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Message: <blockquote data-quote="delericho" data-source="post: 5656075" data-attributes="member: 22424">Actually, he's pretty much right. Sometimes I'm astonished that D&D was ever popular.The early editions of the game are very clearly a work-in-progress, and it shows.1st Edition AD&D, the first edition that seems to be 'done' is horribly complex in places, very badly written and organised. It's just a mess. Had I had to work with that at the outset, I would have quit and walked away.2nd Edition AD&D is actually an improvement, as heretical as that may sound. The rules remain full of annoying quirks, and the game lost a lot of its edge, but at least it was presented in an approachable way.3e, while my favoured edition, is horribly complex. And, annoyingly, it really doesn't need to be - there's the kernel of a really elegant and simple ruleset in there. It's just a shame that, even in the core rulebooks, it's buried under a mountain of detail, modifiers, and math. Oh, the math...As for 4e... well, it's an improvement in some regards, but... For me, 4e feels like D&D as translated by a computer, or D&D as played though an emulator, or something. It's D&D... but it's not the D&D I know and love. (And I know that doesn't make too much sense. But there it is.) It also doesn't help at all that 4e is simple in some areas where it needs to be complex, and horribly complex in some areas where it really should be simple.I think the closest the game has come to the 'ideal' presentation was probably the old Red Box basic set - a nice, approachable set of rules to get you started. Throw in an expansion set or two to take you to higher levels, and you're good. But even that version suffers for being saddled with all the quirks of the pre-3e ruleset.One thing the videos are most certainly right about, though: this game should not require the better part of 1,000 pages of core rules just to get started!</blockquote>

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