If you were to play a version of pre-3.0 D&D, which would it be?

[danzig138]

None of the above. Maybe if you paid me.At this point, I'd rather not game then play one of those.

 

[loki44]

I'm playing OD&D and I love it, but I'd play any of the above given the right DM and group. Voted 1E since that is what I was weaned on.

 

[Gentlegamer]

Moldvay/Cook

A complete game in 128 pages!

 

[ColonelHardisson]

HackMaster

 

[diaglo]

I'm playing OD&D and I love it, but I'd play any of the above given the right DM and group. Voted 1E since that is what I was weaned on.

must not make comment... must not...


doh.


see now that he is a real mang. he is playing a real RPG. not one of those poor imitations.

-- cya, sunday.

 

[Henry]

If I were STUCK playing one for the rest of my days, I'd probably pick 2E, because it had the widest range of materials available towards its end, which our group was happily playing before 3E came along with its IMO better way of doing things.

For sheer fun factor, I'd still easily jump back in to any 1s Edition AD&D game, because there are bits and pieces here and there that may not have been balanced, per se, but were a joy to play with (Ranger Giant class damage bonus, anyone? God, I still love the look on a ranger player's face when he finds out he's facing off against giants or humanoids...)

 

[ruleslawyer]

Honestly I'd play any of them, at least once just to try them, but I don't know enough about the rules differences to really base my decision on that at all. So I'm stuck with flavor, and I can't really say I care for the play style and feel of some of the older stuff I've read, so I have to go with the heyday of fluff and campaign settings...

2e: the planes had depth and the fiends had flavor.

Yeah, but you could always just use the 2e fluff with 3e rules... oh wait, you already do!

[Psst; so do I!]

I'd go with B/E/C/M/I; some of the stuff in there is just awesome, and the ruleset is simple but pretty darn comprehensive (realm design and mass combat, anyone?). Plus there are some kickin' modules available.

 

[RFisher]

A complete game in 128 pages!

Less once you remove the redundancies, how to use this Expert with the Holmes Basic, & maybe one or two other extraneous bits!

But then, sometimes I count B2 (& would be open to arguments in favor of B1 & X1) as part of the "core rules", so the page count goes up again.

 

[Herobizkit]

2ed, revised. Skills & Powers all the way.

As a pleasant side story, I came home from college one year to find my friends had recently picked up Skills & Powers and used it to play through the FR Menzoberranzan box set. One of my friends took way too many Disadvantages and, as such, died a horrible death while the gimped uber-characters laughed. He was discouraged.

I took some time to flip through the book and, not ten minutes later, I had his uber-character replacement. I admire the fact that I *know* how to gimp a character when I want, but I always choose not to. (FYI, I was playing a "vanilla" Fighter/Bard with the Blade kit). I had him make a dwarf cleric -- with Fighter exceptional strength, Fighter constitution bonus, Fighter weapon proficiencies, Healing sphere, Combat sphere, Elemental sphere, and access to the Evocation school of wizard magic. I roared, because it took me such little time to make such an obviously "b0rken" character by today's standards... and he loved it. And *I* loved it, and I had never even heard of the book before that day. Good times, there.

 

[Iron_Chef]

You forgot 2.5e, Skills & Powers, in your poll--the best D&D rules set that TSR ever made! Sure, it was broken, but at least it opened up all kinds of possibilities--even more than 3e.