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A New Taxonomy for TSR-Era D&D
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<blockquote data-quote="Orius" data-source="post: 8347139" data-attributes="member: 8863"><p>That's fairly typical, though I usually count OD&D and Holmes as separate from AD&D. AD&D did grow out of OD&D to be sure, but I see AD&D and the classic D&D game as two separate forks from the original. Holmes is mostly an introductory product for OD&D regardless of the occasional references to AD&D, and some of that's probably the result of Gary and Dave's legal disputes. </p><p></p><p>1e and 2e are both AD&D. Some 1e aficionados refuse to accept any part of 2e, but they're both AD&D anyway. Every single one of my 2e books says AD&D on the cover, no matter what the grognards like or dislike.</p><p></p><p>I refer to the Basic game as Classic D&D to differentiate it from 3e and onward which I group together as Modern D&D. All of them had more than just the Basic set, though Mentzer saw the most development more or less. The RC had its own Basic set in the form of the Black Box which was meant as a new starting point for the game at the time, and there were a few introductory products that were marketed as expansions for the Black Box. After a while, players were encouraged to move up to the RC and the Challenger level products that were being marketed to the more experienced players of D&D. That stuff only lasted about 2 years though because by then, 2e had grown far more popular.</p><p></p><p></p><p>I actually agree with that to some degree, though I have a somewhat different take on things. But the shifts in D&D generally don't take place at the start of a new edition, but rather about halfway through them. Also, the breaks aren't quite so clean either, since there's a bit of overlap.</p><p></p><p>So yeah, there's this:</p><p></p><p>1974-1985: Gary's game. Well Dave was involved in the early stuff too, but a lot of the direction came from Gary. Anyway, this is the original game which still had a lot of wargaming influences and was pretty strongly gamist in nature. A lot of the development came in the form of modules more than anything else.</p><p></p><p>1985-1995: This era is influenced by primarily by Zeb Cook and Tracy Hickman. This was D&D's narrative phase which got its start through the Dragonlance modules and influenced some of the development of 2e. This reached its nadir with metaplot heavy adventures like the Avatar trilogy and Wrath of the Immortals where the players get to sit back and watch powerful NPCs do allegedly cool stuff. TSR put less emphasis on modules and more emphasis on campaign settings, both with 2e's heavy amount of setting material as well as D&D's Gazetteers. </p><p></p><p>1995-2000: Some people see this as a dork age for the game, which makes me bristle a bit because it's when I started getting into the game in earnest, so it's the era that has the strongest influence over my gaming. Yes, at this point TSR was pretty much crumbling, and was no longer a driving force in hobby gaming, but was mostly reacting to stuff like WoD and MtG. But after TSR's bankrupcy, WotC did make some efforts to shore up the game. There were actually some signs of this happening before WotC took over, but WoTC was much better at handling D&D than TSR did in the later days. This period has two developments of note. First, this is the period where TSR started compiling older material. The first was the Encyclopedia Magica which came early in 1994, and was followed up with the Spell Compendiums later and those were mostly published under WotC. the first Wizard's Compendium was published by TSR, and they had the other volumes on their schedule before going bankrupt, but I'm pretty sure WotC decided to keep things going with the Priest's Compendium. Secondly, after WotC took over, and published TSR's backlog for 1997, they generally seemed to shift towards more low level and introductory products while TSR was sort of neglecting that stuff for a while, making the game's barrier to entry higher. The other stuff WotC large tended to do was nostalgia products for the established players and possibly to attract back parts of the player base TSR lost.</p><p></p><p>Some grognards seem to think that WotC cancelled all the older stuff immediately after buying TSR. That's absolutely not true. Yes, WotC did start looking at doing 3e not long after cleaning up TSR's various messes, but they spent 1997 and a good part of 1998 getting the last of TSR's backlog into print, and they published about 2 years worth of stuff until the release of 3e.</p><p></p><p>Like I said above, the editions shifts generally seem to happen about halfway through an edition cycle. 