How long ago did you guys play?
We had to carve our own dice out of the bones of the dinosaurs we slew. And we had to roll them uphill, in the snow, both ways.
I started playing in 1977 using the Holmes rules and we incorporated the AD&D books as they were published.
LATER on, when more of the fantasy RPG people who had no connection to wargames or anything dealing with balance came into the scene, they created all sorts of unbalanced rules for RPGing. Most of those RPG's died before D&D ever came into it's later days.
All through 1E we never actually played "by the book" with the surprise and initiative rules because at the time we found them pointlessly fidgety if not simply indecipherable. I made a good-faith effort once or twice but gave up quickly. The first "AD&D" intiative system I would up learning I actually have no idea where it came from. It may have been a house-ruled invention or may have come from a bit more obscure source like White Dwarf if it had drifted across someone's transom.
We grabbed various rules we liked from other sources when we happened to find them. For example we used a few class abilities from Arduin Grimoire now and then and of course derived our first critical hit charts from there (later modified by Iron Crown critical charts and articles from Dragon). But one of the first things we chafed against was class/level limits. We sort of accepted that dwarves and halflings weren't supposed to be wizards but were agog that there weren't supposed to be ANY PC clerics for dwarves, elves, halflings, and half-elves and -orcs were outrageously limited. No halfling or elven druids. Even elven magic-users hit limits at 11th. So we expanded, bent, broke and finally just flat out ignored and laughed at the charts. I came to accept that those limits had merit as a matter of campaign setting design but we definitely took issue with the games defaults.
We even had one player who sacrificed a couple of wishes to have his approximately 10th or so level fighter become the first and only dwarven dual-class character starting over as 1st level wizard and ultimately being fighter/wizard dual class. We knew where we wanted to take the game whether Gary or or anyone else thought we ought to be going there and not surprisingly the game ultimately DID go there. (I thought it swung too far but that's another conversation).
The first truly unbalanced rules (so it seemed to us) that we came across would be from Unearthed Arcana - weapon specialization rules. What we termed the "nuclear-tipped arrows" were particularly derided because it made archers so
radically more effective than they had been up till then. We still USED them because we were a fairly power-gaming group and how do you say no to that kind of damage and multiple attacks? But we knew right off that it was cheese. Nowadays I'd say that the effort to expand the capabilities of fighters was certainly needed but that the monsters should in turn also have been bumped.
Of course then again, if it was 30 years ago that would be around 1982, at which point it was the middle of the fad and everyone was playing the game in their own way. AT that point there were too many to know everyone anyways or how everyone played.
At that point in time I was actually stepping into the DM's seat and contrarily wanted a stronger set of rules to start with rather than have to house rule so much that had been deemed inadequate (and not just by us but by plenty of others as I read letters to the Forum in Dragon.) I liked most of the changes that 2nd Edition made (initiative was pretty much how we had come to be running it anyway) but actually came to feel quite soon after that it had inexcusably failed to make DEEP ENOUGH changes in the name of maintaining backward compatibility.
Balance problems wargamers may have had originally dealt more with the fantastical rather than anything dealing with limited Hits that one could take or deal out. More wargamers had gripes about it not being a wargame or history, then level limits.
We were certainly all about the combat but we ran games with quite slow advancement (as it happens another area where I convinced others that their house ruled methods were broken and we should be using something
closer to the book) so, yeah, it DID make a significant difference for us that certain race/class combinations were outrageously nerfed in the name of "balancing" them with other race/class combinations that would otherwise be greatly higher level AND unbalancing our campaigns in ways that the "limited" characters never would or could.
Even attempting to play as by-the-book as possible only proved to us that some design decisions were just poorly made (or made without a large enough set of player-feedback data to adequately justify them).
Level limits and other such ideas of "Balance" really haven't gotten as much attention than they started too later on, especially when 3.X hit the market.
No, if you look back at the letters to Dragon (at one time the only decent medium of ongoing communication between groups around the country) there were topics that were ALWAYS drawing criticism. Level limits was most definitely one. It did not take until 3E for that to become a hot button.
As such, I find that many who hate these things tend to come from the newer generations rather then the older generations.
