I miss the old D&D of the 00's

[buzz]

Hence 3.x will never generate the same amount of nostalgia as the early versions of D&D do (yes, there will be some nostalgia, but just not very much of it in comparison to O/AD&D).

Eric's grandma precludes me from posting my initial ersponse to this.

I mean, you don't see much in the way of nostalgia for Dragonquest...

There were more events for DQ this year at GenCon than for a lot RPGs currently in print. Not bad for an RPG that was in print for a short time 20+ years ago.

Personally, I'd jump at the chance to play DQ. AD&D1e I have little interest in revisiting.

The same goes, to a lesser extent, for 2nd edition AD&D. The reason: Dragonquest and 2nd edition AD&D lacked the charm and character of the 1st edition AD&D or basic/expert D&D rules. (Yes, there are many 2nd editions fans out there, but their numbers are dwarfed by those who have nostalgic feelings for 1st edition AD&D or basic/expert D&D.)

I'm not sure how one would go about proving this. Not to mention, people who cut their teeth on 2e are probably in their 20s right now, and are probably less prone to cultivating the sense of nostalgia as us old-timers often do.

But it simply lacks the (admittedly semi-professional and decidedly "unslick") charm and character of 1st edition AD&D and basic/expert D&D.

An opinion. It has its own charm and character. Come back and talk to me when Quasqueton's son grows up.

 

[buzz]

The 3E PHB does IMO a much better job of teaching its rules than AD&D did; it does a better job of keeping on target to its stated goals of encouraging variety, but within the rules rather than breaking them to encompass the same.

3e was the first edition of D&D that allowed me to read the rules, understand the rules, and use the rules as written. I don't think I ever managed to figure out all the rules, or play game wihtout making changes or exceptions, in the 16-odd years I played AD&D1e. The only thing that tempts me to go back is the academic curiosity of actually playing a game of it with the rules as written.

I dunno. Some of the best gaming experiences of my life have been in the here-and-now, as opposed to back in the day. I look back fondly on some of those old games, but also look forward to the new ones, and the wealth of amazing product that's available today.

People are welcome to play the games that bring them the most joy. Arguing that their choice (whatever it may be) is inherrently the "correct" one seems a fool's errand.

 

[Drew]

I remember the feeling of dread I fealt, sitting in the mall with Dragon Magazine circa August of 1999 when I read the words "Third Edition D&D is Coming."

I also remember being frustrated at the lack of information about the rules changes. They were screwing up MY game, and I wanted to know what was going to happen! I searched google three or four times before stumbling on a little place called "Eric Noah's Unofficial 3rd Edition News." I spent the next month reading every little tidbit to come out about the coming 3E. It seemed that this mysterious Eric Noah had some amazing inside source. I felt as if I had a direct connection to the people designing the new game. It was magical.

And then I discovered the message boards!

My gaming buddies and I planned the trip to GenCon 2000 just to make sure we were among the first in the nation to get our hands on the new D&D. I got my Player's Handbook signed by Monte Cook, Jonathan Tweet, Skip Williams, and just about every artist and editor I could find.

At an RPG event, the game was so new that many of the volunteers didn't know all the rules. I did, though, so I stood up and helped people make some characters. I read the entire PH on the way home from Milwaukee (I was a passenger), reading new rules and rules changes aloud to my friend Gary (and this is better, and this is cool...oh, this spell is new!) for hours.

3E revitalized my campaign and breathed 4 years of life into it. I've DMed the same group of characters from about 5th to 17th and 18th level.

Ask me in 20 years how I feel about 3E and see if I'm not nostalgic.

 

[rogueattorney]

That can be easily attributed to the fact that it was new, at the time. This, plus the lack of twenty years of game development, hides quite a few minor flaws. Also, 1e's popularity was never greater than during the B.A.D.D. debacle of the early 1980's. This is something that Gary Gygax has actually substantiated during interviews. He actually said that the whole Satanic flap heralded a huge jump in sales at the time.

So it was first, it was "Satanic", and a few fortunate gamers had a decent DM... That's why the 1e PHB went through 17 printings from 1978 to 1990? Is it really THAT hard for you to say something nice about 1e?

Except that it doesn't come in a box anymore

C'mon, give my some artistic license with a metaphor...

"New" was part of the attraction back then, too, don't forget that.

