we moved out of California when I was 16. At that time, 2nd Edition had just hit the shelves.
I kept up with editions, and really loved 3rd Edition when it came out, though I personally never had an issue with THAC0. It made sense to me personally, even if it was just a simplified calculation to replace the to-hit tables from the 1st Edition DMG (and the calculations were exactly the same). When I took my hiatus, I started to get a yearning to play again, and when 4th Edition came out, I was right there. I put together a group in my new town, made some good friends, and I'm still largely playing with the mature (read: some folks have come and gone, but a couple central folks have stayed, myself included) version of that group. At this point, I fear playing 3.5 would just seem like ridiculous power-gaming to me. I could make a Dragon wildshaping Druid with dragon item slot rules from the Draconomicon who at 14th level was rocking an AC of 78 because I stacked different defensive modifiers. It seems silly now. Sure, I had a guaranteed win, but I find I'm more satisfied now when I'm down several healing surges, a couple of party members are making death saving throws every round, and I'm down to just my at-will powers. If I die, I can try out one of the other several classes I still haven't tried out. If I live, I feel like I earned that XP.
I know RPGs are in a slump right now sales-wise, but when making a community spanning all ages and editions, you count on the shared love of generalities when the specifics don't line up. I can have a great discussion with an old-timer who thought that knowing what you needed to roll to hit a creature was the province of the DM alone, and I can have a great discussion with someone who thinks that D&D Essentials is miles better than the original 4th Edition releases. Because regardless of edition or specific ruleset, we both play Dungeons & Dragons, and that supersedes everything else.
You know, it's interesting. I went over and looked at Paizo's system, and realized there's still a massive market out there for what's functionally 3.5. I can walk into a well-known chain used bookstore in my area and walk out with a complete 3.5 library for around $25 ("complete" being the Player's Handbook, Dungeon Master's Guide and Monster Manual), and could add in ancillary "optional" (put in quotes because it really isn't considered optional by many) books like the Complete Psionics Handbook and Book of Vile Darkness for another $15.
I'm not quite sure why WotC chose the massive system changes they did when moving from 3.5 to 4e. 3rd Edition was a WotC-designed and -owned system. After a few years of tweaks, 3.5 wound up as a very balanced system that was well-loved, as evidenced by Paizo's success with their OGL-based system. The classes covered most eventualities, and in retrospect a lot of folks asking for "new core classes" on the old forums were really just asking for more feat or spell support for a specialized version of an existing class.
At the end of the day, the previous edition of the game allowed for more personal excellence, which admittedly could cause some issues if you had a lax DM who let a player use anything and everything from a WotC-published book (and it got even worse if they started adding in third-party stuff...), resulting in fistfulls of d6s (or higher) being rolled on every attack, which was usually a near-guaranteed hit.
4e doesn't allow for as much personal excellence; even with an optimized character, the Dungeon Master usually just compensates with throwing tougher monsters at the party, which skews leveling rate and runs a higher risk of killing non-optimized characters. I remember just before I took a hiatus from the game during the last 4 years of 3.5, I was thinking, "Y'know, it'd be nice to have a campaign where the only book players could use would be the Player's Handbook..."
The people who played and loved 3.5 get their support from Paizo now. The people who play 2nd Edition are content with their books, even though the spines are probably becoming worn at this point (though I'm to understand scanned versions are becoming popular). People still playing 1st Edition... well, to be honest, I don't know of those.
I'd like to think they'd get into 4th Edition, because it honestly isn't all that bad of a system, even if it bears a ridiculous degree of similarity in execution to a certain massively popular MMO. That MMO has its own tabletop RPG, though, so comparisons needn't go further. I don't see a legacy edition working well; the Monk from 3.5 looks nothing like the 4e Monk. I guaran-damn-tee the Psion from Player's Handbook 3 looks nothing like the Psion options in the 3.5 Expanded Psionics Handbook (more's the pity, say I; I don't like psionics being another "flavor" of magic, and never have). Attempting to merge the systems is a nice nod to the older players, but it isn't going to get them to try 4th Edition. They'd come here, try out the Psion or the Monk, kind of frown a little and say "I liked the other one better." Then their shiny new 4th Edition books wind up at a used bookstore for half price, and they return to their well-loved, dog-eared, bookmarked, marked-up, page-number-memorized copies of their preferred edition, and keep on gaming, perhaps a tiny bit saddened that they lost a couple months of progression in their campaign while they tried something new.
