Explan DMG First Ed. to me!

[DarrenGMiller]

you don't have to be a talented GM to run an acceptable 3e game, but running a brilliant 3e game I think may be harder than in 1e.

I agree wholeheartedly. I was a much better 1E DM than i am 3.x DM (IMO). I am sure that one reason was that when I was younger I had MUCH more time to read, reread, study, memorize and venerate the 1E core books. I also find them more entertaining to read than the 3.x core books. I have read those several times, but the material just doesn't stay in my head as readily as the 1E stuff did. I still have many 1E rules memorized and forget many 3.x rules even if I read them the day before the session... twice.

I also feel uncomfortable bending or making up rules in 3.x. The rules are so codified that it just feels wrong. It is funny... I have a player who quotes rules at me and lets me know if I am doing something wrong (actually, more than one). He is the same player who resents me now for not allowing his Paladin of Heironeous to survive a combat with a Priest of Orcus even though the die rolls say he died, because "Heironeous is a stronger god. Orcus isn't even a real god." etc. He also corrects me if I overcharge the party for item purchases, but lets it by when I undersharge. Hmmm... DM fiat when it benefits your character, strict adhgerence to the rules when it benefits your character.

DM

 

[TheAuldGrump]

Perhaps it is fair to say that 1st ed. was more D. M. reliant for its rulings than 3e? There was a lot of guess work in 1st ed. that is missing in 3e, with a good DM with sound instincts this guess work was fine. With a poor to average DM it was not so good. With some of the DMs that I can remember bragging about TPKs (including one I met at a con who boasted that he had a huge, old, black dragon in the second room of the dungeon... against 1st level characters) this was an incredibly bad thing. 3e does not assume that the DM knows how to balance things, it instead shows the balance. Once you know what is balanced you can depart from it, knowing the likely consequences. (In today's game you are playing heroes recruited by the Good Wizard Gargamel to kill the evil Smurfs that are infesting an entire village of poisonous mushrooms...)

I really do not understand why E.G.G. made some of the design decisions that he made, some of them likely come under the heading of 'seemed like a good idea at the time'. SOmetimes his defenses of the sillier rulings annoyed me more than the rule itself.

I will take 'dry and uninteresting' balanced rules over 'evocative and atmospheric' unbalanced rules almost any day.

A final point in favor of 3e - flexibility. Because the reasoning behind the rules is transparent modifying them is a lot easier. Because there are guidelines as to what third level spells can do you see a lot fewer overpowered and underpowered spells. Because there are guidelines on what traps a fifth level party should face you don't end up with Tomb of Horrors.

The Auld Grump

 

[ssampier]

Ah, Emirikol the Chaotic

I like that graphic. First, I'm a big fan of line art. This particular piece has many straight lines that interest the eye and reduce visual boredom. Second, that graphic implies action, both in the past (the man burning on the ground) and future, the guard (?) at the Green Griffon ready to attack Emirikol. So much fantasy art is static, the character seem posed for the painting (not including monster or NPC books).

As for 1st edition flavor, I can't give one particular phrase to describe it; maybe overuse of the word milieu. The tables at the back were great, especially the rules for insanity and NPC encounters (courtesans, prostitutes, were included). The art was more mature and evocative, with a higher degree of nipples.

 

[Wolv0rine]

I used to do it all the time too. But it didn't work as well as it does now. They are designed to have levels slapped on them, rather than just guessing at it like in AD&D. I've said it before and I'll say it again - the ability for the DM to just make stuff up is not a feature of a ruleset. It applies equally to all RPGs ever made.

While this is pretty much true (leaving for any RPGs I'm unaware of that might actually not), this is not as relevant as it seems here. Because, while they do all do it, this one did it first. Which means they thought of it, and it was another deature that everyone else copied when making their RPG. The question (unanswerable as it is) is would the others have had this included had D&D/AD&D not had it to begin with?

While generally I love the 1E DMG, and find it just generally better in my POV, I have to admit that while I was enjoying reading Mr. Gygax's meandering prose I as often as not found that I had lost interest in finding the rule that I had been searching the text to find and hadn't yet. When you're just reading, that's fine. But when you're actually looking for a rule for something, it's not so good. So it's kind of a toss-up on the benefits of it being a good read vs. not. On the other hand it made me the kind of DM (in spite of the fact that I prefer to be a PC over DM) who would as often as not ask for a die roll and decide on the spot in my head as the dice rolled what the roll would indicate for a situation where I didn't know the rules offhand. I have never been a rules-light kind of player, and this mindset made it easier to design new rules for given situations, which I always found a plus. I still find myself thinking, when I look at a rule I don't like, "I could do this better. And this is how...".

 

[Orius]

It is sad that so many people these days feel the need to have rules for everything, and think it is appropriate to refer to 'common sense' as 'DM fiat'. Oh well, to each their own...

I prefer consistant rulings from DMs myself, and that includes when I'm DMing.