3e, 4e, and 5e all were the result of reacting to problems that had popped up in previous editions to some degree. There were other reasons to release a new edition than that though.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Orius, post: 8347139, member: 8863"] That's fairly typical, though I usually count OD&D and Holmes as separate from AD&D. AD&D did grow out of OD&D to be sure, but I see AD&D and the classic D&D game as two separate forks from the original. Holmes is mostly an introductory product for OD&D regardless of the occasional references to AD&D, and some of that's probably the result of Gary and Dave's legal disputes. 1e and 2e are both AD&D. Some 1e aficionados refuse to accept any part of 2e, but they're both AD&D anyway. Every single one of my 2e books says AD&D on the cover, no matter what the grognards like or dislike. I refer to the Basic game as Classic D&D to differentiate it from 3e and onward which I group together as Modern D&D. All of them had more than just the Basic set, though Mentzer saw the most development more or less. The RC had its own Basic set in the form of the Black Box which was meant as a new starting point for the game at the time, and there were a few introductory products that were marketed as expansions for the Black Box. After a while, players were encouraged to move up to the RC and the Challenger level products that were being marketed to the more experienced players of D&D. That stuff only lasted about 2 years though because by then, 2e had grown far more popular. I actually agree with that to some degree, though I have a somewhat different take on things. But the shifts in D&D generally don't take place at the start of a new edition, but rather about halfway through them. Also, the breaks aren't quite so clean either, since there's a bit of overlap. So yeah, there's this: 1974-1985: Gary's game. Well Dave was involved in the early stuff too, but a lot of the direction came from Gary. Anyway, this is the original game which still had a lot of wargaming influences and was pretty strongly gamist in nature. A lot of the development came in the form of modules more than anything else. 1985-1995: This era is influenced by primarily by Zeb Cook and Tracy Hickman. This was D&D's narrative phase which got its start through the Dragonlance modules and influenced some of the development of 2e. This reached its nadir with metaplot heavy adventures like the Avatar trilogy and Wrath of the Immortals where the players get to sit back and watch powerful NPCs do allegedly cool stuff. TSR put less emphasis on modules and more emphasis on campaign settings, both with 2e's heavy amount of setting material as well as D&D's Gazetteers. 1995-2000: Some people see this as a dork age for the game, which makes me bristle a bit because it's when I started getting into the game in earnest, so it's the era that has the strongest influence over my gaming. Yes, at this point TSR was pretty much crumbling, and was no longer a driving force in hobby gaming, but was mostly reacting to stuff like WoD and MtG. But after TSR's bankrupcy, WotC did make some efforts to shore up the game. There were actually some signs of this happening before WotC took over, but WoTC was much better at handling D&D than TSR did in the later days. This period has two developments of note. First, this is the period where TSR started compiling older material. The first was the Encyclopedia Magica which came early in 1994, and was followed up with the Spell Compendiums later and those were mostly published under WotC. the first Wizard's Compendium was published by TSR, and they had the other volumes on their schedule before going bankrupt, but I'm pretty sure WotC decided to keep things going with the Priest's Compendium. Secondly, after WotC took over, and published TSR's backlog for 1997, they generally seemed to shift towards more low level and introductory products while TSR was sort of neglecting that stuff for a while, making the game's barrier to entry higher. The other stuff WotC large tended to do was nostalgia products for the established players and possibly to attract back parts of the player base TSR lost. Some grognards seem to think that WotC cancelled all the older stuff immediately after buying TSR. That's absolutely not true. Yes, WotC did start looking at doing 3e not long after cleaning up TSR's various messes, but they spent 1997 and a good part of 1998 getting the last of TSR's backlog into print, and they published about 2 years worth of stuff until the release of 3e. Like I said above, the editions shifts generally seem to happen about halfway through an edition cycle. 3e, 4e, and 5e all were the result of reacting to problems that had popped up in previous editions to some degree. There were other reasons to release a new edition than that though. [/QUOTE]
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