Except we're not talking about the people who bought it new, and then abandoned it. We're talking about the people who are still playing it, of which there are many. The people who bought it for the "new" factor are the people who are now tired of 3.5 and are playing Exalted, breathlessly awaiting C&C, and desperatly scouring the Internet for the next hot new thing.

If you look at the game, though, and do a critical analysis of the actual contents and organization of the original D&D game, it's nowhere near flawless. As a teaching tool to the uninitiated, it leaves a lot to be desired; it assumes you are a wargamer with quite a bit of experience under your belt. As a full supplement to playing a complete campaign setting, it's a bare-bones setup; however, some do see this (as Diaglo does) as one of its greatest strengths. I see it was a complete non-draw to someone who wants to start playing with no prior knowledge.

The original game was indeed incomplete. It was a supplement to the supplement of a midaeval miniatures game. That it spawned an industry tells you how great it was. It was written by war-gamers for war-gamers. Strangely, it didn't catch on with war-gamers, but rather caught on more with the fantasy literature crowd. It's pretty harsh to criticize the designers of OD&D with the benefit of hindsight as they ad-hoc'ed their supplement into a game. Reading the old rules and The Strategic Review and the early The Dragon is exhilerating because you realize the creators are really figuring out what they have at the same time the audience is. From '74 to '77, basically on the strength of the "complete non-draw" TSR went from what was essentially a non-entity to a rival to the big two (AH and SPI) serious gaming companies. [I mean "serious" as in for the gaming hobbyist; obviously none of them rivaled Parker Brothers, Hasbro, and Milton Bradley - the "pop" gaming companies.]

Looking back at OD&D, and AD&D, if it weren't for the Basic editions, I never would have played!

Then it did its job, didn't it. I wonder what product is bringing in the 10 year olds to 3.5 now... It certainly isn't the 350 page long PHB. It's no secret that the RPGing community is getting older and older.

It was only by the grace of Moldvay that I went before AD&D, and only years later that I figured out all the rules I had gotten wrong because I simply assumed the same rules from Basic D&D or imported my own. AD&D, nor the Basic set, made any acknowledgement of each other, no info on how they differed, or any such thing that would have saved me years of floundering around not knowing how to play the game even remotely true to the rules.

Join the club. Pretty much everybody did that. Why is it bad? It has no bearing on the quality of AD&D as a game system. The fact was that people were getting into the game at a younger age back then. B/X D&D was for that younger crowd. I think a lot of us moved on to AD&D before we were really ready. AD&D was written for a pretty high reading comprehension level. Did I completely understand the rules at 11? No. Did I start to come around at 16? Yup. That's just growing up and getting smarter, and doesn't have anything to do with the game. I think, more so than the games themselves, the problem was TSR's marketing of the two games.

The 3E PHB does IMO a much better job of teaching its rules than AD&D did; it does a better job of keeping on target to its stated goals of encouraging variety, but within the rules rather than breaking them to encompass the same.

You make a few assumptions that are just plain wrong.
1. You are criticizing AD&D for failing to fulfill a purpose for which it wasn't designed. AD&D wasn't the starter game. It was written under the assumption that the reader was familiar with complex games, particularly OD&D. TSR acknowledged this fact and produced B/X D&D for the newbie and non-hard core gamer set. My main criticism of WotC with 3e (and TSR with 2e after 1993) has been that it ignores the non-hard core gamer. While 3e might do a better job of introducing D&D to the newbie than 1e, it does a much poorer job than B/X D&D.
2. 3e might do a good job of "keeping on target to its stated goals of encouraging variety", but what does this have to do with 1e? The Ford F150 does a better job at being a pick-up truck than the Honda Civic. Does that make it a better vehicle? I don't know. It probably depends on whether you want a pick-up truck or a sedan. This highlights the big problem in these little edition wars: The radically different design philosophies of the games makes it inherent that some will like one game and others will like the other game based on their own personal preferences.

I don't think 1e fans should get all mad at 3e fans. They're just gamers playing their game. But I do believe that the fans of older editions of D&D have all sorts of justified reasons to be mad at first TSR and later WotC. These are essentially the longest and most loyal supporters of a product who have been kicked to the curb and told "your money is no good here, please go away" for the last 15 to 20 years.