Tabletop RPGs are much like computers when it comes to hobbyists: some will just keep upgrading old systems until they can't do what they want anymore, and others will accept that being a hobbyist means that every few years, you just have to scrap the old system entirely and start fresh with a new OS and some new programs. I shamefully remember telling a friend in 1992 who had just gotten 8 MB of RAM for his PC that "You're never going to need that much memory!" Now I'm sitting here on a computer with 4 GB of RAM, and true hobbyists are rocking 32 GB of RAM or more. Hell, my video card alone has 1 GB of dedicated video memory. I'm getting ready to buy a 1 Terabyte hard drive, and my first computer had only 100 MB of hard drive space.
Likewise with D&D: I bought the 1st Edition Player's Handbook for Advanced Dungeons & Dragons in a comic book shop in Tracy, CA that had a used copy on a rack. My friends and I had been playing around with what we called "Dungeons & Dragons" prior to that, with 36th level characters who were gods with stupid things like +36 wings of death. Once I got the PHB, I decided we would start playing "by the rules", and darned if we didn't enjoy ourselves. I can still remember making my Cavalier with the Unearthed Arcana rules ("1.5") and going through the Temple of Elemental Evil module; my friend and I were the only players, and his father was our DM. That last til we moved out of California when I was 16. At that time, 2nd Edition had just hit the shelves.
I kept up with editions, and really loved 3rd Edition when it came out, though I personally never had an issue with THAC0. It made sense to me personally, even if it was just a simplified calculation to replace the to-hit tables from the 1st Edition DMG (and the calculations were exactly the same). When I took my hiatus, I started to get a yearning to play again, and when 4th Edition came out, I was right there. I put together a group in my new town, made some good friends, and I'm still largely playing with the mature (read: some folks have come and gone, but a couple central folks have stayed, myself included) version of that group. At this point, I fear playing 3.5 would just seem like ridiculous power-gaming to me. I could make a Dragon wildshaping Druid with dragon item slot rules from the Draconomicon who at 14th level was rocking an AC of 78 because I stacked different defensive modifiers. It seems silly now. Sure, I had a guaranteed win, but I find I'm more satisfied now when I'm down several healing surges, a couple of party members are making death saving throws every round, and I'm down to just my at-will powers. If I die, I can try out one of the other several classes I still haven't tried out. If I live, I feel like I earned that XP.
I know RPGs are in a slump right now sales-wise, but when making a community spanning all ages and editions, you count on the shared love of generalities when the specifics don't line up. I can have a great discussion with an old-timer who thought that knowing what you needed to roll to hit a creature was the province of the DM alone, and I can have a great discussion with someone who thinks that D&D Essentials is miles better than the original 4th Edition releases. Because regardless of edition or specific ruleset, we both play Dungeons & Dragons, and that supersedes everything else.
Lost you when you said 3.5 was very balanced.
For the OP... The last thing I think we need right now is yet another new sub edition that isn't a sub edition. This is the kind of thing that happened in AD&D, and it became a mess. Things are already a mess now.
Lost you when you said 3.5 was very balanced.
For the OP... The last thing I think we need right now is yet another new sub edition that isn't a sub edition. This is the kind of thing that happened in AD&D, and it became a mess. Things are already a mess now.
Without hashing out the old discussions, 3.5 worked just fine, particularly if one kept to just the Core Rulebooks. Things got out of whack once overly-indulgent Dungeon Masters (of which I was myself one, and from which I benefitted as a player) started letting players bring in things from other rulebooks that at their very first pages said they were "optional". Not every DM has an eye for system balance, however, and it takes a lot of trial and error to figure out things like a Vow of Poverty Monk being so ridiculously overpowered it wasn't even funny (and this comes from someone who favors higher-powered campaigns). Some folks just don't have the ability to immediately notice rampant system abuses, and sometimes won't until they see some mechanics in play. Some players, meanwhile, have a knack for finding things like that, and they often, both sadly and amusingly, wind up in the games of Dungeon Masters who lack said knack.
Nah, 3.5 was fine. It at least understood something that I fear 4th Edition has missed: magic is meant to be powerful and world-moving.
Lost you when you said 3.5 was very balanced.
For the OP... The last thing I think we need right now is yet another new sub edition that isn't a sub edition. This is the kind of thing that happened in AD&D, and it became a mess. Things are already a mess now.
