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View Full Version : Previous edition was better (not what you think!)



Tengu
2008-05-09, 06:08 PM
No, this thread is not about 3.x vs 4e or AD&D vs 3.x. In fact, it's not about DND at all - anyone who writes about DND will be mocked here, as a person who is illiterate and unable to read the initial post.

On topic. What are the RPG systems you know where, in your opinion, a certain new edition was worse than the previous one before it? Once again, DND doesn't count as I have my own opinion about each edition of it already, and this thread exists mostly to satisify my curiosity. Please write the system, the edition in question and, most importantly, why do you think it's inferior to the edition before it.

Matthew
2008-05-09, 06:17 PM
Hmmn. Okay... I thought Star Wars D6 2e was better than Star Wars D6 1e. They were pretty much the same really, but I thought 2e was a lot neater. That said, the rough edges of 1e were quite appealing and they produced more interesting supplemental material.

From what I can tell, Warhammer Fantasy RPG 2e is slightly better than Warhammer Fantasy RPG 1e in terms of balance, but it also doesn't seem to have quite the same amount of cool supplemental material.

UserClone
2008-05-09, 06:46 PM
From what I've read, Shadowrun 4e is reviled by fans of SR3E.

Tokiko Mima
2008-05-09, 06:49 PM
When they made Mage darker to match with the rest of the World of Darkness, it sucked. I hear the new World of Darkness is better though. :smallsmile:

Kurald Galain
2008-05-09, 06:49 PM
Call of Ctulhu. The d20 version is generally considered worse than the original system. The newest version pretends that edition didn't exist.

Paranoia. The fifth edition is generally considered not worth buying. Again, the newest version pretends that edition didn't exist.

Illiterate Scribe
2008-05-09, 06:55 PM
Inquisitor -> Dark Heresy changeover.

Get ye behind me, Dark Heresy toting scum, I'll take my fantastically detailed rules-set and ENJOY it! :smalltongue:

Project_Mayhem
2008-05-09, 07:03 PM
Inquisitor -> Dark Heresy changeover.

Get ye behind me, Dark Heresy toting scum, I'll take my fantastically detailed rules-set and ENJOY it!

I did love Inquisitor, but it's not really an rpg

comicshorse
2008-05-09, 08:47 PM
The last 'Cyberpunk' edition ( 4th, I think) was not only worse than the previous edition but was IMHO the worst roleplaying suplement ever.
And yes I prefered Shadowrun 3rd to Shadowrun 4th edition

Tsotha-lanti
2008-05-09, 08:54 PM
The last 'Cyberpunk' edition ( 4th, I think) was not only worse than the previous edition but was IMHO the worst roleplaying suplement ever.

Third. 2013, 2020, and then 203X, which was total ****, yes.

SamTheCleric
2008-05-09, 08:56 PM
I prefer Vampire: The Masquerade much more than Requiem... the changeover just "felt" wrong.

Nonanonymous
2008-05-09, 08:59 PM
I never played Shadowrun aside from the old Genesis/Master System game, which I believe was based on 3rd edition and certainly wasn't based on 4th. From what I've seen of the flavor and other things, I think I'd prefer 3rd edition by far. The idea of connecting your brain directly to a computer by wireless just seems absurd to me.

Swordguy
2008-05-09, 09:02 PM
I'm thinking that Shadowrun and nWoD are going to be your primary contenders here.

I certainly agree that SR4 is by far inferior to SR3.

Angel in Black
2008-05-09, 09:54 PM
4th ed did horrible, HORRIBLE things to Shadowrun.

Ravyn
2008-05-10, 02:42 AM
Exalted. Yes, half the board's players are going to gripe at me, but I maintain that there were a lot of things that weren't broke the fixing of which only made them worse. This includes Appearance-based Soak, overly cheap Perfects with restrictions that don't mean anything (and things that can explicitly break them, which is silly enough even before you consider that Perfects can explicitly block things that can explicitly break them and that the designer comments for the first edition were quite clear and quite correct about how being able to break them just leads to absurdity--if you want the whole rant, PM me), things that make no sense in the internal metaphysics, anything having to do with Dominatrix Fu, certain bits of the Abyssal crunch I don't even want to think about....

