D&D General [rant]The conservatism of D&D fans is exhausting.

[TiQuinn]

Thac0 was retired…the anti-Thac0nians won.

OOOOOH, Thaconians! I LIKE THAT.

 

[Aldarc]

Even Gavin Norman of Necrotic Gnome (i.e., OSE) basically dumps Thac0 for ascending AC.

 

[Faolyn]

Nah, like 90% of facts on the internet, I just made it up.

Well, you managed to make up something close to reality, then!

 

[Willie the Duck]

I always love the false-equivalency that gets brought into these discussions.

A group of gamers feels put upon because of a single NPC in a module that is obviously meant as a joke. Apparently that is all it takes to make someone feel unwelcome in the hobby.

A different group of gamers puts up with constant ridicule, insults, outright harassment, rape jokes, and whatnot for DECADES and they're supposed to just "suck it up" and not be offended because it's too ... difficult? insulting? too something anyway ... to point out this behaviour and change it. To the point where people, years later, are still salty about WotC putting a disclaimer on material that everyone agrees contains problematic material.

I am one of those individuals least impressed with the notion that your preference in elfgames* is a protected status, and the self-declared victimhood of various levels of fandom can range from tedious to vitriolic**. That said, that doesn't mean that the complaints never have a point. Along the same lines as your neighbor coming down with terminal cancer doesn't mean you never get to gripe about your eczema, the presence of people with real-world demographic statuses which have invoked real victimization (including within the RPG industry and culture) doesn't mean that the minor complaints of subsets of our trivial endeavor can never see the light of day.
*or closely held opinions on Lord of the Rings, Star Wars, Star Trek...
**oftentimes because, as someone alluded to, the self-declared victims can often be the ones who are toxic to others.

It is only when the two directly conflict that we should definitively say 'yeah, trivial complaint is trivial (unlike this other thing).' In the case of griping about the blanket disclaimer on the older books, I'd say hands down this is the case. But is that what is happening in this thread -- are there false equivalences being made, and/or are the complaints of those who suffered decades of outright harassment and worse directly conflicting with those who feel their preferred gamestyle is being impugned? I think harping on Tondro's statement is such, but acknowledge that this is up for and worthy of debate. Debate on ThAC0 the clown? Not so much. Unless we state that feeling ownership of ThAC0 is tantamount to being thoughtless to the IRL persecuted demographics (a statement, the perception of an unstated assumption of, is I think a primary complaint of some in this discussion), the discussion of ThAC0 and persecuted parties* should be able to happen in parallel.
*Man, mods, I'm tryin' my best here not to cross any lines.

Technically, I don't think there's anything that adjusts THAC0 (other than level/HD). Everything else is expressed as a bonus/penalty to the attack roll.
...
What is more confusing is AC. Let's say you wear chain mail for AC 5. You have Dexterity 16 which gives you a Defensive Adjustment of -2, which you apply to your AC, lowering it to 3. Then you find a ring of protection +1 – now what happens to your AC? Do you apply the +1, increasing it to 4 (is it a cursed ring?)? Or do you decrease AC by 1 to 2? And if so, why are you using the Dex adjustment straight but reverse the ring's adjustment?
...
THAC0/descending AC wasn't hard, it was just needlessly confusing. The groups I played with always played a lot of games other than AD&D, and we always thought the whole thing was pretty silly. Then again, we mostly found the idea of armor making you harder to hit was pretty silly in the first place.

I tend to agree that ThAC0 itself wasn't the hard part. It was a consequence* of the real bugaboo, which was descending AC. Descending AC itself wasn't really a big deal until you have bonuses/penalties that are situational and/or you have a hard time** remembering whether it goes to roll or target and if it goes up or down. For instance, I didn't have a problem with it in BX, but every time I see the oD&D/AD&D weapon-vs-armor charts I have to mentally go "okay, lances and 2H swords are better at hitting plate than longswords. Go to them and check if they are + or - to determine what this modifier does."
*the alternative being a chart, which was an equivalent level of complexity.
**and by that I mean anything that might slow down the game or might cause you to miscalculate your roll's success.

Regardless, every time we discuss this it ends up being a game of dueling anecdotes* over 'me/my group never had a problem with it,' and 'me/my group always did, and thought it was ridiculous/silly/stupid.' In my opinion, the relevant parties are the people who aren't here. As in, do you have a friend from that era that you think would have enjoyed TSR-era A/D&D (and you enjoyed having them do so), tried the game, but didn't stick with it -- plausibly at least partially because figuring out the to-hits was unintuitive? IMO, that's the question that has legs in this discussion.
*plus some occasional implied digs at someone's mathematics acumen and nerd pissing contest. Thanks everyone for not going there this time.

Yeah looking back, I think 2E AD&D was probably the most obtuse and inconsistently designed major TTRPG in the 1990s. It's a little surprising it did as well as it did - mostly a testament to the sheer inertia of how popular D&D was in the 1980s, and how just putting out loads and load of wide-spectrum support probably kept it moving longer than it otherwise would have (even if they were losing money doing so).

Every other RPG made more sense and was more consistent - Palladium's ones were probably the next least-consistent/most obtuse set. Stuff like Shadowrun, oWoD, Cyberpunk 2020 and so on, even weird things like Amber or Millenium's End just had much more straightforward and consistent rules (as did TSR's own non-AD&D games, for the most part).

