D&D 1E 1e Play Report

[Celebrim]

STR 19 (+4)
DEX 13 (+1)
CON 10 (+0)
INT 12 (+1)
WIS 7 (-2)
CHR 6 (-2)

LOL. Yes, thanks for the example. It speaks for itself; there is nothing I could have said that would have made my point better. On that note, I rest my case.

Diversity is interesting.

LOL. Seriously?? You just showed me stats for a big strong barbarian with charisma as a dump stat and you think you are presenting diversity? I get more diversity out of point buy than that.

 

[Celebrim]

See the difference?

Nope. I see a lot of perception bias that is coming out in your language, but I don't see a lot of substance to your description.

 

[Water Bob]

I am seriously starting to think that you're not interested in anyone's point of view except your own, so I'm not sure that I'll keep posting in this thread.

LOL. Seriously?? You just showed me stats for a big strong barbarian with charisma as a dump stat and you think you are presenting diversity? I get more diversity out of point buy than that.

I showed you a fine character with a very interesting, creative, background.

Charisma is important in my game, not only for mechanical reasons (leadership, combat feint, intimidation) but also because, if I see a player not playing his character's CHR, then I'll remind him.

The character I posted doesn't take a leadership role. And, at age 14 (the character in the game), he's smart enough to learn to keep his trap shut and just look menacing.

The other PC I have in my game didn't use CHR as a "dump stat". He knows how important the stat can be in my games (the first player knows that too, but with his starting rolls, he had to make some decisions--and he rightly went with brawn for his Cimmerian Barbarian....not too many of them are intellectual types, especially since these barbarians can't read).

The other PC in my campaign looks like this:

STR 18 (+4)
DEX 14 (+2)
CON 16 (+3)
INT 13 (+1)
WIS 10 (+0)
CHA 13 (+1)

This player rolled hot. Cimmerians have +2 STR and -2 INT, so his original rolls were 16, 14, 16, 15, 10, 13. Not bad for 4d6, drop lowest, arrange to taste.

This is what you woud call an example of one character being "better" than the other.

This is a warrior culture. The PCs are barbarians, like Conan. You'd expect them to put their three highest stats into their physicals.

Note how this player didn't choose CHA as his lowest stat. For a Barbarian, this is a pretty congenial guy. The player has ambtions of being chief one day.

Maybe he'll get there.





EDIT: The player playing the "weaker" character is quite happy with his character. That's because he didn't cry about his stats and, instead, made the most out of them. He made a CHARACTER to play.

Background-wise, Caelis (the weaker of the two, stat-wise), has that neat "thing" with the rest of the villagers where they think that there is something strange about old Caelis Redbirth. On top of this, he's the current clan chieftain's son. He's also the son of the blacksmith.

The player has made the most out of the character--in spite of his original rolls of 17, 13, 10, 14, 7, 6--in four ways.

#1: Cool, interesting background story. One of the chief's sons, shunned by some of the villagers. They think that something is not quite right about Caelis Redbirth, and Caelis is smart enough to sometimes use that to his advantage.

#2: Caelis is a hell of a warrior. His physicals are quite strong. The other warriors respect his combat worth.

#3: The player maxed out Caelis' Craft (Weaponsmith) skill, making Caelis apprentice to his father. He's becoming quite a good smith.

#4: Feat-wise, the player did an interesting thing and is specializing the character with thrown weapons. Distance weapons in this culture are looked upon as "unmanly", "childish", and "woman-ish". A spear or a hand axe, thrown in a battle, is OK, but for someone to meet their foe from a consistant distance is just not why Crom put these barbarians on the planet. Since Caelis is somewhat of an outcast already, the character has embraced a non-traditional, even frowned upon, fighting style. He carries a couple hand axes and a javelin quiver on his back. And, he's quite good at it. He'll kill a few foes first before he charges in to meet them face-to-face. And, this all contributes to the character's CHR being low--because what he does is not respected by the other warriors. Yet, he gets results, and the other warriors certainly respect that.


So...is this really a weak character?

He's excellent in melee.

He's excellent with thrown weapons.

He's the chief's son.

He's an excellent weaponsmith

He's big, strong, and quiet. Intimidating.



He's actually quite fun to play, I'm sure the player would say, in spite of his inferior rolls.

Which proves my point: Any character, regardless of stats, can be extremely fun to play.





You know, with point buy, you rarely get extremely interesting characters like Caelis Redbirth--or even Tyrion, from Game of Thrones. Who would point-buy a weak human dwarf?

But, a player who rolls some interesting throws might come up with a concept like Tyrion and have the time of his life.

 

[Celebrim]

I am seriously starting to think that you're not interested in anyone's point of view except your own, so I'm not sure that I'll keep posting in this thread.

If all you can do is post vaguely insulting assertions about by DMing style, even though those assertions about my game contridict the game style I've been vociferously advocating for some 10 years on EnWorld, then yeah, I think that would be my preference as well.

I showed you a fine character with a very interesting, creative, background.

