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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Mercule" data-source="post: 4450586" data-attributes="member: 5100">[*]Rolling 3d6 in order for each ability score.Rarely used.  Always 4d6 -lowest, arrange to taste.  I've kinda got a yearning to try the 3d6 in order, though, and really embrace the idea of fate.[*]Complicated and scattered charts and tables.Not an issue.  The DM learned the rules and the players expected him to know his stuff or be competent enough to keep things moving by winging it.  Honestly, other than attack tables, I'm not sure what was table driven in 1e that isn't in 3e.[*]Races as classes.I mostly played AD&D, so it wasn't an issue.  We had level limits, instead, which were sometimes (and sometimes not) ignored.  From what I remember of old D&D, racial classes weren't bad, just inflexible.[*]Weak low-level mages and powerful high-levle mages.Magic-users were often played by players who had a certain temperment.  The weakness at low levels usually resulted in thoughtful, strategic play (or dead mages).  Also, the specific spells available and the inherent capabilities of fighters to actually fight meant the wizard was expected to manage his resources based on the time the fighters spent adventuring, not the other way around.  This was less true at 1st level, though.[*]Levelling differently.Not an issue, generally.  The only time it was was when a DM would say, "Create 7th level characters for this game."  Better DMs tended to base high-level PC creation on XP totals.[*]Buying guard dogs, henchmen and alchemist's fire instead of fighting.I don't understand what you're saying, here.  Do you mean there was more time spent roleplaying the shopping trip?  I suppose that would depend more on the group.Or do you mean using non-class-based resources in a fight?  Because that's just smart.  To this day, I expect the party to have a couple of NPCs, animal "companions", and other assorted entourage with them.  Worked fine in 3e, and I expect it to work fine in 4e.  The only issue is that 3e added a lot of extra book-keeping for the poor DM.  It looks like 4e will alleviate some of that, though -- hopefully they don't screw the summoners so that only the fighters have their henchmen helping them, though.[*]Regularly dying and being replaced by new characters.Not an issue.  I've had multiple times the PC deaths in the eight years I played 3e than in the 15+ I played earlier editions.  It's all about the group's dynamics, attitudes, and capabilities.[*]DM vs. Players, not DM working with players.3e did introduce a certain amount of adversarial relationship between the DM and players.  I think that's inherent in the way the rules were "balanced", though, so it's a matter of taste.  Every now and then, I'd get an adversarial player in earlier editions, but they were quickly either cured of that attitude or removed from the group -- usually by the other players.  In 1e, the DM was expressly declared to be referee and arbiter of the game.  It took someone with pretty bad social issues to set out to "prove" they were in charge when that was already a given.  Even as a geeky ten-year-old, that wasn't a temptation.[*]Clumsy pastiche of pop culture, pulp fiction and mythology.No worse than 3e.  Probably less so.  You could reasonably ditch elements of the rules that didn't fit with your group (monk never featured in my games, for example).  The idea that "D&D only seeks to emulate D&D" is something that, AFAIK, only came into being late in 2e and leading up to 3e.[*]Simple game, few options.Pure awesome, at least in nostalgia.  I know that, when I stopped playing D&D in the early 1990s, one thing that frustrated me was the lack of options.  But, looking back, each character, even the fighters, are distinct in my mind.  In 3e, despite the choking glut of feats, PrCs, etc., the characters often seem to blur together.  Could just be the players, though.[*]Dungeon as an underworld, where every PC cannot see in the dark and every NPC can.Unchanged in 3e.  Actually, aggravated in 3e, since elves and gnomes get low-light, rather than infravision.  In 25 years, though, I only remember it even being an issue once.  We put together a stealth-based party for RtToEE.  That went poorly.[*]Sprawling, nonsensical mega-dungeons.I home-brewed 90% of what I did.  Still do.  There doesn't seem to be much difference, though, from what I've seen of modules.[*]Wilderness adventures.No difference.[*]Invincible overlord.Never read.[*]NPCs and PCs follow different rules.This was something that really frustrated me in 1e/2e and was probably my biggest issue with the system.  Ironically, it's probably my biggest issue with 3e, too, just the other way.  I think 4e got the mindset (jury's out on the mechanics) right on this one.  PCs should be able to accomplish anything an NPC could, but it's okay to use streamlined stats to represent it.[*]Several different parallel versions of the game.I don't understand this one.  Do you mean AD&D vs. D&D?  Most groups played one or the other -- generally AD&D.  No worse than 3e D&D vs. Iron Heroes or AE/AU.  Probably easier conversions, actually.[*]Everyone had house rules.Yup.  That helped to add flavor to every setting.  Most often the house rules were in the form of extra (or restricted) classes/races, lifting level limits, relaxing multi-classing, etc.  I gave rangers stealth as a thief.  All things that were quick and easy to grasp and generally only impacted character generation in obvious ways.  There were exceptions, but they were uncommon and the DM was usually cognizant of telling them to new players as needed.</blockquote>

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