Why Rules Cyclopedia is the ultimate D&D edition

[rounser]

I have it on good account that Rules Cyclopedia is best version of D&D. That includes 5th edition in being inferior to it.

Why?

Two things, basically. The first is how fast combat runs. Rules Cyclopedia offers the fastest combat of any edition, so long as you use group initiative. This is absolutely critical to running long term campaigns.

The second is the amount of splat included in the game. Excessive numbers of options are the enemy of short preparation times and familiarity with the game. Rules Cyclopedia has approximately just the right amount of spells, magic items and monsters to keep novelty and support high level play. Adding more spells, magic items and monsters offers no benefit. Do not use the Creature Catalog or the Book of Marvellous Magic with Rules Cyclopedia, they add too much splat.

Rules Cyclopedia's sweet spot is levels 4 to 24. Campaigns should ideally begin and end with these level numbers.

D&D Basic/Expert/Companion/Masters Boxed Sets: Identical to Rules Cyclopedia, but lacking critical optional rules such as the death's door rules and extended demihuman experience tables, and the immortals rules are unplayable. And the books are prone to wearing out.
AD&D 1E: About as fast combat as Rules Cyclopedia and the BECMI boxed sets (a little slower), but too many broken and routinely ignored rules, too many spells, magic items and monsters.
AD&D 2E: No real problem with the rules, except combat a lot slower than AD&D 1E, and way, way too much splat. More monsters than you could ever possibly use in a hundred lifetimes, drowning you in options. About the right number of spells if you don't include the Spell Compendiums, too many magic items in the core rules.
D&D 3E: Very slow combat, a lot slower than 2E, which is bad bad bad. Way too many monsters. About the right number of spells and magic items.
D&D 4E: Not really D&D. Combat even more slow than 3E. Too many monsters. Right number of spells and magic items.
D&D 5E: Combat also slower than 3E, even slower than 4E, making it the slowest combat of any edition. Right amount of monsters. Too many spells. Too many magic items.

You may notice a pattern here: Combat has got slower with every D&D edition, so, shockingly, the game has continually gotten worse. This is deeply ironic as everyone knows that new editions are supposed to improve the game.

Rules Cyclopedias are going for over $100 on eBay, and for very good reason. It's arguably the best RPG in the world. Buy multiple copies while you still can, you'll never see it's like again.

 

[Celebrim]

For certain values of 'ultimate', apparently it is.

I left BECMI rather early on and never looked back. If you really want 'fast' in a combat, you should just flip a coin. What you judge combat on is fun per unit of time - that is, did the investment of time I spent on the combat generate a suitably interesting award in fun. For you, apparently you hit that sweet spot in BECMI, which suggests you don't like combat very much at all (and I hope you don't do very much of it). For me, the problem with BECMI combat is that while it is fast - especially if you ignore even the light frame work it offers - it's generally very boring. There isn't enough crunch to offer much drama, and a very large percentage of fights just become straight burn downs.

The other thing to consider is that 3e goes as fast as BECMI except when certain situations come up that get fiddly - summoned creatures, shapechanging, multiple stacking buffs/debuffs, grappling, etc. And 4e and 5e go as fast as the others except that they tend to suffer from number inflation (especially at higher levels) that add pointless time to the burn down (slogging, grinding).

There is one element of BECMI I've considered borrowing though, and that is that combat goes in phases - that is that everyone shoots, the everyone moves, then everyone attacks. It's not perfect, but it does resolve certain problems that show up in other editions.

I think if anyone takes you seriously, you are quickly going to get caught up in edition warring. BECMI is perfect for some groups. And really bad for some other ones. The same is true of say 4e.

 

[rounser]

I left BECMI rather early on and never looked back. If you really want 'fast' in a combat, you should just flip a coin. What you judge combat on is fun per unit of time - that is, did the investment of time I spent on the combat generate a suitably interesting award in fun. For you, apparently you hit that sweet spot in BECMI, which suggests you don't like combat very much at all (and I hope you don't do very much of it). For me, the problem with BECMI combat is that while it is fast - especially if you ignore even the light frame work it offers - it's generally very boring. There isn't enough crunch to offer much drama, and a very large percentage of fights just become straight burn downs.

I would venture that surprisingly, there is enough combat interest and drama purely in d20 attack rolls, a bit of maneuvering, and spells. The problem with adding too much crunch to combat is that along with the added combat length it takes people mentally out of the story and into what is effectively a sub-game, a game within the game. 4E is the worst offender in this respect.

The other thing to consider is that 3e goes as fast as BECMI except when certain situations come up that get fiddly - summoned creatures, shapechanging, multiple stacking buffs/debuffs, grappling, etc. And 4e and 5e go as fast as the others except that they tend to suffer from number inflation (especially at higher levels) that add pointless time to the burn down (slogging, grinding).

I'm sorry but this is frankly not true. There's simply too much crunch in 3E for it to be anywhere near as fast as Rules Cyclopedia, from attacks of opportunity to the heavy miniatures reliance (a biggie) to all the bonuses and modifiers adding up. 4E is a miniatures skirmish wargame in disguise, which is why it is so slow, and 5E goes crazy with modifiers so it's even slower.

I think if anyone takes you seriously, you are quickly going to get caught up in edition warring. BECMI is perfect for some groups. And really bad for some other ones. The same is true of say 4e.

I would argue that everyone basically wants the same thing - a quick game's a good game in order to accomplish anything in the course of a campaign without taking decades instead of years.

With regards to edition warring, note that I've partially complemented other editions in terms of, for example, having partially the right amount of splat. I'm a fan of most other editions, but think it's important to recognise their limitations where the rubber meets the road, which is combat length and prep time. The idea of newer editions with more rules and more splat being better is a natural assumption, but mostly an illusion.

