Diaglo: What's so great about OD&D?

[Odhanan]

* Control: When the DM makes up lots of rules, there's no book there to contradict. Thus, the DM has a lot more control over the game. But I think this is a minor point. It's easier to DM with confidence if you know that you are the final arbiter of rules, but I don't think that's the biggest reason for retro gaming.

The bigger point, IME, is:

* The Power to Improvise: When you have to improvise rules on the fly, or sit down and create house rules, it's a lot easier to build exactly the game you want. The most powerful virtue of RPGs is the creativity they require.

Thanks, Mike.

 

[Ridley's Cohort]

As if people really know deep down that 3.x is better and are letting thier nostalga override the crazy fun they would have if they just embraced the 3.x style.

You are presuming that the ruleset forces a style on the DM. If you are a good enough DM to play a flexible style of OD&D successfully, I do not see why the 3e rulebook would be a straightjacket to you.

The joke is that 1e keeps getting mentioned as so flexible, when, in fact, I have never met a single person in my life that actually plays 1e -- they played a hacked up & customized version because the actual RAW is too painful. Gary himself never played the rules as written.

When we play 1e, we take the approach that the DM should be flexible, fairminded, and know which rules to ignore. Why is this approach so difficult to apply to 3e?

This is a style issue. What does it have to do with the particular ruleset?

 

[Odhanan]

Remember, though, that 3e wasn't designed with experienced, flexible gamers in mind. It's bait for teenagers hooked on Warcraft and Magic:the Gathering.

That's not bad. It means D&D remains marketable to a demographic that might have otherwise lumped RPGs in with video cassettes and Fleetwood Mac (dance remixes not withstanding).

A workable 1e game relies on player consensus and trust in the DM to adjudicate fairly. Pure conceptualism takes the place of prestige classes, feats, and odd skills like "use rope" or "handle animal".

Players used to card games which work on stacking, combos, counter-plays, enhancements and dozens of different bonus types demand a system which provides for every possible activity and permutation. It's a tyranny of rules.

Skip over to the WotC boards and read the tales of woe there. DMs are being bullied with rules like never before. Flavour-text railroads originality without mercy. Players storm out because the DM won't let them stack their dodge with their armour with their shield with their extraordinary and supernatural and spell-like abilities.

Why can't I have my exalted plane-touched illithid monk/barbarian/assassin/slime lord? It's all in the RAW. Roleplaying? Bah! What kind of lame excuse is that?

It's not all bad. Combat is better now than ever. PCs can be tailored and tweaked to a much greater degree than in 1e. I think it depends on whether one considers complexity to be a burden or a blessing.

At the end of the day, it's apples vs oranges. 1e and 3e are the same game in name only. Warhammer Fantasy, GURPS, and Rolemaster (among countless others) are 1e's legacy as much as 3.5 is.

I'm not finished with 3.5. I still want to see what it can do. But while 3e, 4e, or 25e jump through hoops to appeal to players, 1e is always waiting for the roleplayer who doesn't need gimmicks or training wheels.

I agree with all being said here. I particularly like the expression "tyranny of the rules". I think that's exactly what it is, since by creating the lego elements, no matter their combinations, you create a frame and limit them in scope. A character without the element can't do this. A character who has it can do it under certain conditions, with a precise DC to a precise check and so on.

But indeed that's not all bad. At least, it gives the tools to people to imagine characters, situations, and have fun in ways they wouldn't have had without Third Edition. That's a hell of a compliment.

 

[SpiderMonkey]

I have been, for the longest time, "3.X or bustorr!!!one!" but after having played a 2 year campaign that saw the PCs get to about 16th level, I have to say...simple is good.

I LOVE the 3.x rule set, but for higher level play, combat just gets bogged down and takes for ever to resolve. What was once a dramatic moment becomes "man, let's just get this over with" tedium.

I've actually been thinking about breaking out the ol' red box set that I started playing D&D on, just to see what it's like again. This thread has really given me a bit of inspiration.

(And yes, Diaglo, I know the red boxed set really isn't OD&D, but it's close enough, isn't it?)

SM

 

[rogueattorney]

You're making a whole lot of assumptions based on 1e and other post OD&D rules.

1. A magic users cannot cast spells in armor.

According to a literal reading of the rules, M-U's can't cast spells in magic armor.

Pg 6 of M&M: "The whole plethora of enchanted items lies at the magic-users beck and call, save the arms and armor of the fighters"

Pg 8 of M&M: "[Elves] may use magic armor and still act as Magic-Users."

2. A pure-classed cleric of a god of hunting cannot use bows.

Like the language in the magic-user section, a literal reading of the rules states that clerics cannot use magic arrows:

Page 7 of M&M: "Clerics gain some of the advantages from both of the other two classes
I Fighting-Men and Magic-Users) in that they have the use of magic armor and all
non-edged magic weapons (no arrows!)..."

Compare that to the strict prohibition on everything other than daggers for m-u's on page 6 of M&M: "Magic-Users may arm themselves with daggers only."

3. Dwarves can't be wizards, elves can't be paladins, or dwarves and elves were classes, not races.

There weren't paladins in the original rules. Dwarves and elves weren't classes. The "race as class" thing happened later.

