AD&D is not "rules light"

[Lord Mhoram]

D&D is and was never a rules light saystem, if you want to see a rules light system, go check Savage Worlds.
*Savage Worlds fanboyism FTW*

Or go really light and go Wushu.

 

[Orius]

I see this statement a lot around here: "AD&D is rules light"

I have the books. I've read the books. I played the edition. AD&D is in no way "rules light".

Now, the way I played it, I ignored a lot of the rules (weapon vs. AC, helmet, psionics, pummeling/overbearing, potions and segments, training, etc.). But that doesn't make the game as written rules light.

I think Dansuul hit the nail on the head.

AD&D (1e and 2e) were built around sub-systems that did/didn't go together seamlessly. It had two different ways to determine is you hear something (thieves: %, everyone else, d6) for example. Most DMs happily ignored the egregious offenders (psionics, grappling, weapon vs. armor) and ran the game like Basic D&D anyway, but with more complex classes and spells. (For example, it took us nearly 6 years of playing to use weapons speeds/casting times in 2e, we ran initiative like we did in BECMI but with a d10)

AD&D is only "rules-lite" when you run it a slightly more complex version of basic/original. If you tried to run it with all the rules (something EGG didn't even do!) you'll find the game is much more "heavy" than we like to remember.

I think this is it, and it explains the big fallacy behind many of the bad arguments of AD&D fans who insist 1e was the best and everything after 2000 is crap. (I don't mean that 1e is bad, or that all the fans are like this but there are those who insist these sort of things).


Everything I've read about 1e suggests that it was a complicated and fairly arcane system, and that the books weren't organized in the best way either which doesn't help. People say that, "this was different in 1e than it is in 3/4e", but then when presented with evidence to the contrary, there's often that "well we houseruled that out" backpedal. From what I can tell, people used the character creation rules from the 1e books, but then ran combats and the like as Basic because there weren't armor mods, weapons speeds, segments and who knows what else that even Gary admittedly ignored. Ironically, 1e was supposed to be a comprehensive set of rules unlike the orignal 3 books, and wasn't supposed to be heavily house ruled (though some of this was tournament considerations too)!

And Remathilis touches on the second point; that in AD&D especially, a ot of new stuff just got tacked on any old way, so one thing was resolves by 1d20 roll high, another 1d20 roll low, and a third, crack out that d%. If a new rule got added on, it might use a completely different resolution, or it would use one of those three, but in a way that didn't really make sense. I remember the word for it on Usenet back at the very end of 2e was, "kludgy". I do remember that 2e had three levels of rules too: official, torunament, and optional. Offical were the basic rules for all games, tournament was optional for an informal game, but official for any tournament, and optional was just that. Not bad on paper, but it might have complicated things going from campaign to campaign.

The big difference with 3e isn't amount of rules, but how the rules work together. Everything was integrated with the d20 mechanic, which more or less worked well IME. Yes, there is alot of spells, feats, PrCs and stuff like that, but much of that is modular. So I find it easier to plug something new into 3e than it was to bolt a new rule onto 2e. I can't speak for 4e, but it seems like the designers are continuing the same sort of approach.

 

[rounser]

People say that, "this was different in 1e than it is in 3/4e", but then when presented with evidence to the contrary, there's often that "well we houseruled that out" backpedal.

The difference might be that 3E was playable under the RAW. Good luck working out the 1E AD&D RAW in places, let alone playing it.

So I'd argue that there is some validity to this double standard, because no-one (even Gygax himself) played AD&D that way, whereas you can with core 3E. The AD&D DMG resembles a rambling letter from an eccentric uncle armed with a well-thumbed thesaurus in places, but that's part of the charm.

 

[Dausuul]

The difference might be that 3E was playable under the RAW. Good luck working out the 1E AD&D RAW in places, let alone playing it.

So I'd argue that there is some validity to this double standard, because no-one (even Gygax himself) played AD&D that way, whereas you can with core 3E. The AD&D DMG resembles a rambling letter from an eccentric uncle armed with a well-thumbed thesaurus in places, but that's part of the charm.

More to the point, not only can you play 3E that way, but you pretty much have to. As stated earlier, it's very easy to take the silly obnoxious time-consuming rules from AD&D, whack them off with an axe, and proceed on your merry way. You can't do that in 3E; the rules are too integrated. Whacking off rules with an axe leaves giant gaps that require a bunch of house rules to fill.

 

[PaulofCthulhu]

As others have said my groups played 1st ed. AD&D pretty much as if it were Basic with more involved spells and classes (we really enjoyed the fluff in the DMG, inspiring stuff). We ignored the incovenient rules, no psionics, didn't grapple (or used some form of dex/str resolution).

For us there were "no books" beyond Monster Manual II. It kept things straightforward for us and just had jolly good times playing the TSR modules.

That was D&D for us!

Unfortunately the advent of 2nd edition destroyed D&D for me at the time.

 

[ExploderWizard]

The "weight" of a ruleset is so subjective that comparisons are difficult to make. When we say "rules light" or "rules heavy" are we talking about complexity/interaction of those rules or simply the vast number (or small number) of rules?

One possible unit of measurement would be page count of core (most basic) rules. For D&D this would be the first PHB,DMG &MM of a given set.
Some games are complete in a single volume and thus would win any such competition but I don't think it would be fair to blanket label all such games as rules light.

Two games come to mind that I think are objectively rules light:
TWERPS and Dungeon Seige.

 

[Keefe the Thief]

As others have said my groups played 1st ed. AD&D pretty much as if it were Basic with more involved spells and classes (we really enjoyed the fluff in the DMG, inspiring stuff). We ignored the incovenient rules, no psionics, didn't grapple (or used some form of dex/str resolution).

For us there were "no books" beyond Monster Manual II. It kept things straightforward for us and just had jolly good times playing the TSR modules.

That was D&D for us!

Unfortunately the advent of 2nd edition destroyed D&D for me at the time.

But... but... didn´t you know why 2nd edition was created?

15.000 Letters can´t be wrong!

 

[PaulofCthulhu]

LOL!

The only reason AD&D 2nd edition stopped me playing the game at the time is simply because I had soooo much 1st Ed. material I couldn't bear moving to 2nd (member of the UK Players Association, heck I even had the combat wheel and ST1: Up the Garden Path). I didn't think the changes were worth converting for (personally).

When my friends moved to 2nd edition I simply didn't follow them and shifted more into other systems instead. So I've never played 2nd ed. AD&D. There you go!

 

[billd91]

More to the point, not only can you play 3E that way, but you pretty much have to. As stated earlier, it's very easy to take the silly obnoxious time-consuming rules from AD&D, whack them off with an axe, and proceed on your merry way. You can't do that in 3E; the rules are too integrated. Whacking off rules with an axe leaves giant gaps that require a bunch of house rules to fill.

I have heard this a number of times and believe the argument makes no sense. If you could hack off weird rules in 1e and proceed by DM fiat/house rule, you can in 3e as well. There is NO difference except in perception.

 

[Doug McCrae]

You can't do that in 3E; the rules are too integrated. Whacking off rules with an axe leaves giant gaps that require a bunch of house rules to fill.

Do they?

I want to remove the monk, repeating crossbow and gold and silver dragons because they're too anime. Gone! Nothing else is affected.
Change the grappling rules to the excellent 1e system? Changed! Nothing else is affected.
No attacks of opportunity? Outta there. No house rules needed.
Feats? Goodbye! Okay so the fighter now sucks even more than before, but if I cared about balance why am I removing feats? I *want* casters to pwn fighters because I'm a nerd who got bullied by jocks at school.