AD&D, looking backwards, and personal experiences

[Remathilis]

There is a flip-side to this, though: whereas the rules for suprise when the party has a ranger are fairly clear (3 in 6 rather than 2 in 6) the rules for suprise when the party has sneaky thieves in it are not clear at all.

And here is where 2nd edition fixed things.

Rangers and Thieves used the same Hide in Shadows/Move Silently mechanic, which if successful assumed the character was silent/hidden. This could easily equate to the "Silenced/Camouflaged" modifier on the Surprise Modifiers table (-2 each). You could assume that each successful check granted a -2 to your surprise roll, for up to a -4 on a 1d10. If you were an elf or halfling in leather armor, it could go up to -8 (max if you made both checks), which is pretty ninja!

Of course, that requires some reading into the rules a bit, its not as spelled out as it is in 3e on. However, the HS/MS rules work well if the DM decides not to call for surprise rolls and instead eyeballs it via successful checks alone, which is equally viable.

 

[billd91]

There's a point to remember about 4e though when we're talking about allowing splats. 4e, by and large, still hasn't had any really breaking point additions. Nothing on the order of things like the original Unearthed Arcana, or various 2e splats (elven bladesingers anyone?) or the umpteen really, REALLY broken splats that came out for 3e (sometimes from WOTC, sometimes from 3pp - *cough*Mongoose*cough*).

Telling a 4e player to use the CB and then maybe restricting races and classes (such as you might find in Dark Sun, for example) is pretty easy. You have a pretty good idea that nothing that player brings to the table is going to blow your game out of the water.

They're also, for the most part, pretty conservative and uninteresting. I think that new additions via the 4e splats are all boxed into highly restrictive structural formulas. The new classes in Essentials were the only things 4e came out with after the initial release that remotely interested me.

 

[Scribble]

They're also, for the most part, pretty conservative and uninteresting. I think that new additions via the 4e splats are all boxed into highly restrictive structural formulas. The new classes in Essentials were the only things 4e came out with after the initial release that remotely interested me.

Same thing happened for me at the end of 3e... They started releasing stuff like the Bo9S, Tome of Magic, Incarnum, and what not. Prior to that it just always felt like more fo the same to me.

 

[Hussar]

They're also, for the most part, pretty conservative and uninteresting. I think that new additions via the 4e splats are all boxed into highly restrictive structural formulas. The new classes in Essentials were the only things 4e came out with after the initial release that remotely interested me.

Yeah, I'll grant that. The danger of developing a balanced system is that you cannot really dump a bunch of wahoo stuff on the game. There's good and bad there of course. The good being that any book that does come out can generally be used without it blowing up the game. The bad being that sometimes you really, REALLY want some Wowow sauce on your hamburger.

TBH, I think a lot of the problem stems from the flavour side of things, more than the mechanical. WOTC just didn't want to really cut loose on flavour, particularly in the early books, and everything did come out sounding really bland. Having wahoo options certainly is one way to get around poor flavour.

"Yeah, this thing isn't all that interesting in and of itself, but, WOW, look at what I can do with it!!!!"

 

[ExploderWizard]

I think most folks, like me, looked at Advanced D&D and "Basic" and figured they were smarter than the average bear. AD&D is a hecueva lot harder though and not as fun unless you really do love all the fiddly bits and subsystems. I get most of AD&D now, but only because I've spent many games playing earlier versions of D&D. It isn't easily picked up (and definitely far from clear) and presumes certain shared definitions that are not longer held by almost everyone. That said, it has some wonderful elements to it would would advocate for most any D&D game.

Stupid me, of course, thought using a graduate-level mathematics book would be a better place to start than beginner arithmetic.

I actually played and ran basic D&D for a few years before getting any AD&D material. Advanced must mean better right?

I fell in love with all the fiddly bits, and the wider range of character options. The little rules and cool stuff such as the secret downsides to magical spells in the DMG really helped make the game material feel like hidden lore. Bar none the 1E DMG was the most absorbing rulebook I have ever read. I remember on my first read-through it was like an engrossing novel that I just couldn't stop reading.

As time went on and campaigns began and ended, the allure of all the fiddly bits started to fade a bit. I still saw AD&D as a great game but I started looking through my B/X material again and thought about all the possibilities now that I had learned so much from years of AD&D.

