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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Melkor" data-source="post: 2994884" data-attributes="member: 10786">One thing I forgot to mention in my original post was also that the difference in game mechanics between the older edition and the new tend to lend themselves to a different style of play.Now that I have spend over 20+ years gaming, I tend to really appreciate some of the rules included in D&D 3.5 - The fact that your characters ability scores mesh with a skill system to provide a rule set for determining the outcomes of certain actions.The fact that you can actually develop 'skills' outside of your class' abilities and your character's combat abilities.With that depth though comes a bit of an additional rules burden on the DM (at least in my opinion based on my experience with the game).In the early days of gaming, the DM would really 'wing-it' when it came to determining the outcome of situations not covered by the rules.There weren't even 'Ability Checks' in early days of AD&D (until some of the latter adventures and Unearthed Arcana), and the DM had to do his best to determine outcomes by calling for an arbitrary percentage chance, or some kind of '2 in 6' chance roll.As an example, and this contains Spoilers to White Plume Mountain...so stop reading if you plan on playing in the adventure:In the White Plume Mountain module, there is a room where the character's enter into a cavern from a ledge high above an underground river of boiling mud. Suspended accross the river on chains from the roof are wooden disks that serve as a somewhat treacherous way for the characters to cross. To make things more difficult on the PCs, at intervals, geysers of hot mud erupt causing damage and possibly knocking the characters off of the wooden disks to their doom.In the original module, the rules don't state what the characters need to roll to cross the suspended disk walkway, it only notes that they are treacherous and slick. It's up to the DM to 'wing it' what and if the characters have to roll some kind of check to jump from disk to disk without falling. The rules do state that if caught by one of the geysters, characters with a STR of 16 or more have an 85% chance to hang on to the chain until the geyster stops (if I remember the text correctly), and that for each point of STR less than 16, a -10% penalty is assessed to that chance.In the same room in the 3.5 revised rules, the characters have to make DC checks to jump from disk to disk, and there is also a check required to hold onto the chains when being blasted by a geyser. Balance maybe ? I can't recall at the moment.Personally, I prefer some kind of concrete rule that allows me to easily judge 'pass' or 'fail' for a particular action, and possibly the degree of success or failure....but I have to admit that the free-wheeling nature of 'winging it' in AD&D also added a mystique to these older modules that remains a part of the nostalgia I still have for AD&D.Just some thoughts I had while reflecting on 'old school'.</blockquote>

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