An Examination of Differences between Editions

[T. Foster]

But that is a perfectly reasonable assumption, no? The low level regions are in and around the civilised areas, where the farms and merchants are. Then you have a mid level region which is on the borders of the civilised lands, and high level regions which are the dreaded mountains/swamps/deserts where no-one goes (no one BUT HEROES!).

I was in my late teens running OD&D & AD&D and that seemed a pretty straightforward idea to me even then.

Just such an arrangement is implied in the random encounter tables in the 1E DMG -- "civilized/patrolled" areas have encounters least often (1 in 20 per check), a significant portion of those encounters (1 in 5?) are with patrols, and the rest of the encounters tend to be with humans, humanoids, and animals (not that an encounter with a group of bandits or goblins or a family of bears or wild boars can't ruin a low level party's day...), "border" areas have encounters more often (1 in 12) and don't have the chance for a patrol but still use the "more forgiving" encounter chart, and finally the "wilderness" areas have the highest chance of an encounter (1 in 10) and use the most brutal chart, where you've got a decent chance of running across giants, dragons, bulettes, catoblepas, and all manner of other nasty things (I may have some terminology or numbers wrong since I don't have the book in front of me, but the general idea is right).

The books don't ever come out and say that low level characters should stick to the first, mid level ones can risk the second, and only high level characters should dare the third, but it doesn't take too big a leap in logic to make the connection.

OD&D doesn't have separate sets of encounter charts like 1E, but ISTR a vague/ambiguous (like pretty much everything in OD&D) reference to patrolled areas where normal wandering monster checks aren't made. But then again I might be imagining this...

 

[Reynard]

nb: The atmosphere of the thread is starting to drift from conversational towards adversarial a bit, and that isn't so healthy.

Let's stay with nice friendly discussion about differences without feeling the need to defend edition A or edition B please!

Thanks

This is a good, and accurate, point.

On topic, I would say that each edition of the game has been informed by different sources and therefore has been different in feel and tone. And these sources don't exist in a vacuum. D&D has informed other games, video games, fiction and other forms of entertainment, which have in turn informed D&D. Because D&D has traditionally had a very long "edition life", the tone of any given edition has changed over time, as well, even if the edition hasn't. I'll use 2E as an example because, again, I am most familiar with it when referring to previous editions.

The core 2E books, both blue and black, use an art style reminiscent of what you'd see on the cover of a fantasy paperback. it isn't particularly stylized, it doesn't push any envelopes, and it says that this game is a traditional fantasy game. But 2E also had a lot of settings for it and the art direction for each setting wasn't only unique to the setting, but also marks a preogression toward more out-there, non-traditional fantasy as time goes on. Planescape, Dark Sun and Spelljammer -- all latter-day 2E settings -- had very stylized and very non-traditional art direction. this isn't a bad thing, IMO, but it does mark a shift, or at least the beginning of one. Many of the later generic supplements utilized less traditional art styles as the rules themselves changed and became bloated.

Like I said, I am not as familiar with the evolution of 1E, though there is very obviously a marked difference between the original 1E covers and the "wizard" covers. personally, I like the art ebtter on the later covers, but the earlier covers are far more evocative of sword and sorcery adventure.

To my recolecion, B/X/C/M maintained a fairly consisten art style throughout, but as efforts were made in the '90s to re-introduce gamers to D&D, the new "basic" sets had much more extreme, almost 3rd edition art to them (with less spikes).

I generally like my D&D "traditional" -- not so much Tolkien, but dark ages medieval high/sword and sorcery fantasy with a nod toward the mainstream in the genre literature. Somewhere along the line, though, the mainstream genre litertaure became the game literature and it fed on itself until the traditional and mainstream was just tired and old hat.

 

[Hussar]

I've heard this many times before too. It seems, if players are good enough to beat the Balor, they get stuck with "level-appropriate" treasure and only enough XP to advance 1 level. That's not incentive IMO. That's an advancement cap. It tells players they can't beat the system, so don't bother trying. In reverse, it can prop up poor players and give a sense of entitlement, like I mentioned before.

Didn't 1e also have the advancement cap? IIRC, you couldn't go up more than 1 level in an adventure. In fact, IIRC, you got to your level +1 xp and then stopped gaining xp until you stopped adventuring and trained for your next level.

