Can you go home again?

[grodog]

The question, then, is: can one recapture that joy of the "first time"? And: do we need the old games to do it?

Absolutely. Read Knights & Knaves Alehouse or Dragonsfoot and you'll find many delighted players running their games with 20+ year-old mechanics (and books, and dice, and PCs, and friends, and ...).

Links:
- K&K @ http://www.knights-n-knaves.com/phpbb/index.php
- DF @ http://www.dragonsfoot.org/forums/index.php

 

[Korgoth]

I love 3rd Edition. it is fun, it has lots of options, it is modular and it allows me to create the things I want as a DM.

However...

I am suffering from a bit of nostalgia. I find myself wanting to run a 1E or RCD&D game. The one thing 3E doesn't provide is that sense of wnder and bemusement I remember from when I was a yung'un, fighting Bargle and the like. The question, then, is: can one recapture that joy of the "first time"? And: do we need the old games to do it?

It seems like every time I read one of the Gygax Q&A threads, or some other thread about the old skool -- a style I love and try to emulate with my 3E games -- I long for those days.

I guess to me it depends on what exactly you want to recapture. I tried 3E and was ultimately unsatisfied... I went back to the older editions and found out that I like them better. Certain things that I used to consider flaws I "get" now... the one great thing 3E has done for me is to show me, by being different from the old editions, what I liked about them and the virtues of their design philosophy.

So in my case, as regards my personal enjoyment, I find the old rulesets to be superior... I think they are actually better games. I'm not sure if that's where you're headed, or if you're really perfectly satisfied with the 3E rules. See, what I guess I first thought of as something like nostalgia turned out to be a longing for more rules-light days, when combats ran quicker and adventure prep was much easier, when skills were covered merely by your character's background (hand-wavey) and the DM just made up spot rulings for things you wanted your guy to try.

Now, you may say "No, I like 3E just fine and it really runs the way I want it to run... I just want to have the same feelings I had when I was a kid." I don't know about you, but enough stuff has happened in my life that I'll never feel like I felt as a kid, at least not in this life. Recapturing the phenomenon of kid-being might be beyond the scope of a set of game rules.

My suggestion, in addition to following the links provided by the excellent fellows upthread, is to get your hands on some old edition rules and try it out. Maybe you'll find that the rules do things in a way that you like, delivering a play experience that 3E does not deliver for you. Or perhaps not. But I can't think of any reliable way to get to the bottom of the issue without just diving in with both feat. Get an old school module, whatever 'speaks' to you, and run it for your group. I would suggest keeping in mind that a lot of the assumptions are simply different than those of 3E... it's going for a different sort of play experience. So figure out those strengths and play to them. That way you'll find out for yourself.

And again, follow those links. There are a lot of people who have a lot of experience in those places, and are for the most part a thoughtful bunch who really seem to understand the bases of the older rulesets.

 

[Warren Okuma]

You can never go home. You still can go next door, and it's still fun.

 

[Philotomy Jurament]

I would suggest keeping in mind that a lot of the assumptions are simply different than those of 3E... it's going for a different sort of play experience. So figure out those strengths and play to them. That way you'll find out for yourself.

QFT. If you start playing B/X (for example) with 3E assumptions about the way thing *should* work, you're going to be disappointed. I'm of the opinion that 3E really is a breed apart from the old editions, rules-wise, and I'm also of the opinion that this does affect the way the game plays and feels (i.e. "rulesets absolutely modify the play experience," as Whizbang said early-on in the thread). (I do think 3E is a good game, by the way -- I'm just another one of those who found that the older rulesets and approaches fit my style of gaming better.)

I'm not really adding anything, I guess -- just reemphasizing the point.

 

[S'mon]

I'm having an amazing time running both B/X D&D (for the first time) and C&C, the SOW is definitely back. Not having to worry about the number crunching frees up the creative parts of my brain. Plus, back in the old days I ran 1e AD&D (with the 1e UA), B/X is a far cleaner, more streamlined system and lacks much of what I found clunky in 1e.

 

[Celebrim]

As far as I can tell, the play experience between 1st edition and 3rd edition hasn't changed.

