Are our tastes set?

I'm in the same boat as @Parmandur. I cut my teeth on 3.5e and adored it. We tried 4e and bounced back to 3.5e.

I would give a 3.5e one-shot a chance.. But I wouldn't go back to it for a long term game. I'm very happy with 5e. If I had to pick one version to play for the rest of my life like you ask in the OP it'd be 5e. That doesn't mean I'm married to it though. If another system comes along that I like better I'll switch again..

deganawida said:

I’ve been thinking a lot lately, about D&D, editions, and tastes. I’ve noticed that, while I love the mechanical purity of B/X, the weirdness of 1e, the balance of 4e, and so forth, my tastes always seem to come back to 2nd edition. I mean, I love all the editions, but 2e was my first real embrace of D&D, and I end up judging every other edition by it, even when other editions are better and just as fun (which is really frustrating, of course).

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No, not for me. The first edition I had was Mentzer Basic & Cook Expert, quickly followed by acquiring some 1E books, but we never quite got a full campaign to gel with that stuff, mostly screwing around drawing dungeons and making characters and reading the rules, but not fully understanding how to make the game work. I did play a few games of 1E at conventions before 2E came out, but couldn't quite grok it.

The first edition I really played the hell out of was 2E. And I have a lot of fond memories of that, but mechanically and GM-guidance wise, it's a bit disappointing and was always a bit frustrating for me. My groups and longest term DM also messed around with it a lot, including adding concepts (like flanking, and attacks of opportunity) that we'd later see in 3E.

deganawida said:

If you you had just one D&D version you could play the rest of your life, with the group of your choice, would it be the one that brought you to the dance, or would it be a different version?

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My top two favorite editions at this point are 4E and B/X, but....

Snarf Zagyg said:

ETA- and I would add that one of the reasons I like 5e so much is that while it has a better and more forgiving system, it is also fairly easy to tune to make it more 1e-ish, when I need to scratch that itch.

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..given that, this rationale of Snarf's is why I would probably have to pick 5E, if I had to pick just one.

5E has enough mechanical heft that it can support more character customization and a more tactical game, especially using monsters suited for it like those in Flee Mortals!

But it's also light enough that with relatively minimal houseruling (say, removing multiclassing and Con bonuses to HP, allowing 1 or no Death Saves, and imposing Gritty Realism rest rules or something similar) you can easily get a simpler, lower-powered game which will work for old-school dungeon crawls if I want.

Rules-wise, I'm not so sure. So, yes, if was forced to only play D&D and then only a single edition, I might go with 3e (which I played most), but that would immediately trigger a lot of hacking and the result would no longer be recognizable as 3e. And you would probably find a fair amount of B/X in my custom version of D&D.

Theme-/setting-wise, there might be more truth to it. When it comes to classic fantasy, I'm pretty set on the Human, Dwarf, Elf, Hobbit Halfling roster, with maybe Orcs and Goblins being an option, but only for select campaigns. And if there is any state of the Forgotten Realms I consider canonical, it would be the 2e/3e version. I think only playing this for the rest of my life would have it become stale pretty quickly, though.

I don't think our tastes are set, because we are not set. We are not the same people we were decades or years or even months ago. Maybe not even the same person that went to sleep last night, depending on how you define "same."

That said, nostalgia is a hell of a drug and a lot of times I think we want to re-experience those earlier versions of ourselves through the things that defined us then. This includes older versions of D&D, of course.

For my part, I say that 2E is my favorite edition and I would play it in a heartbeat. And I might. But I also might get frustrated with its idiosyncrasies and limitations. And there is a reason, despite not especially loving it, I end up defaulting to 5E so often.

Reynard said:

I don't think our tastes are set, because we are not set. We are not the same people we were decades or years or even months ago. Maybe not even the same person that went to sleep last night, depending on how you define "same."

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Well, find this curious after the formative years imprint our taste thread posted recently. A generality, of course, but one I find the majority of folks fit into. I heard a theory once that pops up from time to time called creator, critic, or consumer. Theory is that most folks will lean heavily into one category (but certainly all folks wear all hats at time). I see folks that spend their day browsing and participating in fora about RPGs are likely in the critics. So, the our/we/you are not "set" line likley applies to folks here at EN World, but may not hold in general. I think a lot of folks are indeed set.

Reynard said:

That said, nostalgia is a hell of a drug and a lot of times I think we want to re-experience those earlier versions of ourselves through the things that defined us then. This includes older versions of D&D, of course.

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For some, the nostalgia is the set. Its not dreaming about yester year, but wanting the set fulfilled.

Reynard said:

For my part, I say that 2E is my favorite edition and I would play it in a heartbeat. And I might. But I also might get frustrated with its idiosyncrasies and limitations. And there is a reason, despite not especially loving it, I end up defaulting to 5E so often.

