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How did pre-3E D&D "play"?
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<blockquote data-quote="RobJN" data-source="post: 4448442" data-attributes="member: 21534"><p>I can 't speak for how AD&D 'feels' in play, never having played enough to develop much of a feel for it, but I can say that Basic D&D played nearly nothing like the bullet points you outline in the OP.</p><p></p><p>In many games, my players did, in fact, run 3d6 in-order characters. After a bit, we went to 4d6, drop the lowest, but the PCs did remarkably well with the original rules. So what if the Fighter didn't have an 18 STR? So he wasn't the strongest man in the world. He bought a helmet and got over it.</p><p></p><p>All the tables the PCs needed to play were right there on the side of the DM screen. Their Saves and the amount of XP they needed for the next level were written on their character sheets. There was no "complication" nor "scattering" of charts until it came time to hop from Basic to Expert and then to Companion sets. But then you just pulled out the next boxed set and moved on to the adventure...</p><p></p><p> "Races as classes" and "levelling differently" went hand in hand. If you played an elf, you payed for that ability to use magic and fight with a hefty dose of XP.</p><p></p><p>My games certainly weren't "DM vs Players" affairs. Sure, the DM challenged the characters and their players, but outside of combat, the relationship was not adversarial. Maybe you're thinking of Hackmaster. <img src="data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7" class="smilie smilie--sprite smilie--sprite2" alt=";)" title="Wink ;)" loading="lazy" data-shortname=";)" /></p><p></p><p>One thing the earlier editions didn't do was coddle the players by inherently stacking the sysem in favor of PC success. There was less min-maxing. As a player, your wits counted just as much as your sword arm in dealing with the challenges the DM threw at you. There was more on the DM's shoulders in terms of arbitrating those types of encounters rather than letting the dice decide the outcome outside of combat.</p><p></p><p>Oh, and take a look at the Weapon Mastery rules in the Masters set or Rules Cyclopedia and tell me that's "simple." <img src="data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7" class="smilie smilie--sprite smilie--sprite2" alt=";)" title="Wink ;)" loading="lazy" data-shortname=";)" /></p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="RobJN, post: 4448442, member: 21534"] I can 't speak for how AD&D 'feels' in play, never having played enough to develop much of a feel for it, but I can say that Basic D&D played nearly nothing like the bullet points you outline in the OP. In many games, my players did, in fact, run 3d6 in-order characters. After a bit, we went to 4d6, drop the lowest, but the PCs did remarkably well with the original rules. So what if the Fighter didn't have an 18 STR? So he wasn't the strongest man in the world. He bought a helmet and got over it. All the tables the PCs needed to play were right there on the side of the DM screen. Their Saves and the amount of XP they needed for the next level were written on their character sheets. There was no "complication" nor "scattering" of charts until it came time to hop from Basic to Expert and then to Companion sets. But then you just pulled out the next boxed set and moved on to the adventure... "Races as classes" and "levelling differently" went hand in hand. If you played an elf, you payed for that ability to use magic and fight with a hefty dose of XP. My games certainly weren't "DM vs Players" affairs. Sure, the DM challenged the characters and their players, but outside of combat, the relationship was not adversarial. Maybe you're thinking of Hackmaster. ;) One thing the earlier editions didn't do was coddle the players by inherently stacking the sysem in favor of PC success. There was less min-maxing. As a player, your wits counted just as much as your sword arm in dealing with the challenges the DM threw at you. There was more on the DM's shoulders in terms of arbitrating those types of encounters rather than letting the dice decide the outcome outside of combat. Oh, and take a look at the Weapon Mastery rules in the Masters set or Rules Cyclopedia and tell me that's "simple." ;) [/QUOTE]
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