[EDITION WARZ] Selling Out D&D's Soul?

S'mon · Oct 31, 2006

To me the soul of the game is that it's a "Product of your imagination". I do find that 3e rules & the approach they foster can get in the way of my imagination, which is a problem.

Hussar · Oct 31, 2006

*snip*

Y'know what, I give. My experiences with earlier editions of the game were so different from yours that we were not playing the same game. In my experience, every time the rules got changed, the players were getting hosed. Unless it came out of TSR, in which case players were getting so much more powerful that it was ridiculous. People talk about the flavour of 1e. To me, there was no flavour. We played nothing but modules. Couple of dozen pages with boxed text. That was it. We blew threw them and moved on.

But, to each his own. Given the choice of playing 1e or not playing, I'd find another hobby. You couldn't make me play it again on a bet. My experiences with the game were THAT bad. Was it the game or the DM's I played with? Honestly, I don't know. It was what, fifteen years ago or more, so, it's quite possible it could be both.

I will always have a soft spot for Ollamar my 20th level paladin armed with a Hammer of Thunderbolts and a Holy Avenger, but, I think I'll stick with 3e thanks. All previous versions were merely prototypes.

WayneLigon · Oct 31, 2006

Raven Crowking said:
If you didn't, you either didn't because you thought you couldn't or you didn't despite the fact that you knew you could. If you didn't despite the fact that you knew you could, you can't fairly blame the rules. If instead you thought you couldn't, an examination of the rules shows that they encouraged you to make changes. Again, this is not something that can be fairly laid on the rules.

You mention the 'attitude' of 1E before. Yes, indeed, the DMG say 'change whatever you want'. It says that once, and typically that advice is buried under a pile of other advice. After that point, though, things change. The attitude of 1E, especially if you were a regular reader of The Dragon at the time, was that if you made significant changes then you were no longer playing AD&D but some game of your own creation. It patted you on the head and said that was fine, but when you're ready to play what the big boys are playing, you'll run the thing just like it's written.

WayneLigon · Oct 31, 2006

The Shaman said:
"Pretty late in the 1e era," Hussar? The Monster Manual was published before either the Players Handbook or the Dungeon Masters Guide - it was the first AD&D book, and it provided for vampires with character class levels.

And very, very seldom was that advice ever used until much later; there are lots of little bits in the MM like that: stuff that was in it, but ignored for many years. Almost always, the vampire was just a vampire with no class levels added. The MM entry on vampires is longer than virtually anything else in the book, so I'm betting that lots of Gm's simply skipped that ton of flavor text.

Ravenloft was unique in that it was the first module to present a monster as fully fleshed out as a player character.

The Shaman said:
"Witch doctors are tribal cleric/magic-users....The maximum level of magic-user is dependent upon the race of the witch doctor..." - 1e AD&D DMG, p. 40.

Those were special NPC classes available only to them. I'd say in my book that it didn't count. They still couldn't be Rangers, Fighters, Monks or anything else they wanted to be.

Raven Crowking · Oct 31, 2006

WayneLigon said:
The attitude of 1E, especially if you were a regular reader of The Dragon at the time, was that if you made significant changes then you were no longer playing AD&D but some game of your own creation. It patted you on the head and said that was fine, but when you're ready to play what the big boys are playing, you'll run the thing just like it's written.

Are we talking about the same The Dragon? Are we talking about the The Dragon wherein nary an issue passed that didn't contain something new for the game, and very often alternate rules? The very same The Dragon that contained all those alternate classes? Alternate poison rules? Alternate unarmed combat?

The Dragon that came out in 1e's day was a veritable potpouri of "do it yourself" goodness. In fact, it was very different from the Dragon of today in that respect. Today's dragon has articles that slot into the existing mechanics without altering anything. Yesterday's Dragon was willing to tinker with the rules.

Which is probably why yesterday's Dragon carried so many good articles on campaign world design and setting design for adventures, whereas with the exception of one article series, today's Dragon and Dungeon are nearly silent on the topic.

1e PHB, p. 8: "This game is unlike chess in that the rules are not cut and dried. In many places they are guidelines and suggested methods only. This is part of the attraction of Advanced Dungeons and Dragons, and is integral to the game. Rules not understood should have appropriate questions directed to the publisher; disputes with the Dungeon Master are another matter entirely. The REFEREE IS THE FINAL ARBITER OF ALL AFFAIRS OF HIS OR HER CAMPAIGN. Participants in a campaign have no recourse to the publisher, but they do have ultimate recourse -- since the most effective protest is withdrawal from the offending campaign. Each campaign is a specially tailored affair."

1e DMG, p. 9: "Read how and why the system is as it is, follow the parameters, and then cut portions as needed to maintain excitement."

1e DMG, p. 21: "You have advice on why they are not featured, why no details of monster character classes are given herein. The rest is up to you, for when all is said and done, it is your world, and your players must live in it with their characters."

And, of course, the entire preface to the 1e DMG, pp. 7-8.

(And the above is inclusive, not exclusive, the results of about 5 minutes of searching & typing.)

RC

Numion · Oct 31, 2006

Hussar said:
Given the choice of playing 1e or not playing, I'd find another hobby.

I'd not go that far, but 1E did drive me away from D&D. I came back with 3.0E.

