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

[Thurbane]

Hmm. Although there are certainly a lot of "save or you might as well be dead" abilities, I'm not so sure about how often they actually come up in play. My memories of AD&D involve a lot of attritional combat.

Oh yeah, there was definitely a lot of slogging it out toe-to-toe, but just off the top of my head, I can recall plenty of my characters being: paralyzed by ghouls, petrified by basilisks, confused by umber hulks, death-gazed by bodaks, charmed by beholders (if you were lucky! ), and, most importantly, poisoned by snakes, spiders, wyverns, medusae, imps, quasits and all the rest.

 

[MerricB]

Oh yeah, there was definitely a lot of slogging it out toe-to-toe, but just off the top of my head, I can recall plenty of my characters being: paralyzed by ghouls, petrified by basilisks, confused by umber hulks, death-gazed by bodaks, charmed by beholders (if you were lucky! ), and, most importantly, poisoned by snakes, spiders, wyverns, medusae, imps, quasits and all the rest.

Bodaks - how to kill parties.

Cheers!

 

[Hussar]

Brachiosaurus (100)
Hydra (by heads, ranges from 30 to 192, athough maxes out on 48 per character)
Pyrohydra (by heads, ranges from 30 to 120, without breath weapons, although maxes out on 40 per character)
Mammoth (76)

Average hit points for a 10th level fighter is 10 x 5.5 = 55 plus Con bonus x 10, say an additional 20 hp to be generous, for 75 hp.

I did allow the brachiosaurus to step on its victim (max damage 80), but otherwise ignored special attacks. In the case of the 1e carrion crawler, 6 attacks lead to 6 chances to be paralyzed. How long does that paralysis last?

In the case of energy drain monsters (max loss of 2 levels in AD&D 1e), hit point loss occurs from the level drain itself.

Add special abilities, and the 1e DM can make 10th level PCs drop like flies, if that is his goal. As can the 3e DM, really.

But, that's the point. Unless you add in those special abilities, like stepping on a target, most of the 1e monsters simply can't do enough damage. Sure, spiders and other save or die creatures can, but, that was my entire point. I'm talking about straight up damage.

Never mind that the creatures in 1e were piddly by and large. How many brachiosaurs fit into a dungeon? I'm far more likely to encounter a Vrock, which, IIRC, appears in a module for 6th level characters (that hidden shrine or temple one in the jungle that I can never remember the name).

You had to throw hordes at the party because any single creature died in the second round because characters of an appropriate level rarely missed and the creature had so few hit points.

To be fair, my experience is similar to Thurbane's. The only time characters died was when poison or other save or die effects came out.

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Ok, this is likely going to be a long bit, so, feel free to keep scrolling if you like.

Just back to the idea that CCG's are crap. That's a very telling point IMO. It's not "I don't like CCG's" which is an opinion I can probably agree with, but, "CCG's are crap. They are bad games."

Why? What makes a CCG a bad game? Do they have vague and contradictory rules? Not really, most of the rules are pretty straight forward and understandable. Do they try to lock you into a particular playstyle? Not really, the formulation of a deck depends greatly on the player. Are there numerous poorly written rules which break gameplay? Possibly, but, then again, they generally support the game well enough to fix broken rules ASAP. So, what is it about the game that makes it bad?

IMO, CCG's are not bad games. They are generally well written, well supported, and a great deal of fun apparently to the people who play them. That, to me, points to the idea that CCG's are pretty good games. And, while I know that market factors aren't really a great judge, I would say that the enduring popularity of the games does point to a fair level of the game being ok. If Magic were crap, wouldn't people stop buying it?

Now, let's get back to the topic at hand. Every one of those criticisms that I stated for a game being crap can be applied to 1e. Every one of them. Does that make 1e a crap game?

Before your head explodes, let me go through them.

Vague and Contradictory Rules

Initiative rules in 1e. There's a pretty prime example. Weapon vs armor rules - do they apply to creatures? And, what are the penalties or bonuses for using claws or bites vs particular armors? How long does subdue last? The list goes on and on of rules that were vague and confusing. Add to this some fairly opaque writing styles and it makes the game somewhat difficult to play.

Add to this the schizophrenic nature of supplements and core. The core says that you should be happy with low stat characters. But every supplement has NPC's with 17's and 18's in their prime stats. The core says that you should keep players hungry and treasure low. But, the core also says that xp will come from treasure and that just about every creature has thousands of gp potentially in its treasure. In addition, modules have hauls that players actually require bags of holding to cart off all the goodies. There's so much treasure in some modules that carrying it all is a problem.

