Edition reccomendations? (Earlier d&d)

[Agamon]

Rules Cyclopedia FTW!!!!11!!1BBQ!1!!

 

[kitsune9]

Rules Cyclopedia FTW!!!!11!!1BBQ!1!!

BBQ and Rules Cyclopedia makes an awesome combo!

 

[Tav_Behemoth]

The great virtue of Basic / Expert over AD&D or OSRIC is that it's stripped down to just what you need to play in the original style. AD&D is grand and baroque and I love it to death, but I find that both it and the 1974 original D&D lend themselves to a playstyle where you spend a lot of time going "hey did even Gary use these rules for character age categories or weapon speed factors?" (AD&D) or "didja notice that the description for haste only says it is the opposite of slow and visa versa?" (OD&D). I think these are valuable koans to meditate upon but not everyone likes pausing their session to discuss such esoterica as much as New York Red Box does.

The great virtue of the Rules Compendium over B/X is that it's all in one book, and has lots of cool add-ons like extra character classes and specializations and mass combat and strongholds that give you the extra scope of AD&D but are more clearly presented and overall better organized. The great disadvantage is that you can get B/X on Ebay for $10 and the RC often runs ten times that.

Modesty forbids me from saying that Adventurer Conqueror King is, like the Rules Compendium, elegantly built on a B/X chassis, has subtly redesigned everything from the bottom up so that the high-level stuff like stronghold economics make sense with the low-level prices of hiring and equipping a man-at-arms, and can be picked up all in one book for a lot less than the RC or together with the Player's Companion that has new classes and spells and guidelines for designing your own usable with any of these old-style games.

EDIT: No, apparently modesty didn't forbid me from saying that. I will have to check my filters.

 

[thedungeondelver]

Yeah, listen to these people: you don't want AD&D, man, with its pages of lore, demons, devils, artifacts, the conversational tone of the DUNGEON MASTERS GUIDE, the art of Dave Sutherland III, David A. Trampier, over a dozen classic modules. Play Basic D&D, or better yet a sterilized clone of it, or better still use the RULES CYCLOPEDIA.

 

[nedjer]

I've a cut-down S&W variant clone called Renegade on free download. It's a playtest, as it's in the course of begin adapted further for kids. However, the game's complete in terms of everything you'd need to get going/ try-out Old School.

Right-Click - Save Link As or the PDF'll pop right up. Renegade.

 

[Water Bob]

I never ran or played an Old D&D (three little books) or Original D&D (the Basic/Expert, Rules Encylcopedia stuff). I have played a lot of 1E AD&D, 2E AD&D, and now, 3.5 E D&D (a d20 3.5 clone).

Of those I haven't played, my impression is that the pre AD&D versions are very simple games. There is only one type of Elf, for example, and "elf" would be his character class.

1E AD&D is a game for strong, decisive DMs--a person who is extremely creative and descriptive, able to come up with dice throws on the fly, comfortable with ad-libbing things, and a tendency to tweak the rules to his taste.

2E AD&D is akin to the first AD&D version but as an attept to move the game away from the gaming table into the living room. 2E AD&D is less about graph paper and exact distances and more about a DM sitting in the living room, players comfortable around the coffee table, with the DM describing the action for the players' minds eye.

3E and 3.5E D&D returns the game back closer to its wargaming roots with published rules for each eventuality and an emphasis on a combat grid with minis or tokens to represent the PCs.

Hope that helps.

 

[Libramarian]

A lot of the elements you are familiar with in 3.5 are from AD&D. It's really the roots of modern D&D.

Basic D&D (B/X, BECMI, various retroclones) will get you playing an old school dungeoncrawl the fastest. But it's really stripped down and missing a lot of quintessentially D&D stuff.

The OSR people are mostly Basic D&Ders, particularly the silver age 2.0 types who write and play "retroclones". It's kind of its own subculture...in a way it's as much "D&D for people who don't like D&D" as fourth edition is. They're very system-oriented. They see D&D as an experience that the rules should be optimized to provide. They use compu sci metaphors. They network with Forgies. More nerdy than geeky, if you know what I mean.

I used to be into that but I'm falling out of it. I am realizing belatedly and somewhat to my chagrin that this aspect of the old school movement is what is drawing the interest of the 5e designers. But anyway.

If you need to learn the game in less than a week, or if "rules light", "elegance", "symmetry", "design", are your gamer shibboleths, go with Basic or a retroclone.

Otherwise pick up the AD&D books and read them. Like put them in the bathroom and read them slowly, bit by bit absorbing them for 2 months before playing. And then be prepared to elide and bend and create rules as you play.

Or get OSRIC, skim it and play a dungeon, then if you like it get the AD&D books.

