D&D General War- What's it Good For? How to Handle Rules Conflicts

[Remathilis]

hmmm
Kipande cha Snarf cha Kusoma Sheria ndiyo sababu ninaona ni vigumu sana kuamini watu wanapozungumza kuhusu kucheza OS kana kwamba ilikuwa ni kikundi kimoja cha Best Practices kilichofuatwa na kila mtu. Sheria za D&D zilikuwa mchanganyiko wa mifumo na matarajio yasiyo na uhusiano yaliyoshikiliwa pamoja na DM kupitia muundo wa sheria wa wavulana na uwazi. Hakuwa hata kwenye kiwango cha kuunda rafu ya vitabu ya IKEA bali kama stakabadhi ya mbao za 2x4 na maelekezo yaliyoandikwa kwa Kiswahili (wewe unahakikisha screw zako mwenyewe). Kila mtu alicheza mchezo wowote aliyependa uliokusanywa kutoka AD&D, Basic, sheria za nyumbani, na kitu kutoka kwenye riwaya ya fantasy waliyosoma miaka minne iliyopita.

Now all I need are screws

 

[Coroc]

< tangental ramblings >

Elves and spirits: I have occasionally wondered if is an unexcised artifact from before the D&D/AD&D schism.

If elves were meant to be loosely associated with the elemental/inner planes instead of the outer planes, and raise dead targets the outer planes...

The spirit/soul divide could also partially explain the BECMI elf's immunity to undead paralysis* (you ain't got a soul to suck, 'cause yer a spirit...) instead of sleep/charm.

< /tangental ramblings >


--
*AD&D 2nd Ed. too. Thank-you "I just don't feel like myself today" Farrow. (Uncaged: Faces of Sigil)

It might be that elves were closer associated with being fey. These are quasi immortal, but indeed do not havea soul.

 

[Coroc]

Now all I need are screws

You were obviously trying to say: Sasa ninachohitaji ni skrubu

 

[Coroc]

Snarf's Read the Rules threads is why I have such a hard time believing people when they talk about OS play like it was a monolith of known Best Practices everyone followed. D&D rules were a hodgepodge of disassociated collection of systems and expectations that were held together by the DM via amateur rule design and gumption. It wasn't even the level of IKEA build a bookshelf as much as a pile of 2x4s and instructions written in Swahili (you provide your own screws). Everyone played whatever game they liked cobbled together from AD&D, Basic, house rules, and something from a fantasy heartbreaker they read four years ago.

It absolutely wasn't. Besides modifying the rules to make your game playable, you had to modify the adventures also to make them playable.

Was much more work than today. No one in his sane mind would play a 2e module out of the box with rules as written.

 

[Remathilis]

It absolutely wasn't. Besides modifying the rules to make your game playable, you had to modify the adventures also to make them playable.

Was much more work than today. No one in his sane mind would play a 2e module out of the box with rules as written.

As another thread points out: what's the point of a game you can't play without rewriting it?

I'm not talking about banning gnomes or bards (that's a different hot take), I'm talking about how AD&D* barely functions RAW and most modules were written to be read, not played. Say what you will about modern D&D, but I feel like the game was designed holistically rather than as a bunch of parts you may or may not be able to make something usable out of.

*( Clarification: I feel 1e is essentially unplayable RAW without the DM fixing it's jank. 2e is essentially TSRs official attempt to that and it mostly works as long as you use only the Core books. Once you go beyond the PHB, the game flies off the handle. Basic works for the first dozen or so levels but really drops of between levels 16 and 36. There is a reason though most not-straight clones of TSR era start with Basic as the base and but Advanced, unless the goal is to embrace the jank.)

 

[Maxperson]

hmmm
Kipande cha Snarf cha Kusoma Sheria ndiyo sababu ninaona ni vigumu sana kuamini watu wanapozungumza kuhusu kucheza OS kana kwamba ilikuwa ni kikundi kimoja cha Best Practices kilichofuatwa na kila mtu. Sheria za D&D zilikuwa mchanganyiko wa mifumo na matarajio yasiyo na uhusiano yaliyoshikiliwa pamoja na DM kupitia muundo wa sheria wa wavulana na uwazi. Hakuwa hata kwenye kiwango cha kuunda rafu ya vitabu ya IKEA bali kama stakabadhi ya mbao za 2x4 na maelekezo yaliyoandikwa kwa Kiswahili (wewe unahakikisha screw zako mwenyewe). Kila mtu alicheza mchezo wowote aliyependa uliokusanywa kutoka AD&D, Basic, sheria za nyumbani, na kitu kutoka kwenye riwaya ya fantasy waliyosoma miaka minne iliyopita.

"Ah chee ka gogh yu nee, Solo. Uu na keeng saleen na back bahdlah. beeska chatah, wee now kong bantha poodoo."

 

[Coroc]

As another thread points out: what's the point of a game you can't play without rewriting it?

I'm not talking about banning gnomes or bards (that's a different hot take), I'm talking about how AD&D* barely functions RAW and most modules were written to be read, not played. Say what you will about modern D&D, but I feel like the game was designed holistically rather than as a bunch of parts you may or may not be able to make something usable out of.