It occured to me that the games might actually be reversed from a certain point of view. Advanced was for the beginner despite being so complex because of all the structure it provided. Basic was the advanced game because it was more freeform and took more effort from the DM to run smoothly.

I suppose logically, the argument over which one is the more "advanced" game could go either way depending on perspective.

 

[Shadeydm]

I think most folks, like me, looked at Advanced D&D and "Basic" and figured they were smarter than the average bear. AD&D is a hecueva lot harder though and not as fun unless you really do love all the fiddly bits and subsystems. I get most of AD&D now, but only because I've spent many games playing earlier versions of D&D. It isn't easily picked up (and definitely far from clear) and presumes certain shared definitions that are not longer held by almost everyone. That said, it has some wonderful elements to it would would advocate for most any D&D game.

Stupid me, of course, thought using a graduate-level mathematics book would be a better place to start than beginner arithmetic.

I got started with AD&D but honestly it wasn't the word Basic that stopped me from playing Basic. I just couldn't accept the idea of dwarf or elf as a character class. As an AD&D player it just didn't make any sense to me so i never tried it. Stupid and short sighted but hey I was like 14

 

[Tony Vargas]

There's a point to remember about 4e though when we're talking about allowing splats. 4e, by and large, still hasn't had any really breaking point additions. Nothing on the order of things like the original Unearthed Arcana, or various 2e splats or the umpteen really, REALLY broken splats that came out for 3e.

I'd nominate HotFL, HotFK, and HoS. (They didn't break to such extremes, but relative to how balanced 4e was it was still broken.)

 

[Neonchameleon]

They're also, for the most part, pretty conservative and uninteresting. I think that new additions via the 4e splats are all boxed into highly restrictive structural formulas. The new classes in Essentials were the only things 4e came out with after the initial release that remotely interested me.

Uninteresting is in the eye of the beholder. Personally I find e.g. the Bravura Warlord or the Malediction Invoker as a concept more interesting than just about anything 3.X came out with in its lifetime. And the 4e implementation of these classes rocks.

You don't need an entirely new structure to make a good class or subclass. What you need is an interesting theme or idea, and mechanics that match the concept. 4e excels at both.

 

[P1NBACK]

I think I prefer AD&D to 3E saving throws. In AD&D a wizard could have a rasonable save vs spells, or vs wands, because s/he was able to subtly manipulate the enemy magic. In 3E, though, the wizard is stuck with a bad save vs Fireball or a Wand of Polymorph, becaus the saves were recategorised from looking at the effect, and then leaving it to the table to imagine how a given PC might defend against that effect, to looking at the PC's capacity (at dodging, at enduring, at mental steadfastness).

Technically, you could use class features to represent this with the Fort/Ref/Will method.

Like, "Bend Magic: when you make a saving throw against an effect caused by a wand or spell, you get a +3 to your roll."

That bonus would apply to all three saves and it's entirely based on what effect caused the save to take place.

 

[Stormonu]

Although I owned the Holmes D&D first, I really got into the game with 81 B/X set. I wasn't aware of an AD&D until 84. Thinking that you were supposed to "graduate" to this version, I picked it up and started playin (BTW, I didn't pick up the MM until about 88 - I used the stat lines in the DMG and modules until then); I think UA came out shortly after I started playing AD&D and I picked it up as soon as my allowance allowed.

However, I was really never enamored with 1E, and as soon as 2E came out and I'd digested the books, we switched to it and didn't look back. I played 2E for nigh on 10years and loved it. At the time, my goal was get published and working for TSR making D&D content. O happy times (esp. when I finally got an adventure published!)

In the late 90's, around the time Planescape was coming out, I discovered Vampire. And I really started to become disgruntled with what felt like D&D's baleen wire & spit chassis - not to mention D&D was feeling more and more like a hack'n'slash game standing next to Vampire's "storytelling" system.

It was actually 3E's incorporation of a skill system and monsters/NPCs being statted out like a full-fledged character - and feats - that brought me back away from other RPGs.

I think, in the end, that 1E actually holds my least favorite rule aspects of D&D. Ackward systems, passive-aggressive stance towards player empowerment and a system that was really still in its infancy trying to figure out where it was going and how it was going to evolve. While there are some aspects I'd like to see come back - primarily with how spells and magic items had drawbacks to keep them from getting completely out of hand - I don't want to go back to it wholesale.