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

[WayneLigon]

Eh, I posted in response to a specific question. But I'll bet you a billion dollars you can't post anything that 3e permits while 1e doesn't.
(Sucker bet. 1e explicitly assumes a DM who isn't afraid to tinker with the rules.)

It also assumes that you won't stray very far from the fold, either, or 'you're not playing D&D'.

There are whole huge reams of things you are prohibited from doing in 1e if you simply follow the rules as written, while in 3e, doing the same thing, very little is. Man, where to start? Wizards using swords. Human wizards making Boots of Elvenkind. Dwarves becoming 15th level wizards.

Both editions assume you're going to tinker; 3E just allows you a look under the hood so you can tinker better and without as great a chance of unbalancing the whole thing. Certainly 1E let you tinker: and gave you absolutely no direction or suggestions on how to do that.

 

[Imperialus]

wow... this is a fascinating thread. I praticularly enjoyed Merric's breakdown of the evolution of D&D.

Now... with regards to the OP, I must admit I'm firmly planted on the fence. 1E was a bizarre amalgamation of house rules, different systems, and while my experience with it is extremely limited (I started playing in 90 and therefore 2nd ed) I have played a few adventures with 1e. I found it quite confusing but that is more likely because I didn't dedicate the time to understanding the rules the same way I did with 2e and I kept confusing the two editions. I can see however the appeal of 1e. It has an incredibly evocative writing style and I often find myself reading the books for pure enjoyment, something I have never done with 3e. That said I do prefer playing 3.X rather than any previous editions.

I find that recently at least 3e has become too bloated. When I DM I allow the 3 core, along with the complete books, UA, PHBII and DMGII (though complete mage is still up in the air). If someone has their heart set on playing something from another splat book I may include it but the default answer is no. Players also have to double check with me if they create anything that isn't strict core. It's more to prevent characters that have a very different concept than the game I plan on running to than to prevent min-maxing but sometimes that enters the mix too. By doing this I find that it keeps the game manageable and still allows players to develop characters as they see fit though I may put the kibosh on some of the more specialized classes (such as the hunter of the dead) if I plan on running a campaign that they just don't fit in.

I’m not a good enough rules lawyer to get into the nitty gritty comparisons between editions like comparative power levels so I guess I’ll just say that regardless of edition D&D is what you make it. It doesn’t matter if you are playing 1e, 2e, 3e, 3.5e, or XPe, the possibilities are only limited by the collective imagination of the gaming group, rules could and can be tweaked to suit just about any campaign, the actual mechanics of the basic rule set providing a guide, or rough outline to see the groups goal (to have fun) realized. How that goal is achieved is as varied as there are groups out there.

 

[PapersAndPaychecks]

Certainly 1E let you tinker: and gave you absolutely no direction or suggestions on how to do that.

Indeed. I prefer my freedom to come without direction or suggestions. You may feel differently.

 

[Keldryn]

McDonalds sells more than Licks because McDondalds takes into account EVERYTHING about the hamburger (including, notably, cost, time, availability, and advertising), and thus makes a hamburger that is better suited to the majority of people because of the qualities it has. It sacrifices taste, sure, but people obviously don't care about taste or it wouldn't be successful. A better burger isn't just about taste -- apparently, people are willing to eat cardboard at 59 cents when they can demand it in about 30 seconds. A good hamburger will take that into account, as McDonald's does.

Bloody hell, now I'm craving McDonald's for lunch. Despite how it doesn't really taste that amazing, and that I usually regret it about half an hour later.

In other words, don't tell me what 3e does wrong, tell me what the other editions did *right*, and tell me specifically, in ways that are in the rules themselves, not in your own experience or just from your DM style.

I definitely favour the 3.x rules over any other edition of the game, but one thing that always comes to mind as something that I thought the 1e rules did right is that spellcasters had a much stronger flavour than they do in subsequent editions.

