D&D General Back to First Principles

[overgeeked]

New =/= better. Old =/= bad.

I know some people are obsessed with the latest and the newest, but don't mistake that personal preference for some kind of objective truth. Just because something is new and shiny doesn't mean it's better. Just because something is old and worn doesn't mean it's bad. Mechanics change over time, yes. Some of those could be called improvements, but that's still a matter of taste. I think it's easier to deal with ascending AC as it's simply a target number I have to roll against, but figuring out THAC0 and the like isn't some wildly difficult thing, it's not an onerous task. But then I don't like that literally everything in the modern D&D game functions exactly the same. It's always d20 + mods vs a static DC. That's boring. I liked rolling 1-in-6 for things or d100 for others. Sometimes rolling high and sometimes rolling low. It kept the mechanics interesting in-and-of themselves. Now the mechanics are boring. People complain about the sameyness of characters, well, the sameyness of the mechanics is tedious.

 

[DND_Reborn]

I showed some of my new players AD&D 1E (they had only experienced 5E), and the interesting uses of other dice and tables for so many things made the game more intricate and interesting to them. We only played it for a few sessions as a break from 5E, but they really enjoyed it.

 

[Yora]

This might be a semantics issue, but I think modern game design has lots of what I would call advancements over 80s design.

One obvious one is the realization that looking things up on tables isn't ideal. THAC0 came along.

Another is the idea that bigger is always better. It's a clearer game design when a low=fail and high=success

Similarly using predefined conditions, damage types, and keywords in a game all create a better system of rules.

This is from a technical writing point of view. It is entirely possible to have a poorly designed game that adhered to all of these principles, but they are improvents in how games are created.

I think where D&D lost its way in 2nd edition and stumbled blindly through the dark ever since is not in the way that specific dice rolls are resolve, but in that they lack an underlying structure. I feel that since 2nd edition, D&D doesn't really know what it actually wants to be. There are lots of mechanics, which keep getting revised and tweaked in every edition, but there is no overall plan for how the game as a whole is conceived to work. Of course the typical reply is always that you can play the game in whatever way you want, but I think that only further exposes that the mechanics exist in a vacuum, and not are not designed to serve a specific purpose.
This is something that is present in BECMI and I believe in AD&D 1st edition, but also in much more recent games like Apocalypse World and Blades in the Dark.

 

[Reynard]

Old-School Essentials is, as mentioned, a formatting clean up of B/X. So if you're interested in playing B/X but want a new book that's well made and not a stapled booklet printed 40 years ago, go with OSE. There's also gobs of wonderfully weird and wild adventures and supplements for OSE...which work just as well with B/X as they're the same game with a modern printing, editing, and organization.

There's a charm in the way those old books were laid out -- not least in that they were more concise. RC contains 36 levels of D&D up through and including conquering territory, ruling a domain, going to war and achieving immortality -- all in a book about the size of later edition PHBs.

 

[Reynard]

I think where D&D lost its way in 2nd edition and stumbled blindly through the dark ever since is not in the way that specific dice rolls are resolve, but in that they lack an underlying structure. I feel that since 2nd edition, D&D doesn't really know what it actually wants to be. There are lots of mechanics, which keep getting revised and tweaked in every edition, but there is no overall plan for how the game as a whole is conceived to work. Of course the typical reply is always that you can play the game in whatever way you want, but I think that only further exposes that the mechanics exist in a vacuum, and not are not designed to serve a specific purpose.
This is something that is present in BECMI and I believe in AD&D 1st edition, but also in much more recent games like Apocalypse World and Blades in the Dark.

I don't think BECMI, taken as a whole, fits that paradigm. It covers a lot of ground, even if it does so systematically (first dungeons, then wilderness, then war, etc...).

 

[overgeeked]

There's a charm in the way those old books were laid out -- not least in that they were more concise. RC contains 36 levels of D&D up through and including conquering territory, ruling a domain, going to war and achieving immortality -- all in a book about the size of later edition PHBs.

Yes, I'm aware. I've gone through three of them. Still haven't quite gotten to the point of pulling the trigger on the drivethrurpg POD. According to what I can find it's basically their softcover POD with a hardcover glued on. Not sure I like the sound of that. Which is why lately I prefer OSE as a physical object to use. But you can pry the original B/X booklets from my cold dead hands when it comes to form, size, layout, and art. Those things were almost literally perfect...if a tad worn lovingly used.

 

[Yora]

Basic and Expert at the very least have a very clear gameplay loop (and loops within loops), and all the mechanics are tailored around that underlying structure.

 

[overgeeked]

I think where D&D lost its way in 2nd edition and stumbled blindly through the dark ever since is not in the way that specific dice rolls are resolve, but in that they lack an underlying structure. I feel that since 2nd edition, D&D doesn't really know what it actually wants to be. There are lots of mechanics, which keep getting revised and tweaked in every edition, but there is no overall plan for how the game as a whole is conceived to work. Of course the typical reply is always that you can play the game in whatever way you want, but I think that only further exposes that the mechanics exist in a vacuum, and not are not designed to serve a specific purpose.
This is something that is present in BECMI and I believe in AD&D 1st edition, but also in much more recent games like Apocalypse World and Blades in the Dark.

That's mostly because they're not designed to do any one thing and only that one thing. They sprang from wargames but then players wanted to take on the individual role of this or that soldier on the field and it went from simulating the circumstances of war to simulating, potentially, the entire world and all possible activity within the world. So rules developed as needed to cover things the players at the designers' tables actually did in the game. So some things were covered way more than others because those were the things the players actually did. And, mostly being wargamers, they focused a lot on combat. We got a coat of paint and an edit or two (LOL) before it was packaged and shipped. So, to me, the notion that a game should be laser focused on one thing kinda defeats the purpose of it being an RPG. That's what boardgames are for. What's the point of playing an RPG if you can't try anything? It's all about setting up the world and a character within that world and being let loose to poke around.

 

[Yora]

Well, that's obviously not at all what I said.

 

[overgeeked]

Well, that's obviously not at all what I said.

1. Who are you talking to? Quoting people you're talking to helps avoid any confusion.

2. Okay. Assuming you're talking to me, despite not quoting me for some reason. Then what did you mean by what you said?