Unpopular opinions go here

[mamba]

I suspect most AD&D 1E GMs hadn't read the whole of the DMG before running the game, and many still haven't...

I’d say that also isn’t necessary, I doubt it gets fully read in 5e either

Even with the mandatory rules only, 1e is not a well designed, consistent system. I don’t think the nostalgia for it has much to do with the actual rules at all and more with the feel and types of adventures, things being more gritty and dangerous, and survival more up to player decisions / skill than dice rolls

 

[aramis erak]

I’d say that also isn’t necessary, I doubt it gets fully read in 5e either

Even with the mandatory rules only, 1e is not a well designed, consistent system. I don’t think the nostalgia for it has much to do with the actual rules at all and more with the feel and types of adventures, things being more gritty and dangerous, and survival more up to player decisions / skill than dice rolls

I'd say it's more common in 5E than it was in AD&D to have actually read the whole thing. I'll note that the DMG wasn't out when I was first running 5E - I was using the PHB and the DM's Basic v0.1...

Most of the 5E GMs I know also have actually read all the not-clearly-marked-optional bits within the first year of DMing. I agree most haven't when they start, but the "Rules Matter and affect play" crowd (which I self-identify with) have had an impact.

 

[Autumnal]

I happen to have a handy bit of confirmation for @Whizbang Dustyboots ’s comment about the evolution of media properties, thanks to 1990s GEnie traffic from then-Pocket Books editor John Ordover. He spent (IIRC) more than a year surveying Trek fans (including a whole lot the authors) on the service on their ratings for Star Trek novels up to that point, taking them ten at a time. Then he studied and discussed the results.

The ratings turned out to gather in a really strong pattern. The early blocks had more top-rated books and more bottom-rated ones. The average ratings rose slowly over the years, with a truncated range - fewer 1s and fewer 10s both.

I think John’s interpretation is correct. Early on, nobody writing the books or at Pocket Books had a very strong idea of what a good Trek book might actually look like. So there was a lot of experimentation, some of which worked great and some…did not. As good editors, John and the rest learned how to spot duds early in the process and fix or toss them. But knowing a bunch about what makes for good-selling and well-received Trek books comes with a corollary of missing the potential in some books that could do something new, or overhaul something that hadn’t worked before so that now it could succeed. Experimentation tapered off for both good and bad.

(There are interesting exceptions. But I don’t have time to tell the backstory of Barbara Hambly’s Crossroads right now.)

John didn’t see any particular way to avoid that. It falls out of the basic facts of being a successful publisher who’s a responsible steward of a property.

I’m inclined to agree with him, and therefore with the obvious implication of @Whizbang Dustyboots ’s post. Media properties need to stop running after a while, both hiatuses to allow time for changing directions and just plain being done with and energy put into launching new things.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Okay some more:

Star Wars Saga Edition is the best Star Wars RPG, hands down. FFG is the least good.

“Keep it simple” is bad advice as often as it’s good advice, and “start with a town and build the rest during play” is terrible advice for new DMs. I’d have an easier time doing that with years of experience DMing, than I would have the first time, and most people learn to swim just fine if you put them in the damn pool. No one learns to swim with just their feet in the pool. Likewise, just let new DMs jump into the deep end. I have never seen a single DM burn out from doing so.

Wizards should be more weird and tied to things like hermetic mysticism, but other spellcasters like sorcerers should be about as simple as a martial character.

Related, not everything needs its opposite to exist. Spellcasters having complex base class option doesn’t mean martials should. If you want a complex martial, it certainly shouldn’t be the fighter.

The Monk should be the complex Master of Arms with a through line of mysticism. It shouldn’t be made more mundane.

Most of what the 5e Bard does belongs in a different class. Jack of All Trades should be a Ranger feature. The inspiration dice mechanic should be for a martial character that can inspire. Magical Secrets should be Sorcerers or Wizards.

Counterspell should be how Spellcasting works, and should always involve a roll.

Weapon users should all have the ability to parry/deflect attacks as a reaction, with different secondary features tied to it.

Wotc products have been better in the last few years than in the first 5 years of 5e.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

I think John’s interpretation is correct. Early on, nobody writing the books or at Pocket Books had a very strong idea of what a good Trek book might actually look like. So there was a lot of experimentation, some of which worked great and some…did not. As good editors, John and the rest learned how to spot duds early in the process and fix or toss them. But knowing a bunch about what makes for good-selling and well-received Trek books comes with a corollary of missing the potential in some books that could do something new, or overhaul something that hadn’t worked before so that now it could succeed. Experimentation tapered off for both good and bad.

(There are interesting exceptions. But I don’t have time to tell the backstory of Barbara Hambly’s Crossroads right now.)

John didn’t see any particular way to avoid that. It falls out of the basic facts of being a successful publisher who’s a responsible steward of a property.

I’m inclined to agree with him, and therefore with the obvious implication of @Whizbang Dustyboots ’s post. Media properties need to stop running after a while, both hiatuses to allow time for changing directions and just plain being done with and energy put into launching new things.

That makes a lot of sense. It still makes it hard to get excited for the upcoming Disney+ series about what Greedo was like in middle school, but at least it's logical-ish.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

There is no point where using the oxford comma is going to be unclear. There are a huge number of cases where not using it causes clarity loss. Therefore It shouldn't be optional.

If you are unable to consistently write clearly without always using the Oxford comma, you should definitely always use it.

But insisting the rest of humanity do so because of your (in the generic) failings is silly.

 

[Nikosandros]

I suspect most AD&D 1E GMs hadn't read the whole of the DMG before running the game, and many still haven't...

And they say that 5e didn't take anything from AD&D 1e.

 

[QuentinGeorge]

Isn't that what I said?