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You are able to make the distinctions in how you want the game to play, and how you expect it to work. A fellow critic if I ever heard one.

deganawida said:

If you you had just one D&D version you could play the rest of your life, with the group of your choice, would it be the one that brought you to the dance, or would it be a different version?

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I came in with AD&D in 1977-78 or so, but my D&D end-times edition would be 3.5Ed. Anything I actually missed from prior or subsequent editions I’d just homebrew a version of.

deganawida said:

I’ve been thinking a lot lately, about D&D, editions, and tastes. I’ve noticed that, while I love the mechanical purity of B/X, the weirdness of 1e, the balance of 4e, and so forth, my tastes always seem to come back to 2nd edition. I mean, I love all the editions, but 2e was my first real embrace of D&D, and I end up judging every other edition by it, even when other editions are better and just as fun (which is really frustrating, of course).

If you you had just one D&D version you could play the rest of your life, with the group of your choice, would it be the one that brought you to the dance, or would it be a different version?

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I began playing D&D in '88 as a young kid, with a group using a mix of mostly AD&D 1st edition classes/races along with BD&D stuff for cleaned up rules – at least that's what I vaguely recall. And then the following year in 1989 2nd edition came out, and then my family moved and I started GMing when I was about 10 years old, using a hodgepodge of whatever materials I had – BD&D, 1e, 2e, and one or two supplements that were probably from other systems entirely.

Nothing about my experience was purist, so while I have nostalgia, I am happy playing pretty much any edition – feel like I have a solid grasp of their merits and flaws.

Play style, however, I definitely prefer a game leaning heavier on old school vibes in the sense of "players look to their creativity first, and their sheets second, to solve challenges", but still with a touch of new school in the sense of "there's a coherent narrative, pacing, and PC-driven story beats that still allow for emergent play."

What's really fascinating to me are the bleed zones towards the end of one edition's lifecycle and the start of a new edition (i.e. the half-step editions).

• 1e had many modular distinct eccentric sub-systems, the initial hints of subclasses (i.e. ranger) and prestige classes (i.e. bard), and no universal skills. Towards end of 1e's printing, skills were coming in from Oriental Adventures and many of Gygax's musings (though not all) were incorporated by David "Zeb" Cook.
• 2e enshrined skills in non-weapon proficiencies. However, 2e inherited the organizational mess of 1e and then the proliferation of supplements magnified that problem, and then towards the end of 2e's printing, with Skills & Powers option it was becoming more about character customization.
• When WotC released 3e it removed most of the sub-systems for streamlined rules, and went all in on the character creation mini-game – they learned from MtG that was were the money was. The skill system here was universal but also carried on with specific modifiers like from 1e/2e. When the proliferation of prestige classes, feats, and such interacting in unanticipated ways with the d20 rules become untenable, they tried to clean it up with 3.5e and that led to the Tome of Battle: Book of Nine Swords.
• That bridged to 4e, where the goal was even more universal design at the opposite end of the spectrum from 1e's eccentric subsystems, which pushed the boundaries of what many gamers perceived as being D&D. Skills were further streamlined, losing even the modifier tables from 3e's skills. When Mike Mearls developed the 4e Essentials line that was an attempt to recapture the tone of "classical D&D" eschewing the universal At-will/Encounter/Daily power system.
• 5e doubled down on subclasses as the main mechanism of character customization, and attempted to address flaws of earlier editions. To avoid the distaste for "non-D&D" 4e, they mechanically differentiated classes & incorporated ideas from that edition with a few rail guards (e.g. Hit Dice became healing surges then suddenly everyone was OK with the idea, and save ends effects became de rigueur for monsters that paralyzed/poisoned/stunned). To avoid an excess of conflicting rules with unexpected interactions like in 3e they consolidated feats and greatly limited player-facing content so they could vet it better. They mostly carried over the refined skill system of 4e – with all of its merits & flaws. Subsystems were extremely limited compared to 1e, so there was the downtime subsystem which you could use or ignore, yet it didn't involve suddenly switching to % die rolls but instead integrated with the skill system.

I hope I have done those transitions justice. This is all based on my (faulty) memory.

There's sort of a moving pendulum where there are swings back and forth between "old school creative make-it-up D&D" and "new school character building mini-game codified D&D", but the big picture of those fluctuations is a move towards increasing codification and selling options to players.

ichabod said:

I would take 5E, and I would be sad.

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Almost exactly this - I would take 3.5e, and then lament all that was lost.

While I started with Basic and 1e, it was 4e that really clicked for me and I really like 5e. I think I would stick with 5e.

I started with the a combination of the 1981 Moldvay set and 1st edition AD&D. I transitioned fully into 1st AD&D for years as a player and then DMed 2nd edition AD&D. I played 4th edition D&D. I have both played and DMed 5th edition. I would unequivocally stay with 5th edition as my forever edition...and I will say I am looking forward to the revised core books and hope those turn out great.