TheRPGSite

here's your alternate goddamn thread.

You TRAITORS.

Oh, thank goodness.  I was so worried about a thread on the RPG Site going off topic...

I hope Benoist comes in here and explains himself for saying 1st and 3rd are more similar than 1st and 2nd.  I'll lie asleep (I mean, awake!) all night tonight if he doesn't.

But, huh, they are basically the same, dude. Speaking about the three core books respectively, that is.

That'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")

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")

 YEAH!  What he said!

okay let's throw down

Streamlined rules: are overrated.  Particularly, experience points and saving throws.  

Experience points should vary by class.  Is a math professor a ditch digger or a cook or a neurosurgeon?  What they learn and how they learn what they learn and how they apply what they learn in their profession, their class, if you will, differs from person to person.  You take ten people of ten different professions and put them through the same experience and they're going to take and apply what they learned in different ways altogether.  The magic user may not get as much out of the toe-to-toe slugfest with the orcs (he'll get an equal share of XP, but mayhap not enough to raise his level).

Saving throws: boy howdy this one drives me up the wall.  So a fireball is cast at Bork the Unlucky over there.  In 3e...does he make a reflex save to duck and cover and take less damage?  Or does he make a will save to at least somewhat disbelieve that it's a real, tangible fire?  Or is it a fortitude save so he can man up and soak up some of the damage without harm?

In AD&D, we have a specific save (vs. spell), plus we have the granularity of magic armor(s) and a high DEX score adding to a save in that case.  More granularity = more variety = better.

3e/d20 is soft.  Get grabbed by a wight?  Say goodbye to a character level!  If you see a wight and you don't have a cleric able to turn or a magic or silver weapon handy, run.  Not all challenges are supposed to be pushed over.  Your Adventuring World is supposed to be dangerous.

Formulas, formulas, formulas.  I'm not talking about the this-adder-plus-that-adder-versus-this-stat-the-other-guy-has "opposed checks", I mean the edict to DMs that so-and-so level monster is to be set against PCs at such and such level and after this-or-that number of adventures the party will be whatever level.  BAH.  If the party whips up on some bandits - or just sneaks past them and hauls off some of that sweet, sweet Treasure Type "A" and gains a level right out of the box and they won it, then by god they won it!  What level was Bilbo when he faced down Smaug?  Or those stone trolls?  Young Peregrin stood up to the Witch King of Angmar!  (Okay, backstab, but that's not the point!)  Don't tell me the "CR" "must be" something Ryan Dancey thought was a good idea.

"Anyone can be an anything of any class".  God don't get me started on this.  "My kobold paladin of Lolth will..." get thrown out of my game is what he will.

and that's just for starters.

The 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.

Quote from: thedungeondelver;4140763e/d20 is soft.  Get grabbed by a wight?  Say goodbye to a character level!  If you see a wight and you don't have a cleric able to turn or a magic or silver weapon handy, run.  Not all challenges are supposed to be pushed over.  Your Adventuring World is supposed to be dangerous.

Formulas, formulas, formulas...Don't tell me the "CR" "must be" something Ryan Dancey thought was a good idea.

"Anyone can be an anything of any class".  God don't get me started on this.  "My kobold paladin of Lolth will..." get thrown out of my game is what he will.

and that's just for starters.

I may not agree with you on the first few, but you know what?  I think these last few are the best places to just plain ignore the RAW in 3rd.  I've never calculated a CR or EL since I started running it, basically just eyeballing any encounter.  Have there been mistakes?  Sure, but surprisingly few, all things considered.  Experience, and playing combats as something other than a tactical competition between the DM and the players goes a long way.

Oh, and anyone trying that kind of multi-classing at my table is going to get turfed so far so fast they'll leave skid marks in my driveway on the way out.

I 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]

I literally had the same experience with 1e to pathfinder, with the only differences being in quality of content. I'd bet dimes to dollars I could have everyone in my pathfinder games write up equivalent 1e characters and once they got used to no AoO (which they would like better) and grappling being gm fiat (which they would like better) I doubt they would know the difference.

I get the feeling that this revolves around published supplements, as opposed to the core books (i.e. PHB, DMG & MM).  If I look at the core rules of the 3, 1 and 2 are pretty similar, 3 is a significant departure (clean-up, modernization, whatever).

Quote from: Melan;414087I have rolled my Will save and will not go into a point by point argument. Three observations, though.

BOCK BOCK BOCK

Quote1) 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.

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

Quote2) 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.

Hey, I am not even remotely trying to defend AD&D from '86 onward.  Dreck, all of it.

Quote3) Palladium is the second most Gygaxian RPG on the planet. It is The Other AD&D©®™.

You misspelled "Dangerous Journeys".

Quote from: thedungeondelver;414076Experience points should vary by class.  

Is a math professor a ditch digger or a cook or a neurosurgeon?  

There are two ways of doing this. Either you can make a class give it abilities distributed by levels and assign a cost in xp for each level. Add them up and get your xp table. This produces varying xp charts per class. This also means that a 5th level X is not the same power level as a 5th level Y. Each class has to be considered in of itself as to what X level means.

Or you can make a single XP charts and with the assumption that a single level means an equivalent increase. Note that I am deliberately vague here. What the increase means it up to the game designer. You could view it as spent learning, as effectiveness in the game, or any number of other criteria.

If you have the same assumptions for both method then neither is "better" than the other it just boils down to personal preference.

For example

I could say that a class get +1 to hit per level like this and for the purpose of this it is the only ability the class gets.

0 to 1000 xp +0
1001 to 2000 xp +1
2001 to 4000 xp +2
4001 to 6000 xp +3
6001 to 10000 xp +4
10001 to 14000 xp +5

or I could go like this

0 to 2000 xp +1
2000 to 6000 xp +3
6000 to 14000 xp +5

for the first class the 3rd level character is weaker than a 3rd level character of the second. But both require the same amount of xp to get to the same power level.

So it is perfectly feasible to make a version of D&D where every class has the same "increase" per level. With that you can use a unified XP chart.

Now whether you LIKE that is an entirely different point. Like Ascending AC vs descending it may be the same but you just plain prefer one over the other for whatever reason.

Plus it is a debatable point whether D&D 3.X achieved this in it's design. My opinion that it did so only partially and they let it fall to the wayside in the later books.

Quote from: thedungeondelver;414076Saving throws: boy howdy this one drives me up the wall.  So a fireball is cast at Bork the Unlucky over there.  In 3e...does he make a reflex save to duck and cover and take less damage?  Or does he make a will save to at least somewhat disbelieve that it's a real, tangible fire?  Or is it a fortitude save so he can man up and soak up some of the damage without harm?

Because the author made it up? Gee whiz why should a Fireball shot by a wand be a different save then a spell casted by a major-user? Because Gary said so? Something in D&D make sense from real-life while other whatever Gary Gygax said so.

Quote from: thedungeondelver;414076Formulas, formulas, formulas.  I'm not talking about the this-adder-plus-that-adder-versus-this-stat-the-other-guy-has "opposed checks", I mean the edict to DMs that so-and-so level monster is to be set against PCs at such and such level and after this-or-that number of adventures the party will be whatever level.  BAH.  

Mmm Monster & Treasure Assortments? Encounter by Dungeon Level? It is silly to criticize 3.X for having Challenge Ratings. Now it is a legitmate criticism of a referee if he choose to continually build "level appropriate encounters" at every step of a campaign. It is a crictism that I agree with when a company all their modules this way.

What 3.X tries to do is make so that if you X group of monster you know that they are of equal power level to Y group of characters. The problem is that this useful tool was applied poorly to campaigns and published adventures.

 

Quote from: thedungeondelver;414076and that's just for starters.

You are focusing your criticism the rules themselves. When it either personal preference or an application of the rules. Should 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?

No the problem is either how the company choose to present the game or how the referee choose to run his campaign. That is in my book is legitimate grounds for criticism. Not a rant on how bad the other guys rules sucks.

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.

I am afraid now I actually got what Sett was talking about.

Your brain has been incapable of learning if it can't handle the improved saving throw system.  Half the time, AD&D didn't make sense on save - especially with thing s that didn't fit the half a dozen categories.
 
Differing 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.
 
CRs are a rough guide for new DMs estimate encounter difficulty.  Nothing says they have to be used and they aren't used much - though used far more often than weapon type vs. base AC in AD&D.

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" :D

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 (http://www.myths.com/pub/rpg/stories/navero/index.html) 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! :D

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.

Quote from: BWA;414072Visual diagram:

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

Cool!

Here's my visual diagram:

(http://enrill.net/images/forump/DnD-editions-diagram.jpg)

:D

I can't do a visual diagram because 3e doesn't belong on the same fucking diagram at all.

Quote from: Melan;4140873) Palladium is the second most Gygaxian RPG on the planet. It is The Other AD&D©®™.

Hell yeah!

Quote from: Melan;414110Killing 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:

Even more Hell yeah!

Godslaying was a regular part of our high-level Classic D&D games.  In my games, if you killed a god, you could take his place.   The other immortal option was ascension as a god's champion.  It was the motivator for why non-clerics worshipped gods.  It was the path to immortality.

If the game doesn't have THAC0 and weapon speed it's not D&D and I'll break the furniture of anyone who says otherwise.

Actually, the new saving throws make way more sense to me than the old. I never understood why saving vs. "rod" was different from saving vs. spell. And why does petrification need its own discrete saving throw? WTF.

Lots of fond memories of AD&D though. I sold all my 3.5 stuff and don't regret it even a little.

Quote from: Benoist;414130There are similarities, however. The 'back to the dungeon' tone of 3rd ed, for instance, is directly reminiscent of AD&D to me.

You seem to heavily influenced by fluff, which would explain why you prefer the mess of 1e over the clean 2e (not counting the abomination of skills & powers).  Our group's reaction to 2e was to take the cleaner rules and the relatively simple thaco, ignore the renaming of demons, and add in the few 1e bits we liked.  I didn't buy a lot of the 2e boxed sets or adventures so those didn't affect my opinion.

Quote from: Melan;414110Killing 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:

Well, that would explain what happens to gods when they're superseded by other gods.

"The Emperor Constantine gives you a mission to go to Olympus and -"

On topic: There is a simple way to distinguish between editions of D&D. D&D3.5 sucked. AD&D1e did not.

Quote from: Nicephorus;414155You seem to heavily influenced by fluff

Flunch is disgusting, so you know. Now, I can clutch my way out of the cruft, thankfully. :)

(http://www.eurocheapo.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/flunch_ext.jpg)

Quote from: Nicephorus;414155You seem to heavily influenced by [background, implied setting, feel, aesthetics, whatever "fluff" might mean], which would explain why you prefer the mess of 1e over the clean 2e (not counting the abomination of skills & powers).  Our group's reaction to 2e was to take the cleaner rules and the relatively simple thaco, ignore the renaming of demons, and add in the few 1e bits we liked.  I didn't buy a lot of the 2e boxed sets or adventures so those didn't affect my opinion.

[more seriously now]

Notice that on my diagram 2e is the edition of the game that falls into the garbage bin?
That's because 2e sucks. I don't like it. At all. Including THAC0, which sucks.

Now, to me, all the elements of a game design work together to create a specific game play. I love AD&D, its Gygaxian tone, rules, fiddliness or wonkiness, however you look at it. I really do not like the "auberge espagnole" (sorry Ramon) that is AD&D2. Its design is completely contradictory, mixes and mashes about a dozen different feels to try to be anything and everything, which amounts in the end to pretty much nothing, to me. I MUCH prefer 3rd ed which at least makes some clear decisions at to the type of world it wants to represent, and how it's going at it on a rules level.

Again a similarity between AD&D and 3rd ed. They each know where they want to go with their design. No matter how different the results end up being.

Quote from: Benoist;414168At all. Including THAC0, which sucks.

Now this I don't get. Of all the stuff 2e brought to D&D, THAC0 is the best improvement. As I recall, it first showed up in modules just prior to 2e, and I took to it immediately. Made my job as DM so much smoother.

