The thing I miss most from AD&D is...

[xechnao]

snip

Have the PCs buy with gold their level progression at training grounds or something. Might&Magic world of Xeen used this idea.

 

[Baumi]

I started with a German RPG (Das schwarze Auge) and later go to AD&D 2nd Edition, so I cannot say anything about 1E, but what I miss from 2E are the extremely cool Settings (I bought Dragonlance before I got AD&D Books, Dark Sun and Ravenloft was awesome, ...).

And the Art (one-Page Pictures) from 2E are simply legendary, especially Pcitures from Larry Elmore bring me instantly to a world of heroism, Dragons and Magic.

While I liked Kender (and the new Halflings), the fat, barefooted and pipe smoking Hobbits where simply the "greatest" race for me.

 

[ggroy]

...experience points for treasure gained.

I understand where the XP systems of 3e and 4e are coming from and, mostly, I think they achieve their goal. However, I feel that there is a unifying feature for XP=GP that is sometime sorely missed. When the primary motivation in an adventure is Treasure(!), then you know what everyone wants and the glee of finding a dragon's hoard is more than merely "what can I buy with this stuff?" (Which, a lot of the time in AD&D, was "a follower" or "a castle" - not some bit of magical power).

Sure, not giving XP for treasure opens up a wide set of other motivations. Not all PCs need to be mercenaries. It makes the monk fit in a bit more. However, occasionally the nostalgia overtakes me and I mourn the loss of finding 1000 gold... and gaining 1000 XP!

I houseruled out XP for treasure from my basic D&D and 1E AD&D games. It didn't make sense to me even back then. Instead, I just changed the XP awards for killing monsters to as much as 10 or 20 times as usual, as well as XP for role playing. The level progression was about as fast as XP for treasure.

After awhile, I did away with XP altogether and did leveling up by DM fiat. Usually after about 8 or 9 encounters and/or reaching a milestone, I had the players level up. But I still had players do training for each time they level up, which required some gold to pay for. The XP numbers quoted for encounters didn't really make sense to me, other than appearing to being numbers chosen almost semi-arbitrarily.

Towards the end of my time playing 1E AD&D (before I took a long hiatus from tabletop rpgs), eventually I dropped training for leveling up altogether. Without an XP system for killing monsters and taking their loot, it was easier to motivate the players to reach a particular goal, where the reward involved leveling up as a part of the package.

 

[avin]

I miss the feeling that D&D was a more mature game (Dark Sun, Planescape) than today.

 

[lutecius]

I miss the "You get a Keep and dudes to run it at 9th level". I like nation building and management of that style, and I haven't seen that thing in 3e or 4e at all yet.

Same here. Of course this kind of advancement did not fit every campaign but each setting could have its own variant.

As for gold=xp, I've never liked it. Even when I started gaming (a couple of years before the release of ad&d2) it felt redundant and too gamey.
Killing things=xp doesn't always make sense either but at least sometimes it does.

To me, every edition (except 4e of course ) was a vast improvement over its predecessors and I miss very few things from older editions. The Ad&d2 priest spheres are one of them.

Anyway, treasure=xp as implemented in ad&d1 is not that hard to add. It's not like it was balanced back then.

 

[Obryn]

I'm running it now for a few long sessions a year, so there's little to miss.

-O

 

[Doug McCrae]

I don't see how xp mostly for killing monsters can possibly work, doesn't it give a massive incentive to just kill everything you meet? The groups I've been in haven't played that way since, well, forever.

The d20 approach is more simulationist though. Instead of seeking gold because it magically makes them more experienced, PCs want gold because they can use it to actually buy stuff.

 

[TheWyrd]

I miss the plateau effect of negative advancement. Where you got your character's up to between 10th and 15th level and simply remained there because you were constantly loosing levels vs undead or resurrection or what have you.

 

[BryonD]

Being a 15 year old gamer.

 

[Aeolius]

Random Prostitute Encounter Tables? ( Sorry... somebody had to... )