What *feel* did OD&D/Basic D&D/1E/2E have compared to 3E?

[GlassJaw]

The ruleset does influence the feel of the game but I think it has more to do with age. I'm sure a 12 or 13-year old opening the PHB for the first time has the same sense of wonder that we did when we opened the red box for the first time.

As you get older, the games you play and run are just different, even if it's a 3ed game, a 1ed game, or something completely different. You can't regain that "D&D innocence" as you get older and become experienced.

 

[David Howery]

Well, I've only played during the 1E/2E eras... got into it too late for OD&D, haven't gamed since 3E came out. To be honest, I didn't find all that much difference between the two editions, other than cosmetic stuff that could be changed anyway. No assassins/barbarians/cavaliers? No problem, just put them back in or use class kits. No demons or devils? Just put them back in (TSR did anyway, after a year or two).
My take on both editions was the same: a nice series of core books that got drowned in a sea of 'optional' following books. 1E wasn't perfect, but it was workable. Then they started adding on books. New monster books were always nice, but UA was just too much. And then came the dungeon and wilderness guides, guides for each TSR campaign world, etc. etc... 2E went through a similar dismal path. THe core books weren't perfect, again, but you could fix what you didn't like pretty easily. Then came all the add ons; PO books, DM options books, the softcover blue books, players handbooks, HR books, etc. etc..
3E.. never had a chance to play it, but it seems to be very 'the player can do whatever he wants' oriented.....

 

[Evilhalfling]

Started with basic, and had a blast, looking up rules while playing never occured to me and much sillyness insued - lots of 1-2 session games, two player games and an accidental slide into advanced D&D with the Monster Manual.

Pre-High School -
1st ed added a multitude of strange rules, mostly I rember ignoring large parts of the system - weapon vs AC modifiers, suprise modifiers, iniative speeds, never played an assasin, monk or illusionist, the ability requirements were too high. Lots of abuse of psionics. and looking up tables, the hit charts, the saveingthrow charts, the thief charts, etc....

Expert/masters/compaion D&D
still remembered as a great focus on running a kingdom rather than dungeon crawling, I loved the complexity of the gazateers - New rules croping up in suprising places, like red arrow black shield and detailed castle servants wages in some random modual.

High School - College
2ed D&D - my longest running campaigns, well attendend, regualr group of players. The profieceny system gave charaters skills outside the dungeons, all ridiculously easy to use, I played most of the rules as written. It had very detailed society and ecology rules of all the monsters in those big Binders -
the mage was forever harvesting monster pieces. My first homebrewed worlds were 2nd ed and Darksun was violent and nutty - with even more psionic abuse. Magic items had a better feel, rare, but not uncommon for a really powerful item to fall into the hands of midlevel adventures - Leveling was tough and a three year campaign got to 9th level.
I ignored the skills and powers stuff compleatly - It felt like a bad cartoon

Post College
3rd - streamlined rules, more logical, but more arguments over shades of meaning. combat has more of a wargame feel to it. Battlemaps are necesary
The positives- much better flexable PCs - skills that have both use and meaning. 3rd is a player driven system in a lot of ways.

My stage of life was wrapped up in each edition.

 

[Remathilis]

WARNING: I never actually PLAYED 1e. I'm getting my opinions from a through reading of the rules and supplements for that one.

BASIC (@ Cyclopedia age): Mystical. Very Archtype driven. Fast and furious. Streamlined. All encompassing world.

AD&D 1: Open. Grim-n-Gritty. Lots of magic, but rarely saved you from death. Experimental. Tongue-in-cheek in areas. All encompassing world.

AD&D 2: Confused. Began as a streamlining, but became an amalgamated mess. Lots of great ideas. Houserules galore. Better than 1e in some areas, worse in others. All encompassing multiverse.

D&D 3.X: Balanced. Simple to learn, impossible to master. Highly powered. Open for tinkering, but easily broken. Strategy based. Larger. More grand. All emcompassing core rules.

 

[MoogleEmpMog]

I never played OD&D, so I won't comment on it.

Basic: Fast and easy to learn, very traditional and dungeon-crawly in its presentation but loose enough for a roleplay-oriented DM to take it in other directions.
The best pre-3e campaigns I played and/or DMed used these rules.