A lot of settings and modules of the 2e era were good. Skills and Powers was OK, but the only book in that series that I liked and used (though not much, given how infrequently I got to game by that point) was High Level Campaigns, a lot of which foreshadowed 3e.

But, yeah, I don't have many fond memories of 2e.

Anyway, 3e was definitely a smoothing out and straightening up of 1e/2e. Those previews of 3e in Dragon showed how the new stuff could be introduced gradually into one's game, and not really screw anything up.

Quote from: ColonelHardisson;414182As I recall, it first showed up in modules just prior to 2e, and I took to it immediately. Made my job as DM so much smoother.

THAC0 was in the 1E AD&D DMG in the monster appendix E section.

Though back then, it was not used directly in combat like it was for 2E AD&D.

Quote from: ggroy;414185THAC0 was in the 1E AD&D DMG in the monster appendix section.

Absolutely. As a reference.

Now, to me, using to-hit charts and keeping players from having a whole bunch of mental calculus to do during the game makes sense. It's part of the Wizard of Oz DMing of 1st ed.

THAC0, however, is a useless piece of trash to me when compared to either the charts, or the d20 + modifiers rule. If I have to choose between THAC0 and DC/Roll over, I'm going to choose the latter. No picture at the finish line, to me.

Quote from: ggroy;414185THAC0 was in the 1E AD&D DMG in the monster appendix section.

Though back then, it was not used directly in combat like it was for 2E AD&D.

Good catch! I'd forgotten that! I think we kind of ignored it until it started showing up in modules. The more I think about it, the earlier it seems we were using it. It showed up in a lot of 1e modules, didn't it?

Quote from: ColonelHardisson;414189Good catch! I'd forgotten that! I think we kind of ignored it until it started showing up in modules. The more I think about it, the earlier it seems we were using it. It showed up in a lot of 1e modules, didn't it?

Don't remember offhand.  Will have to look through the old 1E modules.

Quote from: Benoist;414188THAC0, however, is a useless piece of trash to me when compared to either the charts, or the d20 + modifiers rule. If I have to choose between THAC0 and DC/Roll over, I'm going to choose the latter. No picture at the finish line, to me.

Compared to the 1e charts in the DMG? No way. Compared to the 3e d20+modifiers system? Well, of course. Hell, that was one of the biggest draws to me for 3e. I was embarrassed to realize I'd never tried something like that all those years of thinking the armor system of 1e/2e was ass-backward.

At the time, I didn't quite know what the purpose of THAC0 was in the 1E AD&D DMG.  The only thing I figured out, was that it could be used a guide to indicate whether one was using the proper line in the to-hit combat tables for a particular monsters.

Quote from: ggroy;414191Don't remember offhand.  Will have to look through the old 1E modules.

I have a bunch of 'em, but I was just too lazy to go and get 'em. :D

Quote from: Kyle Aaron;414158On topic: There is a simple way to distinguish between editions of D&D. D&D3.5 sucked. AD&D1e did not.

Strange... Fans of AD&D1e over D&D3.5 tell me that the former already did everything the latter did... :p

Quote from: ColonelHardisson;414193Compared to the 1e charts in the DMG? No way.

Way. :D

Quote from: Benoist;414197Way. :D

Seriously, though, THAC0 made running combat so much quicker. I can't see what advantage the charts had.

Quote from: ColonelHardisson;414199Seriously, though, THAC0 made running combat so much quicker. I can't see what advantage the charts had.

I just wrote down the lines of to-hit numbers for the players to hit particular monster ACs in combat.  No need to go through the to-hit table every single roll.

Quote from: ColonelHardisson;414199Seriously, though, THAC0 made running combat so much quicker. I can't see what advantage the charts had.

They were right in front of you and required no math?

Quote from: Benoist;414131Cool!

Here's my visual diagram:

(http://enrill.net/images/forump/DnD-editions-diagram.jpg)

:D

are those stink lines or motion lines coming off of 2e?

I like to think they're stink lines.

Quote from: thedungeondelver;414202They were right in front of you and required no math?

This.

Quote from: thedungeondelver;414204I like to think they're stink lines.

They are. :D

Quote from: thedungeondelver;414202They were right in front of you and required no math?

That's pretty weak. The math was ridiculously simple for THAC0. If that was a stumbling block for anyone, they might wanna consider playing Chutes & Ladders instead. THAC0 meant adding and subtracting the AC from 0. Much quicker and easier to use on the fly. It sped up combats in my games by a good margin. It also made it easier for me to keep the players from knowing exactly how hard it was for them to hit a given monster. I used those charts for so long that when I dropped my DMG, it fell open to that section automatically, so it's not like I had no experience with the system. THAC0 was such an improvement for me that I rarely had to even open the book after that.

Quote from: ColonelHardisson;414212That's pretty weak. The math was ridiculously simple for THAC0.

No math beats simple math.

Quote from: Melan;414110A 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.

Dangerous Journeys is awesome. You might want to give it a look. It's less complex than it looks, and it's dripping with alternate ancient/medieval earth inspiration.

1e Roxxors and 2e Suxxors???

I don't get the argument.  I didn't care for the family-friendly presentation of 2e, but its just 1e rules + a supplement.  Its not any more an "edition change" than CoC 1e is different from CoC 6e.

2e did have truly awesome settings though.  Loves me some Ravenloft, Al-Qadim and Planescape.

Quote from: Benoist;414215Dangerous Journeys is awesome. You might want to give it a look. It's less complex than it looks, and it's dripping with alternate ancient/medieval earth inspiration.

Start a DJ thread.  I'd like to hear about it.   It never really showed up on my radar.

I can't read this thread point by point now because I've got too much Armagnac in my gut and I need to go to bed. But, I want to thank Dungeon Delver for starting it, and Melan for letting me know it was here.

I suspect there is so much truth on both sides here that it will beat the shit out of various apparent contradictions and take its stuff. But, like I said, goodnight.

Quote from: Calithena;414221I can't read this thread point by point now because I've got too much Armagnac in my gut and I need to go to bed. But, I want to thank Dungeon Delver for starting it, and Melan for letting me know it was here.

I suspect there is so much truth on both sides here that it will beat the shit out of various apparent contradictions and take its stuff. But, like I said, goodnight.

Yeah, this is pretty much where I'm at.  I just can't muster much give a shit about 3e and its relationship to AD&D, at the moment.  I went out to dinner.  I had calamari, greek salad, and rosemary bread, followed by sautéed sea perch smothered in crab, oysters, and shrimp.  I ordered a bottle of Ruffino Lumina Pinot Grigio, but they accidentally brought (and opened, before showing me the label) a bottle of Ruffino Chianti.  However, I went ahead and tasted the chianti, and I didn't send it back, because it was so damn good.  For dessert I had tiramisu with amaretto ice cream and a cappuccino.  I had my wife and my four children with me, plus my sister-in-law and her children.  We had a great time.

Perhaps I'll be more on my game in the morning, but for now, I think I'm going to go out on my porch, look at the stars, and smoke a cigar.  I wish I had another bottle of that chianti.

Quote from: ggroy;414100From 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?

DEFINITELY AD&D2 at this point, at least in terms of culture surrounding Pathfinder.

Quote from: Philotomy Jurament;414222Perhaps I'll be more on my game in the morning, but for now, I think I'm going to go out on my porch, look at the stars, and smoke a cigar.  I wish I had another bottle of that chianti.

Haha, I'd like to have a first one. Among the forest of empties on the counter is the 2006 zaccagnini montepulciano that like a rube I bought because there was a stick tied to it, as a chianti substitute, but that was a nice fucking wine for the money

Quote from: Philotomy Jurament;414222Perhaps I'll be more on my game in the morning, but for now, I think I'm going to go out on my porch, look at the stars, and smoke a cigar.  I wish I had another bottle of that chianti.

I would like a first one at this point, of course, the wine store being closed. among the forest of empties on the counter is the zacagnini montepulciano 2006 which in place of a chianti i bought, like a rube because there's a stick tied to it, but man that turned out to be a nice fucking wine for the money.

er, that is, all told I think 3e has some likeness to TSR D&D, but rules wise less than the various TSR D&D's have in common with one another. but I do remember when 3.0 came out, the word from the west was "Play it like first edition," so we did. The word changed, but we didn't change so readily.

I do think the adventure path focus of pathfinder is distastefully 2-y though.

(http://www.batmancomic.info/gen/20101104204411_4cd37d8bcf09c.jpg)

Quote from: thedungeondelver;414231(http://www.batmancomic.info/gen/20101104204411_4cd37d8bcf09c.jpg)

You're the last person I expected to hear saying AD&D was dead :)

Quote from: Cole;414234You're the last person I expected to hear saying AD&D was dead :)

If one can't occasionally laugh at oneself...

Quote from: thedungeondelver;414236If one can't occasionally laugh at oneself...

One ends up applying a great severity to such matters as RPG theory and bat wieners?

Quote from: Cole;414239One ends up applying a great severity to such matters as RPG theory and bat wieners?

Well there's occasionally laughing at oneself, infrequently laughing at oneself, rarely laughing at oneself, never laughing at oneself and then laughing at oneself even less which sort of implodes through quantum tunneling and you wind up with a sad bastard who [strike]self-flagellates[/strike] invents story games about misery tourism.

Quote from: thedungeondelver;414240Well there's occasionally laughing at oneself, infrequently laughing at oneself, rarely laughing at oneself, never laughing at oneself and then laughing at oneself even less which sort of implodes through quantum tunneling and you wind up with a sad bastard who [strike]self-flagellates[/strike] invents story games about misery tourism.

Well, those of Edward's games with which I have any familiarity don't seem to have much to do with misery tourism. Several seem to have a lot to do with codependence and several have to do with breasts. But the misery tourism I would associate with other designers. I just hold no truck with RPG theory and am a puerile asshole who cannot resist making "bat weiner" jokes when the tide is high.

Quote from: thedungeondelver;414240Well there's occasionally laughing at oneself, infrequently laughing at oneself, rarely laughing at oneself, never laughing at oneself and then laughing at oneself even less which sort of implodes through quantum tunneling and you wind up with a sad bastard who [strike]self-flagellates[/strike] invents story games about misery tourism.

"Self-flagellates" was the correct expression. No need to strike it.

Quote from: Cole;414243Well, those of Edward's games with which I have any familiarity don't seem to have much to do with misery tourism. Several seem to have a lot to do with codependence and several have to do with breasts. But the misery tourism I would associate with other designers. I just hold no truck with RPG theory and am a puerile asshole who cannot resist making "bat weiner" jokes when the tide is high.

RPG theory is stupid.  Hey, here's some RPG theory: person who shows up with some good beer gets 500 extra XP.  

Now is that GAMIST or SIMULATIONIST or shut the fuck up and play?

Also ron's obsession with bat-dick is a scream.

(http://www.batmancomic.info/gen/20101104220853_4cd3916568443.jpg)

Quote from: thedungeondelver;414247RPG theory is stupid.  Hey, here's some RPG theory: person who shows up with some good beer gets 500 extra XP.  

Now is that GAMIST or SIMULATIONIST or shut the fuck up and play?

Also ron's obsession with bat-dick is a scream.

I struggle to keep a straight face saying it, but the morphology of bat wangs is a legitimate, if utterly hilarious field of study.

RPG theory, on the other hand, is the nonsense that comes when you go a little crazy from watching a few too many bats sport wood. I think that would traumatize me in a way no RPG could hope to.

Good booze is its own reward. The XP is just icing.

(http://www.batmancomic.info/gen/20101104221616_4cd39320d0bea.jpg)

Benoist, the simlie is broken: Pathfinder is its own culture, really its own thing. Also, no general trend! 2e was part of a general trend. Reagan, Hulk Hogan-aftermath.
Pathfinder, while being rooted in the USA of Mr. Bush, did not answer the questions of the time in the same way as other RPGs. That is mostly because Paizo-stafff has NOT done anything but Pathfinding. Way different from TSR in the 90ies, which shared many authors with its competitors. 2e cuilture was pervasive, Pathfinder culture is pretty specific. It has also its own brand of paradox: Freedom of Build AND the Railroad.

