D&D (2024) What the 1e-2e Transition Can Tell Us About 5.5e

[mamba]

I don't think they care much if you actually use the new books. They care if you choose to access them via the D&D Beyond infrastructure. Getting D&D Beyond subscriptions and turning D&D into a service rather than a product is the real goal.

that may be true, but this does not require a new version

 

[Sacrosanct]

True words, though I was certainly upset about Gygax being pushed out. I grew up on Marvel comics and Stan's soapbox, so I was perfectly primed for St. Gary's essays and observations delivered throughout the AD&D books, and especially Dragon magazine, which I read and re-read voraciously. Not that I always agreed with him - I'm a liberal Canadian at heart - but I believed in him, if you get my drift. So the idea of TSR without Gygax personally offended me at an almost visceral level.

It's funny, but older I get the more open-minded I am becoming. I think it's because I have just been wrong so many times, that I have finally learned a tiny bit of humility. Reading Game Wizards (5/5, hugely recommend) really made me reassess a lot of my ideas about what TSR was. I've gone from idolizing Gygax as a teen, to kind of vilifying him when some of the less savoury stuff about him came out, to seeing all those guys as just people, warts and all, who still gave us something great, and for which I am thankful.

I feel the same way about the folks working at WotC now, and about everyone else working on these games that we love. Morris, and the other folks behind this site. All of you (even the ones I have on ignore for both of our sakes). Gratitude. So I am optimistic about OneD&D, and about the wider proliferation of RPGs. I think these kinds of games are a net good, and the reason we argue about them so passionately is that we all love them so much.

Right now, I feel particularly thankful for Snarf. I stated it before, but this is 5 star writing that I would pay for, and you give it to us for free.

I feel much the same. I've always warned against deifying people, because we are all just people, and often something will come out about them that was...not good. If you don't deify them, you don't have that heartbreak. Gary did a lot of questionable and mean things, but no more than most people. He was just a man with great creative ideas and found lightning in a bottle.

 

[overgeeked]

Section 3, sub E. Some people weren’t mad but still stuck with 1E. Like us. We already had the books so we didn’t need new ones. Especially not ones with such minor changes. So we adapted the few rules changes we liked (while also pulling from the Basic line), and kept on playing AD&D.

 

[TwoSix]

that may be true, but this does not require a new version

It doesn't require it, no. I think they're doing it both to help market the service and out of a considered belief that the 5e system is a little long in the tooth and would benefit from some upkeep.

 

[overgeeked]

It doesn't require it, no. I think they're doing it both to help market the service and out of a considered belief that the 5e system is a little long in the tooth and would benefit from some upkeep.

There’s also a concerted effort to lock down various things that were unclear and/or left to the DM to decide. Stealth, social interactions, etc.

 

[Sacrosanct]

Section 3, sub E. Some people weren’t mad but still stuck with 1E. Like us. We already had the books so we didn’t need new ones. Especially not ones with such minor changes. So we adapted the few rules changes we liked (while also pulling from the Basic line), and kept on playing AD&D.

That's exactly what we did. We brought in THAC0, thief skill progression rules, and spell schools from 2e, but kept the rest pretty much 1e.

 

[TwoSix]

There’s also a concerted effort to lock down various things that were unclear and/or left to the DM to decide. Stealth, social interactions, etc.

Yea, that's all the kind of stuff I would classify as the upkeep. Hammer down the proud nails people have discovered over the last 9 years,

 

[overgeeked]

Yea, that's all the kind of stuff I would classify as the upkeep. Hammer down the proud nails people have discovered over the last 9 years,

I think it’s more that they want to be able to program the mechanics into a computer and have it be able to run the system. “Let the DM decide” doesn’t work as well on a computer as it does at the table.

I think part of 5E’s success came from “rulings not rules for everything” but the design team seems to be going back to rules for everything...so they can code it.

 

[TwoSix]

I think it’s more that they want to be able to program the mechanics into a computer and have it be able to run the system. “Let the DM decide” doesn’t work as well on a computer as it does at the table.

I think part of 5E’s success came from “rulings not rules for everything” but the design team seems to be going back to rules for everything...so they can code it.

They might. It's not something I have much of an opinion on.

 

[Bedrockgames]

3. Why U Mad Brah? Understanding the Reaction Against 2e.
I can't be with someone like me. I hate myself!

Given that 2e was backwards compatible with 1e, and that it really wasn't a major rule change, it might surprise you to learn that there were people, D&D fans, who weren't happy with the new edition. I know, I know. It is shocking, shocking I say to find out that D&D fans might be angry with a new edition of D&D! But it happened. The question is, why? After all, later edition changes (2e - 3e, 3e - 4e, 4e - 5e) all involved changing the rules in ways that were no backwards compatible. So why were people angry?

I was younger when I started playing AD&D in the 80s, and so I was fully on board when 2E came out (to me newer was just better I think, and I didn't really understand that there were these massive differences in flavor at the time). But I very clearly remember many of the older players not being pleased with the new edition. And even into the late 90s, I knew a lot of people who were strict AD&D players (because of backwards compatibility my group used both 2E and 1E books at the table so we could keep things like the monk)

I cannot speak for every single angry person, of course, but generally I would say that most of the resistance came down to some of the following factors:
a. Anger over the PG direction. This might shock you, but the idea that "D&D isn't for kids," has been around since, well, almost forever. the combination of the specific choice to make it more teen-friendly as well as the acknowledged capitulation to the forces behind the Satanic Panic weren't great for a lot of people.

This went a little over my head when it happened, but I can appreciate it as both my taste in music and RPGs got snagged in the satanic panic. I understand why TSR felt they needed to run in the opposite direction. It may be hard to understand now just how much of an effect an accusation of a game being demonic would have, but the culture was very different at the time and calling music, games and other media satanic was a very effective tactic. That said, as much as people refer to 2E as PG, there is a lot of stuff in there that, in hindsight, is definitely not PG. It isn't sword and sorcery, but still some pretty risqué material (Curse of the Azure Bonds leaps to mind)

c. Anger over sacred cows. In addition to axing the half-orc and assassin, they got rid of beloved sub-classes like the illusionist. And classes people liked from UA (barbarian, cavalier) weren't included. And the monk? The monk was gone. And the bard, the bard became a real class ... guess who HATED THAT.

One change I loved was the 2E bard. I know people often ridicule them. But I was a very into listening to and playing music so bards connected with me in a big way. And so much of 2E was RP focused that we weren't really concerned about whether the class contributed heavily to combat or something.

The monk people missed. I had a player who brought the 1E PHB to games so he could play the monk (he adored the Quivering Palm ability).