Quote from: Settembrini;414083All other differences are one of CULTURE. And oh hell yes, the 3E CULTURE changed for the worse after a while, removing it from AD&D IN SPIRIT but not in its building blocks or rules.

From this alleged "analogy" between AD&D and 3E, so is Pathfinder more similar to 2E AD&D than it is to 3E/3.5E or 1E AD&D?

Quote from: thedungeondelver;414076Streamlined rules: are overrated.  Particularly, experience points and saving throws.

In some 1E AD&D games I played in back in the day, the DM had an alternative saving throw system for cases where something didn't make sense using the normal saving throw tables.  Basically to save in this alternative system, a player rolled less than or equal to a particular stat to save.

Quote from: Nicephorus;414099Differing XP charts is an unneeded complexity that doesn't add to the game.  It would be ok if the differences really made sense.  In some versions, MUs suddenly advance quickly around levels 5-8 - for no fucking reason.

It is easier for a designer to tweak Differing XP Charts to account for differences in classes than it is to try to make each character class level the same "increase" so you can use a unified XP chart.

On the other hand with a unified XP chart you get a clean way for character customization through multi-classing. Which addresses the #1 complaint of AD&D while I was playing.

My opinion is that you keep the core rules as straightforward as possible. And implement what you need for your campaign and say the hell with trying to fine tone balance. Just get into the ballpark and be done with it using whatever mechanic you prefer.

A lot of of these posts seem to be about which edition is better, but that doesn't seem to be the topic.

On topic: Feats, Skills, Multiclassing, and Prestige Classes.

Quote from: Melan;414087I have rolled my Will save and will not go into a point by point argument. Three observations, though.
1) Our vanilla 3.0 games - when we were still playing 3.0 - were relentlessly deadly. Characters died left, right and centre, to ogres, traps, critical hits, ogres, carrion crawlers, evil clerics with the Death domain (death touch!), and did I mention ogres? There was that particular session that had a TPK, then the rescue squad went in to loot the corpses and had another TPK. That's, uh, not soft. 90s style AD&D was soft.
2) TSR's products were weak sauce in the 90s, consisting of either bland filler or things that actively made our great spontaneous campaigns less enjoyable (exceptions like Dungeon magazine, the first Undermountain box and, in hindsight, Dark Sun noted). At the time, AD&D was actively dismissive to things like dungeon-crawling or playing anything wholesome like CE half-orc assassins killing CE half-orc clerics. D&D  3.0 returned D&D to its adventuring roots where it belongs, thus making it more D&D than 95% of 2nd edition. It introduced its own problems, of course.
3) Palladium is the second most Gygaxian RPG on the planet. It is The Other AD&D©®™.

[edit]Hah, Century Gothic! Sorry, delver.[/edit]

Two can play at that game, MELAN!

Quote from: thedungeondelver;414092Then you had a DM who definitely went against the grain.  Also, fuck 90's AD&D  I agree it was (probably) soft then too.

Our DM didn't believe in game balance, and he was good at tactics, so his games were a great survival challenge. When I took over the campaign, I continued the tradition. The experience may have been atypical for all I know. It was encouraged on the Necromancer Games forums, however, and NG is where I spent most of the 3.0 period, so that's my frame of reference.

(Come to think of it, Frog God Games ought to republish The Tomb of Abysthor for Swords and Wizardry, because holy crap, that's a great module, one of the best I ever ran.)

Quote from: thedungeondelver;414092You misspelled "Dangerous Journeys".

A friend of mine owns a copy (and the original Necropolis, the lucky bastard!), and he swears by DJ as the best complex fantasy system he knows. He may be right about that, but from what I have seen, it is less gygaxian than Palladium.

Quote from: estarShould I shout to the world at how D&D is broken because it allowed Monty Haul campaigns, and Gods to be hunted because now they have stats thanks to Dieties and Demigods?

If Calithena were still active on this this site, he would remark that in his day, his party in their OD&D/Arduin campaign had killed the gods and lived to tell about it (plus they got great loot out of the bargain). Since to my knowledge he isn't, I will remark that our recently concluded campaign also featured the PCs kicking the crap out of **UUARAM** the Hairy Mound, an amoeboid demi-god, and **TRAGOS MEGALOS**, god of the goat-men. Killing gods is a wholesome thing to do for high-level characters. If the gods weren't meant to be killed, they wouldn't have stats. :cool:

Quote from: BWA;414072That's crazy talk.

Or, in the local dialect of theRPGsite, you guys are lunatic assholes who are legally blind and have never seen polyhedral dice and have no friends or brains.

I think 2E (which I still have affection for), was a general updating and cleaning of the various sprawling 1E rules.

Whereas ... 3E was a major shift in how the rules fit together. (In a good way, 3E is my favorite edition.)

Visual diagram:

1E --- 2E -------- 3E ------------ 4E

(Where each "-" represents a static unit of "differentness")

LOL.

Also, here's a Revised Visual diagram:

1E --- 2E -------- 3E
                           -
                           -
                           -
                           - -
                             -
                             -
                   4E -----

Quote from: Melan;414110Our DM didn't believe in game balance, and he was good at tactics, so his games were a great survival challenge. When I took over the campaign, I continued the tradition. The experience may have been atypical for all I know. It was encouraged on the Necromancer Games forums, however, and NG is where I spent most of the 3.0 period, so that's my frame of reference.

