D&D General The Rules Cyclopedia - Unlearning Dnd Preconceptions from a 3e player
Never got the RC- not even sure why, as it seems like it'd be right up my alley. (just ask the shelves groaning under the weight of all the D&D related books I own...)
I began with B/X, and instantly loved it! Some things I did find irritating (racial limits), but that's true of any game. And we just houseruled that stuff away, anyhow. We never moved on to BECMI, because we were playing AD&D by then. I even ported over my B/X characters, so I could keep playing them.
Still have both boxed sets, though the dice that came with them are long lost. Lots of fond memories of playing that game!! I should take them down and read through them again! It was amazing how they were able to pack THAT much information (an entire RPG!!) into one reasonable sized booklet like that. All you needed to play was in that boxed set- rules, dice, and a module. Just had to supply a pencil and paper.
I always looked back fondly on those days- when hauling around a 2' tall stack of AD&D stuff to all the games...
3E got rid of pretty much all of the obnoxious arbitrary limits we'd long houseruled- and it's hard to look back.
I hadn't thought about how 5E was similar to the early editions of D&D- but it does seem strangely familiar. The much streamlined combat rules DO remind me of earlier, simpler times, when fights and such just seemed to flow better. And while I do miss all the extra choices for spells in 2nd and 3rd ed, I do NOT miss trying to keep them all strait. And I definitely don't miss having to flip through half a dozen hardcovers, softcovers, Dragon Mags etc etc etc to find them when I needed it, lol.
I began with B/X, and instantly loved it! Some things I did find irritating (racial limits), but that's true of any game. And we just houseruled that stuff away, anyhow. We never moved on to BECMI, because we were playing AD&D by then. I even ported over my B/X characters, so I could keep playing them.
Still have both boxed sets, though the dice that came with them are long lost. Lots of fond memories of playing that game!! I should take them down and read through them again! It was amazing how they were able to pack THAT much information (an entire RPG!!) into one reasonable sized booklet like that. All you needed to play was in that boxed set- rules, dice, and a module. Just had to supply a pencil and paper.
I always looked back fondly on those days- when hauling around a 2' tall stack of AD&D stuff to all the games...
3E got rid of pretty much all of the obnoxious arbitrary limits we'd long houseruled- and it's hard to look back.
I hadn't thought about how 5E was similar to the early editions of D&D- but it does seem strangely familiar. The much streamlined combat rules DO remind me of earlier, simpler times, when fights and such just seemed to flow better. And while I do miss all the extra choices for spells in 2nd and 3rd ed, I do NOT miss trying to keep them all strait. And I definitely don't miss having to flip through half a dozen hardcovers, softcovers, Dragon Mags etc etc etc to find them when I needed it, lol.
Alzrius
The EN World kitten
Because it makes it easier for publishers to write compatible material under the OGL?
Jack Daniel
dice-universe.blogspot.com
It didn't used to be, before WotC put up a print version on DriveThru. If you didn't want to drop a mint plus shipping on Ebay, the only way to get your hands on an RC was to get really lucky at a game shop or a secondhand bookstore.
Also, what @Alzrius said. If you write an adventure module "for use with Dark Dungeons," that's a bit more marketable than "for use with the fourth revision, circa 1991, of the basic version of the world's first and most popular fantasy RPG."
Ath-kethin
Elder Thing
I love the Rules Cyclopedia, and my main game is a modified version of that rule set.
Dark Dungeons, for all its praise, does one thing horribly and irredeemably wrong: it ditches the THAC0 combat system but replaces it with a different, still ridiculously counterintuitive combat system. Instead of a simple attack bonus and armor bonus, as most modern games use, it has funky math - evidently on the assumption that OSR gamers still want an asinine combat system, they just dislike the specific application of THAC0.
It's a pity, because otherwise it's a pretty solid book. Unless you want the Mystara specific setting info, which of course it lacks.
For my part, pencilled-in conversions of AC and to-hit bonuses in my Rules Cyclopedia does the trick, though I also imported the 5e (dis)advantage mechanic.
Dark Dungeons, for all its praise, does one thing horribly and irredeemably wrong: it ditches the THAC0 combat system but replaces it with a different, still ridiculously counterintuitive combat system. Instead of a simple attack bonus and armor bonus, as most modern games use, it has funky math - evidently on the assumption that OSR gamers still want an asinine combat system, they just dislike the specific application of THAC0.
It's a pity, because otherwise it's a pretty solid book. Unless you want the Mystara specific setting info, which of course it lacks.
For my part, pencilled-in conversions of AC and to-hit bonuses in my Rules Cyclopedia does the trick, though I also imported the 5e (dis)advantage mechanic.
No, I get why it exists as a publisher resource. I just don't get why there's a commercial product.
I understand OSRIC and B/X Essentials because those sources, while also available, are kind of a mess. But Alston's RC is a pretty much perfect book from an organizational standpoint.
