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Flowchart of the Editions


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howandwhy99

Adventurer
Just a note, but in his interviews back in '77 (I've been perusing early White Dwarf again) Gary said Advanced was a different game. I think the Classic boxsets are too, but he didn't mention them at the time. But he was certain about AD&D being not the same game.
 


RFisher

Explorer
My thoughts (...though I don't think anything that hasn’t already been mentioned):

  • A line should go directly from oD&D + supplements to AD&D.
  • The line between AD&D and Holmes should be pointed from AD&D to Holmes. Holmes was encouraged to include stuff from the in-progress AD&D, but Gygax always seemed not too keen on Holmes’ own ideas.
  • Moldvay/Cook/Marsh should have lines leading too it from both oD&D and Holmes. While they were certainly influenced by Holmes, it’s clear that they also looked directly back to oD&D rather than just updating Holmes. (The Expert Set was really a replacement for the oD&D box set. The Companion—at this stage, B.F. Before Frank (^_^)—was envisioned as a replacement for the supplements. At least, that’s how I see it based on convos with old TSR people.)
  • The line from classic to 3e is entirely correct. I recall the designers themselves saying so. Although, personally, that means less to me than how much I recall thinking that they’d gone to classic for inspiration when first reading 3e.
 

Achan hiArusa

Explorer
If you are not including nonD&D books, okay. But Ars Magica had a big influence on 3.0 due to the fact that Johnathan Tweet wrote the PHB (and I know some D&D purists don't like me mentioning that) and he used a very similar task resolution system (similar being that a d20 was used instead of a d10) and the Barbarian's Rage is a take off of the Berserk Virtue in ArM.
 
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RFisher

Explorer
Achan hiArusa said:
If you are not including nonD&D books, okay. But Ars Magica had a big influence on 3.0 due to the fact that Johnathan Tweet wrote the PHB (and I know some D&D purists don't like me mentioning that) and he used a very similar task resolution system (similar being that a d20 was used instead of a d10) and the Barbarian's Rage is a take off of the Berserk Virtue in ArM.

If you want to include non-D&D games, then 3e is going to have a huge list of antecedents.

If you want to include non-D&D books...(O_O)
 

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