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Message: <blockquote data-quote="TerraDave" data-source="post: 5157006" data-attributes="member: 22260">Why, I am working on something related…(see sig)…First, AD&D was NOT Gygax’s house rules. If only we could be so lucky. It was very much a compilation of many people’s house rules, or at least things that they had been playing with, and sought to tone down the excesses of OD&D (see a pattern here?). Some of the complicated bits were OD&D legacy material, some were foisted on Gygax by others in TSR as part of the very strong trend at the time to add detail and realism. Note that Unearthed Arcana probably came closer to house rule territory, but we will never really know how many of those rules Gygax actually used in play. Ok, Second edition, or I should say the core books for 2E. The issue with this version is that it many different goals:-Be backwards compatible,-Bring the game closer to how people played it (ie, leave out the complicated stuff they were ignoring),-Bring in more player options without the gonzoness of Unearthed Arcana-Make monsters challenging over a wider range of levels-Tone down the elements that led people to link the game to Satanism-Make the game more generic to support different campaign settings and campaigns. -This included FR high fantasy, DL story telling, and even historically oriented campaigns, which TSR would try to support. -Do a total rewrite to remove Gygax’s name from the game (note, this was also part of a pattern, see Dave Arneson). Most—though not all—were worthy goals. The result was a mostly cleaner playing game that you could use with all sorts of stuff out there that felt like it was written by committee and totally lacked the edge of OAD&D. Many posters above have also touched on the schizophrenic nature of the game. That is, all the mechanics where there for blasting arch-fiends with your staff of wizardry and taking their stuff, but the game at points was written as if this was a bad thing.  This was part of pattern of trying to use moral suasion to address deep issues in the game and, dare I say it, game balance, that actually went back to early 80’s 1E and post Gygax Dragon. "Monty Haul" was to be avoided at all cost. It was more about the world, the story, and having an interesting, if not really good, character. Or at least that’s what they said. Play was something else.</blockquote>

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