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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Raven Crowking" data-source="post: 3741834" data-attributes="member: 18280">I think I would agree that, in comparison to what they were fighting, 1e characters were tougher than 3e characters, at least in the low- to mid-level ranges.  There is a difference, however, in dying due to player choices and dying due to bad die rolls where there is an expectation of an encounter being "balanced".  IMHO, at least.  When people say that older editions were more "difficult", I believe that they mean "more difficult for the players in terms of complexity of decision-making during play" not "more difficult for the characters".I'm not sure that 1e was more complex in terms of decision-making during play.  There is a lot of decision-making in 3e....too much in some cases.  I do think, however, that 3e has replaced some of the "fun" decision making (should we venture into the lower levels?) with "chore" decision making (what buffs shall we stack to gain the maximum effect?).  This might well be a product of 2e, thought, with its emphasis on set story modules over sandbox style play.There is a difference between 1e plotlines, which were easy to change/manipulate/ignore, and some 3e plotlines.   The early 3e modules (Forge of Fury, for example) had plotlines similar to those of the old modules.  A situational plotline says "Here's the bad guys, where they live, what they are doing, and some ways to get the PCs involved".  In the event of a tournament module, that plotline generally starts with the PCs involved due to DM fiat.  If there are "win conditions" for tournament play, that also affects how the module is played within that context.  Other than that, though, the PCs are pretty much able to do whatever they like.  The doors are wide open.A more constraining plotline contains stronger railroading elements, and assumes that the PCs will take certain actions.  Encounters occur in sequence, each building a "story" that forces the PCs to take certain actions or abandon the plotline.  Some 1e DMs tried to run modules this same way; my worst experience in 1e as a player was in A1, where the DM didn't take kindly to my trying to circumvent some of the encounters.These are different types of play experiences, and I tend to think that having some of each in a campaign leads to the most fun.  Some of the 2e Ravenloft modules were good for this (Feast of Goblyns, if memory serves).  Not as linear as you might think.  The first time I ran this, the party bypassed much of the dungeon by finding the villian's escape route, and attacked her by surprise from the secret door.1e had plenty of rules, but the rules in 1e were the provence of the DM, who decided what got used, what got ignored, and under what circumstances any rule would apply.  As has been pointed out more often than rabbits mate, almost no one played AD&D 1e by the RAW.  As the RAW contradicted itself, this was possibly impossible.  No player could know the rules in play in any given encounter, even if he memorized the DMG, which de-emphasized the rules from the players' perspective.  Although 1e had a lot of rules, it didn't play or feel like it had a lot of rules.Yes, but while Rule 0 exists in every addition, Rule 0 was a vital principle of 1e, as Gary pointed out in his introduction to the 1e PHB.RC</blockquote>

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