Yes, I won't quibble with that, but you also showed me an almost completely sterotypical barbarian build with a stat array not significantly different than a lot of point buy builds and which matched up well with all my predictions about your 'random' generation. You are using 4d6 drop lowest, arrange to taste, which is rather non-random in its results and on average produces results very close to point buy. You could accomplish almost the exact same results with 27+1d6 point buy. Because it is 'arrange to taste' it really loses alot of its randomness, and quickly approaches simply arranging the elite stat array to taste, which is as I predicted when I guessed what the play at your table was really like. Likewise, for all your throwaway insults at people who don't play point buy - let's remind people what you said: "point-buy, cookie-cutter, archetype brothers" - the characters you are extolling look remarkably like cookie cutter archetypes and have stat arrays that closely resemble those found in my point buy game. Moreover, all random point buy really does is winnow out weak characters (you have none in your samples), and force players with few strong scores (but at least one good score, like both your examples) to play a class with single attribute dependency - like Barbarian, Sorcerer, or Wizard.

What you don't do is 3d6 in order (true random), nor do you laud how great it is to play the character that has a 14, 13, 12, 12, 11, 7 stat array. Both of the characters have rolled the 16's and 17's necessary to define a character by his strong abilities, even though I just did 4d6 drop the lowest for 5 characters and produced between the 5 only two 16+ abilities, and even though I know from years and years of experience with random point buy that that's a slightly unusual and fortunate result.

The only real advantage of random generation is not letting the player arrange his stats to taste, which forces the player to play 'odd' stat arrays and classes that are atypical and perhaps out of his normal comfort zone. Once you allow the player to arrange the stats in order, and once you move to 4d6 drop lowest or 5d6 drop the two lowest, you are moving toward something that is relatively indistinguishable from point buy save that it produces relatively minor differences in character potential (and your two examples have relatively minor differences).

As for backstory, you do realize don't you that people who play with point buy aren't backstory impaired? There is nothing particularly special about that backstory. It's just a backstory.

The other PC I have in my game...

The other? As in you have just two?

EDIT: The player playing the "weaker" character is quite happy with his character. That's because he didn't cry about his stats and, instead, made the most out of them. He made a CHARACTER to play.

I think you are being really niave. The guy rolled a 17. Tell me about how he's happy with a weak character when he's got no stats above 12 and his average across all stats is below 10.

Which proves my point: Any character, regardless of stats, can be extremely fun to play.

To a certain extent I want to agree with you. As a DM, I play all sorts of characters and get enjoyment out of it. And as a PC, I can enjoy RP for RP's sake and lean towards the thespian end of the player spectrum. But to a large extent, I'm hearing the voice of inexperience. Again, any character with a 19 in something is playable. True randomness however regularly turns out characters with no good stats. First edition tends to minimize the problems with randomness by making ability scores to not matter much over a wide range, but I've seen enough of the problems to know of what I speak.

You know, with point buy, you rarely get extremely interesting characters like Caelis Redbirth--or even Tyrion, from Game of Thrones. Who would point-buy a weak human dwarf?

Your under several misconceptions there. First, nothing about point buy prevents you from having interesting characters. Second, you are somewhat getting the situation backwards. With point buy, you play the human dwarf because you want to - not because you have to. You are under the false perception that the purpose of point buy is to ensure mechanically sound characters. But in my experience only about half of all players are using it primarily for that purpose. The rest are ensuring that they get the unusual character that they think would be interesting to play.

I can't help but here limited system experience as well. How many point buy systems have you played? GURPS? Star Wars? White Wolf's story teller system? The vast majority of systems don't use random stat generation. Players don't seem to have trouble creating interesting backgrounds.

But, a player who rolls some interesting throws might come up with a concept like Tyrion and have the time of his life.

Maybe. But that's not something exclusive to random stat generation. I've seen a whole lot of random stat generation characters without great backstories. You keep mistaking game style for system. If a player wants to create an interesting backstory, it won't matter what system you are using. If the player isn't inclined (or able) to make an interesting backstory, it won't matter what system you are using.

 

[Celebrim]

The Litany of Death

For something like this, there really isn't much of a story so I won't give a full walkthrough:

Spoiler

1) Elf Fighter 4/M-U 4 - Attempted to swing across water after creating an ill advised rope swing using several normal ropes and a magical rope of climbing. Neglected that the hypoteneus of a right triangle is longer than the other two sides, and ended up in the drink. His character had only 10 hit points due to bad hit point rolls; shocked to death by an electric eel.
2) Halfling Thief 6 - Asphexiated by poison gas while helping to push a stone block. Three sixes in a row for damage from the gas doomed the character.
3) Dwarf Fighter 5 - Pulled a part by a pair of giant beetles.
4) Human Fighter 5 - Had lost all of his equipment during the ill advised rope tricks when he paniced and quaffed a potion of gaseous form. He managed to scavange a pitted bronze spear and bits and peices of rotted armor from the tomb, but found himself beset by zombies. While fleeing, attempted to grab a golden ring from the eagle's mouth in hopes finding something useful, but became stuck and was torn apart.
5) Human Cleric 5 - Fell into a pit, and was zapped by a Will O' Wisp.

