Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Plane Sailing" data-source="post: 5023368" data-attributes="member: 114">From my experience and judgement, I'd still say that I think 1e had a much shallower learning curve. Even as DM you didn't need to know everything to run a game, the whole process was much more straightforward.I know 13 year olds who picked up the books and took to it like a duck to water.The unity of the d20 system is touted as an advantage, but while it has a theoretical appeal it is also a little problematic as so many things in 3e were integrated together that it was more difficult to evaluate the knock-on effects of changes. It seems even worse in 4e to me. Sure you can change the paint job on the outside, but changing any of the fundamental underpinnings is far more difficult because the underlying design is hidden (e.g. in 4e the relationship of damage, duration, and different side effects for different powers).All through 3e (which I really like BTW) I pointed out that it suffers from high coupling of its systems. 1e was in many ways a more practical design with high cohesion and low coupling between its subsystems - there were no knock-on effects from changing one subsystem.It is the lack of inter-relatedness of things in 1e which actually made it easier for people to pick up (in my observations).Cheers</blockquote>