What did we do before feats, skills, and prestige classes?

[Odhanan]

You know, as much fun as it is for old-timers to heap scorn on a more detailed rules set, I've got to disagree. That attitude strikes me as intellectual elitism, and it gives nostalgia too heavy a weight for my own personal taste.

I use my imagination as much or more in 3e than I did in 1e. I very clearly remember making up a dwarven fighter in 1st edition, and being incredibly frustrated that mechanically he was like every other fighter out there. Sure, I had an elaborate backstory for him, just like I do for my characters nowadays, but I always had the nagging feeling of so much lost potential.

That's no longer true for me. Maybe its because I play with DMs who respect the rules without being shackled to them (as my favorite DMs always are), but I now can match my character's abilities to the intricate vision I have in my head. I love that about D&D nowadays.

Quoted for Truth.

 

[Felon]

We used something else. I just can't remember what it was called.....
Hang on.....
It's coming back to me now....
Yes, we used something called "Imagination". I have no idea where we got it from, or where it has gone today, or just exactly how it was used, but it was definitely involved somehow.

Wow.

This response lacks substance, has no depth, offers no real insights--it's completely shallow and unsupported. It has an almost puerile quality. Yet it makes a claim that some folks will "amen" like it was gospel, and salute like it was a banner of some great nation.

Likewise, it lacks any particularly inflammatory content, engages in no explicit name-calling or other rude content that would constitute a violation of board policy. Yet some folks will take up arms against it.

In short, I believe we have discovered The Perfect Post.

 

[Felon]

Hrmpfh... it is not how big it is, but how you use it... sorta... I did not need the rules to explain the differences. It had to do with tactics, ideas, motivation, weapons preferred (and not just whatever gives the most plusses), culture etc. .

Note that the current edition of D&D has not abolished tactics, ideas, motivation, or weaponry. Oddly enough, I don't recall seeing a lot of barrbarians armored only in a loincloth, or mercenary warriors whose weapon of choice was a dagger.

When I was a kid, we called that "Cops 'n' Robbers," or "Cowboys 'n' Indians." All imagination, no stats, hours upon hours of fun.

Really? I recall it having about twenty minutes of playability before kids realized how inherently unsatisfying it was. Apparently, the robber class had some uber class features that gimped cop couldn't touch.

I'm sorry, The_Gneech, but you've committed the reductive fallacy - by stripping away the meaningful details, you attempt to make the question sound absurd

The Perfect Post had no meaningful details. That would have corrupted it, made it imperfect. Once you try to support a statement, you've opened yourself up to attempts at deconstruction. No, do not do this. Simply assert that imagination was used back then, and imply that today it is a quality that has been forgotten.

 

[I'm A Banana]

In short, I believe we have discovered The Perfect Post.

Felon. Manbabies. Now.

It was closely akin to watching some elderly man say "Boy, back in my day, we knew the value of a dollar! Not like today where you spend $10 on a 2 hour movie with sex and drugs!"

People have always played D&D to have fun. Back inna day, it apparently consisted of fighting uphil against a system that limited what you could do at any turn and making it enjoyable almost despite itself. It said "Now you can play heroes from myth!" and then required you to bludgeon it into submission with the power of your imagination (e.g.: something outside of the game) before it worked like that.

Now, it says "Now you can play heroes from myth!" and gives you at least half a dozen ways you can do that, depending upon your sources, your budget, and your interpretation.

The old way had the dubious virtue of being made up as you went along. You can make up stuff as you go along in the new way, they just actually provide a framework for it.

It's like, people have been wanting to see movies about sex and drugs for pretty much all of humanity. It's only now that we're able to pay $10 to indulge that desire.

Now I'm babbling. Anyhoo, yeah, before the PrC's and feats and stuff people generally made up their own rules or played something else. D&D didn't do that whole thing very well.

 

[Tsillanabor]

In first edition people created horribly unbalanced new classes, or got them out of Unearthed Arcana, or Dragon Magazine, or third-party sources. I think coming up with a cool concept and creating it within third edition rules requires just as much imagination.