Unfortunately, their justified rancor is often targeted at (or perceived to be targeted at) those who play the new game. And unfortunately, many fans of 3e would rather make fun of and demean fans of the older games than try to make a more hospitable gaming climate for the "old guard". I believe that the biggest tradgedy of this whole edition mess is that it often prevents fans of what is nominally the same game from being able to have intelligent conversations with one another.

R.A.

 

[diaglo]

If it's all about the game, then why do people who try it without a good DM, never re-play it?

you'll have to ask them.

i'm not a good referee by any stretch of the imagination. but that doesn't stop me from trying to keep the fun going.

i tried later editions of the game. and by tried i mean played them years.

i can regale you again with my 2000ed stories. it is the game. not just the person behind and in front of the screen.

the newer editions with the d02 logo are different games. they ain't D&D.

 

[Henry]

That's why the 1e PHB went through 17 printings from 1978 to 1990? Is it really THAT hard for you to say something nice about 1e?

If you look at each of my first three or four posts, I'm saying plenty of nice things about the earlier editions; they brought me fun times with my friends that I never would have had otherwise, first of all (I met my first real gaming group by talking with one of them about the PHB he was carrying in class in high school). Second, the convolution of the rules had one positive effect I noted on - the sense of personal accomplishment that one had by being the "go to guy" on the rules - very few people back then were even remotely familiar with anything beyond slinging a d20 and how to level up, because the DMG was what it was - disorganized, and carrying this "rules-masters only" air. Then, I mentioned that for all that, it was a good game - it was certainly more complete than any version before it.

[AD&D]was written under the assumption that the reader was familiar with complex games, particularly OD&D. TSR acknowledged this fact and produced B/X D&D for the newbie and non-hard core gamer set.

I still believe that each one failed at communicating with the other. If it were simple --> complex, then why does the AC system vary inexplicably by one point, why are hit dice different between classes, why do wizards gain fewer spells, and those same spells are often different in they way they work? It wasn't just the design philosophies, it was the core game assumptions themselves that were different enough to make them two separate games. If you look at it chronologically, it was Moldvay basic who failed AD&D; however, looking at Moldvay's design versus Gary's re-design, comparing both to Original D&D, maybe it was AD&D who failed Moldvay's attempt! Regardless, there was too little communication between the two to be the best bridge product.

However, I think AD&D would have benefitted better from something like Gary's later design attempt at the Mythus game - put a bare-bones in the front, and tack on all the advanced in part II. Hindsight is 20/20, with every edition, not just AD&D or 3E.

My main criticism of WotC with 3e (and TSR with 2e after 1993) has been that it ignores the non-hard core gamer.

It's just my opinion, but I think they do a pretty good job from the get-go; There still needs to be a Moldvay-style gateway product, sure, but even in the PHB the teaching tools and self-teaching tools are there. It's that part of the game that many people define as "soulless."

While 3e might do a better job of introducing D&D to the newbie than 1e, it does a much poorer job than B/X D&D.

Agreed.

This highlights the big problem in these little edition wars: The radically different design philosophies of the games makes it inherent that some will like one game and others will like the other game based on their own personal preferences.

It's strange, but looking and comparing AD&D to OD&D, they had similar goals; both products were fairly revolutionary. Gary altered many target numbers when moving from 3d6 to d20 for combat and save rolls, and incorporated many of the design efforts of others in his group and from other groups when designing; 3E for sure examined every piece of the game, nothing was sacrosanct, no attack roll, no saving throw, no magic system; even magic missile went through a few trial runs before the playtesters screamed loudly at the design team to leave it alone. In the end, both used the pool of existing rules available in the design community at the time to radically alter the game. It's just that the designer pool was MUUUCH larger for 3E than for 1E.

I don't think 1e fans should get all mad at 3e fans. They're just gamers playing their game. But I do believe that the fans of older editions of D&D have all sorts of justified reasons to be mad at first TSR and later WotC. These are essentially the longest and most loyal supporters of a product who have been kicked to the curb and told "your money is no good here, please go away" for the last 15 to 20 years.

Unfortunately, their justified rancor is often targeted at (or perceived to be targeted at) those who play the new game. And unfortunately, many fans of 3e would rather make fun of and demean fans of the older games than try to make a more hospitable gaming climate for the "old guard". I believe that the biggest tradgedy of this whole edition mess is that it often prevents fans of what is nominally the same game from being able to have intelligent conversations with one another.

R.A.

