1E Resurgence?

[Irda Ranger]

Er, to completely avoid the whole "Just how old school is 4e?" conversation, I'll just respond to the OP.

Yeah, I've seen it too. 1E, BECMI and OD&D (plus their clones) have all gotten a lot of attention lately. I think it was the designers and many others (including me) discussing not just 3e vs. 4e but 4e vs. all previous editions. It was a reminder that they were there. Then a few people posted "Yeah, we're still playing _E, and it's a blast." Which was probably a kind of "That never occurred to me" news to a lot of people, who may have assumed that playing pre-3E wasn't an option (outdated, no groups, whatever).

I'll also just toss a data point out there too. I'm trying to get an RC group together to run some of the old school quests. That's a direct result of 4E being "not D&D" to me once I tried it. I've never played RC before (started with 2e) but I want to see what everyone's talking about.

 

[Engilbrand]

I like how some people seem to be confused about simple topics.
Person A: I think that 4th edition has brought back the feel of 1st edition.
Person B: Your 1st edition games had 9000 Trolls with a billion hit points?
Me: WTF?! Somebody obviously missed something.

Feel and mechanics are not the same thing. My players, both in their 40s, consistently liken 4th edition to 1st edition because of the fact that they can do fun and tactically interesting things in combat. Whether it's in combat or out of combat, it "feels" like 1st edition for them. It's not all of the mechanics. It's the feel that the mechanics lend the game. Minion rules actually help to make a 1st edition feel to these players. It's not that the mechanics are like 1st edition. How is that still hard for some people to grasp? If the game doesn't feel good to you, then you're doing it wrong. If it doesn't feel like 1st edition, then you obviously have different memories of 1st edition than the many people who say that 4e reminds them of 1st. Get over it.

I've also noticed that there have been a lot more posts about the old editions. I think that it's because a lot of people have gotten nostalgia because of the fun that they've been having with 4e. I've never played 1st edition, and I don't want to because mechanics are actually important to me and I don't want to deal with that system. I will say that one of my players told me on Friday that he thought that, mechanically, 4th edition was the best edition of D&D because he thought that it actually did what D&D was trying to do all along.

 

[Henry]

So there were 30+ hit point kobolds at 1st level that took a steady beating for 5+ rounds to kill, and you could get back spells and hit points by resting for 5 minutes between fights in 1E? That really doesn't match up with what I know and have heard of about 1E.

Again, it's really a better discussion for a separate thread. If there is one, I'll post to it tonight or tomorrow.

 

[thecasualoblivion]

Haven't read this topic, but...

For me, my dissatisfaction with 3E had me both looking forward to 4E and pining for 2E AD&D at the same time. I'd actually like to run a 2E game at some point in the future, with a few choice houserules stolen from 3E and 4E to be sure.

 

[Ant]

I think the 4e mood and gameplay are similar to OD&D and AD&D.

That hasn't been my experience with 4e at all, unfortunately, and so far I've played in quite a few games under 4 different DMs.

I raised this with a friend of mine and his thoughts were that the "OD&D feel" that gets touted about 4e is more in relation to the ease of DMing it. From what I've read there does seem to be truth in that.

However, I tried playing 2 PCs last 4e session (one player couldn't make it because he was on honeymoon ... where's the dedication? ) and my head almost exploded trying to keep track of all the different powers and how best they could be utilised. Never before had I felt like I was playing Book-Keeping and Accounting more than that evening.

 

[Grimstaff]

So there were 30+ hit point kobolds at 1st level that took a steady beating for 5+ rounds to kill, and you could get back spells and hit points by resting for 5 minutes between fights in 1E? That really doesn't match up with what I know and have heard of about 1E.

Ha! This is very funny Shazman, but kind of missing the point. Old-school "feel" has very little to do with rules (in fact I'd argue very few of us 1E vets were even playing by the 1E RAW), and more to do with atmosphere, game objectives, and DM focus (as in, focusing on facillitating a fun game as opposed to focusing on the rules). By your argument, if I added 30 hp kobolds and healing surges to my 1E game, it suddenly wouldn't feel like 1E anymore.

Its certainly true that the 1E players handbook contains no Warlords, wizard implements, or Fortitude defense-enhancing cloaks. Its also certainly true that has nothing whatsoever to do with the "feel" element a lot of us are talking about.

Regardless of that, there are plenty of threads with testimonials from folks who have caught a great big whif of old-school from their 4E games, so those threads are probably a better place for that discussion.

My curiosity was more toward whether that feel was fostering an increased interest in older editions, not whether that feel existed. It may indeed be that folks want to continue with that feel, but with the simpler rulesets of 1E or B/X, or it may be that being attacked by a horde of those 30hp (or 1hp minion) kobolds from Keep on the Shadowfell brought on a wave of nostalgia for the horde of 2-5hp kobolds from Keep on the Borderlands, or it may be completely coincidental.

It just seems like a notable increase to me...

 

[Shazman]

That hasn't been my experience with 4e at all, unfortunately, and so far I've played in quite a few games under 4 different DMs.

I raised this with a friend of mine and his thoughts were that the "OD&D feel" that gets touted about 4e is more in relation to the ease of DMing it. From what I've read there does seem to be truth in that.

However, I tried playing 2 PCs last 4e session (one player couldn't make it because he was on honeymoon ... where's the dedication? ) and my head almost exploded trying to keep track of all the different powers and how best they could be utilised. Never before had I felt like I was playing Book-Keeping and Accounting more than that evening.

Exactly. I just don't see that "old school" feel in 4E.

 

[Tigerbunny]

Hmmmm... I'm not planning to do any DM-ing in the immediate future, and with 3 games I'm playing in my plate is full. But in my idle moments when I think about trying to DM some 4E, the first thing that occurs to me is ... "you know, I'll bet the GD series would really *work* as a starting point..."

So yeah. I do find that 4E is making me dig out old material and look at it again. I think it's because D&D is fun again in a way it hasn't been in a very long time, and that makes me think about the adventures that rocked my world when I was a new gamer. Giants. Drow. Kuo-Toa. Tharizdun. Iggwilv. Hommlet. All that jazz.

Plus, it gives me an excuse not to do anything about it for a while - "gotta wait until I get Frost Giants!"

 

[Obryn]

Exactly. I just don't see that "old school" feel in 4E.

OK. That's legit. Not everyone gets the same stuff out of the same products. (It's why we have so darn many of them.)

But do you think people who believe 4e has a 1e feel are deluded, or that they're looking at things in different ways than you are?

-O

 

[Betote]

I've looked back myself to pre-2E rules in search of a good pick-up game, and found it in LL/RC. I still play and run 3.x (Pathfinder these days) and love it, being my "campaign game" of choice, but I find myself using LL for one-shot games or to fill spare time, as in "Dinner was good; Wanna kill some orcs?".

I began playing D&D with AD&D2, so no much for nostalgia here (I've always found 2E rules horrible, altough some of its campaign settings were great). I've also played and run quite a bit of HackMaster, which I still enjoy if played without quirks/flaws. Nevertheless, I never was a "D&D person", always prefering other rulesets as Runequest or Fudge, and I got hooked by 3.5 with the Age of Worms adventure path.

I don't know what all this says about me, but I'm sure it'll be nothing good