D&D General Your favorite things about editions that aren't your favorite.

[pogre]

O-D&D - House rules were a given and the expectation of having tons of players with a caller - It was a very different experience than modern rpgs. I played a small campaign at a guy's house who used a sand table and modified historical miniatures. Right at the end of the campaign some of the Heritage boxed sets were being released.
Basic - The first edition I dmed and made sense to me completely.
1e - Dropping race as class
2e - never played, but like some of the settings that emerged.
3e - unified mechanics (compared to previous editions).
4e - the lore

 

[Olrox17]

AD&D: my only exposure to this edition is Baldur’s Gate 2. I find the system to be overly complicated and archaic, but I was intrigued by its multiclassing system. My cleric-fighter and fighter-rogue were a blast to play.

3rd: Dmed it for many campaigns and for a long time. Nowadays, I would never run it, but it has a lot of things that I like:

• if the players are system savvy (but NOT power gamers), the enormous amount of player options can be a huge plus
• epic spells are one of the most ridiculous and most interesting mechanic I’ve ever read
• tome of battle is BAD. ASS.
• Weapons of legacy are one of the coolest ideas ever

4e and 5e: I really like them, so I’m not wasting anyone’s time going through everything I like about them.

 

[Dormammu]

2E: Getting repetitive by now, but yes it’s the campaign settings. Top 3 most interesting to me are Dark Sun, Birthright, Spelljammer (#1-#3 in that order).

3E: Tough for me because it lost the best part of 2E (settings) and ratcheted up the worst part of it.The splat book technology of 2E went crazy in 3E and all the options created the in-depth CharOp movement, which ruins D&D for me. Ironically, for being light on settings, maybe the best part is Eberron. Though it’s too gonzo for my tastes, I admire the execution involved in incorporating everything from D&D no matter what.

Those are the only two editions that didn’t work for me.

 

[Eric V]

1e: I was super excited to read Unearthed Arcana

2e: Al-Qadim

3e: The idea of prestige classes (though perhaps not the mess they ended up becoming)

5e: Full caster bards or good wildshape rules for druids

 

[Eltab]

I am just trying to visualize this right now, and the only thing I am sure of atm. is no matter how, but I will not get rid of those mental images easily.

The bard is not attacking the enemy with a violin bow himself, a magical bow appears, enters the foe's body, and saws back and forth. Imagine a cello playing itself with no hands.

 

[Coroc]

The bard is not attacking the enemy with a violin bow himself, a magical bow appears, enters the foe's body, and saws back and forth. Imagine a cello playing itself with no hands.

Yep something like that, it looks as ridiculous though, imagine the sounds this would produce, its eventually quite similar to scratching the wall with your fingernails.

 

[Perun]

Just off the top of my head. I consider AD&D 2e my favourite edition, so here are the other versions of the game I've actually played in:

AD&D 1e: Monk. World of Greyhawk. The feel of the books and lore. I started playing in 2e era, but since one of the players and sometime DM had a few of 1e books, we used some rules in our games.

D&D 3(.5)e: Elimination of THAC0. Streamlining of the rules. Eberron. Warlock. As @Eric V said, the idea of prestige classes, but not the execution. Monks again (yay!).

D&D 4e: Meh. Not much. Even if I ignore the at-will, encounter and daily power for all classes, the edition was just too over-the-top and chaotic. There are still some decent ideas to this edition, though. I liked the invoker class

D&D 5E: Return to the simpler model of the game. Slow trickle (compared to some of the earlier editions) of accessories (which is both a positive and negative quality, depending on the day).

 

[teitan]

1e - Dropping race as class

Didn't drop it, race as class was the new fangled way of doing things!

 

[teitan]

2E: Getting repetitive by now, but yes it’s the campaign settings. Top 3 most interesting to me are Dark Sun, Birthright, Spelljammer (#1-#3 in that order).

3E: Tough for me because it lost the best part of 2E (settings) and ratcheted up the worst part of it.The splat book technology of 2E went crazy in 3E and all the options created the in-depth CharOp movement, which ruins D&D for me. Ironically, for being light on settings, maybe the best part is Eberron. Though it’s too gonzo for my tastes, I admire the execution involved in incorporating everything from D&D no matter what.

Those are the only two editions that didn’t work for me.

I could swear 2e had far more supplements than 3.x but will gladly admit I am wrong. I think the problem with 3.x wasn't that it was so many supplements its that the supplements became far more crunchy after the Silver Munches.

 

[Dormammu]

I could swear 2e had far more supplements than 3.x but will gladly admit I am wrong. I think the problem with 3.x wasn't that it was so many supplements its that the supplements became far more crunchy after the Silver Munches.

I meant exactly what you're saying. When I said "ratcheted up the technology," I meant they improved the amount of gameable crunch and mechanical synergy so that it became the ideal playground for people who like to optimize systems. But that kind of play isn't fun for me in tabletop RPGs.