Things I Miss....

[Fifth Element]

Haha, I saw the "My free mostly-OGC OGL game" part and stopped reading, not knowing what those acronyms were and assuming they weren't related. My bad.

And you just quoted him on it. Sheesh.

 

[Ed_Laprade]

HUMANS: Any one class; humans other than paladins, monks, and bards can become dual-classed.
ELVES: Fighter, ranger, cleric, thief, or mage. Elves can be multi-classed with any combination of two or three classes that does not incorporate both cleric and thief, hence: F/C, F/T, F/M, M/T, M/C, F/T/M, and F/C/M (F = fighter *or* ranger).
DWARVES: Fighter, cleric, thief, assassin, or necromancer (to give dwarves a potentially creepy edge). Dwarves can multi-class as F/C or F/T (T = thief *or* assassin).
GNOMES: Fighter, cleric, thief, assassin, or illusionist. Gnomes can multi-class any two of their classes together (except, of course, that thief and assassin are in the same group and can't be combined).
CENTAURS: Fighter, ranger, druid, bard, or mage. Centaurs can multiclass F/D, F/M, or F/D/M (as with elves, ranger can substitute for fighter in these combinations, assuming some relaxed alignment restrictions that allow for good druids, thus making ranger/druid a legal combination).

Now this is what pissed me off about classes from the beginning. They're frikkin' job descriptions! I've had a half dozen different job types in my life, why can't my character? Why can't Elves be Cleric/Thieves? Aren't there any Gods of Theft/Mischief around? If so, why not? Etc., etc., etc. Not that I wouldn't play in your world, but I would grumble...

 

[Jack Daniel]

Now this is what pissed me off about classes from the beginning. They're frikkin' job descriptions! I've had a half dozen different job types in my life, why can't my character? Why can't Elves be Cleric/Thieves? Aren't there any Gods of Theft/Mischief around? If so, why not? Etc., etc., etc. Not that I wouldn't play in your world, but I would grumble...

Oh, but that's one of my favorite parts! Only gnomes in AD&D could be cleric/thieves, which really says something about gnomish religion, don't you think? It's precisely the little details like this that make me nostalgic for the (not really but seemingly) arbitrary 1e and 2e class system.

 

[pukunui]

I like random stats, especially hard core random stats, because an STR 18 is something "special" that you definitely don't see all the time.

While I'm finding that a lack of randomness is causing me dissatisfaction with "modern" gaming, this is one bit of randomness that I do not miss in the slightest. I have a heightened sense of fairness, and rolled stats are so unfair it's not even funny. I've been at the receiving end of the unfairness of rolled stats, whereby my PC had crappy stats while another PC or two had really awesome stats. It's not fun. At all.

While I just use straight point buy these days, back when I was running a D&D 3.5 campaign, I used a rather odd method that was a mix of rolling and point buy. Essentially, you rolled 4d6 and dropped the lowest, but only three times instead of six. You then took what you rolled and figured out how many points it was worth on the point buy chart, then subtracted that amount from 36 (although I later lowered it to 32). You then used any remaining points to choose the values for your remaining three stats.

This gave the people who wanted rolled stats some randomness while at the same time keeping everyone's PCs at the same power level so as to keep it fair.

 

[Water Bob]

Oh, but that's one of my favorite parts! Only gnomes in AD&D could be cleric/thieves, which really says something about gnomish religion, don't you think? It's precisely the little details like this that make me nostalgic for the (not really but seemingly) arbitrary 1e and 2e class system.

Absolutely!

I have a heightened sense of fairness, and rolled stats are so unfair it's not even funny. I've been at the receiving end of the unfairness of rolled stats, whereby my PC had crappy stats while another PC or two had really awesome stats. It's not fun. At all.

Why not?

When I play, I play a character. That's where I get my enjoyment. I don't have to be the "hero" all the time--or, I'm in the "hero" in spite of my character's stats.

Low stats on a character can be quite fun. You roll the dice, then see what the dice "say" about that character, making up reasons for his stats being the way they are.

Random roll, ending in high, medium, or low, can be real roleplaying character builders.

While I just use straight point buy these days...

Oooo, yeah, you and me are on two different sides of the spectrum. While I think there's a place for point buy (The James Bond RPG, for example, uses point-buy, and it "right" for that particular universe of gaming), it's definitley not my taste for most game worlds.