Melan's 3e experience sounds a lot closer to my own than the ball-shrivelling tales of level-appropriate encounters often bandied about. Late in the 3.5 phase I did start to see some of the "5 rooms, 5 fights, in a row" problem but that's a different animal. The fights were still brutal.

Incidentally, In the TSR days I saw character deaths all the time, but I associate the outright TPK much more with 3e.

I never got around to running Abysthor. I should give it a go as basic or S&W. "Conversion" ought to be pretty trivial right?

Quote from: Melan;414110If Calithena were still active on this this site, he would remark that in his day, his party in their OD&D/Arduin campaign had killed the gods and lived to tell about it (plus they got great loot out of the bargain).

Well, I guess this supposes a 1:1 progression between the power of the characters (including their magic items and other props) and the challenges they face. But the approach to storytelling can vary. In "The Lord of the Rings" (which many see as the blueprint for D&D) a humble hobbit is given the Most Powerful Artifact Ever (tm), the party is composed by characters of wildly different level, and the plot is actually solved by an NPC.

This to say that in my campaign the Gods took some fairly sized kicks in the balls from the 7th levelish PCs because, as a player put it "When the Gods move, and Great Heroes rise to Epic Challenges, no one pays attention to what 4 idiots do"

The edition was 3.5E BTW.

And, oh, to return IT, I like more 3E than the previous editions because I find it both more rich and flexibile: a good compromise between the archetypes D&D/AD&D were traditionally based on and the possibility to freely create your character offered by systems like GURPS.

When I first browsed a 3E book (it was 3.5, actually) I thought that it was like someone had read my mind regarding what I wished to be added to the game and what I wised they retained - even things I hadn't consciously thought about. Wierd, but this is exactly how I felt.

My second favoured system in the D&D line is the Mentzer/Rules Cyclopedia one (Mystara included) - i.e. the polar opposite, and the one I use when I DM for kids.

Quote from: Settembrini;414083The building blocks, they remain the same. All other differences are one of CULTURE. And oh hell yes, the 3E CULTURE changed for the worse after a while, removing it from AD&D IN SPIRIT but not in its building blocks or rules.

Lest I forget, here is one of the greatest surviving documents of proper 1st edition AD&D as a CULTURE. Navero, Cleric of the Correct and Unalterable Way by Dan Parsons is one of the first online campaign journals (42 posts on USENET from 1989 to 1990, and a further 22 a few years later), and in addition to being great and authentic history, it is also very entertaining. If you have the time, read it.

Quote from: Cole;414116I never got around to running Abysthor. I should give it a go as basic or S&W. "Conversion" ought to be pretty trivial right?

Tomb of Abysthor is Clark Peterson's 1st edition AD&D dungeon from the 80s with some additions by partner in crime Bill Webb, so yes, mostly trivial.

Quote from: Elliot Wilen;414103A lot of of these posts seem to be about which edition is better, but that doesn't seem to be the topic.

Yeah, this.

It's pointless to argue over which edition of D&D was "better". And, far worse, its dull and tiresome.

3E was my favorite edition, but there are things I like about every edition (given the fact that each "edition" is a section of the long continuum, rather than a point on it).

Also, I think the culture argument, while interesting, is a separate discussion. When I played 4E (briefly), I was definitely aware of the culture, in that I am an active participant on web forums and sometimes attend local cons. When I played 3E, I played *only* with my longtime friends, so I wasn't part of the culture in any way. I wasn't even aware of it.

Quote from: Reckall;414119"When the Gods move, and Great Heroes rise to Epic Challenges, no one pays attention to what 4 idiots do."

This is one of the better distillations of the spirit of D&D I've heard. Even better if it were like "7 idiots, 4 hired stooges, and a linkboy."

Quote from: BWA;414122Yeah, this.

It's pointless to argue over which edition of D&D was "better". And, far worse, its dull and tiresome.

And, strangely enough, almost never the debate considers the quality of the "fluff".

I still remember "Legend & Lore" for AD&D 2E. In the part about the Arthurian Myths they twisted and spinned to avoid mentioning that Merlin's father was - GASP! - the Devil (IIRC the father was "a supernatural creature of evil alignment") or that Modred father was - GULP! - Arthur, who had conceived it with his (words fail me here...) HALF SISTER (Blimey! Kids, run for the hills!)

Which shows how direness didn't began with 4E.

However some of the contents for [put any edition of D&D here] were/are excellent. The question, if we really want to debate, should be more like "for what edition you like to adapt your favourite D&Dish fluff?"

Quote from: thedungeondelver;414061here's your alternate goddamn thread.

You TRAITORS.

I knew you'd react!

Notice I didn't say AD&D and 3rd ed were alike. I said they were not as far apart as other editions of the game would be from one another. Now sure, if you concentrate on the differences, you've got about one gazillion and a half to go through before you'd have exhausted the topic.

There are similarities, however. The 'back to the dungeon' tone of 3rd ed, for instance, is directly reminiscent of AD&D to me. Also, the D&D world being its own thing is a commonality, with the "Under Construction" signs in Greyhawk compared to the "No Spellcasting" behind the barman washing a mug in the 3rd ed DMG. Compare that to AD&D2 which was raped by pretty much anything and everything under a Fantasy sun, and you'll see what I mean. The attention to detail is another one, though both games go about it in widely different ways.

Really, the two games aren't so far apart as one would think. Look beyond the game mechanics for a minute, and you'll see some similarities.