The Inverse Trek Law?

[Mercule]

I liked 1E. Granted, it was a cornucopia of cobbled subsystems. It was also a house-ruler's joy. Over all, there were some issues and oddities with it (rangers got heavy armor and no stealth?), but the system was pretty good.

I did not like 2E. It would probably be fair to say that I never did actually play 2E. I spent 4 years playing a 1.5E and borrowing things from 2E that made sense -- adjustable thief skills, ranger stealth -- and ignoring things that didn't -- ranger w/ TWF = WTF. The (as someone else put it) "slash and burn" mentality of TSR during that time period helped to drive me away from what I already considered a problematic system.

I came back to 3E and played it for almost as long as I played 1E (not counting the 1.5 bits). I liked it, as a player. I had some great flexibility in character options, and they kept getting better. I hated anything over level 8-10, as a GM. The NPC construction and balancing of adventures were too time consuming and fragile. I couldn't just eyeball it the way I could 1E.

I'm looking forward to 4E. The promise is that the players will get the advantages of 3E, and then some, while the DM gets the ease of 1E. I definitely don't expect the DM side to be quite that easy, but it should be an improvement. We'll have to wait and see.

 

[maggot]

1e - played memorable long-term campaigns and one-shots that we still talk about to this day
2e - all campaigns died off, quite playing D&D
3e - came back to playing, played memorable long-term campaigns and one-shots that we still talk about to this day
4e - the more I see, the less interested I am

If the pattern continues, 5e will rock for me.

 

[Lizard]

The Trek Law has never applied because 1e was by far and away the worst edition of D&D ever.

It took the wonderful, solid simplicity of the OD&D line and added a huge amount of clunky, time-consuming pointlessness such as different weapon damage vs S-M or L. Subsystems sprout like fungus all over 1e.

Gryhawk (LBB Supplement), Page 15
Damage Done By Weapon Type (Addition)
Weapon Type vs Man-Sized Opponent/Larger Opponents
Dagger 1-4 Points/1-3 Points

Etc.

You kids and your wacky revisionist history...

Or are you going to tell me the Greyhawk supplement isn't part of "Original D&D"? Then I guess we scrap rogues, paladins, beholders, different hit die for classes, different damage (at all!) for weapons -- all weapons in unsupplemented D&D did 1d6, period -- etc.

 

[Wormwood]

The Trek Law has never applied because 1e was by far and away the worst edition of D&D ever.

How dare you, sir!

The Emperor's clothes are splendid! Splendid I tell you!

 

[Henry]

...and yet, D&D's highest point was in the early 1980's, when 1e was in full swing. I did play a lot of 2e, I'll freely admit, but not a single game of it was "pure" 2e. Our groups always, without exception, mixed back in a generous helping of 1e stuff (the cavalier, ranger, and weapon specialization being notable examples) to make 2e more palatable. I imagine something similar might happen with 4e - that gamers might figure out what the core assumptions of the game are, and "3e-ify" their 4e games. In fact, I'd almost guarantee it, given that several things might take up to one to two years to come back from the designers that are already in 3e.

 

[HP Dreadnought]

Too bad a lot of people already love 4E and think it promises to be the best edition yet. . . thereby invalidating your hypothesis.

 

[kennew142]

Not to mention the fact that postulating a continuing pattern without there already BEING a pattern and needing an ESTABLISHED 4th data point to even begin to SUGGEST a pattern is, to be as kind as I can, either stupidly speculative, or else bald edition-hatemongering.

How dare you, sir? How dare you introduce logic into an internet discussion?

 

[Doug McCrae]

Or are you going to tell me the Greyhawk supplement isn't part of "Original D&D"?

It's not part of OD&D 'core'. It's a splatbook. 1e was built out of OD&D plus the splats such as Greyhawk. Much as 4e has been built out of 3e + late 3e splats such as ToB and Complete Mage.

Imo those OD&D splats broke the game. Adding 7th-9th level spells when stuff like teleport and raise dead had previously defined the maximum level of power possible was a major problem. Adding new classes such as thief and paladin when the existing classes - magic-user and cleric - left no niche for them was another.

And the OD&D splats have remained in the AD&D line all the way up to 3e. That's why 3e doesn't work at high level. The OD&D splats broke the magic system. That's why we need the major overhauls of 4e.

The BECMI line however derives more from OD&D core than the OD&D splats. Which is why BECMI pwns.

 

[GVDammerung]

1e -"Hey! This things sells!"

2e - "Hey! Let's crank out a new edition and sell some more! whoa. This isn't going the way we thought."

3e - "Hey! This thing sells!"

4e - "Hey! Let's crank out a new edition and sell some more! . . . "

Its all in the wrist, as they say. 1e had the right intention and idea - cool idea begets game and public responds with great sales. 3e essentially did the same thing by way of a reinvention. 2e was bandwagoneering in search of a buck. 4e appears to be similarly motivated. IMO, you are always better off aiming for cool ideas in a game and letting the sales take care of themselves. 2e did not and suffered somewhat for that. 4e again appears to be motivated more by the need to sell games than the opportunity to make a really cool game. Yeah, yeah, yeah, "they are a business," but they are a GAMING business and in a GAMING business there is no substitute IMO for being motivated by cool ideas first and sales only thereafter. We shall see if the inverse works with 4e.

 

[kennew142]

The Trek Law has never applied because 1e was by far and away the worst edition of D&D ever.

It took the wonderful, solid simplicity of the OD&D line and added a huge amount of clunky, time-consuming pointlessness such as different weapon damage vs S-M or L. Subsystems sprout like fungus all over 1e.

I had a lot of fun with 1e when it came out. Of course I always ignored some of the clunkier bits, like weapon speeds and weapon bonuses to hit armor types.

And Gary's prose sucks.

Ouch! But true, oh so true.

2e made a bad mistake in cutting the balls off D&D. It became less red-blooded. Less Conan, more Dragonlance. But the rules and text were a big improvement over 1e, so overall it was a lot better.

When they changed demons and devils to unpronounceable words of many syllables, it seemed to me to be caving in to the Jack Chick crowd. Although I felt that the RAW were better than 1e, there were other rpgs out there that were more appealing to me. The lack of a skill system in 2e drove me first to RQ, then to GURPS.

3e brought me back to D&D. Although I both played and ran 2e, most of my gaming was in other systems. The addition of skills and the cleaning up of the combat mechanics, combined with the fact that it was Dungeons & Dragons (my favorite genre) made me a willing convert.

4e (IMO) seems to be addressing the remaining problems I've had with the D&D rules. I think it would be unfair to say that I love 4e. I haven't seen the game yet. But I do love all of the rules they've previewed thus far, and I have high hopes for the next edition.

I will be running 4e when it comes out because it will be D&D. What I mean is that when new players go to buy the game, this is the edition that will be for sale in game stores and book stores. I tried to keep RQ alive for years after it went out of publication, and have no desire to support an out of print game in the future.

If 4e sucks, I will probably try to find some other game to run. The problem is that I do not really like any of the other systems on the market. True20 seemed really cool to me on paper. I jumped in and bought a whole lot of material when it first came out. Playing that system (along with M&M) changed my opinion of it completely. I still have the core rules, since I collect rule books. But I doubt I will ever play it again.