Why do people still play older editions of D&D? Are they superior to the current one?

[Flexor the Mighty!]

Interesting question - and answered pretty well in the posts above. In my experience it tends to be where you came in and made the most investment - time and money. I still play basically 1st ed rules but have added a few extra things from 2nd ed (like the secondary or non-weapon skills). Does it limit play? Not in my opinion because the way we play is much more collaborative group puzzle solving...plus beer/wine and a belly full of laughs. The basic rules do limit initial character selection and development but is that really why you are playing the game? There are plenty of other fun things to do with it and at the end of day it's more about you and your group of friends getting together on a regular (or irregular) basis. We are still playing after 35 years - marriages, kids, divorces and a ton of other real life nonsense getting in the way. When we want to switch pace or fancy a change someone else in group runs some Call of Cthulhu, RuneQuest, or Traveller for a while and/or we start a new campaign. For AD&D I think I have almost every module, rule book and supplement issued for both 1st & 2nd Ed. Why change to a new edition of the same game? Will we role play any differently? I don't think so...

Exactly. For us the rules are secondary to generating the fun unless they are getting in the way. Or just fail to do what I want them to do for my current game. But for us 99% of the fun isn't based off someones using the kung-fu grip feat at the right time, or putting complicated mechanics together for max effect, its from player interaction and player decisions, and bad dice rolls. My OD&D clone gets out of the way and provides a framework for our antics that works fine. Most of my group said they had no desire to go back to AD&D, which I would gladly run, so I took them back even further, just disguised it a bit from them. At first they were a bit hesitant, "how can I be a great hero with a d8 HD, and my fighter has a 14 STR..." but the stats don't matter all that much since the bonuses are mostly +/- 1 for most things and the lower damage dice worked well with the lower HP values for foes. We are having a blast from a single 144 page volume, though I can use most of my D&D stuff up to 2e without much issue if I need to. The rules put most of the work on me to be a fair, fun, and impartial referee so its a good thing I rule. 3.x I was looking up the rules too often in our massive pile of rule books and 5e was just far too easy and I was re-working stuff too often.

Its a vast difference between systems at our table. In my S&W game its "oh crap a spider...save or die...RUN AWAY, RUN AWAY!" In 5e its more "well its a 100 foot drop so I'm going to jump off the side and try to land a headbutt...yeah I'll take damage but 8 hours of sack time cures cancer and if I "die" we have revivify and I'll get a 20 minute nap in" totally different focus. One is more Fafhrd and Grey Mouser the other is a Micheal Bay take on wuxia. I know someone who wanted over the top action vs having to be cautious and worry about logistics and henchmen would not enjoy our game as much but its rocking for us. Not pure nostalgia, I'd be running 1e, but just a better fit for what we are doing. And I could just rework 5e for that but why?

 

[Nymblwyly]

I remember DM'ing a group of kids on their first time out (including my own!) and one of them did something pretty stupid. Instead of killing his character as the rules and directions stipulated I had the large rock that should have killed him land on him and jam his helmet on his head. For the rest of the adventure he wasn't allowed to speak unless he put his hand tight over his mouth and shouted! They all thought that was hilarious and he changed his character name to meathead. After the adventure I told him that the blacksmith had to take a tin opener to him to get him out. He and his brother still play and are both DMs now running their own campaigns in 5e. They've switched because they have less invested in the old systems and that's what all their friends are now playing. But the one universal rule still remains - use the rules where and when they help but feel free to bend them as you see fit (within reason) - keep the fun flowing, that's why we play, not because of the rules!

 

[Eltab]

I can play Dark Sun in 4e. But not 5e - yet; psionics rules (and eventually a Dark Sun Campaign Setting book) are still under construction.
I got the 4e DSCS for Christmas. Therefore I am creating a 4e DS campaign. If/when 5e gets everything together, I can convert over.
If I wanted to lay out some money, I could play DS in 3e or 2e. If I also wanted to do a lot of conversion work I could play DS in 1e or BASIC.

 

[KenNYC]

I still play the older editions because I think they are superior games. Just this week I was playing a retro clone called Basic Fantasy. I am a 1st lvl Magic User with 3 HP. My one spell is Sleep. We come across a giant room with two entrances on the same wall about 40 feet apart. We look in one doorway and see 20 zombies and skeletons standing dormant. We knew from a previous session that the moment anyone walks through a door all 20 come to life and go on the attack. 1st lvl party, 6 characters, what to do?

I had 10 vials of oil. I made a puddle in front of the doorway covering the entire width of the doorway, in the hallway between the two doors I made 3 more giant puddles of oil 10' apart. I stepped in the room, the zombies shambled first because they were in front. They're slow, so I waited til they got close and set the first puddle in front of the door on fire. Then I backed up down the hall and led them like the pied piper from puddle to puddle setting them on fire as I went, each one doing 1d6 of damage for 2-4 rounds. By the time they followed me all the way down the corridor, all the skeletons and zombies were dead, and not a single HP had been lost.

The 5e way would have been probably 70 rds of arrows and me with a non-stop cantrip with an ice ray--rolling dice endlessly. The older cloned system required me to think about the problem, and solve it using my head, not my sheet. That's why I prefer the older editions. And so much for the notion that wizards need cantrips or they have nothing to do.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

And, I dunno, I just like the way 3.5 makes the game-world 'feel'. Which doesn't make any sense, but there ya go.