EDIT: Man, I love the old Classic Traveller character generation method. You start out with stats at 18 years old. And, these are hard core stats, too. You roll 2D for each stat, straight, with no arrangement. WYRIWYG. What You Roll Is What You Get.

At that point, if the player wants his character to be a pilot, well, he's got to find a career where he can be a pilot. He rolls to see if he was able to get into that career. If he doesn't, then he has to submit to the Draft. Life can take a character in many strange angles. You roll terms on the character, seeing what happens to him every 4 years or his life (or even every 1 year if you use one of the Advanced character generation schemes).

When the character gets out of character generation, he's got all this background. You KNOW him. You know where he's been, what he's done.

Many times, the character is nothing like the player's original concept.

This is my favorite character generation method. It's like you actually role play, in a short hand way, the years of a character's adult life up to the point where he enters the campaign.

These details make the character a very strong character, in rp-ing terms.

 

[lumin]

I don't really "miss" these things, because I've found my new love in AD&D and I am now playing it all the time. But, boy, where do I begin? There is so much that I love in the old-school game.

The most blatant thing I loved was the art. To this day, I have never seen a cover so evocative and interesting as the 1st Edition PHB. The cover pretty much summed up the entire game. The characters (along with their henchmen or other villagers) had just finished slaughtering a group of monsters and were now having to meticulously count up the loot and carry it out. What's going to happen next? Nobody knows!

In fact there was a section in the DMG that actually talked precisely about how important the act of "cleaning up" after a successful adventure was, and that slaying the dragon was probably the easy part (making reference to the Hobbit). When I first read that, I was like, "Holy Crap, I have never thought of that before, but it's so true!"

The rest of the art was fantastic as well. It was gritty and sometimes irreverent. The last picture in the 1E DMG comes to mind with the nude succubus sitting on a rock before an eerie sunset. She had such a solemn, even sad, look on her face.. I've always wondered why she was so sad. Was she once a beautiful princess, transformed by an evil witch? Was she banished to another dimension, condemned to live the rest of her life as a demon? The thoughts the pictures evoked was wonderous.

Today D&D is just about dungeon crawling, min/maxing, and grabbing phat loot - back then, it was about living in a fantasy medieval world with REAL consequences to every action. Today we just get art with some huge-breasted chick with a sword in her hand battling a giant dragon. It just isn't the same as it used to be.


Another thing I liked was the bizarre, long-winded fluff in the books. I may be one of the few people that actually cherished the disorganized mess that the 1st Edition DMG was, over the more streamlined 2nd edition rules. There's something visceral about cracking open a book that feels like an old wizard's personal journal (Gygax). You have to hunt down or memorize where something was at, just like a monk would have done with an old tome during the dark ages.

I loved how each magic user had their own completely unique spell list. I loved how weapon hit rolls changed based on the target's AC, requiring players to pick their proficiency carefully. It wasn't always "tanks up front", "wizards in the back" - it changed for each fight. I loved that the DMG said it had no business being shown to players, and they should be punished in the game if they should try to peek at it. I loved that not wearing a helmet would require a check to see if an attack injured the head. I loved the fluff text about ecology and making sure your monsters went extinct if your players killed too many.

There are just so many little things that make the old game so cool to play. You didn't worry about buzzwords like "feats" or "skills" or "powers" or "prestige classes" or any other video game junk like that. You were a character in a living/breathing world that was ready to kill you at any moment and you had to survive the best you could - any way you could.

I loved that back then you weren't buying a rulebook, you were buying a guide on how you could experience a believable medieval fantasy world. There's a big difference.

 

[Fifth Element]

Random roll, ending in high, medium, or low, can be real roleplaying character builders.

I don't need dice to build my character for me. We don't determine race randomly, or class, or name, or gender, or background. Why are stats the exception? Why can you choose to be a dwarf but you can't choose whether you're strong or not?

That's how I look at it now. Lots of people love random stats, but there's an argument against them.

 

[Fifth Element]

Today D&D is just about dungeon crawling, min/maxing, and grabbing phat loot -

It is? Holy crow, I'm doing it wrong then!

 

[scourger]

Wow. I find that games with random generation lend themselves to more character than less. With a point buy system, people always have the best fighter that they can have, the best mage, the best thief, and so on.

Man, you roll random, especially hard-core random stats where there is no arrangement to taste (like the base chargen system in 1E), and you have to discover the character.

I usually find these to be the strongest, most interesting characters because the player, who originaly thought he'd play a fighter, is not figuring why life turn a right turn for his toon, sending him down the path of being a cleric.