Without hashing out the old discussions, 3.5 worked just fine, particularly if one kept to just the Core Rulebooks. Things got out of whack once overly-indulgent Dungeon Masters (of which I was myself one, and from which I benefitted as a player) started letting players bring in things from other rulebooks that at their very first pages said they were "optional". Not every DM has an eye for system balance, however, and it takes a lot of trial and error to figure out things like a Vow of Poverty Monk being so ridiculously overpowered it wasn't even funny (and this comes from someone who favors higher-powered campaigns). Some folks just don't have the ability to immediately notice rampant system abuses, and sometimes won't until they see some mechanics in play. Some players, meanwhile, have a knack for finding things like that, and they often, both sadly and amusingly, wind up in the games of Dungeon Masters who lack said knack.
Nah, 3.5 was fine. It at least understood something that I fear 4th Edition has missed: magic is meant to be powerful and world-moving.
Even in the PHB, it had no semblance of balance beyond 10th level. Casters simply dominated at higher levels (really started when they gained 3rd level spells). CoDzilla, IIRC, used core only. I wouldn't want to see a return to this.
Vow of poverty was a trap option. It created a front loaded character that seemed powerful at first, but quickly fell to underpowered as the other characters gained levels and magic items.
I do almost wish they'd make a new edition, though. Even if they officially called it 4.5, just to clean things up. The new direction was supposed to help bring in new players, but the newer players seem more confused then ever when they look beyond the essentials products.
What I do not want is yet another sub edition within an edition.
Lost you when you said 3.5 was very balanced.
For the OP... The last thing I think we need right now is yet another new sub edition that isn't a sub edition. This is the kind of thing that happened in AD&D, and it became a mess. Things are already a mess now.
Without hashing out the old discussions, 3.5 worked just fine, particularly if one kept to just the Core Rulebooks. Things got out of whack once overly-indulgent Dungeon Masters (of which I was myself one, and from which I benefitted as a player) started letting players bring in things from other rulebooks that at their very first pages said they were "optional". Not every DM has an eye for system balance, however, and it takes a lot of trial and error to figure out things like a Vow of Poverty Monk being so ridiculously overpowered it wasn't even funny (and this comes from someone who favors higher-powered campaigns). Some folks just don't have the ability to immediately notice rampant system abuses, and sometimes won't until they see some mechanics in play. Some players, meanwhile, have a knack for finding things like that, and they often, both sadly and amusingly, wind up in the games of Dungeon Masters who lack said knack.
Nah, 3.5 was fine. It at least understood something that I fear 4th Edition has missed: magic is meant to be powerful and world-moving.
Paragraph one: You can't be serious.
Paragraph two: Rituals. Considering there's one that raises flying islands, there's your world-moving.
Paragraph one: You can't be serious.
Paragraph two: Rituals. Considering there's one that raises flying islands, there's your world-moving.
Of course I'm serious. You don't have to agree, which is fine. I played 3rd and 3.5 at both ends of the spectrum: massively-restricted slow-leveling Core-Rules-Only, magic-nerfed-to-high-heaven and massively-open-ended, fast-leveling, all-WotC-published-books-allowed, most-third-party-published-books allowed power gaming. The latter, of course, opened itself up to rampant abuses, largely because several of the later optional WotC books were never meant to be implemented in totality with the Core Rules, and many of the third party-published books had little concern for implementation with Core Dungeons & Dragons, and largely just wanted you to use the Core classes from the first Player's Handbook and throw everything else out in favor of their crunch-and-fluff specifics. They wanted to be self-contained campaign settings riding on the back of an established system that sold well and made their publication possible to begin with. They're the people who struggled to sell (or get published at all) in 2nd Edition.
Of course you're going to have an imbalanced game when you're allowing the Core Rules on top of a lot of heavy power-gamer-oriented publications like Draconomicon, Book of Vile Darkness, Book of Exalted Deeds, etc. The multiclassing rules of 3.5 allowed extreme customizability, and without a Dungeon Master to rein in the players who'd spend half a work week of hours (or more) prior to each gaming session poring over all the available rulebooks looking for combinations that guaranteed success and quick loot, you wound up with what motivated the (much-despised on my part) group "Nerf Magic Foundation" from the old 3.x forums.
The Core Rules in 3.5, as written, with selective implementation of some elements of the optional rules, resulted in a very balanced game using the RAW.
Paragraph one: You can't be serious.
