AD&D is not "rules light"

[Ariosto]

First, lightness and heaviness are relative; there is no absolute, universal standard by which to decree, "That's not light; it's heavy!" Second, "rules lightness" can be judged in different aspects.

I would call AD&D lighter than 3E/4E in terms of the average "rules footprint" in the sessions of play I have experienced. It's lighter than OD&D with all the elaborations from the supplements. The lesser amount of time spent handling rules helps keep the pace of action brisk.

On the other hand, there's a LOT of stuff in the Dungeon Masters Guide; it addresses a great cornucopia of subjects. It may be a stretch to call some of that material "rules", but in any case very little of it is likely to be germane to a particular game session.

Now, the way I played it, I ignored a lot of the rules (weapon vs. AC, helmet, psionics, pummeling/overbearing, potions and segments, training, etc.). But that doesn't make the game as written rules light.

Unless one understands that all those "rules" are optional, and that in choosing not to use them you were exercising the judgment proper to a Dungeon Master -- as explained in the Introduction and reinforced in the Afterword.

The ease with which one can simplify or complicate, while keeping it recognizably Advanced D&D -- and Dungeons & Dragons even if one goes further -- is another measure of rules-lightness.

I don't see that flexibility to such a degree in 4E. It is more truly an integrated system, the procedures and data more truly rules, both by design and in the prevailing view among players that I have seen. That systematic nature is clearly part of its appeal. As Gygax wrote in the DMG, "your players expect to play this game, not one made up on the spot," and "variation and difference are desirable, but both should be kept within the boundaries of the overall system." Those boundaries seem to me more quickly met in 4E, a design that much more assiduously, and thus more successfully, pursues the goal of uniformity from campaign to campaign.

 

[Doug McCrae]

4e was intended to be very easy to houserule by making the expected values of everything explicit, something no previous edition of D&D has done. We know the expected values for attack, damage, ac, defenses and hit points for both PCs and monsters at every level. We know how much magic the PCs are expected to have even more precisely than in 3e.

It's very easy to remove magic items from 4e completely while leaving the expected values untouched. Could the same be said of 1e? No, because there were no expected values. A 7th level fighter could have a +1 sword and a 15 strength or a +3 sword, +3 shield and +3 armor and a belt of frost giant strength. Obviously the latter would be vastly more effective than the former.

And because the expected values are known, it's easy to completely change them if desired with full knowledge of what one is doing.

 

[billd91]

Okay. Explain to me how you would throw out the following? And remember, I'm talking about throwing out here, not house-ruling. This isn't where you replace a rule you don't like with a rule you do. This is where you simply ignore a rule you don't like, without it having a massive effect on gameplay.

• Grappling rules. (Keep in mind that the Monster Manual is loaded with monsters that have improved grab.)
• Ability score damage and the resulting cascade of effects. (Ditto poison.)
• Iterative attacks where you subtract 5 each time.
• Feats.
• Skill points.

That's just off the top of my head. I could probably come up with others after some thought.

Once again, you may not replace any of these with anything. You have to chop them off and play with the bloody stump. And the game still has to play just as smoothly, and all the base classes and most of the monsters have to work just as well, without them.

I'd deal with them the exact same way I'd deal with anything in 1e we didn't want to deal with. Just not deal with them and judge any situations normally resolved by them by DM fiat based on the circumstances. Pretty simple, really.

 

[Ariosto]

In 1e, if you want to grapple, you roll a d20, the dm consults a chart.

That's true if you're using Unearthed Arcana -- and System I therein is even simpler than System II.

If you're using the DMG procedure, then you make a percentile roll; that's compared with the result of a calculation involving multiplication, addition and subtraction; if the result is a successful grapple, then another percentile roll is made and modified; and then the DM consults a chart.

 

[Ariosto]

Doug, I can see why one might find that appealing -- but it's a matter of additional rules handling, and the very reason for finding it appealing lies in the rules of "expected values". That's a whole layer -- on top of all the procedural rules -- that seems to me pretty key to making a game the game that 4E players expect to play.