In general, I consider C1 to be a much harder, harsher, and less fair module than the more famous S1: Tomb of Horrors (which is only the third hardest module I've played). So the results were not that surprising and were probably about the expected for this module assuming a complete lack of famliarity with the text of both it and MM2.

 

[Water Bob]

If all you can do is post vaguely insulting assertions about by DMing style, even though those assertions about my game contridict the game style I've been vociferously advocating for some 10 years on EnWorld, then yeah, I think that would be my preference as well.

I've actually been quite polite to you, while your tone is quite snarky....

So exactly who the @#$# do you think is used to being in charge if it isn't me?

Do you have any idea how many threads I've participated in on EnWorld were some bozo has told me I abuse my players, that I'm a control freak, that I'm narcisstic, that I'm sociopathic, etc. because I advocate a DMing style that they think is too authoritarian?

But this question itself tells me that you don't have a clue.

LOL. Yes, thanks for the example. It speaks for itself; there is nothing I could have said that would have made my point better.

LOL. Seriously?? You just showed me stats for a big strong barbarian with charisma as a dump stat and you think you are presenting diversity? I get more diversity out of point buy than that.

Nope. I see a lot of perception bias that is coming out in your language, but I don't see a lot of substance to your description.

You could accomplish almost the exact same results with 27+1d6 point buy.

But, that's not the point. The point is...with point buy, a player most likely would not end up with those stats because he wouldn't want to penalize himself so much. STR would come down while WIS and CHR would go up.

- let's remind people what you said: "point-buy, cookie-cutter, archetype brothers" - the characters you are extolling look remarkably like cookie cutter archetypes and have stat arrays that closely resemble those found in my point buy game.

See a lot of Stat 6 an Stat 7 attributes in your point buy game, do ya?

I doubt that.

Moreover, all random point buy really does is winnow out weak characters (you have none in your samples), and force players with few strong scores (but at least one good score, like both your examples) to play a class with single attribute dependency - like Barbarian, Sorcerer, or Wizard.

FYI - in my game, the players had no choice of class. They new beforehand that, whatever their rolls, they would be playing Barbarians.

As for backstory, you do realize don't you that people who play with point buy aren't backstory impaired? There is nothing particularly special about that backstory. It's just a backstory.

Sure. A lot of gamers are creative. You miss the point again, though. The stats inspired the backstory. His stats presented roleplaying topes that guided the player on who the character is.

And, I've found that's a lot more interesting than what you typically get with point buy where players typically attempt some heroic archetype.

The other? As in you have just two?

That's it. Only two players and one GM this time out.

I think you are being really niave.

Need to add that snarky remark to the list above.

The guy rolled a 17. Tell me about how he's happy with a weak character when he's got no stats above 12 and his average across all stats is below 10.

He's quite happy with him, for reasons I described.

In a Traveller campaign, I had a player roll physical stats of STR 2, DEX 2, END 3, which is almost as low as you can go in that game.

We turned that character into something to be remembered. He had a gravity-chair that he floated around in. He was useful in combat because he was the Scout, going high in altitude or far ahead in his grav chair.

The player (different one from the one in my game now) was always thinking of ways to improve his chair with weapons and sensors and whatnot--making up for his stat deficiency.

The point there is: Stats don't make characters. High stats are not required for enjoyable characters. Neat characters, regarldess of stats, are what is needed.

But to a large extent, I'm hearing the voice of inexperience.

Careful. I may have more years in the DM seat than you do.

I can't help but here limited system experience as well. How many point buy systems have you played? GURPS? Star Wars? White Wolf's story teller system? The vast majority of systems don't use random stat generation. Players don't seem to have trouble creating interesting backgrounds.

Point buy is a good system for certain types of game. The James Bond game is a good example. Why? That universe is about character archetypes. Thus, point buy is the way to go.

I've never played a Supers game, but if I did, I would think point buy would be a good choice.

I did run a 7 year D6 Star Wars game, and although that system is not quite point buy, it is a system where all characters are (mostly--some exceptions) created equal. And, yes, with Star Wars, that was a good choice.

Not with D&D, or Conan or most other games, though. Random Generation (either true random or with some player input such as arrange to taste) is a vastly superior method, imo.

 

[Toric_Arthendain]

But the problem of rules silence has, as I said, the opposite problem and appears more strongly at low levels of play. While these are both in some sense 'problems with the rules', they are problems of a very different sort and I'm trying to compare and constrast them.

For you maybe "rules silence" is a problem. This is not necessarily the case for everyone, just the same as "rules for everything" is a problem for me but not necessarily everyone.

This is kinda odd praise considering the wide variaty of games that were built from the D20 framework. Besides which, there isn't a game I've ever played that I felt constrained against making my own and smithing out if necessary dozens of pages of house rules.

Where I really think you are off base is that you are confusing DM style with the system. You seem to be saying that you can't use a particular style with 3e but that you can with 1e, and that just isn't true. Let's collect a few assertions here.

