AD&D First Edition inferior?
- Thread starter Theuderic
- Start date
Holy Bovine
First Post
This is the thread that never ends,
It goes on and on my friends.
This is the thread that never ends,
It goes on and on my friends.
This is the thread that never ends,
It goes on and on my friends.
This is the thread that never ends,
It goes on and on my friends.
This is the thread that never ends,
It goes on and on my friends.
This is the thread that never ends,
It goes on and on my friends.
This is the thread that never ends,
It goes on and on my friends.
This is the thread that never ends,
It goes on and on my friends.
This is the thread that never ends,
It goes on and on my friends.
This is the thread that never ends,
It goes on and on my friends.
This is the thread that never ends,
It goes on and on my friends.
This is the thread that never ends,
It goes on and on my friends.
This is the thread that never ends,
It goes on and on my friends.
This is the thread that never ends,
It goes on and on my friends.
This is the thread that never ends,
It goes on and on my friends.
This is the thread that never ends,
It goes on and on my friends.
This is the thread that never ends,
It goes on and on my friends.
This is the thread that never ends,
It goes on and on my friends.
This is the thread that never ends,
It goes on and on my friends.
This is the thread that never ends,
It goes on and on my friends.
This is the thread that never ends,
It goes on and on my friends.
This is the thread that never ends,
It goes on and on my friends.
MeepoTheMighty
First Post
Holy Bovine said:
Some people started posting it
not knowing what it was
but they'll continue trolling here forever just because
This is the thread that never ends,
It goes on and on my friends.
This is the thread that never ends,
It goes on and on my friends.
This is the thread that never ends,
It goes on and on my friends.
etc
MeepoTheMighty
First Post
I try.
Storm Raven
First Post
GENEWEIGEL said:
I doubt it. If this were true, one would expect Lejendary Adventures to be selling better than it has thus far. While it has not been a commercial failure by all accounts, it does not appear to be selling any better than a dozen other game systems either.
Ezrael
First Post
Well, I've come to the thread late, but I do have some things to say so I'll say them.
I loved D&D when I first stumbled upon that purple boxed set. I was perfectly happy playing an elf as my character class. To this day, if I'm going to run a game for a complete group of new players, I consider dragging out the D&D Compendium. We originally rotated DM's, and many of us owned the older supplements for the D&D game like Greyhawk and Blackmoor, and it was all fine by us. Put us in front of a dungeon and we'd clean it out.
I switched over to AD&D mainly because my game group did. And it was like a revelation. Race and class combinations. Rangers. Jesus, did I love rangers. To this day, whenever I start playing a new campaign, I consider playing a ranger just because my most memorable character was one. (And strangely enough, he had two swords...we worked out a compromise that I basically used the left sword like a shield in game terms, which was fine by me...I wanted two swords solely because I thought it looked cool, not because I was going for damage): granted, I think a lot of people identify rangers with RA Salvatore, but that's okay, a lot of people identify them with Aragorn. To me, rangers are Robin Hood. AD&D served the purpose I asked it to: it let me play a game and pretend to be someone else. To be honest, I've never been the subtlest player and as a result, a lot of the rule problems people have spoken about weren't obvious to me...I played characters who either filled enemies with arrows or closed with them and got messy. AD&D did fine by me for this purpose. As a DM, I found it harder to run, but not so much so that I was particularly disenchanted with it.
I'd definitely say that AD&D was my 'gateway drug' towards other RPG's. I would never have played Champions, GURPS, or Palladium if I hadn't played it. It's funny to realize that I played AD&D, both first and second edition, for as long as I did. I played that game in one form or another for almost two decades, from the beginning of the eighties to the end of the nineties. I have horror stories, of course, and there were elements I didn't like (especially when the second edition came around...some of the race and class choices they made annoyed me) but in general I played and enjoyed it for quite some time. But I did drift away, and there were several reasons for that drift. The first was time: I couldn't play as much as I wanted to during and after college, especially when I moved around as much as I did. The second was that I'd come to enjoy having more control over my character's starting abilities than I felt I was getting from AD&D...point buy systems had become the games I was most often playing. The third was that I felt a bit put off by the people who were playing AD&D. Now, I'm aware that snobbery and elitism are silly when one is talking about RPG's, but people who believe that a rigid legalistic mindset is somehow worthwhile when talking about one's hobby have always seemed to be putting the cart before the horse to me, and that was all I was finding. (Admittedly, that's subjective, but I can only speak to my experiences and the way I was thinking at the time.) I play games to have fun, not to have a ten minute discussion of weapon speeds, which is what was happening to me a lot more than I was comfortable with.
So around 1996, I more or less stopped playing AD&D. I came back to the first edition rules for a memorable summer in 1998 or so, when one of my earliest game groups (and the longest lived) got back together over the course of a few months and more or less wrapped up our characters. And it was fun, and we enjoyed ourselves. And that was it for me and AD&D.
I would not be playing D&D, and possibly not playing RPG's at all, right now if not for 3E. Not only has it brought back a lot of the simplicity I liked in the original game while keeping the options of AD&D, it's brought back players, so far as I can tell. I enjoy the game immensely, and to me, that's what the games have always been for.
