AD&D: There and Back Again - a Role-Player's Tale

[pawsplay]

lumin, it's like this. You found a game you like. And you found a style of adjudicating you like as a DM. And that's awesome. But I don't think the link you are making between the two really exists. The link... is you.

You are the Chosen One.

 

[Ariosto]

To go way back to the OP, this illustrates the issue.

In AD&D, if you want your wizard to trip an orc, the DM has to improvise a mechanic: probably something based on the wizard's Str or Dex with the difficult set arbitrarily.

In 3E, the rules set it out for you. First you make a melee touch attack, which draws an opportunity attack from the orc unless your wizard has the Improved Trip feat (which he doesn't, because he's a wizard). If you succeed, you then make opposed Strength checks (the defender can use Dexterity if it's higher), modified by size, with another modifier if the defender has more than two legs.

If you fail this check, the defender can initiate another such check to try to trip you back.

Which system has the stricter rules here?

I reckon "tripping" would come under Overbearing (DMG p. 73). "This attack form aims at quickly taking the opponent to a prone position, incidentally inflicting damage, and allowing either a pummel or grappling follow-up attack. The attacker can have either or both hands otherwise employed..."

The scales of resolution are different here, with an AD&D round lasting 10 times as long and assuming more action than the 3e blow by blow.

Overbearing is as detailed as Grappling (or Pummeling).

 

[Aus_Snow]

In 3e, different characters can distribute skill points in different ways. This is one thing that weakens the character class system, but it strengthens the far-reaching and thoroughly quantified "character build" system.

True, though the tottering niche protection offered by 3e is upheld somewhat by class and cross class skills.

For example, in the core rules anyway, only Rogues and Bards (who are decidedly Rogue-ish in many ways) have Sleight of Hand as a class skill. Others will pay dearly to even achieve levels in it that will nonetheless still be inferior (to the Rogue's or Bard's, should they invest in such).

 

[Fifth Element]

I reckon "tripping" would come under Overbearing (DMG p. 73).

I thought of that after I posted, but then figures since 3E has seperate rules for both tripping and grappling/overbearing, it would still have to be considered more rules-heavy regardless.

 

[lumin]

I think I have hit a few nerves in here about this issue, with good reason. I'm challenging a principle that a lot of you have held firm to for a very long time. A long held opinion about something doesn't just change overnight.

The misconception that 3E is more restrictive than AD&D came about primarily because of a misinterpretation of what "old-school" meant. People like to lump "old-school" with AD&D, when this is fundamentally wrong. As Matthew Finch points out, Old School meant 0E. The game was free-wheeled quite a bit when the first paper back rules came out and this habit continued into AD&D, even though Gygax's intention was to eliminate the free-wheeled game to "tighten" things up.

I've taken many of your arguments into consideration, but I still don't see it. The D20 Core mechanic was designed from the very beginning to give more flexibility to the D&D game system. These are not my words, they're the words of those who helped create D&D 3rd Edition.

You can look it up on Wikipedia, you can go back and look at the drawing boards and all the commentary made by the designers of 3rd Ed. Their goal was to make the game less restrictive across the board: character creation, race class combos, skill gain, and encounter resolution. They were simply catering to the GMs that were playing 1st and 2nd edition that way. To deny this is to simply not understand the history of Dungeons and Dragons and it's evolution over the years.

 

[Mallus]

I think I have hit a few nerves in here about this issue...

Possibly.

... with good reason.

No.

The misconception that 3E is more restrictive than AD&D came about primarily because of a misinterpretation of what "old-school" meant.

We're very lucky to have someone to explain to us what most of us actually experienced first-hand. Damn unreliable human perception/memory! For extra credit, can you explain where I was on and around the weekend of July the 4th, 1984? I believe that was when I first discovered cheap Scotch, in my friend's basement, but my memories are a little sketchy.

People like to lump "old-school" with AD&D, when this is fundamentally wrong.

I lump 2e in with old school, too. Can you explain to me how that's incorrect using your marvelous powers of 2nd and 3rd hand observation? I dare you!

As Matthew Finch points out, Old School meant 0E.

I'll wager even Matt Finch doesn't consider himself the sole authority on "old-school D&D". You can ask him yourself. He posts around here. Or you can wait a few years and then read what some other people were saying about the subject on the Internet.

I've taken many of your arguments into consideration, but I still don't see it.

Keep trying!

To deny this is to simply not understand the history of Dungeons and Dragons and it's evolution over the years.

Which, by your admission, you didn't witness. You wouldn't happen to be pulling our (collective) legs with the thread, would you?