I like random stats, especially hard core random stats, because an STR 18 is something "special" that you definitely don't see all the time.

And, in my past games, some of the neatest characters were those with low stats in certain areas that the player embraced and characterized for his toon. I understand that the reason Raistlin, in the Dragonlance novels, talks with a raspy voice and drinks potions all came about with a random roll, making the playtested Raistlin have a low CON. So, the original playtester of Raistlin (I forgot who it was, but a "name" at TSR) actually built a strong, memorable character trait because of a low or mediocre CON throw.

You don't usually get that kind of thing when players use point-buy or have chargen system where all their stats are "decent-to-high", and the guy is a hero from every angle you look at him.

No, I think he's OK with random stats; and so I am I. The difference with Gamma World is that you randomly roll your 2 backgrounds which then define your character. You get an 18 stat for the primary background and a 16 stat for the secondary. The rest are rolled randomly, but they don't really hamstring you as much (except CON is still pretty important for starting HP). 2 defined skills at +4, and one random. But, all the character types have useful abilities tied to the 2 backgrounds and therefore the 2 good stats. Some small choices are made along the way for powers, but mostly a new level just means +5 hp and +1 to everything else. It's very cool & simple mechanically, but it leaves out the players' game-within-a-game of character advancement because there really are no choices to be made.

Omega World d20 had the same dynamic of rolling random mutations & defects. I loved it because the weaknesses really define the characters for me, but he hated it because he felt his characters had no business even walking around--much less adventuring--with crippling defects. I can see the point.

If I ever run Sons of Conan d20, I think I will give the PCs a random 18 and let them roll & assign the rest. That way, they have one great legacy stat but the rest is fate with a little choice. I liked the "organic" method from 3e where you roll them all with 4d6 in order, reroll any 1 and switch any 2. That seemed like a good middle ground, so I may use a variation of it.

 

[pukunui]

Why not?

Because I don't enjoy it. It's not necessarily the idea of needing to have good stats, it's more the idea that someone else might have better stats than me. And it's not even necessarily the stats themselves, it's more the effect that having good or bad stats can have. When the lucky PC continually succeeds at his tasks more often than the unlucky PC, that's just not fun. I'd prefer all PCs to be created equal. Randomness can be factored in in other ways.

When I play, I play a character.

So do I. But I like to be in control of how that character is created. I can see the appeal of creating a "completely random" character, rather than trying to build a character according to a predetermined concept, but I don't like the idea that certain aspects of a character may be chosen (race, class, gender, etc) while others are random.

That's where I get my enjoyment. I don't have to be the "hero" all the time--or, I'm in the "hero" in spite of my character's stats.

That's fine. Different people have different tastes. I'm not knocking yours.

Low stats on a character can be quite fun.

For you, maybe, but not for me. Again, though, it's not necessarily the low stats themselves. It's the unfairness that some PCs are "better" than others because of the random generation.

Oooo, yeah, you and me are on two different sides of the spectrum.

Definitely.

EDIT: Man, I love the old Classic Traveller character generation method.

I would love to try Traveller sometime. A friend of mine gave me his old rulebook. I don't know which edition it is, but it's pre-d20. I don't know anyone else who'd want to play it though.

The most blatant thing I loved was the art.

I miss a lot of the old 2e-era art too. Not the hideous stuff from the Monster Manual, but the more evocative stuff by Larry Elmore and his contemporaries. They really knew how to set a scene and give it context. They knew how to paint a picture that made you feel like you could step inside and be in that fantasy world. These days, we mostly just get character sketches that are devoid of any context or half-baked digital art that just doesn't look "real" enough that you could "step inside".

EDIT: I think most of the art I'm thinking of started out as FR or DL novel covers but later found their way into the actual AD&D 2e game supplements as full-page art. I'm talking about stuff like this and this.

I don't need dice to build my character for me. We don't determine race randomly, or class, or name, or gender, or background. Why are stats the exception? Why can you choose to be a dwarf but you can't choose whether you're strong or not?

That's how I look at it now. Lots of people love random stats, but there's an argument against them.

This.

The thing is, I'd be all for playing a game wherein your character is competely random, but only so long as that's the premise going forward. If the premise is that I get to play a character of my own creation, then I want to be able to determine every aspect of that character myself. If I have my heart set on a particular concept, then I'm going to underestandably be disappointed if a random character generation method doesn't give me what I want. But If I'm wanting to just go for a random character to begin with, then it's not a problem.