My Response to the Grognardia Essay "More Than a Feeling"

[Desdichado]

Nostalgia is irrelevant and a useless emotion in itself. "Feelings" in general aren't very important except insofar as they contribute to the creative process of the GM. If they help him come up with a more inventive and enjoyable game then fine. Now, Joe and others can play games based on feelings if they want. But I consider any statement that Old School play in general is based upon nostalgia to not only be a lie but an outright insult.

What games you decide to play may or may not be driven by nostalgia, the the Old School Revival movement certainly is. Otherwise, there's no explanation for how retro-clones of OD&D, BD&D and 1e AD&D can all be lumped into the same movement, when they don't really have much in common other than their year of publication. They had different goals, and different methodology and a pretty different approach.

 

[Nikosandros]

What games you decide to play may or may not be driven by nostalgia, the the Old School Revival movement certainly is. Otherwise, there's no explanation for how retro-clones of OD&D, BD&D and 1e AD&D can all be lumped into the same movement, when they don't really have much in common other than their year of publication. They had different goals, and different methodology and a pretty different approach.

I disagree. OD&D, BD&D and AD&D are all variations on the same game. They have their differences, but they are much more related that 3rd edition is to any of them.

 

[Nikosandros]

but don't get hung up on percentile strength, level limits, or other antiquated rules like that.

I really dislike the usage of the word antiquated. Games aren't like technology where there is a constant improvement and as a matter of fact, I have no problems at all with, for example, percentile strength. I dislike and don't use level limits, but this has nothing to do with progress in game design... I stopped using them before 2nd edition came out.

 

[Desdichado]

I disagree. OD&D, BD&D and AD&D are all variations on the same game. They have their differences, but they are much more related that 3rd edition is to any of them.

And I disagree with that. AD&D in particular represented a fairly radical departure in design philosophy from OD&D, and I believe 3e was the natural, evolutionary endpoint for that design philosophy. 3e and 1e were, fundamentally, designed around the same principles and for the same reasons, in spite of the differences in execution.

BD&D, arguably (perhaps) was truer to the original design principles of OD&D, or at least it lacks the change in philosophy that Gygax himself has described plenty of times that informed the formulation of AD&D.

 

[Nikosandros]

And I disagree with that. AD&D in particular represented a fairly radical departure in design philosophy from OD&D, and I believe 3e was the natural, evolutionary endpoint for that design philosophy. 3e and 1e were, fundamentally, designed around the same principles and for the same reasons, in spite of the differences in execution.

I can easily run BD&D adventures in AD&D doing the very little conversion needed on the fly. 3rd edition is a wholly different game that maintains only the exterior trappings of AD&D.

 

[Desdichado]

Here's a cut and paste from Wikipedia, which is in turn heavily quoted from Gygax himself in Dragon #26.

Gygax, who wrote the advanced game, wanted an expansive game with rulings on any conceivable situation which might come up during play. J. Eric Holmes, the editor of the basic game, preferred a lighter tone with more room for personal improvisation. As a result, the basic game included many rules and concepts which contradicted comparable ones in the advanced game. Confusing matters further, the original D&D boxed set remained in publication until 1979, since it remained a healthy seller for TSR.

Advanced Dungeons & Dragons was designed to create a tighter, more structured game system than the loose framework of the original game. While seen by many as a revision of D&D, AD&D was at the time declared to be "neither an expansion nor a revision of the old game, it is a new game". The AD&D game was not intended to be directly compatible with D&D and it required some conversion to play between the rule sets.

In 1981 Basic Dungeons & Dragons was revised by Tom Moldvay. However, the rules for the Dungeons & Dragons game continued to diverge and it became a separate and distinct product from TSR’s flagship game, AD&D. This game was promoted as a continuation of the original D&D tone, whereas AD&D was an advancement of the mechanics. Although simpler overall than the 'Advanced' game, it included rules for some situations not covered in AD&D.

In any case, I could easily run BD&D or AD&D adventures in 3e without having to do much conversion (and what little I needed to do I could do on the fly) too, so where does that leave us? Other than the fact that the rallying cry of the Old Schoolers who lump AD&D (1e), BD&D and OD&D together as having some objective "sameness" that marks them as separate from later D&D is in direct contradiction to the game designers' stated intent, nowhere that I can see.

 

[Nikosandros]

Here's a cut and paste from Wikipedia, which is in turn heavily quoted from Gygax himself in Dragon #26.


In any case, I could easily run BD&D or AD&D adventures in 3e without having to do much conversion (and what little I needed to do I could do on the fly) too, so where does that leave us? Other than the fact that the rallying cry of the Old Schoolers who lump AD&D (1e), BD&D and OD&D together as having some objective "sameness" that marks them as separate from later D&D is in direct contradiction to the game designers' stated intent, nowhere that I can see.

AD&D and BD&D play very similarly. When I talk about doing the conversion on the fly, I'm literal: when I ran B2 for AD&D I mostly used exactly the same numbers that were written in the module... I hardly think that it's possible to do that with 3e.

The sameness is objective and since you quoted Gygax he certainly appreciated the different versions of "old" D&D and he disliked 3x.

 

[Desdichado]

AD&D and BD&D play very similarly. When I talk about doing the conversion on the fly, I'm literal: when I ran B2 for AD&D I mostly used exactly the same numbers that were written in the module... I hardly think that it's possible to do that with 3e.

You'd be wrong. I could. Or, I could just manually adjust them on the fly based on what they needed to be, too. It's not hard.

The sameness is objective and since you quoted Gygax he certainly appreciated the different versions of "old" D&D and he disliked 3x.

No, the differences between AD&D in particular and the other two is objective. I don't much care if Gygax liked 3e or not. For one thing, that's pretty irrelevent to what we're talking about.

 

[Nikosandros]

You'd be wrong. I could. Or, I could just manually adjust them on the fly based on what they needed to be, too. It's not hard.

But you have to make up a lot of numbers, like all the DCs for skill checks. I'm sure that an experienced DM can make them up on the fly, but by this token a lot of fantasy RPG would really be the same game, which is patently false.

No, the differences between AD&D in particular and the other two is objective.

There are differences, but they are much smaller than the difference between AD&D and 3rd edition.

 

[Desdichado]

Well, I don't think there's a lot to be gained by continually restating our divergent opinions at each other. I don't consider making up Skill checks DCs to be a significant hurdle to running a module without prior conversion work. Nor do I see how an added skill system suddenly is the "break point" beyond which suddenly we're in brand new territory but with all the things AD&D added to D&D (beyond that which was in, say, OD&D) doesn't. But clearly you think there's something there that I can't see.

Because to me, 3e was very obviously an evolved version of the same design principles that informed the AD&D split from OD&D/BD&D... which was where the really signifcant change happened.