Paragraph two: Rituals. Considering there's one that raises flying islands, there's your world-moving.
Of course I'm serious. You don't have to agree, which is fine. I played 3rd and 3.5 at both ends of the spectrum: massively-restricted slow-leveling Core-Rules-Only, magic-nerfed-to-high-heaven and massively-open-ended, fast-leveling, all-WotC-published-books-allowed, most-third-party-published-books allowed power gaming. The latter, of course, opened itself up to rampant abuses, largely because several of the later optional WotC books were never meant to be implemented in totality with the Core Rules, and many of the third party-published books had little concern for implementation with Core Dungeons & Dragons, and largely just wanted you to use the Core classes from the first Player's Handbook and throw everything else out in favor of their crunch-and-fluff specifics. They wanted to be self-contained campaign settings riding on the back of an established system that sold well and made their publication possible to begin with. They're the people who struggled to sell (or get published at all) in 2nd Edition.
Of course you're going to have an imbalanced game when you're allowing the Core Rules on top of a lot of heavy power-gamer-oriented publications like Draconomicon, Book of Vile Darkness, Book of Exalted Deeds, etc. The multiclassing rules of 3.5 allowed extreme customizability, and without a Dungeon Master to rein in the players who'd spend half a work week of hours (or more) prior to each gaming session poring over all the available rulebooks looking for combinations that guaranteed success and quick loot, you wound up with what motivated the (much-despised on my part) group "Nerf Magic Foundation" from the old 3.x forums.
The Core Rules in 3.5, as written, with selective implementation of some elements of the optional rules, resulted in a very balanced game using the RAW.
Again, it wasn't. Casters ended up with save or die, and save or suck type spells even in PHB only games. CoDzilla was PHB only, and puts just about everything else created to shame without needing extreme liberal interpretations of rules (pun-pun).
Basically, CoDzilla could out fight the fighter (by a large margin), out cast the wizard, and still had their own unique line of abilities. The Druid got absurd with its animal companion and Natural Spell thrown into the mix.
The Core Rules in 3.5, as written, with selective implementation of some elements of the optional rules, resulted in a very balanced game using the RAW.
No, it did not. Not by any remotely rational definition of balanced. The druid's animal companion was more powerful than the fighter, for Ceiling Cat's sake. Druid 20 was the most powerful character in the game, splats or no.
If Wizards wants some customers back, they need only to return their out of print pdfs to the market -- I will definitely buy.
The Core Rules in 3.5, as written, with selective implementation of some elements of the optional rules, resulted in a very balanced game using the RAW.
No, it did not. Not by any remotely rational definition of balanced. The druid's animal companion was more powerful than the fighter, for Ceiling Cat's sake. Druid 20 was the most powerful character in the game, splats or no.
The more you say things like this, the more I am convinced you never played 3rd edition or didn't know how to play 3rd edition.
I think if WotC publishs its own retro-clone...
WotC doen't need to publish a "retro-clone." They own the rights to the originals. I think if they were to reprint the OD&D or AD&D books they would make quite a few sales. Not a bad deal for them, really, since the material is already written and they don't need to devote a lot of time to R&D.
I'd just print the older material, like the campaign settings and modules for the new ruleset.
just leave the former ruleset books lost to obscurity
That said, my current dream D&D product from WotC is a special one-off 40th anniversary deluxe leather cover remake of the 1991 Rules Cyclopedia - call it Classic Dungeons & Dragons: Anniversary Edition. It would use all of the classic rules from that older book but with all new layout and new artwork. Maybe a few new items in it like some extra classes (where class and race are one) like a half-orc or ranger. I think even with an MSRP of $100 the book would fly off the shelves. This wouldn't be a book to replace the current edition, but it would be a great product for classic fans and collectors.
L
Someone said in a previous post that players tended to be confused by the 4th edition. I have to disagree here. I taught DD4 to many players and so far no one seemed to be confused. They rather enjoyed the game system and all it offers. I think it depends on the way one uses to make others discover the game.
In France, DD4 has great difficulties to break through DD3.5. I often found people who either had a bad experience with DD4 or had heard from others it was a bad edition. But when I welcomed them at my table and included them in one of my adventures, they enjoyed the game from the very first session and came back for more. Isn't that strange?
Anyway, I found out that DD4 was a nice evolution of the DD franchise, as were all previous editions compared to their previous edition. But now that I have adopted DD4, I cannot play any previous eiditons. I chose to move with the river flow.