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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Neonchameleon" data-source="post: 5573181" data-attributes="member: 87792">1e does use inches as its explicit movement speed - go re-read the movement rules on p101 (at least in my copy of the 1e PHB).  If you're going to cry false, get your facts right.  And why would movement be measured in inches unless you were expected to measure it somehow?  For in-character adjudication it's a meaningless quantity, but for tabletop + minatures from a wargame it's perfect.  And for anything other than tapemeasures, it's an absurd quantity.  Now I'm well aware that you and almost every other group ditched measuring the inches.  But ditching one of the rules is a house rule rather than the rules of the game.  You miss the point.  More hit points mean that death is less of a lottery.  If you're effectively playing russian roulette and dying to a single die roll (I suppose it was 2e which introduced the domestic cat, bane of low level wizards) then death is going to be regular and meaningless.  In 4e you do not die to an errant roll and so can trace where things went wrong.   And none of them have a combat system remotely as complex as 1e.  A solid wargame core with no skills is completely different from a system like Dread or 3:16 that is almost statless.  Apples to oranges comparison here.  I think that selecting your powers encourages you to chose exactly how you approach the world and what you do under stress.  Rather than when the chips are down approaching the world as Sword + Board Fighter #27.  A burly fighter who puts his shield between the enemy and his mates moves differently in 4e from one who mostly wants to <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /><img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /><img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /><img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /> the enemy up - and has different powers.  Powers that reflect and expand on who he is and how he approaches the world.  Another apples to oranges comparison.  Without powers you can just swing your axe, roll to hit, and roll damage.  "I hit him for 8 damage."  And according to Old Geezer on RPG.net, that was how it was played at Gygax's table.  Narrative isn't enforced by the rules of 1e.  And basic combat is explicitely covered by the rules. With powers and without narrative in 1e you have next to nothing.  But the 4e system, what happened was that the person using that power moved carefully round their target in a set direction, and hit them hard knocking them to the floor.  Much more interesting than "Chop.  Eight damage."  Which would be the 1e comparison. And in both games you can bring the chandelier down on people, requiring DM adjudication.  (4e presents better guidelines for the DM to judge what happens when you do, but I digress).  I have played 1e AD&D/OSRIC.  The combat system was the most fundamentally disempowering I have ever played as a RPG, and that despite a good DM (hi, S'mon).  (I've had far more disempowering games - I'm talking about the system here).  The combat rules mean that in a high pressure, high lethality situation you get to decide what you are doing once every minute.  That's how long a turn is.  You can not adapt to changing situations or exploit openings like that.  And a minute is much too long to describe what you are doing - with swords and spells flying around, what happens in fifteen seconds is IMO far too much.  Even six is pushing it.  Any description you give of what you are doing is either a broad brush, a photo snapshot, or requires massively writing the scene.  And then you only get to make an attack roll once in a minute most of the time - an absurdly long time for things to last. I prefer T&T bucket of dice approach.  Get the combat out of the way rather than having a lot of rules for it - and rules geared to tabletop wargaming at that.  If you just roll a bucket of dice and say it was a confused skirmish, and here was the outcome, it works.  But plotting out minute-long turns doesn't.  Which left it as a hacked wargame.  This is not to in any way denegrate Gygax or Arneson.  They were doing amazing things with the tools they had available.  But we have better tools now than having to use hacked wargames.  Of course.  They wanted to play wargames, not hacked wargames that were groping towards becoming good roleplaying games.  And D&D was better at what it did than anything that had come before.  We've just learned a lot since then.  You seriously need to go back and read the rules for 1e AD&D if you want to continue this conversation.  Because right now you aren't talking about 1e, you are talking about P1NBACK D&D - if you weren't you'd know that movement in 1e was in inches.  And Raven Crowking is talking about RCFG v0.1.  This isn't a surprise.  Few people I've spoken to played 1e straight out of the book and for good reason.  But if you want to talk about actual 1e AD&D, claiming that inches weren't the system used merely undermines any credibility you have. And @Pmerton, I agree completely about combat being values reflected at the sharp end so to speak.  I like the positioning and movement details because the way I look at the world is kinaesthetic and it nails them down - I'm well aware that this is far from universal.  But your choice of approach to high stress and high risk situations is a fundamental reflection of who you are.  And the character powers are how the character naturally approaches the common high stress and high risk situation of combat.</blockquote>

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