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<blockquote data-quote="Mannahnin" data-source="post: 8872848" data-attributes="member: 7026594"><p>Yes, this is something that I've seen discussed recurrently over the dozen or so years I've been reading OSR blogs and forums.</p><p></p><p>I really think this article of Gary's shows how he had lost vision. There's nothing inspirational in there. Dumping Psionics makes some sense, but keeping marginal classes like Thief-Acrobats and Assassins and adding even more likely useless ones like the Jester and Savant? Pass.</p><p></p><p>I can understand the desire to keep the game largely the same. Certainly there was a pretty big chunk of the player base which was invested in 1E and had no desire to switch to 2E, particularly with the perception that it had been watered down and kiddified to placate Angry Mothers From Heck, as Jim Ward wrote about in Dragon.</p><p></p><p>UA was a cash grab to help keep the company afloat, full of reprinted material from Dragon. And while it was popular with players, in some ways the original example of what would come to be known in later editions as a Splat Book, full of intriguing and powerful new options for players (more powerful classes and races! Weapon specialization and DOUBLE specialization! Higher level limits for demihumans! New spells and magic items!), many folks find it of dubious quality. The idea of just folding it into inflated new core books seems a bad one to me. Moldvay/Cook B/X established that editing D&D DOWN into a more compact form could produce a really elegant and enjoyable form of the game. That's more what AD&D needed. Cleanup. Editing. Clearer and shorter explanations. I would have LOVED a clean and simple revision of the 1E group initiative rules. </p><p></p><p>On the whole I think 2E was better off for being under Zeb Cook's direction rather than Gary's, even though I found the final product disappointing in a lot of ways. Some of that comes down to choices made to placate player write-in feedback and requests (like the bizarre and asinine choice to make 3d6 the default ability score generation method like in OD&D and Basic, while retaining the more stringent higher ability score modifier requirements from AD&D, just a bit simplified). Other elements come down to trying to make the game generic enough to serve both old school and post-Hickman more Narrative-focused players. With the result, for example, that the XP system was busted, without adequate advice to help new DMs ensure a reasonable pace of advancement if they didn't use the optional rules like individual XP or gold for XP. IME 2e WAS more watered down and less-inspired compared to Gary's 1E, though it was MUCH more clearly explained and laid out.</p><p></p><p>For the most part revisiting Gary's column tends to make me think that his take would have been kind of a worst of all worlds. Certainly the RPGs he produced after leaving TSR (Cyborg Commando, Dangerous Journeys) were famously terrible.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Mannahnin, post: 8872848, member: 7026594"] Yes, this is something that I've seen discussed recurrently over the dozen or so years I've been reading OSR blogs and forums. I really think this article of Gary's shows how he had lost vision. There's nothing inspirational in there. Dumping Psionics makes some sense, but keeping marginal classes like Thief-Acrobats and Assassins and adding even more likely useless ones like the Jester and Savant? Pass. I can understand the desire to keep the game largely the same. Certainly there was a pretty big chunk of the player base which was invested in 1E and had no desire to switch to 2E, particularly with the perception that it had been watered down and kiddified to placate Angry Mothers From Heck, as Jim Ward wrote about in Dragon. UA was a cash grab to help keep the company afloat, full of reprinted material from Dragon. And while it was popular with players, in some ways the original example of what would come to be known in later editions as a Splat Book, full of intriguing and powerful new options for players (more powerful classes and races! Weapon specialization and DOUBLE specialization! Higher level limits for demihumans! New spells and magic items!), many folks find it of dubious quality. The idea of just folding it into inflated new core books seems a bad one to me. Moldvay/Cook B/X established that editing D&D DOWN into a more compact form could produce a really elegant and enjoyable form of the game. That's more what AD&D needed. Cleanup. Editing. Clearer and shorter explanations. I would have LOVED a clean and simple revision of the 1E group initiative rules. On the whole I think 2E was better off for being under Zeb Cook's direction rather than Gary's, even though I found the final product disappointing in a lot of ways. Some of that comes down to choices made to placate player write-in feedback and requests (like the bizarre and asinine choice to make 3d6 the default ability score generation method like in OD&D and Basic, while retaining the more stringent higher ability score modifier requirements from AD&D, just a bit simplified). Other elements come down to trying to make the game generic enough to serve both old school and post-Hickman more Narrative-focused players. With the result, for example, that the XP system was busted, without adequate advice to help new DMs ensure a reasonable pace of advancement if they didn't use the optional rules like individual XP or gold for XP. IME 2e WAS more watered down and less-inspired compared to Gary's 1E, though it was MUCH more clearly explained and laid out. For the most part revisiting Gary's column tends to make me think that his take would have been kind of a worst of all worlds. Certainly the RPGs he produced after leaving TSR (Cyborg Commando, Dangerous Journeys) were famously terrible. [/QUOTE]
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