TSR On the Relative Merits of the TSR Editions

[Micah Sweet]

I never got to play Moldvay/Cook or Mentzer. My introduction to BECMI was the Rules Cyclopedia, which I bought and used (along with The Orcs of Thar) before I fully understoof that 1E and 2E weren't exactly the game game, and that AD&D was different from D&D.

My highest level  legit AD&D character wwasa multiclassed Troll/Assassin/Shaman. He didn't so much die as cease to exist alongside Vecna at the end of Die, Vecna, Die, because the DM allowed us to beat one of the Biggest Bads of D&D of D&D history with a schoolyard prank... but not without extracting his pound of flesh.

The other two PCs were a Klingon Jedi with a lightsabre-bat'leth and a human Fighter who mastered the smallsword.


Problem is, there's two kinds of Kits: there'a what PF1 calls Archetypes and whay 5E calls Backgrounds. Both of them should exist, but they shouldn't occupy the same design space.


I switched over to 3.0 and 3.5 immediately, and they were my preferred game from 1999 to about 2006 or so-- got a sweetheart deal to do second-party work for ICE so I switched to HARP and Rolemaster SS/FRP until that sweetheart deal broke my heart.

I slept on 4E when it came out-- I don't play single-class characters and the PHB1 rules just didn't count. Still a bunch of things that bug me about the rules, but I feel like I missed out by not playing it when it was in print.

I have a lot of great PF1 sourcebooks published by WotC before the Paizo published the core rulebook, but 4E is hands-down my favorite WotC edition.

Slept on 5E for a couple of years, too, but I picked it up eventually. Ran a campaign for almost a year and a half. More than a fair shot, but by the end of that campaign I was angrier about 5E than I'd been aboutn game since Gamma World d20. Used to say 5E was my absolute least favorite, but then the 3PP ecosystem started getting better and the OSR convinced me to stop taking being "fan-fired" personally.

Still not fond of 5E as a system, but at least I feel like EN Publishing and Skydawn Game Studios want me to like it.


I'm in a very weird place with that. My first gaming group-- step-family-- played 1E (I started in 1993) and they more or less just rolled with whatever Classic/2E books I bought. I didn't really "play 2E" until the groups I played with in high school didn't allow the other rules.

Want I want from the OSR is a lot like the playstyle of those early games-- only with adults I'd trust to play with children-- but the OSR community and especially the 1E fandom.remember 80s D&D a lot differently than I do.


Pretty much the same. Its not D&D without psionic half-orc monks. I do a lot of weird mix-and-matching. Use most of the OA classes, but rename them; turn a bunch of Kits into classes.

Between this and the "innovations" thread, I am getting  ideas.

I never owned the orange spines, but the black borders seemed to have higher page counts. I don't remember the custom class rules being in the original 2E DMG.

But when I say "black border" I'm including Player's Option, Tome of Magic, and High Level Campaigns. (It's fun going through HLC and keeping track of which 11th+ level powers became 1st level powers in 3.0n which became 21st level powers.)


It absolutely is, but "Player's Option" is a vicious misnomer. Those are DM tools; they're the Unearthed Arcana (1E) and Unearthed Arcana (3.5) in a three volume set.

You should definitely let your players play with some of it, but you should curate the hell out of what you let them play it. It's not about powergaming; I trust my players. Uncurated 2.5 will break your game in perfect good faith the same way trying run all all of UA3.5 all at once will.

And like every version of UA, some parts of it just are not good.



Frank Mentzer is a living.legend who had his thumb in some of the greatest moments in D&D history. He paid his dues when we were in short pants.

I'd say he has well earned the privilege of being wrong.


I feel like I'm the same way. I'm not fond of 1E, but 2E isn't  whole without a bunch of 1E material. I vastly prefer Official PF1 and the 3PP PF1 ecosystem, but PF1 doesn't feel right without a bunch of WotC and 3PP stuff.

Including, ironically, UA and OA.

The second printing 1e books had the orange spines, not 2e. 2e first printing was black spines with blue line art, and the second printing was also black spines and had red line art and headers.

 

[DammitVictor]

The second printing 1e books had the orange spines, not 2e.

I swear, there was a time in the relatively recent past when I  knew all of this. I can't remember anything right this week.

 

[Parmandur]

The least popular edition in its original run, the most popular in the OSR.

Haven't read past the first post, but B/X was the most popular edition until 5E came along. That's why it gets all the OSR attention.

Speaking as somwone who started with 3.c in College (not really wither 3E ir 3.5, sort of a mix) having gone back and experienced older editions later: every TSR edition aside from OD&D and B/X was essentially a mistake, and a single volume B/X with Race separated from Class would have been a perfect Evergreen game.

 

[Parmandur]

I think the case could be made that every time D&D has tried to go above 20th level, it's had diminishing returns.

I think a case can be made for 10th (OD&D) or 14th (B/X).

 

[Micah Sweet]

I swear, there was a time in the relatively recent past when I  knew all of this. I can't remember anything right this week.

Trust me, I wish I remembered far more important things than this instead.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

1E's vibes were immaculate, building on the weird fantasy vibes of OD&D and just leaning into them. The full page PHB illustration of a magic mouth talking to adventurers is super-odd and couldn't be any other game than Dungeons & Dragons.

From a rules standpoint, it's basically a rickety structure built atop the half-finished structure of OD&D without the kind of high level, holistic look at how it all fits together that we expect nowadays from our RPGs, with Gygax sometimes contradicting himself in a single page.

But in comparison to 1E, everything else has felt bland and I'd argue that pretty much everyone in the OSR is just chasing the high of those original three books (and arguably the Fiend Folio and Unearthed Arcana, which were similarly weird and full of vibes).

2E had better settings, but even the weirdest of them were clearly works by committee and had been looked over by managers who didn't want to deal with a second Satanic Panic.

B/X and BECMI had their own weird vibes, but there was a vein of "this is supposed to be for kids, right?" that pervaded even the darkest and weirdest of those books and adventures. In retrospect, either ruleset is probably better than 1E D&D, though.

At this point, I'm never going to run any of the TSR D&Ds again, other than maybe as a one-off experiment. Having been there, done that, and got the t-shirt, to-hit and saving throw matrices don't hold any appeal for me other than nostalgia. I would rather chase those 1E vibes with a system like Shadowdark, since -- IMO -- the awkward system wasn't what gave 1E its appeal. It was stuff like that creepy mouth on a dungeon wall, illuminated only by a pair of torches in a dark, dark ruin somewhere.

 

[Reynard]

Haven't read past the first post, but B/X was the most popular edition until 5E came along. That's why it gets all the OSR attention.

I don't think this is true at all. Labyrinth Lord was nowhere near as popular as OSRIC in the early days of the OSR. B/X became the thing more recently when newcomers to OSR realized they wanted the vibes without the wonky rules overhead. Even then it took a lot of experimentation before the community "settled" on OSE.

 

[Parmandur]

I don't think this is true at all. Labyrinth Lord was nowhere near as popular as OSRIC in the early days of the OSR. B/X became the thing more recently when newcomers to OSR realized they wanted the vibes without the wonky rules overhead. Even then it took a lot of experimentation before the community "settled" on OSE.

There are more varieties of B/X on the market, compared to say variants of 2E.

 

[Reynard]

There are more varieties of B/X on the market, compared to say variants of 2E.

Why are you shifting goalposts?

 

[Parmandur]

Why are you shifting goalposts?

I did not, I was clarifying an apparent misunderstanding. Isaiah B/X has gotten a lot of OSR attention, which it has comparatively. As you said yourself, OSW was not the only B/X like in town.