I've seen places where the result of such rancor ended up in getting the place shut down; we generally frown on outright edition wars here, and I'm sorry that we've somehow meandered towards that way ourselves. I'll close by saying that I've loved every version I've played - but my opinion is that I've seen a definitely improved direction in each edition, and that's why I've dropped playing each edition in favor of the one after it, not because I can't find players. Great memories then, and great memories now - as long as I keep generating those, the edition I'm playing is irrelevant.

 

[Psion]

Ask me in 20 years how I feel about 3E and see if I'm not nostalgic.

Likewise.

For me, 3e will always be "the edition that renewed my interest in the game, and salvaged it from the mire of outdated and inconsistant rules that were holding it back."

 

[WizarDru]

I have to agree with Henry. I knew many kids in middle school who picked up D&D because it was new and part of the zeitgeist. Most of them bought the game and it's products for a short time, played a few times and then never played again. a good DM or good group could certainly reverse that trend...but many of them weren't gamers to begin with, and buying the game wouldn't change that. Many of them simply wanted an experience similar to what CRPGs and console RPGs provide now.

I loved my days of AD&D, but I saw it's flaws then, and I see them now. I went on to GURPS, becuase AD&D simply didn't meet my needs, any longer. I avoided 2e from reviews from friends who had it and played it, and had almost dropped out of gaming entirely, when 3e pulled me back in. Suddenly, I had plenty of people, all former players, who wanted back in. That doesn't mean we'd turned our backs on Basic D&D or AD&D and forgotten how much fun we'd had with them...just that we recognized that, for us, 3e was a better system.

Some folks, such as diaglo, see the sparseness of 0D&D as a great benefit, as it allows complete flexibility (if there are no set rules for anything, then there are also no walls or boundaries to what you can do). Other folks, such as myself, prefer a ruleset where most major things are either consistently defined or implied. This can lead some gamers to view it as constricting, with the rules dictating the game, instead of the other way around.

When we came to D&D in the early 1980s, we had few expectations about it. In 1979, D&D was NOT a household word. The original D&D booklets were rarities, seldom seen and only owned by hobbyists. RPGs were looked upon by wargamers the same way that CCGs were looked upon by RPG players when they came upon the scene. I still remember buying my first D&D supplement....in a PET STORE. Comic shops were a rarity, and game stores? Fuhgeddaboutit. That changed, of course....but to this day, I still associate certain modules with the smell of bags of wood shavings for guniea pig cages and small animal feed. D&D today comes with expectations and HISTORY. The fact is that the conditions of D&D today are different than they were then. My big brother hadn't played D&D, and father certainly hadn't. That isn't necessarily true, today. Just ask my kids.

All of which is a long way to go to say that D&D is still D&D. The rules aren't irrelevant, but neither are they the be-all and end-all of the game, either. If an individual rule is a determiner of what D&D 'is'....then to me, that rule has to be 'have fun with your friends'. The terminology would change, but D&D would not. Could I have my 7th level fighter jump and grab onto a giant Ice Wurm and attempt to kill it while riding through a subterannean ice tunnel in any edition I play*? Yep. Oh, it happened in AD&D, but it could happen in any edition....and I'd treasure the memory, no matter where it occured.

* - (For the record, I had turned into a half-demon at the time and was wielding a powerful enchanted sword, fighting alongside my comrades to rid the nearby peace-loving orc kingdom of a terrible menance while slowly losing my soul...but that's a story for another time)

 

[buzz]

The original game was indeed incomplete. It was a supplement to the supplement of a midaeval miniatures game. That it spawned an industry tells you how great it was.

Or, at least, how great an idea it was. I don't think anyone is going to deny the importance or quality of the Model T or the Apple II, either. I don't know that I want to commute to work in the former and do Web design on the latter, though.

It's pretty harsh to criticize the designers of OD&D with the benefit of hindsight as they ad-hoc'ed their supplement into a game.

I don't know if anyone is "criticizing" Gygax & co. per se. Conversely, I don't know if it's valid to criticize 3e for not being the charming little staple-bound game that enthralled you when you were 12, either. Time has moved forward. It tends to do that.

Then it did its job, didn't it. I wonder what product is bringing in the 10 year olds to 3.5 now... It certainly isn't the 350 page long PHB. It's no secret that the RPGing community is getting older and older.

Make note of this...

(And, yes, the RPG community is getting older. That happens when the hobby as a whole matures.)

