TSR Why would anyone want to play 1e?

[Neonchameleon]

I guess I don't really agree that loss of XP for gold makes a game "no longer gritty". XP for gold just drives towards less combat, but you can have a gritty game and be combat focused.

D&D has never in any edition been genuinely gritty. Hit points are anti-grit. Gritty is Call of Cthulhu, WFRP, or even Blades in the Dark where you have to live with consequences. The only consequence in D&D that's on the table 95% of the time is death (and here comes Sigby, brother of Rigby)

But 1e had a gritty tone and was designed for mercenary dungeon crawling. 2e had a high fantasy tone and the rules it ditched or deprecated from B/X were precisely the ones that made 1e good for mercenary dungeon crawling.

 

[Neonchameleon]

I guess I don't really agree that loss of XP for gold makes a game "no longer gritty". XP for gold just drives towards less combat, but you can have a gritty game and be combat focused.

Oh and just to confirm what you asked about:

Can you give me specific rules for dungeon crawling in 1e that offer a better table experience and specific rules in 2e that make that experience a complete mess? What rules in 2e make it a high fantasy adventure compared to 1es rules that do not?

The XP for GP rules were specific rules for dungeon crawling. I'm not sure why you are saying that it makes it 'no longer gritty'.

What ripped out what mechanical grit there was from 1e dungeon crawling was the deprecation or removal of the hireling rules so you'd go in with a dozen friends and come out with four at low level (and by level 5 or so being a hireling became suicidal)

 

[Voadam]

What ripped out what mechanical grit there was from 1e dungeon crawling was the deprecation or removal of the hireling rules so you'd go in with a dozen friends and come out with four at low level (and by level 5 or so being a hireling became suicidal)

2e had the same henchmen stuff that I remember

 

[Sacrosanct]

Oh and just to confirm what you asked about:

The XP for GP rules were specific rules for dungeon crawling. I'm not sure why you are saying that it makes it 'no longer gritty'.

I seemed to read your comment that the removal of XP for gold made 2e less gritty. That's what I was disagreeing with. Grit has nothing to do with how many combat encounters you have (which is what xp for treasure modifies in play style), but the feel and flavor of the game. Sure, the art of 1e seemed to convey a more gritty feel than the more heroic 2e, but a) that shift in art style happened years before 2e came out in 1e anyway and b) the rules themselves didn't make the game less gritty as the rules that impact that (combat lethality and hazards) are largely the same as 1e.

For example, Dark Dungeons has no rules like D&D, and is what I and I'm guessing most people would call "gritty".

What ripped out what mechanical grit there was from 1e dungeon crawling was the deprecation or removal of the hireling rules so you'd go in with a dozen friends and come out with four at low level (and by level 5 or so being a hireling became suicidal)

2e has henchmen and hireling rules...

 

[Mannahnin]

2e had the same henchmen stuff that I remember

2e has henchmen and hireling rules...

The PH stuff is pretty similar, but they do seem a bit de-emphasized in the 2E DMG. If you compare 1E pages 28-37 to 2E pages 104-115. 2E talks about them more in context of other NPCs, and removes the mechanics for actually recruiting a henchman, the rules spelling out how much payment is needed, what equipment is normal to provide, etc.

In 1E it definitely seems like the expectation is that recruiting help is normal and expected, where in 2E it becomes much more of the DM can allow this but has to fill in a lot of the details themselves, and as a novice DM the section came off very much like this was something for advanced DMs with more experience. As a player, I almost never saw henchmen in play, but rather more commonly a DMPC to fill a hole in the party, with the expectation that henchmen would eventually show up at name level with other followers.

 

[Sacrosanct]

I don't know, the 2e section literally starts off with this sentence:

Sooner or later, all players are: going to discover the value of henchmen.

 

[Voadam]

2e had little rules things for more heroic fantasy than 1e did.

Death at -10 instead of 0 (1e had the negatives only for if you hit zero exactly and lost one a round until dead at -10)

Healing non-weapon proficiency in the core PH for potential faster healing.

More xp for fighting monsters so to efficiently gain levels you are incentivized to figure out how to defeat more monsters instead of avoiding them if you can.

Higher level demihuman level limits in the teens instead of mostly single digits.

Specialist wizards getting more spells (in particular doubling to two spells per day at first level).

Bards from level 1 and with spells from level 2.

The occasional really powerful specialty priest or kit.

Casting in combat does not provoke one round of melee attacks per segment of casting time.

Stoneskin protecting against multiple hits instead of just 1.

For heroic in the moral sense they had a default good guy perspective for alignment with no evil default assassin type classes and telling PCs that playing evil is generally a bad idea.

 

[haakon1]

I’ve only seen henchmen in 3x.

But I do think the AD&D recruiting rules look fun.

 

[Valetudo]

Just curious what game where you talking about earlier when you where talking about a 2nd edition clone or osr?

 

[The Soloist]

Removing XP for gold in 2e opened the door to milestone XPs. I gave out a fixed amount of XP after each session. The PCs levelled after about 6 sessions of 8 hours.