Infernal Teddy
Explorer
My simpler than PF System would be Savage Worlds, or AFF. MAYBE Rolemaster. Not AD&D
Do we live in the d20 Dark Ages?
gamerprinter
Mapper/Publisher
I don't see it as in a Dark Age, rather in a midlife crisis.
While I was playing D&D since 1977, I did not get involved with RPG freelancing and publishing until the last four years or so. In a way, I'm in my own midlife crisis having gotten involved at all and so deeply - I think my life coincides with the life of D&D.
No way is this a dark age...
While I was playing D&D since 1977, I did not get involved with RPG freelancing and publishing until the last four years or so. In a way, I'm in my own midlife crisis having gotten involved at all and so deeply - I think my life coincides with the life of D&D.
No way is this a dark age...
Daztur
Adventurer
Neonchameleon: 2ed is hardly my edition of choice but I think you're overstating how complicated it is. My brother ran a 2ed campaign when he was still having trouble with his multiplication tables and it went fine because:
-You can often just ignore the more complicated bits (such NWPs and weapon proficiencies which are rather stupidly quirky) and it works just fine. If you ignore the complicated bits of more recent editions that causes more problems.
-Knowing what you can do as a thief or fighter is pretty damn easy and for the casters having the spells effects written out with less game jargon made it pretty easy to understand as kids, we didn't have to know what a "close burst" or any terminology like that was, which makes the learning curve of 2ed less steep than recent editions (but the curve keeps on going longer if you want to learn all of the ins and outs which really add up if you play things by the book).
-Some of the stuff you mentioned just doesn't come up often enough to be annoying. Stuff like every class having the same XP to advance looks neater on the page but doesn't really make much difference in actual play since you're only consulting those charts once per sessions.
-More of the rules load is placed on the DM rather than on the player, this makes it easier for the player to just say what their character is going to do and have the DM tell them what to roll. This makes it easier for newbie players and since more rules stuff is placed on the DM and the DM is the guy who gets to decide whether to follow the rules or just handwave things to speed things up or because they can't be arsed to look it up, dealing with the rules is often easier. So for example if you have a 2ed player who doesn't have a clue what ThAC0 is or how saves work its not really a problem (been there, done that, works fine). If you have a player who doesn't know how AoO's work that's a much bigger problem.
-In WotC-D&D when you're creating a character you have to make a lot more important decisions than in 2ed. In 2ed you can just choose a the weapon prof for whatever available weapon does the most damage and whichever NWPs sound fun and you'll be good to go. With WotC-D&D you have to actually know what the
you're choosing does or you'll gimp your character badly (less of an issue in 4ed than in 3.5ed).
So there's plenty of crunch in 2ed but it's a lot easier to dodge the crunch in 2ed (in my experience) than in later editions. I'd still prefer Rules Cyclpedia though, it avoids a lot of the silly that piled up in 2ed.
As far the OP question, it looks like the Dark Age is over and we're hitting the Renaissance right on schedule. Google+ hangouts and finding players via social media means it's easier to play, Kickstarter and PDF means its easier for people to get their stuff in print and in people's hands so we're seeing a massive surge of stuff getting printed by hobbyists (or small operations like Evil Hat) and a real wealth of options as well as so much free stuff on blogs. I can dig up more useful stuff for free now (one page dungeons etc. etc. etc. etc.) than I could if I'd bought out the entire stock of my local gaming store back when I was a kid and a lot of this is just beginning, for example the surge of making game material compatible with old editions is just a few years old and we've already seen so much good stuff.
-You can often just ignore the more complicated bits (such NWPs and weapon proficiencies which are rather stupidly quirky) and it works just fine. If you ignore the complicated bits of more recent editions that causes more problems.
-Knowing what you can do as a thief or fighter is pretty damn easy and for the casters having the spells effects written out with less game jargon made it pretty easy to understand as kids, we didn't have to know what a "close burst" or any terminology like that was, which makes the learning curve of 2ed less steep than recent editions (but the curve keeps on going longer if you want to learn all of the ins and outs which really add up if you play things by the book).
-Some of the stuff you mentioned just doesn't come up often enough to be annoying. Stuff like every class having the same XP to advance looks neater on the page but doesn't really make much difference in actual play since you're only consulting those charts once per sessions.