 

[S'mon]

Didn't 1e also have the advancement cap? IIRC, you couldn't go up more than 1 level in an adventure. In fact, IIRC, you got to your level +1 xp and then stopped gaining xp until you stopped adventuring and trained for your next level.

Just took a look through what EGG wrote - it's not terribly clear, but looks like he's just saying you can't get XP for a 2nd level until you've trained for the first, ie you're held at 1 XP below that needed to advance. Either that or you're held at whatever XP you were at when you gained enough XP to advance, but you're not capped at 1 point into the higher level, which could work out very harsh (I'm 5 XP below 12th, I kill Lolth and take her stuff, instead of getting 40,000 XP I get 6 XP). Still, it's clear you are never supposed to advance more than 1 level from any one XP award.

As a house rule for 1e and C&C, B/X etc, I think a good approach is to cap XP awards at an amount equal to whatever total amount you need for the next level. So if you're 1st level and need 2,000 for 2nd you can't get more than 2,000 from one award. If you're 2nd and need 4,000 for 3rd you can't get more than 4,000 from one award, and so on. Maybe an absolute cap of 100,000 for name-level PCs, even Demogorgon is only worth 74,000 per 1e DMG so that seems reasonable - these days I don't think gaining a 1 million gp gem should advance a PC 4 levels.

 

[Hussar]

Y'know, there's a difference that we haven't really mentioned yet. Writing style.

Each edition has its own distinct style. And, really, I think that goes a long way to setting the tone of the game. I remember 1e as being very conversational in nature, with digressions and whatnot within each section with an organization that was, well, loose I guess is the best word. And, that gets reflected in play as well. People come to 1e games fully expecting the rules to be folded, mangled and bent. Structure and form were less important than content. (IMO).

2e brought up a more structured approach to the books and the rules. There is still a lot of very evocative language used in the PHB and the DMG, but, a lot of the information in the DMG got shuffled into the PHB. The books are easier to use, with some thought being given towards putting pertinent information all in one place. OTOH, you still see a great deal of fluidity in the rules. Look at the section on clerics where it talks about specialty priests. Boil the lines down and you get, "Go ahead and make whatever you think is best".

3e is much more rigidly structured than the previous two. The language is intended to be as plain and straightforward as possible. Finding pertinent information is probably the easiest it has ever been. Far more information is now given to the players than ever before, placing the onus of rules knowledge on the players as well as the DM. The writing is certainly less evocative than before as well, mostly in an attempt to remove ambiguity (with various results).

3.5 takes this even further. Compare the 3e PHB section on attacks of opportunity to the 3.5 one. Rules that were problematic for some groups in 3e have been altered and nearly every class got a bit of tweaking between editions. Ruleswise there's as much difference between 3.0 and 3.5 as there was between 1e and 2e.

I really think that the use of clear language has made the push towards RAW much stronger. As I mentioned, pretty much no one played 1e even remotely close to RAW. (Yes, Yes, I know that YOU did, I'm talking about all those other guys.) And, mostly, people never thought much about it. The first question asked was usually about house rules. With 3e, with much more concise language, I think the assumption of a new player is that RAW (or something very close) will be in play with any exceptions to RAW being presented beforehand.

But, one of the biggest differences between editions has been the use of language. Now, whether you like one or another is a matter of personal taste. I am in no way trying to place a value judgement on any of them. It's pretty obvious that I prefer less ambiguity, but, that doesn't make the previous editions bad, just bad for me.

Really, I think that's what Celebrim meant when he said that 3e has the best mechanics. Certainly 3e has the clearest mechanics.

 

[Rothe]

Just took a look through what EGG wrote - it's not terribly clear, but looks like he's just saying you can't get XP for a 2nd level until you've trained for the first, ie you're held at 1 XP below that needed to advance. Either that or you're held at whatever XP you were at when you gained enough XP to advance, but you're not capped at 1 point into the higher level, which could work out very harsh (I'm 5 XP below 12th, I kill Lolth and take her stuff, instead of getting 40,000 XP I get 6 XP). Still, it's clear you are never supposed to advance more than 1 level from any one XP award.

As a house rule for 1e and C&C, B/X etc, I think a good approach is to cap XP awards at an amount equal to whatever total amount you need for the next level. So if you're 1st level and need 2,000 for 2nd you can't get more than 2,000 from one award. If you're 2nd and need 4,000 for 3rd you can't get more than 4,000 from one award, and so on. Maybe an absolute cap of 100,000 for name-level PCs, even Demogorgon is only worth 74,000 per 1e DMG so that seems reasonable - these days I don't think gaining a 1 million gp gem should advance a PC 4 levels.