 

[cavalier973]

D&D 4E: Not really D&D.

*Facepalm*


Anyway, I noticed you neglected to mention Moldvay B/X.

What of these excellent rules?

 

[TwoSix]

I would argue that everyone basically wants the same thing - a quick game's a good game in order to accomplish anything in the course of a campaign without taking decades instead of years.

I think you need more supporting information if that's your thesis.

 

[rounser]

I think you need more supporting information if that's your thesis.

Okay, here's one: 3E, 4E and 5E combat regularly taking hours, instead of minutes. Here's another one for you: Higher hp values naturally lead to longer combats, and they have seen continual inflation over the course of the WOTC editions as well.

 

[Celebrim]

I would argue that everyone basically wants the same thing...

Starting from that standpoint gets you to where you are at. Assuming however otherwise, gets you a very different answer. I would argue that few things are more self-evident than that not everyone wants the same thing.

I would venture that surprisingly, there is enough combat interest and drama purely in d20 attack rolls, a bit of maneuvering, and spells. The problem with adding too much crunch to combat is that it takes people mentally out of the story and into what is effectively a sub-game, a game within the game. 4E is the worst in this respect.

There are two basic problems with this argument. First, in my opinion the goal of combat is to create story, and to the extent that the crunch of the combat directly creates situation, then crunch puts people into story rather than takes it people out of story. It would take a rather long discussion to explain to you what I want in a combat system and why BECMI fails in it, but the core ideas is how often does the action precede or substitute for the idea of a mechanical roll. That is, how often does the player declare to do something, other than pick up a dice and say, "I attack, I rolled a X." And to the extent that players do do that often, how much support does the system provide for it.

Secondly, not all groups want to prioritize story goals over tactical crunch. Some groups consider story secondary to challenge.

I'm sorry but this is frankly not true. There's simply too much crunch in 3E for it to be anywhere near as fast as Rules Cyclopedia, from attacks of opportunity to the heavy miniatures reliance (a biggie) to all the bonuses and modifiers adding up.

You're continually mistaking opinion for fact. But even to the extent that I agree with you, attacks of opportunity - being attacks - don't slow down combat. They lengthen the round, but since they contribute to combat ending (damage inflicted) they don't add a lot of time to the time combat plays out in. Secondly, I play 'theater of the mind' as often in 3e as I did in BECMI or 1e (you can pretty much always do it when there is just one relatively immobile foe), and to the extent that you don't track position in BECMI it even more becomes pointless burn down. Movement is part of combat - as even you suggested - and if it isn't happening or isn't meaningful, your combat is pointless and undramatic. I grant that 3e modifiers can get fiddly in some situations, but in theory this can happen in BECMI as well. That it doesn't does not inherently suggest good things about the combat (ei, all problems can be solved with a fireball, so why bother, or combat is not compelling so why try to optimize you chance of success?)

 

[TwoSix]

Okay, here's one: 3E, 4E and 5E combat regularly taking hours, instead of minutes. Here's another one for you: Higher hp values naturally lead to longer combats, and they have seen continual inflation over the course of the WOTC editions as well.

Sorry, I mean your thesis that everyone is looking for quick combats, because "everyone is looking for the same thing".

 

[Celebrim]

Okay, here's one...

I'm afraid you didn't even understand the question.

3E, 4E and 5E combat regularly taking hours, instead of minutes.

How much gaming experience do you have? Try running a combat with 6 PCs and 7 henchmen versus say 40 ogres of diverse stats and weapons in a 3D environment (ledges, pits, etc.) in any edition and see how long it takes you. Ironically, depending on how you stat it up, 4e might actually be the fastest play (minionizing most of the ogres).

Do you think that's an unreasonable example?

The opening combat of 'WG4: The Forgotten Temple of Tharizdun' with its mixed combat involving in total scores of norkers, ogres, hill giants, ettins, and mountain giants (and lots and lots of flaming oil) is potentially much more complex than that.

BECMI does combat really fast in 20x30 rooms with 4 PC's versus a single foe. It does pure burn down/slog/grinds faster than most of the other editions. But 3e can be brutally fast in situations like that as well.

But perhaps even more importantly, later editions of the game tend to both dissuade the DM away from creating combats of that sort and even more importantly eliminate the need to bring in that sort of thing in order to have a compelling combat. There are upsides and downsides to that, but you can't possibly believe early edition combat is significantly faster than more recent editions in practice unless you are building recent edition style combats in older editions and resolving them with the world rules. If you build old school style combats like the cascading fights with the humanoids of 'Keep on the Borderlands', where soon whole tribes get pulled into the fight or the potential cascading fight with hill giants in G1: Steading of the Hill Giant Chieftain, they bloody well will take hours in earlier editions as well.

Here's another one for you: Higher hp values naturally lead to longer combats, and they have seen continual inflation over the course of the WOTC editions as well.

I'm not a big fan of number inflation over the years either, but the thing you are neglecting is that hit point inflation in many editions was matched by damage inflation. If every attack does more damage, the time to burn through a stack of hit points doesn't necessarily go up. It may even go down. I had a combat with an 80 hit point cleric last half a round in 3e, and was over in sub 3 minutes real time, because the rogue achieved surprise and won initiative and dealt 80 points of damage before the NPC could even react.

The real question isn't how long the combat takes, but how grindy and uninvolved with the drama it feels. BECMI all too often feels like it should have a 'run combat' button that you push to get it over with.

 

[Neonchameleon]

I think if anyone takes you seriously, you are quickly going to get caught up in edition warring. BECMI is perfect for some groups. And really bad for some other ones. The same is true of say 4e.

Basically yes. Oddly enough a lot of 4e groups prefer BECMI/RC to other D&D editions (with the exception of 4e). It's because the game was designed to do something and works to that end.