*( Clarification: I feel 1e is essentially unplayable RAW without the DM fixing it's jank. 2e is essentially TSRs official attempt to that and it mostly works as long as you use only the Core books. Once you go beyond the PHB, the game flies off the handle. Basic works for the first dozen or so levels but really drops of between levels 16 and 36. There is a reason though most not-straight clones of TSR era start with Basic as the base and but Advanced, unless the goal is to embrace the jank.)

It was for nerds and geeks back then, and everybody knew and was fine with it or moved to different systems, some o fwhich never would have gotten so far if D&D always had been a plug and play product.

See it that way: If it had been perfect from the start, there never would have been the motivation for so many editions, expansions maybe, but not stuff like 4e which made a total different game out of D&D.

5e is so far the best version to play on the table, i did not occupy myself much with next / 5.5. because for me 5e pretty much got the perfect toolset and i do not play D&D on the table atm.
I would still do minor modifications, but if i have to, for a vanilla setting i can absolutely live, master and play with 5e RAW totally unmodified without getting a headache. So there you go

 

[Remathilis]

It was for nerds and geeks back then, and everybody knew and was fine with it or moved to different systems, some o fwhich never would have gotten so far if D&D always had been a plug and play product.

See it that way: If it had been perfect from the start, there never would have been the motivation for so many editions, expansions maybe, but not stuff like 4e which made a total different game out of D&D.

5e is so far the best version to play on the table, i did not occupy myself much with next / 5.5. because for me 5e pretty much got the perfect toolset and i do not play D&D on the table atm.
I would still do minor modifications, but if i have to, for a vanilla setting i can absolutely live, master and play with 5e RAW totally unmodified without getting a headache. So there you go

I think that gets closed to the debate about closed ecosystems vs open source software. A closed system (like what Apple uses for it's phones and computers) might have a more polished and simple OS, but at the cost of customization. In theory, Microsoft Windows or Google Android are far more open, and a Linux distro more open still, but you start paying for that openness in complexity.

You can say (and I would probably agree) that D&D's openness is what gave it staying power over other, more refined systems (that and brand recognition). TSR was so raw you needed to recompile the code to even play it. 3e tried to open source the game via OGL. 4e tried to go to an Apple-like walled garden and paid for it (both in terms of rules complexity and 3pp support. Designing a new class in 4e is a nightmare). But that openness costs accessibility. 5e probably is the most approachable version of D&D for people who just want to play and not engage in amateur rule design.

Anyway, I'm rambling. My point was just that while I agree D&D being easily customized (depending on the changes and edition) is an asset, I think the fact older editions forced you to customize just to play it smoothly was not the benefit people view it as in hindsight.

 

[Silam]

Hmm… I’m surprised to hear the take that 2e was unplayable RAW. We played it RAW and I didn’t see major issues with it. We also had friends who played heavily homebrewed versions of 2e so I’m familiar with that to some extent, but I recall that most folks in my main play group disliked such heavy homebrewery and we almost never reached for it ourselves. I don’t have experience with 1e or Basic, etc, so can’t compare. We did use various splatbooks for 2e though, and sure we could tell it was not that balanced, but that didn’t bother us. We also ran some (though not that many) standard published adventures and didn’t need to tweak them much. In contrast, some 5e adventures feel not that polished (especially story-wise, the crunch is fine I guess), even though 5e is by and large much easier to learn and better balanced than 2e. Anyway, your mileage may vary I guess, but I thought I would throw my data point into the mix…

 

[billd91]

Hmm… I’m surprised to hear the take that 2e was unplayable RAW. We played it RAW and I didn’t see major issues with it. We also had friends who played heavily homebrewed versions of 2e so I’m familiar with that to some extent, but I recall that most folks in my main play group disliked such heavy homebrewery and we almost never reached for it ourselves. I don’t have experience with 1e or Basic, etc, so can’t compare. We did use various splatbooks for 2e though, and sure we could tell it was not that balanced, but that didn’t bother us. We also ran some (though not that many) standard published adventures and didn’t need to tweak them much. In contrast, some 5e adventures feel not that polished (especially story-wise, the crunch is fine I guess), even though 5e is by and large much easier to learn and better balanced than 2e. Anyway, your mileage may vary I guess, but I thought I would throw my data point into the mix…

You know, people say the darnedest things.
The only significant truth to AD&D (both 1e and 2e) being unplayable RAW is that the people who played with ALL the rules RAW are vanishingly rare. Most of us played with a subset because we either didn't remember/understand all of the fiddly rules or we decided they were too cumbersome. 1e initiative is a classic example of exceptions and corner cases that were such a hassle that we usually played with straight side initiative. 1e surprise rules, once you tried to incorporate all the weird variations ranging from the monk's % chance to be surprised, to svirfneblin using d12, drow using d8, etc, was so complex few people knew what to do with it. And don't even get me started on grappling rules with either 1e or 2e.
But the bulk of the rules were quite serviceable and playable, even under RAW, to work with. That just didn't stop us from ignoring the ones we wanted to ignore.