Neonchameleon
Legend
When I took my first steps in RPGs, we were a relatively isolated school group and taught ourselves to play. It was in the 1990s and there was a lot on the market.
Games we played and enjoyed:
Also there didn't seem to be much point to the AD&D rules, being as they were, a hacked set of tabletop wargame rules. The game appeared to be one mostly designed for hack and slashers. And there were a lot of reasons for this.
Starting from the top, the fighter class. Yes, people praise the fighter because it's simple. You can write the whole of a 1e fighter into one single line if you try. And literally everything defined as a property of that character is either (a) a stat or (b) about combat. On the other hand you can write literally the whole of a 1e WFB character into one single line if you try - in this case literally everything defined is either (a) a stat or (b) about combat because WFB actually is a tabletop wargame. Continuing the comparison, WFB 1e had more stats, including more mental stats so the tabletop wargame characters had more definition than the RPG ones - although the actual numbers were condensed (for obvious reasons involving army size).
Then we move onto the thief. Ah, the thief. 10% chance of picking pockets and really pretty bad at stealth. I don't know if they were trying to convince you not to play a character with non-combat skills but the thief's percentages at everything except scaling sheer surfaces were terrible. As far as I remember everyone took a look at the thief percentage tables and moved on.
So next up we had the casters. The cleric was a battle line caster. And the wizard was field artillery. The wizard mapped extremely well to a 1e WFB wizard - spell levels and spell distances measured in inches IIRC. Also spell points vs Vancian is not that different.
Just about all the classes therefore gave me the impression of being tabletop wargame classes intent almost entirely on hack and slash with the single exception of the thief which wasn't really good at anything. (Seriously, read those numbers again). Not that the pre-Unearthed Arcana 1e fighter was very good at fighting.
And then the couple of adventures I remember. Killing stuff for profit - and in a much more nakedly mercenary way than most other systems. Combat is a big thing in most RPGs - but when it is literally the only thing other than equipment (mostly for combat) on a character sheet you have a wargame. (And the brown box presented itself as a wargame).
Yes, there always was an awesome game inside D&D - but the game both seemed and seems to be there despite rather than because of the rules set. I play 4e because it is a good game that genuinely supports one of the two playstyles that D&D promised and the rules got in the way of (the one that had its first truly big display with the Dragonlance Saga but was promised in a range of products). The other game, the one Gygax played with high lethality and "greyhawking" dungeons and where the subset of skills often called "player skill" is a vast thing again wasn't supported that well by the actual rules - and I'm looking at Dungeon Crawl Classics and Dungeonworld to do that well.
So what do I want from D&D Next? If it really is to unite the editions?
Simple. A game that delivers on the two games promised by D&D (the heroic and larger than life fiction of Appendix N, Dragonlance, and adventure paths, and the slightly gritty highly challenge based XP for GP dungeon crawling game). And one that does so in a game where the rules support me in providing the experience promised rather than one where I have to fight the rules to do it.
Games we played and enjoyed:
- GURPS
- WFRP
- MERP
- Rifts (core book only)
- Cyberpunk 2020
- Shadowrun
- Rifts + worldbooks
- GURPS vehicles (incl. mecha and robots)
- AD&D 1e
Also there didn't seem to be much point to the AD&D rules, being as they were, a hacked set of tabletop wargame rules. The game appeared to be one mostly designed for hack and slashers. And there were a lot of reasons for this.
Starting from the top, the fighter class. Yes, people praise the fighter because it's simple. You can write the whole of a 1e fighter into one single line if you try. And literally everything defined as a property of that character is either (a) a stat or (b) about combat. On the other hand you can write literally the whole of a 1e WFB character into one single line if you try - in this case literally everything defined is either (a) a stat or (b) about combat because WFB actually is a tabletop wargame. Continuing the comparison, WFB 1e had more stats, including more mental stats so the tabletop wargame characters had more definition than the RPG ones - although the actual numbers were condensed (for obvious reasons involving army size).
Then we move onto the thief. Ah, the thief. 10% chance of picking pockets and really pretty bad at stealth. I don't know if they were trying to convince you not to play a character with non-combat skills but the thief's percentages at everything except scaling sheer surfaces were terrible. As far as I remember everyone took a look at the thief percentage tables and moved on.
So next up we had the casters. The cleric was a battle line caster. And the wizard was field artillery. The wizard mapped extremely well to a 1e WFB wizard - spell levels and spell distances measured in inches IIRC. Also spell points vs Vancian is not that different.
Just about all the classes therefore gave me the impression of being tabletop wargame classes intent almost entirely on hack and slash with the single exception of the thief which wasn't really good at anything. (Seriously, read those numbers again). Not that the pre-Unearthed Arcana 1e fighter was very good at fighting.
And then the couple of adventures I remember. Killing stuff for profit - and in a much more nakedly mercenary way than most other systems. Combat is a big thing in most RPGs - but when it is literally the only thing other than equipment (mostly for combat) on a character sheet you have a wargame. (And the brown box presented itself as a wargame).
Yes, there always was an awesome game inside D&D - but the game both seemed and seems to be there despite rather than because of the rules set. I play 4e because it is a good game that genuinely supports one of the two playstyles that D&D promised and the rules got in the way of (the one that had its first truly big display with the Dragonlance Saga but was promised in a range of products). The other game, the one Gygax played with high lethality and "greyhawking" dungeons and where the subset of skills often called "player skill" is a vast thing again wasn't supported that well by the actual rules - and I'm looking at Dungeon Crawl Classics and Dungeonworld to do that well.
So what do I want from D&D Next? If it really is to unite the editions?
Simple. A game that delivers on the two games promised by D&D (the heroic and larger than life fiction of Appendix N, Dragonlance, and adventure paths, and the slightly gritty highly challenge based XP for GP dungeon crawling game). And one that does so in a game where the rules support me in providing the experience promised rather than one where I have to fight the rules to do it.