Illusionists weren't just Magic-Users specialized in Illusion/Phantasm spells. They had their own unique spell list, with many spells that were not available to basic Magic-Users, ever. Spells like Phantasmal Force were 1st level spells for Illusionists, but were 3rd level spells for Magic-Users. 2nd and 3rd Editions made the Illusionist extremely bland and lame, and also kind of sucked some of the flavour out of the Mage/Wizard as well by giving them a bloated spell list completely lacking in any sort of theme... just a list of all of the arcane spells in the game.

The same thing happened with Clerics and Druids. Several spells that were exclusive to Druids in 1st Edition ended up on the generic Priest spell list in 2nd Edition and were actually not available to Druids because they belonged to spheres that Druids didn't have access to.

3rd Edition definitely improved upon 2nd in this respect, giving each class a customized spell list. But there is still a lot of crossover, Wizards are bland in their ability to cast pretty much anything, and specialist Wizards taste like rice cakes.

A lot of 1st Edition's restrictions placed on characters of specific classes, races, etc were boneheaded, unfair, and made little sense, but they did carry a strong flavour that hasn't always survived into later editons.

 

[Lanefan]

There are whole huge reams of things you are prohibited from doing in 1e if you simply follow the rules as written, while in 3e, doing the same thing, very little is. Man, where to start? Wizards using swords. Human wizards making Boots of Elvenkind. Dwarves becoming 15th level wizards.

Many of those prohibitions were, I suspect, for flavour reasons...the no-Dwarf-wizards is a good example, same with the Elvenkind items are only made by Elves example (why would Elves allow the knowledge to escape?)...while some - like the no-swords-for-wizards - were to keep the classes distinct and separate. You're a wizard? Then manual combat is Not Your Job.

3e tends much more to allow everyone to do everything, blurring the class definitions and resulting in many more jack-of-all-trades PC's...Gestalt being the next step on this evolution. PC parties were big in 1e mainly to have all the roles covered, with a bit of backup, and for various reasons I prefer this to the 4-character 3e strike force.

Lanefan

 

[JRRNeiklot]

6 and 7 result from the lack of options available to higher level PCs in 1E as compared to 3E. Personally, I think the fact that well over 75% of 1E characters of equal level and identical are mechanically identical except for things like spell choice (which is even debatable) and magical items makes things very, very dull, but that's getting into the realm of opinion.

[/I]

Hmmm. Suppose I put 2 humans dressed similarly in a room. They must be identical, right? Nevermind one is Albert Einstein and the other Babe Ruth. They are identical. Albert Pujols and David Eckstein? Identical. They both use the same type of bat. I've never understood this fallacy. My characters in ANY edition were different. They had different goals, diffrent fears, different personalities. George the Dragon slayer charged at the drop of a hat, Shujo cautiosly surveyed the battlefield and chose his battles carefully. Some revered nature, some would cut down an acre just to find the right sapling for a long bow. If mechanics are the only way you can tell your characters apart, you're not playing an rpg of any kind.

 

[Numion]

Eh, I posted in response to a specific question. But I'll bet you a billion dollars you can't post anything that 3e permits while 1e doesn't.

(Sucker bet. 1e explicitly assumes a DM who isn't afraid to tinker with the rules.)

Gary had a strange way of showing that. 1E might've allowed that, but then, by Gary, it wouldnt've been (A)D&D.

Actually I wouldn't start the list, because the first generation "3E is not D&D" (in year 2000, IIRC) threads we're based on the premise that too much was possible with 3E.

Naah .. I know I'll regret this, but I can't help myself:

1) GELATINOUS CUBE NINJA OF THE CRESCENT MOON!!!111!!eleven!!

 

[Keldryn]

I have a fundamental problem with the philosophy that it is "unfair" to inflict any form of lasting damage on a character. Characters need to feel that there is a genuine risk when adventuring, otherwise what is the point? You might as well be earning your GP through Craft and Perform checks.

The risk of dying in combat, getting offed by a trap, or losing a treasured possession are all genuine risks of lasting damage that don't seem unfair to me. I don't think people are insisting that it is unfair to inflict any form of lasting damage on a character. I do think it's unfair to inflict severe and lasting damage on a character when it is the result of a single unlucky die roll or any other essentially random or arbitrary event.