Dozens of pages of house rules? If I felt I had to house rule 3.5 like that, I would have dumped the system LONG ago. I don't even have dozens of pages of house rules for 1e, I have three. All I need at the moment, although I reserve the right to add to them in the future.

Why did you let them get away with that then? That's not a requirement of the system. Nothing in 3e demands that you resolve an in game situation wholly through a metaproposition. Nothing in 3e demands that you the DM interpret abstract propositions into concrete propositions on the players behalf.

Of course it doesn't but players develop certain expectations and many players have fallen into this practice, even veterans. Call it growing lazy or whatever. And I don't let my players get away with that. But it gets tedious to have to remind them over and over.

Yeah, players do that. No, you don't have to let them get away with it. If someone says, "Search check.", you can and should always say, "Searching what and how?" If someone says, "Diplomacy check.", you can and should always say, "Yeah but what do you say?" And the really important thing to note is that this isn't system specific. Because I can remember the point in my early RPG development when I learned how to play the way that we both demand at our tables. I was an elementary school DM, and a player's high school age cousin agreed to run a game for me and my friends, and there was a social situation and I proposed something like, "My character goes over and introduces himself to the cleric", and the DM said, "Yeah, ok, but what does your character say?" And I distinctly remember this strong moment of embarassment at having to actually do what you and I would call role-playing, because it wasn't something that we'd learned to do at that point. We weren't used to acting in the first person. We had directed our characters in the third person abstract and now it had to get concrete.

You don't let players say, "Climb check", without saying what they want to climb. Why would you let them say "Diplomacy check", without saying what they want to say? Conversely, why would you let them climb a wall or pick a lock unless the climb was trivial or the lock was trivial without making some sort of check for success?

You can sugar coat it any way you want. Players are still going to say, "I search the room" and roll a d20. What real difference does it make if they say "I search the desk" and then roll a d20? If something is hidden behind a shield hanging from the wall, players expect to be told about it if the make their Search DC. Look at the skill description. It tells what DCs are needed to accomplish certain tasks. In 1e, I am not telling the players about what is behind the shield on the wall unless they actually say they check it. In 3.5, the rules assumption is that I will inform the players about what is behind the shield if they meet or exceed the DC. Most descriptions in 3.5 modules say some variation of this, "If the PCs succeed at a DC25 Search check, they will discover the ruby hidden under a loose floorboard under the bed". Sure you can make them specifically say they are searching under the bed. But then you start to bog down the game with too many skill rolls. Each player could be making multiple Search rolls in every room. And if a published module states that a DC# Search check will discover something hidden somewhere in the room, but you expect the players to still tell you they are searching that specific spot to even get a shot at rolling, why even have the skill? If a ruby is hidden under a loose floorboard and the PC looks under the bed and sees the loose floorboard, why does he still have to roll? And if he doesn't have to roll, why have the Search skill at all? Plenty of players expect that the blanket statement of searching a room and a single Search check is good enough and I believe the rules can be interpreted as supporting this style of play. And unless you want too many checks slowing down the game, that is probably how many DMs handle it.

Yes you do. If you don't have to worry about it, it's not because of the system but of the culture. You lost control of your 3e game. It sounds like you have an easier time retaining control of your 1e game probably because of differences in how your players play the game, and how you run the game, and not because of differences in the system. That's Celebrim's Second Law of Role Playing: "How you prepare for and think about playing a system is more important than the system itself."

Wow, making a few assumptions about me and my game? I didn't lose control of my 3e game. And I can't stress enough that it has EVERYTHING to do with system for me. 3e is rules intense. As the levels go by, everything slows down. Combat for a mid to high level group can take hours. Players deciding on what spells they are memorizing or praying for takes awhile. Rules are spread out across many different books. Prep time takes far longer for 3e than 1e. Stat blocks for monsters and bad guys are ridiculously long. Unless you have a fantastic memory, you will without a doubt have to look up skill descriptions, feat descriptions, spell descriptions, power descriptions, etc. PCs and enemies have outrageous bonuses, especially at mid to high levels. I believe the balance that many love about 3e begins to fall apart at higher levels. Can you play minimalist 3e? Maybe with some effort. But from experience, I absolutely grew to hate 3e for all the reason stated above. Again, this is my perception and experience. Others certainly, yourself included, might not feel this way.

Why do you let the players get away with that? I still do as I did in 1e. When its your turn to declare an action you have six seconds to state your action or you lose it. If you have to the rule up in a rule book, do it between your turns. If you are a spell caster and you don't know what your spell does, you aren't allowed to cast it. Most of my players have a small sheaf of relevant rules paper clipped to their character sheets for quick reference. I'm not going to let the players get away with bogging down the game in rules lawyering (again, the old term), and being indecisive. And once again, I note that this has nothing to do with edition. I can remember sessions of 1e (ran by people other than myself) where the players and the DM spent half the session with their noses in the rule book trying to find things in the notoriously badly organized 1e DMG and arguing over what the vague rule therein meant and how it was to be applied.

