My, how the adventures have changed...

[VirgilCaine]

This is D&D. There is always an inn. It could be a hamlet of 20 people. There is an inn.

Not in my campaigns.

Heroes/Villains might be gladly put up for the night in someone's home or more untrustworthy types might get someone's barn, but there won't be an inn in a place surrounded by wilderness (if there is, it'll be an empty wreck) or with 20 people (they'll wonder why you don't move on a ways up yonder and go to the inn in Mud Creek).

 

[Freak of Nurture]

You know, if you're gonna slam me for not "understanding" the game, you should get your own rules quotations correct. In 2e, not being proficient in a weapon is AT LEAST a -2 penalty (I found this out by digging out my books... I haven't played 2e in about eight years, so I can understand someone else not being crystal clear on things - some people, I guess, cannot).

Just though I'd mention that.

Well, a warrior's nonproficiency penalty is -2. It's a +1 sword, so -1 to hit. I can understand you not being crystal clear on things since you haven't played in so long and have an obvious bias against it.

Just thought I'd mention that.

About your Ranseur example:
"2e: Odds are, no one has the item, and since there are no rules for selling items (and it seems to be suggested in the DMG that selling items is WRONG!), the item has little worth. So, the DM fudges things - which is what 2e is about, apparently - and changes the weapon type. Not a big deal, but still."

Another 2e slam. The 2e DMG says nothing about selling items being WRONG as you put it. I have no idea where you got that. I don't know why anyone would need rules for selling some random weapon they found. Maybe in 3.X they do. Anyway, if 2e is all about fudging then previous editions would have to be even worse since there were more rules for everything in 2e.

It would actually go more like: Odds are no one has proficiency in that weapon, but someone would take it and sell it at a weapon shop later or try it out with the nonproficiency penalty to see what kind of damage it does. If they like it they can become proficient in it at some later time.

 

[Wik]

I don't see how you think I'm slamming the game. Where is my bias towards 2e coming from? I have no more bias against 2e than I do against 1e, BECMI, or 3e. They've all been a lot of fun for me over the years.

And I still think you're off on the weapons. For starters, in 1e, weapons had prices, making it easier to sell them off. If I recall, those prices were taken out in 2e, because the designers didn't want to encourage "magic item shops". I could be wrong there, but I don't remember item prices being in the DMG (whereas they are in the 1e DMG... and BECMI too, I think). So, in 2e, there was either a lot of "guestimmation" on how much you could sell that +1 Ranseur for, or holding on to it in case you came across a monster that could only be hit by +1 or better weapons (a huge beef of mine, and one I'm glad they nerfed in 3e, though they got close with 2e).

A 1st level group finds a +1 ranseur and no one's proficient. They wait for three levels, and gain proficiency in it... only to pick up a better weapon down the road. My experience with 2e is it's much more likely for GMs to "seed" their treasures with weapons appropriate to the PC party. Granted, this is good GMing, and it happens in all editions... but in 2e, it's almost necessary to keep the party strong. You can't rely on the random tables.
A quirk of the edition - not a "Slam".

As far as I know, 2e is the only edition that makes selling items hazy, and more in the DM's domain. There's a lot less guidelines. I could be wrong on this, though - I don't remember BECMI's system enough to be sure.

Ah, well. If you're set on thinking I'm attackign your favourite edition of the game, nothing I'm gonna say will change that. Suffice it to say that, well - I had no intention of really attacking any edition. Because that's silly. I just think it's funny how certain artefacts of the systems can affect the play experience.

Imagine playing the D&D encounter with the Shadowrun rules! Or Palladium Fantasy rules! This could get really crazy.

 

[VirgilCaine]

Anyway, if 2e is all about fudging then previous editions would have to be even worse since there were more rules for everything in 2e.

I've heard it said that in 2e there were more rules for everything--multiple, contradictory rules in some cases--and I've heard it said of 2e there was a total or near-total lack of usable information in the DMG, except for the treasure and combat tables.

So it ended up there was a lot of DM Fiat in 2e.

 

[Herobizkit]

Agreed. If you cut out the snark and the obvious fallacies (for example, the ritual healing circles and excessive magical items)...

... and I thought we were still talking about 3rd edition, 'cuz that's how *I* run it.

Props to Ryan for the nod to beloved Save Points.

 

[TheAuldGrump]

I've been running 1&2e adventures since they were published and no I don't have stats handy on the proportion of poison types in every adventure ever published, and neither do you. I just know offhand about the 70 or so adventures I have run several times and can run at the drop of a hat. In those, the save or die poisons are almost all at higher levels when the party can deal with the death fairly easily.

You make an assumption that I am somehow 'slamming' AD&D when I state (yes, state, not infer, imply, or suggest) that while there may have been rules for non-lethal poisons they were by and large ignored.