-More of the rules load is placed on the DM rather than on the player, this makes it easier for the player to just say what their character is going to do and have the DM tell them what to roll. This makes it easier for newbie players and since more rules stuff is placed on the DM and the DM is the guy who gets to decide whether to follow the rules or just handwave things to speed things up or because they can't be arsed to look it up, dealing with the rules is often easier. So for example if you have a 2ed player who doesn't have a clue what ThAC0 is or how saves work its not really a problem (been there, done that, works fine). If you have a player who doesn't know how AoO's work that's a much bigger problem.
-In WotC-D&D when you're creating a character you have to make a lot more important decisions than in 2ed. In 2ed you can just choose a the weapon prof for whatever available weapon does the most damage and whichever NWPs sound fun and you'll be good to go. With WotC-D&D you have to actually know what the
you're choosing does or you'll gimp your character badly (less of an issue in 4ed than in 3.5ed).So there's plenty of crunch in 2ed but it's a lot easier to dodge the crunch in 2ed (in my experience) than in later editions. I'd still prefer Rules Cyclpedia though, it avoids a lot of the silly
that piled up in 2ed.As far the OP question, it looks like the Dark Age is over and we're hitting the Renaissance right on schedule. Google+ hangouts and finding players via social media means it's easier to play, Kickstarter and PDF means its easier for people to get their stuff in print and in people's hands so we're seeing a massive surge of stuff getting printed by hobbyists (or small operations like Evil Hat) and a real wealth of options as well as so much free stuff on blogs. I can dig up more useful stuff for free now (one page dungeons etc. etc. etc. etc.) than I could if I'd bought out the entire stock of my local gaming store back when I was a kid and a lot of this is just beginning, for example the surge of making game material compatible with old editions is just a few years old and we've already seen so much good stuff.
Neonchameleon
Legend
Not by much tbh. You're saying "You can ignore the rules" - which isn't the same as saying they aren't there. Especially not for the purposes of people fresh to the system. Generally I divide players into two groups with respect to system mastery: Those who want to master the system and those who want to just know enough to be able to play.For the would be system masters, 2e is a minor nightmare and is actively harder and rules heavier than 3.X or 4e. Even before you take into account that you almost have to houserule it - it was from this perspective I wrote about the rules heaviness.
For those who want to just know enough to be able to play, it might be easier to teach than 3.X or 4e. I'm dubious as you have your own terminology there like THAC0 and the saves - and it certainly is harder to mess up character creation. It might be easier from a standing start. But this group of people already generally knows one of the more modern versions of D&D and it's making them learn a whole new system (which they have little interest in) for a result that isn't significantly different from what they already know - so it's pointless additional overhead as they don't fundamentally care.
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Teacher Man
Explorer
I can answer the part about why B2 is being used for the play test, the module is a really good one. Why is it so bad to update great modules for play testing? Modules like Keep on The Borderlands, The Giants trilogy (G1-G3), Tomb of Horrors etc., have stood the test of time and should be used when appropriate in play testing.
And it was probably easier and more cost effective to simply convert a well known and respected module to 5th edition that it would be to create one from scratch.
The high school I teach at is using converted modules (S1 & G1) in our inaugural D&D (3.5) tournament because they were so well constructed.
Looking to the past for inspiration happens all the time. Look at the new Ford Mustang and Dodge Challenger for example, they look pretty similar to the old ones.
Now obviously there are many good modules out there covering every edition of D&D, having a classic as part of the play test is a good thing in my opinion. Keep the good stuff, dump the bad stuff.
Just my 2¢ worth.
Yes. I am not sure that any and every reference to the past is automatically a sign that the past is a "Golden Age".
Daztur
Adventurer
The "you can ignore the rules" bit actually does matter. NWPs are definitely optional rules and I think weapon profs are as well (not sure, don't have my 2ed book on hand and haven't read them in a loooooooong time). If you say "we're not using proficiencies" everything works fine (probably better, the 2ed proficiency system is a mess). Can you do the same for WotC-D&D feats? What happens if the DM says "we're not going to use feats in this campaign"?
The same goes for a lot of the crunchier bits of 2ed. AD&D is a disorganized mess of inconsistent sub-systems that don't really interact with each other. This is bad for a lot of reasons, but it does allow you to just yank out most any sub-system you don't like and throw it in the garbage and the rest still work fine. This doesn't work well with unified systems in which all of the parts interact like in 3.*ed.
This isn't me doing the rule zero fallacy, I'm not saying that 2ed isn't broken if you fix it, just that it's a lot easier to ignore bits of rules of even apply them inconsistently than with WotC D&D, which makes a big difference.
