What the heck is "First Edition Feel"?

[Endur]

1e was great

1e was great.

Rules balance didn't really exist.

Everything depending on the GM

 

[TerraDave]

Since the only two companies consistantly producing modules are Goodman with their DCCs and Necro, it seem to me that 3e feel is now almost totally devoted to 1e feel. Esp. where modules are concerned.


Aaron

totally is a little strong (there is still Dungeon) but yes, both these publishers try to make products with "1st edition feel", but 3.5 rules. It is a question of style, not substance (at least until Goodman comes out with C&C modules).

In any case, to get all the way back to the original post, the "feel" is a question of style, not if there should be one XP table or one for each class...

 

[jodyjohnson]

Since the only two companies consistantly producing modules are Goodman with their DCCs and Necro, it seem to me that 3e feel is now almost totally devoted to 1e feel. Esp. where modules are concerned.


Aaron

And I think that's a good thing for our play style. My reference was mostly with 2e modules. Even a few of the 8 3.0 modules from Wizards had some of that 1e feel (Sunless and Forge, maybe Iron Fortress). Most had a more 2e feel of 'here's the plot, try not to derail it' (Standing Stones, Nightfang, and the James Wyatt one).

The Goodman Games and Necro stuff is probably in the future but it's tough to start dropping $10-12 a module when I'm sitting on 2 years worth of 1e stuff I want to run as role play added to the hack 'n slash.

 

[The Shaman]

Don't like 1st edition? Then leave the thread stage left. This is not the place for edition wars, and I don't want hijacking.

Thank you for that.

We used the cavalier and anti-paladin out of the pages of Dragon. I think they were worse.

Certainly in the context of the time... ...!

Back to the original question...

For me, one aspect of "first edition feel" is a certain simplicity and elegance in the style of play. This simplicity certainly wasn't mechanical..."Wait, is that a save v. death ray, or a save v. petrification? Where's the save table?"...I think it had more to do with the way so much of the game was invented on the fly by the GM.

If you wanted an orc chieftain you added a few extra hit dice, maybe gave him a magic axe - you didn't assign him x levels in this class and y levels in that PrC then look up how much gold he should have at his level to determine what magic items you can purchase for him. If a character wanted to trip an opponent, the GM might say, "Roll to hit to grapple him and then roll a strength check to knock him down."

I still do this to some extent - I had a terrain feature in my PbP Modern game that if I followed the RAW would require eight Climb checks to descend and then another eight to ascend the other side, with failure causing up to 13d6 damage. That just wasn't going to fly, so I made up a houserule for it and moved on. For me that sort of judgement call is part of the "first edition feel."

In terms of adventure and campaign design, I think adventures with a "first edition feel" are closer to primary literary sources, whether in classical mythology or the contemporary fantasy literature that spawned the game in the first place. With a few notable exceptions, fantasy writing before the Eighties eschewed literary pretensions and simply focused on action and adventure, and the early days of D&D captured that quite well. In time as D&D grew it fostered its own literary corpus - the Dragonlance and Realms novels - and the game began to feed on itself for ideas, creating a sort of feedback loop between its novels and its accessories and supplements. Minotaurs no longer lurked in labyrinths - now they occupied a country and went to war with their neighbors. The game evolved from its roots into something unique, but for me recapturing that "first edition feel" is returning to those roots for inspiration - one of the reasons I like the Wilderlands campaign setting so much is that it draws heavily from classic mythology ("Wind-dark Sea" is still one of my absolute all-time favorite place names in a fantasy setting!) and the style of Robert E. Howard and his contemporaries.

(This explains in part why I've been reading the heck out of guys like H. Rider Haggard, C.J. Cutliffe Hyne. Edwin L. Arnold, Edgar Rice Burroughs, P.C. Wren, Rudyard Kipling and so on, to create a d20 Modern/Past game with its feet planted firmly on this literary foundation, to give it what is to me a "first edition feel.")

There's more, but I've rambled too much already. Note that I'm not saying that one style of play or set of mechanics or source of inspiration is "better" than another - I like the d20 mechanic, I like the options of the current edition (something hong clearly didn't pick up on, based on his predictably snarky reply), and I like some of the unqiue fantastic elements of the "D&D fantasy genre" - but I defnitely run my games with a "first edition" GM's mindset, and I very much look to those primary literary sources for most of my inspiration in adventure and campaign design.

 

[BiggusGeekus]

The Goodman Games and Necro stuff is probably in the future but it's tough to start dropping $10-12 a module when I'm sitting on 2 years worth of 1e stuff I want to run as role play added to the hack 'n slash.

I think the Goodman Game's Arie of the Crow God is still available for free at drivethrurpg. Good read.

 

[Staffan]

And yes, 2e has these problems as well.

I'm 99% certain that 2e had a rule that said you could kill a helpless opponent in one round without rolling. It might not have used the actual term helpless, but the gist of the rule was there.

 

[S'mon]

to put it more bluntly, in 1st edition, I could put a guy in a stockade, raise my axe above his head, and swing - and miss, because there are no rules for "prone" in 1e.

And if I hit, I would merely do damage. So, if the guy I was trying to execute was a 20th level fighter with 200 hit points, I might have to cut his head off over several tries, because each time would just deal a certain number of hit points out of his total. There are no rules for coup de grace.

And yes, 2e has these problems as well.

Per 1e DMG, you could auto-kill 1 helpless (eg sleeped) victim/round, ie coup-de-gras was 100% successful within the 1 minute time frame of a combat round. IRL it often took executioners several blows to sever a head, BTW.

1e DMG had 'cover' and 'concealment' rules that applied to (eg) being prone - that'd typically be 75% cover from the firer (depending on the angle of fire) so -7 to-hit. 50% cover was -4, 90% was -10. This was if anything superior to 3e IMO.

 

[Henry]

I'm 99% certain that 2e had a rule that said you could kill a helpless opponent in one round without rolling. It might not have used the actual term helpless, but the gist of the rule was there.

First Edition AD&D had a rule in the combat chapter that you can, outside of combat, kill a helpless creature in one round automatically. Inside of combat, you can hit them at your normal rate of attacks for max damage (or was it double max damage?). It's apparently little known, but it's there.

 

[Belen]

I prefer second edition feel. One day I could feel some DarkSun, the next a little planescape, and then I could move onto more familiar places like the Realms. Nothing beats that good ol' variety.

In any event, when someone says 1e feel to me, I think simplicity. The game will be straightforward, easy to run and provide enough hooks to throw you in a totally new direction. I really do not equate 1e feel with mechanics. 1e feel is more about just having fun without worrying about all the complication that has built up over the years.

 

[coyote6]

Even a few of the 8 3.0 modules from Wizards had some of that 1e feel (Sunless and Forge, maybe Iron Fortress). Most had a more 2e feel of 'here's the plot, try not to derail it' (Standing Stones, Nightfang, and the James Wyatt one).

Aside: Plot? In Nightfang Spire? Where? There was a plot in Standing Stone & Speaker in Dreams, but Nightfang Spire is a big ol' dungeon of dead guys. Yeah, the chief bad guy has Evil Plans (TM), but they're rather vague ("C'mon, Ashardalon!", basically), and there's no schedule or anything; he's not about to ascend or open a gate to the Netherworld or whatever. He's just in his lair, when along come the PCs.