Locking you into a particular style

Look at the 1e books. Right in the rules we have a table that states that elves and dwarves don't like eachother. Why? Other than building off of Tolkein, what possible reason is there to make dwarves and elves dislike each other part of the rules? After all, neither race covets similar resources, they don't share territory and they have no conflicting goals. Also, why should the rules dictate campaign setting to me? Shouldn't the relations between races be up to the individual DM?

Or, why should halflings be athiests? Why no halfling clerics? Balance issues? Pish. It's because the rules are trying to shoehorn players into a particular format - based on Tolkein and to a lesser extent Howard.

I'm all for rulebooks giving guidance on campaign building. That's great. But, when a particular campaign is hardwired into the rules, to the point where characters are dictated by that setting, then that's an example of poor game design.

Note, I realize the irony of the above considering how much Greyhawk appears in the 3e PHB. However, there is a difference. The Greyhawk references in the 3.5 PHB appear in two places - Gods and named spells. In the Gods section, it's specifically called out that this is only an example and can and should be changed by the DM and removing the names from spells doesn't actually have any mechanical effects. In fact, the SRD shows you can remove ALL Greyhawk campaign elements from the game and it plays exactly the same. Can the same be said for removing racial level limits?

Poorly written rules that break the game

The barbarian, the cavalier. Oh, how I loved my paladin after UA came out and I became the engine of destruction of the gods. Automatic 18/00 strength WAHOO! Never mind the spells in UA. Yummy. Or the numerous typos and misprints in the books that were only corrected in Dragon, which, if you were a young man growing up outside of the city, you could only get once in a blue moon.

Heck, I collected the Dragonlance modules. I actually had to pay for my errata. DL 5 is an entire module filled with errata of the first four modules. Now how's that for support? Stoneskin lasts until you get attacked enough according to my Player's handbook. We'd cast it days in advance and trounce the first two or three encounters of every adventure.

It wasn't until years later I found we did things wrong.

 

[BroccoliRage]

I think Card games are crap because I find them to be juvenile. Noone is being forced to agree with me. Besides, that was a comment made in passing. The larger point behind my original statement was that lots of folks who play rpg's also play card games. the two hold hands, more so than rpg's and board games.

People buy things I consider crap all the time. Consider rap music. I'm just not down with the hip hop. In my opinion, it is absolute garbage.

I don't think supplement NPC's (are you referring to Elminster in particular here?) are a good example of what a player should look for in a PC. That's purely subjective there. An Elminster type character really bores me. Someone who is just amazing in every sense and has few limitations is not challenging to play, from the gamist or role player's point of view. It may be fun for a 1 off romp, but it gets stale to me.

1. Esoteric/Contradictory rules

You get alot agreement with me here. I'm almost positive that I do some things "wrong" when I DM 1e (2e is much more defined), and that I have jettisoned some parts of the games folks find essential. That's just their opinions, they are welcome to leave my table at any time. I find Gary's style of writing to be convoluted at times, esoteric at others.

Again, I was stating an opinion. You disagree. I got the point a while ago.

2. I did away with racial level limits long ago. I also did away with racial stat bonuses. You either qualify for a class or you don't. To still provide an example of the stereotypical elf, halfling, dwarf, whatever, I allow the classes as defined in B/X, and then I bump it up in certain ways to be on a par with AD&D characters. In my games, it is not impossible to have a half orc fighter, human bard, and 1st level Elf in a party. I got the idea after reading something Mentzer wrote, and seeing the paragon classes in the 3e UA, which seem to be an attempt to create B/X style play within the 3e system.

I also feature elves as severe racists, the perpetrators of many genetic cleansing crusades against other races.

One of the nice things about most game systems is that you can pretty much use all editions of them and get rid of what you don't like if you aren't in a tournament setting.

So you named two things I also don't like about (A)D&D, and did away with. Gygax is a great guy, and I do respect him as one of the originators of my hobby. He is not my idol, however, and he does not have final say at my table. And, as he said, that's how it should be.

3. Poorly written rules.

Well, the cavalier and barbarian, if I remember correctly, are not easy to qualify for. I haven't cracked my UA open in some time, so if I'm wrong feel free to correct me. They are somewhat overpowered compared to other classes, but they have drawbacks as well. All things considered, neither are very attractive classes to anyone who isn't seeking serious roleplay conflict. Two more overpowered classes are the monk and asassin, but I haven't run into many problems running games for players using them.

You've mentioned flaws that exist in 1e. I agree with you. But again, based on what I've seen of D&D and 3e, I still prefer D&D.

I probably do things "wrong", and someone with a better knowledge could probably point that out to me if they wanted. I don't care, because every houserules I have in place I deliberated on. I streamlined AD&D for my own use and it is still recognizable as AD&D. Now, if I were to run a tournament, I would be in trouble because my game is not by the book. But I'll be damned if we don't have a blast, and these party balance issues don't come up much. If I awarded XP individually, it may be, but I award XP as a group.

