AD&D, looking backwards, and personal experiences

[Tony Vargas]

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.

Yeah, the whole 'role vs roll' thing, the edition war of the 90s, except it wasn't a civil war, of course.

The OGL really changed that, it became less politic for other game companies to promote their stuff by dumping on D&D, and more profitable for them to jump on the d20 bandwagon. WWGS still didn't make out so well in the end, though.

 

[Stormonu]

Yeah, the whole 'role vs roll' thing, the edition war of the 90s, except it wasn't a civil war, of course.

The OGL really changed that, it became less politic for other game companies to promote their stuff by dumping on D&D, and more profitable for them to jump on the d20 bandwagon. WWGS still didn't make out so well in the end, though.

Yeah, it wasn't exactly all that civil either. A lot of WW's got nosebleeds, not from being punched, but just from their nasal altitudes.

D&D has shown that it is slow to adapt and change to the times, but that it can change itself into something fun when it bellies up to the bar.

 

[Remathilis]

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.

My general opinion is 2nd edition really is the better of the AD&Ds because they fixed so many wonky areas. It could've stood for a few more tweaks (Dave Cook said he wanted upwards AC, but it was shot down to keep compatibility) but it really is a smoother system than 1e was. Unfortunately, it got mired in some really poor products (Complete books) and the ousting of much of Gygax's work and voice. Still, if given a choice between the two, I'd much rather play 2e than 1e.

 

[Hussar]

Honestly, I think a lot of my issues with 1e stem from my own age, rather than anything else. I started playing AD&D in about 82 or so, and I was only ten years old. Between pretty baroque rule books and some really byzantine mechanics, I know for a fact that the game I played might have pretended to be 1e D&D, but, it probably wasn't.

By the time 2e came out, and I jumped on that wagon as soon as it did, I had reached the point where I could actually properly digest the game. So, yeah, 2e has a bigger place in my heart than 1e.

 

[MerricB]

My general opinion is 2nd edition really is the better of the AD&Ds because they fixed so many wonky areas. It could've stood for a few more tweaks (Dave Cook said he wanted upwards AC, but it was shot down to keep compatibility) but it really is a smoother system than 1e was. Unfortunately, it got mired in some really poor products (Complete books) and the ousting of much of Gygax's work and voice. Still, if given a choice between the two, I'd much rather play 2e than 1e.

The trouble with 2e for me is that it made some supremely wonky design choices designed to streamline the system. Nowhere is this more evident in what happened to the illusionist. From having its own identity, it got shoe-horned into a system that allowed all kinds of wizard specialist - but little thought to how balance existed between those specialists. The "one size fits all" idea destroyed this extremely flavourful class, and it was only with the 3.5E release of the Beguiler (PH2) that we sort of got the class back.

The basic systems of Combat? Yeah, 2E got them organised and cleaned up, which they really needed. Unfortunately, when it came to the identity of the classes, a lot of very good material was thrown out, and the 'new' material didn't live up to the old.

(AD&D had some very wonky classes, esp. the monk, of course!)

Cheers!

 

[Crazy Jerome]

My learning AD&D was kind of an accident of the times. Red Box, Blue Box, and then 1E were the first game books I got. By the time I learned that our group would have been happier with Runequest or Dragon Quest or the like, I was too invested in AD&D to switch. Money was tight. (We borrowed Runequest and ran it a few times, but I couldn't keep the books indefinitely.)

In any case, if you spend 6 years or so pouring over something and thinking about it, you'll eventually get the hang of it, even if it is fairly complicated. Plus, we were a pretty experimental group within D&D, with several of us making up our own stuff. But I hit the game at the perfect age for me, when I was old enough to pick it up, but young enough to still have all that time to spend on it--and fortunate enough to have seven friends my age that enjoyed it too.

If I'd had that 1st edition Fantasy Hero book or GURPS or RQ or DQ or any number of other games, we wouldn't have spent much time on AD&D because I'd have never learned it well enough. Of course, if we'd had RC BECMI compilation, we wouldn't have mastered AD&D, either. I can't say for sure about 2E, because I had found Fantasy Hero by the time it arrived. But given that it managed to clean up a lot of things that I had already mastered and come to terms with, while ignoring the things I had not, I doubt it would have made much difference. (It would have been slightly easier to pick up, but I'd have still hit the same plateau that sent me elsewhere.)

 

[Remathilis]

The trouble with 2e for me is that it made some supremely wonky design choices designed to streamline the system. Nowhere is this more evident in what happened to the illusionist. From having its own identity, it got shoe-horned into a system that allowed all kinds of wizard specialist - but little thought to how balance existed between those specialists. The "one size fits all" idea destroyed this extremely flavourful class, and it was only with the 3.5E release of the Beguiler (PH2) that we sort of got the class back.

The basic systems of Combat? Yeah, 2E got them organised and cleaned up, which they really needed. Unfortunately, when it came to the identity of the classes, a lot of very good material was thrown out, and the 'new' material didn't live up to the old.

(AD&D had some very wonky classes, esp. the monk, of course!)

Cheers!

Yeah, the illusionist and the druid really suffered from the change to the school/sphere system of specialists. It wouldn't be till Spells & Magic either of them got some of their mojo back. Still, I find the ranger and bard both superior, and the Thief head-and-shoulders better due to customization.

TSR might have done well to make a "2.5" that fixed some of those issues, but I digress...

 

[Steely_Dan]

(AD&D had some very wonky classes, esp. the monk, of course!)

Total, but also has mass panache, same with the Ranger; the 1st Ranger is still one of my all time favourite character classes.

 

[Lanefan]

The trouble with 2e for me is that it made some supremely wonky design choices designed to streamline the system. Nowhere is this more evident in what happened to the illusionist.

At first release it also made some very bad design choices to appease the BADD crowd, evident in what happened to the Assassin, Demons, Devils, etc.: they all vanished. This soured me on 2e right off the hop.

Most of the missing elements eventually found their way back into the game by late in 2e's run, but by then the damage was done.

Lanefan

 

[Remathilis]

At first release it also made some very bad design choices to appease the BADD crowd, evident in what happened to the Assassin, Demons, Devils, etc.: they all vanished. This soured me on 2e right off the hop.

Most of the missing elements eventually found their way back into the game by late in 2e's run, but by then the damage was done.

Lanefan

I get the cries of "betrayal!" from the 1e crowd over the removal of Demons, Devils, Assassins and Half-orcs (though a part of me asks: were the latter really played all that often?) I still find 2e a vastly better system.

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nF_Ca45JRFs]Spoony Betrayal - YouTube[/ame]