AD&D First Edition inferior?

[RobNJ]

The Third Edition went the route of one DM's custom ruled optioned out campaign but it did show masses and masses of new players how that could be achieved right away.

So antiquarians were reviled of the capability of a first time player to manipulate the material so much as to not even come close to the medieval elements of the game.

I have absolutely no idea what these two paragraphs mean.

The first one seems to indicate one person and one person only determined how 3rd Edition would be based on his individual preferences (which is quite obviously incorrect), but I have absolutely no idea what this means, or what it has to do with what you said: "but it did show masses and masses of new players how that could be achieved right away."

The second just makes no sense whatsoever. Are you suggesting that those who wrote 3rd Edition were first time players? Or do you have a problem with new DMs being able to customize things however they wanted?

I have a very hard time taking your argument seriously when you can't express yourself with anything approaching clarity.

 

[Thorvald Kviksverd]

You misundertand me I think. I did not mean that Lejendary Adventures would have to outsell 3e in order for their evidence that a Gygax designed new version of D&D would outsell the current version. What I said was that one would look for Gygax's current game to be doing very well by industry standards in order to have good evidence.

What I am saying is this: the general evidence is that Lejendary Adventures sells okay, but not necessarily great. I'd be surprised if it was in the top 5 of non-D&D, non-White Wolf RPG lines sold today. Given that he does not appear to be outperforming his peers who have similarly limited brand recognition (and he has his own name recognition to help him out), I'm inclined to think that the evidence that he could produce a more popular version of 3e D&D is rather weak.

Good points, but I would add this...

What would Gary have been able to offer had he not been hampered, either legally or otherwise, from building upon the foundation he had layed with D&D?

I should have been more precise, it's not just the name recognition of D&D, it's also all the accoutrements that go along with it--particularly when it comes to tugging on the heartstrings (and thereby loosening the wallets) of long time fans.

Impossible to tell. We can only draw conclusions from the evidence available, and the evidence available doesn't include anything that would be real helpful on this score.

Agreed.

Still, I thought it worthwhile to remind others that things could have been different--whether for good or ill we'll never know but, for myself at least, I think I probably would have preferred the result.

Gotta run.

Game On

 

[Storm Raven]

I implied scholarly towards the game.

Sorry.

Well, now your statement is not just silly, it is also incoherent.

 

[Storm Raven]

What would Gary have been able to offer had he not been hampered, either legally or otherwise, from building upon the foundation he had layed with D&D?

From the evidence available, I'd say it is entirely unsupported that he would have produced a version more popular than 3e. He might have produced one that some people like more, but in general, I think the evidence supports the view that he would probably not have had the same success that the current version of 3e has had.

 

[Numion]

Here's another real point: Gary would have made a more popular Third Edition.

Here's another real point: If he really could have, he would have.

 

[Numion]

And on the original subject of inferiority: Why yes, 1e really is inferior. Compared to 3e at least. This Lejandary Adventures I don't know, so it's hard to say.

 

[ForceUser]

When I was 12 years old, I stumbled across a copy of Unearthed Arcana. I didn't know what D&D was, I just knew the book had neat pictures and some interesting text. A lot of the text was incomprehensibly arcane, however. You know - the rules stuff. Still, I became interested, and my brother and I played "D&D" much the same way we played cops & robbers. A couple of years later someone bought me the basic D&D red box edition, and I learned to play the game as intended (although it was still with just me and my brother). By the time I entered high school 2E had come along, I met other kids who liked D&D, and I began playing in my first real campaign.

To me, 1E has always been that incomprehensible previous edition. It has stuck in my head that way - interesting, but arcane, outdated, and too difficult to bother learning. I'm not saying it is, in reality, like that. But that's how my subconcious views it, and as a result I have always steered away from it.

I got bored with 2E and quit for a few years, but when 3E emerged on the horizon I became enthralled. When I bought it, I fell in love. I won't play D&D any other way. 3E is to me what 1E is to PCat and some others who've posted here.

If that makes sense.

 

[johnsemlak]

In addition, you have the baggage of being written by the good Colonel. As many people loathe him and his style as love him, it seems. The number of people that stopped playing AD&D when other options appeared is legion. (I wasn't one of them, btw, just an objective observation.)

Has there really ever been a signiicantly large number of players of non-D&D fantasy rpgs? I really don't know. I remember seeing somewhere a stat that even in TSRs worst times 3 out of 4 gamers or something like that would buy the D&D name if given options. I could be wrong on that--don't quote me.

Does anybody have reliable info on how popular non-D&D games ever were?

 

[Numion]

Does anybody have reliable info on how popular non-D&D games ever were?

Didn't White Wolf actually outsell TSR for a while in the nineties, when the vampire / goth enthusiasm was at it's height? IIRC, of course.

 

[GENEWEIGEL]

Well, now your statement is not just silly, it is also incoherent.

Now you see why I resort to humor?

Your automatic negative response is just as incoherent.

If I'm so incoherent law man why do I always rattle your crop?