I came up with my modifications years ago, and can still refer to the books for clarification as needed. For me to suddenly drop all of that and convert to 3e would be truly pointless, because I'm not only throwing away all that work but I am rendering my collection inert. And I'm a player, not a collector. That's alot of books to give away.

You could use all of those reasons to say 1e is crap, but again, that's just an opinion. And one I disagree with. Kind of how my opinion on card games are just an opinion. What water do they really hold outside of my own perspective? You can get bent out of shape over semantics, but that's silly. Collectible cards games are crap. I truly think that. I think the same about most miniature games.

The strength of D&D as opposed to 3e is it's interchangeability and customization. IF you want a more standardized version, play 3e. That's the way to go with that. But I don't like that, I enjoy the the confusion and sense of something being a little bigger than me that I get from individual games. It adds to the overall sense of playing a D&D game, of being in an alien atmosphere, and I find it to be a great help to suspension of disbelief. Some folks may get that from 3e, and if so, more power to them. I do not, and I have given the game an honest try. Aspects of it remind me of playing a video game, watching some bad anime, playing a wargame, and so on. This are my own personal impressions. I don't need a justification. Just like you don't need one for disliking OOP D&D (if, indeed, you do). It's nothing more than preference. IF you look at what I've been saying throughout this thread, you'll see I haven't actually condemned 3e outside of not playing it.

I have yet to encounter a truly bad roleplaying system. I have encountered quite a few I don't care for, for various reasons.

 

[Philotomy Jurament]

Removed

 

[Flexor the Mighty!]

I have to say we never used weapon vs armor rules, I don't think Gary did either. We did simple 1d6 initiative and with a tie being simultaneous.

Locking you into a particular style is how I view D&D to be honest. There are no dwarven Wizards even when I run 3e. I run a greyhawk games and all those assumptions are still in there, for AD&D, 3e, and C&C. I never really viewed D&D as a generic fantasy game to be honest, It was D&D and had certain assumptions built in. Racial level limits were ignored as well.

 

[MerricB]

I have to say we never used weapon vs armor rules, I don't think Gary did either.

He didn't. I seem to remember he was petitioned to include them (along with the Psionics rules) by well-meaning friends.

Locking you into a particular style is how I view D&D to be honest. There are no dwarven clerics even when I run 3e.

Funny, they're there in 1e. (NPC in 1e, PC in 1e+UA).

More seriously, I have my own restrictions on 3e choices when I run it to fit the style of campaign I want to run. There are certainly assumptions in D&D that you live with, and there are others you can modify. (So, no barbarians, monks or half-orcs in my 3e Ulek campaign).

Cheers!

 

[The Shaman]

Initiative rules in 1e. There's a pretty prime example.

"Surprise is determined by rolling a six-sided die for each party concerned, modifying the result by using the most favorable member of the party concerned, i.e. a ranger, surprised only on a roll of 1, will represent the whole of a group of other character types. Note, however, the effect of dexterity as detailed below. The same holds for mixed types of monsters." - 1e AD&D DMG, p. 61.

"Again, a d6 is rolled, and the scores for the two parties are compared....The higher of the two rolls is said to possess the Initiative for that melee round." - 1e AD&D DMG, p. 62.

"It will often occur that initiative determination results in a tie. This merely indicates that each party has equal chances for acting and that ottacks occur simultaneously. In cases of equal initiative score, damage occrues to both groups regardless of what is inflicted." - 1e AD&D DMG, p. 63.

Weapon vs armor rules - do they apply to creatures?

"Do not confuse armor which is worn with the armor class (AC) rating of a monster." - 1e AD&D PHB, p. 36.

"If you allow weapon type adjustments in your campaign please be certain to remember that these adjustments are for weapons versus specific types of armor, not necessarily against actual armor class." - 1e AD&D DMG, p. 28.

And, what are the penalties or bonuses for using claws or bites vs particular armors?

There are none in the 1e AD&D DMG or PHB - this is rolled into hit dice, which determines attack table.

How long does subdue last?

"A dragon remains subdued for an indefinite period, but if the creature is not strongly held, well treated, given ample treasure, and allowed ample freedom, it will seek to kill its captor and/or escape." - 1e AD&D MM, p. 30.

The list goes on and on of rules that were vague and confusing.

I find the rules above neither vague nor confusing.

Add to this some fairly opaque writing styles and it makes the game somewhat difficult to play.

For a fantasy roleplaying game based on the fantastic literature of Professor Tolkein, Lord Dunsany, Shakespeare, Le Morte d'Arthur, and the Arabian Nights?

Add to this the schizophrenic nature of supplements and core. The core says that you should be happy with low stat characters.

