A question for folks who started with 3E, 4E or Pathfinder: how do earlier editions play for you?

[Savevsdeath]

If it's any consolation, your desire to house rule 2nd edition isn't a product of your modern game design sensibilities. Heavily house ruled games were pretty much the default state of AD&D in my experience.

One game you might want to try out is Castles & Crusades. It's like AD&D filtered through a WotC D&D lens. The classes are still fairly simple(though not quite so much as in AD&D), but because of the way the game is designed, you can pretty much tack on subsystems from any version of D&D(at least through 3.X... haven't tried 4E features) with virtually no change at all.

I may check out C&C on your recommendation, so thanks a lot. Funny enough I like OSRIC"s simplicity, but I hate the mind-numbingly small list of options. I could even stand the imbalance if my class could at least do it's job, like an assassin that can actually successfully sneak up on someone.

 

[Sage Genesis]

I started with AD&D myself and somewhat recently got into an AD&D game with a few people who started with 3e. What I'm about to describe is not speaking for myself but on their behalf.

Their responses were something like this:
"What the f*** is this s***?! You guys really played this? How does this even work? Why are the rules for initiative, surprise, and skill checks so completely different? What are these saving throw categories all about? Why is Dexterity 7 and Dexterity 14 essentially the same thing (for non-thieves)?"

For them it wasn't like visiting an old folks' home where the play big band... it was more like visiting an old folks' home where they play '40s German nationalistic songs. Not just strange, but wrong somehow.

I tried to explain to them how it all evolved into that situation but I have to admit that most of these things were just stuff you had to accept and know, you couldn't really deduce them from the rest of the system.

 

[Zardnaar]

When I run AD&D I convert THAC0 to BAB and use ascending ACs. Then my Pathfinder players kind of get it.

 

[Scars Unseen]

When I run AD&D I convert THAC0 to BAB and use ascending ACs. Then my Pathfinder players kind of get it.

That's pretty much what Castles & Crusades is, though with somewhat more advanced class features(e.g. the fighter gets extra attacks against 1HD creatures, bringing a vague equivalent to minion rules) and the SIEGE engine for attribute checks(primary attributes have a base difficulty of 12 and secondary attributes have a base difficulty of 18). Otherwise it's mostly just streamlined AD&D.

 

[Zardnaar]

C&C has added things like level 8 and 9 spells for Clerics and Druids though.

 

[Yora]

AD&D is awful with it's armor/hit system and confusing saving throws, and those entirely pointless level limits.
Castles & Crusades, that fixes all those things, is a really great game, though. I much prefer it over the new d20 games, because it's so much easier to teach, faster to run, and very much faster to set up.

 

[Minigiant]

I went 2E -> 3.0 -> 1E -> 3.5 -> 4E -> 3.5 -> 2E -> 3.5 -> 4E

To me, 1E felt like "Good DM or Bust". The lack of customization, class, race, and level restrictions, forced the players and DM to make all the charm and charisma of characters. 2E was like this but less.

Ther other thing was there was no real mechanical force of character. Meaning your character didn't feel charismatic unless you as the player rolelayed it and the DM invoked it in the world.

Part of it comes from my core roleplaying stance. "I say what my PC does. The stats and sheet tell me if the PC can do it." Some earlier editions was only fun if the DM believe that too.

 

[Robyo]

As someone who started with Basic and moved quickly onto 1e, it seemed like 1e had many more options. But compared to modern games, I agree AD&D is pretty simplistic.

I ran C&C for a while. I liked how combat is quick and a DM can tell a dramatic story in an evening. After awhile, it really started showing it's clunkiness. The unbalanced nature was making it hard to design encounters. I think it's a good, fast and dirty RPG that's simple and effective. It's easy to get a game going, from chargen to several different encounters, in one evening session, but over the haul of a long campaign, meh. Just depends on how a DM wants to roll I guess. I found it easy to house-rule, but that gets cumbersome too.

Modern games strive for a sense of balance, which generally makes things run smoother at the table. I've found 4e doesn't need much house rules at all. But the amount of player options in modern games have made it less fun for me. They've just gotten ridiculously overwhelming in modern games. I'm making a 15th level Pathfinder sorcerer with anything allowed on the PRD. It's taken me days, in my spare time, to hammer him out.

In my current "D&D" campaign, I'm using Radiance. It has certain influences from earlier games, but has a good amount of modern-style options. It's pretty easy to run 4th edition monsters too.

And I think I would like to try 1e or OSRIC again, or Dark Dungeons... Maybe switch out some class abilities at earlier levels? Or just forget about XP and do leveling-up after every session.

 

[Zelkon]

Well, my first experience with D&D was a long time ago for me. I was young and my friend tried to get me to play some 3e (he basically just DMPC'd me for the hour that we played). Well after that, I was given a Basic D&D box set from the 90s, say, five years ago, a while after that little game. I tried to play it, but when I got to the section about wizards and Vancian spellcasting, I threw it down in distaste and forgot about it. About a year after that, I played the 4e intro set with my friend. A year after that, I bought the 4e Players Handbook from a bookstore going out of business, and now I have around half the books and a DDI sub. So that's my background. Now, I don't have a ton of recent experience playing older games, but I've played a session or two of retroclones and I have the 2e core books. It's sort of weird in that it doesn't feel enough like a rulebook or manual. Nothing feels "official" or consequential. It's a really odd feeling.