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Message: <blockquote data-quote="JohnRTroy" data-source="post: 5158668" data-attributes="member: 2732">When it comes to the rote mechanics, I agree with what most posters say.  AD&D 1e did not feel like a good "let's learn this game".  As much as I loved Gary and still love his writing, I don't think he could ever do a very good job of making an easy-to-learn rule set.  D&D benefited greatly from the basic sets.  (DJ is almost like 1e in that regard, LA is the best so far but I still think it could benefit from a second party;s hand).As far as philosophy of the game (such as game play styles, etc.) goes, it really isn't fair to measure 1st and 2nd edition by themselves.  We are seeing a gradual evolution of the game system, and that comes from both expectations of the growing player base as well as the influence of other designers.  I think arguments about it becoming more about "story" and less about "randomness", because if you look at the modules of the time, there was a lot of change of style and experiments.Monster Ecology--heck, that was starting in Dragon, and Gary started doing more of that.  Read WG4 to see how he adds some ecology to rather sketchy monsters in the FF?  And EGG went with the boxed text paradigm.Stories and Chapters--read some of the pre-Dragonlance Hickman modules.  I3-5 is a great mix of both Randomness and tricky traps along with a lot more story driven stuff.I think the hard division into camps between 1e and 2e ignore these gradual changes and the fact that there are many players who were okay with some changes and not the rest.  I refuse to use the terms "golden age" or "silver age" because I don't think there's a good line to measure.  I also fear the "scrappy doo" effect, where enough of a vocal group complaining about a change in the past end up transforming actual historical fact.  (If people hated Scrappy Doo they would have written him out of the damn show pretty quickly).  I think a few elements like Ed Greenwood and Unearthed Arcana suffer from the Scrappy Doo analysis.Finally, a cute aside.  The 1e Harlot Table--I am embarrassed to say for the first few years of my life I never looked up the word so I thought these guys were some sort of royal attendants or professions.  (The word hooker or prostitute was not used, and terms like pimp weren't as saturated in the language back in the early 80s).</blockquote>

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