Interested in the proportions relative to the other thread.

I'm also interested in the overlap, so there are four poll options instead of two.

Yes and No.

Define "fan".  Do you mean that, as a "D&D fan" or "d20 fan", this is your favorite game and/or your favored system above any others?

!i!

Please define D&D, too. I don't know enough about 3.x or even 2e to be a fan, but I might be a fan of earlier versions.

Hi Ian,

I mean that you would describe yourself as a fan of D&D or d20 (or both or neither). Don't feel a need to parse it further for purposes of this thread.

Hi Elliot,  

'D&D' and 'd20' are terms that mean different things to different people. For purposes of this poll feel free to answer relative to what they mean to you. That gives us somewhat squishier information, but still information.

Nope. I like some of the settings, but some of the basic assumptions rub me the wrong way. So, positive opinion? Certainly. Fan? Not quite.

Quote from: CalithenaHi Ian,

I mean that you would describe yourself as a fan of D&D or d20 (or both or neither). Don't feel a need to parse it further for purposes of this thread.

Ah, okay.  As long as I can apply my own personal definition to myself, then I'm a "fan" of neither.  I like D&D just fine, but I'm not a fan of it as I am with, say, BRP.  I'm not really familiar enough with other d20 games to have a broader opinion.

!i!

Sorry, I couldn't vote. There's no option for "I'm a fan of D&D and other d20 games, but only the good ones that I've played." The closest option would be "Yes, and I'm also a d20 fan." but I'm either neutral or don't like some d20 stuff out there, and would rather not have my vote back every d20 game ever written when I've only played a few.

Hi James,

Are you a fan of the d20 system as a whole?

If you really can't answer yes the answer is probably no (you either are a fan or you're not, right?). Why you answer yes is up to you - you might really like some d20 games so much it makes the whole system a good thing to you, or you might think in general the system provides something useful to gaming, or both. (If you don't think either you're probably not a fan.)

Lots of people have to make this decision for D&D as well - for instance, if they're fans of the 1974 game but don't really like what's been done with it since, or if they hated AD&D2 but like D&D3, whatever.

They're 'on the whole' sorts of questions, about what the terms mean to you - do you consider yourself a fan or not?

I consider myself a fan of D&D as long as it isn't a d20 version. Try as I might, I just can't get in to it in its current WotC form.

I like D&D, don't hate d20 but it's not my best system list. (Though the Saga edition d20 is cool). I like the all the editions previous to 3.0 the best.

Quote from: CalithenaHi James,

Are you a fan of the d20 system as a whole?

If you really can't answer yes the answer is probably no (you either are a fan or you're not, right?). Why you answer yes is up to you - you might really like some d20 games so much it makes the whole system a good thing to you, or you might think in general the system provides something useful to gaming, or both. (If you don't think either you're probably not a fan.)

Lots of people have to make this decision for D&D as well - for instance, if they're fans of the 1974 game but don't really like what's been done with it since, or if they hated AD&D2 but like D&D3, whatever.

They're 'on the whole' sorts of questions, about what the terms mean to you - do you consider yourself a fan or not?

I'm not a fan of it as a whole because it's worthless to me by itself. I'm no more a fan of my own skeleton by itself, but wouldn't want the useful framework it presents to go away.

I said yes and yes, though the first yes is wavering.

D&D was my mainstay system for some time in various iterations, though I don't think I could go back to older versions. AFAIAC, every major version has been an improvement so far.

This could be a temporary thing, but I am drifting to a space where I am probably more of a fan of D20 offshoots than D&D itself. D&D can be great game to play, but it has lots of baggage that goes with it. It is developing a bit of a "too many cooks" feel to the system and a "player entitlement" feel to the fanbase. But the latter perception probably springs from all the Bo9S fanboys I've run into online of late who won't cotton any utterance against their newfound munchkin toy.

At any rate, much to J Arcane's denial, (many of) the students have surpassed the master.

The latest versions of D&D (3.0+) are the only ones really worth playing.

Prior to that I've had mixed results:

Basic D&D - is hard for me to manage at the experience point level. If you use the system as-is, you end up with characters overburdened by gold. If you remove gold-as-experience, there's simply not enough of a points economy for me to manage levelling as the GM. Also, it's a bit too basic. I like the freedom of choosing a race AND a class. I need more spells than they provide. There aren't enough monsters. I want more nonhumans. I want more tools. At low levels this game is just painful to run.

I love the Voyage of the Princess Ark, but I think it works because the main characters are around 17th level.

I like the aesthetics of Basic D&D, but you either need to deal with characters above 1st level to start out with (and a lot of them-- perhaps multiples per player).

AD&D1st- is really an improvement, but lacks a working skill system. Also, I'm not fond of how this game handles multiclassing. But all in all, I like AD&D1. But still, kinda painful. If you play a 1st level Magic-User, you get ONE spell. You have a dagger and 4 hit points. You go down into a dungeon, you cast your ONE spell and thats it. More tools are provided here but not enough.

Still, this right here is the best version prior to D&D3, as far as I am concerned.

AD&D2: totally screwed by more restrictive alignments, still no decent skill system, multi-classing still screwed, blandification of demons and devils.. and a lot of vindictively awful advice about GMing. The worst of the lot.

Ironically, they started to provide more tools in AD&D2 (like the "Humanoids Handbook" which showed you how to hack monster races to make them usable for PCs.)

Better than all of the above: Palladium Fantasy. Easily. had a working skill system, and handled nonhuman characters in a much more interesting way than any previous edition of D&D.

Better than Palladium Fantasy? D&D 3.0 and 3.5. Earthdawn came close at the system level, but was too tied into that crappy Barsaive setting.

The current version of D&D gives me everything I want.

Is it edition war time already? We were going along so smoothly...