Apologies I missed the final line of your post. But it seems to me RPGs can be stories, in the same way real events can be a story.

 

[DammitVictor]

For all of its myriad faults in its game design and cultural sensitivity, Oriental Adventures was an essential part of AD&D and should have been considered a core rulebook. The classes and monsters and proficiency rules-- admittedly, the races were weak and "honor" is little better than alignment-- should have been part of the Core Rules for Second Edition alongside Dungeon Survival Guide and Wilderness Survival Guide.

Monks and Ninja belong in the PHB. Obviously, I won that argument (in 3.X and 5, at least) but Samurai belong in the PHB, Shamans belong in the PHB, Vanaras and Kappa and Tengu belong in the PHB. Psionics belongs in the PHB.

Instead of connecting the default D&D settings (Oerth, Toril, Krynn), Spelljammer should just be the default D&D setting. (You could say Spelljammer... belongs in the PHB.)

D&D is weird. People who want to make D&D less weird, like a poe-faced hybrid of Tolkien's work and Howard's work... are really overlooking how weird Tolkien and Howard were.

The Player's Option series of books for AD&D 2e are actually very good, they're just unfortunately and mistakenly named. As DM's options, they're the best toolkit for tailoring your D&D game for your world and your table ever published-- better than both Unearthed Arcanas combined, better than Pathfinder Unchained.

Race as Class is actually good. It means that being a nonhuman intelligence is actually a distinct archetype and it allows the game to model that distinction without clumsy, wonky tools like racial ability mods and class restrictions. The stupid proliferation of playable races in AD&D and modern D&D is because you can fit four of them on a page when there's next to nothing differentiating them from one another.

The racial class restrictions in AD&D were trying to accomplish this... but the point was considerably dulled by the fact that, outside of Planescape, the vast majority of playable races had the exact same list of class combos: Fighter, Cleric, Thief and either Fighter/Cleric (Dwarf) or Cleric/Thief (Halfling).

 

[Aldarc]

I think @Aldarc should give those of us ignorant a correct pronunciation from their perspective.

True story: In my senior capstone class, I was lecturing on the historiography of the Scottish Witch Hunts of the 1690s, and I kept pronouncing Berwick as "Burr-Wick." At the end of the class, my professor took me aside and said, "I think it's pronounced "Barrick."

Here in Arkansas, we have a town called El Dorado. How do you think it is pronounced? It's "El Duh-rah-dough." Surprised the hell out of me. How about Stuttgart, Arkansas? It's pronounced "Stutt-gart." I used to live in Germany, and when I moved here I used the German pronunciation and this dude looked at me like he was ready to tear my head off and corrected me. Some people are really, really touchy about their pronunciations.

Pronunciations of place names are an important part of cultural identity, and such pronunciations are often used as cultural and socio-political markers: i.e., Shibboleths. There is a Beaufort, North Carolina and a Beaufort, South Carolina, which are named for the same duke but have different pronunciations from each other: BO-fort and BYEW-fort, respectively. It's not difficult for me to refer to each according to their local preferences. But this is something that you learn through experience.

Sharyn McCrumb is a North Carolina novelist who often writes novels pertaining to Appalachian folklore and history.

Old Gods of Appalachia is an eldritch horror podcast from Cam Collins and Steve Shell. Both are from Wise, Virginia. OGoA is also now a Cypher System TTRPG by Monte Cook Games. Tammy Ryan, who works for MCG and wife of Charles Ryan, is also from Wise, Virginia. When MCG got the gig for OGoA, she apparently made sure that everyone at MCG said "Appalachia" as per the core region. Similarly, I've heard that as part of freshmen orientation, Appalachian State University teaches new students how to say "Appalachian."

Incidentally, "app-puh-LATCH-uhn" tends to be the preferred pronunciation for academics and scholars of Appalachian culture, folklore, dialect, etc. There are reasons for that, namely the fact that it's both the older pronunciation as well as the pronunciation used by the regional cultural core.

Anyway, you can hear the pronunciation early on in this introductory video for the podcast.

The recently released OGoA book even goes out of its way to write:

What If You Don’t Know Anything About Appalachia?
Not to worry—we’ve got you covered. The first thing to know is how to pronounce it—it’s “apple atcha,” like “throwing an apple atcha.” Unless, of course, your character’s an outsider, in which case their mispronunciation will give them away right quick.

I would probably walk away from the table of anyone playing this game if they insisted that App-uh-LAY-Shun was the correct pronunciation. (I would be okay if the player or GM was using the pronunciation to depict a jasper.)

It's much as Sharyn McCrumb says. It's like the sound of nails on chalkboard. When we hear App-uh-LAY-Shun, we hear condescension. We hear people telling us that we are uneducated, impoverished, inbred hillbillies and rednecks. We hear people assuming that we are wrong about how the mountains are pronounced because we can't possibly know better than someone from New York, Massachussetts, or California. We hear people trying to culturally erase us. We hear a continued struggle for our regional and cultural identity. We hear people who are ashamed to be from the region because of its aformentioned associations, and who want to be regarded as "high society." We hear LBJ, RFK, and reporters objectifying us as part of their poverty tour of the Appalachian mountains. We hear New Yorkers in the early 1900s who believed that the hiking trail that goes through our mountains would sound better if they changed it to App-uh-LAY-Shun.

Yes. People in different places pronounce things differently, but reality is not that darn childishly simplistic. And it's not ridiculous for the people who live there or are from there and our experiences. It's only ridiculous for the people who can't be bothered to care, learn, or change about these issues after they have been told about them. I have many friends and acquaintances across the United States outside of the Appalchian Mountains and American Southeast. They may not have said "app-puh-LATCH-uhn" when we first met, but I promise you that they do now.