Classic D&D...

So I've spent the better part of the last year trying to "reform" my 3e campaign, and I've had some success in that area. Mainly by stripping feats and prestige classes out of the game, I was able to recapture some of that AD&D feel. But it was an awful lot of work for realtively little payoff, and the fact of the matter is, it's not AD&D that gives me most of my happy, fuzzy memories about playing the game for the first time. It's the Classic edition, based on the B/X booklets and the RC.

So, just for kicks, I decided to run that. I pulled out my old "The Classic D&D Game" boxed set and I ran my PCs through "Escape From Zanzer Tem's Dungeon" and "The Lost Treasure of Stonefast." Then I decided to keep going, through B1 - In Search of the Unknown (I'm sure some of you folks out there remember Quesqueton... ) and now we're on B2 - Keep on the Borderlands.

I've noticed a few things since going retro.

1. No multiclassing? It hasn't hurt my game in the least, especailly since, even when I was playing 3e, most players never, ever took advantage of the M/C option, except to cherrypick a level or two. In theory, it sounds really nice to say that your 5th level fighter can train with a thieves' guild to become a 1st level thief. Logically, anyway, there's no reason to realistically dis-allow such a thing. It's just that... in years and years of playing 3e, I don't remember anyone ever significantly departing from whatever class they started in, let alone role-playing the event of picking up a second class. In 2e, if you could dual-class, you did, because it was a real power boost. But in 3e? The multiclassing rules actually tend to hurt most characters' relative power, and so they usually don't get used. In short, after switching back to basic D&D, they're hardly missed (which I didn't expect, but was surprised to notice).

2. It's a human world again. With only the human characters allowed to pick whether they're Fighters, Clerics, Thieves, Mages, or Monks, players are pretty reluctant to settle on playing an Elf, Dwarf, or Hobbit. I even use the variant rule from the back of the RC that lets demihumans advance past their level limits, and still players prefer humans. It makes the game feel... well, normal again. I no longer have entire parties of non-humans trying to interact with a mostly human-populated world. So this is definitely a good thing AFAIAC.

3. THAC0 isn't so bad! Really! I mean, what's the difference, honestly? In 3e, if you're a fighter attacking with a bonus of +3 and your enemy has AC 17, you know you need to roll a 14 or better to hit. d20 + attack bonus beats AC. Very simple, very intuitive. In the classic game, though, if you're a fighter with THAC0 17 attacking an enemy with an AC of 3, what's the difference? You know that if the d20 + the bad guy's AC beats your THAC0, you hit -- roll 14 or better. What I'm driving at here is, since the numbers are practically the same, why the hate? Why is it that whenever anyone brings up "what's bad about D&D before 3e came out", THAC0 and AC always top the list? I'm not seeing a difference!

4. In order to allow all of the roles that exist in my campaign to be fulfilled, I've only had to add two human classes (noble and scientist). I've had to add a great deal more demi-human classes to cover all the races that exist in my campaign, but thankfully, since most basic D&D demi-humans just wind up being weaker variations on the fighter, that means that players only go for those classes when they really want to role-play something special. That said, some concepts just make for really, really cool basic D&D classes... and when all is said and done, it turns out that all I need to run a basic D&D campaign is the Rules Cyclopedia and a little five-page house rules document that adds the extra classes and a few odd spells and weapons. One book, and I'm playing a whole D&D camapign! This is far and away the happiest side-effect of my little sojourn into retro-gaming. Three core manuals, half a dozen Complete books, Unearthed Arcana, Oriental Adventures, and a whole pile of other heavy hardcovers get to stay on my shelf when I go to play... all I can say is, I'm so stoked over how much easier it is to play basic D&D that I just can't stop glowing.

Has anybody else had a similar experience with going back and playing by the "auld school" rules?

Jack Daniel said:

... and when all is said and done, it turns out that all I need to run a basic D&D campaign is the Rules Cyclopedia and a little five-page house rules document that adds the extra classes and a few odd spells and weapons. One book, and I'm playing a whole D&D camapign! This is far and away the happiest side-effect of my little sojourn into retro-gaming. Three core manuals, half a dozen Complete books, Unearthed Arcana, Oriental Adventures, and a whole pile of other heavy hardcovers get to stay on my shelf when I go to play... all I can say is, I'm so stoked over how much easier it is to play basic D&D that I just can't stop glowing.

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I love playing the older versions of D&D - notably not AD&D which you couldn't drag me back to from 3e without a crowbar and a cute kitten you were threatening to kill - but D&D. There are some weirdisms in the rules, but nothing a bit of tweaking can't handle, and the game runs fairly smoothly - especially for old-school dungeon crawls.

