[EDITION WARZ] Selling Out D&D's Soul?

[Henry]

Gents, let's try to keep an even keel when posting, and make sure we're not raising the thermostat for others to follow suit. So far, I've been more than impressed with the fact that this has continued without any name calling and flame matches, and I'd like to see it not approach it. Otherwise, I can't let it stay open.

To be fair:

Gary by his admission wasn't largely involved in the home office business in the 1984 to 1986 range, because of the California work, and the legal and comtrol troubles the company was embroiled in at the time. While those two books may have had some of the kinds of things that went into 2E, design-wise, they were pretty clearly precursors, not successors. I owned both, and it seemed pretty clear to me.

and Merric is one of the last people I'd accuse of having an Anti-1e agenda. He's just keen to point out each edition has its warts, 3E included.

Besides that, isn't that getting pretty off topic from the discussion?

 

[DestroyYouAlot]

Well at least this time you admit you skewed things to fit whatever anti 1e AD&D agenda you're pushing.

Merric's part of the vast right-wing conspiracy to discredit 1st edition AD&D, this has been covered.

 

[Flexor the Mighty!]

Why do you hate so much Merric? Can't you let it go?


Seriously though, this is an interesting conversation.

 

[PapersAndPaychecks]

Personally, I tend to think of UA as D&D 1.5. OA/DSG/WSG/MoP are D&D 1.95. DragonLance Adventures (TM) only theoretically has anything to do with 1e. But I think this is personal to me.

MM2 was the last AD&D book I think of as pre-1.5.

 

[Henry]

Personally, I tend to think of UA as D&D 1.5. OA/DSG/WSG/MoP are D&D 1.95. DragonLance Adventures (TM) only theoretically has anything to do with 1e. But I think this is personal to me.

MM2 was the last AD&D book I think of as pre-1.5.

I can see it. I can see a gradual accumulation of ideas and snippets before it wound up at 2E.

However, I loved Dragonlance Adventures. It heavily influenced both the magic items flavor and Clerical domains, gods, etc. that I created for my homebrew campaign. It was one of the first books (given how rare the Greyhawk box was to find at the time) that showed me how a unified campaign world, with its unique variants, custom classes and spells, etc. could look, and how I could do something similar.

 

[PapersAndPaychecks]

I'm sure Forgotten Realms was around before DLA?

 

[Flexor the Mighty!]

FR didn't have any of the custom classes and stuff that DLA had. It was similar to the Greyhawk stuff in that it was a world that was totally core AD&D.

 

[Henry]

I'm sure Forgotten Realms was around before DLA?

Dragonlance Adventures was 1987, I believe; the first FR box was either 1986 or '87, I think? Also, as Flexor said, FR was pretty vanilla compared to the FR boxed set; while a pretty neat world, it really didn't have the kind of flavor that stood out to the 16-year-old me. In Greyhawk, and FR before it, Clerics were Clerics were Clerics, for instance: I didn't have the benefit of people like Diaglo, teaching me the kinds of customizations that were going on with OD&D and AD&D back then. Every DM I every played under had clerics of Aphrodite that had the exact same powers and skills as a cleric of Ares, the only thing different was what holy symbol they sported. DLA taught me that an astral cleric would be very different from a war cleric, or a healing cleric, or a sea cleric. Previously, what magic items weren't named after Vecna, Johydee, and Delvhar-Nar were called "sword +1" or "necklace of fireballs". Now, it was "Mageslayer" and "Staff of Magius" and "that magic mouse ring." It really taught me a lot about bringing life to a campaign for players.

 

[Lanefan]

Individual initiative seems to be used mostly by groups who are (understandably) confused by the 1e initiative rules and (incorrectly) apply DEX modifiers.

Or who, like us, prefer the more realistic approach of not having everyone on a side swing/cast/act at once. Ditto for re-rolling; we do it because in a real combat the participants don't wait their turn; they act when they can, and the initiative roll* shows when that is.

* - or rolls; if someone can do two or more things in a round for whatever reason (multi-attacks, haste, etc.) each action gets its own initiative.

Lanefan

 

[PapersAndPaychecks]

realistic approach