Can someone explain what "1st ed feel" is?

[francisca]

It seemed more rough and tumble, more sword and sorcery. Like I said, that's just what it was like for me.

Me too.

Still is, in many cases, even when running 3E.

 

[Silver Moon]

What is the 1st Edition Feel?

That depends on who you are and what you started playing with. For old timers like me, it's the RPG that we grew up on and has a high level of comfort because of that. I enjoy playing 1st Edition games, but I also enjoy a good game of a D20 RPG. The key to me is having the enthusiastic players and a DM with an overactive imagination, not which set of rules are being used.

1E also has a nostalgic feel to me, but that's because it is one of the many things that reminds me of my college years. I'm reminded of a passage from Mark Shopper's wonderful book about the Beatles titled Paperback Writer. That book was a satire of the Beatles story and concludes with a reunion of the group a decade after the breakup. When the group gets back together they are in a creative lull and put out a new album with songs that are total garbage, and they then go on tour to promote it. They get boo's when they try to play the new material but the audience finally warms when they switch to their oldies. After the concert John tells the others "They didn't want The Beatles. They wanted the Sixties. They just wanted to relive an earlier time and remember the good things with none of the baggage."

So others like me will remember all the best elements about gaming 20 years ago - being about to pull together a dozen friends for a quick pick-up game that could go in any direction. The fast-and-loose rules that let you just move on without stopping the game for twenty-minutes to look something up and decide on how it did or didn't work in conjunction with other rules. Basically, the fact that the game was just plain fun to play. There were lots of negatives about that system too, many of which have been noted in the prior five pages of this thread, but for me it will always be a happy memory.

 

[D+1]

Y'know, for those who keep complaining about how 1e had so little plot or story - you're missing an important point. Plot and story was provided by the DM then, and so could be dispensed with in the modules. Adventures of recent years have often been overwritten, spoon-feeding plot and story to the players and DM alike. 1e was more about individualization. That's what 1e "feel" is, not lack of logic or an element of goofiness. Those old modules, with their lack of fluff text, invited everyone to think for themselves, which often resulted in some completely memorable experiences as the imaginations of the gaming group was given free rein. Heavily plotted modules of more recent times seemed more confining, less adaptable to individual whim, less open to spontaneity - in short, less like 1e.

I agree with everything this man is saying... Why shouldn't I? I've said it myself many times.

 

[Steel_Wind]

1st edition feel is marketing-speak aimed at nostalgia by delivering a setting with creatures that have no source of food and no real reason to be there other than to pose a challenge to the party.

They were illogical, inconsistent dungeon crawl adventures; beer and pretzel fare that ultimately failed and was passed over and left behind when players and DMs became sophisticated enough to start to think about them.

Yes, I enjoyed 1st edition a lot - for a time. I was a teenager. When that intial few years of falling in love with power-gaming and all the funny sided dice ended and my tastes matured, I left AD&D behind in the dust. I never returned to it and skipped 2E in its entirety.

I have returned to 3E and I love it. But I don't confuse nostalgia with quality. They are not the same at all.

I'll take Sovereign Press' War of the Lance hardcover - which is simply the best gaming book I've ever purchased in 25+ years - over any misplaced sense of wonderment over the Hidden Shrine of Tomoachan, revisited with refried beans.

There is a reason that the industry left beer and pretzel dungeons alone and put them aside as being childish fluff. Perhaps a lot of the 2E adventure material, be it Planescape, Birthright, or 2E era material such as Harn and ICE's Middle Earth ended up going too far in the other direction. Fair enough. But I don't think its wise to throw out the baby with the bathwater on either end.

If you like that sort of thing - ok - but to pretend that a silly nonsensical dungeon is something other than a silly nonsensical dungeon, in the name of "nostalgia", is not for me.

 

[scourger]

I played 1e way back when it was new, but I can't explain the feel of it. All I know is that Necromancer (and Goodman) put out some darn fine modules. May they continue to do so! And may other publishers follow their lead! I'll still have to wade through many to find the few that speak to me, but it's fun!

 

[D+1]

Colonel, I think you're not understanding quite what I'm saying. It's not the lack of plot that makes them problematic for me -- it's their lack of plausibility.