 

[nedjer]

A lot of the elements you are familiar with in 3.5 are from AD&D. It's really the roots of modern D&D.

Basic D&D (B/X, BECMI, various retroclones) will get you playing an old school dungeoncrawl the fastest. But it's really stripped down and missing a lot of quintessentially D&D stuff.

The OSR people are mostly Basic D&Ders, particularly the silver age 2.0 types who write and play "retroclones". It's kind of its own subculture...in a way it's as much "D&D for people who don't like D&D" as fourth edition is. They're very system-oriented. They see D&D as an experience that the rules should be optimized to provide. They use compu sci metaphors. They network with Forgies. More nerdy than geeky, if you know what I mean.

I used to be into that but I'm falling out of it. I am realizing belatedly and somewhat to my chagrin that this aspect of the old school movement is what is drawing the interest of the 5e designers. But anyway.

If you need to learn the game in less than a week, or if "rules light", "elegance", "symmetry", "design", are your gamer shibboleths, go with Basic or a retroclone.

Otherwise pick up the AD&D books and read them. Like put them in the bathroom and read them slowly, bit by bit absorbing them for 2 months before playing. And then be prepared to elide and bend and create rules as you play.

Or get OSRIC, skim it and play a dungeon, then if you like it get the AD&D books.

I hardly know where to begin While your personal experience or understanding may match your comments - I'm afraid you've been misinformed - big time:

• Old School is for a lot more than dungeon crawls.
• Using your imagination and improvising in various ways is very much the quintessential D&D.
• OSR 'people' are not mainly Basic D&Ders - they typically embrace Oe through 2e and aren't necessarily averse to a spot of 3e to 4e.
• They are far from very system-orientated or system-locked as evidenced by, e.g. 1,200 of them in Facebook's Old School Gamers group who pretty much play every game under the sun.
• They 'network with Forgies' is the most palpable nonsense in there, as it's a false generalisation. As someone who enjoys an Old School game be happy to link to the posts where my views on the pseudo-scientific Forge are made clear.
• Learning a huge rule set is not complex; it's laborious. Complex is using your imagination and coming-up with, (and integrating), new ideas on the fly.
• Old School itself is a misnomer, as many so-called Old School ideas are evergreen and intuitive, e.g. play what you like, player choice, open-ended gameplay, collaboration over competition.

In other words, 5e - with all its language-based modularity and integration - is, essentially, Old School intuitive meets modern design. Perhaps it's time to extend the schematic?

Old School
New School
Intuitive School

 

[Philotomy Jurament]

I mean a more dungeon crawl oriented one, course that could be the complete wrong vibe of the previous games but no matter, I was wondering what version of d&d prior to 3.0 people preferred?

I prefer Original D&D and Advanced D&D (1e). Check out my site for more on why I like OD&D. You might especially be interested in the "dungeon as mythic underworld" and "creating a mythic underworld" stuff. And maybe "considering OD&D" and "making the game your own."

Despite my love for OD&D, I consider 1e AD&D to be the de facto standard for "this is D&D." I like both of them, and I'd be hard pressed to choose one or the other.

Those two editions (OD&D and 1e AD&D) stand above all the others, IMO. My third choice would be the 1981 B/X boxed sets.

If you can't find used copies of the OD&D and 1e AD&D books, there are the retro-clone versions: Swords & Wizardry and OSRIC, respectively. But I'd prefer the "real deal" over a retro-clone, if possible. (And I'd prefer a retro-clone over an "inspired by" game like Hackmaster or C&C.) The best way to get a "traditional D&D" experience is to play the actual games.

Also one other question, what edition did Gary mostly run? I think it was AD&D but I could be wrong,

In his later years, he ran Original D&D (although he preferred running his Lejendary Adventure game). The ENW mod game he ran was original D&D. When he wrote new material, though, he wrote in in AD&D terms (e.g., the Castle Zagyg stuff he did was written in D&D terms and then converted to C&C terms by TLG).

 

[trancejeremy]

I never ran or played an Old D&D (three little books) or Original D&D (the Basic/Expert, Rules Encylcopedia stuff). I have played a lot of 1E AD&D, 2E AD&D, and now, 3.5 E D&D (a d20 3.5 clone).

Of those I haven't played, my impression is that the pre AD&D versions are very simple games. There is only one type of Elf, for example, and "elf" would be his character class.

That's actually not true. That was introduced in the 1981 version of the Basic Set (I guess to set it apart from AD&D).

Originally Elves were either Fighters or MUs, depending on the adventure (player got to pick) and Dwarfs and Hobbits were simply Fighters. But then in the Greyhawk supplement (1975), there was true multi-classing, more or less as found in AD&D. OD&D + the Supplements is very close to AD&D.