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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Treebore" data-source="post: 5034687" data-attributes="member: 10177">First off, read my sig.Now not only did Gary and crew do their best to write as well balanced a game as they could at the time, but he also expected us to use our own judgement as our games grew and progressed.Many of us did, because many, if not all, wrote house rules to fix things we found to be broken during our game experiences.So Gary and crew knew very well their rules set was not perfect and needed further adjudication on an individual basis, which is why they wrote what is in my sig.So not only did they do their best to "balance" 1E, but after 25 years I am more convinced than ever that they did a pretty good job, considering they were the first to ever try to do so with a game sold on such a scale.Sure, people can sit here 30+ years later and claim they could have done better, but thats a safe claim to make since they can never prove it.Plus Gary and company never, ever, for one minute, or even a second, tried to make the classes balanced between one another. They knew the mage would eventually become the most powerful PC. They knew the Thief pretty much sucked in combat. They knew that when it came to pure thump the fighter was the best in pretty much every situation, especially when magic was "dead" for whatever reason.I think people had a problem with running 1E for many reasons. In my experience the biggest was that DM's didn't know that part of maintaining balance was to also know what each and every spell did. That way they knew what could negate those scrying spells, stop teleportation, or to make one single magic item with one 6th level spell in it that would allow a fighter to kill any spell caster once they got in range.So yes, the game was far from being perfectly balanced, but it had a lot more balance to it than many seem willing to give it credit for. It was certainly the best for its time, and some of its bigger flaws are made even more obvious by decades of exposure to other game mechanics.Todays games are built on identifying the mistakes of the past and figuring out ways to do it better.I recently went back and played 1E for a few sessions. Yes, it has some things that still rub me the wrong way. You know what? With all the games I have ran and played in since I last ran 1E 20+ years ago, I can go back and house rule 1E better than I ever did before, and make it run a heck of a lot better than it ever did back in the day.I imagine every one who visits these boards and used to also play 1E at one point could also do the same.How good of a game do you think you could make it be today?</blockquote>

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