Have you played it yet? How did you like FLOW?

i just picked up the "Bundle of Holding" with Dungeons World and Apocalypse World, among others, and I really want to try at least an episode or two of DW. The system looks great, love the no-fail checks. I have actually incorporated them into our D&D campaign.

2nd edition, 3.5er over here. I've tried out 4th edition and felt the game played out way too much like a boardgame. Pathfinder is a good alternative to D&D if your a 3.0/3.5 fan.

I love 3.5 myself, I tried 4th and it was alright. My main issue (though it can usually be argued with ANY P&P game) is that game is only as strong as the DM/GM running the game. I do find though that in 4th it can be a little more noticeable when the DM is either not very good or relies too much on the "by the book" mentality. That isn't to say a good DM can't run an amazing 4th game, and it's possible I just had bad luck with the DM that ran the 4th games I did participate in.

As others have stated about Pathfinder, it is a really good expansion of the 3.5 rules and I do recommend it for any fan of those rule sets as well. I also absolutely LOVE the Pathfinder Core Rulebook, not only does it describe everything in detail and in easy to understand explanations, but it is BEAUTIFUL in it's flavour text and artwork as well. Even if you don't play Pathfinder it's worth getting just for the quality of the book itself. It's much the reason why I have as many Rifts books as I do; not to go off on a tangent but it also has some amazingly well crafted books, even if the system is broken as a motherfucker. :P

Used to play a lot of D&D and board games. But lack of time stopped me. Stopped playing at 3.5 edition.

These days I play a lot of DnD online (play-by-post games in old-school D&D forums). My edition of choice is B/X (The "Basic" and "Expert" books published in 1981), although I do OD&D too (1974).

I've played AD&D (1e and 2e) in the past, but keep away from them now. I've never even looked at 3/3.5e or 4e.

Same here. I started playing Runequest in the summer of 1981. First edition Runequest had the best combat system for any pen and paper game. Second edition D&D, in my opinion is the best version of that game. I really haven't played 4th edition much, but I still have friends that occasionally play on a weekly basis. Ahh, the memories.

I wanted to play Pathfinder, but I can tell you that after picking up the core rulebook, the rules seem a LOT more fiddly. I think part of it is the presentation, and that is where 4th Edition (mostly) shines. I know what I need, and the text is plain. I mean, the section in the PF core rules about how armor class is calculated is confusing as hell. The actual calculation should be left to the character generation section, not the general section on AC at the beginning.

One thing I like about 4th is that is only tells the player/DM what they need to know. A DM could conceivably not even own/read any of the player materials, and still do a great job. I do agree that the combats become mini boardgames, but that was mitigated vastly by MM3 and Essentials.

Been doing PnP RPGs (mostly D&D, but also some Cthulhu and Shadowrun) for 16 years.

I prefer the augmented 2nd edition (with the optional books), but like some aspects of the 3/3.5 edition (simplified saving throws, extended and streamlined core stats range, thievery abilities and counter-abilities as skills, more flexible and believable of the multiclass scheme) and I dislike the 4th edition.

At this point, I'm considering creating a homemade 2.5 edition (taking what I consider to be the best parts of the 2nd and 3/3.5 editions).

I appreciate how fluid they made the combat in the 4th edition, but I prefer the core game (in particular, the abilities of non-magic classes) to be somewhat believable so that I get to decide just how much magic and superhuman powers to put in there.

Insert too many feats and magic-like abilities into the main rules and every game becomes a Japanese manga.

And don't get me started on how they butchered the mage class and its derivatives.

If you do that please do post or PM me a copy, I always do love "home brew" systems. I would very much like to see a 2nd/3rd/3.5e system indeed. I mostly miss the 3.5 (I think maybe it was 3rd) edition of Planescape and Ravenloft (I am a HUGE Ravenloft fan in particular). I am actually thinking of getting a group later to run a Ravenloft campaign in Pathfinder.

After looking at wikipedia on the different editions, it seems I never saw 2nd Edition except in computer games. I stopped playing around 1990 and 2nd edition came out in 1989...and I doubt I would have upgraded my books since I was a poor teenager. Not to mention I inherited a bunch of books from my older brother. Oh and I remember having the Monster Manual and not the Monstrous Compendium. I'll have to look around for my old manuals to see if they are still around.

So, I'm with the 1st Edition for life group.

I was thinking about releasing the documents and code once everything is done. The only tricky part is not including constants derived from material in the rulebooks for IP reasons. A compromise would be to make a system that interprets the data, but the initial values must be inputted manually using the books as a reference.

Makes sense, but if you're not charging for it I don't see the issue about leaving in the constants. Oh well, I am still interested in seeing what you can come up with. :)

My parents played AD&D when I was a child, so I became interested and tried it out. I enjoyed rolling characters and such, but couldn't get into actually playing.

I would, if I had anyone to play with, or could find a simple client to manage things.

But I'm really more a Paranoia RPG sort.