 

[Heathen72]

When I was a kid, we called that "Cops 'n' Robbers," or "Cowboys 'n' Indians." All imagination, no stats, hours upon hours of fun.

But still a limited number of classes. Cops or Robbers. Cowboys or Indians*





*with the girl next door needing rescue, perhaps - but that was probably an expansion set.

 

[Seeten]

She got rescued, and then it was a game of Doctor, and "patient".

 

[teitan]

For me and my group, we didn't really think about every fighter being the same mechanically, we had different attributes and different NWPS but even that wasn't the big deal, it was actually the CHARACTER that we thought about. Sure, Sasha Quickblade and Valadriel Darkholme were essentially the same character at 5th level, sans magic items, but they were different people and that was all we thought about. In fact, we were so immersed in our characters that we didn't even notice these similarities mechanically until we played 3e. For us game balance wasn't whether the magic user was over shadowing the fighter in encounters but whether or not we got too much treasure or if an encounter might accidentally wipe out a party of 7.

I think 3e has gotten too caught up in the fiddly bits and game balance where no character overshadows another character. We look at the Cavalier or the Barbarian in Unearthed Arcana and talk about how they are soooooo broken but dammit, that wasn't the point and to cry and boohoo over that matter is to miss the whole point of the freakin' game... to HAVE FUN and these classes ARE FUN to play, they are fun to watch others play.

Another thing that has happened with 3e is that things have become almost too quantified. We used to do things like leaping onto chandeliers and other kewl Errol Flynn style theatrics but now it seems like everyone is like "well, you can't do that cause you don't have this *particular series of feats* and it says on page XX you need such and such feat to do this here as well so you can't do that either". I know that isn't what the rules say, penalties to the skill check etc but either the DCs are set so high that the untrained could NEVER accomplish such a tactic or the above arguement ensues. I noticed this especially in D20 Modern with automatic weapons. Players were assuming they couldn't use an Uzi because they didn't have the proper feats. What did we use to do? Make an ability check rolling your ability or under on a D20. It didn't matter if you had this or that, you just did it because it was FUN and KEWL.

I know like I sound like I am anti-3e. I am most certainly not but I think a lot of players out there need to play some OD&D or AD&D to remember that the game was about fun and not about number crunching and the above. Balance has become too strong an influence and is starting to overpower the fun. We are so caught up in whether things are balanced we aren't checking out the kewl factor at all.

3e is the best incarnation of D&D, I think most of us are in agreement on that but many of us seem to be really forgetting what made the game fun in the first place. I personally hope when 4e comes out they dial down the mechanics and dial up the kewl factor. 3e started out with a LOT of kewl factor and those three core books (3.0) are still waaaaay kewl. 3.5 is just wayyyyyyy to obsessed with "balance" and less concerned with "fun". Its almost a wargame and not an RPG.

Jason

 

[Orius]

Or, back then, the character was called Fighter and had no personality since all we did was kill stuff and take their lunch money.

You know, as much fun as it is for old-timers to heap scorn on a more detailed rules set, I've got to disagree. That attitude strikes me as intellectual elitism, and it gives nostalgia too heavy a weight for my own personal taste.

Yup, I have to agree. Some grognards can say "Imagination" all they want, but back in the day, your character died, you rolled up a new one and they all were played the same. Some imagination.

When people did play different character types, there were hundreds of classes in optional sources, and a bunch of them were probably little more than slight variations of the normal classes, maybe with some overpower abilities tacked on. Just as bad as the whole PrC mess the old timers harp about. Personally, I prefer the 3e system, because its easier to wing things, and the current system provide a pretty good way of judging how powerful new additions can be.

 

[Felon]

Felon. Manbabies. Now.

My bottom line here is that designing characters within an intricate rules system is fun. I think certain DMs use the "imagination" angle as a way to express their aggrivation towards players designing powerful characters using the possibilities they now have at hand.

Which is what folks did in 1e. They just depended more on magic items.