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Message: <blockquote data-quote="wingsandsword" data-source="post: 5709493" data-attributes="member: 14159">Okay, I honestly think that if D&D 3e had not been released, AD&D would have not lasted.Here's why: Of all the gaming groups I knew, they all had to house rule AD&D 2e beyond recognition to use it.  Not just one group, but every gaming group I met had it's own heavily house ruled, heavily modified version.  No two were close to the same, and very few groups were close to happy with the standard rules.We all played D&D, but nobody was happy with it.  We played it because it was the most common game, what we'd always played, but we hacked it to make it usable.So many things needed changes: multiclassing/dual-classing restrictions, race/class/alignment restrictions (why couldn't elves be Druids? why did Rangers have to be Good?  Why couldn't Bards be Chaotic Good? ect.), level limits, different XP tables per class, clerical magic going to 7th level but wizard magic going to 9th level, the confusing THAC0 system, a hapless mish-mash of saving throws, awkward NWP's (or the much worse Secondary Skills), the Thief Skill system, ridiculously inconsistent rules about ability scores and their benefit. . .Compared to so many other games on the market, AD&D was badly designed and a hopelessly confusing mish-mash.  Any other game being released to the market by the late 1990's with that many arbitrary and nonsensical design elements would have been dead on arrival.  D&D lasted because of name recognition and familiarity of ~20 years of regular play.3e took the AD&D game and refitted the look, feel, and play style into more consistent and coherent mathematics and game elements, and removed arbitrary restrictions that didn't even make internal sense (Elves are more magical and vastly longer-lived than humans. . .but will never be high enough level as a Wizard to cast Wish, for example), Even if TSR didn't fold and tried to keep AD&D in print, do you really think that people would be lining up to scratch their heads and figure out THAC0 and such now if there were other options?  I'll never forget buying the "Black Box" Basic set in '91 and sitting around with my friends never being able to figure out THAC0 (and wondering why only Humans could be clerics, did Elves and Dwarves not have priests?).AD&D, as compared to other games on the market, was REALLY showing its age by the late '90's and even if TSR had stayed solvent it was ripe for another game to come along and steal it's thunder, much like White Wolf did in the early 90's (albeit another genre, but proving that games other than D&D could be big movers & shakers in the industry).</blockquote>

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