....though aside from a few complaints, I will admit they've got more than decent fluff.

Pyroconstruct
2008-05-10, 03:48 AM
Another vote for Shadowrun 4e. It sucks. I played in 2 one-shot sessions, which thankfully were casual because both of my characters were horribly, horribly broken. These weren't Pun-Pun-esque monstrosities, just a hacker and a summoner-mage.

Hacking: Oh god, the wireless. Apparently everyone in the future is an effing moron who leaves everything WIDE OPEN TO BE HACKED BY ANYONE WITH WIRELESS ACCESS. Security cameras? Wireless, and hacked. Police helicopters? Wireless, hacked, and then stolen and sold for more money than the shadowrun we were on paid. Did I mention vehicle pricing is absurd, and you can make more money jacking cars with, you guessed it, wireless access hacking, than shadowrunning?

Magic: Honestly, it's just broken. The straightforward starting mage character I made could summon and bind, pretty reliably, spirits who were comparable in combat effectiveness to other party members. Except he could keep a bunch in retainer all the time, and get the one needed for any specific task. I should repeat that I didn't really have to try hard to optimize this, I just paid the points to make his "Summon Spirit" stat (I forget the mechanics) at the max, bought the obvious gear to assist with summoning, and used his abilities in the obvious way.

And don't get me started on the techno-mages.

Kurald Galain
2008-05-10, 04:06 AM
I prefer Vampire: The Masquerade much more than Requiem... the changeover just "felt" wrong.

Interesting... I feel that the system for the New World of Darkness is better, but the setting is worse (which is why I'm sticking with the Old).

However, a friend of mine who works part-time at a gaming store claims that "nobody" likes the NWOD and that its sales figures are really poor... he's not exactly the most reliable source, but does anyone know from more official sources whether this is even remotely true?

SuperPanda
2008-05-10, 07:30 AM
Since I've not had much of a chance to really play in the World of Darkness, new and old, I don't have much I can say about the crunch.

Flavor wise I think the update from new to old was really lame on the part of Vampire and Mage, but that is coming from a very biased viewpoint.

My gripe with Vampire really just boils down to the fact that in the older editions I felt no one (ever) portrayed my favorite clan, Malkovian, in a way that even made the smallest amount of sense. Partially because of this they were pretty much removed in later updates of the old World of Darkness and then ignored in the reboot. Instead of taking the time to rewrite the fluff so that it made more sense they just abandoned a really good concept.

To clarify: everyone I encountered played/portrayed Malkovians as completely loony to the point of being unable to even function with in the world, let alone communicate with anyone. I always saw them more as operating on a different level of sentience from the rest of the world. The were suppose to be incredibly bright before getting the dark gift which along with pushing their intelligence even further beyond human limits also twisted them slightly (some of them even broke, but not all of them). As such they would be better as the people who could tell you everything you had done so far that night through perceiving little pieces of rubbish that had collected on you through the day but never knew where they put their glasses (on their own head) or the ones who could tell you their current longitude and latitude but not their own phone number. Incredibly intelligent, just not really in tune with the greater world.

Most story tellers (not to mention players) who I encountered played them more like this.

"So, what were you up to today."
"Blue."
"Excuse me?"
"Zgriggle fan, You sound Blue."
"Right, where's the boss?"
"The Donkey eats oats."
"Shoot me now."
"Pepsi tastes like Mozart."
"Right, so long guys."
"Wow, now you sound plaid."

Then in the nWoD version of Vampire there wasn't anything that really fit what I was looking for fluff wise and it was equally difficult to make something new.


As far as mage went, the fluff and the setting were about the only reason I had to be interested in it. I will openly admit that the Technocracy was a bit overwhelming, but I always saw it as the built in player control system (apart from paradox) which cautioned against trying to Pun-Pun things (you get noticed by professional GM pun-puns).

The really interesting thing about Mage for me was the fact that the traditions had such a deep and engaging set of paradigms each founded on altered versions of real world religion, mysticism, spirituality, and metaphysics. It was perfectly possible to create a member of any given tradition who had found their calling through any number of resources and it created a really in depth and fun philosophical element to gaming which I find is usually sorely missing even when the game system explicitly calls for it.

nWoD's mage system opted to completely ignore the rich foundations of its predecessor to settle on a lame and cliche origin story based around Atlantis (completely removing most of the Asiatic philosophies and mysticisms from the game unless on wants to make them proxies of western Europeans mysticism.

