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D&D Older Editions, OSR, & D&D Variants
Dragon Reflections #93
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<blockquote data-quote="Wofano Wotanto" data-source="post: 9678374" data-attributes="member: 7044704"><p>I started out in the late 70's and played some form of D&D or another steadily (but not exclusively) until about 1983, took a multi-year break, then resumed when Spelljammer came out, which let a few years of dabbling in the settings that flooded out under 2e AD&D as TSR was dying. Was an early and enthusiastic adoptee of 3e but didn't play much, too many other, greater interests. 4e got by far the most actual table time of any WotC edition, and I moved into 13th Age without regret. Paltested 5e and couldn't stand it, and I have zero interest in whatever the official name in for 5.5. Just don't need more new fantasy RPGs, period.</p><p></p><p>Going back to the beginning (which I assume is of the most interest to you) my childhood (I started at 11) D&D experiences were split into two parallel lines. As a rural small town kid, there was a small but zealous group of players from the local school district. I gamed with them the most, and it was all AD&D owing to it being shiny and new and "obviously" better/more grown-up than Basic or OD&D. I have very little play experience with any iteration of Basic prior to the Rules Encyclopedia and Gazetteers, which apparently leaves me in the minority. OTOH, the local game group was deeply confused about what was Advanced and what was Basic, and I know many of my slightly-older (two years was a big deal back then) DMs shoehorned quite a bit of Basic stuff in without really grokking that they were doing so.</p><p></p><p>That was the home game. There was also a gaming club in the "Big City" (not even 100,000 people in those days) that I could usually get to despite the 45 minute car ride each way, although that died off in the early 80s for me. They had specific "kiddie tables" run by some of the most gleefully masochistic GMs I've ever met using crazy mashup rules full of homebrew, and mostly meant to keep a dozen or so teenage boys (mostly "city kids") entertained for 4-6 hours. I managed to graduate to "kid knows his gaming" status pretty early and drifted between RQ, T&T, and more definably AD&D-ish tables, along with a fairly steady Traveller game that led me to infect the locals back home with scifi roleplaying. I only visited the club a few times post-college, and despite there being plenty of adult tables to play at I found I preferred playing at home or the FLGS, a prefrence that lasted until 2020.</p><p></p><p>Having said all that to establish where I'm coming from:</p><p></p><p>The local games were dominated by multiclass fighter/magic-users of the elven/half-elven variety, supported by large numbers of Dwarf and human fighters and human clerics. PC thieves were very rare, and we were constantly being robbed by NPC hireling thieves in response. People shied away from druids due to the level cap, very few people ever rolled stats that would allow a paladin,. Weirdly, rangers were almost as common as straight fighters, and almost everyone who made the stat rolls to allow it played one - something I confess to doing myself a couple of times. We used all the hireling/henchman/follower and morale rules pretty stringently, which helped our lower player-count games by bulking up our parties. A lot of gameplay took on the tone of an exploratory, archeological or military expeditions. </p><p></p><p>The club games were more chaotic and I didn't know the people around me nearly as well so it's harder to track, but I recall there being a lot of fighters from any kin that had an decent cap in the class, a lot of (mostly human) clerics, a surprising number of half-orcs, and very few thieves. The group that I played with longest over there was also dedicated to the use of NPCs in the party to bulk up numbers, but tended to have more players t start with so when we had everyone and their backup singers show up at once it was like a small army - and got treated as one by most NPCs. Surprisingly few elves of any kind, although that may have been die to several DMs disliking them and casting them as villains in their games - something I also saw in RQ.</p><p></p><p>And yeah, all that has influenced me over the years, even if "play an army" style games are largely a thing of the past now. Ars Nagica might actually be the closest it get to how I remember D&D being in my youth.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Wofano Wotanto, post: 9678374, member: 7044704"] I started out in the late 70's and played some form of D&D or another steadily (but not exclusively) until about 1983, took a multi-year break, then resumed when Spelljammer came out, which let a few years of dabbling in the settings that flooded out under 2e AD&D as TSR was dying. Was an early and enthusiastic adoptee of 3e but didn't play much, too many other, greater interests. 4e got by far the most actual table time of any WotC edition, and I moved into 13th Age without regret. Paltested 5e and couldn't stand it, and I have zero interest in whatever the official name in for 5.5. Just don't need more new fantasy RPGs, period. Going back to the beginning (which I assume is of the most interest to you) my childhood (I started at 11) D&D experiences were split into two parallel lines. As a rural small town kid, there was a small but zealous group of players from the local school district. I gamed with them the most, and it was all AD&D owing to it being shiny and new and "obviously" better/more grown-up than Basic or OD&D. I have very little play experience with any iteration of Basic prior to the Rules Encyclopedia and Gazetteers, which apparently leaves me in the minority. OTOH, the local game group was deeply confused about what was Advanced and what was Basic, and I know many of my slightly-older (two years was a big deal back then) DMs shoehorned quite a bit of Basic stuff in without really grokking that they were doing so. That was the home game. There was also a gaming club in the "Big City" (not even 100,000 people in those days) that I could usually get to despite the 45 minute car ride each way, although that died off in the early 80s for me. They had specific "kiddie tables" run by some of the most gleefully masochistic GMs I've ever met using crazy mashup rules full of homebrew, and mostly meant to keep a dozen or so teenage boys (mostly "city kids") entertained for 4-6 hours. I managed to graduate to "kid knows his gaming" status pretty early and drifted between RQ, T&T, and more definably AD&D-ish tables, along with a fairly steady Traveller game that led me to infect the locals back home with scifi roleplaying. I only visited the club a few times post-college, and despite there being plenty of adult tables to play at I found I preferred playing at home or the FLGS, a prefrence that lasted until 2020. Having said all that to establish where I'm coming from: The local games were dominated by multiclass fighter/magic-users of the elven/half-elven variety, supported by large numbers of Dwarf and human fighters and human clerics. PC thieves were very rare, and we were constantly being robbed by NPC hireling thieves in response. People shied away from druids due to the level cap, very few people ever rolled stats that would allow a paladin,. Weirdly, rangers were almost as common as straight fighters, and almost everyone who made the stat rolls to allow it played one - something I confess to doing myself a couple of times. We used all the hireling/henchman/follower and morale rules pretty stringently, which helped our lower player-count games by bulking up our parties. A lot of gameplay took on the tone of an exploratory, archeological or military expeditions. The club games were more chaotic and I didn't know the people around me nearly as well so it's harder to track, but I recall there being a lot of fighters from any kin that had an decent cap in the class, a lot of (mostly human) clerics, a surprising number of half-orcs, and very few thieves. The group that I played with longest over there was also dedicated to the use of NPCs in the party to bulk up numbers, but tended to have more players t start with so when we had everyone and their backup singers show up at once it was like a small army - and got treated as one by most NPCs. Surprisingly few elves of any kind, although that may have been die to several DMs disliking them and casting them as villains in their games - something I also saw in RQ. And yeah, all that has influenced me over the years, even if "play an army" style games are largely a thing of the past now. Ars Nagica might actually be the closest it get to how I remember D&D being in my youth. [/QUOTE]
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