Short of a TPK, the ease of Raise dead spells, and the fact that the only penalty you take for dying is the loss of a level - which you can earn back as normal (at an accelerated rate, as you are now 1 level behind the others, which the CR system will reward you for).

Losing a level and being one level behind the rest of the party -- even when you can earn that level faster than you did the first time -- is hardly what I'd call a reward. The loss of a level represents a supposed average of 3 or 4 playing sessions, and losing a couple play sessions of advancement isn't something to just brush off.

Characters see a Rust Monster - suddenly the fighter thinks that his Keen Vorpal Ghost Touch Flaming double sword might be destroyed. i.e. he feels a sense of risk. Not to mention the fact that I think the system has been set up to make characters waaay to reliant on their equipment in 3.X.

Characters see... any monster powerful enough to defeat them... there is a sense of risk that they will be killed. Even if they aren't killed but are captured, they will likely lose most of their powerful equipment, at least for a time. The sense of a real risk certainly needs to be there to keep the level of tension and excitement going, but a lucky hit from a monster that destroys a weapon that you fought hard to earn does feel a lot like the DM going "neener neener, you lost your swo-ord!"

It's kind of like when the party Wizard researches or finds an invisibility spell and then suddenly all of the major opponents have magic items that let them see invisible creatures.

What my ramblings are getting at is the mindset that thinks that inflicting a TPK is fine (within the hallowed halls of CR, of course), as it within the "spririt of the rules", but taking someone's shiny magic armor and weapon is grossly unfair, and has rendered that character now unlayable.

Taking someone's shiny magic armor or weapon isn't grossly unfair in and of itself, but if it's taken in a way that boils down to an unlucky die roll or two... that's cheap. Especially if it target's a classes primary function and severely cripples their effectiveness. If you're going to cripple one party member, it's better to cripple all of them so that the one player doesn't get left with nothing to do. ;-)

Call me an old stick in the mud, but "back in the day" when you knew that dying meant, at the very least, the loss of 1 point of Constitution, and that level drains from undead could well be permanent if you didn't have a high level Cleric handy, bred a real sense of risk and adventure.

I don't feel any less sense of risk and adventure without a permanent Con loss or permanent level drains from undead. Permanent, debilitating losses are not intrinsically unfair, but I do believe that they should be inflicted sparingly, and very rarely from what is essentially a random or meaningless encounter without any reward appropriate for the severity of the losses at risk.

 

[Glyfair]

Gary had a strange way of showing that. 1E might've allowed that, but then, by Gary, it wouldnt've been (A)D&D.

Admittedly, that was a while after AD&D was released. Gary was trying to avoid the problems when people were showing up for conventions to play D&D and finding they had to deal with house rules they weren't familiar with. Often there were pages of rules changes when you were just playing in a single scenario. More often than not you didn't find out about the DMs house rules until it came up in the game ("no, I don't allow magic missiles to automatically hit").

That was a big barrier to the game at that time, and was another black eye to the idea of playing in a convention game. To a lesser extent, it happened when players moved to a new area and were trying to find a new D&D game. They were invited to play in a "D&D" game only to find so much was changed it wasn't really D&D.

 

[Keldryn]

Too bad for you, then.

And he was working at TSR while the WSG and DSG were in development.

Err, in what way were those two books "2nd Edition?" Gary may have been working at TSR when then WSG and DSG were in development, but I don't think that what became 2nd Edition was in development in 1985.

I remember in early 2nd Edition previews, they talked about how the original idea for 2nd Edition was basically just to incorporate errata, clean up the layout, put in some new art, and change the covers.

Mechanically, the WSG and DSG weren't any more 2nd Editon than was Oriental Adventures. Nothing in those texts actually reflect 2nd Edition rules.

Now, Dragonlance Adventures (1987?) -- that was clearly written with 2nd Edition in mind, despite no mention being made on the cover. So was Greyhawk Adventures, although that did mention "compatible with both 1st and 2nd Edition" in a little spot on the front cover. The Greyhawk book was, obviously, more in line with what showed up in 2nd Edition in 1989, although there are some differences.