Mechanics wise it was the change from the entropy sphere to the Death sphere (calling it Decay would have worked). Death magic was already covered under the life sphere and Entropy had many very different uses which had previously warranted its existence... Death as a sphere of power is just weak both fluff wise and mechanically.

Attilargh
2008-05-10, 07:40 AM
Just so you know, you might want to check page 241 of the V:tR rulebook for the Malkovian bloodline of the Ventrue clan. The clan's name in Masquarade was Malkavian, by the way.

JMobius
2008-05-10, 08:08 AM
Interesting... I feel that the system for the New World of Darkness is better, but the setting is worse (which is why I'm sticking with the Old).

This was pretty much my feelings. Mage and Hunter were really the only titles that interest me, so when I was looking and comparing the two Mage games, I liked the setting and fluff for the oWoD much, much better. I opted to run a campaign with it.

Of course, my players then exploited it's slightly broken mechanics to hell and back. Whoops.

InaVegt
2008-05-10, 09:08 AM
Interesting... I feel that the system for the New World of Darkness is better, but the setting is worse (which is why I'm sticking with the Old).I feel the same, I'm currently working out a way to use oWoD fluff and nWoD mechanics.

However, a friend of mine who works part-time at a gaming store claims that "nobody" likes the NWOD and that its sales figures are really poor... he's not exactly the most reliable source, but does anyone know from more official sources whether this is even remotely true?
Over here nWoD and nWoD are played about equally much, most of the oWoD players just dislike the new fluff too much.

Funnily enough, the new fluff is what I dislike about 4E D&D, mechanics wise, I love 4E. (Just like I love nWoD mechanics wise, but dislike the fluff)

Gorbash Kazdar
2008-05-10, 09:09 AM
Just to even out the Shadowrun discussion, I should point out that there are 4E fans, and the arguments besides the two sides on that game make the 3.5x D&D vs 4E D&D arguments look like games of patty-cake. I won't start the argument here, suffice to say that it can get nasty.

One the Dark Heresy vs Inquisitor argument... I really don't think you can consider those two editions of the same game. The difference in rules and base concept is so divergent I really think they're two different games in the same setting.

I usually end up on the side of newer editions of late, but there are a few I did not enjoy. CoCd20 was a terrible blight upon the series, and one that is thankfully generally forgotten. It was a case-in-point demonstration that the d20 ruleset didn't work for every genre and set of assumptions; in CoC, the investigators really need to be average joes and it's hard to model that correctly in d20.

Paranoia 5th edition was inexplicably bad. Part of this is due to having the wrong designers and writers on the project, writers who missed the fact that Paranoia was about dark humor and satire at its heart and just went for cheap pop-culture gags. Plus the rule changes that were made were pretty dumb - they didn't fix the parts that were clearly a problem and broke things that worked. 2nd Edition was far superior (yes, I do mean 2e, Paranoia has 1st, 2nd, 5th, and XP/Current editions).

JMobius
2008-05-10, 09:13 AM
Paranoia 5th edition was inexplicably bad. Part of this is due to having the wrong designers and writers on the project, writers who missed the fact that Paranoia was about dark humor and satire at its heart and just went for cheap pop-culture gags. Plus the rule changes that were made were pretty dumb - they didn't fix the parts that were clearly a problem and broke things that worked. 2nd Edition was far superior (yes, I do mean 2e, Paranoia has 1st, 2nd, 5th, and XP/Current editions).

Huh. I have a copy of Paranoia XP, though I haven't gotten to play it much yet. No experience with previous editions. How does it rate?

Scintillatus
2008-05-10, 11:15 AM
The Lords of the Damned take of Malkavia is phenominal, and the book is gorgeous. Really, the only bad thing about nWoD is that it doesn't have some of the immediate eye-catching names and concepts, like The Technocracy, the Ravnos, Daughters of Cacophony, Kiasyd, Tzimisce, etc. Also, some players are hung up on the rules as written in an absurd way.