I also see the newer generations trying to classify it as
stupidity. I agree that it would be a design
error but one simply deriving from
ignorance which is quite different.
Newer generations tend to try to find reasons to say it's a balance thing when in truth the REAL causation behind the elimination or extension of level limits had nothing to do with "balance" and more to do with...I WANT...I WANT...I WANT.
Indeed, and this is where, as I mentioned before, the pendulum swung much too far. It was a valid criticism that there were unjustifiable limitations, but it was a bad decision to remove ALL limitations just to appease players. Limitations were still warranted, but needed to be far less Draconian (an appropriate word methinks), to be given firmer justification and explanation, and for that #()*&%#$ about it being needed/wanted for "balance" to be nuked from orbit to be sure.
But then, back then most didn't aggressively attack Gygax with such accusations and such blatent personal affronts...those didn't really come around until the 80s gamers.
And ironically when Gygax was no longer IN CONTROL of the comapny much less the game itself.
You might not understand the balance of the system, or how the system of balance even worked...but then that wouldn't be because the system itself didn't work as it was intended or wasn't balanced as intended...it would rather imply that the way you utilized or played the game made it so that it was unbalanced for your style.
I believe both are true. It did not work for the way we played the game AND it did not even work as it was intended. Part of my frustration (and others) at the time was not that the system was far from perfect - we could all live with that quite easily, and DID. It came from REPEATED denials that there WERE inadequacies or errors; refusal by TSR (note: not even Gygax anymore but the increasingly resented, amorphous "they") to admit that the game could be improved in any number of ways for any number of reasons.
However, levelling accusations that the game wasn't balanced at all, or it was flawed...is actually pretty darn offensive.
But it wasn't! Certainly not in the way they wanted to insist that those sorts of mechanics achieved. Not that we need to harp that much on level limits but for them to have ANY meaningful effect upon game balance each campaign would pretty much have to be played well beyond the point when limits were reached or else the limits would never actually come into effect and thus NOT have an effect. So, any group that consistently played low-level games knocked any level-limit "balance" into a cocked hat. The simple fact that SO MANY groups and individuals railed against level limits (and still do) is all the anecdotal proof needed to show that whatever it was they were trying to achieve at the time it was not a good move even then. (Mind you I'm also not 100% convinced that it was less an intentional effort of design than a mere reflection of, "This is how _I_, the author, happen to be codify these limitations. Naturally, I expect that you'll still make your own decisions about this stuff.")
I would say that your flaws are not flaws...but your dislike and likes rather than any real balance issues.
I hope in turn that you're aware that NONE of this is in any way a personal insult to Gygax. It's not even a particularly effective attack upon his skills as a game designer. It is simply an insistence that the man was capable of ERROR in game design. There are simply things about the editions of D&D over which he had design control that were not done as well as even HE would have liked - initiative and psionics being particularly notable examples where he did not even personally use what he published.
Gygax more than anyone knew that knowing the rules and being able to then twist and change them to be USED by you was the important thing in an RPG...and in that if you did away with LL that was perfectly fine. That didn't mean a flaw in the game...that meant being able to play what you wanted.
I may not have said so here, but I REPEATEDLY and loudly champion Gary's words in the 1E DMG Preface where he says as much: The game is not perfect, cahnge it and play it the way you want to.
But I have to once again strongly disagree with you on the entire balance and flaws thing and also wonder how our experience in seeing the gamers and who was playing were so different...unless you're talking about the 80s as opposed to the mid to late 70s.
Mid '70's onward. But DESPITE all its flaws I still personally feel that 1E (with a bit of 2E thrown in) is still a better framework to build another edition of D&D upon than any other.
That doesn't mean flaws or problems as much as differences of outlook and goals of the system. That should be recognized and understood before one starts blindly calling something names...and especially before trying to dish out on a very respectable person's rendition of the game.
It can and does mean both seeing inherent flaws as well as differences of outlook and goals. I don't DENIGRATE Gary for the failures of 1E any more than I do Cook, Tweet, and Williams for 3E or Heinsoo, Collins and Wyatt for 4E. But Gygax made mistakes/design errors just as those others have. It's not disrespecting any of them to call attention to those choices with a casually "slanderous" phrase like, "Level limits were a stupid idea."
