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Dungeons & Dragons 3.5 Reviewed
WorselWorsel writes "The new edition of the seminal Dungeons & Dragons paper-RPG comes out this Friday and d20zines.com has this review. This is the first new edition of D&D since Hasbro acquired Wizards of the Coast. The last edition came out almost two years ago, and this time around the prices of three core books are up by $10 each. Since these are partially incompatible with older 3rd edition books, WotC is printing/making downloadable a short booklet explaining some changes." In addition to being a product review, it's a good overview of what's changed since 3rd edition, and really helps one decide if the changes are important enough to rebuy the core rulebooks.
Ha! Only nerds play Dungeons & Dragons and post to Slashdot about it....oh, wait.
this time around the prices of three core books are up by $10 each
Up $10 over the price of the old books when they were first released. Exactly the same price as the old books have been selling at since January 2001.
True the MSRP of the books is now $29.95 but a quick look at almost all online retailers shows them going for about $20. Walmart.com and abebooks.com have em for around 18 each.
Granted this is the shortest core rules turnaround of all time, it would seem that WoTC is milking the public.. but if you check their website... htt://wizards.com/dnd you sill see that there is just an INSANE ammount of free stuff. Adventures, additional classes, monsters, maps.. just a bunch of stuff. As long as WoTC puts out free quality stuff like that, I'll bite on new rule books.
If you're like me, and you know you're going to buy them anyway, pre-order the books from Amazon at a discount, instead of paying retail.
You can even do a little better if you buy all three books and then use the "share the love" feature to invite the rest of your gaming group to buy the books at 10% off the already reduced price.
(Not that I, er, still play D&D or anything.)
As much as I like to support the local game shops, some offers are too nice to pass up.
Not representing or approved by my company or anybody else.
You're still getting more entertainment time for the buck playing paper D&D in a regular group than virtually anything else out there.
Show me a D&D-playing college student (that's hardcore about it) with a 4.0 and I'll give you my ocean front property just outside of Phoenix, Arizona.
I'm sure there are tons of us that wish we could do some kind of class action lawsuit like the tobacco addicts. D&D killed our GPA! As did Warcraft II, Quake, MUDs, etc. I think females were in there somewhere, but I can't really remember.
HA!
REAL geeks still PLAY 1st edition!
And live in their parent's basement.
And hope someday they'll actually meet a real GIRL (with +5 ta-tas).
The problem with D&D's d20-based system is that it's random. I mean random in a bad way. The odds of rolling a 1 are the same as rolling a 10 are the same as rolling a 20.
GURPS's 3d6-based system produces results in the range of 3-18... but it does it along a normal distribution. (Think "bell curve.")
So to roll hit effectiveness in GURPS, for example, you roll 3d6 and compare to a chart. If you get somewhere in the middle (say, 9-12), you score normal damage. If you get slightly outside the middle (6-8, 13-15) you score slightly lower or slightly higher than normal damage. If you get outside that (4-5, 16-17) you score significantly lower or higher damage. If you get an 18, you lopped off the bad guy's head or sense cluster or whatever and killed him instantly. If you get a 3, you lost your balance, fell down, and broke your wrist.
You can't do that kind of thing in a d20-based system. The math doesn't allow for it.
Plus, to play GURPS all you need is six-sided dice. You don't have to special order your dice, or be seen going into one of those freak shops. And if anybody sees you with your dice, you can just claim that you like to gamble in alleyways. No one is the wiser.
(I'm always amazed by how much /. ignores this.)
D&D has been, since 3.0 came out, the lead-runner in "Open Gaming."
Go to this page on WotC's website, and you can get quite nearly every rule in the core 3.0 books--soon to be quite nearly every rule from the core 3.5 books.
The only rule that's really missing is awarding XP--and there are easily a half-dozen ways to find that on the web.
(So, everyone who's complaining about a 3 year turnaround for a revision--do you complain about how quickly Linux gets a new kernal, or how swiftly Mozilla moves from 1.0 through 1.4?)
Interesting, but incorrect.
Dungeons and Dragons was published by TSR in 1974. This is the three volume set (Men and Magic, Monsters and Treasure, and the Underworld and Wilderness Adventures).
Advanced Dungeons and Dragons wasn't published until 1977 (Monster Manual), 1978 (Player's Handbook), and 1979 (Dungeon Master's Guide).
So, Dungeons and Dragons existed for at least three years before Advanced Dungeons and Dragons came out.
Sources: here, here, and TSR's list of every product ever.