This was interesting because whilst in many cases you did need to know more actual rules to play some of them than AD&D (where a lot of rules rarely came up), or even to create a character, they were so much easier to learn that people (including people who hadn't played RPGs before) were getting into them anyway.

I think it also had to do with net effect on play. Shadowrun (1e) had target numbers of 6 even though* you couldn't roll a (net) 6. WoD had that thing (I forget the specifics) where the more dice you rolled, the worse a crit-fail you could have. Cyberpunk had your charisma-equivalent score gate** how much cyberware you could have implanted, so the combat characters would all start out character creation like D&D paladins (but ending up monstrous). All of them had over-complex or broken options, or things which may have been very consistent, but not well designed or playtested. Meanwhile, yes AD&D 2nd edition was AD&D's exception-based design with 10-12 years of additional cruft added on but*** little ability to smooth out or refine. However, by then everyone already wasn't playing AD&D by the rules, and had any one of hundreds of different ways they made it work for them and their group. So I think at the end of the day it ended up effectively being the most obtuse and inconsistent... except for all the others.
*because of exploding dice
**and be degraded by
***because of the backwards-compatibility mandate

 

[CellarHeroes]

Fortunately, modern D&D does not use XP for GP as a mechanic.

The point I’m making is that the people claiming « modern D&D doesn’t cater to all playstyles » are conveniently forgetting that neither did older D&D.

And I think this is where we come to the center of some of this discussion...at least for me.

Let's say I have an idea for a campaign that takes place in a fantasy world. For me, the (A)D&D series is what I use for my fantasy games. After some thought I find that using the current edition would not be appropriate for this campaign, and I think the AD&D survival rules would really make a difference in how the world is presented. So, I'm using the AD&D ruleset.

Then when I go and present this to some groups there is resistance. Not to the campaign concept, just because of the ruleset I'm using. The pushback is coming in the form of negative comments the players had heard/read from WotC or those they feel represent WotC in some form or another. The players have never actually played any of the AD&D rulesets.

I've also heard people refuse to play 5e because they heard/read something about the edition that they don't agree with.

In both of these instances, what they read/heard had nothing to do with the rules, just how the games are perceived by others they believe are authorities on the game.

WotC, or any other game publisher, can do what they want with their game. If the rules don't align with the type of game I want to run or play, then I will choose one of the countless other rulesets. It's been my experience that there is no "one size fits all" system out there.

 

[Micah Sweet]

And I think this is where we come to the center of some of this discussion...at least for me.

Let's say I have an idea for a campaign that takes place in a fantasy world. For me, the (A)D&D series is what I use for my fantasy games. After some thought I find that using the current edition would not be appropriate for this campaign, and I think the AD&D survival rules would really make a difference in how the world is presented. So, I'm using the AD&D ruleset.

Then when I go and present this to some groups there is resistance. Not to the campaign concept, just because of the ruleset I'm using. The pushback is coming in the form of negative comments the players had heard/read from WotC or those they feel represent WotC in some form or another. The players have never actually played any of the AD&D rulesets.

I've also heard people refuse to play 5e because they heard/read something about the edition that they don't agree with.

In both of these instances, what they read/heard had nothing to do with the rules, just how the games are perceived by others they believe are authorities on the game.

WotC, or any other game publisher, can do what they want with their game. If the rules don't align with the type of game I want to run or play, then I will choose one of the countless other rulesets. It's been my experience that there is no "one size fits all" system out there.

Agreed. I enjoy a lot of games, many of them with quite different rulesets. IMO no one game is going to work for everyone, and no ruleset is going to be perfect for (practically) anyone. Even the games I really like usually have something I'm not completely happy with.

 

[James Gasik]

What minus means minus? For armor? Yeah, I don't think so. It meant a worsening of AC. Did you even know how the system worked? Maybe you were one of the few who struggled with it back then?

Oh so high Dexterity makes your AC worse then? Take your insults elsewhere, please and thank you.

 

[CellarHeroes]

View attachment 401974
Oh so high Dexterity makes your AC worse then? Take your insults elsewhere, please and thank you.

Keep in mind that the Defensive Adjustment also applied to Saving Throws. In the text, IIRC, there is a description of how the number alters AC in the opposite direction. This table can definitely be confusing if players weren't reading the rules.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Keep in mind that the Defensive Adjustment also applied to Saving Throws. In the text, IIRC, there is a description of how the number alters AC in the opposite direction. This table can definitely be confusing if players weren't reading the rules.

Back when I first learned this stuff, I honestly just memorized it and moved on. I expect if I were trying to learn it for the first time now it would be tougher, but I still like the style.

 

[ezo]

But the result with the math is a subtraction. 5 vs. 3.

As I noted.

Also, and not that it really matters, AD&D did not phrase AC as "5th Class" or "3rd Class" and if you think it was otherwise, I'll be happy for the page number of whichever book.

And yet they were classes (or category as he also uses) of protection. That was the problem because most people (I suppose?) didn't understand that. Chain mail +1 for example did not mean "AC 5 + 1", it was an abbreviation for AC 5 + 1 category better, or AC 4.

ACs in 1E were not "numbers" for you to "add +1" or "subtract -1".