Sounds like those people lost control of their group, to use what you accused me of earlier. I don't set a six second limit. I believe in allowing the players a little bit more time than that to make a decision. And in 1e, there are only so many actions that are valid so that goes fairly quickly. The game bogged down for me, not with the time it takes the players to decide on an action, but with what I stated above. Long combats, fiddly bonuses from feats, skills, powers and spells, tons of rules scattered across huge rulebooks. I don't have rules lawyers in my game. No one questions a judgement I make until after the game and even then they are respectful about it.

Also, the 1e DMG is my favorite RPG rulebook ever written. YMMV, of course.

Me too... oh wait a minute, you are saying 1e is grittier... nevermind. That is ALSO not an attribute of the rules, but rather something that depends on the culture of play at the table. The least gritty games I ever played were in 1e. Play balance in favor of the PC's broke really easily in 1e, to the extent that it was not unusual for me to meet people back then who had characters that had killed not only all the arch-devils but many of the gods. Especially post Unearthed Arcana, it was really easy for the players to dominate over stock monster manual entries unless the DM was very creative.

I totally disagree with all of that. 1e is grittier in my opinion and IS an attribute of the rules and has little to do with culture at the table. Characters in 3e with their outrageous bonuses to hit and their feats and big damage bonuses are more like superheros in a fantasy setting, again in my opinion. In every game I ever ran or played in 1e, play balance certainly didn't break in favor of the players.

But characters in either edition are as frail as the DM wants them to be. There is no upper bound on the power of 3e monsters. It is much easier to challenge players within the 3e rules than 1e, which often required you making things up that broke or altered the rules in order to challenge the players.

Again, I guess I can agree to disagree here. A 1st level character in 1e is far more frail than a 1st level character in 3e, especially if the DM runs it by the book and doesn't give full hit points at 1st level. A fighter in 3e has 10 hp at level 1 and possibly more with a decent Con. The same fighter in 1e has 1-10 +Con by the book. The 3e fighter also likely has bonuses to hit and damage from high strength whereas the 1e fighter might not because ability score bonuses don't kick in until the scores are 15+. So a 3e fighter with 15 Str has a +2 to hit and damage from Strength. A 1e fighter with a 15 Str has no bonus to hit or damage from Strength. This doesn't even count Power Attack and feats that offer up even more bonuses. Same with other classes. Mage in 3e gets bonus spells from high Intelligence. By the book in 1e, the Magic User gets 1 first level spell regardless of Intelligence. There are plenty of challenges for higher level 1e PCs. That said, 1e was not really meant to go much past level 12 and the experience point totals needed to reach that high of a level were large enough that it took quite awhile to get there, unlike the faster leveling in 3e. By level 12 in 1e, many characters were retired and new campaigns were started. Could you go past that? Sure. Was it more difficult to find challenges for the PCs? Yes, but they are there.

I'm ok with that. But you, like several others here, seem to be more willing to give viewpoints on my game - a game you are completely unfamiliar with - than viewpoints on the system itself. And most of you are flat out wrong about my game, and would be laughed at by my players for your cluelessness.

Go back and read my post. I offered no viewpoints on your game other than mentioning a contradiction I though I had detected in one of your posts and that really had nothing to do with your game but how you perceived the rules. I admit to being unfamiliar with your game. All of my comments pretty much centered on my own game and my viewpoints on 1e and 3e. Again, take a look at my one other post here. It all centered around my feelings about the two editions. Those comments were made to express my opinions about 1e and 3e, not make judgements about your DM style or your game. I wouldn't presume to tell someone what would be best for their own game. In nearly all cases, I said "I think" or "I expect" or "I don't have to worry about that". I never said "I think you should do it this way" or "You have to worry about that".

That being said, I wonder what your expectations were when starting this thread? You started a thread on a messageboard where you pretty much said that 1e is a bad game. Were you not expecting that there might be a few who would post why they like 1e and dislike 3e? If that was your expectation, you probably shouldn't have started the thread in the first place.

I'm not sure why you felt the need to attack me with comments stating your belief that I lost control of my group. I thought I was pretty polite to you in my initial post in this thread. I didn't bash you or how you run a D&D game. I simply presented my own opinion on 1e and 3e. I politely mentioned a contradiction in a comment you had made. At no time did I attack you, your game, your DM style or any of that. All of my positive comments about 1e and negative comments about 3e were made from MY perspective, not with the assumption that everyone would agree with me.

As I said in my last post, and Crothian said earlier, 1e is not for everyone. I accept that just like I accept that 3e is not for everyone. But plenty of people love 1e and believe it is a good system. You seem to be saying that the game is bad and you are shocked anyone likes it or that those of us that do like it just don't get it. There are plenty of fans of 1e that would disagree with much of what you have said about it here. Just like there are plenty of 3e fans that would disagree with what I have said about it here. I accept that. I'm not even saying that 3e is a bad system, it just isn't for me anymore. I might even play it in the future if I had a chance to join a game. But I will never DM it again. I have my game of choice.

