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<blockquote data-quote="kenjib" data-source="post: 1453762" data-attributes="member: 530">1st Ed. AD&amp;D was archaic and convoluted, and restricted more toward a certain cultural/literary milieu, and oddly I liked that.&nbsp; I spent time looking up two dozen variety of latin abbreviations, digging through a chart on the folkloric magical properties of herbs, an appendix detailing several dozen types of pole-arms each with multiple different forms illustrated, a detailed derivation of various gem types, and a bunch of arcane rules that were arbitrarily different for each type of action.3rd Ed. D&amp;D has been modernized and genericized.&nbsp; From references to &quot;she&quot; as gender neutral pronoun to weapons and armor more pulled from the air than based on historical or literary examples (which is not to say that AD&amp;D didn't have some egregious errors, such as sword nomenclature, but 3e preserved all of these and added more), to character design that sacrifices reinforcement of archetype for flexibility, to a more streamlined and accessible set of rules, to a more modern and accessible use of language in the text itself.What I think was interesting about 1e was that all of the convoluted properties of the rules and writing style helped me to think differently, to really enter a different world.&nbsp; The characters and system were almost like something out of an old cabalistic or alchemical treatise from the dark ages.&nbsp; 3e feels more like the Hercules/Xena TV shows.&nbsp; Everything is modern at it's core, but dressed up in ren-faire attire and pretending to be other-worldly.3e is great, but I think the feel is quite different.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="kenjib, post: 1453762, member: 530"] 1st Ed. AD&D was archaic and convoluted, and restricted more toward a certain cultural/literary milieu, and oddly I liked that. I spent time looking up two dozen variety of latin abbreviations, digging through a chart on the folkloric magical properties of herbs, an appendix detailing several dozen types of pole-arms each with multiple different forms illustrated, a detailed derivation of various gem types, and a bunch of arcane rules that were arbitrarily different for each type of action. 3rd Ed. D&D has been modernized and genericized. From references to "she" as gender neutral pronoun to weapons and armor more pulled from the air than based on historical or literary examples (which is not to say that AD&D didn't have some egregious errors, such as sword nomenclature, but 3e preserved all of these and added more), to character design that sacrifices reinforcement of archetype for flexibility, to a more streamlined and accessible set of rules, to a more modern and accessible use of language in the text itself. What I think was interesting about 1e was that all of the convoluted properties of the rules and writing style helped me to think differently, to really enter a different world. The characters and system were almost like something out of an old cabalistic or alchemical treatise from the dark ages. 3e feels more like the Hercules/Xena TV shows. Everything is modern at it's core, but dressed up in ren-faire attire and pretending to be other-worldly. 3e is great, but I think the feel is quite different. [/QUOTE]

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