1e: Darker than basic, presumably in an attempt to be more mature, and somewhat deadlier. Also cumbersome and sometimes contradictory.
I played very little 1e and never DMed it, but it seemed to suffer some of 2e's problems, only less so.

2e: Flavorful, fantastical... and very close to unplayable.
Combat was a cumbersome chore, nonweapon proficiencies were just enough to limit noncombat activity without fully giving rules to resolve it, and the sheer number of books became outrageous. The setting information was expansive and wonderful, but the mechanics invariably bogged down and sabotaged every campaign I played in it. And yet, it was the main edition I ended up using. -sigh-
BUT, before murdering it for evil Planescape, 2e did result in the creation of the Perfect Setting, Spelljammer. Therefore, it gets a pass.

3e: Flavor-neutral, tactical and (mostly) balanced.
Easily the most fun to play, particularly in combat, and a more than servicable wargame unto itself. Speeded up leveling (good!) but left levels as significant as previous editions (bad!). Not suitable for the much-sought-after (by me) 99-level rules set. Excised most of the stupid rules of old (negative AC, RACIAL LEVEL LIMITS) and balanced most of the unbalanced ones (monster characters).
Overall, I've enjoyed 3e far more than prior editions. I like the fact that it's mostly flavor-neutral, because it makes it easier to invent. I like the fact that it's tactical because it doubles for skirmish rules. Gone are the days of using Warhammer Skirmish rules for Spelljammer ship-to-ship combat!

d20 Modern: Action-movieish, tactical and roleplay-focused.
My favorite TSR/WotC system by far. Driving another nail into the coffin of the outmoded and obtuse 20-level class=archtype model that D&D hasn't yet completely abandoned! But, the provided settings are *very* weak.

3.5e: As 3e, but slightly improved.
I actually think 3.5 is about as big of a departure from 3e as 2e was from 1e... which is to say, not much.
Overall, 3.5 has been the best D&D I've played and DMed.

I would rank them:

Modern > 3.5 > 3.0 > basic > 1e > 2e

 

[Type2demon]

OD&D: Dunno. Never played it. (Diaglo, can you help here?)

Little white box with 3 small brown books....hmmm this one really showed the Wargammer background. lots of tables for everything and a very sketchy group of rules. Yet still, no one had seen anything like it before...It had a very revolutionary feel to it. It was a huge transition from the board games that most people played at the time.

Basic D&D: Full of wonderment. Colourful. Fascinating and dreamy.

Very open ended feel with lots of room for individual interpretation of the rules. It seems to have had more incentive to role play and less "special" powers to encourage Min-Maxers.

AD&D 1E: Grim. Gritty. Dark. Battles . . . lots of battles.

1E had a very Robert E. Howard/ Conan feel to it.

This is the Edition that I grew up on. I'll always have a soft spot in my heart for it because it kept me and my friends out of trouble through high school.
The feel for 1e was not set just by the core 3 books, but heavily influenced by Dragon magazine and Judges Guild Material. 1E was dominated by the Greyhawk setting and the game was in a lot of struggle to identify itself. Cumbersome rules were circumvented by thousands of different house rules. The argument of the day was also realism vs playability.
The word Monty Haul was coined to descibe a DM who practically gave away treasure and magic at every turn.
1e players often felt like rebels due to a social trend for religious fanatics who posed as experts on cult activities accused role playing gamers of being involved in Satanic cult activities, witchcraft or being brainwashed into commiting suicide and other such dribble. Many authorities took this seriously at the time (1981 - 1984) and D&D books were banned from some schools. It was not unheard of to hear of a kid who had his books burned by his parents to protect him from Satan.
Once the televangelist craze fell apart, most of this tappered off.

The feel of AD&D changed midway through its life due to changes in TSR's structure. 1.5e (unofficial title) started about when Unearthed Arcana was released... Gygax was gearing up for 2E. But when he had a change in his personal life and his Ex-wife got TSR in the divorce things took a nose dive.
Gygax no longer had influence on the remainder of 2e... other stuff such as Complete Dungeoneers handbook.
Many people complained about physical intergrity of books printed after MM1 (the first 3 AD&D books were printed by Random House and had bindings made to last a lifetime.... later books are already falling apart).