"Great Pacific" they should call it.

You know?  While I'm no fan of 3e I'm really glad that in their attempt to modernise it they didn't go to a HERO style points system with advantages and disadvantages.  And I love GURPS and HERO and Rolemaster Standard System.

But there are some things D&D simply shouldn't be.  Feats and powers are on that list but that's another story.

3e does keep most of D&D's core concepts.

d20 to hit with class based chance / modifier
The hit dice vs damage roll
Fire and forget spells
Saving throws

Of these only the first remains in 4e.

For myself just about everything that gets layered on top of that is cruft that contradicts the core principles that D&D is based on.  Because D&D paints in broad archetypical strokes and treats combat in an extremely minimalist fashion.  I still hold that the weapon vs armor table makes more sense in context than variable weapon damage.

The experience points issue is really silly.  Balanced classes should have balanced level costs and unbalanced classes should be balanced with higher experience costs.  Since 3e tried to balance the classes out it makes sense that it used the same costs for all of them.

Thaco and BAB are no big deal from where I sit.  When you tell people to hit an AC 25 they subtract their BAB to figure out what they need to roll anyhow.  The tables would have been better if they'd integrated the weapon verses armor table.

Quote from: Settembrini;414259Benoist, the simlie is broken: Pathfinder is its own culture, really its own thing. Also, no general trend! 2e was part of a general trend. Reagan, Hulk Hogan-aftermath.
Pathfinder, while being rooted in the USA of Mr. Bush, did not answer the questions of the time in the same way as other RPGs. That is mostly because Paizo-stafff has NOT done anything but Pathfinding. Way different from TSR in the 90ies, which shared many authors with its competitors. 2e cuilture was pervasive, Pathfinder culture is pretty specific. It has also its own brand of paradox: Freedom of Build AND the Railroad.

"Great Pacific" they should call it.

Hmm. Can't say you're wrong. Particularly on the whole paradox between the freedom of built and the railroad, which shocked me as well. I was focusing on the railroad part of the equation I guess, and the feel of Golarion which somehow reminds me of Marco Volo and such fantasies of AD&D2's era. James Jacobs' narrative logic, as well.

Quote from: Settembrini;414259It has also its own brand of paradox: Freedom of Build AND the Railroad.

I think this paradox does have similarities to the late-2e setup of a huge array of character micro types (with the layers of classes, plus customization within classes, plus kits, plus proficiencies and "class-like" systems bought with proficiencies -martial art schools, some types of magic in later kit books, some takes on psionics - plus races and subraces, plus regional 'templates...) with pages and pages of DM advice on linking adventures into plot arcs, etc.

Clearly there are a lot of differences between the two "cultures" but I think that paradox in particular is itself the odd similarity between the two - odd since I think most of the familiar Paizo faces think of themselves as fans of 1e at heart.

Quote from: Benoist;414263...the feel of Golarion which somehow reminds me of Marco Volo and such fantasies of AD&D2's era...

While the Pathfinder society, as a conspicuous example, has a metagame origin, in the game world it feels very much like this aspect of the 2e era to me.

My last post before bed:

mechanically, Pathfinder is an even bigger twink nightmare than 3e; it's all about build build build build.  

with that said

I have maaad respect for paizo as a company.  They loved Greyhawk and it shows in what they did with Dragon and Dungeon magazines, and I hope WotC collapses and Paizo somehow winds up with D&D.

There, I said it.

Quote from: David Johansen;414261You know?  While I'm no fan of 3e I'm really glad that in their attempt to modernise it they didn't go to a HERO style points system with advantages and disadvantages.  And I love GURPS and HERO and Rolemaster Standard System.

But there are some things D&D simply shouldn't be.  Feats and powers are on that list but that's another story.

3e does keep most of D&D's core concepts.

d20 to hit with class based chance / modifier
The hit dice vs damage roll
Fire and forget spells
Saving throws

Of these only the first remains in 4e.

For myself just about everything that gets layered on top of that is cruft that contradicts the core principles that D&D is based on.  Because D&D paints in broad archetypical strokes and treats combat in an extremely minimalist fashion.  I still hold that the weapon vs armor table makes more sense in context than variable weapon damage.

The experience points issue is really silly.  Balanced classes should have balanced level costs and unbalanced classes should be balanced with higher experience costs.  Since 3e tried to balance the classes out it makes sense that it used the same costs for all of them.

Thaco and BAB are no big deal from where I sit.  When you tell people to hit an AC 25 they subtract their BAB to figure out what they need to roll anyhow.  The tables would have been better if they'd integrated the weapon verses armor table.

/nitpick.
Of the four you listed 4e didn't really keep the first one -"d20 to hit with class based chance / modifier" - your wizard and your fighter in 4E have the same to-hit chance. Well OK, the fighter may get +1.
It does have the third one - fire and forget spells. Fighters get them too, of course.

First, Calithena and Philotomy are lucky people and I envy them. I supped on a can of sardines, and spent the evening reading mostly inane stuff on the Internet. It beat my day, but still. OTOH, I am accepting an award for young researchers today and having a proper dinner in the evening, so things may turn out right after all.

Second, here is how you use ThaC0:
1) Look at your ThaC0 (including modifiers).
2) Roll 1d20 and subtract it.
3) Announce the results. This is the AC you hit.
If that's complicated, you should abstain from complex tasks such as tying your shoelaces or deciding whether to have chianti or a diet coke. Attack matrices are technically simpler, but it takes more time cross-referencing rows and columns, plus they either occupy premium table space or require a DM screen.

Third,

Quote from: Settembrini;414259Pathfinder, while being rooted in the USA of Mr. Bush, did not answer the questions of the time in the same way as other RPGs.

Care to expound what the talented Mr. Bush has to do with it, or is it just a label for the general time period? I'd be miffed if someone called my d20 variant "rooted in the Hungary of Mr. Gyurcsany".

Quote from: Bloody Stupid Johnson;414269/nitpick.
Of the four you listed 4e didn't really keep the first one -"d20 to hit with class based chance / modifier" - your wizard and your fighter in 4E have the same to-hit chance. Well OK, the fighter may get +1.
It does have the third one - fire and forget spells. Fighters get them too, of course.

Jesus Christ.

I personally don't see build as being a big deal. It doesn't stack up to much. Anyone can stumble into a fighter with power attack, or a thief with two weapon fighting. I wouldn't call that build. Besides, players are pretty generous with advice on how to put it together for the newbs.

That isn't really even my point though.

When my players, all six of them, levels 4-5 came up against my home brewed Japanese tentacle rape, small farm eating, vinegar soaked floating head vampire with its damage reduction, regeneration, tube tongue, and domination gaze, how big of a difference do you think it makes if one player twinked out his character for an extra 5%? Not a whole hell of a lot.

Just because the fighter is averaging 14 points of damage per hit instead of 9, it isn't going to really change the encounter. It takes all of them and they know it.

Honestly though, I do want to go to a con and take a big dump on a designer's pathfinder game. Get all four players to make a chantry of neutral clerics with negative channeling, selective channeling, and 18 Charismas.

We would be a 1st level party spamming 4d6 damage in a 30 foot radius more times per day than you've got encounters.

Quote from: Melan;414280Care to expound what the talented Mr. Bush has to do with it, or is it just a label for the general time period? I'd be miffed if someone called my d20 variant "rooted in the Hungary of Mr. Gyurcsany".

First, your d20 variant is rooted in just youselves. But the culture surrounding your game? That, I cannot answer. If it is basically your gaming group, then it does not apply. Too individual.

Same for D&D 3.5/Pathfinder: The rules are expressions of individuals, basically Tweet & Cook. Neither of which is an IT person, btw.

The culture surrounding Paizo OTOH, is deeply rooted in the Bush decade. All the TV, all the US-Manga, they are linked. Example: CSI. CSI is a direct answer to 9/11. So, the exchange of inspiration from Novels to TV & Comic Books and video games, that is what is Bushian about the culture surrounding the late D&D.

4e, in turn, is the D&D of ECONOMIC and POLITICAL FEAR. Times have gotten so hard, that histrionic band loyality coupled with the eating up of propaganda to fight ANY uncertainty is the cornerstone of 4e-fandom.  It is the Fox News edition. Ron Edwards as Ayn Rand to the EnWorld Glenn Becks and O'Reilly Mearls, if you will.
The climate of FEAR also served as a catalyst to (some major elements but not all of) the OSR, I presume. Before jumping to false conclusions I highlight the word catalyst. The OSR is geniune, but the way it expresses itself is FEAR-fueled in many places these days.

Quote from: Settembrini;414299Example: CSI. CSI is a direct answer to 9/11.

CSI started before 9/11.  The first season was October 2000 -> May 2001.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CSI:_Crime_Scene_Investigation_%28season_1%29

Also George W. Bush wasn't declared winner of the 2000 presidential elections until December 2000.

Eras and mindsets do not end and start like a method call in a website. The SUCCESS of CSI is 9/11-fueled. In turn, CSI influenced court practice etc.

Something can only be a success if it is there at the moment of change/shock.

Example: Bush was elected because the majority had shifted already, thus Bush and CSI were "in the air". Both the story of Bush and the story of CSI were transformed by 9/11.

D&D culture reacted to the pop culture, and the pop culture definitely changed with 9/11 and Bush.

Shouldn't be too hard to swallow for the comic fans out there, you have got all those metal-ages, no? They might also not have such a clear cut end or start, and renaissances of philosophy X happen there too, no?

Interesting points. I will have to chew on them for a while.

While the influence  of an era interesting and perhaps even an accurate observation I think it is not of any significance. The personalities, the history of the product and their workplace environment loom much larger.

Much of Paizo is rooted in the fact they were focused on producing Dragon and Dungeon Magazine. I have the complete Kingmaker series and in some ways it reads like a highly focused monthly magazine. Not to say it good or bad it just the overall impression.

The designers of 4e took what they felt where the issues with 3.X, mixed it in with the company's experience with Magic the Gathering and came out with D&D 4e. Whether they focused on the right issues from 3.X is a matter of debate. Plus I think the exception based rule system is great at managing complexity I think what they choose to present with it was terrible. In

either case they gambled in a way that 3.X didn't on D&D's legacy rule system by nearly completely ripping it out. A move I think will prove to be viewed  as a mistake.  

Somewhere in the genesis of 4e the assumptions on how to present the product line got baked in and that will prove it's ultimate doom.  D&D Esstentials has been about changing how 4e is presented both in form factor and the package of classes, powers, and feat. The change being to make 4e feel more like older editions of D&D.

The new DM's kit focuses a lot on a mini campaign set in a corner of Nentil's Vale. If they continue this and shift away from encounters 24/7 then they may extend 4e' shelf life. Otherwise the focus on the game means that D&D 4e is going to have a short life among gaming groups. What give an RPG long term playability is the ability to roleplay and interact with the campaign. Encounters don't cut it in that regard as they are too bulky in format to allow enough pages to be devoted to roleplaying side.

Quote from: Settembrini;414302Eras and mindsets do not end and start like a method call in a website. The SUCCESS of CSI is 9/11-fueled. In turn, CSI influenced court practice etc.

There were other procedural police type television shows on for years before CSI and 9/11, such as Law and Order.  (Law and Order has been on the air since 1990).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Law_%26_Order_episodes

Quote from: Cranewings;414285When my players, all six of them, levels 4-5 came up against my home brewed Japanese tentacle rape, small farm eating, vinegar soaked floating head vampire with its damage reduction, regeneration, tube tongue, and domination gaze,

Wait - you mean a Pennaallgaan?

Quote from: Benoist;414213No math beats simple math.

Simple math beats cross-referencing.

Advantage THAC0.

Doubleplus win advantage = ascending AC. BID.

Quote from: Cole;414227I would like a first one at this point, of course, the wine store being closed. among the forest of empties on the counter is the zacagnini montepulciano 2006 which in place of a chianti i bought, like a rube because there's a stick tied to it, but man that turned out to be a nice fucking wine for the money.

