Do you consider 2nd edition AD&D "old-school"

[Ariosto]

I see an important distinction between the texts as artifacts on one hand, and their interpretation in "gamer culture" on the other.

This occurred to me in the context of associations of 2E with the "golden age of railroads" and the play philosophy espoused even in the core books -- associations that for some posters seem to outweigh the essential continuity of rules systems (albeit perhaps with some "improvements" that some of us might regard as actually demonstrating a poor grasp of those systems).

Although there are probably some aspects of 3E with which I would take issue in any case, I think my great problem with its rules heaviness is really more a problem with some player attitudes -- basically, "rules lawyering" taken not as a vice but as a virtue under the guise of "system mastery".

(My problem with 4E's rules heaviness is that when it is not going out of its way to offend my -- presumably "old school" -- sensibilities it is simply boring me to tears.)

I am not going to laud as a great virtue the scope of necessity of ad hoc rulings in OD&D, or the occasional opacity even of 2E AD&D that can inspire almost Talmudic debates online. None of that is to my mind a great asset. A number of possibly greater minds than mine sometimes seem to disagree -- but most of them seem not to have been refereeing OD&D for 30+ years.

More tools in the toolkit is not a bad thing, and The Strategic Review and The Dragon (at least into the early 1980s) were full of rules to handle this or that topic that had come up in campaigns.

The observations of people looking at the original "little brown booklets" with fresh eyes are often insightful and inspiring. Even people who actually "played AD&D" for years are sometimes surprised at what they find when they at last sit down to read the books carefully (as opposed, say, to injecting reflexively a Basic/Expert Set gloss at every turn). To this day, I discover overlooked gems in the gloriously Gygaxian Dungeon Masters Guide, and not just because I was 13 years old at my first reading.

Just as the old games are often misrepresented, so I think that even (and indeed most significantly) fans of 3E have tended to read into it inferences that the designers did not mean to imply.

There is a feedback loop of ideas going from a generation of designers to a generation of gamers, and then coming back -- mutated -- to influence a new generation of designers.

There may be rather literal generations involved. My impression is that the 3E design team had cut their teeth on 1E, whereas much of their audience (rather naturally) was younger and had started with 2E. Almost a decade later, the relevant editions (or at least sub-editions) have probably advanced chronologically. Yes, there are always a few of us longer in the tooth -- but I suspect that the teens and 20s have remained more commonly the prime years for getting into D&D (after which real life tends to get in the way for a while), and that the design teams have not been recruited from successively older demographics.

 

[NerfedWizard]

2nd Ed is in the same bracket as 3e/3.5

The real issue is not the meat and bones of the rules, nor even the style of adventure that people play (railroaded or whatever). It's that 2nd edition is when the game lost its gonads. Let's be honest here, AD&D 1st edition had Deities and Demigods taking a more than irreverent look at a number of still-practised major world religions. It used the word "demons" without fear. It had housecats killing magic-users.* In one hit. You had your basic character class and that was more or less what you were - you were a fighter, a cleric, a magic-user, an illusionist, whatever. It was an honest, raw, basic vehicle for rough and ready dungeoneering. It was a game which boasted on its cover that it had a hardback encylopedia of monsters running to XYZ pages, because in those days that was top notch. It was a game with the confidence openly to dictate to the players and DM all sorts of things about random treasure and random encounters, while at the same time being built on such a simple, slender structure that you could tinker with it all you liked without bringing the whole edifice toppling down. This was a game with balls.

*OK, still an issue in 2nd edition

In 2nd edition, in contrast, everything was sanitised and the atmosphere and character of the game was toned down to something really quite bland. Then they brought out things like The Complete Fighter and character kits which on top of widespread use of non-weapon proficiencies and general powercreep meant that the options for customising your character turned the whole thing into an exercise in player appeasement rather than just getting on with cutting down some orcs. 3rd/3.5 is basically 2nd edition taken to pieces and fitted back together again so that you can do things like slot levels in one class on top of levels in another, taking the internal logic of 2nd edition to its maximum, then adding some excruciatingly annoying XP budgets for encounters and all sorts of other stupid rubbish, IMHO, YMMV. Plus more of the endless ratcheting up of everyone's hitpoints which really just makes you wonder who they think they're fooling - yes you've got 5 more hitpoints than you had in the previous edition, but so has everyone else so what's the point? It's just more numbers to count.

So OD&D and 1st edition were old-school.

2nd, 3rd, 3.5 are modern D&D.