That said, there's no reason that 3e can't run just as smoothly - get rid of multi-classing and tell your players you're restricting them to the Players Handbook classes only - no Prestige Classes. Your problem with the demihuman races would still come up (which I don't see as a problem myself, but different strokes), but you can House Rule certain races to only be allowed in certain classes (e.g. all of them fighters except for the Elf, which you'd probably have to create a new low-powered "gestalt" class to recapture the feel of the D&D version). If your problem is "book bloat" one of the best cures for that is to cut down the books allowed to a smaller number.

(One other thing that I like about the RC version of D&D are the restricted spell lists of Clerics and Magic Users. Almost every spell on those lists were useful - no filler - and there were so few of them there weren't too many problems figuring out which spells you wanted to prepare on a given day. I do miss that sometimes, especially when my Cleric and Druid players are both dithering over which spells they think they might want today.)

Jer said:

(One other thing that I like about the RC version of D&D are the restricted spell lists of Clerics and Magic Users. Almost every spell on those lists were useful - no filler - and there were so few of them there weren't too many problems figuring out which spells you wanted to prepare on a given day. I do miss that sometimes, especially when my Cleric and Druid players are both dithering over which spells they think they might want today.)

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I love this part too. A little tweaking to the rules (replace spell preparation with spontaneous spell slots) and it makes the cleric and magic-user feel just like FF1 white and black mages!

Regarding 3e, yes, it's true that it can be run just as smooth and simple as classic D&D. But the problem for me is that, for all that matters, it is still AD&D. It's rules heavy. WotC just dropped "Advanced" from the title as a marketing strategy, to attract newer, younger players who might be turned off and intimidated by the "Advanced."
I'd much rather DM a game where I can call up most of the rules from memory.

My groups were mostly 2e D&D. We played OD&D for a long time before that, but when 2e came out, that's what we played.

When 3e came out, I saw just as many humans as I did in OD&D. With an extra feat and skill point, IMHO they're the most powerful race, and many players go for that.

Jack Daniel said:

Has anybody else had a similar experience with going back and playing by the "auld school" rules?

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took me 7 years (1997-2004) but i put an OD&D(1974) campaign together. so i've been refereeing again (2004 to present)

Jack Daniel said:

3. THAC0 isn't so bad! Really! I mean, what's the difference, honestly?

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I had no problem with THAC0 for my own use other than it being inelegant. I have met many people who it gets annoying for.

The standard time-saving method of reporting to-hit results is to roll the die look at my stats, and then report the AC hit to the GM.
Old Method: THAC0 9, I roll 12, I subtract my roll from my stat. AC -3.
New Method: Attack 11, I roll 12, I add my roll to my stat. AC 23.

What's the difference? Commutivity
9 - 12 = -3
12 - 9 = 3
11 + 12 = 12 + 11 = 23

1. No multiclassing? It hasn't hurt my game in the least, especailly since, even when I was playing 3e, most players never, ever took advantage of the M/C option, except to cherrypick a level or two. In theory, it sounds really nice to say that your 5th level fighter can train with a thieves' guild to become a 1st level thief. Logically, anyway, there's no reason to realistically dis-allow such a thing. It's just that... in years and years of playing 3e, I don't remember anyone ever significantly departing from whatever class they started in, let alone role-playing the event of picking up a second class. In 2e, if you could dual-class, you did, because it was a real power boost. But in 3e? The multiclassing rules actually tend to hurt most characters' relative power, and so they usually don't get used. In short, after switching back to basic D&D, they're hardly missed (which I didn't expect, but was surprised to notice).

There's also the fact that since classic D&D has less structure, it allows more classes to do more things. If there's a fighter who happens to work his way into a thief guild, there's no reason to say he couldn't try to pick a lock once in a while -- not as easily as a pure thief, but you could allow him to make a Dexterity check with some sort of penalty to allow it to work.

2. It's a human world again. With only the human characters allowed to pick whether they're Fighters, Clerics, Thieves, Mages, or Monks, players are pretty reluctant to settle on playing an Elf, Dwarf, or Hobbit. I even use the variant rule from the back of the RC that lets demihumans advance past their level limits, and still players prefer humans. It makes the game feel... well, normal again. I no longer have entire parties of non-humans trying to interact with a mostly human-populated world. So this is definitely a good thing AFAIAC.

That's one of the biggest differences between editions that I've seen. Demihumans are more archetypal than they are in 3e, so humans dominate the setting. That said, I found it pretty easy to establish a similar setting in my 3e campaign. By presenting the world as human-centric, using mostly human NPCs, and playing up racial differences, it's easy to make 3e just as human-centric.