As to superiority or inferiority, I can't see any reason to make that judgement. I liked AD&D. I like D&D 3E. I enjoy having skills and feats, I think it's something that helps keep options open. I vastly prefer multiclassing as it now stands to the old multiclass/dualclass rules. I think, however, that without the evolution of the game marketplace fueled by AD&D's existence over the years that these features would not exist, and therefore it's like asking if I think grandpa is inferior to me. He's my grandpa. AD&D is a big chunk of my past. I'm not going to rank on it, nor am I going to pretend that I don't think the new version meets my needs now. I find it more easily introduced to new players, more streamlined, and I prefer the mechanics of the new game.
I'm not going to make an inferiority/superiority judgement. I am, however, going to keep playing 3E over the old rules. I liked them, they had their time, and now I've moved on. Not without fondness, but definitely and completely.
I loved D&D when I first stumbled upon that purple boxed set. I was perfectly happy playing an elf as my character class. To this day, if I'm going to run a game for a complete group of new players, I consider dragging out the D&D Compendium. We originally rotated DM's, and many of us owned the older supplements for the D&D game like Greyhawk and Blackmoor, and it was all fine by us. Put us in front of a dungeon and we'd clean it out.
I switched over to AD&D mainly because my game group did. And it was like a revelation. Race and class combinations. Rangers. Jesus, did I love rangers. To this day, whenever I start playing a new campaign, I consider playing a ranger just because my most memorable character was one. (And strangely enough, he had two swords...we worked out a compromise that I basically used the left sword like a shield in game terms, which was fine by me...I wanted two swords solely because I thought it looked cool, not because I was going for damage): granted, I think a lot of people identify rangers with RA Salvatore, but that's okay, a lot of people identify them with Aragorn. To me, rangers are Robin Hood. AD&D served the purpose I asked it to: it let me play a game and pretend to be someone else. To be honest, I've never been the subtlest player and as a result, a lot of the rule problems people have spoken about weren't obvious to me...I played characters who either filled enemies with arrows or closed with them and got messy. AD&D did fine by me for this purpose. As a DM, I found it harder to run, but not so much so that I was particularly disenchanted with it.
I'd definitely say that AD&D was my 'gateway drug' towards other RPG's. I would never have played Champions, GURPS, or Palladium if I hadn't played it. It's funny to realize that I played AD&D, both first and second edition, for as long as I did. I played that game in one form or another for almost two decades, from the beginning of the eighties to the end of the nineties. I have horror stories, of course, and there were elements I didn't like (especially when the second edition came around...some of the race and class choices they made annoyed me) but in general I played and enjoyed it for quite some time. But I did drift away, and there were several reasons for that drift. The first was time: I couldn't play as much as I wanted to during and after college, especially when I moved around as much as I did. The second was that I'd come to enjoy having more control over my character's starting abilities than I felt I was getting from AD&D...point buy systems had become the games I was most often playing. The third was that I felt a bit put off by the people who were playing AD&D. Now, I'm aware that snobbery and elitism are silly when one is talking about RPG's, but people who believe that a rigid legalistic mindset is somehow worthwhile when talking about one's hobby have always seemed to be putting the cart before the horse to me, and that was all I was finding. (Admittedly, that's subjective, but I can only speak to my experiences and the way I was thinking at the time.) I play games to have fun, not to have a ten minute discussion of weapon speeds, which is what was happening to me a lot more than I was comfortable with.
So around 1996, I more or less stopped playing AD&D. I came back to the first edition rules for a memorable summer in 1998 or so, when one of my earliest game groups (and the longest lived) got back together over the course of a few months and more or less wrapped up our characters. And it was fun, and we enjoyed ourselves. And that was it for me and AD&D.
I would not be playing D&D, and possibly not playing RPG's at all, right now if not for 3E. Not only has it brought back a lot of the simplicity I liked in the original game while keeping the options of AD&D, it's brought back players, so far as I can tell. I enjoy the game immensely, and to me, that's what the games have always been for.
As to superiority or inferiority, I can't see any reason to make that judgement. I liked AD&D. I like D&D 3E. I enjoy having skills and feats, I think it's something that helps keep options open. I vastly prefer multiclassing as it now stands to the old multiclass/dualclass rules. I think, however, that without the evolution of the game marketplace fueled by AD&D's existence over the years that these features would not exist, and therefore it's like asking if I think grandpa is inferior to me. He's my grandpa. AD&D is a big chunk of my past. I'm not going to rank on it, nor am I going to pretend that I don't think the new version meets my needs now. I find it more easily introduced to new players, more streamlined, and I prefer the mechanics of the new game.
I'm not going to make an inferiority/superiority judgement. I am, however, going to keep playing 3E over the old rules. I liked them, they had their time, and now I've moved on. Not without fondness, but definitely and completely.
Storm Raven
First Post
Theuderic said:
I'm guessing, and I said so. The real problem is that the burden of proof lies with the side advancing an argument that something should be done that is not now being done. Thus far, there have been lots of claims that there is a "huge untapped market" of people aching to buy 1e based material, but there has been no evidence presented that this is true.
Given that the one entity that stands to both make money from tapping this alleged "untapped market" appears to have the most information about the matter (in the form of market reaearch and sales data from their own and various licensed properties) and has declined to tap into this "huge untapped market", I would tend to view with a skeptical eye any claims that such an "untapped market" is actually significant.
The burden of proof is on you. Show us evidence other than speculation that such a market is actually "huge" and not just you and the 20 guys you know.
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