The feel of AD&D 1e changed from one of wonder and exploration at the first half of its life to one of dscord and lack of focus. House rules were used more than official rules then.

AD&D 2E: Light-hearted. Many worlds. Cosmopolitan and vibrant.

When 2e staggered to life it had so many errors that the PH and DMG were reissued in a revised edition about 1 year later. This was a time of corprate greed and people started calling TSR "T$R". This was due to huge number of "Complete ____ Handbooks" and other scattered publications that were issued to cover items that were previously contained in the core books in 1e. There was a very crappy MM that was issued as a ring binder notebook with updates for new monsters that could be purchased $$. T$R also took a very unfriendly stance against the internet community and tried to strong arm anyone who had a D&D related site and tried to force a copyright on anything from Dwarves to Drow. This pissed a lot of people off and led to a lot of piracy of T$R products out of spite.
I spent time playing Gamma World 4e, Mega Traveller and Shadowrun during this time.
2e was heaven for munchkins and min-maxers.

D&D 3E: Cinimatic, innovative and glossy.

3e feels more like an episode of Xena, Warrior Princess, less serious than earlier editions but more streamlined.

I have a love-hate relationship with 3e.
I love that Wizards put the game back on track, but hate that it now feels like MAGIC the role playing game. Feats and skills work just the way different MAGIC cards boost other cards.
I love that the old THAC0 tables were scrapped for the D20 combat system. I hate the fact that it is almost impossible to play without miniatures.

I think that 3e despite its failings, is what 2e should have been.

 

[Orius]

There's a simple solution to this. Ignore most AoOs.

I generally ignore AoOs and the game works fine. My combats really aren't too different from the 2e days, except not stumbling around with weapon speeds, THAC0, and rerolling initiative every round speeds things up.

 

[dead]

But "Basic D&D" is vague -- do you mean the original Holmes Basic Set, the classic Moldvay Basic set, or the Mentzer Basic set?

I played the Mentzer set. I guess I'm just generalising . . . I wouldn't know if the different editions of the Basic Set each had a markedly different feel. But the Mentzer set certainly filled me with a dreamy wonder . . . you must remember, I was about 10 at the time.

Cinematic? What? :\

If you mean turning combat into a tactical wargame "cinematic", then okay (in my books, constantly worrying about whether "doing x" will "prompt an attack of opportunity" is the antithesis of cinematic).

Yeah, I was actually at a bit of a loss to describe the *feel* of 3E. I was thinking that perhaps I'll only ever be able to describe the feel once 4E is out and I can *reflect back* on it.

And, yes, cinematic is a strong word and I was a bit hesitant to use it. But what I was trying to get across was that, more than any other edition, I find myself thinking about Popular Culture and Cinema Narratives in relation to my D&D game. I never did this before! And, I think this is a general trend happening for a lot of 3E D&D players.

 

[diaglo]

You can't regain that "D&D innocence" as you get older and become experienced.

stop by next weekend. i'm running an OD&D session for a group of n00bs.

new to OD&D. not new to D&D and roleplaying.

ask them if you can't go back...

 

[Saeviomagy]

Gawd, I could not disagree more.

Thank heavens there is still a BRP version of CoC, and that Buffy/Angel was not done with d20! I think using d20 for Conan was a horrible idea (though Mongoose did do about as good a job as one could, given the d20 constraints).

D20 suits a very particular RPG style. It is great for certain kinds of campaigns/worlds/milieux. But it is completely inapporiate for many others.

I'd agree totally with that.

What I meant by 'more' like d20 was:
I want a unified mechanic.
I want few to no exceptions to this mechanic. (my favourite game pre-3rd ed was shadowrun, and the only thing that makes shadowrun difficult to play is that they have a core mechanic, but they vary it slightly for just about every scenario).
I want a system where a starting character doesn't require the careful expenditure of 400 points (hello BRP - the worst offender in the category of "disposable characters that take forever to generate and still all look alike").
I want a system where everyone has a decent chance to perform simple tasks without needing to put points into it (which I think d20 does OK at - again it's one that BRP is hopeless at).
I want a system that is quick.

My current favourite system is godlike - it does all of these things. Try playing 'cthululike' sometime - everything you need is freely downloadable (get the 'wild talents' playtest rules and look up 'cthululike'.