D&D General Edition Experience - Updated Survey Results, Jan 2021 (All Surveys)

[Thunderfoot]

Heh, I've never seen "broken" used with that definition before. But, I do understand the sentiment I suppose.

Funny thing though. You really, really couldn't play 2e and 1e together without a LOT of work. 2e characters were SO much more powerful than 1e characters. I remember running 1e modules in 2e and having to use modules two, three or four levels higher than the group just to keep up. So, your 2e 5th and 6th level characters were waltzing through Against the Giants and making absolute mincemeat out of it.

I always have to laugh a little when people talk about how compatible 1e and 2e were. They really, really weren't.

Yes. It took some work, sure, but many of the differences were easily rectified (once you learned how. I mean yes there was a learning curve there.) But at the end of the day, their similarities out weighed their differences if you looked at them objectively. Most of the power differences fall in that middle zone that we talk about for 3e. 5th (4th for Pallys and Rangers) though about 9th. If you used a 1e wizard things got interesting at about 12th level because 2e spells capped damage dice and 1e didn't. Fireball is an effective spell, but in the hands of a clever player Lightning Bolt was far more dangerous and deadly.. Specifically the bounce/length/start point of the spell. You had to "throw" the Fireball, you could cast Bolt on the other side of a closed door. So both had their perks and nuances. BTW glad to see you're still around.

 

[CleverNickName]

UPDATE: Survey Results as of January 2024
Sorry for the long delay...this sort of fell off my radar for um, three years. And in that time, hundreds of new votes came in, and most of them were for 3rd Edition. How did that skew the results of 2021?

Here are the survey results as they stand in 2024:

The edition that most people have played: still AD&D 1E, at 83.8%. D&D 3E is gaining on it, though, up 0.4% to to 82.4%
The edition that most people are still playing: still B/X, at 12.8%. D&D 3E is gaining on it also, up 0.3% to 11.0%
The edition that most people didn't play: still OD&D, at 65.6%. None of the others even come close.

The edition that was most favorably regarded: AD&D 1E again, at 86%.
The edition that was most neutrally regarded: Basic D&D, at 18.0%. In 2021 this record was held by B/X D&D, at 17.8%.
The edition that was most unfavorably regarded: D&D 4E, at 36.1%. This is unchanged from last year.

I think it's interesting that out of all 1,452 votes across all 8 editions of D&D that were surveyed, a full 25% of them were for 3rd Edition--and most of those votes came in a year or more after the survey was first opened.

And I think it's unfair that 4E is doomed to languish alone and ignored, with the same 180 votes that it had 3 years ago, because edition warriors couldn't behave themselves and got the thread closed. It wasn't my favorite edition, but it deserved a better legacy than that.