I still have that problem with third edition modules. I'm currently running Speaker in Dreams, which is probably about as close as you'll find to a spoon-fed plot in any published module. And I find it so implausible, the actions of major NPCs so foolish and incomprehensible, that I've spent hours and hours completely rewriting it.

First edition, in my experience, was worse in this respect. Plausibility simply wasn't a major consideration; and with plausibility, generally a coherent narrative was tossed out the window.

But THAT... that thing you're talking about right there. Rewriting the module and making it what YOU want. THAT is 1E and it is why 1E modules DON'T really concern themselves with plausibility. If you want more plausibility it's up to you to provide it. Every campaign, every DM, every group is different. Rather than spell it all out carefully 1E gives you the sound and let's you decide how to spell it.

1E gives you basic information about the contents of a room. "There is a desk and chair, torture devices in the corner, and a locked chest with 90 gp in it." Nowadays you get description. "There is a desk and chair made of dark Fruzlewood, an almost entirely melted candle and ledger on the desk written in Draconic that details expenditures for 'entertainment' costs, an iron maiden with the skeleton of a dwarf still covered in tattered rags that once were clothes, and a chest locked with a DC 35 lock and a broken needle trap containing 90 gp in a soft leather bag embossed with a flower." The 1E "description" sort of assumes that if you CARE in the first place what the furniture is made of you'll throw that in there, that if you want something like a ledger to be on the desk to provide a clue to another adventure that you know better than a module's author what should be in it, and that if your crew is the kick-in-the-door-kill-then-loot-and-move-on type you don't need illuminating description, and if your players live for long, lovingly crafted description and detail to set moods and provide evocative mental scenery you're gonna embellish things whether it's 1 sentence or several paragraphs. So why not go with 1 sentence and let people make of it what they want?

People's fondness for 1E *is* heavily based in nostalgia. But it's a nostalgia that's borne of having been required to be MUCH more actively imaginative with bare-bones material, with constant revision and adaptation. Back in the days of 1E the DM provided 90% of the material himself and bought maybe 10%. Now I think the perception is that those percentages are reversed - 90% of adventure, setting, and rules is purchased and only 10% is of the DM's own imagination. It may not be true - but that's the perception and that's what accounts for the lack of 1E feel. The entire hobby, the rules and resources we have available to us are all VASTLY more plentiful and advanced.

We don't play "Duane's Campaign" which happens to use the Greyhawk setting - we play the Forgotten Realms setting wherein lies Duane's Campaign. Even back when Greyhawk pretty much was the ONLY setting that was available we always, ALWAYS, were drawing our own maps, naming our own towns, inventing our own nations and NPC's, and we used the purchased materials as a resource to fill in occasional parts. Now we seem to use purchased materials foremost and fill in only occasional parts with our own, much smaller, less consequential bits of invention.

That's the 1E feel for me.

 

[maddman75]

Can we not get this thread closed too guys? Please? I kind of like talking about different editions. 1e is only for beer and pretzel gaming like 3e is only for powergaming and tactical wargaming. Both of those statement can be true, but that doesn't mean that this is all anyone does with it. And saying either like its true is just plain insulting to people who like those games. Heck, All Flesh Must Be Eaten is a great beer and pretzels game. That doesn't mean you can't do anything else with it.

I recall Orcus from Necromancer games describing it like this - they don't give you Star Wars, they give you the Death Star. That's what 1e modules (and Necro's modules) do. They don't sell you a prewritten 'adventure' that railroads you into a plot about a young orphan from Tatooine that discovers he has the powers of a Jedi and goes on to destroy the planet destroying battle station. They give you tons of deck plans and detailed encounters with stormtroopers, and leave it to the DM to figure out what to do with it.

Look at the greatest of the great, Keep on the Borderlands. There's no premade plot hooks, railroaded encounters, and 'story' elements that serve to restrict the players. Its the keep, and here's what's in the keep, and here's the Caves of Chaos, and here's what lives in it. Its up to you to figure out what to do with it. If you just want to run through the caves and kill everything that moves, go for it! If you want to use the area as a setting for a story, its easy to do that too!