As for THAC0 and weird saves in the last campaign I played the players never heard the word THAC0, they just rolled the dice said what they rolled and the DM looked it up in the 1ed DMG chart. The same goes with the weird saves. Some players kept on forgetting if they wanted to roll high or low on saves but it worked OK since the DM just told you what to roll and what happened. AD&D works better if you stick as much of the rules adjudication on the DM as possible and let the players "just know enough to play." Players into system mastery will get headaches.
But for overall rules heaviness I'd still put 2ed well below 3.5ed due to the vast swaths of 3.5ed rules that most everyone ignores. Stuff like ALL of the rules for climbing and the rules for how hard it is to tumble across uneven vs. even flagstones. There's a gazillion rules like that in 3.5ed and because of those I'd find running 3.5ed 100% by the book a lot harder than doing the same with 2ed.
conclave27
First Post
This would be the period where TSR was run by Lorraine Williams who openly disdained gamers? The period when they bought Gygax's Dangerous Journeys and shelved it permanently to take out the competition? The period in which it was commonly known as T$R with buisness practices that would make WotC blush? The period when TSR was working on a Buck Rogers RPG specifically because she owned the license? A period in which TSR released over 600 books in 9 years extruding products like the Complete Book of Elves and attempting to monetise that ... failed because TSR neither knew nor cared what the players wanted to play. There was some very good stuff buried amongst all the crap but that's because there were many minds at work - and everyone has a few good ideas. If you want a time of creativity that puts that period of D&D to shame, look at the early days of 3E - when the OGL was allowing literally everyone to publish their own take on D&D.
I think the issue is the separation of 2E as a time period of gaming versus the diabolical business practices of the parent company and its reputation. The same argument can be made for the rescuers of the genre of WOTC and Hasbro. I am well aware you are familiar with their drama, its draconian measures, its Cease and Desist orders to fandom, and its treatment of its creative talent.
I am aware of the issue of the original TSR, as they have been talked about before. I was enraged when my subscription to the magazine was stopped and the company did not reply to me until after one year of my subscription status!!!! It was sad about Dangerous Journeys... which I have have the Epic of Aerth as well....since it is another version of Greyhawk. It was criminal what they did to Gygax, Arnesonm and early giants of the industry, .Buck Rogers... hey its a campaign system, and again as a fan of the show and genre loved it. Guess what... I bought as many of those books under the regime of TSR...... and the Complete Book of Elves was one of my favorites as it coalesced and began to organize what the overall material was and paved the way for future book like the 3E Races of the Wild...series. It was at that time really the only thing we had.
Plus what other choices were out there at that time during 2E? Palladium, GURPs, Mayfairgames, Rollmaster, Warhammer, and infant White Wolf. In context...minus the publisher/parent company issue, IMHOP 2E was a period of expansion.
Hussar
Legend
conclave27 said:
Hang on. Really? WOTC has been positively benevolent about online resources. About the only C&D drama I can think of was when that guy in Italy posted a 4e character generator that used cut and pasted copyrighted material and then charged for people to use it. Are you seriously going to try to say that WOTC had no right to shut him down?
Yup, WOTC yanked the pdf's, but, again, that's a different issue as well. It's their product, they can certainly do so and suffer the bad press in response.
TSR was unbelievable. Never minding the massive plagiarism and outright IP theft they engaged in (I still have an orginal Deities and Demigods with the Cthulu and Melibonean mythos in it), any fan effort was crushed as soon as it became known.
Sure, there was some great 2e stuff. Of course there was. Sturgeon's Law applies. 90% of everything is crap. Well, when you bang out more 2e product than the entire 3e library (WOTC and 3pp combined), you're bound to have some good stuff there.
Daztur
Adventurer
Yup, WotC's been far nicer about managing their IP than TSR ever was. Still incredibly stupid to yank the PDF sales of out of print stuff. I can understand (if not agree with) the idea that not selling PDFs of your current stuff helps drive DDI and book sales but not selling PDFs of the out of print stuff basically boiled down to "no thanks, we don't want to take that money that you're giving us for doing something that costs us basically nothing." It smelled like a decision made by some MBA applying some general purpose business theory without pausing to think for a moment about the specifics. I wouldn't be surprised if the person who gave the order to take down the PDFs didn't realize that most of the PDFs were for out of print stuff...