 

[Dyson Logos]

Once again, you may not replace any of these with anything. You have to chop them off and play with the bloody stump. And the game still has to play just as smoothly, and all the base classes and most of the monsters have to work just as well, without them.

Why not be able to replace them?

Lots of people replaced rules that they ditched in 1e. We had grappling rules from a huge variety of other games. We had skill systems. We had combat rounds that weren't a minute long.

You are adding a bunch of rules to this exercise that do not reflect the way 1e was house ruled by many players and groups.

 

[thecasualoblivion]

Why not be able to replace them?

Lots of people replaced rules that they ditched in 1e. We had grappling rules from a huge variety of other games. We had skill systems. We had combat rounds that weren't a minute long.

You are adding a bunch of rules to this exercise that do not reflect the way 1e was house ruled by many players and groups.

I dumped about 80% of AD&D. I replaced it all with the same thing: DM Fiat. Even the monsters.

 

[Ariosto]

Here's another comparison. A 4E character starts with (besides class features and racial traits) 17 skills, 1 feat and 4 powers. (Humans get an additional feat at 1st level, and some classes grant additional feats at various levels). That's 22 additional rules for each character -- versus just 12 spells for a cleric or druid (but 3 or 4 for an illusionist or magic-user), or 8 functions for a thief, in 1st edition AD&D.

Of course, there are rules analogous to some of the skills that come regularly into play in AD&D, and more that are less par for the course. Although a number of those are included in the PHB, the application of most is really more in the DM's domain.

At 15th level, a typical 4E character has the same skills, 9 feats, 13 powers and 2 paragon path features (plus a third at 16th) or 41 rules -- 24 not counting skills. In terms only of number of spells one can memorize (not number in books, which can vary widely), a 1E magic-user has 28; a cleric can choose 32 (or more, with wisdom bonus) from a list of 66. There are a total of 76 cleric spells and altogether 194 for magic-users.

A 30th level AD&D character is almost unheard of; the deity Odin's top level is 30th! However, an m-u's spellcasting ability tops out at 29th level with 58 spells. Setting aside the skills, a 30th level 4E character gets 18 feats, 17 powers, 3 paragon path features and 3 epic destiny features, or 41 rules (58 counting skills).

The versatility of AD&D spellcasters can make them even more rules-intensive than 4E characters. However, all characters are rules-intensive in 4E (and that's not even touching on the 30 pages of combat rules).

 

[Dausuul]

Why not be able to replace them?

Lots of people replaced rules that they ditched in 1e. We had grappling rules from a huge variety of other games. We had skill systems. We had combat rounds that weren't a minute long.

You are adding a bunch of rules to this exercise that do not reflect the way 1e was house ruled by many players and groups.

The point is not that you can house-rule in one edition or another. You can house-rule anything you like, any way you like. Every edition of D&D gets house-ruled all to hell and gone by pretty much every group that plays it. House rules are good and I use them all the time.

My point is that house-ruling, as opposed to ignoring, requires a substantially greater investment of time and effort - to devise the house-rule, to balance it, to remember it in play and during chargen, to explain to new players. Yes, yes, I know, all your house rules are simple and easy to remember. They still require effort to come up with, and steepen the learning curve at your table.

By comparison, ignoring a rule - not replacing it, not tweaking it, just skipping that chunk of the rule book like it isn't even there - is trivial. You simply don't bother with it. You don't have to remember that Rule X is replaced with House-Rule Y. Teaching it to new players at your table is as simple as saying, "Eh, don't worry about that bit."

A system like AD&D, where you can just ignore a rule you don't want to deal with, is thus "lighter" than a system like 3E, where you have to replace unwanted rules with house-rules.

 

[Fifth Element]

So, to summarize the thread so far: if you define "rules-light" in a certain way, AD&D is rules-light. If you define "rules-light" in another way, AD&D is not rules-light.