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

[bardolph]

You are very confident in your opinions, young grasshopper. I respectfully disagree.

The complex that I described, with the illogically winding-but-90-degree-angled corridors, also contains a section with curving corridors. If the concern was that it was harder to draw curving corridors, it wouldn't have contained that other section.

Man! You read my whole post, and you had to respond to that??

Hmm... lemme try to refute this one... maybe ole Monte Cook drew some of these corridors, then got lazy and drew the rest to match the graph paper.

And if you're gonna nitpick me, I'll nitpick you right back: it's actually harder to draw straight corridors than to draw curvy corridors, if you don't have a ruler.

Not if the player has graph paper in front of him.

But it's easier to DESCRIBE to someone how to draw straight corridors.

Righteo!

If you put Occam's razor to work, I believe, you'll get one conclusion: the map's original designer thought that describing how to map straight corridors was easy, but that mapping corridors that went in random directions was more fun.

I'm guessing, though, that people would rather eat broken glass than admit that old-school dungeons weren't always plausible. So maybe I should let it drop, eh?

Depends on the consistency of the glass, and how transparent it is. By the way, I'm hungry...

 

[der_kluge]

I knew I wasn't imagining that we'd had a very similar thread in the past.

*casts spell*

mmmm, thread necromancy.

Enjoy.

 

[Arnwyn]

Oops!

 

[Aethelstan]

1st Edition feel: Well...for starters, the rules were clunky, inconsistant and riddled with Gygaxian quirkiness. But in the beginning no one really cared because the whole concept of the RPG was so new and exciting. A DM could whip up a dungeon with an architectually absurd collection of rooms filled with an illogical mish-mash of monsters (room #1: Unicorns, room #2: Displacer Beasts, and on and on...) and players would hack and slash their way through it with glee, never question the hows and whys. Everything about the game had a slightly rough and ready feel. Players did not need intricate hook laden plotlines and novel-like campaign worlds.
Just playing the game, an game unlike any they had ever concieved of, was reward enough.

 

[Torm]

In my mind, "1E feel" and to a large extent "2E feel" (since I never really even understood there was a difference until late in 2E - the DM always handled the parts that made that matter) is PRE-INTERNET feel. Not to say that I don't enjoy the way things are now - ENWorld, a global D&D community, and gaming resources galore are great! But there was a certain feel to the game when you just had a few books and a few friends, and you didn't tell anyone you played because they might think you were Lucifer , and your game, even though it was run from the books, was more homebrew than anything else because the rules were incomplete, self-contradictory, and your Dungeon Master's word was FINAL - to the extent that you may have had one or two notebooks or Trapper Keepers of notes and rulings about the way things worked in your little shared world.

It's the difference between that secret spot you used to go to to think, that no one or maybe just your best friends knew about, and the coffee shop you sometimes stop at with friends now - just like lots of other people. Both are good things, but there's something that just feels... (lost? commercialized? blasphemed? overthought? brighter? pedestrian?) Well, something that just feels.

It's probably something about getting older, period, rather than anything about the game - I get irritated and nostalgic for Doritos back when they were "Nacho Cheese" instead of "Nacho Cheesier" and tasted better, too. At least, in my mind, they did. And I'm sure in twenty years there will be people who feel that way about 3E, too.

But I miss Egghead. I miss Atari - the real one, not this software distributor wearing their name tag. And I want MY MTV back, dammit.

 

[kenobi65]

First edition feel is like the old definition of pornography: "I cant describe it, but I know it when I see it."

Long live Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart.

Legend has it that, when the Supreme Court deliberated on a pornography case, they would always have to screen the material in question. Stewart's law clerks would sit behind him during the screening, and, when anything particularly naughty showed up on the screen, they would yell, "I see it! I see it!"

 

[Mythmere1]

Is this a duplicate of an identical thread? There was one where MerricB suggested closing it in the first page and Piratecat said not to be insulting - this isn't the same thread...

 

[BiggusGeekus]

Is this a duplicate of an identical thread? There was one where MerricB suggested closing it in the first page and Piratecat said not to be insulting - this isn't the same thread...

die_kluge used his necromantic abilities to ressurect a dead thread with a similar topic. He can also use his power to kill bunnies. Don't mess with die_kluge, man. He'll mess you up.

 

[shilsen]

Despite pointing out numerous example of the "feel" we are referring to, many people seem to think "Diablo" when they think First Edition.

And I thought the problem was that people seem to think "diaglo" when they think First Edition

 

[jester47]

Thus, dwarves, elves, and dragons aren't a problem. Windy corridors are.

Daniel

Why can't windy corridors be imaginary objects? Things that don't make sense can be and most likely are imaginary. The imaginary object generates a non-sequiter which yeilds a surreal situation and thus a fantasy is created. Makes me think the weirdness is ok...

Aaron.