D&D 5E You can't necessarily go back

[dagger]

I found 1e AD&D to be incredibly detailed, possibly needlessly so. Definitely, it was as least as detailed and comprehensive as 3e, but not streamlined at all.
I know it may have seemed otherwise, but I believe that is because many people simply ignored or didn't understand a lot of those detailed rules. That's especially true for folks that ran 1e games when in middle or high school back in the day.

Don't know about 'streamlined' or what that even means, but it is pretty darn FAST. Also, most of those little detailed rules have very little bearing on the speed of play in my experience.

 

[dagger]

Granted, about 30 years of experience does perhaps help just a little.

Do you think someone could do the same after reading the AD&D books one time?

LOL

Just because it takes someone an hour or more to set up a combat in all editions but 4e does not make 1e slow or clunky.

 

[Ahnehnois]

One person's "vagueness" is another person's "rules-lite" or "streamlined". Whatever you call it, I don't think it constitutes "going back".

 

[Obryn]

So is this another one of those threads where we say mean things about editions we don't care for?

Don't we have several of those already?

-O

 

[Mercule]

Granted, about 30 years of experience does perhaps help just a little.

Do you think someone could do the same after reading the AD&D books one time?

That's a good question. I can only speak from my own experience. I started playing AD&D in the summer of 1983 -- and by "play", I mean I was the primary DM in very short order. I can distinctly remember planning out most of an adventure as my mom drove me to a game. Based on where we lived and my being young enough to not drive myself, that gives me roughly 4-5 years of experience at that time. By the time I started college, in 1991, I rarely bothered prepping -- I was familiar enough with all the 1e source books (I continued with 1e and just used 2e as supplemental material) that I could run a marathon, 10-12 hour session with almost no need to look at the books, with the exception of some of the random tables.

We started playing 3e immediately when it came out, with me as primary DM. We stopped playing about the time 4e came out. IIRC, that'd be about 2008. The 3e campaign actually collapsed under the weight of its own prep time. No matter how many corners I cut, I still seemed to spend as much time prepping for games as I did actually running them, if not more. There were also more times I felt like I was just missing a rule or treading on shaky ground that required a rules reference during play.

So, 8 years with 1e and I could practically show up without doing homework and also leave my books at home. 8 years of 3e and my game collapsed because of how much prep time I had to do and the number of times rules were referenced or there were rules arguments.

Yeah, you might want to blame the players for being rules lawyers, except that the core of the groups were the same folks.

That's also the same group I'm doing the 5e playtest with and things are looking a ton more like AD&D, in terms of prep work and rules. Sure, we're still looking up a few things, but they're easy to remember once we have them. So, yeah, I think the actual rules make more of a difference than just experience, though I don't discount experience. I also think that, sometimes, you can go back.

 

[Tony Vargas]

I can whip up an encounter for a 15th+ party in 1e in about 10 min max and even do it on the fly. I don't even need to open the books.....

Nod. I could run combats off the cuff and often did so - after I'd played and run AD&D for about 5 years. Towards the end of a 10-year campaign I was doing that for 14th level characters, too.

I never got that level of mastery over 3.0, and I did run one campaign with it, and found the amount of prep it required a little inconvenient. 4e, OTOH, was dead easy to run from day 1, and not by guess and by golly and winging it, but running it straight by the DMG encounter guidelines, with monsters straight out of the DMG. The first time I ran 4e was at a convention, in the open gaming room. I had an idea all worked out, but no prep done, in about 5 minutes, I'd looked through the MM and picked out monsters for 4 encounters vs 4 level 4 PCs, with half those monsters casually re-skinned. Stunningly simple.

My personal experience, FWIW.

 

[Argyle King]

There were a lot of things about 4E I liked -which might surprise a few people who have seen some of my previous posts.


The main problem I had was that I did not feel the mechanical structure of the game lent itself to the kind of stories I wanted to tell very well. Oddly, I also didn't feel the mechanical structure of the game lent itself to the kind of story that the early 4E fluff told very well either.

This has put me in an odd position. The few areas where I feel 4E improved upon the 3rd edition model were enough of an improvement that I do not feel like I want to go back to 3rd Edition. However; at the same time, I do not prefer the core ideals about gameplay and style which 4E is based upon. After having explored other games, I sometimes question whether or not D&D ever was the game for me or if -as page one of this thread mentioned- "I just didn't know any better."