Noted wine critic and former Brand Nubian ("Punks Jump Up to Get Beat Down") member Sadat X agrees with you:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uL5NaAkAv7k

Quote from: Calithena;414309Noted wine critic and former Brand Nubian ("Punks Jump Up to Get Beat Down") member Sadat X agrees with you:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uL5NaAkAv7k

AS would I.

More bombastic opinion follows.

Re 1e-3e.

I agree with Melan that 3e can be just as deadly in the hands of a GM who tries just a little bit. I about dropped a load when I saw how nasty 3e dragons were. None of this namby-pamby subduing crap.

While new level draining doesn't bother me (and there were variant rules for nerfing it in 1e--see Lords of Darkness), I was really like "oh sigh" when I saw the "kinder gentler rust monster".

But the one major 1e grognard complaint that I really feel has merit is the whole "magic item economy" thing. Hinging on just one stupid little sentence in the DMG, many came to the conclusion that it's open season for magic items at the local bazaar. Now magic items are part of the character build, and a "standard load out" of magic items came from it.

This led to late 3e era threads ranting about how Mordenkainen's Disjunction was the "unfairest of them all" and that a DM could do "millions of GP of magic item damage. :banghead:

And 4e's answer to the 3e magic item debacle? Keep the magic items in the build (even going so far as to put them in the PHB), just make them suck.

FORTUNATELY, one result of my extended years running 1e taught me, it was to make it my game (another attitude that a minor edit to the 3.5 DMG apparently sought to alter. BID.) Wights can be as deadly or namby pamby as you want. Dragons can be as deadly or namby pamby as you want. I kicked the idea of "open season on magic items at the bazaar" out the door, and wouldn't you know it, my 3e game didn't experience 90% of the horror stories I hear on internet forums about 3e.

Quote from: thedungeondelver;414307Wait - you mean a Pennaallgaan?

Thanks, I couldnt think of it. The one in the book is way to of.

Quote from: Calithena;414309Noted wine critic and former Brand Nubian ("Punks Jump Up to Get Beat Down") member Sadat X agrees with you:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uL5NaAkAv7k

Haha, I now like this wine 500% more :)

Quote from: Caesar Slaad;414308Simple math beats cross-referencing.

Depends on people. Some people have a brain wired for simple math. Others for cross-referencing on a visual table. Or as I put it yesterday, sometimes, just like a picture is worth a thousand words, a single table is worth a thousand mental operations.

Advantage: the way your brain is wired.

Quote from: Benoist;414326Depends on people. Some people have a brain wired for simple math. Others for cross-referencing on a visual table. Or as I put it yesterday, sometimes, just like a picture is worth a thousand words, a single table is worth a thousand mental operations.

Advantage: the way your brain is wired.

Sure; that was an "AFAIAC" post. And of the two I posted, not the post I was hoping would draw a response. :)

Quote from: Caesar Slaad;414330Sure; that was an "AFAIAC" post. And of the two I posted, not the post I was hoping would draw a response. :)

I hadn't seen your second post before I answered that one, to tell you the truth. :)

Quote from: Caesar Slaad;414313But the one major 1e grognard complaint that I really feel has merit is the whole "magic item economy" thing. Hinging on just one stupid little sentence in the DMG, many came to the conclusion that it's open season for magic items at the local bazaar. Now magic items are part of the character build, and a "standard load out" of magic items came from it.

This led to late 3e era threads ranting about how Mordenkainen's Disjunction was the "unfairest of them all" and that a DM could do "millions of GP of magic item damage. :banghead:

This is the CULTURE of balance, though, and not the system. AD&D had severe Gold-Level Interdependencies, only that you could not do too much with the humungous amounts of gold, except for strategic gameplay which is at odds with the "eternally Loner S&S"-style many do like.

Again, I do not have problems with the 3.5 economy. Apart from the stupid "wish" economy, there's some very servicable extrapolations of how such a D&D magic item economy would look like in some of Trollman's writings as well as the wonderful (WONDERFUL) Magical Medieval Society: Western Europe. I stick to MMS:WE and have never encountered a Problem. In short: Every higher priced Magic Item has been crafted for SOMEONE: Most are in the hands of large organizations and/or adventurers/villains. The REAL change I DO concede to 1e fans are the magic item creation rules. If you have enough Gold AND TIME you will get what you want.
But this is an amount of predictable effort that is more fair than the "fuck you" /"nagnaggimmepleaseamonsterwiththeitemIneednagnag" routine that many have experienced in former editions. Also: "fuck you" time restrictions are perfectly viable-

Only the CULTURE of balance "forces" anything re: magic items.

Quote from: Settembrini;414354This is the CULTURE of balance

I agree, since I really like 3rd ed and ED&D, but want to have no part in that culture. It's VERY easy to mix up to the two, particularly when the game company that produces the game gives in to such culture to make a buck.

(I would just like to point out that Benoist and Melan have quit saying 3e is like 1e so I win)

Quote from: Caesar Slaad;414313FORTUNATELY, one result of my extended years running 1e taught me, it was to make it my game (another attitude that a minor edit to the 3.5 DMG apparently sought to alter. BID.)

Well, paint me naive but this is what I supposed I had to do since way back, in 1984, when I started. If you want to play a "LordoftheRingseresque" campaign with D&D you make magic items scarce, but, in turn you throw the most powerful of them all in the lap of the least powerful character ever.

Fightning a 10th level monster with a 10th level character armed with a 10th level sword is only grind. It's when you throw a Balrog on the top of a 1st level party "just to see what happens" that gaming becomes interesting.

(http://www.philotomy.com/images/batman1.jpg)

(On a related note, I'm now going to have to hunt down a bottle of Zaccagnini Montepulciano 2006.)

I always enjoy a good discussion about food. But oysters and Zaccagnini Montepulciano, really? I don't doubt the wine's quality for a minute, but wouldn't a dry white wine do a better job with them?

(http://www.muscadet-grandmouton.com/images/muscadet-grand-mouton2.jpg)

Quote from: thedungeondelver;414359(I would just like to point out that Benoist and Melan have quit saying 3e is like 1e so I win)

Also, is it the culture or the system that's the point of comparison?

Because Sett just said that the culture of 3e was the same as 1e, even though the system is different (again: Feats, Skills, Multiclassing, PrCs). But then when someone brought up the magic item economy, he brushed that off as cultural.

Granted, my 1e is the three core books. OA and UA may have changed things mechanically in the direction of 3e, just as 3e may have going 2-ish culturally late in its life.

Quote from: Benoist;414384I always enjoy a good discussion about food. But oysters and Zaccagnini Montepulciano, really? I don't doubt the wine's quality for a minute, but wouldn't a dry white wine do a better job with them?

For my part I was merely speaking of pairing the wine with late-night message board posting :)

Quote from: Elliot Wilen;414386Granted, my 1e is the three core books. OA and UA may have changed things mechanically in the direction of 3e, just as 3e may have going 2-ish culturally late in its life.

That's what I'm talking about as well, to be clear: Gygaxian, pre-UA AD&D. I'm not talking about UA and books that included skills and all. That's out the window, to me.

Muscadet and Chablis are indeed the classic oyster pairings.

Quote from: Elliot Wilen;414386Also, is it the culture or the system that's the point of comparison?

I'm not talking about the culture, because the culture of 3e basically evolved extremely quickly into the cult of rules balance and all (Monte Cook once mildly joked about it, wondering what they had unleashed - in hindsight, some elements of the game certainly had some widely unexpected influence on the audience, like the CR/Encounter Levels guidelines, which are intended as such, not hardcore rules of what range of difficulty an encounter OUGHT to be). I'm comparing what the core books of 3e and 1e achieve. They go about it in widely different ways, but their actual thematics are not so far apart as one would believe. The emphasis on the dungeon, the classes representing a variety of archetypes, return of AD&D elements like the monk and the assassin compared to 2e, and so on, attention given to simulation and how you go about simulating the game world, instead of narrative/story/whatnot bulshit, so forth.

(http://batmancomic.info/gen/20101105111331_4cd4494be2c14.jpg)

Quote from: thedungeondelver;414401(http://batmancomic.info/gen/20101105111331_4cd4494be2c14.jpg)

Wow, Batman slapped him so hard his words bust right out the balloon!

Quote from: thedungeondelver;414401(http://batmancomic.info/gen/20101105111331_4cd4494be2c14.jpg)

Pretty funny meme, but can you elaborate on where you think their themes differ most significantly?

Quote from: Benoist;414384I always enjoy a good discussion about food. But oysters and Zaccagnini Montepulciano, really? I don't doubt the wine's quality for a minute, but wouldn't a dry white wine do a better job with them?

Oh absolutely yes.  I didn't mean to suggest pairing it with oysters.  I was just saying that after the hubub about it, I'll have to seek it out.

Quote from: Philotomy Jurament;414405Oh absolutely yes.  I didn't mean to suggest pairing it with oysters.  I was just saying that after the hubub about it, I'll have to seek it out.

I make no claims it was the best wine ever, but for a "bought it on account of the label" wine, it was pretty tasty.

Quote from: ColonelHardisson;414193Compared to the 1e charts in the DMG? No way. Compared to the 3e d20+modifiers system? Well, of course. Hell, that was one of the biggest draws to me for 3e. I was embarrassed to realize I'd never tried something like that all those years of thinking the armor system of 1e/2e was ass-backward.

I was thrilled when 3e came out with that system since we'd been using it in 2e for years at that point. To me that was one of the best improvements to D&D, alongside better Saves (though we did add in Save vs. Spell, using the others for more mundane things) and the skill system (before it got broken by books and books of Feats and PrCs.

Quote from: ColonelHardisson;414212That's pretty weak. The math was ridiculously simple for THAC0. If that was a stumbling block for anyone, they might wanna consider playing Chutes & Ladders instead. THAC0 meant adding and subtracting the AC from 0.

This is true though. I never, ever saw the fuss about THAC0. The math was on par with rolling up stats by adding up three dice. Simple addition and subtraction. Sadly, we had to switch to the 3e style long before 3e due to the fact that we liked to smoke a lot of pot during my late high school years, so we kept everything simple. Heh.

And lastly:

Quote from: Spinachcat;414217Loves me some Ravenloft, Al-Qadim and Planescape.

Hoh-lee shee-yit! I thought I was the only person on the planet that loved Al-Qadim. I ran it religiously. I still have the books and boxed sets, thankfully.

-=Grim=-

(http://www.batmancomic.info/gen/20101105112315_4cd44b936b51d.jpg)

:D :D :D

Quote from: Cole;414403Wow, Batman slapped him so hard his words bust right out the balloon!

'swhat happens when you argue D&D with batman, mang.

Quote from: Philotomy Jurament;414376(On a related note, I'm now going to have to hunt down a bottle of Zaccagnini Montepulciano 2006.)

Make sure to get some salt and vinegar chips to go with it.

Okay, let's get serious for a half a tick...

One thing - and I think this is undeniable - AD&D has a clear emphasis on the character-as-archetype.  3e breaks down the archetype: I'll take a few levels of paladin, a side order of magic-user, a large 2 levels of thief, and for dessert a couple of levels of psionicsist.  Multi (and dual) classing in AD&D allowed some flexibility but what you can do in 3e just totally breaks down the whole archetype approach that AD&D has.  

It creates an entirely different atmosphere and feel, and I don't think that's disputable at all.

Whether or not some people like it is immaterial; it does change the nature of the game, how people play it and the net result.  I mean, if you, the player, sit down and roll up the stats for a fighter in AD&D then your goal is to be the best fighter you can, and you envision how you fit in Greyhawk (or FR or whatever campaign world).  In 3e you just snap on bits and pieces until you become this walking swiss army knife of feats and powers and skills and all you think about is the build.  That has to impact how you play.

Quote from: Philotomy Jurament;414405Oh absolutely yes.  I didn't mean to suggest pairing it with oysters.  I was just saying that after the hubub about it, I'll have to seek it out.

OK. I obviously misunderstood! :)

Quote from: thedungeondelver;414416Okay, let's get serious for a half a tick...