Raven Crowking · Oct 31, 2006

WayneLigon said:
And very, very seldom was that advice ever used until much later; there are lots of little bits in the MM like that: stuff that was in it, but ignored for many years. Almost always, the vampire was just a vampire with no class levels added. The MM entry on vampires is longer than virtually anything else in the book, so I'm betting that lots of Gm's simply skipped that ton of flavor text.

So, if I say the CR system is broken because I don't use it, I'm right?

If I say the 3.5 MM IV is no good because I haven't read it, I'm right? :uhoh:

Hussar · Oct 31, 2006

You're missing the point RC. I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that there were extremely few groups out there that used 1e RAW. I'd go a step further and say that the vast majority barely scratched the surface of the RAW.

Why would that be? Because of fantastic game design? Because of wonderful fluff that inspires? What possible reason could there be that people felt the need to chuck out large sections of 1e RAW?

The Shaman · Oct 31, 2006

WayneLigon said:
And very, very seldom was that advice ever used until much later; there are lots of little bits in the MM like that: stuff that was in it, but ignored for many years. Almost always, the vampire was just a vampire with no class levels added. The MM entry on vampires is longer than virtually anything else in the book, so I'm betting that lots of Gm's simply skipped that ton of flavor text.

Perhaps this is true of the people with whom you played 1e, but it wasn't true of our group: we had four dungeon masters in our group and we all combed through the books looking for ideas to spring on one another and the rest of the players in our bunch. There wasn't a bit of text that we didn't exploit to create novel challenges.

WayneLigon said:
Ravenloft was unique in that it was the first module to present a monster as fully fleshed out as a player character.

I seem to recall lycanthropes with character class levels, but I couldn't tell you from where anymore. However, given that most of what we played was homebrewed adventures, I could easily be confusing that with something that me or someone else in our group put together.

I can say with confidence that there were very few vampires in our games that didn't have class levels, because it was an easy way to make a by-the-book encounter more interesting and challenging.

WayneLigon said:
[Shaman and witch doctor] were special NPC classes available only to [humanoids]. I'd say in my book that it didn't count.

You are of course entitled to your opinion.

Shaman and witch doctor humanoids were probably my favorite monsters after wights in our 1e games. I can't tell you have often a shaman or a witch doctor was the primary antagonist in my low- to mid-level adventures.

WayneLigon said:
They still couldn't be Rangers, Fighters, Monks or anything else they wanted to be.

They could if the dungeon master allowed them to be (and we did, sparingly) - that brings us back to your previous post, which Raven Crowking has admirably addressed already.

Garnfellow · Oct 31, 2006

WayneLigon said:
You mention the 'attitude' of 1E before. Yes, indeed, the DMG say 'change whatever you want'. It says that once, and typically that advice is buried under a pile of other advice. After that point, though, things change. The attitude of 1E, especially if you were a regular reader of The Dragon at the time, was that if you made significant changes then you were no longer playing AD&D but some game of your own creation. It patted you on the head and said that was fine, but when you're ready to play what the big boys are playing, you'll run the thing just like it's written.

Yeah, I think for me those few lines in the DMG exhorting DMs to make the game their own got drowned in the many, many Sorcerer's Scroll articles and other Official Pronouncements (tm) from Lake Geneva that declared "If you aren't playing the game as written, you aren't playing Official AD&D, but rather some inferior variant."

This really stuck in my craw, especially when it became clear that (1) even Gary didn't follow the rules as written, (2) several subsystems in AD&D were seriously broken and deserved to be chucked (initiative, unarmed combat, etc.), (3) Dragon magazine was churning out extremely cool stuff every month that often cooler and/or mechanically better than much of the "Official" material, and (4) I was coming to AD&D from the Moldvay basic/expert set, which was a much cleaner ruleset that encouraged experimentation.

After all, whose fricken game was this, and why should I be browbeaten for trying out some critical hit charts?

One of the things I most liked about 2nd edition was the abandonment of this High Orthodox view of the game and the encouragement of optional rules. Waa-hoo! Personally, I found the sea-change in attitude a real breath of fresh air, and I seem to remember a lot of DMs at the time expressing similar sentiments.

I think one of the hard things about discussing 1st edition is that, depending on what primary texts you read, you could come away with radically different views of the game. How much magical loot should PCs have access too? If you read the DMG, it sounds like a 9th level fighter should feel glad to have a +1 dagger, a +2 shield, and a philtre of love. If you ran the GDQ modules, you would expect a 9th level fighter to have a +3 sword, +3 platemail and a +3 shield, as well as a girdle of giant strength and a ring of regeneration.

I wonder . . . it seems like some of the hardest core fans of 1st edition over on Dragonsfoot are British. Was Dragon magazine readily distributed across the pond in the late 70s early 80s? I know White Dwarf from the same period had a much more libertarian and experimental view of the game, in stark contrast to the party line that was coming out of Lake Geneva. For that matter, the TSR UK contributions from the early 80s seemed to push the game boundaries a bit more than the TSR US contributions.

If my primary experience of AD&D had been limited to just the core books and WD magazine, which promoted a more open and experimental version of the game, I think I would have had a much different and probably much more positive view of 1e than I did.

(And don't get me wrong, I still liked 1e a great deal.)