1. You are criticizing AD&D for failing to fulfill a purpose for which it wasn't designed. AD&D wasn't the starter game.

Isn't this the same reason you're taking 3e to task in the above paragraph and previous posts?

When 3e was released, WotC created a Basic Set to go along with it. The new version, which comes with more bells and whistles than any previous edition, has just come out. The PHB is not the Basic Set.

My main criticism of WotC with 3e (and TSR with 2e after 1993) has been that it ignores the non-hard core gamer. While 3e might do a better job of introducing D&D to the newbie than 1e, it does a much poorer job than B/X D&D.

Well it's not the Basic Set. Apples, meet oranges.

As for appealing to the non-hard-core... I can't think of any other mainstream RPG that is as well set up for casual gaming as D&D (any edition). I don't know that 3e is necessarily any better or worse in this regard.

This highlights the big problem in these little edition wars: The radically different design philosophies of the games makes it inherent that some will like one game and others will like the other game based on their own personal preferences.

I had thought that the bigger problem was either side of the debate making sweeping claims that the other "lacked character and charm" and "no one will ever have nostalgia for it". I know I'm certianly not trying to argue that anyone's prefeence is wrong. Far be it from me to tell you you're not having fun.

But I do believe that the fans of older editions of D&D have all sorts of justified reasons to be mad at first TSR and later WotC. These are essentially the longest and most loyal supporters of a product who have been kicked to the curb and told "your money is no good here, please go away" for the last 15 to 20 years.

I think faulting a company for occasionally trying to improve, update, and keep current its product over a span of 30 years is incredibly unreasonable. Using a phrase like "kicked to the curb" in this regard seems totally nuts to me. I mean, do I get to use phrases like that when I talk about how disappointed I was with 2e? When they basically didn't do a damn thing to make the game any better (IMO), address any of its outstanding design issues, and, on top of it, package it with some of the ugliest art and design ever (Planescape excepted)?

Nah. I didn't bother. Like a lot of people, I just took my money elsewhere. I would have done the same if they'd just kept reprinting 1e. When I saw that 3e actually had improvements I liked, that it looked liked it had learned from the past decades of RPG design, I brought my money back. The industry already has one Palladium. Reprinting 1e ad nauseam would just have ended up with TSR competing for the #2 spot (and then #3, and then #4...).

And unfortunately, many fans of 3e would rather make fun of and demean fans of the older games than try to make a more hospitable gaming climate for the "old guard". I believe that the biggest tradgedy of this whole edition mess is that it often prevents fans of what is nominally the same game from being able to have intelligent conversations with one another.

There's fault on both sides of these stupid debates. From my perspective, I more often see the "old guard" on the offensive, but that could just be coincidence... or, like you perhaps, what I'm looknig for.

As the initial post in this thread points out, only time will tell. All I know is, 3e brought me back into the hobby full-force, and seems to have ushered into existence a number of companies doing great things with the OGL. Whether a consequence or a coincidence, we're in a second Golden Age right now. There's so much great product (D&D and non) on the shelves right now, it'll make your head spin. I wouldn't trade this for a c.1980s FLGS for the world.

 

[Quasqueton]

I don't know if I should assume you're joking and wisecrack back, or assume that you really are that sensitive and leave well enough alone... I guess life is full of hard choices. Allow me to re-correct my statement:

It was a smartass comment to show a point. As I said earlier, it seems that folks cannot make a complimentary statement about the older editions of the game without at least insinuating that something is wrong or bad about the new edition of the game.

Saying, "D&D prior to 3e was a good game," at least insinuates that D&D since 3e is not a good game. You could have said it as I corrected, "D&D prior to 3e was a good game, too." Or you could have said, "D&D in all its editions is a good game." Or all kinds of other ways. But you chose to explicitly exclude 3e from the description "good game." Might have been a communication mistake, or it might be that you specifically wanted to insult the new edition.

Me, I loved AD&D1 in its time. I love D&D3 now. (Never quite felt anything for AD&D2.)

Unfortunately, some old grognards take any exclaimed affection for D&D3 as an insult to AD&D1. And too often, those grognards express their love for AD&D1 in a negative-D&D3 way.

Is a 2004 Ford Mustang a better automobile than a 1973 Ford Mustang? In all material ways, yes it is. But that does not make the '73 a "bad" car. Nor does a love for the old model necessitate a hatred of the newer, and vice versa.

Quasqueton