One thing - and I think this is undeniable - AD&D has a clear emphasis on the character-as-archetype.  3e breaks down the archetype: I'll take a few levels of paladin, a side order of magic-user, a large 2 levels of thief, and for dessert a couple of levels of psionicsist.  Multi (and dual) classing in AD&D allowed some flexibility but what you can do in 3e just totally breaks down the whole archetype approach that AD&D has.

No. MOST Emphatically not.

3e itself doesn't break down the archetype. It tries to strengthen it. Things like level-dipping, multi-classes-PrCs characters were a side-effect of the design. In the core books, PrCs were for instance intended as ways for the characters' mechanics to be tied to the game world. PrCs reflect some groups or organizations, and the characters become part of them, thus opening themselves to the possibility of gaining specific levels in the class.  

It's all the OGL and supplements that soon came out with PrCs and all that destroyed the intent pretty much right out the gate. That's not how they're intended to be used, originally. They're not supposed to be "OMG I'm going to specialize in fire spells with this and that feat!!!" they're supposed to be about your Ranger character joining the Order of the Grey and learning survival skills from the elves. See what I mean?

The side-effect of level-dipping uber-optimization bullshit is a side-effect of GMs of Ze Suck and designers who forgot themselves, or did not understand what D&D is about in the first place.

Quote from: Calithena;414413Make sure to get some salt and vinegar chips to go with it.

That video cracked me up.

1e is like 3e in the sense that they both had lots of wild-ass shit, unlike 2e.

0e is unlike 3e in the sense that while 3e tells you all the details about the wild-ass shit, in 0e you had to make up your own wild-ass shit to explain the wild-ass shit. 1e is the same, except you have some guidelines for making up wild-ass shit to explain the wild-ass shit.

In 2e, there wasn't any wild-ass shit, and the lame-ass shit wasn't allowed to kill you.

Quote from: Benoist;414399The emphasis on the dungeon, the classes representing a variety of archetypes, return of AD&D elements like the monk and the assassin compared to 2e, and so on, attention given to simulation and how you go about simulating the game world, instead of narrative/story/whatnot bulshit, so forth.

2e had all that too, with mechanics better than 1e, but not as sophisticated as 3e. Narrative elements were about equally lacking in the 3 sets of core books. There is a pretty clear progression from editions 1 to 2 to 3 in system. Gaming style in actual groups didn't really change between 1e and 2e. Oh sure, there were morons digging all the Dragonlance and Forgotten Realms rubbish but all that started in 1e.
 
Your arguments boil down to "I have positive affect for 1e and 3e but not 2e so 1 and 3 seem more similar to me."

Quote from: Benoist;414420It's all the OGL and supplements that soon came out with PrCs and all that destroyed the intent pretty much right out the gate. That's not how they're intended to be used, originally. They're not supposed to be "OMG I'm going to specialize in fire spells with this and that feat!!!" they're supposed to be about your Ranger character joining the Order of the Grey and learning survival skills from the elves. See what I mean?

I have to say that WOTC started this themselves by offering a selection of PrC's in the dungeon master's guide that were all specialist/build type classes. Maybe it's difficult to give examples of a class type that's supposed to be tailored to a DM's campaign, but offering up zero those and half a dozen build specialties like 'arcane archer' and 'shadowdancer' is setting up quite the opposite.

Also, while I did not play with a lot of 'build maniacs,' it wasn't common to see a character that was mostly of one class with one or two levels of a 'sideline' class, usually rogue or fighter. I didn't see this as a problem, mind you, but it's there, easily available, and I don't think it strengthens archetypes. More of an attempt to 'have the best of both worlds" where the assumption is archetypes, but have some latitude about how tightly you're holding to them. I thought it worked out pretty well for the most part, on its own terms. But it's not "like AD&D" in that sense.

Quote from: Cole;414435I have to say that WOTC started this themselves

Yes, they did.

Quote from: Nicephorus;4144342e had all that too

No. Read my post again.

Quote from: Philotomy Jurament;414425That video cracked me up.

Very underrated MC too, always been a funny guy.

Quote from: thedungeondelver;414416Okay, let's get serious for a half a tick...

One thing - and I think this is undeniable - AD&D has a clear emphasis on the character-as-archetype.  3e breaks down the archetype: I'll take a few levels of paladin, a side order of magic-user, a large 2 levels of thief, and for dessert a couple of levels of psionicsist.  Multi (and dual) classing in AD&D allowed some flexibility but what you can do in 3e just totally breaks down the whole archetype approach that AD&D has.  

Statements like this demonstrates you have no freaking clue what playing 3e was actually like. This is paranoid pre-3e-release mantra all over again.

The reality is I saw far less multi(/dual) classing in 3e than 1e. You no longer had multiclass combo tables, but the change to "levels as a zero sum resource" mades massive multiclassing very inefficient.

It's obvious that 3e is not the game you imagine it to be.

Quote from: Cole;414444Very underrated MC too...

Dude, seriously!!! Unfortunately, hip-hop is all but destroyed in this manner. Legions of fantastic emcees and DJs are unknown thanks to the sell-out nature of big-money hip-hop (as opposed to street-hop). In this I mean that the sell-out names like DMX, Wu-Tang and Fiddy Cent are known, but how many people know Slaine, Zion I, and Nesquik?

Small rant. Sorry. It just pisses me off, that's all.

-=Grim=-

Note that Pathfinder tries to address the class-dipping thing by actually making it more rewarding to stick with one class over multiclassing in zillions of them.

Quote from: GrimJesta;414448Dude, seriously!!! Unfortunately, hip-hop is all but destroyed in this manner. Legions of fantastic emcees and DJs are unknown thanks to the sell-out nature of big-money hip-hop (as opposed to street-hop). In this I mean that the sell-out names like DMX, Wu-Tang and Fiddy Cent are known, but how many people know Slaine, Zion I, and Nesquik?

Small rant. Sorry. It just pisses me off, that's all.

-=Grim=-

Hah, I don't think I have heard of Nesquik, either. :)

Opinions vary though. I think the whole Wu collective was one of the best artistic forces in the past 20 years of music, myself. Much like RPG editions it's good to remember that a lot of this is a matter of taste.

I do like Zion I, but then, I also ran a PC through 18 levels of Eberron and counting.

Quote from: Benoist;414449Note that Pathfinder tries to address the class-dipping thing by actually making it more rewarding to stick with one class over multiclassing in zillions of them.

In 3.e I think multiclassing is usually only a "problem" if you're really concenred with direct comparison power balance.

At the same time, in AD&D, if you have an elf F/MU/Thief who's topped out in his other 2 classes, and is really only improving at a reduced rate as a thief, this doesn't mean you now have an unplayable character either.

Quote from: thedungeondelver;414416One thing - and I think this is undeniable - AD&D has a clear emphasis on the character-as-archetype.  3e breaks down the archetype: I'll take a few levels of paladin, a side order of magic-user, a large 2 levels of thief, and for dessert a couple of levels of psionicsist.  Multi (and dual) classing in AD&D allowed some flexibility but what you can do in 3e just totally breaks down the whole archetype approach that AD&D has.  

It may look like that but in practice only a handful of player took multiple classes. The reason being the old adage "Jack of all trades, master of none" hold true even in RPGs. The same effect can be seen in skill based games like GURPS or Runequest.

Now 3.X does support Prestige Classes which a character can qualify for at higher levels. Players tend to go to the ones complimentary to their original class.

And in late 3.X there were crazy ass builds by pulling different classes from different books. But in an ordinary campaign these combos would make no sense and the referee's reaction was to disallow them.

Using just the core rules the most broken thing I found was a half-orc with straight fighter levels with max strength (starting at 18, adding racial bonues and level bonuses over time), with feats like Cleave and Great Clevee, along with swinging a great axe. The character was a damage machine and could solo creatures at much higher Challenge Rating than normal.

If you want to rant, rant about the feats which all classes got. The minmaxing of feats is something that many 3.X players did and continue to do with Pathfinder.

Quote from: Benoist;414420they're supposed to be about your Ranger character joining the Order of the Grey and learning survival skills from the elves. See what I mean?

I thought that was way cool when I first read about that and in the few 3.X campaign I ran my prestige classes were exactly that. Specialized classes reflecting on the various organizations, religions, or cultures of the Majestic Wilderlands.

Then in later 3.X books I went "What the hell happened?".

Quote from: Cole;414452I think the whole Wu collective was one of the best artistic forces in the past 20 years of music, myself.

I'm actually from Staten Island, i.e. Shaolin. I'm pretty sure it is impossible for me NOT to like Wu-Tang. But my point is that while some of the bigger artists are great, radio and print need to also pay attention to the other artists too. It just seems like they get forgotten, passed over, never getting the respect they deserve. And unlike punk and rock, there's plenty of room at the top in hip-hop.

Wait, what was this thread about again? ;)

Quote from: GrimJesta;414462I'm actually from Staten Island, i.e. Shaolin. I'm pretty sure it is impossible for me NOT to like Wu-Tang.

*whew* that's a relief!

Everything's okay then :)

Quote from: estar;414458I thought that was way cool when I first read about that and in the few 3.X campaign I ran my prestige classes were exactly that. Specialized classes reflecting on the various organizations, religions, or cultures of the Majestic Wilderlands.

Then in later 3.X books I went "What the hell happened?".

I've seen players develop a new PrC with the DM for an organization their PC founded, which was my favorite application of the idea.

Lately I've been giving more thought to how (I've been thinking b/x D&D but it's a pretty general idea) to better implement gaining abilities through adventuring more than through leveling. I.E. instead of spending a feat, duel with a master. Or pull off some stunt in the heat of the moment, add a version of it to your repertoire.

Today's dinner was a light risotto with calamari, shrimps and duck liver, plus a local chardonnay. The evening was beautifully clear and warm for November, and some street musicians were playing classical music across the square. Relaxing. ... Oysters? That's very "30s rich people", wonderful for the zeitgeist.

But to business:

Quote from: Caesar Slaad;414313But the one major 1e grognard complaint that I really feel has merit is the whole "magic item economy" thing. Hinging on just one stupid little sentence in the DMG, many came to the conclusion that it's open season for magic items at the local bazaar. Now magic items are part of the character build, and a "standard load out" of magic items came from it.

Bingo. It is a cultural issue, but one that, along with builds, has strongly shaped expectations about the game and how it should be run. It is not in the system, and it did not occur to me as normative on my reading of the 3.0 books. (I allow the purchase and sale of magic items, but my model is "you find this weird thing in this dusty rat-hole, and it will cost you money that's more than your life is worth in these parts, but it may just be something very cool to have it", not fantasy Wal Mart.) The books themselves discuss options and explain fairly well what effects they have on play, and one reading that's very much there but which fell out of favour due to changing culture is a world of status quo encounters, random treasure charts (right there in the book, and prominently) and a whole lot of death.

3e also took an explicit 180 degree turn on some things 2e plain got wrong in the blueprints (http://www.therpgsite.com/showthread.php?t=7027) part; not just demons, devils, random encounters and dungeons, but a whole lot of DMing advice such as:

Quote[Adventure] Structure
Good structure:
- choices
- different sorts of encounters
- exciting events
- encounters that make use of PC abilities
Bad structure:
- leading the PCs by the nose
- PCs as spectators
- deus ex machina
- preempting the players' abilities

Aside from "encounters that make use of PC abilities", which should be "encounters that present an open situation with several possible approaches", this is not just a sound list for creating adventures, but a praise of 1st edition's virtues and a strong criticism of post-1984 TSR practices. The campaign- and world-building advice is not as inspiring as EGG's prose, but it is a functional and well-structured introduction for creating good "adventure fantasy" worlds. And there is even a nod to genre-bending with alternate weapon lists with SMGs, grenade launchers and even lasers. There is a significant consciously pro-1st edition direction to a lot of the game, and especially the DMG, that goes beyond name-dropping (which is the current way), and tries to restore or reflect on classical design ideas to prominence. It is almost like a checklist of the 1e DMG with someone asking, "okay, how do I add that to our overhauled system".