I guess maybe this: if the RC PDF isn't searchable I can see wanting something that is.
pming
Legend
Hiya!
For those that don't know, here's how you figure if you hit or not:
1d20 + Adjustments + Opponents AC >= 20, then you Hit
Example: You swing your sword. You roll 1d20 and get 14. You have a +2 for Strength, so 16. You are also a 4th level Fighter, so you have a "Base Attack Bonus" of +2, so you are at 18 now. Your opponents AC is 4, so you have 22. You hit. ... ... ... in other words, if your opponents AC was 1 or better, you'd miss.
That said, you could always just use the Attack Charts from the BX/BECMI/RC books in stead and ignore the BAB for the DD classes. Wouldn't change a thing.
For those that want a physical copy of the Rules Cyclopedia...well, hope you have deep pockets, because the typical price for even a "Fair" condition is a bit lower than $200. So...yeah. PoD of DD will be $15 ($26 for Hardback; $90 for Hardback, full colour on premium paper...which, I must say, is of VERY high quality!
).
^_^
Paul L. Ming
Wow. Talk about different strokes and all that! Personally I consider the slightly modified DD combat "To Hit" determination to be one of it's better modifications!
For those that don't know, here's how you figure if you hit or not:
1d20 + Adjustments + Opponents AC >= 20, then you Hit
Example: You swing your sword. You roll 1d20 and get 14. You have a +2 for Strength, so 16. You are also a 4th level Fighter, so you have a "Base Attack Bonus" of +2, so you are at 18 now. Your opponents AC is 4, so you have 22. You hit. ... ... ... in other words, if your opponents AC was 1 or better, you'd miss.
That said, you could always just use the Attack Charts from the BX/BECMI/RC books in stead and ignore the BAB for the DD classes. Wouldn't change a thing.
For those that want a physical copy of the Rules Cyclopedia...well, hope you have deep pockets, because the typical price for even a "Fair" condition is a bit lower than $200. So...yeah. PoD of DD will be $15 ($26 for Hardback; $90 for Hardback, full colour on premium paper...which, I must say, is of VERY high quality!
).^_^
Paul L. Ming
teitan
Legend
i don’t know if I am alone but to me, skill systems kind of ruined D&D/AD&D. It was all exciting at first to pick them but the way they conflicted with thief abilities was unfair to thieves, extrapolating the thief system just made it a mess like Palladium. Just using the secondary skill system was broad enough to imply a series of broad base skills for a PC to work from in down time and could also help adjudicate in adventuring environments with enough granularity to keep a game flowing without turning social encounters into dice chucking affairs rather than role playing opportunities.
the alignment expansion I think is where a sea change occurred. While Law and Chaos were more cosmic forces than hard moralities before, tacking on good and evil kind of encoded a morality into it as opposed to the more cosmic conflict it seemed to represent in the Gygaxian dialect. The alignment languages also made sense as Law, Chaos because they were more like what we would call Celestial or Abyssal and the like. This is why Neutrality was so hard to wrap your head around because it represented a cosmic balance because alignments were a specific choice with good or evil being more indicative of morality. So the Lawful Good Paladin was one, choosing to side with the cosmic forces represented by Law and then was morally good. It really shouldn’t have anything to do with observing the “law of the land” that seems a common interpretation extrapolated from later materials. Law vs Chaos was a literal cosmic conflict and the Neutral forces were choosing to keep both in check. It’s grainy when the good and evil axis are juxtaposed on the morality axis with neutrality where Chaotic Neutral and Lawful Neutral just seem out of place.
the alignment expansion I think is where a sea change occurred. While Law and Chaos were more cosmic forces than hard moralities before, tacking on good and evil kind of encoded a morality into it as opposed to the more cosmic conflict it seemed to represent in the Gygaxian dialect. The alignment languages also made sense as Law, Chaos because they were more like what we would call Celestial or Abyssal and the like. This is why Neutrality was so hard to wrap your head around because it represented a cosmic balance because alignments were a specific choice with good or evil being more indicative of morality. So the Lawful Good Paladin was one, choosing to side with the cosmic forces represented by Law and then was morally good. It really shouldn’t have anything to do with observing the “law of the land” that seems a common interpretation extrapolated from later materials. Law vs Chaos was a literal cosmic conflict and the Neutral forces were choosing to keep both in check. It’s grainy when the good and evil axis are juxtaposed on the morality axis with neutrality where Chaotic Neutral and Lawful Neutral just seem out of place.
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Flamestrike
Legend
So I got a chance to borrow my friend's Rules Cyclopedia recently (which as far as I understand it is the collection of all of the Box sets back in the day, I believe before 2e came out). Though I played a little 2e, I never "looked under the hood" of the game before 3e....so it was really neat to see some of the early rules for the game. It was cool to see how some things evolved, and honestly....I found some rules that I thought were pretty good even today. So here are a few general notes and interesting things:
**I'm going to reference "back then" a lot in the post, just noting I am sure there were other flavors and versions out there, so know I am specifically referencing the Rules Cyclopedia.