That is what to me means 1e feel. My entire group hates adventures because almost every one we've played has tried to strongarm us into a premade plot. When the DM runs on his own stuff the game is ten times better. But we still talk wistfully about Keep on the Borderlands.

 

[Virel]

I still run the same 1st ed AD&D GreyHawk campaign I started in 1980. Currently, there are three adventure groups, with nine players and a total of 28 active PC's. Several players are long time and have played since 1980, some joined in 1989 and three joined in late 2004.

There are several on going plots and subplots in the game. The players are aware of some of them and interact and effect how the game develops. Each character has a background and I've talked in detail with each player about their characters back ground.

While there have been a few dungeon crawls, they occured with in context of overall plots and subplots.

Many of the adventures are player generated somethings on the fly. Thanks to 1st ed's easy to improvise and create on the fly "rules light approach" an experience DM can let a decent set of players do this.

Of course there are a few house rules etc because 1st ed is designed to be made in your own. So in our 1st ed games a few 2nd ed concepts were adapted like allow a thief to custom tailor how his abilities increase at each level etc

To me that's 1st ed feel, where the system is so flexiable a DM can run a very large group with lots of players and characters. This is easy to do with 1st because it allows for quick character generation and very fast combat resolution, thanks to it's elegant game mechanics.

 

[maddman75]

I'm of the opinion that those that stick with 1e always ran it as a rules light system. However, there are a lot of groups that never ran it that way, and to me 1e is a very rules heavy system, just in a different way than 3e. When we played for instance, if you weren't a thief or ranger it was *impossible* for your character to hide from someone. That's a theif ability and you aren't a thief. Now a flexible AD&D DM would whip up some rule, but there's a lot of us that this kind of thing never occured to.

 

[D+1]

I'm all about the Ursula LeGuin approach to fantasy. People have real motivations, cultures are in upheaval, death is sad, morality is tenuous. Window-dressing is as important as mechanics. Characters come with half a dozen pages of background. Religions are fleshed out, and aren't just limited to polytheism or monotheism. Reality itself is uncertain, but its nature is central to the game.

I love that my players can discuss the merits of elvish coffee over dinner with the head of their religious order, and that the conversation can continue in that vein for fifteen minutes before the boss gets around to blackmailing them.

That's certainly possible in 1E, but it's not First-Edition Feel. As you suggest, first-edition feel doesn't have a whole lot of sociological thought in it.

No, that IS 1E feel. It's just that the module or the setting doesn't DICTATE that feel to you. The 1E module doesn't tell you that the Boss will talk about the coffee for 15 minutes before blackmailing the PC's, it just says that the Boss will blackmail the PC's. YOU fill in the rest to suit your taste (or lack therof as was often the case for us teens back in the day). 1E was not about 6 pages of background, it was about a full character sheet on a piece of notebook paper with background created AS needed, not whether it was needed or not. I love that my players can discuss the merits of elvish coffee in the same way as you and yours. I just don't need or WANT that in my gaming materials. That is for ME to invent and play out to the degree I desire:

Scene 24. The Boss makes small talk over dinner with the PC's and then blackmails them. They can discuss coffee, mustard pies, the new theories of macroeconomics, or how evidence from sage research points to the notion that NOTHING in the world really should work (not economics, physics, sociology, biology, or cosmology) but it does anyway. 1E neither actively promotes nor discourages that - but it doesn't stand in the way of it either if that's what you want.

It is, as you say, a different style of playing, and it's good that D20 can accommodate so many different styles. But if you think that the alternative to bare-bones, plausibility-challenged dungeons is railroading adventures, then I think your scope of gameplay is limited.

No, the railroading was one alternative that was tried in the 2E era and earned a great deal of well-deserved scorn. Even if those who place "story" as paramount over other aspects understand that players still want their characters to be more than uninvolved, utterly non-influential bystanders to the story. The fact that they are at the table with their own characters, it unquestionably follows that their active participation and influence in the story is desired. That requires that materials be more readily adpatible to PC influences - and that is achieved by LESS details; frameworks and minimal descriptions; not more details where the more you change things the less the intricate details make sense as a whole requiring yet more change. I think the question of plausibility is irrelevant because there are just as many implausibilities in EVERY gaming rules era and it's products. But the more bare-bones approach is definitely a factor in 1E "feel".