It does not get everything right - for instance, the DMG's remark that "encounters with more than a dozen creatures are difficult to judge" removes the fun of facing dozens of enemies and living to tell about it, and I think the system works better if you remove the upper 50% of the 18-level power scale from active campaigning - but it is good enough for a good old school game experience. Which is what Necromancer Games and later Goodman built their business on, and they were the two most prominent adventure publishers on the scene before Paizo's adventure paths (although IMO Necro was much closer spiritually than GG, who got the trade dress right but often added really meh content).

The question is, where did that part of the scene disappear to? Did they move on to the modern D&D paradigm? Old school systems? Still playing but not posting much? Dead due to 3.0's carcinogenic binding? Hm. That early 3.0 scene is something I am, oddly, nostalgic about.

Quote from: estar;414458I thought that was way cool when I first read about that and in the few 3.X campaign I ran my prestige classes were exactly that. Specialized classes reflecting on the various organizations, religions, or cultures of the Majestic Wilderlands.

Then in later 3.X books I went "What the hell happened?".

Many people started to react that way. I reacted the same way you did. That's when I started to look more towards LA or C&C, which would eventually bring me back to AD&D and OD&D. I know that Monte Cook became keenly aware of the way things went south very early on in that regard, because he tried to address this issue multiple times through his website's reviews and columns. Which was a bit like fighting windmills, since the game was out there, via WotC's ownership and the OGL, for good or for ill.

Quote from: Benoist;4144203e itself doesn't break down the archetype. It tries to strengthen it. Things like level-dipping, multi-classes-PrCs characters were a side-effect of the design. In the core books, PrCs were for instance intended as ways for the characters' mechanics to be tied to the game world. PrCs reflect some groups or organizations, and the characters become part of them, thus opening themselves to the possibility of gaining specific levels in the class.

I am ambiguous about it. The multiclassing system gets around a lot of the problems that AD&D solved with new classes or kits, and if we are brutally honest, we can extend that understanding to paladins (fighter/cleric), rangers (fighter/druid, but it could be a fighter/thief if you want more Robin Hood than Aragorn) and assassins (fighter/thief). If you want to play any character type from "the standard D&D setting", the 3.0 class system can do it except maybe a real 1e-style illusionist. Ironically, it also solves the problem of demihuman level limits, which 3e removed: characters who reach their level cap simply change into another class, horrible hangup lots of people had with D&D solved instantly.

But yes, it easily upsets the archetype system and pushes players in a more "who am I?" direction than 1st edition's "here I am, now what do I do?". (The answer is: "I become an amoral cutthroat because the GP-->XP+training rule and the source literature say so".) It also allows level-dipping, which in our campaign produced Narg the Paladin/Monk/Sorcerer/Fighter/Thief/Ranger, until the character's goddess bitch-slapped him into reason, allowing to convert that abomination into Paladin levels.

With respect to prestige classes, I understood them as an adaptation of the advanced classes from the Wizardry CRPGs (Fighter, Cleric, Wizard, Thief --> Samurai, Bishop, Lord, Ranger and Ninja). In a campaign, Benoist's interpretation is the way they really ought to be used (and that's what happened in our games). Basically, a PrC should give a player something unique for in-game accomplishments and perseverance, which in turn reinforces the PC<->campaign connection and makes the particular character more valuable, because by Jove, you earned that special elite status, here are your chevrons and beret. You know, prestige. If the concept is treated as a salad bar of purely mechanically relevant character building options, the entire purpose is subverted into something different, which is what happened in practice.

Quote from: Melan;4144673e also took an explicit 180 degree turn on some things 2e plain got wrong in the blueprints (http://www.therpgsite.com/showthread.php?t=7027) part; not just demons, devils, random encounters and dungeons, but a whole lot of DMing advice such as:
...
Aside from "encounters that make use of PC abilities", which should be "encounters that present an open situation with several possible approaches", this is not just a sound list for creating adventures, but a praise of 1st edition's virtues and a strong criticism of post-1984 TSR practices.

Thanks for linking that thread. Excellent post, both here and in the OP there.

What you write here can be helpfully juxtaposed with Sett's point there:

Quote from: SettembriniI developed a similiar idea on the german blogosphere.
But it´s more centered on the unchangable elements in the games, around which meaning revolves and evolves around.
I called them cores of relevance.

In D&D, Money, XP and Hitpoints are the mechanical cores of relevance. Whereas conceptually, it´s death & power.

All things in D&D relate to death & power, rulings can be made any way, agreements reached, changes made. But they really all must heed death & power.
Because death & power are well defined, the whole world and game can derive meaning and relevance from it.
Changing the fundamental cores of relevance fucks with the game pretty hard. Look at 3.x: the core of relevance has been tempered with only slightly and it changed the way people play to the reactive tactical standard we all know.

What you reference above* is diametrically opposed to what Paizo is doing in their adventure paths (which is what Sett is referring to*), and yet they are the one company who keep the ruleset in print.
(*in the bit I bolded)


How close 3e is to AD&D is thus an unanswerable question, unless it's clear whose take on 3e we refer to. I can think of (at least) four takes:

Stage 1: original 3.0
Stage 2: WotC' take on 3.5 around 2003, still pretty close to Stage 1, but certain lines like "DM decides which rules to use and how strictly to use them" get excised - that's foreboding of things to come
Stage 3: the Paizo take over. Shackled City hits the scene. Really hard. There's an amazing post by Clark Peterson on how it's teaching DMs to see everything "anew". Boy, if only he knew how right he was.
Stage 4: WotC decides to re-enter the module  market late in 3.5's life cycle. Of course they know little better than to imitate their most successful competitor - Paizo. End result: modules are now a pre-arranged string of custom-tailored encounters. Only difference: Paizo interlaces these with cut scenes (which don't make a difference to "the story (TM)") whereas WotC says "scratch this, on to the fun!".

Quote from: Windjammer;414479Stage 3: the Paizo take over. Shackled City hits the scene. Really hard. There's an amazing post by Clark Peterson on how it's teaching DMs to see everything "anew". Boy, if only he knew how right he was.

I remember that! Clark was so enthusiastic. Really, really fired up on the "campaign in a book" idea, although pursuing that will'o'wisp wasn't good for Necro (it compromised their vision), and I think it tied the company down in projects that were very costly timewise. One of them is only being published now under a new imprint (http://www.talesofthefroggod.com/index.php).

WRT campaign standards, Settembrini was right about them back in 2007, and from what I know from it, you appear right about stage 4. The openness of play from individual encounters to adventure situations ("scenarios") to campaigns is something I am personally really keen on, and based on the experiences of our campaign, I believe it can be used to build complex, rewarding games in a rather painless way. It is not easy to describe formally, but it is somehow about establishing a good flow that doesn't involve direct DM intervention, just taking PC and world actions to their logical conclusions in a game world (or space) where the result of actions are biased towards generating or escalating conflict (and hopefully an interesting resolution), which is of course the logic of adventure.

Quote from: Caesar Slaad;414446Statements like this demonstrates you have no freaking clue what playing 3e was actually like. This is paranoid pre-3e-release mantra all over again.

The reality is I saw far less multi(/dual) classing in 3e than 1e. You no longer had multiclass combo tables, but the change to "levels as a zero sum resource" mades massive multiclassing very inefficient.

I really have to agree. A character who multi-classed that much would be complete crap at everything. Single-class characters in Pathfinder, in my experience, are significantly more potent than the multi-class or prestige class equivalents.

We have two casters in our play group, a mystic theurge (wizard / cleric / theurge) and a straight-up druid. The theurge can cast arcane and divine spells, ok, sure. But the druid has about half again the number of spells and can cast at least one level higher. Plus loads more class abilities. In a fight he'd wipe the floor with the theurge, hands down.

This seemed to be pretty much the case in 3.5, too, but even more so in PF. You could be a wizard / rogue / bard / ninja / superchanger, but there's no reason why you'd want to.

There are some nice things about MTs. I' have to look, but I think you are wrong about the number of spells. The MT should have a few more. Plus, they can carry a lot of the same spell which is awesome for long dungeons.

Being an 8th level character and being able to cast like 8 Dispel Magics, if you do it right, is pretty nice.

Quote from: Cranewings;414485There are some nice things about MTs. I' have to look, but I think you are wrong about the number of spells. The MT should have a few more. Plus, they can carry a lot of the same spell which is awesome for long dungeons.

Being an 8th level character and being able to cast like 8 Dispel Magics, if you do it right, is pretty nice.

Maybe the theurge player just bitches a lot then, because he's always going on about how he doesn't have enough spells.

Not saying the MT is a bad class, I still think the single-class druid is significantly more potent overall.

Quote from: Melan;414482I remember that! Clark was so enthusiastic. Really, really fired up on the "campaign in a book" idea, although pursuing that will'o'wisp wasn't good for Necro (it compromised their vision)

Let's not forget the final nail in the coffin, around March 2008:

QuoteMaybe you will be interested in our 4th Edition Iron Tower Adventure Path,
to be published through Paizo. That's right. Adventure Path. 4E.

It will be a continuation of what you will get a glimpse of in our free 4E
pdf intro adventure "Winter's Tomb."

It will have a setting larger than that from Shackled City. It wont be a
full world. Buy you'll be able to run a campaign in it.

Frozen wastes.
Ancient frost giant ruins.
Demonic gnolls.
Feral elves.
An aquirable stronghold for the PCs.
An epic weapon with a legendary secret.
Descent into the underdark.
Travel to the elemental planes of fire and ice.
And to the very gates of Hell itself.

Sound good?

Oh, and if you dont think we can do old school first edition feel with 4e,
think again. I guarantee it.

I am so geeked to support 4E, I can't even tell you... And just wait till
you see who is going to be helping me with this.
__________________
Clark Peterson
Necromancer Games
//www.necromancergames.com

(From an old Enworld post. Needless to say, retrieved from elsewhere, because Enworld shifts servers... regularly.)

An acquirable stronghold. Madness, I tell you, maaaadness!

... oh, hold on, I'm sure we can shoe horn it into something... manageable.

QuoteSTRONGHOLD
This large building resembles a stronghold.
Huge object. 20 squares x 30 squares
Keywords: Martial, Weapon, Plot
Effect: While within 2 squares of the stronghold, you receive +1 on Intimidiate, and +1 to AC.

Quote from: Windjammer;414491Let's not forget the final nail in the coffin, around March 2008:

I remember being very psyched about a 3.5 version of Tegel Manor coming out - at the time we were periodically playing Tegel in 3.5 with the DM converting more or less on the fly, but I was interested then at how NG would "3.5 it up." Then 4e/GSL issues seemed to finally devour it somewhere on its alreadly slow march to release.

Quote from: Insufficient Metal;414486Maybe the theurge player just bitches a lot then, because he's always going on about how he doesn't have enough spells.

Not saying the MT is a bad class, I still think the single-class druid is significantly more potent overall.

A second level mystic theurge, assuming 16s for his attributes, including his domain spells and bonded object, would have 4 first, 3 second, and three third level arcane spells + 5 first, 4 second, and 3 third level spells, for a total of 22 spells, including 6 third level spells.

An eight level druid with an 18 Wisdom would have and an elemental domain (which is a bad choice over the animal companion in my opinion, but just to compete) would have 6 first level, 5 second level, 5 third level, and 4 fourth level spells, for a total of 20 spells.

You know, I always thought it was a bigger difference than that. I guess the mystic is really getting hosed. 4 Fourth level spells beats the ever living shit out of anything you can do with some extra second and third... like cast Freedom of Movement on the whole party...

Quote from: Cranewings;414510You know, I always thought it was a bigger difference than that. I guess the mystic is really getting hosed. 4 Fourth level spells beats the ever living shit out of anything you can do with some extra second and third... like cast Freedom of Movement on the whole party...

Yeah, not to mention that at 15th level our druid can turn into a huge fire elemental on command. :D

Holy Guacemole, three years and finally someone read that core of relevance post. Also, wasn't there a fucker-douchebag who said i didn't predict it all in 2007?

Anyhoo, I need to make a longer post on the cores of relevance, because the wording is still confusing.

Explanation by example: (I fear that is old, too): Battletech = Mechs & ultimately, their Factories. All meaning in BattleTech is derived from MechFactories.