Is 1e perfect? No. But it comes very close FOR ME.

 

[Toric_Arthendain]

Yes!



YES!!



Sing it, brother!

Just sharing my love of 1e!

 

[Celebrim]

For you maybe "rules silence" is a problem. This is not necessarily the case for everyone, just the same as "rules for everything" is a problem for me but not necessarily everyone.

On that I would agree. The big question of what system works for you ultimately comes down to, "What problems most annoy you?" And ultimately that question is personal and different for everyone, and can change over time as you experience different things. And what you experience can depend on a lot of things: how many players you have at a table, how many different groups of players you've ran, how many different personalities you've encountered, how long you've been playing with someone, how new that person is to the game, what their prior baggage from older games is, etc.

Dozens of pages of house rules? If I felt I had to house rule 3.5 like that, I would have dumped the system LONG ago. I don't even have dozens of pages of house rules for 1e, I have three. All I need at the moment, although I reserve the right to add to them in the future.

By the time I gave up on 1e, I had dozens of pages of house rules and that wasn't counting the extensive rules sets I was importing from Dragon magazine in my count. Moreover, I'd be very surprised if your three pages of house rules fully enumerated the errata you are applying to your game. Until you've gone through every page of every book in use at your table and done a, "This text supercedes that text.", you don't really know how many house rules you had. When I started my house rules project, I thought I only had a couple of dozen pages. When it reached over 100 pages, I realized that I pretty much needed to just rewrite the whole book.

I played 1e for more than a decade with probably 8 different DM's. I never played at one table that only had 3 pages of house rules. If you only have 3 pages of house rules, your the most by the book 1e DM I've ever met - and I was by the book enough that I used the 'to hit vs. AC' weapon tables. Except, I ended up tweaking them.

You can sugar coat it any way you want. Players are still going to say, "I search the room" and roll a d20. What real difference does it make if they say "I search the desk" and then roll a d20? If something is hidden behind a shield hanging from the wall, players expect to be told about it if the make their Search DC.

You don't beat around the bush do you. I've written about a small book worth of text at EnWorld on the exact particular problem of search and full concealment. Suffice to say that this is the most complex problem I know of in the 3e game, and that we'd totally hijack the thread to address it. However, the root problem of communicating to the DM different degrees of concreteness in a proposition is one that shows up even in 1e. How it is addressed differs from DM to DM: do you lead the players by prompting them for more information, or do you risk angering the players by making assumptions about their actions without taking their inputs? Very difficult problem, and I'd be happy to tackle it in another thread.

Most descriptions in 3.5 modules say some variation of this, "If the PCs succeed at a DC25 Search check, they will discover the ruby hidden under a loose floorboard under the bed".

That may be true, but that is a style or design problem and not a rules problem. Moreover, by the explicit description of the skill, the above isn't by the rules. A search allows you to search a 5'x5' area; there is no such thing as 'searching a room' in the rules, and a proposition to 'search the room' has to be broken into its components in 3e in the same way you'd have to break the same proposition in 1e.

There are ways to address this issue in the encounter design within the rules by enumerating the issues required to find the ruby. Do they search under the bed? This requires explicitly checking a 5'x5' area. But if they 'search the bed' does that mean that they search under the bed. Typically what I do hear is set a high DC to find the loose floorboard, then set a modifier on the roll for certain specific helpful actions. For example, I might give the search check a +10 bonus if they explicitly move the bed to search under it, and so forth.

Sure you can make them specifically say they are searching under the bed. But then you start to bog down the game with too many skill rolls.

Potentially, but you can also bog down the game in too many concrete propositions. If you are really going to hide rubies under loose floorboards, then be prepared for, "I tap the first floorboard to see if it makes a hollow sound. Ok, now I take a crow bar and try to pry up the first floor board. I carefully sift through all the dust looking for items. Now, I carefully inspect the board for hidden hollows. Now, I replace the floor board, and move to the second floor board." I have experienced 1e games that bog down as the PC's move to that level of what 1e haters lovingly refer to as 'pixel bitching'. Of course, they use that term to refer to my 3e, 1e inspired, game as well.

And if a published module states that a DC# Search check will discover something hidden somewhere in the room...

It probably will be no surprise to you that I rewrite published modules extensively as well.

Plenty of players expect that the blanket statement of searching a room and a single Search check is good enough and I believe the rules can be interpreted as supporting this style of play.

Sure, but that's a DMing style issue. The rules can be interpretted as supporting my style of play as well by focusing on different statements in the rules. And in fact, in my opinion the rules support both styles of play as valid and its up to the DM how to handle the situation as best he sees fit. The fact that other DMs handle the situation differently is not something I let impact my game.

Wow, making a few assumptions about me and my game? I didn't lose control of my 3e game.

It sure sounds like it. But, ok, I admit that that is a provocative way to state the problem and I'll drop it.

Is the levels go by, everything slows down. Combat for a mid to high level group can take hours.

