D&D 5E Mike Mearls interview - states that they may be getting off of the 2 AP/year train.

[PMárk]

It was an era of overly complex rules systems of one stripe or another. My first RPG was a MERP set my mother bought me when I was 10 or so (Middle Earth RolePlaying, which used the Rolemaster system), and it was just charts charts charts. the next was Earthdawn which my friend bought; I was maybe 13 or 14. That one made enough sense to play, and we did, and it was great.

But then I found 2e D&D, and it was so elegant and simple compared to the others it blew our minds. The Earthdawn setting was great, but the mechanics were wonky and the dice pools and steps were just clunky. D&D, with its simple "roll a d20 and add modifiers" mechanic, was astounding.

We never managed to get a sustained WoD campaign going, largely because, again, the mechanics seemed so finicky compared to the elegance of D&D. We have Castle Falkenstein a shot (based on the positive reviews it got in Dragon Magazine), we played a game called Og for a while, some of us ran Marvel Superheroes and Star Trek and even Toon, but we all came back to D&D. It was just an easier and more flexible system. Almost everybody knew how to play it, and it was simple to introduce new players who didn't.

Again, this was at a nerd farm of a high school, and we lived on campus so we saw each other all the time. But even after graduation, whose of us who went to (and ultimately dropped out of, but that's a different story) the same college kept going with it.

THAC0 was easy. The core D20 system that replaced it may have been easier, but it wasn't by too great a margin.

Interesting, thanks for elaborating!

My opinion and experience still says it's a strange standpoint although, but that1s okay, we're different! I nver played Earthdawn, but I know Shadowrun 3e and yes, it's pretty convoluted and unnecessarily complex, but IMO it's not because the core mechanics of dice pools and target numbers, but everything else. The number of dices rolled is just not the part of complexity in my book, D&D isn't more straightforward, because you only need to roll one d20.

WoD... I'd never, ever say that any iteration of WoD is harder to grasp and all-in-all more complex than any iteration of D&D. Quite the opposite, my experience says that new gamers tend to understand and learn it much faster and it's a much more flexible system, IMO. Especially with older editions, since 5e closed the gap considerably, but still.

But again, I'm not a math nerd, so our experiences are clearly differ. I'm not saying yours isn't valid, it's yours, I just say I'd never thought and don't know anybody who'd say that WoD is a more complex system than D&D 2e/3e.

Anyway, it was interesting, so thanks again!

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Longest session ever of D&D used THAC0- 28 hours school holidays/students/unemployed. Started around 10am one day wenth through to 2 pmish the next day around 1998.

I also discovered 9 PCs is to many, booze does not mix with DMing, rollerblading and happy hour do not go together and some women do not like being called sturdy.

Did the ignore feature bork itself yesterday, or did you unblock me?

 

[Zardnaar]

Did the ignore feature bork itself yesterday, or did you unblock me?

I don't recall blocking you or anyone else.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

I don't recall blocking you or anyone else.

That's weird. I know I didn't block you, because I only block people who are outright jerks/abusive/etc, and at worst you're snarky, but I could only see your posts when other's quoted you.

Same with [MENTION=1560]Corwin[/MENTION], who I also didn't block. Did you block me, corwin? Until today, I couldn't see your posts unless someone else quoted you, and I don't even remember having an interaction with you that I would normally expect to end in blocking.

 

[Zardnaar]

That's weird. I know I didn't block you, because I only block people who are outright jerks/abusive/etc, and at worst you're snarky, but I could only see your posts when other's quoted you.

Same with [MENTION=1560]Corwin[/MENTION], who I also didn't block. Did you block me, corwin? Until today, I couldn't see your posts unless someone else quoted you, and I don't even remember having an interaction with you that I would normally expect to end in blocking.

I block people who smell bad

 

[doctorbadwolf]

I block people who smell bad

I've been to game stores. That's a fair strategy.

 

[Zardnaar]

I've been to game stores. That's a fair strategy.

Geeks smell bad its true. Ours closed down almost 10 years ago, the smell sometimes though...

 

[Zardnaar]

I've been to game stores. That's a fair strategy.

Geeks smell bad its true. Ours closed down almost 10 years ago, the smell sometimes though...

WoTC could package free deodorant with 5E.

 

[Jester David]

Geeks smell bad its true. Ours closed down almost 10 years ago, the smell sometimes though...

In my two times at GenCon I've learned that 99.99% of geeks smell just fine.

However... that .01% more than makes up for the rest. Oh god, when one walks passed. There may only be 50 in the entire convention hall, but effballs are you aware of each and every one of them.

 

[MackMcMacky]

I came into D&D at the tail end of 2E and the beginning of 3E and a complete novice to RPGs. From my own experience - I cannot attest to anyone else's - the d20 system of post-2E was far more intuitive and easier to understand than THAC0. Roll high and add bonuses. Done.

If you were attempting to argue that THAC0 is convoluted, counterintuitive, and archaic in comparison with the present system, then congratulations, you succeeded marvelously with flying colors.

I'm another guy who played plenty of 1st Ed. and 2nd Ed. The old armor class was counterintuitive and took all of a few seconds to understand. Convoluted? Nope. It wasn't hard to understand. It just wasn't the simplest thing to understand. Archaic? Nope. Rolling high comparing modifiers is older.

I can see folks preferring this or that edition. I do not understand fixating on bashing one mechanic that worked well enough to carry the RPG community for many, many years.