BECMI is a child-friendly interface which has its natural home somewhere between AD&D 1st edition and AD&D 2nd edition.

4th edition because of its structure based around powers which everone has access to and its blatant fixing in advance of treasure parcels and challenges is a totally different entity altogether.

AD&D 1st edition sought fun in the raw feeling of exposure to danger.

AD&D 2nd edition hid sheltered away from the rawness and ballsiness of 1st edition and offered player appeasement. From another perspective it was basically a slightly more "sensible", "flexible", "modern", "open-minded" version of AD&D. It sought fun by letting players play what they wanted to play and setting the adventures up to give them the sorts of experiences they wanted.

D&D 3rd edition and 3.5 basically went nuts over internal logic and coherence, taking 2nd edition to bits and putting it back together again with trainspotter-style obsessiveness plus another dose of player appeasement. Like 2e it sought fun by letting players play what they wanted to play and setting the adventures up to give them the sorts of experiences they wanted.

D&D 4th edition is the ultimate >> so far << in player appeasement. It seeks fun by trying to give everyone something cool to do all the time, trying to make every character *awesome* and trying to ensure that at each stage of the game everything is *cool*.

So, old-school:- 1st edition; modern:- 2nd/3rd; weird & shiny:- 4th.

IMHO, YMMV etc.

 

[Mallus]

Which is another way of saying that you do get the utility to some degree, correct?

Oh sure... that's why I italicized 'quite'.

They are only good or bad in terms of how they interact with a group's or individual's play preferences.

Agreed.

Recognizing differences in what game rules support well isn't limiting. Refusing to do the same is.....if for no other reason than it hinders in modification and/or selection of a ruleset that supports your playstyle.

You would think that most people would select the game system that best suits their play style (and certainly some people do just that). What I find interesting is when that doesn't happen, when people use a particular rule set to do what it isn't suited for --and this is common in my experience.

I suspect what's really going on is that gamers select systems that do what they don't want to fix/improve/modify well. If you want to call this choosing a system that supports their play style, so be it.

For example, a more narrativist RPG like Spirit of the Century seems to be the best match for my group's play style . Most of use came to gaming through fiction, most of us have a show-offy streak of author (you've read the notes to our campaign setting). A perfect fit, right? Except that we also enjoy a good tactical fight, the thing that 4e does so well it gets derided for.

For us, it's easier to add narrativist elements to 4e (or 3e) than to add a tactical wargame to Spirit of the Century. So for now the 4e campaign is our main game, and SotC is a summer replacement.

 

[Grimstaff]

Personally, I don't consider 2E to be "old-school" at all. That's not to say its not a fun game, I enjoyed playing it. It was, however, the first version of D&D to be designed by a corporation, rather than the original creators of the game, and it suffers for it. It pandered to the moms against D&D crowd with its omission of assassins, devils, harlots, etc. It homogenized illusionists and druids. It instituted non-weapon proficiencies as a core mechanic rather than an option, further straying from the old-school ethic of describing how you do something as opposed to making a sterile skill check.

2E also heralded the concept of character customization through rules and statistics, rather than through player/dm interaction. For instance, the difference between a Swashbuckling fighter and Heavy Knight fighter was now determined by skills, pluses and minuses, etc.

Again, these aren't necessarily criticisms, just reasons why I can't consider the edition to be old-school.

 

[Mallus]

It pandered to the moms against D&D crowd with its omission of assassins, devils, harlots, etc.

But how hard were they to put back in? I had plenty of devils -well, demons actually-- and assassins in my long-running 2e campaign. Harlots, alas, not so much.

It instituted non-weapon proficiencies as a core mechanic rather than an option, further straying from the old-school ethic of describing how you do something as opposed to making a sterile skill check.

If they players want to be challenged directly, the DM is free to oblige them. Aren't all rules optional? And aren't more options for resolving tasks/conflicts, well, nice to have? (within reason, of course. Profession: Cooper and Perform: Hammer Dulcimer are a bit much).

Besides, how many 1e players actually described how they were going to make their horse run faster? Or build a bridge? More importantly, how many DM's could reasonably evaluate the wide variety of player action descriptions they got? I bet a lot of task resolution came down to randomly-assigned percentages and ability checks.

I'm sure some 1e DM's were actually polymaths. I'm also sure most weren't.

2E also heralded the concept of character customization through rules and statistics, rather than through player/dm interaction. For instance, the difference between a Swashbuckling fighter and Heavy Knight fighter was now determined by skills, pluses and minuses, etc.