That makes plenty of sense. The rules of the game go a long way to describing how the game world works, and the rules of 3.5 describe a world which is internally consistent and mathematically regular. Other editions describe game worlds which are more ad-hoc and less predictable.

 

[Morrus]

Why do people still play older editions of D&D? Are they superior to the current one?

And, I dunno, I just like the way 3.5 makes the game-world 'feel'. Which doesn't make any sense, but there ya go.

This is so literally a thing. And I don't get why people don't seem to feel the same way.

Every rules system feels different. 5E feels different to Fate feels different to Rolemaster feels different to Savage Worlds feels different to WFRP (I mean, obviously they do - why else would people play different games?)

5E feels different to 4E feels different to 3E feels different to 2E feels different to 1E.

I find it hard to agree with folks who say "the rules don't matter, it's just the style of play which matters". Because really, they feel different. They create different styles of play, and a game designer's art is creating a style of play through rules.

Different rules *feel* different. They literally embody different game worlds as much as the fluff text does. The rules are part of the world.

And that's why it's OK to say "2E feels better to me" or whatever.

I mean, Michael Bay's Transformers feels different to Goodfellas, right? And Gygax's 1E feels different to Mearls' 5E.

 

[Tony Vargas]

I mean, Michael Bay's Transformers feels different to Goodfellas, right? And Gygax's 1E feels different to Mearls' 5E.

I feel the same level of total disinterest in both Bayformers and Goodfellas. ;p
And, the major reason I like running 5e is that it feels so much like running AD&D.

Some games hard-core more feelz than others, though. For all that 5e openly wants you to ignore it's own rules, and AD&D necessitated doing so, they both keep a definite feel, however far afield the DM takes them.

 

[ccs]

I can play Dark Sun in 4e. But not 5e - yet; psionics rules (and eventually a Dark Sun Campaign Setting book) are still under construction.
I got the 4e DSCS for Christmas. Therefore I am creating a 4e DS campaign. If/when 5e gets everything together, I can convert over.
If I wanted to lay out some money, I could play DS in 3e or 2e. If I also wanted to do a lot of conversion work I could play DS in 1e or BASIC.

If you can run DS in BASIC, then you can certainly run it in 5e.

 

[Zardnaar]

If you can run DS in BASIC, then you can certainly run it in 5e.

Alot more conversion work and Basic has that gritty feeling that 5E lacks. You can outright port the 2E psion rules to Basic, can't do that in 5E.

In BASIC, 1E, 2E and 3E to a lesser extent energy drawing undead are feared. You might bolt from a 4HD Wight as a lost initiative roll and good attack roll you lose level.

Death also matters a lot more pre 3E as resurrection is not guaranteed and gets smaller the more you are raised.

1E is more Sword and Sorcerery 5E more high fantasy.

If you like modern mechanics but old feelings there are also clones. I'm not a fan of 4E but understand why fans like it.

A lot of okd settings are also better off under original rules than newer updates assuming they actually got updated.

 

[MechaPilot]

Hello everyone,,
This is kind of a general question, and I know that, but I see lots of people playing 3rd edition and even more 3.5, but why do they play those instead (Mod Edit: spam link removed ~Umbran) of 5e? I'm fairly new to 5e as a whole, and I'm just wondering, in what ways are 3.5 and 3rd better than 5th? Is it simply for the feeling of playing something original? Or does 5e do something terrible that can only be done correctly in past editions? Just genuinely curious, and would it be worth it for me to learn the older versions?

Every edition of D&D has it's own quirks and features that changes the feel of the game; it's part of why people develop favorite editions.

For some people, being able to perform cantrips all day long makes magic feel less magical. For others, it makes sense to them if their wizard can always have something magical they can do, instead of resorting to a crossbow or running away and hiding when they run out of spell slots.

For some people, overnight healing makes combat feel like there aren't any repercussions. For others, it speeds up play so the party doesn't spend a week or four recovering from the first fight of the adventure.

Some people enjoy the more rule-heavy tactical part of the game that some editions offer, while others prefer a more rules-light combat experience with less moving parts to track.

I love the way AD&D 2e handled multiclassing (though I wasn't a fan of it being restricted solely to non-human races) in which you simultaneously advanced in levels of each class by dividing your XP among all your classes; and I despise the 3e and 5e versions of multiclassing, where you have a set number of total level slots in which to equip class levels, and you have to pick and choose at each level.

I also love the to hit paradigm of editions 3, 4 & 5, where you simply roll, add bonuses and compare to AC, and where high ACs are better. By contrast, AD&D 2e had a system where ACs ranged from 10 to -10 (with -10 being the best) and a Thac0 score (meaning To Hit Armor Class Zero) that determined what number you needed to roll to hit a creature with an armor class of zero. Thac0 and 10 to -10 AC aren't overly difficult to use, especially over time and with experience, but it is algebraic and counter-intuitive, and I find a lot of people have a more lengthy time struggling with it before it finally breaks through and they're fine with it.

I don't really care for the 5e method of each attribute having its own saving throw. The lion's share of saving throws in 5e are Dexterity, Constitution and Wisdom saves, which corresponds directly to the Reflex, Fortitude and Will saves (or defenses) of 3e (and 4e). The rest of the 5e saves feel kind of tacked on (at least to me).

And I'm sure that's just a sliver of opinions you'll find on the matter.