"As ADBD is an ongoing game of fantasy adventuring, it is important to allow participants to generate a viable character of the race and profession which he or she desires. While it is possible to generate some fairly playable characters by rolling 3d6, there is often an extended period of attempts at finding a suitable one due to quirks of the dice. Furthermore, these rather marginal characters tend to have short life expectancy - which tends to discourage new players, as does having to make do with some character of a race and/or class which he or she really can't or won't identify with. Character generation, then, is a serious matter, and it is recommended that the following systems be used. Four alternatives are offered for player characters:..." - 1e AD&D DMG, p. 11.

But every supplement has NPC's with 17's and 18's in their prime stats.

NPCs specifically designed to present challenges to the player characters - I don't understand why this is so surprising.

The core says that you should keep players hungry and treasure low. But, the core also says that xp will come from treasure and that just about every creature has thousands of gp potentially in its treasure. In addition, modules have hauls that players actually require bags of holding to cart off all the goodies. There's so much treasure in some modules that carrying it all is a problem.

It's never assumed that the players and their characters will find everything, nor is it assumed that they will be able to carry it off easily.

1e also includes training costs and other player character expenses such as henchmen and hirelings, taxes and levies, and stronghold maintenance if applicable. And then there was this: "Each player character will automatically expend not less than 100 gold pieces per level of experience per month. This is simply support, upkeep, equipment, and entertainment expense. These costs are to be deducted by the Dungeon Master automatically, and any further spending by the PC is to be added to these costs. Such expense is justified by the 'fact' that adventurers are a free-wheeling and high-living lot." - 1e AD&D DMG, p. 25.

Look at the 1e books. Right in the rules we have a table that states that elves and dwarves don't like eachother. Why? Other than building off of Tolkein, what possible reason is there to make dwarves and elves dislike each other part of the rules? After all, neither race covets similar resources, they don't share territory and they have no conflicting goals.

Treehuggers and resource extractors are not in conflict with one another?

Also, why should the rules dictate campaign setting to me? Shouldn't the relations between races be up to the individual DM?

They don't, and they are.

Or, why should halflings be athiests? Why no halfling clerics?

NPC halfling druids, 1e AD&D PHB, p. 14.

I'm all for rulebooks giving guidance on campaign building. That's great. But, when a particular campaign is hardwired into the rules, to the point where characters are dictated by that setting, then that's an example of poor game design.

Why are elves immune to sleep, more resistant to certain spells, able to see better in low-light conditions, proficient with longsword, rapier, longbow,and shortbow, more alert, and better at finding secret doors without actively searching? Aren't these attributes that describe 3e D&D elves "hardwired into the rules" as well? And if I use these elves as written, aren't they dictating an aspect of my setting? What if I think elves should be presented as they are in Norse mythology? Or in Three Hearts and Three Lions? How does 3e make this possible in ways that 1e doesn't?

Note, I realize the irony of the above considering how much Greyhawk appears in the 3e PHB. However, there is a difference. The Greyhawk references in the 3.5 PHB appear in two places - Gods and named spells.

The Greyhawk setting is incorporated into every one of the player character races except halflings in 3e, as well as many of the monsters.

Oh, how I loved my paladin after UA came out and I became the engine of destruction of the gods. Automatic 18/00 strength WAHOO!

Page number and quote, please? I don't have UA to check this out myself.

Or the numerous typos and misprints in the books that were only corrected in Dragon, which, if you were a young man growing up outside of the city, you could only get once in a blue moon.

GDW did exactly the same thing for Traveller in Journal of the Travellers' Aide Society - it's how things were done before the Intreweb became ubiquitous.

The fact that magazine distribution was spotty where you lived as a kid is hardly a valid criticism. And TSR offered subscriptions.

It wasn't until years later I found we did things wrong.

And that's who's fault, exactly?

 

[Philotomy Jurament]

"Again, a d6 is rolled, and the scores for the two parties are compared....The higher of the two rolls is said to possess the Initiative for that melee round." - 1e AD&D DMG, p. 62.

"It will often occur that initiative determination results in a tie. This merely indicates that each party has equal chances for acting and that ottacks occur simultaneously. In cases of equal initiative score, damage occrues to both groups regardless of what is inflicted." - 1e AD&D DMG, p. 63.

Uh oh, 1E initiative rules citations have appeared...

I like 1E a lot, but there's really no denying that the initiative rules are confusing and cumbersome (and perhaps even contradictory, in places). IMO, the best "by-the-book" resource for running 1E combat is the ADDICT document [link is a PDF] put together by DMPrata.

Personally, I prefer the B/X or BECMI approach to initiative.

 

[Thurbane]

<snip>

My hat's off to you sir - your post is an inspiration to all of us that remember 1E being a great game, and not the eldritch, unplayable monstrosity that some of these "whippersnappers" are claiming!