D&D 5E (2014) So 5E is the Successor to AD&D 2nd Edition? How and How Not?

pemerton said:

I recently reread Ghost Tower of Inverness. I don't think it's that good.

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Not just me then!

A lot of it was recycled by Durlag's Tower in BG1 DLC.

Zardnaar said:

1. We weren't to serious about it.

2. Basic line doesn't really offend anybody.

3. "Its to basic" well thats kind of the point.

Also if you read old D&D stuff its aged better and has a very good hit ratio in the modules in terms of quality.

And everyone hates Bargle. Bastard!!!!

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I've seen plenty of things where people were exceedingly, uncomfortably serious about it. So I don't entirely buy #1. Edition warring is as old as the very concept of "editions".

I have seen it, albeit to a much lesser extent (both in terms of amount of people, and in terms of severity of opinion) than other editions.

#3 sounds to me like ignoring the criticism because you don't think the criticism is valid, which is not the same as there not being criticism in the first place...

And as for the "it's aged better", again, I have seen things that aged like fine wine and things that aged like fine milk. So...I can't really take this one very seriously. Gygax wrote a LOT of things. Some of them are awesome. Some of them are awful. Need I remind you about the casual sexism baked into the rules at various points in time? There are PLENTY of things in old-school D&D that have aged horribly, both mechanically and aesthetically/thematically.

I started with 2e and have to say that other than t mm going back to attrib=N style stat boosting items while keeping the 3.x scaling that made them so much more powerful
I have a hard time thinking of anything at all I'm 5e that feels like running or playing ad&d. Even making rulings and using dm fiat is totally backwards where the once was able to cast aside a strict and probably lethal rule to let a player survive/be awesome it's now really only possible to do it in order to nerf sandbag or steal away success to give failure and pointless pain because the whole edition is geared to all rockey Valentine all the time from Twilight zone's nice place to visit. Someone described it as like nerf with all of the sharp jagged and rough edges filed off because failure is almost implausible and it can't matter even when failures happens. Id add one more way that it's like nerf, everyone in a Nerf game is roughly doing the same thing with roughly the same results no matter what nerf guns they have 5e is the same where the bar is so low that any build only really needs "I go here and attack this guy" for near optimal success

Desdichado said:

Best part of BECMI was the Larry Elmore cover art.

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Was there much Elmore cover art? Caldwell and Easley, seem like they were by far the most prolific among the cover artists.

Zardnaar said:

1. We weren't to serious about it.

2. Basic line doesn't really offend anybody.

3. "Its to basic" well thats kind of the point.

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I think there's two sorts of criticism that the Basic line gets. One is a transfer from the Mystara setting that people associate with those rules; people claim it's silly, which it is in parts, and assume that the rules are too silly for their serious gaming group. The other is related to complexity; some people don't like the lower number of classes or race-as-class as a concept, while there's also the fact that once the line became BECMI the complexity of the later sets increased really dramatically - a prime example being the Weapon Mastery rules.

EzekielRaiden said:

I've seen plenty of things where people were exceedingly, uncomfortably serious about it. So I don't entirely buy #1. Edition warring is as old as the very concept of "editions".

I have seen it, albeit to a much lesser extent (both in terms of amount of people, and in terms of severity of opinion) than other editions.

#3 sounds to me like ignoring the criticism because you don't think the criticism is valid, which is not the same as there not being criticism in the first place...

And as for the "it's aged better", again, I have seen things that aged like fine wine and things that aged like fine milk. So...I can't really take this one very seriously. Gygax wrote a LOT of things. Some of them are awesome. Some of them are awful. Need I remind you about the casual sexism baked into the rules at various points in time? There are PLENTY of things in old-school D&D that have aged horribly, both mechanically and aesthetically/thematically.

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Gyfax didn't write B/X. Thats why its better.

Well, 5e can somewhat feel like 2e, kind of.

If you play it with 2014 rules, phb only, and remove all optional rules. In 2014, both feats and multi classing were optional. Drop that. Now, you have, by modern D&D standard, somewhat simple and streamlined system on player facing side, rulings over rules on GM side.

When Perkins described 5e as the successor to 2e he didn’t mean it was all that similar to 2e, any more than 3e is similar to 2e. He meant that 5e ignored a lot of the evolution through 3e and 4e and took the game in a different direction.

Bluenose said:

Was there much Elmore cover art? Caldwell and Easley, seem like they were by far the most prolific among the cover artists.

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We're talking about the BECMI line, right? Elmore did 100% of the covers of the BECMI boxes. You're probably thinking of the related gazetteer covers or the later book omnibus versions of the rules like RC.

Paul Farquhar said:

When Perkins described 5e as the successor to 2e he didn’t mean it was all that similar to 2e, any more than 3e is similar to 2e. He meant that 5e ignored a lot of the evolution through 3e and 4e and took the game in a different direction.

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That may be but there is good reason why people who played and ran keep pointing out that 5e also very much ignored critical parts of 2e that made the dynamic work. There's nothing left functional enough to support the claim

Paul Farquhar said:

When Perkins described 5e as the successor to 2e he didn’t mean it was all that similar to 2e, any more than 3e is similar to 2e. He meant that 5e ignored a lot of the evolution through 3e and 4e and took the game in a different direction.

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If that's indeed what he meant, then I'd argue that he's very wrong. 5e is a streamlined reworking of 3e with a few 4e elements rebranded and relabeled. It didn't ignore 3e and 4e, it built upon them more than on any other previous version of the game.

I seriously doubt that that's what he meant, though.