This assumption is false. I have most of the old 1e adventures, going back to the early eighties, and a few OD&D (from Judges Guild - JG made more stuff or the original edition of the game than TSR) that go back to the late seventies. The JG are mostly print, the TSR are mostly PDF at this point.

The fact that I have them at all should tell you that I liked first edition. So, yes, I can pretty much say that 'Save or Die' was the norm, even in low level adventures, including the first novice adventure 'Village of Hommlet'. I am not slamming the game - that was just the way it was played back then. Characters died. It was even the point of some of the more notorious adventures Tomb of Horrors being the most often mentioned. The game also tended to be a lot more generous with magic items.

So do not tell me what I can know or not know. I get angry when somebody who apparently does not know a hawk from a handsaw* tries correcting me. With most of them available as PDFs it is actually pretty darned easy to go through them. They tend to be a lot shorter than current adventures. (Though I would love it if the PDFs had been read with OCR, so that I could use Search.)

Games being lethal was part of the older editions - for good or ill. I can point out plenty of people who think that the game is now too 'player friendly'. It is not 'slamming' to say that the earlier editions had a more lethal paradigm than current. It is not even 'slamming' to point out that the poison rules that were present were not, for the most part, used. Save or die was simple, and easy to remember.

AD&D had a lot of rules that no one - even Gary Gygax - used. If I wanted to slam AD&D I would look no further than the unarmed combat rules.

I do not have all that many 2nd edition adventures, the adventures for that edition suffered from too much railroading to be all that great, in my opinion. On the flip side, I actually liked the three ring binder monstrous manuals, and felt that some great settings came out at that time. But if there is any edition that I would 'slam' it would be second, and that only in its later years.

The Auld Grump, who does know a hawk from a handsaw when the wind is southerly....

* The reference is to madness (Hamlet) rather than stupidity. I don't know about you, but I would rather be thought insane than dull....

 

[trollwad]

This is a fantastically funny thread.

The Auld Grump is mostly right about poisons being mostly of the save vs. die variety in 1e modules. However, a notable exception is the (otherwise excellent) Saltmarsh series. More of the poisons were of the save or not very nice variety! Silly soft Brits

 

[Numion]

Games being lethal was part of the older editions - for good or ill. I can point out plenty of people who think that the game is now too 'player friendly'. It is not 'slamming' to say that the earlier editions had a more lethal paradigm than current. .

I've found 3E much more lethal than the previous editions. I mean, 30+ PC deaths in RttToEE. While that adventure is particaularly deadly, I've had little problem racking up the bodycount in 3E. 1E and BD&D were different - much less PC deaths. Yes, there was the occassional poison death, but poison deaths were always rare.

It's got to do with offense outpacing defense in 3E. I don't know if that's a good thing or bad, but the end result is that a troll can drop a PC in one round. 1E and those had monsters with small damage bonuses - now it's a big STR bonus to damage + rend.

On the other had I can recall 1 PC who died in 1E to poison, and 1 in 3E. So it was more common in 1E to die of poison, since so much less PCs died in 1E.

 

[howandwhy99]

Original D&D (1974):

 

[TheAuldGrump]

I've found 3E much more lethal than the previous editions. I mean, 30+ PC deaths in RttToEE. While that adventure is particaularly deadly, I've had little problem racking up the bodycount in 3E. 1E and BD&D were different - much less PC deaths. Yes, there was the occassional poison death, but poison deaths were always rare.

It's got to do with offense outpacing defense in 3E. I don't know if that's a good thing or bad, but the end result is that a troll can drop a PC in one round. 1E and those had monsters with small damage bonuses - now it's a big STR bonus to damage + rend.

On the other had I can recall 1 PC who died in 1E to poison, and 1 in 3E. So it was more common in 1E to die of poison, since so much less PCs died in 1E.

Hmmm, it was pretty much the other way around for me - the death of at least one character per adventure - straight out of the published module, seemed to be the norm. My own adventures tended to be a good deal less lethal (what can I say, I'm a wuss ) but still fell into a more lethal range than 3.X.

Part may have been that until 2nd edition I did not see all that many retreats - folks seemed willing to press on just a little too far, and then roll up new characters as needed. They may have been less attached to the characters, looking back it was usually the same players rolling up new characters most of the time.

I lost track of TPKs under AD&D 1&2. I have had two under 3.X - one of which still seems more like party suicide. And one near TPK where all but one of the characters decided to swim what amounted to the Rhine in Spring flood. The one who decided against it was the only one with a Swim skill.... I think that he was also the only player who knew how to swim.

This is a fantastically funny thread.

The Auld Grump is mostly right about poisons being mostly of the save vs. die variety in 1e modules. However, a notable exception is the (otherwise excellent) Saltmarsh series. More of the poisons were of the save or not very nice variety! Silly soft Brits

Hey, don't go dissing Saltmarsh! I liked that adventure series!

The Auld Grump, oh, wait - the wind is northerly....