4. Humans can't multiclass. Demihumans can't dual class.

There weren't any multi-classing rules. The ability to switch from m-u to f-m and back was special ability distinct to elves.

5. A gnome could be a fighter/cleric, a fighter/thief or a cleric/thief, but not a fighter/cleric/thief.

Gnomes weren't player characters, they were monsters. The thief wasn't in the original rules.

6. A human fighter with Strength 14 and Intelligence 18 cannot dual-class to wizard because he is not strong enough.

Wrong. From page 10 of M&M: "In order for men to change class they must have a score of 16 or better in the prime requisite (see below) of the class they wish to change to, and this score must be unmodified." The fighting-man in the above example could therefore become a magic-user.

7. Some magic items could only be used by members of specific classes (certain wands and staves could only be used by wizards, for example).

True enough. Show me an edition of D&D where this isn't the case. Are fighters reading magic scrolls in 3e? Paladins using Staves of Wizardry?

8. A ring of protection does not provide a bonus to AC when used with magic armor. A cloak of protection does not provide a bonus to AC when used with any armor except leather. (I may have remembered this incorrectly. Is so, could someone post the correct version?)

I don't know where to begin on this one. Magical armor and Rings of Protection don't change one's AC. They effect the attacker's hit roll. Further, there is no language whatsoever regarding "stacking" these bonuses. I've never heard of anything like that rule

Really, most of your concerns regarding players getting the characters they want is handled in this passage from page 8 of M&M:

Other Character Types: There is no reason that players cannot be allowed to play as virtually anything, provided they begin relatively weak and work up to the top, i.e., a player wishing to be a Dragon would have to begin as let us say, a "young" one and progress upwards in the usual manner, steps being predetermined by the campaign referee.

The six player types in the original box were to be considered a starting point. The product history of OD&D, beginning with the very first publication of The Strategic Review, which introduced the Ranger, is replete with examples of DMs creating new classes, races, and character types. Check out the wierd stuff in the Arduin Grimoires, for example.

You're perfectly free to dislike OD&D. I know it's not to everybody's taste. But you should really crack the book open before you start dissing it.

R.A.

 

[harmyn]

The more I have DM'd games of 3.5 (and I have DM'd many many many many many games of it) the more I find myself drawn back to the earlier editions because they were both simpler and far more open to creative use. Now for me, its the boxed sets/Rules Cyclopedia that I would use most, but that's just my personal tastes (and never really getting a chance to get ahold of the oldest set is another issue). Someone asked about a barbarian type class, I was able to make a nice one with about 45 minutes work. I did an elven cleric in twenty minutes and a dwarven fighter/thief concept in half an hour. It takes easily an hour to make a character in 3.5 using the RAW. let alone anything special or different. Its a matter of personal preference, that's all.

As for the eternal arguments of use only what you want in the books, its the PLAYERS, not the DM's that have an issue with that. If you sit down with an old rules set and pull out old dragon articles and home brew supplements to help inspire them, people don't tend to mind. If you sit down at the table and everyone breaks out their 350pg rule book and you delcare that you have disallowed 120 pages of the book to streamline things, well that is very seldom well received, even if you give advance notice.

The issue isn't any one specific thing with 3.x. Its the collection of everything, and while you don't have to buy all the supplements, there is an amazing amount of whining and complaining from all the players that do buy every book printed looking for that extra little mechanical edge to crunch on for an advantage.

Think of it like a spider web. No one single strand holds the fly fast, but its the combined strength of many all laticed together that can give the big insects pause. When people ask what my biggest issue with 3.x is, its not any one thing, its that glut of everything all put together.

 

[Spell]

can i drop my tuppence?

1. it's so rule light that you can learn all the rules in one hour
2. it takes 5 minutes to create a character and start to play
3. things are not set in stone. you won't get anyone complaining that "red dragons don't do this" or "kobolds are meant to look like that". the game had so many wacky adventures, locales, ideas (and sooooooo many great ones) that you had to expect the unexpected
4. you needed ONE book to play (or one box... the others were very useful expansions, but you could very well play with the red box only)
5. did i mention it was rule light?
6. you could add subsystems to make the game more complex without screwing up other parts of the game.

 

[Spell]

The thing I've noticed in C&C is that people are clamboring more for options - multi-class and dual-class options, and some more combat variety and options.

they did it with D&D, too. if you look at old dragon issues, you have tons of optional rules and classes.
but i have never see two d&d assassin class looking the same. you had one per each game table, or so. which is something that some people find dodgy or wacky. i find it cool.

i trusted my DMs. they would never come up with something completely stupid and uncool to play. if they ever did, they would have allowed me to state my point, and we would have reached a compromise.

the game, now, is designed as if the dm was your enemy, and you needed the books to have a fair referee for each situation...

 

[Aaron L]

\
the game, now, is designed as if the dm was your enemy, and you needed the books to have a fair referee for each situation...

Um, no. The game now is designed so that the DM doesnt have to be a master from the beginning and adept at creating on the fly rulings on just about anything, or creating NEW rules for a large amount of situations on the spot.

 

[Akrasia]

And as diaglo said, the edition/C&C cultists start coming out.

Man what? :\