1) Alignment: As much as we like to talk about the "9 alignments" as a sacred cow, it actually was just Law, Neutral, and Chaos back then. It seems that Law was "Big L, little g" and Chaos was "Big C, little e".
2) As we talk about bounded accuracy today, there are several places where I find it interesting how much more "bounded" the game was back then. Some examples:
a) Ability scores were more spread out. You had to get very higher scores just to get even a +2 or +3, and you didn't go above 18.
9-12 +0
13-15 +1
16-17 +2
18 +3
b) Many more things used static rolls instead of adding in ability scores. Several skills, initiative, surprise, even your saving throws were almost entirely dependent on level than on your ability scores.
c) Hitpoints were tighter. Fighters only had d8 hp, and you only gained a single HP at 9th and beyond.
3) Alignments actually had their own language back then! So lawful characters could talk to each other in "secret code". That's both weird and neat.
4) In our modern day of "6 saving throws", its neat to remember we actually started with 5 not 3.
5) The "Name" level at 9th actually reminds me a bit of the 4e paragon path. Though they are much less mechanical and more flavorful, there is still the notion that you are moving into a new direction as a character, and gaining a new suite of benefits and responsibilities. Its also pretty telling that the levels could go as high as 36 but often characters were expected to at least consider retirement at 9th.
6) The term avenger as a fighting class dates way back, I had thought that was a 4e invention.
7) The concept of being able to move and attack twice existed back in the day. I had assumed 3e's "move and get 1 attack only" had been the norm for some time.
8) Its no wonder that nature clerics and druids have overlap nowadays, as back then a druid was simply a "prestige class" for a cleric.
9) It was interesting to read the "Mystic" which is the original monk. The monk honestly hasn't changed nearly as much as I had expected, and many of its current abilities you can see traces of in the original class.
10) Later editions like 3rd played with very complicated "spell preparation time formulas", but back then it was a simple single hour to memorize spells.
11) There was a neat concept back then of "reversible" spells for clerics. So the "cure wounds/inflict wounds" or "light/darkness" were actually the same spell, and the cleric could use either version when casting (though lawful classes were supposed to use this ability only sparingly). Its often talked about how few spells a caster might have prepared back then, but the reversible spells meant they had a few extra ones than the numbers might let on.
12) Cure Light Wounds could actually cure paralysis back then, neat!
13) Wish really was a "10th level spell" back then. Though it was technically 9th, you had to be 36th level to use it! Aka the highest of the high, it was clear even back then that Wish was the pinnacle of magical casting.
14) Intelligence actually determined the duration of mental effects back then. Though a little cumbersome, it was a nice bit of benefit for Int.
15) Dispel Magic actually worked more like 5e's version....automatically dispelling any equal or weaker magic, but then providing a chance to dispel stronger magic. The main difference is back then the dispel check on higher level magic was MUCH harder, which is something I actually like.
16) Skills existed back then! I had known about Thief Skills but I didn't know that the more general list of skills we know today actually did exist back then, though it was a good bit bigger than today's list.
17) The Exploration Rules are actually pretty comprehensive and have a lot of simple but useful rules, I may steal some of it for my current game.
18) Initiative was very different back then. It was a simple d6 and done by each group. The ideas of adding dex to the roll and rolling it per person were actually optional variants at that time. So was surprise, there was again no perception check back then just a simple d6 done by both sides. I like the simplicity of it, but considering how deadly surprise can be its probably a good idea they changed it.
19) The Monster Reaction and Morale tables are actually very simple and yet I really like how they make encounters more organic. Monster reactions showcases things like animals that may not be hostile due to certain circumstances, and morale gives you reasonable "checkpoints" on when to consider if a monster should just leave a fight. Its very clear that back then, it was more common for monsters to leave the battlefield than to just get killed.
20) Weapon Speed did exist in a very simplified version: Ranged Attacks went first, then Spells, then melee weapons.
21) "Power Attack" actually existed back then, called the smash maneuver. And it was quite potent, for a -5 to attack you got to add your Strength Score (not modifier) as a bonus to your damage. So effectively the "-1 attack, +2 damage" math has existed for quite some time.
22) There was a concept that your attack bonus if high enough allowed you to deal extra damage. And I don't mean the attack roll, if your skill was simply high enough vs your opponent's AC, you straight up got bonus damage. Interesting idea!
23) THAC0 tables really are as nasty as I remember
24) "Point Blank Shot" actually existed as a standard part of missile attacks back then.
25) Until you got to high levels, Saving Throws against spells were very hard to make. This meant that spellcaster spells went into effect much more often than they do nowadays.
26) Grappling was stupidly complicated even then
The Mystic wasnt the original Monk, the Monk was.
It debuted in AD&D years prior (after first appearing in Dragon) and was further refined in Oriental Adventures (with unique Martial arts styles).
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