View Single Post
Old 08-31-2007, 11:57 AM   #22
Pmandrekar
Careful Wisher
 
Pmandrekar's Avatar
 
Join Date: Jun 2005
Location: Oregon, WI
Default Re: Is a 5th Edition coming soon?

Quote:
Originally Posted by NeverCool
As for the system overhaul, I don't know. Seems like the old "money for nothing" angle, sure, but the system does have some drawbacks that GURPS does not (not wanting to bash DnD, still respect them for some very cool concepts). One is that it is very narrow.
I agree with you completely. Using my 3rd Edition GURPS Ruleset from 1987, I managed, with little difficulty, to run RPG campaigns ranging from Complete weirdness (IOU) to a Mercantile campaign in Traveller, to Vampires in New Orleans, to something set in a slightly mystical Ancient Greece, to Rogues working out of a Brothel in a Fantasy Metropolis... Without changing the core system, but by pushing sliders here and there about how things work, and what equipment was available.

By Contrast, I've played D&D for *much* longer than GURPS (26 vs. 12 years) and over that time, I've played a couple of campaigns that differed, but essentially, I've played mostly Dungeon Crawls. I started playing in 1981 (1st Edition) in a Dungeon Crawl Campaign, and I'm playing in one even now.

Not that there's anything wrong with that. If you're going to play Dungeon Crawls, and all your published modules are in D&D 3.5 (as is the case right now--the DM is running a number of Goodman Games Dungeon crawl classics on us), then it makes sense for us to play D&D.

And there is a lot of room for D&D 4E to improve upon how things are handled, such as social interactions. But it's hard to imagine why I would move to D&D 4E for the Social interaction rules, if I'm thinking of running such a campaign, seeing as how I *have* 110 or so GURPS Books in 4th and 3rd Editions.

And even with a handful of those books, the *variety* of campaign types is much broader that can be handled, than D&D.

So, I'm hoping (for the sake of my D&D Fan friends) that this next edition will be a significant improvement, as there is room for improvement in D&D... I'm just not going to get invested in it, since I just bought my first Core book for 3.5 (I had been trying to play with my 3.0 materials. They claim that they are compatible, but they've changed so many things, like spell durations, for example, that I just figured I'd pony up the $24 for a PHB 3.5, easier than sorting through stacks of printouts from the internet.)

A few things that I've heard are improvements. The Spell lists will no longer be all "Fire and Forget" Vancian spells. There will be some combination of Mana engine and spell slots. The social rules look to be an improvement (again, probably not enough for my taste, but an improvement nonetheless).

-P.
__________________
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
P. Mandrekar, Geneticist and Gamer
Rational Centrist
"Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts"- Daniel P. Moynihan
Pmandrekar is offline