The thing I miss most from AD&D is...

[Hussar]

Being a 15 year old gamer.

Random Prostitute Encounter Tables? ( Sorry... somebody had to... )

Heh, somehow I think these two quotes just belong together.

The thing I miss the most from the 1e era ... err... scratch that. There are two things I miss from that time.

First, I miss the humour. I miss those cartoons in the DMG and the various jokes and whatnot that were sprinkled through other books (I remember fondly finding those lines in the spellbook in the Unearthed Arcana that said something to the effect of "Help I'm trapped... Get me out!") and the various silly and almost surreal magic items that you could find.

D&D really does take itself too seriously sometimes.

The second thing I miss is the strong voice of the writer. Having started reading a lot of RPG's of late, that is something I'm really noticing. RPG's, particularly the smaller ones, have a real voice behind the writing of the rule books. You can picture the guy writing the Savage Worlds books - he's likely got a cigar burning beside his typewriter and a beer on the other side.

3e books, by and large, have no voice. 4e, particularly the PHB as well is very stale. The DMG is much better, as it's sprinkled with lots of sidebars where you really get a chance to hear a voice, but, even then, it's still very understated, and not very conversational.

I realize that it makes them better rule books, but, it also makes them a heck of a lot more boring to read.

 

[Storm Raven]

I miss the 1e training rules. And the 1e initiative system. And the 10 coins to the pound ratio.

Okay, no I don't miss any of those things.

I miss being young enough to be able to play regularly four or five times a week.

 

[JeffB]

The things I really miss from AD&D are

1) Gary's writing style (and Gary )

2) Better modules (for the most part)

3) The Dragon (in print)

Rules-wise I don't miss anything off the top of my head- was never into the followers/henchmen/trap fodder or "landowner" aspects of AD&D (or OD&D for that matter). Alot of AD&D-ims I don't have issue with like some do, but I don't miss them either.

More than anything I miss the time period and being a kid again

 

[Dragonhelm]

I started with a German RPG (Das schwarze Auge) and later go to AD&D 2nd Edition, so I cannot say anything about 1E, but what I miss from 2E are the extremely cool Settings (I bought Dragonlance before I got AD&D Books, Dark Sun and Ravenloft was awesome, ...).

The settings were a large part of what hooked me. I was entranced by the idea of using one set of rules to play a variety of worlds. They were very rich and imaginative. My favorites included Dragonlance, Dark Sun, Spelljammer, the Forgotten Realms, Greyhawk, and Al-Qadim.

And the Art (one-Page Pictures) from 2E are simply legendary, especially Pcitures from Larry Elmore bring me instantly to a world of heroism, Dragons and Magic.

Some of the new art is great, but artists like Elmore, Easley, Caldwell, and Parkinson really defined the game for me. Dragons will always look like Elmore's dragons.

While I liked Kender (and the new Halflings), the fat, barefooted and pipe smoking Hobbits where simply the "greatest" race for me.

I forget the name of the product, but Ari Marmel (sp?) worked on a 4e book that included a shire halfling race. I thought that was a nice tribute. I just consider hobbits to be one of the halfling subraces these days.


The other thing I miss is the sense of the fantastic. Magic items seem so stale these days, providing X bonus here, Y power there. I liked the flavor of the 2e magic items. I liked how they were sometimes downright bizarre. Flame tongues and frost brands. Gauntlets of Ogre Power combined with a Girdle of Giant Strength for warhammers. I also miss wild magic. That was so much fun.

Ah, the good old days.

 

[coyote6]

The free time I had to game.

 

[mmadsen]

Everything about AD&D was great -- except the rules.

What I miss about the old-school game is how free-form most of the game actually was, whatever the voluminous rulebooks might have implied. Very, very little of the game was choosing the optimal strategy given well-defined rules for various powers and abilities. It was almost all "outside the box" -- and most of our problems with the game were with the "inside the box" parts that didn't make sense (hit points, etc.).

 

[kitsune9]

...experience points for treasure gained.

I understand where the XP systems of 3e and 4e are coming from and, mostly, I think they achieve their goal. However, I feel that there is a unifying feature for XP=GP that is sometime sorely missed. When the primary motivation in an adventure is Treasure(!), then you know what everyone wants and the glee of finding a dragon's hoard is more than merely "what can I buy with this stuff?" (Which, a lot of the time in AD&D, was "a follower" or "a castle" - not some bit of magical power).

Sure, not giving XP for treasure opens up a wide set of other motivations. Not all PCs need to be mercenaries. It makes the monk fit in a bit more. However, occasionally the nostalgia overtakes me and I mourn the loss of finding 1000 gold... and gaining 1000 XP!

Cheers!

Same here, I miss it too. However, I rolled with the XP system in 3.0,3.5, and Pathfinder.

 

[BraveSirKevin]

It's been said by a lot of people, but I think I miss Larry Elmore's artwork the most. I totally agree that his Dragons defined what dragons looked like for me and the dragon artwork appearing in all the new material just doesn't look right to me as a result.

I also really miss the layout and style of the AD&D Monster Manuals and Monstrous Compendia. Sure the book was overloaded with useless crap that I'd never use in any campaign and a lot of the monsters were somewhere between redundant and ridiculous, but.... The book made it very easy to find what you needed and dedicating an entire page or 2 to a particular monster instead of squeezing it into half a column meant that they had space to richly detail the monster's appearance, habits, preferred environment and so on. It really made the creatures come to life and have a real place in the universe, and helped to flesh out realistic dungeons and encounters when writing the adventures.

Dungeon Magazine during the 2nd Ed period also appealed to me. sure most of the book was in black and white and there was seldom more than 1 ilustration per adventure, but the adventures were so much deeper in plot and story. Sure this made adventures more linear and less open ended, but that depth of flavour was great!

 

[Ariosto]

The d20 approach is more simulationist though. Instead of seeking gold because it magically makes them more experienced, PCs want gold because they can use it to actually buy stuff.

Maybe in some imaginary worlds, PCs think treasure "magically makes them more experienced" -- but in mine, they usually know that experience is what happens on the way to attaining the goal.

I don't think a big salary (or severance package) magically makes a CEO more competent, either ... but some folks sure seem to like the "bling" anyway!

 

[Storm Raven]

Maybe in some imaginary worlds, PCs think treasure "magically makes them more experienced" -- but in mine, they usually know that experience is what happens on the way to attaining the goal.

Well, to be perfectly fair, that is the way the 1e rules were written. You get treasure, you get more experienced.