1e also featured a whole lot of identical fighters wearing plate and carrying longswords. There's something to said about providing some guidelines for mechanically representing a wider variety of character concepts, at least with regard to the game's core activities (like the hitting of things).

 

[Mallus]

It's that 2nd edition is when the game lost its gonads.

Is there a tough way to pretend to be an elf?

AD&D 1st edition had Deities and Demigods taking a more than irreverent look at a number of still-practised major world religions.

It was more an irreverent look at a number of copyrighted materials owned by other parties.

It had housecats killing magic-users.* In one hit.

<shatner>You consider... this.... a plus?</shatner>

D&D 4th edition is the ultimate >> so far << in player appeasement.

Are you comparing 4e players to Hitler?

 

[Umbran]

So you have said, although I am not aware of any rational argument you have made to explain why you feel this way.

Yes. Largely because most of the discussion I've seen and been part of on the topic has overall been less than pleasant. So far, this one is turning out no different.

Rather than having some patience and waiting for me to answer, you set about trying to tell me what my thoughts imply, even though you have not heard my thoughts, effectively putting words in my mouth. That the words are rather unseemly certainly doesn't help.

Whether or not it was you conscious intention, the effect is generally, "Let's put him in a position where he has to refute our assertions first, on the defensive and slightly annoyed, so that he is more likely to say things in a less cogent manner so we may rip his position apart." One of the older rhetorical tricks in the book. Again, perhaps not intentional, but there nonetheless.

This does not leave me inclined to engage, sir. Perhaps some other time, when you approach the discussion in a different manner.

 

[Ariosto]

[Deities & Demigods] was more an irreverent look at a number of copyrighted materials owned by other parties.

The number was only three (Cthulhu, Elric, Nehwon) -- versus 13 traditional sources: American Indian, Arthurian, Babylonian, Celtic, Central American, Chinese, Egyptian, Finnish, Greek, Indian, Japanese, Norse and Sumerian.

[Second Edition] instituted non-weapon proficiencies as a core mechanic rather than an option, further straying from the old-school ethic of describing how you do something as opposed to making a sterile skill check.

Proficiencies were clearly labeled optional, and the following text applied: All proficiency rules are additions to the game. Weapon proficiencies are tournament level rules, optional in regular play, and nonweapon proficiencies are completely optional. Proficiencies are not necessary for a balanced game. They add an additional dimension to characters, however, and anything that enriches characterization is a bonus.

Moreover, they did not really dictate anything. It was still up to the DM to determine a reasonable probability of success. 3E offered more tools for the DM in making such assessments, a guide to what the game factors were meant to represent in a game that covered the spectrum from ordinary humans on up to demigods. That's an enterprise plentifully familiar from the 1E volumes' cornucopia of advice (and many magazine articles).

Movement to a new ethos was really a player-initiated movement, in the course of which it came to be that "everyone knows" things about the rule books that are false.

[3E added] excruciatingly annoying XP budgets for encounters ... [4th Edition's] blatant fixing in advance of treasure parcels and challenges is a totally different entity altogether.

In themselves, those are just tools for DMs -- on par with the dungeon level encounter tables and treasure tables in old D&D (but expressing more plainly what the designers had in mind). It was players who decided that characters of Level X should always have Level X encounters or else the DM was "cheating". Even the 4E DMG recommends a range of encounter levels. It was players who made a fetish of optimization for combat and "balance" on that basis; the 4E team merely designed a game around that existing ethos in the new game culture.

They also threw out the "simulation" emphasis that had prevailed in rules development right into 3E. That's another thing that makes the rules heaviness tiresome to me. The basic, classic D&D framework is dissociated enough from details of the imagined world; I don't need or want a lot of complications to make it even more so!

2nd edition is when the game lost its gonads.

I am no fan of the (to my eyes silly) renaming of demons and devils, much less of the later wholesale replacement of real mythological inspirations with proprietary "product". However, that's a pretty small part of the 2E core -- about on par with the expurgation of explicit Tolkien references starting with later printings of the original D&D books.

 

[Mallus]

The number was only three (Cthulhu, Elric, Nehwon)

I may have exaggerated a little for comedic effect...

 

[Herschel]

Since 2e came out, I've often mixed the two versions of AD&D... many disagree, but for me they are essentially the same game. The PO stuff, on the other hand, modified quite a bit the system.

This. The Player's Option stuff really changed the game and was the gear up for 3E. I never allowed them. The handbooks were fine, they just required me to be on my toes as a DM and make sure the negative aspects of kits were also in play.