3. THAC0 isn't so bad! Really! I mean, what's the difference, honestly? In 3e, if you're a fighter attacking with a bonus of +3 and your enemy has AC 17, you know you need to roll a 14 or better to hit. d20 + attack bonus beats AC. Very simple, very intuitive. In the classic game, though, if you're a fighter with THAC0 17 attacking an enemy with an AC of 3, what's the difference? You know that if the d20 + the bad guy's AC beats your THAC0, you hit -- roll 14 or better. What I'm driving at here is, since the numbers are practically the same, why the hate? Why is it that whenever anyone brings up "what's bad about D&D before 3e came out", THAC0 and AC always top the list? I'm not seeing a difference!

THAC0 isn't horrible, but it is unintuitive and one more way of slowing down the game. Subtracting to find a target number and then rolling is one more computation that people need to do. It's simply more intuitive to roll, add your bonus, and see if you beat the target number. THAC0 requires you to figure that target number out first. Anything that adds an extra step, no matter how small, is slowing down game. Those little things add up. It's one of the reasons I hate threat ranges in 3e.

Of course, THAC0 is easily circumvented in those old editions by just converting it into an attack bonus and making AC go low to high instead of high to low. That was a house rule of mine long before 3e hit the shelves.

4. In order to allow all of the roles that exist in my campaign to be fulfilled, I've only had to add two human classes (noble and scientist). I've had to add a great deal more demi-human classes to cover all the races that exist in my campaign, but thankfully, since most basic D&D demi-humans just wind up being weaker variations on the fighter, that means that players only go for those classes when they really want to role-play something special. That said, some concepts just make for really, really cool basic D&D classes... and when all is said and done, it turns out that all I need to run a basic D&D campaign is the Rules Cyclopedia and a little five-page house rules document that adds the extra classes and a few odd spells and weapons. One book, and I'm playing a whole D&D camapign! This is far and away the happiest side-effect of my little sojourn into retro-gaming. Three core manuals, half a dozen Complete books, Unearthed Arcana, Oriental Adventures, and a whole pile of other heavy hardcovers get to stay on my shelf when I go to play... all I can say is, I'm so stoked over how much easier it is to play basic D&D that I just can't stop glowing.

Eh...I could easily run a 3e campaign with just the Player's Handbook and a few pages printed off of the SRD. I love the Cyclopedia, but I think the whole "one book is all you need" thing is way overrated.

Has anybody else had a similar experience with going back and playing by the "auld school" rules?

The older D&D game is a much better game than a lot of people give it credit for. It's not perfect, but in my opinion it beats any version of AD&D easily -- twice on gaming day. I'm happy with my 3e game, but I like looking through the older books like the Rules Cyclopedia. If I ever hunt down a copy of the "New Easy to Master" boxed set, my nostalgia might get the better of me and cause me to return to my gaming roots.

an_idol_mind said:

THAC0 isn't horrible, but it is unintuitive and one more way of slowing down the game. Subtracting to find a target number and then rolling is one more computation that people need to do. It's simply more intuitive to roll, add your bonus, and see if you beat the target number. THAC0 requires you to figure that target number out first. Anything that adds an extra step, no matter how small, is slowing down game. Those little things add up. It's one of the reasons I hate threat ranges in 3e.

Of course, THAC0 is easily circumvented in those old editions by just converting it into an attack bonus and making AC go low to high instead of high to low. That was a house rule of mine long before 3e hit the shelves.

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THAC0 works best as a static target number which the roll + adjustments has to equal or exceed, with target AC being one of the adjustments -- so you roll your d20, add all your adjustments for Str, magic, flanking, etc., and then add your target's AC (so if the target is AC 3 you add 3 to the total; if the target is AC -3 you subtract 3 from the total) and if the grand total equals or exceeds the target number (THAC0) you hit. It's very easy -- arguably easier than the 3E method, because the target number is fixed/static -- but it does require the DM to tell the players the AC of their opponents, which some people don't like.

Yes. I'm having a great time with Moldvay-Cook B/X D&D using bits of the RC (mostly the War Machine & Dominion rules) and also with Castles & Crusades.

You may find bits of the Basic Fantasy RPG useful:
http://basicfantasy.org/main.html

an_idol_mind said:

Of course, THAC0 is easily circumvented in those old editions by just converting it into an attack bonus and making AC go low to high instead of high to low. That was a house rule of mine long before 3e hit the shelves.

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Side note: My preference is to convert to attack bonus, keep AC the same, and use a "target 20" mechanic for everything. Seems like less conversion work for me.

d20 + attack bonus + AC >= 20 for hit.

For real streamlining, I just use all monster HD for their attack bonus, so there's actually nothing to convert from the printed page.