Actually I think the 1e DMG, at least my copy, is saying exactly that you can't gain anymore experience points once you have points to put you into the next level until you train. I'll quote the section, which appears as ALL CAPS in the original, I assume for emphasis:

"ONCE A CHARACTER HAS POINTS WHICH ARE EQUAL TO OR GREATER THAN THE MINIMUM NUMBER NECESSARY TO MOVE UPWARD IN EXPERIENCE LEVEL, NO FURTHER EXPERIENCE POINTS CAN BE GAINED UNTIL THE CHARACTER ACTUALLY GAINS THE NEW LEVEL"

DMG p. 86 The same page also makes clear that having enough xp only makes you eligible to train to the next level it is not an automatic jump.

But again, in actual play in the day I never met a group that actually enforced the harsh consequences of such rules. Not that such groups didn't exist.

And this may be a difference in play between editions. The groups I played with were almost invariably coming out of OD&D and had a belief the rules were guidelines, good ones, but guidelines none the less. Not surprising given the rules light nature of OD&D which encouraged you to fill the gaps.

Compared to later editions the idea seems to be to make sure there are no gaps, with the result that people seem to be more adverse to modifying or ignoring rules, or if they do, express more trepedation over doing so. Not that they shouldn't when the rules become highly integrated.

 

[Plane Sailing]

And this may be a difference in play between editions. The groups I played with were almost invariably coming out of OD&D and had a belief the rules were guidelines, good ones, but guidelines none the less. Not surprising given the rules light nature of OD&D which encouraged you to fill the gaps.

This was certainly the case with me - I'd played so much OD&D that when AD&D came along we used the bits we liked, and ditched the bits we didn't. Not gaining a level until training happened didn't match our vision of heroic characters (we couldn't see Conan or Aragorn going off to fighter school at regular moments) so we never used that.

Mind you, we stopped giving xp for treasure during our OD&D lifetime too (c.f. the 1,000,000gp gem mentioned above...)

Cheers

 

[Philotomy Jurament]

...I'd played so much OD&D that when AD&D came along we used the bits we liked, and ditched the bits we didn't...

That was the case with me, too, except I started with Holmes, rather than OD&D, and then treated AD&D books as supplements. I played a bastardized mixture of Holmes and AD&D (and the odd rule from Moldvay/Cook/Marsh) for years. I didn't play a (close to) by-the-book campaign of AD&D until pretty late in the game.

My preferred D&D rule-set is still a mix of the published editions. That's probably why I gravitated to C&C -- it's a good foundation for house ruling and cherry picking the stuff I like from all the various editions.

 

[Celebrim]

Really, I think that's what Celebrim meant when he said that 3e has the best mechanics. Certainly 3e has the clearest mechanics.

Careful. Someone's likely to go nuclear over such a non-subjective statement.

Yes, clearest. And, most comprehensive (the fewest things which would come up in regular play for which there is not already a resolution). Most elegant in the sense of smallest set of base/universal mechanics with the fewest exceptions, fewest special cases, fewest dependent tables, fewest irregularities and unpredictable areas. The least 'buggy' in the sense one would refer to a computer program, in that there are fewer moments where the 'system' comes to a crashing halt and must be 'fixed' with a house rule. (Just as a for example that comes to mind, that intellectual nerds with runny noses had a better sense of smell than wolves. You don't know how happy I was to see the 'scent' ability, so I'd not have to fight that battle again.)

I've seen alot of tweaking of the rules in 3rd, but nothing like what was common in 1st. Nor have I the experience of whole sections of the rules being reutinely ignored by almost everyone, as they were in earlier editions. Nor do I have the experience of experienced players not knowing whole sections of the rules because they were too confusing to understand, to bothersome in actual play, and reutinely had been ignored in every group that they were in.

 

[The_Gneech]

I've seen alot of tweaking of the rules in 3rd, but nothing like what was common in 1st. Nor have I the experience of whole sections of the rules being reutinely ignored by almost everyone, as they were in earlier editions. Nor do I have the experience of experienced players not knowing whole sections of the rules because they were too confusing to understand, to bothersome in actual play, and reutinely had been ignored in every group that they were in.

Although grapple's doing its best!

-The Gneech