In D&D its levelled guys and gold, used to be (AD&D) levelled guys and their armies of monsters and mercenaries.

Oh yeah, and the currency for that core is HPs for D&D and spare parts for BT. Now, with 4e one can say all the fun stuff aka shortcuts have been annihamearlsed.

4e is like BT without crits. "Cocpit hits are no fun, lets remove the hit locations!" "Ammo hits are unfun, lets introduce unexploding ammo!"

Now...waidaminute...

Quote from: Insufficient Metal;414486Maybe the theurge player just bitches a lot then, because he's always going on about how he doesn't have enough spells.

Not saying the MT is a bad class, I still think the single-class druid is significantly more potent overall.

I think it takes the right sort of campaign (hint: not a high combat intensity one) to make a MT worthwhile.

The only dog I'm throwing into this fight is an efficient little ratter named "a single saving throw per class is better than either than 1E or 3E method".

The first two pages of this thread were laugh-out-loud funny.  It just started in the middle of a heated argument, like a brawl spilling into the street.

Quote from: Settembrini;4145484e is like BT without crits. "Cocpit hits are no fun, lets remove the hit locations!" "Ammo hits are unfun, lets introduce unexploding ammo!"

Now...waidaminute...

I agree here, mostly. Unexpected results/setbacks create surprises that help keep play dynamic and add challenge for people who've mastered the systems.

I tried once to argue in favor of older editions having more "surprise" factor and how that could add to a campaign via unexpected results (assuming the DM is fair), but was shouted down as liking "unfun" games.  :idunno:

However, my non-TTRPG playing friends (ie, normal people) were obsessed with nethack, and that's the most brutal AD&D CRPG clone I'm aware of.  The game purposefully fucked with you in so many ways, and yet they found it entirely enjoyable because of how random some events were.

Quote from: Peregrin;414633However, my non-TTRPG playing friends (ie, normal people) were obsessed with nethack, and that's the most brutal AD&D CRPG clone I'm aware of.  The game purposefully fucked with you in so many ways, and yet they found it entirely enjoyable because of how random some events were.

That's because your character is an @, rather than a fictional person youve invested imagination and description in.

I would argue that the increased preciousness of PCs has been the greatest driver of change to D&D over time, but that's for a different thread.

Quote from: Melan;414475I am ambiguous about it. The multiclassing system gets around a lot of the problems that AD&D solved with new classes or kits, and if we are brutally honest, we can extend that understanding to paladins (fighter/cleric), rangers (fighter/druid, but it could be a fighter/thief if you want more Robin Hood than Aragorn) and assassins (fighter/thief). If you want to play any character type from "the standard D&D setting", the 3.0 class system can do it except maybe a real 1e-style illusionist. Ironically, it also solves the problem of demihuman level limits, which 3e removed: characters who reach their level cap simply change into another class, horrible hangup lots of people had with D&D solved instantly.

The way I visualized it was similar to GURPS Templates. Except templates were something you used at the start of the campaign to create your character. In D20 each level represented a package of advantage, skills, and possibly stat changes.

While GURPS remained my favorite RPGs, I though the D20 approach was close to ideal as far as balancing customization vs simplicity.

QuoteThat's because your character is an @, rather than a fictional person youve invested imagination and description in.

An @ in a game so difficult that you can spend countless hours trying to progress to the end and still never making it.  You may not have investment in a fictional persona, but you have huge chunks of time devoted to that particular playthrough.  In fact, I'd find that more devastating than losing a favorite PC.  I've let plenty of characters I've invested in go without a word, in fact I've stopped DMs from fudging the numbers.

For me, the risk makes it all that more dramatic.  If you introduce safety nets, it might improve "gameplay", but I don't find it as enjoyable.

Granted, it is a factor in the difference between AD&D and 3e, but I find it also depends on player expectations more than anything else.

Quote from: Hairfoot;414636That's because your character is an @, rather than a fictional person youve invested imagination and description in.

You can invest imagination and description into an @-sign. It may well be more fun if you do. Unless you're playing with miniatures, in AD&D he's not even an @ sign - he's just an idea!

There are those who will disagree, I suppose, but I try to make any first level character at least a little bit real - I think it just makes the game more engaging. It's sad if some poor bastard with 4 hit points dies before his tale amounts to much, but if he's just one of a succession of at signs gleefully blundering into a spiked pit trap "cause I can just roll atty-two when atty dies, that's more like 'depressing.'

A GM I've played with for a while now allows players to roll up a new character if his ability scores are especially poor - with the caveat that the dead PC goes to the "PC Sematary" from which he is likely to arise as an undead monster someday.

...He recently ruled that declined stat arrays must henceforth be given names before being relegated to the Sematary. :)

I don't disagree that an increased "preciousness" of PCs has shaped D&D's development over time. But I think in a way earlier edition PCs can be precious by virtue of their fragility!

Quote from: Peregrin;414643An @ in a game so difficult that you can spend countless hours trying to progress to the end and still never making it.  You may not have investment in a fictional persona, but you have huge chunks of time devoted to that particular playthrough.  In fact, I'd find that more devastating than losing a favorite PC.  I've let plenty of characters I've invested in go without a word, in fact I've stopped DMs from fudging the numbers.

Quote from: Cole;414644You can invest imagination and description into an @-sign.

I reckon my logged Nethack hours would hold up favourably against anyone else's record, so I'm not dismissing any of that.

It's quite different in Nethack, though, because the PC is rolled up instantly and gets straight into the action.

In a D&D game, OTOH, if a disposable 1st level PC dies, it might be a half hour of real time before the player can bring a new one in.

When a group has played out the party's introduction and journey to the dungeon of the Stirge Lord, it's a bit more frustrating when a PC dies falling down the entrance stairway.

Quote from: Hairfoot;414649When a group has played out the party's introduction and journey to the dungeon of the Stirge Lord, it's a bit more frustrating when a PC dies falling down the entrance stairway.

I don't disagree with you there. (Sometimes "a bit more frustrating" is part of RPGing, though, I do think, and that bit may buy more than its price would indicate in terms of enjoying a game.)

I also think that kicking things off with an arbitrary, basically unavoidable deathtrap probably isn't the greatest adventure design, but that's almost irrelevant to the edition or arguably the system - I.E. for the 3e character the Deadly Stairs would just need to be a little steeper.

Of course, if the stairs are visibly perilous and crumbling, and the player just sort of blithely jogs down them and falls, he has chosen his own disposability :)

Quote from: Cole;414651I also think that kicking things off with an arbitrary, basically unavoidable deathtrap probably isn't the greatest adventure design, but that's almost irrelevant to the edition or arguably the system - I.E. for the 3e character the Deadly Stairs would just need to be a little steeper.

Of course, if the stairs are visibly perilous and crumbling, and the player just sort of blithely jogs down them and falls, he has chosen his own disposability :)

You can substitute "Deadly Stairs" for "orc patrol" or similar, of course, but I'm saying that D&D design has evolved to encourage players in such situations to take the orcs down toe-to-toe rather than avoid or ambush them, because they know the PCs can do it.  That leads into the whole other discussion of whether PCs are heroes or ambitious schmucks, and whether the system encourages combat as the answer to everything, etc.

Quote from: Hairfoot;414653You can substitute "Deadly Stairs" for "orc patrol" or similar, of course, but I'm saying that D&D design has evolved to encourage players in such situations to take the orcs down toe-to-toe rather than avoid or ambush them, because they know the PCs can do it.  That leads into the whole other discussion of whether PCs are heroes or ambitious schmucks, and whether the system encourages combat as the answer to everything, etc.

I basically agree with you, although I would say that, through 3e at least, it's more that the design has evolved to "be more forgiving of players in such situations" rather than to encourage them. Though, again, it's still the question of "how steep are the stairs/how many orcs are in the patrol." I think it's only with 4e that the rules so concretely assume that "if there are monsters that can be fought, they are to be fought." The attitude long predates 4th edition, and you don't have to play 4e that way, but I do feel that it is what the rules, and their authors, take as the basis of the game.

Earlier editions, via the forefronting reaction roll, gave active support to the idea that even the Orcs you blundered into randomly might just want to negotiate or trade or just leave the situation with their asses intact. This part of the game was, and I don't think I'm surprising anyone by saying so, very often ignored, both by DMs in the privacy of their own home, or module authors enamored of the phrase "attack on sight," but it's very much there.

Anyone on here good at that thing called 'Filking'?

I keep thinking this whole argument over the past 2 or 3 years could be done in song. A song called "It's Still D&D To Me" to the tune of Billy Joel's "It's still Rock & Roll" (to me) .

Are adventurers still going into dark creepy places looking for treasure and beating up monsters?
 Then trying to get out alive?

Wasn't that always the gist of it?


- Ed C.

Quote from: Settembrini;414546Explanation by example: (I fear that is old, too): Battletech = Mechs & ultimately, their Factories. All meaning in BattleTech is derived from MechFactories.

In D&D its levelled guys and gold, used to be (AD&D) levelled guys and their armies of monsters and mercenaries.

I beg to disagree. What AD&D/D&D is about is a king/damsel in distress/shady dude in a tavern hiring the character to do something. If the character refuse, the adventure provides a list of ways to make them do it anyway. While questing, something unspeakably dire and for which the characters aren't ready for happens - and the players get their opportunity to exercise free will and the DM to lay back and have fun.

I still remember the first time I DMed "Ravenloft", the original module. East Europeanish setting, decrepit village living under the shadow of the vampire's castle... The players assume that the adventure involves delving into "the big dungeon" (the castle), defeating secondary minions and gathering clues & magic items, all of this in preparation for the final show-off with Von Zarovich.

The go to the castle and the vampire is right there, in the first hallway, incredulous: "How do you dare to violate my castle??!" TPK.

Cut to: another, new, party of adventurers stumbles - lo and behold - in the same area. But, for some reason, they are wiser and decide to put together a real plan before going "up there".

This is what D&D is about.

Quote from: Koltar;414668Anyone on here good at that thing called 'Filking'?

I keep thinking this whole argument over the past 2 or 3 years could be done in song. A song called "It's Still D&D To Me" to the tune of Billy Joel's "It's still Rock & Roll" (to me) .

http://www.enworld.org/forum/3807391-post82.html

Ah, memories. ;)

EDIT: Ah, shoot, that's not the right one. The one I'm thinking of was funnier and had a passage that alluded to templated characters. Hmph.

Reckall, you are in a wholly different territory. "Aboutness", no please let us not go there.

Quote from: Cole;414495I remember being very psyched about a 3.5 version of Tegel Manor coming out - at the time we were periodically playing Tegel in 3.5 with the DM converting more or less on the fly, but I was interested then at how NG would "3.5 it up." Then 4e/GSL issues seemed to finally devour it somewhere on its alreadly slow march to release.

Ha! I remember investing half a year of my time into writing that 3.5 version. Trying to understand what made the original Tegel tick, and drawing on that to develop something that's authentic, fresh for someone who would know the original, but accessible for total newbies. We playtested it, then it got lost in development hell - ambitious "vinyl playing mat" plan, Necro's switch to a different publisher, WotC's switch to a new edition, Necro's misadventures with the GSL, then the death of Bob Bledsaw. The resurrected Judges Guild is planning to release a new edition/sequel thing, but that's by Bob Jr., not me. I am not blaming any of the involved, since it was an interplay of delays and unfortunate circumstances, but it sucks to lose that sort of time and effort.

Actually, I think 4e already doomed it. If Necro released it for the 4e audience, it would have been panned as an example of bad design, because it is totally antithetical to 4th edition culture. Like, the total opposite of "the way it should be done".

If people are interested, I have an internal design document I wrote that I could post to my website and link here - 4 years later, I suppose there'd be no harm in it.

Quote from: Hairfoot;414628The first two pages of this thread were laugh-out-loud funny.  It just started in the middle of a heated argument, like a brawl spilling into the street.

It is actually a pretty level-headed thread that could have come from the 2006 or 2007 version of TheRPGSite before people started taking things a wee bit too seriously, and the tone of the boards soured.

