D&D General The Rules Cyclopedia - Unlearning Dnd Preconceptions from a 3e player

[teitan]

I mean, maybe assuming that your experiences were universal is a bit of a stretch?

Except in the case of 2e it was nearly universal that minis were not standard and a luxury. If you find offense in my comment in this regard that's on you. SPeaking in terms of the average experience should not be offensive when it's a generally accepted fact. 2e did not encourage the use of miniatures and full rules for them really only emerged late in 2e with Combat & Tactics. Sure we had Battlesystem but that was a game in and of itself. As was the skirmish version. Both were published as their own game.

As someone pointed out above, even BECMI made little references to miniatures other than you might want to have some to show marching order but they weren't necessary. EVen the 1e DMG mentions them but only for about half a page in total to say hey, these exist and this is how the floor scale works but they aren't necessary for play. The default expectation has always been Theater of the Mind until, honestly, 3.5 where movement was changed from feet to squares to reflect the open adaptation of battlemats and the D&D Miniatures line as an integral part of the game. 3.0 was handy with minis but they weren't required or called out for use. So high horses really should be dismounted because being offended by my general comment is... on you.

 

[cbwjm]

You're not wrong. But it's still a more complicated process than just adding positive numbers (with the occasional bit of subtraction due to a negative modifier or similar).

I played tons of 2e/TSR-era D&D mishmash in high school, and I was attending a nerd farm. That is, a residential program for 'gifted and talented' students. In order to be admitted, a student had to pass fairly rigorous math tests.

And we STILL had players who occasionally had a rough time with adding and subtracting negative numbers. It's wasn't a huge deal, and I daresay that playing D&D helped them wrap their brains around the process better, but the fact remains that adding and subtracting positive numbers is just more straightforward.

So I can do THAC0, you can do THAC0, my 7yo can do THAC0, and so can thousands and thousands of people worldwide. I still think that using all-positives makes for easier and smoother gameplay.

It does make it smoother, but it's (perhaps not too) surprising that some people have trouble working with positive numbers as well. Not necessarily because they are bad at maths but because they've been playing for 3 hours and adding 7 to 15 has become more difficult.

 

[Don Durito]

It does make it smoother, but it's (perhaps not too) surprising that some people have trouble working with positive numbers as well. Not necessarily because they are bad at maths but because they've been playing for 3 hours and adding 7 to 15 has become more difficult.

Yes. Playing rpgs are inherently cognitively draining.

 

[Aldarc]

1) Alignment: As much as we like to talk about the "9 alignments" as a sacred cow, it actually was just Law, Neutral, and Chaos back then. It seems that Law was "Big L, little g" and Chaos was "Big C, little e".

At the risk of becoming a one-note song, but this is something that I liked about the 4e alignment system. IMHO, it captured the importance of Order vs. Chaos found in ancient societies while also helping to morally contextualize them for modern audiences - "little g" and "little e" - where Law was regarded as a social good and Chaos was regarded as a social evil. In the 4e paradigm, evil perverted and corrupted order towards cosmological chaos, while goodness worked towards cosmological order and harmony. It's less cynical than Moorcockian Law vs. Chaos, which IMO fits within the heroic fantasy that D&D has increasingly gravitated towards since at least Dragonlance.

c) Hitpoints were tighter. Fighters only had d8 hp, and you only gained a single HP at 9th and beyond.

IMHO, WotC should have considered something similar for 5e, creating a soft cap for the game at level 10, with "epic" play extending beyond that. That would also have worked better in conjunction with bounded accuracy and making opponents a threat longer.

 

[Ath-kethin]

It does make it smoother, but it's (perhaps not too) surprising that some people have trouble working with positive numbers as well. Not necessarily because they are bad at maths but because they've been playing for 3 hours and adding 7 to 15 has become more difficult.

True dat!

But 3 hours? We lived together, my friend, and our bloodstreams were 80% Mountain Dew at all times; 24+ hour game sessions were a badge of honor. By the backside of those, we barely could remember our names, let alone add.

The moreso with some of the wacky games people ran. One friend had a megadungeon derived entirely from the Fibonacci sequence, for example, and successfully navigating it required solving puzzles based on logic theorems. He also drank 2-3 pots of coffee per day and was always a bit . . . twitchy as a result. I was serious about the nerd farm bit.

Ahh, the good old days!

 

[Ath-kethin]

Conversely, with a 36 level spread, they did thieves a dirty on the skill percentages. Stretching them out over a wider level spread compared to B/X. This meant your thief was useless at being a thief for longer!
It was a missed opportunity to give them something interesting at higher levels I feel.

You know, I don't think I ever had anyone play a thief using the RC rules. They were popular using 2e, but I never saw on in RC games. I never really thought about it before, but you're right.

 

[transmission89]

You know, I don't think I ever had anyone play a thief using the RC rules. They were popular using 2e, but I never saw on in RC games. I never really thought about it before, but you're right.

There are several options to deal with this. One is to just use the B/X progression chart instead. Then what does the thief do after level 14? That's down to you.

Grim Reaper's masterpiece of RC errata (found here: Dungeons & Dragons Rules Cyclopedia Errata and Companion Document Download Page) also contains a suggestion. Allow the thief to attempt a skill at a level above current per dex bonus mod. (so a +2 dex bonus would mean a 3rd level thief could attempt to open locks as a 5th level thief). He also provides a complete homebrew rework for taste as well.

 

[Reynard]

Except in the case of 2e it was nearly universal that minis were not standard and a luxury. If you find offense in my comment in this regard that's on you. SPeaking in terms of the average experience should not be offensive when it's a generally accepted fact. 2e did not encourage the use of miniatures and full rules for them really only emerged late in 2e with Combat & Tactics. Sure we had Battlesystem but that was a game in and of itself. As was the skirmish version. Both were published as their own game.

As someone pointed out above, even BECMI made little references to miniatures other than you might want to have some to show marching order but they weren't necessary. EVen the 1e DMG mentions them but only for about half a page in total to say hey, these exist and this is how the floor scale works but they aren't necessary for play. The default expectation has always been Theater of the Mind until, honestly, 3.5 where movement was changed from feet to squares to reflect the open adaptation of battlemats and the D&D Miniatures line as an integral part of the game. 3.0 was handy with minis but they weren't required or called out for use. So high horses really should be dismounted because being offended by my general comment is... on you.

Only one of us seems to be getting excited over this. I certainly wasn't offended. I was just pointing out that only Sith deal in absolutes.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

At the risk of becoming a one-note song, but this is something that I liked about the 4e alignment system. IMHO, it captured the importance of Order vs. Chaos found in ancient societies while also helping to morally contextualize them for modern audiences - "little g" and "little e" - where Law was regarded as a social good and Chaos was regarded as a social evil.

I always thought that one of the more interesting explorations of this (I mean, for the time and the medium) was in Babylon 5.

I don't want to put in spoilers here, given I am going to post a separate discussion thread about this, but the treatment of law and chaos as little g (not even) and little e is interesting.

 

[Aldarc]

I always thought that one of the more interesting explorations of this (I mean, for the time and the medium) was in Babylon 5.

I don't want to put in spoilers here, given I am going to post a separate discussion thread about this, but the treatment of law and chaos as little g (not even) and little e is interesting.

Who are you? What do you want?