True of high level 1e as well because I've been there. Of course, I've also experience 1e high level play where the initiative check could be considered 'mid-combat' because most combat in the first round - if it wasn't actually over in the suprise round. High level 1e PC's are just enormously powerful if the DM doesn't keep an extreme check on the game.

Players deciding on what spells they are memorizing or praying for takes awhile. Rules are spread out across many different books.

Again, true of 1e as well.

Prep time takes far longer for 3e than 1e.

I'll grant that to a certain extent, but what I've lost in prep efficiency since the 1e era I've more than made up for with the power of the word processor. However, if I tweaked my expectations abit, I could prep for 3e in exactly the same time it took me to prep for 1e.

Stat blocks for monsters and bad guys are ridiculously long.

Not that much longer than 1e unless you are referencing a monster manual entry, in which case they are about the same length. I'm willing to bet that you ignore the psionic stat block for high level monsters in your game (which would require you to select disciplines), and that you ignore the fact that in the 1e text, the monster powers tend to be part of the text and not part of the stat block.

PCs and enemies have outrageous bonuses, especially at mid to high levels.

Can be true of 1e as well.

I believe the balance that many love about 3e begins to fall apart at higher levels.

True of 1e as well.

Can you play minimalist 3e?

The thing is, most people who play 1e do play minimalist 1e.

Also, the 1e DMG is my favorite RPG rulebook ever written. YMMV, of course.

On that I also agree with you. That isn't to say however that I still want to use its rules, but for all its problems of editting, it's still the best written and most inspiring RPG supplement of all time.

I totally disagree with all of that. 1e is grittier in my opinion and IS an attribute of the rules and has little to do with culture at the table.

And that is the voice of inexperience. I don't doubt that that is your experience, but give me the benefit of the doubt that I'm conveying a real experience to you instead of saying, "No, that couldn't happen. That's impossible", as if you could convince me that I didn't experience what I have experienced.

Characters in 3e with their outrageous bonuses to hit and their feats and big damage bonuses are more like superheros in a fantasy setting, again in my opinion. In every game I ever ran or played in 1e, play balance certainly didn't break in favor of the players.

Not in your opinion, but rather, in your experience. First edition can generate just as big hit and damage bonuses as 3e and just as much a feel of superheroes in a fantasy setting. The big difference between the two games is that 1e monsters are, barring new invention by the DM, rather capped in their abilities. Whereas 3e monsters are not so capped (or handicapped) and can match any player power and ability with powers and abilities of their own. While it is true that the raw numbers are somewhat higher in 3e, in 1e the PC's numbers tend to be higher than the monsters - and ultimately much higher - while in 3e the monsters numbers tend to be much larger than that of any one PC.

Again, I guess I can agree to disagree here. A 1st level character in 1e is far more frail than a 1st level character in 3e, especially if the DM runs it by the book and doesn't give full hit points at 1st level. A fighter in 3e has 10 hp at level 1 and possibly more with a decent Con. The same fighter in 1e has 1-10 +Con by the book.

I partially agree. However, it's worth noting that the 1e orc probably does 1d6 damage, where as the 3e stock orc does 1d12+3 damage. And that's just a non-leader orc. In 3e there is a much better chance that all the orcs are 4HD warriors with elite stat arrays and feats of their own. So how frail a character in either edition is can't be evaluated in isolation, but only in comparison to what he is facing.

And in the long run, that 1e fighter can with a reasonable CON bonus expect to exceed the hit points of every single monster he fights. A high level 1e fighter can have over 100 hit points, more than pretty much every non-unique monster in the book. And once he gets his AC in the -4 to -6 range, every monster he faces is going to need nearly a 20 to hit him because monster to hit is capped at paltry 16HD and mosters generally don't have to hit bonuses. The same cannot be said of the 3e.

That said, 1e was not really meant to go much past level 12 and the experience point totals needed to reach that high of a level were large enough that it took quite awhile to get there, unlike the faster leveling in 3e.

Again, those are play style statements. Depending on the DM/campaign, 1e leveled as fast or faster than 3e. It sounds like you and me both favor slower leveling, but its easy to see from something like the GDQ adventure path or 'Temple of Elemental Evil' that 1e supports fast leveling as well.

By level 12 in 1e, many characters were retired and new campaigns were started. Could you go past that? Sure. Was it more difficult to find challenges for the PCs? Yes, but they are there.

As I said, 1e play balance broke much harder in favor of the PC's than it does in 3e.

But plenty of people love 1e and believe it is a good system. You seem to be saying that the game is bad and you are shocked anyone likes it or that those of us that do like it just don't get it.

I first want to point out that for most of my time at EnWorld I've been one of the 1e defenders, and in another context I probably would be. Believe it or not, there are threads on EnWorld where me and Water Bob are on the same side of defending 1e play and 1e style play. However, I wanted to post about my experience of actually playing 1e after years away from it and how it made me much more sympathetic to those that really don't like it. And, I was curious as to what the defenders of 1e would say to my experience. To a certain extent, I expected a bit of the general 'You aren't a strong enough DM' bias and a lot the advice about how to run a game, which - in the context of who they are telling it too - is a bit redundant since its pretty much how I've been advising and telling people to run any game - whether 1e or 3e - for years now. I'm still hoping to learn something about why people like 1e more than 3e.

