If WotC decided to revitalize and support AD&D, would you play/buy it?

[avin]

I would never go back to Thaco and negative AC.

Using Planescape books and the nice ecologies from Monstrous Manual is perfect valid for me.

 

[jmucchiello]

What would such a thing look like? No idea. Not "Skills and Powers" -- that was proto-d20/3E. Maybe some evolution of the proficiency system (skills) and perhaps a shuffling back in of half orcs, demons and assassins. Not sure.

What? Skill and Powers was the direction TSR was headed with 2e. If TSR were to make AD&D3 in 1999 I'm sure Skills and Powers would have been a big influence. You can't ask if we'd be interested in AD&D3 without taking into account what AD&D2.5 looked like.

 

[Chainsaw]

I would never go back to Thaco and negative AC.

Me either, way too complicated.

 

[M.L. Martin]

What? Skill and Powers was the direction TSR was headed with 2e. If TSR were to make AD&D3 in 1999 I'm sure Skills and Powers would have been a big influence. You can't ask if we'd be interested in AD&D3 without taking into account what AD&D2.5 looked like.

The assumption being, of course, that the Player's Option books were "2.5" instead of an experimental set. I think they were more idea-testing and test-marketing for possible directions for a 3rd Edition, rather than the single direction TSR was heading.

I do think a couple of ideas from PO--especially their revised take on kits and proficiencies--would have made it into any 3rd Edition that didn't radically divorce itself from 2E, but I'm not sure we'd have seen a wholesale adoption.

 

[Reynard]

Me either, way too complicated.

I don't get it. It's just a single step of subtraction in an otherwise all addition process. The THAC0 hate always seems to me like a strawman, something to "hate on" for no real reason. Then again, I prefer 1E that didn't have THAC0 -- it used combat matrices.

 

[Chainsaw]

I don't get it. It's just a single step of subtraction in an otherwise all addition process. The THAC0 hate always seems to me like a strawman, something to "hate on" for no real reason. Then again, I prefer 1E that didn't have THAC0 -- it used combat matrices.

I'm kidding!

 

[Orius]

I know there are many people as firmly attached to 2E as others are to other editions, but my impression is that more people find themselves more satisfied with "basically" Basic or 1E or 3E -- with particularly favored bits and pieces from the 2E line mixed in.

Well, in my case I started playing in 1993, so 1e was history and Basic was on its way out. So it's not so much attachment as it was those were the rules that were available. I prefer AD&D to Basic, and in the basics 1e and 2e weren't terribly different. As time went on 2e developed its own flavor, but that seems to have happened with all the editions.

* I won't get into the unfortunate things they left in (like dual-classing), nor the broken additional things that came in later supplements.

Worst thing left in: Exceptional Strength. It was an artifact from what, the Greyhawk suppliment as a bonus to fighters when everyone just had 3-18 in stats, and it became obsolete when 2e introduced stat tables from 1-25. IIRC, there was always confusion over how things like the strength spell interacts with it or how wishes affected stat gains WRT Strength. And then throw in Skills and Powers, use the subabilities, and watch the players set up a 19 in the Muscle stat thereby skipping over about 6 or 7 rows on the Strength charts and getting hit and damage bonuses that were overpowering for 2e's math.

I would never go back to Thaco and negative AC.

It's not to hard to retrofit something like 3e's system into 2e. Just have the AC go up instead of down by the same value, and give out pluses to hit equal to the improvement THAC0 gives. Simple. Though really, THAC0 was never anywhere near as bad as people make it out to be.

What? Skill and Powers was the direction TSR was headed with 2e. If TSR were to make AD&D3 in 1999 I'm sure Skills and Powers would have been a big influence. You can't ask if we'd be interested in AD&D3 without taking into account what AD&D2.5 looked like.

The Player's Option books did have some influence on 3e's design anyway. They introduced the AoOs and the skill system seems like it was influenced S&P vastly supwerior NWP system.

 

[Greg K]

I don't get it. It's just a single step of subtraction in an otherwise all addition process. The THAC0 hate always seems to me like a strawman, something to "hate on" for no real reason. Then again, I prefer 1E that didn't have THAC0 -- it used combat matrices.

You may not understand it, but it is not a strawman.

 

[Remathilis]

What? Skill and Powers was the direction TSR was headed with 2e. If TSR were to make AD&D3 in 1999 I'm sure Skills and Powers would have been a big influence. You can't ask if we'd be interested in AD&D3 without taking into account what AD&D2.5 looked like.

Truth.

This is less about what "AD&D 3" might have looked like and more about what "AD&D 1 printed by WotC" would have.

 

[jmucchiello]

The assumption being, of course, that the Player's Option books were "2.5" instead of an experimental set. I think they were more idea-testing and test-marketing for possible directions for a 3rd Edition, rather than the single direction TSR was heading.

TSR didn't have that kind of marketing savvy. Read the stories of Ryan Dancey's due diligence before WotC bought TSR. TSR didn't do marketing surveys so how could they have been test-marketing. They put out whatever they wanted and expected the masses to buy because it was gospel from on high.

I do think a couple of ideas from PO--especially their revised take on kits and proficiencies--would have made it into any 3rd Edition that didn't radically divorce itself from 2E, but I'm not sure we'd have seen a wholesale adoption.

I disagree. I think in 1997 TSR was headed for a point buy system that might have been more universal than the limited point buy stuff in PO. Arguably many of the class customization stuff in PO became feats in 3E.