Note: I'm not trying to knock your new-found love of AD&D. But I am curious as to why you believe your lack of experience with the game gives you special insight into its nature and history. I mean, to do a proper job of summarizing the "nature" of AD&D, you needs a lot more than a few pull-quotes and Wikipedia links. You need to read through not only the various rule-and-source books, but the modules, too, which grant valuable insight into how the the system was meant to work in play, and then, most importantly, you'd need to interview people who actually played the game back then, the real primary sources... you know... the stuff you're dismissing as irrelevant.

You'd happen to be a Prescriptivist, would you?

 

[ExploderWizard]

To deny this is to simply not understand the history of Dungeons and Dragons and it's evolution over the years.

Not all of us are smart enough to analyze wikipedia. Some of us had to actually had to live through and experience that history to understand it.

 

[usdmw]

Lumin -

I would be curious if anyone on Dragonsfoot.org (a site primarily devoted to AD&D 1e and other vintage games) would actually agree with you. As some of the writers for AD&D occasionally visit that sight, you might, perhaps, take their positions more seriously.

I've been playing AD&D for more than 25 years, and I have had the great pleasure of playing WITH G.Gygax at a convention or two. He SEEMED to have no difficulty with players taking novel actions not specifically enabled by their race/class/secondary skills.

It is indeed possible that some of our perceptions of AD&D 1e have been altered by time and personal playstyle, but one would think that actually having played the game, rather than having only read it or played it in isolation from AD&D 1e culture, would lend our experiences some credibility.

 

[Ariosto]

Lumin, you seem completely clueless as to what Gary wanted to "tighten up" -- which was no secret, nor had been for years, and most who were into the game back in the day should be able to guess it in one try -- and quite oblivious to the degree to which AD&D was a collation of D&D material rather than a radical departure in any way, shape or form. I see no evidence that you have any acquaintance whatsoever with the great corpus of pre-AD&D material. Certainly, and by your own admission, you were not part of the scene in the 1970s.

One problem is that the AD&D books were not addressed to you. They were written in a particular cultural context -- and that context was not post-3e RPG-dom.

The context was the miniature wargames hobby and its relations, especially of course the role-playing offshoot. There was a very narrowly regulated RPG, to wit GDW's En Garde, but that was exceptional and the approach has always made its credentials as a "full fledged RPG" subject to challenge. (There was a John Carter game that seemed similarly focused and formalized, as I recall, and likewise of dubious RPG-ness in most quarters.)

Gary was not trying to be difficult or obscure or misleading, any more than were Ken St Andre and Prof. Barker and Jim Ward and Marc Miller and Simbalist & Backhaus and Dave Hargrave and so on. Some of those people are alive today, and you can ask them about their intent. They wrote of their intent in the common language of the hobby of which they and we were fellow participants.

The reason we old hands agree so much in our understanding is that Gary, like the rest, was writing from and for that very same understanding. It's in a lineage of custom with Joe Morschauser and Jack Scruby, Charles Grant and Don Featherstone, Brigadier Young and Lt. Colonel Lawford.

I do recall very well an attitude, as tiresome as it was ignorant, among some players who came in with AD&D. However, your 'fundamentalism' is so extreme that it resembles more than anything a parody of the would-be rules lawyer ill equipped to plead before the Judge.

Your position reminds me of a fellow who wrote a theological attack on Orthodox Christian use of icons without knowing much about the actual tradition of theory and practice. His ignorance was easily and clearly demonstrated, and he ended up doing the intellectually honest and honorable and genuinely educational thing: writing an admission and apology, and actually learning a bit about the subject.

 

[Aus_Snow]

I think I have hit a few nerves in here about this issue, with good reason. I'm challenging a principle that a lot of you have held firm to for a very long time. A long held opinion about something doesn't just change overnight.

"Everyone else is insane!!!"

Anyway...

People like to lump "old-school" with AD&D, when this is fundamentally wrong.

No. It isn't. You can trust the creators of "old school" RPGs, and creators of "new school" RPGs, on that. Just ask them. Or look up some of their statements, conversations, whatever. Really, do yourself a favour. You're not posting with anything substantial to back you up, so far. you'd be better off doing so - for your own sake, if nothing else.

The D20 Core mechanic was designed from the very beginning to give more flexibility to the D&D game system. These are not my words, they're the words of those who helped create D&D 3rd Edition.

O RLY?

"The designers of the newest edition built so much reliance on rules right into the game, to make it easier to play. As one of those designers, I occasionally think to myself, 'What have we wrought?' " - Monte Cook (one of said designers of d20 / 3e - a primary one, in fact).

That's just the first one that comes to mind. There are plenty more where that came from... As I said before, you'd do well to educate yourself here.

You can look it up on Wikipedia

rofl!

you can go back and look at the drawing boards and all the commentary made by the designers of 3rd Ed.

See above.

[blah blah blah - nothing substantial, let alone factual, yet again...] is to simply not understand the history of Dungeons and Dragons and it's evolution over the years.

Oh, the irony!