 

[Celebrim]

A lot of people don't believe my assertions about my experience, so I thought I'd back them up.

These are typical 3e stat blocks for me as I use in my prep:

Ghoul (0-16): CR 1; Medium-Size Undead; HD 2d12+16; hp 29; Init +2 (Dex); Spd 30 ft.; AC 14 (+2 Dex, +2 natural); Atk Bite +3 melee (1d6+1 and paralysis), 2 claws +0 melee (1d3 and paralysis); SA Paralysis, create spawn; SQ Undead, +2 turn resistance; AL CE; SV Fort +0, Ref +2, Will +5; Str 13, Dex 15, Con -, Int 13, Wis 14, Cha 16. Skills and Feats: Climb +6, Escape Artist +7, Hide +7, Intuit Direction +3, Jump +6, Listen +7, Move Silently +7, Search +6, Spot +7; Multiattack, Weapon Finesse (bite).

Shambling Swarm (CR 4): Size/Type: Diminutive Vermin (Swarm); Hit Dice: 9d8-7 (33 hp); Init: +4 Speed: 20 ft. (4 squares), climb 20 ft.; Armor Class: 18 (+4 size, +4 Dex), touch 18, flat-footed 14 Base Attack/Grapple: +6/—; Attack: Swarm +10 melee touch attack (2d6 plus poison); Space/Reach: 5 ft./0 ft.; SA: Swarming touch, fearsome presence, distraction, poison; SQ: Darkvision 60 ft., immune to weapon damage, swarm traits, tremorsense 30 ft., vermin traits; Saves: Fort +5, Ref +7, Will +3; Abilities: Str 1, Dex 19, Con 8, Int Ø, Wis 10, Cha 2; Skills: Climb +12, Spot +4; Feats: Weapon Finesse (touch)
Fearsome Presence (Su): Any creature viewing the shambling swarm must make a DC 10 fear check.
Swarming Touch (Ex): Any creature touched by the shambling swarm is treated as if it was in its space until it succeeds in a DC 18 reflex save, or is subject to an area attack doing at least 5 damage.
Distraction (Ex): Any living creature that begins its turn with a shambling swarm in its space must succeed on a DC 13 Fortitude save or be nauseated for 1 round. The save DC is Constitution-based.
Poison (Ex): Injury, Fortitude DC 13, initial and secondary damage 1d4 Dex. The save DC is Constitution-based.

Barochun’s Oozing Mummy: CR 6; Unique Medium-Size Undead; HD 8d12+19; hp 71; Init -1 (Dex); Spd 20 ft.; AC 19 (-1 Dex, +10 natural); Atk Slam +10 melee (1d6+11 and green slime); SA Despair, green slime; SQ Undead, resistant to blows, damage reduction 5/+1, fire vulnerability; AL LE; SV Fort +2, Ref +1, Will +7; Str 24, Dex 8, Con -, Int 6, Wis 14, Cha 15. Skills and Feats: Hide +8, Listen +9 Move Silently +8, Spot +9; Alertness, Great Fortitude, Toughness.
Despair (Su): At the mere sight of a mummy, the viewer must succeed on a DC 21 Horror save. If the save is successful, the target is not effected by the despair power of a mummy for a period of 24 hours. However, they are still subject to base DC 16 Fear checks as is normal for encountering a creature with fearsome presence.
Green Slime (Su): Supernatural disease—slam, Fortitude DC 12, incubation period 1 round; damage 1d6 Con and 1d6 Cha. The save DC is Charisma-based. Unlike normal diseases, the green slime continues until the victim reaches Constitution 0 (and dies) or is cured as described below. The green slime is a powerful curse, not a natural disease. A character attempting to cast any conjuration (healing) spell on a creature afflicted with mummy rot must succeed on a DC 20 caster level check, or the spell has no effect on the afflicted character. To eliminate the green slime, it must be burned off of the aflicted character by doing at least 1d6 damage + 1 damage for each round the slime has progressed. An afflicted creature who dies of green slime turns into a pool of green slime as the ordinary hazard.
Undead: Immune to mind-influencing effects, poison, sleep, paralysis, stunning, and disease. Not subject to critical hits, subdual damage, ability damage, energy drain, or death from massive damage.
Resistant to Blows (Ex): Physical attacks deal only half damage to mummies. Apply this effect before damage reduction.
Fire Vulnerability (Ex): A mummy takes double damage from fire attacks unless a save is allowed for half damage. A successful save halves the damage and a failure doubles it.

For monsters without a lot of powers, stat blocks tend to be nearly as compact as in 1e. For monster with a lot of unique powers, the stat blocks are larger but they are much more information rich than a comparable 1e stat block, and I'll have less need to reference a Monster Manual to remember what, for example a Dragonne's roar does or how Phycomid spores work.