To prove this to your satisfaction, I suggest you play with inexperienced players.

I don't believe that there is such a thing as a definitive 1st edition experience. I played with at least a half dozen DM's and all of them produced a slightly different game with a slightly different experience. The experience produced by 3rd edition is well within the range of experiences produced by 1st edition.

Frankly, I find the notion that the 1st edition rules are superior to the current generation to be ridiculous in the extreme. They are superior only in as much as 1st edition DM's were compelled to rely on thier judgement more often because there were huge gaps anomolies and problems with the rules, and if they were good DM's this produced a superior experience and if they weren't it didn't. If you want to reproduce that experience, rely on your judgement in preference to the RAW. The result may or may not be better than the RAW depending on your judgement. First edition was superior only in the sense that DM's were free to experiment because no one told them what was balance or how many enounters would produce what ammount of treasure or how many levels of advancement, and this too produces a superior experience under a good DM and a questionable one otherwise.

In other words, if you want a 1st edition experience with the 3rd edition rule set, use your bloody imagination and don't worry about whether your characters have enough treasure for thier CR or even if they are capable of facing monsters of a particular CR. None of that is important anyway. What's important is that everyone has fun.

 

[Philotomy Jurament]

As far as I can tell, the play experience between 1st edition and 3rd edition hasn't changed...Frankly, I find the notion that the 1st edition rules are superior to the current generation to be ridiculous in the extreme.

:shrugs: There're quite a few of us who disagree with you on both points. (Although I will say that 1E isn't my favorite old-school rule-set.) Opinions and preferences...what can you say?

What's important is that everyone has fun.

No disagreement, there.

 

[MerricB]

Personally, I found the play experience in AD&D and BECM D&D to be quite different from each other - I enjoy all versions of D&D, but you need to understand what each of them have as strengths and weaknesses.

Cheers!

 

[Mighty Veil]

I enjoy all versions of D&D, but you need to understand what each of them have as strengths and weaknesses.

1) 300 was awesome! D&D could learn something from it (Oh... so *that's* the actually audience we should be aiming at, duh...)

2) What would you Merric say is the strength and weakness of the D&D's?

3) What was again your house rules for AD&D. I remember you took X from 1e and Y from 2e.

 

[Reynard]

Seeing as how I am currently running a 3.5 campaign and have a one shot old school dungeon crawl set for a few weeks from now, I think maybe the real issue is that I want (from a DM's perspective) to "feel" like running those games from yon days. So, I think maybe concentrating on how to make my experience as a DM closer to what I'd like it to be using D&D 3.5.

For one, I think I need to divorce myself from the CR/ECL system and just use my judgement -- based on my players, their PCs, and my experience with the system -- when designing adventures and encounters.

Second, I need to drop the battlegrid (again). For awhile, I didn't use it because my regular group was meeting in classrooms at Yale where there were always big chalkboards. We didn't necessarily drop any movement or AoO rules -- I just adjudicated stuff based on the scenario and the desires of the players (i.e. if a player says, "I want to move around to flank" I would say "Okay. it'll take you the whole round unless you want to let one of the orcs geta whack at you") lately, I have been bringing out the battlemat again -- or, at least, a grid and some sketches. Maybe a whiteboard on an eisel (sp?)?

The next one os kind of hard. I think that if I am going to use classed NPCs, I should actually go about statting them appropriately. This is kind of related to the CR/ECL thing, I guess, but also related to the fact that I think in cheapens the challenge for the PCs if I just say "20 HP, AC 15, Attack +5, Damage 1d8+3" or some such. That being said, it makes off the cuff, fly-by DMing harder. I have no problem using monsters and such from the MM -- it isn't that the stat blocks are too big or the rulestoo complex -- so maybe I just need a good collection of typical NPC types.

And then there's the dungeons. I have fallen into a trap of linear, short dungeons. I am not sure why. I think it is time to steal some maps from the WotC site and the Dungeon web extras and build myself a big, varied, complex dungeon with all the good stuff: green slime and yellow mold, gelatinous cubes and rust monsters, traps and puzzles, and no real "point" outside of whatever reason the PCs went in in the first plce (find the widget, make a shortcut through the mountain, etc...)