It's ok, if you've got a DM that's fair, isn't out to kill the party, and so on when the rules are being made up on the fly. That doesn't really bother me. But I don't like gaming with DMs that have a sadistic streak that like to pull all sort of nasty stuff with the PCs because he gets his kicks that way. Ok, granted 3e probably won't change the killer DMs, they'll just whine about how much 3e sucks and how much it strips DMs of their authority, and then go back to 1e or something and throw 1st level characters through the Tomb of Horrors or some such nonsense. I don't like the DM fiat when it amounts to nothing more than a power trip from someone with a lot of unresolved psycological issues.

As a DM, I like to have consistant rules, because if I make up a rule one time, forget it, and then make up something totally different the next time a similar situation comes up, likely at least one player will remember the earlier ruling and start complaining. And while I can squash complaints, it'll probably start an argument that will lessen the fun from the game, even if only a little while. I can't really blame the player too much either, since how's he to know that I simply forgot the earlier rule? I've been on both sides of the screen and I know it can seem unfair when the DM rules inconsistantly.

 

[barsoomcore]

"Common" is the first thing I cut out of a setting, sense and otherwise.

See, that's where we differ. "Sense" is the first thing I cut out, common and otherwise.

 

[S'mon]

I also feel uncomfortable bending or making up rules in 3.x. The rules are so codified that it just feels wrong.

I have this too - even when the d20 rule is plainly silly, substituting a better rule feels vaguely sacriligious. And unlike 1e this is definitely not because the book includes on-high sermons against changing the rules; quite the reverse. The 3e rulebooks are full of suggestions on modifying the rules as desired - eg yesterday reading 3.5 PHB I was surprised to come across the advice to modify all classes to fit character concepts! Example given is a Fighter-enforcer w Bluff & Sense motive as class skills & 4 skill points/level who has weapon & armour profs as Rogue - seemed a bit overpowered to me, unless the GM was strict about multiclassing.
One thing I do that feel sacriligious is not use d20s when better dice are available - eg I use BECMID&D's morale (2d6) and mass combat (d100%) rules, both of which IMO work much better than if they were using d20. Or add the full stat to a roll rather than just the bonus (IMO STR + d6 to open door is a lot better than STR mod +d20 in terms of plausibility). My players are generally fairly accepting of my eccentricity but I do worry about it much more than I would in 1e.

 

[Dr Simon]

Perhaps it is fair to say that 1st ed. was more D. M. reliant for its rulings than 3e?

Completely fair.

Here's a quote from Monte Cook (from a Design Diary about Arcana Unearthed, but relevant to design decisions behind DMG 3rd Ed.:

"To try to explain some of the things I'm attempting to do with Arcana Unearthed (and the books that follow it), I'll occasionally have to back up a bit and explain some things that we did with the core rules. One thing, for example, that we tried to do was to "take the DM out of the equation" as much as possible. Now this has caused its own share of problems, but the reason we did it was to make the game as easy as we could for new players. If the DM has to make a lot of judgment calls, the game is more difficult to learn. However, it's my belief that it's also more satisfying. So with Arcana Unearthed, I've intentionally backed away from that approach a bit. The champion of freedom, to use him as an example again, might get a bonus on attack rolls, saves, and checks in all situations pertaining to freeing captives or struggling against an oppressor. Although the book does provides guidance on how to judge such situations, it's ultimately up to the DM to decide when the champion gets the bonus."

One may or may not agree with him that the DMing making judgement calls makes the game "more difficult to learn". A possible counter-argument would be "so does making the DM remember rules for every situation". I think therein lies the root of the 1st vs. 3rd preference-schism.

That, and the tendency of 1st Ed DMG to turn into Schott's Miscellany.

 

[S'mon]

One may or may not agree with him that the DMing making judgement calls makes the game "more difficult to learn". A possible counter-argument would be "so does making the DM remember rules for every situation". I think therein lies the root of the 1st vs. 3rd preference-schism.

I disagree with Monte in that the simplest & most introductory RPGs have the fewest rules, depend almost entirely on the GM & are easiest to learn - the best example I know is Fighting Fantasy, which has 3 stats - Skill Stamina & Luck, and works fine relying on the GM to adjudicate nearly all actions aside from melee combat.

 

[Henry]

The original poster wanted to know why he should buy the first DMG, and the best answer is found in those supplemental tables. Everything from Item saving throws to properties of gemstones, to dungeon dressing tables, to random dungeons to potion miscibility - so many things that you DON'T find outside of PDF supplements nowadays.

In reading the prose posted from each version of the DMG, I find myself agreeing with Wormwood. Obtuse yet delightful describes the 1E DMG to me -- it's more FUN to read than referential. To me, the 3E DMG reads no differently than the System Reference Document -- maybe it's the parts I'm paying attention to, maybe not -- but if 1E ever had an SRD, it would read TOTALLY differently from its original text.

That said, it does have a downside, as one poster mentioned: You can honestly lose your place in the 1E DMG trying to find the rule you WERE looking for, and pay more attention to the side diversions. I could go looking for a rule on using wolfsbane to cure lycanthropes, and instead spend 45 minutes by accident reading up on the rules for running lycanthropes as PCs!

Finally, maddman75's post really hit home to me; I and my friends were INDEED those average DMs back in the day who followed the rules literally as our 11- to 15-year old minds were wont to do, for the parts we COULD understand - it was 1988 and 2nd edition before I even used DICE for initiative and to-hits!