Strangely, even though I've never played 2nd Edition, I find that the books for 2nd Edition D&D seem to speak to me. I'm not exactly sure what it is about the presentation of them or what exactly it is about the way they are written, but there's something there which makes me want to play the game in spite of complaints of thac0 and various other things. There's a style there which speaks to me on some level.

I also have not played 1st Edition, but I plan to soon. Even though I still have some questions about the "charity" nature of the reprints and what exactly goes to the charity out of what I paid, I chose to buy the reprints. I wanted to broaden my D&D experience and see what had come before. I wanted a more informed D&D experience. I wanted to see if maybe there was a type of game; a type of experience that I was missing with the more modern style of the game. To some extent, I also just wanted to have a cool conversation piece on my bookshelf.

Now, I have 5th Edition to look at. There are a few things I see which make me feel good about the future of D&D, but there are also things which make me feel negative. Even worse, there are things which drive me to the brink of apathy toward the brand.

Looking back at what I have said in this post about 3rd & 4th Edition, I feel part of the problem I have with 5th Edition right now is that I feel as though the designers do not understand why I didn't like 4th Edition as much as other games. For me personally, my problem with 4th Edition was not that it was not 3rd Edition. To be sure, there were things I missed when I transitioned to the new game, but nostalgia wasn't the basis for why I disliked certain things.

I also feel that -in general- the designers (WoTC) do not understand what I want out of a game. I feel as though they are speaking a language which is different from my own. I feel these ways because words such as "modularity" are used in a way which seem to mean something very different from what the word means to me and what I thought was meant when they had originally used the term. I fear that their lack of understanding of what I want, and my perceived lack of understanding about why I did or didn't like certain aspects of 3rd and 4th Edition will lead to a game which includes what I view as the worst aspects of both while simultaneously doing away with the parts I liked from both. Perhaps it's an irrational fear, but it's one I have.

 

[JRRNeiklot]

Older editions of D&D, by contrast, had me spending an hour or so per combat, which added up to a dozen or so hours per adventure, just selecting and statting up the bad guys. The difference is night and day. I far and away prefer 4E for the ease of prep, the ease of throwing together an encounter ad hoc, and the ease of creating custom baddies and custom situations to challenge my group.

Because "Orc, hp 4" takes forever to write down.

 

[ExploderWizard]

Earlier editions of D&D were to a large degree vague, shapeless and formless masses open to interpretation. This came about by happenstance, and it seems like WotC is trying to deliberately recreate that happenstance. I don't think they can, pandora's box has been opened and I don't think it can be closed again now that people's eyes are open. Classic D&D was primarily a dungeon crawl system, but it was vague enough to be clumsily adapted to most anything and was used as such to a large degree because people didn't know any better, or at least because there weren't alternative systems that could deliver. In 2012, we do know better and do have alternatives, having seen an explosion of different takes on d20 thanks to the OGL, more robust non-d20 system choices than existed in the past, and also several more specific and idealized visions of D&D from the OSR and even Pathfinder and 4E.

They seem to be trying to go back to how things were, an "old school" dungeon crawling system left vague on purpose, but without the circumstances that led to the magic.

This seems like yet another attempt to compare game design principles with technology.

Games are designed toward a certain play experience. Some designs deliver better expected play experiences than others. Regardless of age, or complexity, any game has the potential to be the one that a particular group of players feels delivers the best experience for them.

What does that mean?

It means that there have been no objective improvements to rpg design in almost 40 years. There are great old games and great new games, it depends on what one is looking for.

Classic D&D might have defaulted to a dungeon crawl beginning but the original game supported wilderness and city play as well. One persons 'robust' system is too intrusive and heavy for another.

When all is said and done the 'best' way to pretend to be an elf is the one a particular play group decides is best for them. D&D Next appears to be trying to straddle the line between providing robust rules support while at the same time leaving enough space undefined for user generated content. It is a next to impossible balance to pull off where the core of the game is concerned.

 

[billd91]

After having explored other games, I sometimes question whether or not D&D ever was the game for me or if -as page one of this thread mentioned- "I just didn't know any better."

It may be that D&D isn't the best fit for you - was never the best fit for you. But I reject the spin that "You just didn't know any better." That's a pretty backhanded comment, if you ask me. You made do with what you knew and what you had. There's something to be said for that. That's a positive spin. It's not based on the negative approach of not "knowing better". That's a lament for the lost fun because you didn't know something that fit you better was out there, it's not a celebration of the fun you had with the stuff at hand.