Quote from: Melan;414694It is actually a pretty level-headed thread that could have come from the 2006 or 2007 version of TheRPGSite before people started taking things a wee bit too seriously, and the tone of the boards soured.

I apologize for my seriousness and lack of a sense of humor.

Quote from: LordVreeg;414695I apologize for my seriousness and lack of a sense of humor.

I am cornholio!

Quote from: Melan;414694It is actually a pretty level-headed thread that could have come from the 2006 or 2007 version of TheRPGSite before people started taking things a wee bit too seriously, and the tone of the boards soured.

Before 4E was released, you mean?

Coincidence, correlation or causation? The jury is still out.

Quote from: Settembrini;414684Reckall, you are in a wholly different territory. "Aboutness", no please let us not go there.

Sorry: I forgot how, in a discussion if is something is alike to something else, what they should be about doesn't matter :rolleyes:

Quote from: LordVreeg;414695I apologize for my seriousness and lack of a sense of humor.

It's when I display my sense of humor that people call me "sour" :p

Quote from: Melan;414693If people are interested, I have an internal design document I wrote that I could post to my website and link here - 4 years later, I suppose there'd be no harm in it.

That would be great. I am currently in the midst of running Tegal using Swords & Wizardry. What a crazy ass place!

Gold Star Manor Part I - http://batintheattic.blogspot.com/2010/10/gold-star-manor-part-i.html

Gold Star Manor Part II - http://batintheattic.blogspot.com/2010/10/gold-star-manor-part-ii.html

Gold Star Manor Part III (player view and really long) - http://batintheattic.blogspot.com/2010/10/gold-star-manor-part-iii.html

Quote from: Melan;414693If people are interested, I have an internal design document I wrote that I could post to my website and link here - 4 years later, I suppose there'd be no harm in it.

You bet I'm interested!

Quote from: Melan;414693If people are interested, I have an internal design document I wrote that I could post to my website and link here - 4 years later, I suppose there'd be no harm in it.

Hells yes!

Quote from: Melan;414693If people are interested, I have an internal design document I wrote that I could post to my website and link here - 4 years later, I suppose there'd be no harm in it.

That would be fantastic!

All right, people: head over to my site (http://fomalhaut.rpg4.me/category/english/) to read the strange tale of Tegel Manor - how the Necromancer edition was conceived, what considerations were involved in the design effort, and what became of the project. It is a long read.

I cannot guarantee everything in the design doc makes sense, especially if you don't have a copy of the original Judges Guild version - but I hope you will at least find it interesting and entertaining. :cool:

The post includes some of the handouts I created for my players (although not all of these were found), as well as an unofficial but nevertheless incredibly cool cover concept by none else but Windjammer. Check it out!

Quote from: Melan;414881All right, people: head over to my site (http://fomalhaut.rpg4.me/category/english/) to read the strange tale of Tegel Manor - how the Necromancer edition was conceived, what considerations were involved in the design effort, and what became of the project.

Thanks, this should be very interesting!

Very, very cool! Thanks, Melan. :)

Good lord what have I begotten?

(Also I've played plenty of 3e so please don't tell me I don't know what I'm talking about when I say the fucking rules support salad-bar character builds and the complete pushing away of the archetype.)

Quote from: Melan;414881I cannot guarantee everything in the design doc makes sense, especially if you don't have a copy of the original Judges Guild version - but I hope you will at least find it interesting and entertaining. :cool:

Everything made sense to be. Of course, I have the original version Tegel Manor handy.  Thanks much for posting this. It's a shame your work never saw print.

(http://www.batmancomic.info/gen/20101106174222_4cd5f5ee328c9.jpg)

:D

Quote from: Benoist;414934(http://www.batmancomic.info/gen/20101106174222_4cd5f5ee328c9.jpg)

:D

You've been waiting two days to spring that, haven't you.

:o How did you know?

Quote from: thedungeondelver;414935You've been waiting two days to spring that, haven't you.

(http://batmancomic.info/gen/20101106174720_4cd5f7185ceb7.jpg)

Quote from: thedungeondelver;414928Good lord what have I begotten?

(Also I've played plenty of 3e so please don't tell me I don't know what I'm talking about when I say the fucking rules support salad-bar character builds and the complete pushing away of the archetype.)

(http://images2.memegenerator.net/Inception/ImageMacro/3517212/Ill-just-take-two-levels-of-monk-from-Oriental-Adventures-How-do-you-intend-to-do-that.jpg)

Quote from: thedungeondelver;414940How do you intend to do that?

In that last frame DiCaprio looks like he's decided to "take two levels of monk" right there in his shorts.

OH GOD. I am laughing so hard my ribs hurt, you bastards!!! :D

Quote from: Benoist;414946OH GOD. I am laughing so hard my ribs hurt, you bastards!!! :D

Careful, man, you don't want to lose your "two levels of monk" or nothin'

In all seriousness, yes 3e is more like AD&D than it is like 2nd edition AD&D. 3e is not "3rd edition Dungeons & Dragons", it is the third edition of Dungeons & Dragons. It's the sequel to this:
(http://bzorch.ca/pics/redbox.jpg)

Not the sequel to this:
(http://www.holdfast.org/phb_2ed_1s.jpg)

If they made a new AD&D, it would be 3rd edition AD&D, not 5th.

And 3e D&D has a very core rules-centric approach. Everything is written to be compatible with the basic set, the basic combat rules are all in the basic set, and people who read the basic set are expected to be able to play with people who have read all the source material without having to really scratch their heads. Meanwhile, 2nd edition AD&D is fucking Icelandic Law, where "secret rules" are all over the place, and you won't know how crossbows "really work" without reading 4 different books that are each ironically named "complete".

To the extent that AD&D was more like D&D than 2nd edition AD&D was, AD&D was also more like 3rd edition D&D than 2nd Edition AD&D was.

-Frank

Quote from: thedungeondelver;414928(Also I've played plenty of 3e

I roll to disbelieve.

My two (late) cents about Prestige Classes.

I like the idea very much, but I'm not the average "delve into the system and compare every +1 to every stat penality" gamer. To me Prestige Classes are mostly about narrative ideas and opportunities for the players.

The first time I used them was when a first-time player wanted to play an "Inquisitor" (because she was big on a novel featuring a medieval inquisitor). I checked the manuals and there it was: the Inquisitor Prestige Class. We rolled one and the character worked well in this function for the rest of the campaign.

Another player wanted to be an "Harper Agent" because she likes the organization. She built her character towards this end, and threw a party when she got the pre-requisites. We never cheched if it was balanced/overpowered/underbalanced, because no one cared.

Then there are the Prestige Classes that, simply, give you narrative ideas. One of them was "The Malconvoker". I read the description and immediatly found a key use for one of them in my campaign. I rolled out an NPC Malconvoker using eTools, but it was almost superfluous: I never used the character's stats and powers in game, he was only someone now "living under a protection program" who spilled some beans to the PCs. But it was the idea itself what I was really looking about for that part of my campaign.

I must say that maybe I'm a little bit lucky: in my group what is important is to have fun with your character. That the paladin delivers tons of damage while the "halfling economist" is the comic relief dude is the whole point, as long as the player is happy with his/her role.

Which, interestlingly enough, was the philosophy behind the original "Dragonlance" modules (which I loved): Raistlin started out as a 3rd level Magic User with a bunch of low-level spells a cool staff, while Sturm was a 6th level Fighter with a +3 two-handed sword. Total unbalance: but who cared? What mattered was *who they were in the story*. This, in a way, sums up why the advent of Prestige Classes only added flavour and variety in my games.

Quote from: Caesar Slaad;415178I roll to disbelieve.

You fail.  The target is beyond all of your combined skill bonuses and your raw stat scores.

Sorry, Charley; I played in a couple of year+ 3e campaigns, some d20 modern, a single short (6mo) 3.5 campaign and a 2 year d20 Wheel of Time campaign.

You can wish it away all you like, but I know of what I speak.

Quote from: FrankTrollman;415135In all seriousness, yes 3e is more like AD&D than it is like 2nd edition AD&D. 3e is not "3rd edition Dungeons & Dragons", it is the third edition of Dungeons & Dragons. It's the sequel to this:
(http://bzorch.ca/pics/redbox.jpg)

I thought they just dropped the 'A' to avoid a perceived brand confusion, not divorce it from the AD&D legacy. :hmm:

Quote from: Peregrin;415274I thought they just dropped the 'A' to avoid a perceived brand confusion, not divorce it from the AD&D legacy. :hmm:

Yeah, that's what I thought too when I read Frank's post, but I can't bring myself to completely disagree with his point. There's something to it, but I can't quite put my finger on it.

Quote from: Hairfoot;414649I reckon my logged Nethack hours would hold up favourably against anyone else's record, so I'm not dismissing any of that.

I don't know about that.  I've been playing Nethack extremely regularly for the last 23 years.  The beauty of the game is that I've never actually managed to beat it.

Its pretty much the only computer RPG I play.  I dabbled with diablo 2 briefly, and went back to Nethack as vastly superior.  I've played a few other roguelikes too.  Aside from that, the only other things I ever play as games on the computer are stupid puzzle games like bejeweled.

RPGPundit

Ok, now I'm going to just admit that I haven't had time to read all of this thread. I just read the first few pages and then the last five or so.   In any case, to me its pretty clear that the "connectedness" of D&D is as follows:

"old" D&D, AD&D1e, and the RC (or B/E/C/M if you prefer) are all EXTREMELY similar. They're basically the same thing.  These are what I'd call the "cluster of awesome".  Different people will have different preferences (to me, the RC is god), but they're basically all great.

2e was a very unfortunate whitewashing of AD&D1e; I personally hated it, but its also not fundamentally dissimilar to the other editions mentioned above.

3e was of course notably different from what came before, but it was still similar enough that you could still feel like you were playing a D&D game.  This became less so as 3.x went on, however, and more and more bloat and bullshit got added into the game, and there was also some kind of a shift in the "mentality" of the game, so that people were no longer running it in the same way in later years than in earlier years (in later years, "character build" became a disgusting obsession to many).

4e bears extremely little resemblance to any of these.

So to make a line-of-connection as was done earlier in the game, I would say the more correct way of portraying this would be:

D&D
AD&D1e---AD&D2e------------D&D3e-----------------------------------------------------------------------4e
RC D&D

RPGPundit

Quote from: Melan;414280I am accepting an award for young researchers today

Hey -- Congratulations!

Quote from: Melan;414881All right, people: head over to my site (http://fomalhaut.rpg4.me/category/english/) to read the strange tale of Tegel Manor - how the Necromancer edition was conceived, what considerations were involved in the design effort, and what became of the project. It is a long read.

And thanks for putting this up.  I hope to read this at some point when I have some free time (most likely over the X-mas holiday).

Quote from: RPGPundit;415432...
So to make a line-of-connection as was done earlier in the game, I would say the more correct way of portraying this would be:

D&D
AD&D1e---AD&D2e------------D&D3e-----------------------------------------------------------------------4e
RC D&D

Yeah, that looks about right to me.

The important thing to note though is that it's not a line. 3e D&D did not make the same changes to D&D as 2nd Edition AD&D did, it went in an entirely different direction. There were things that were wrong with that direction, but there were also things very right with that direction. And the really important thing is that it wasn't the same direction as 2nd edition AD&D.

The point is not that 3rd edition AD&D is more similar to AD&D than 2nd edition AD&D is to AD&D - the point is that 3e is more similar to AD&D than 3e is 2nd edition AD&D. Which is true, because it diverged from D&D in a different direction.

Interestingly, I think 4e actually is the spiritual successor to 2nd edition AD&D. The "builds" it keeps adding look an awful lot like "Kits".

-Frank

Quote from: Akrasia;415436Hey -- Congratulations!

Thank you! This is the award of the Regional Academic Committee; I also submitted a bid for the annual Academy Youth Award, and if I could win that, that would be something. Perfect CV fodder.

I dislike 2e more than I dislike 3e - in fact I share some of Melan's nostalgia for the early days of 3.0 - for a few brief moments the Dream lived again, for some of us at least, I know not all - but I cannot agree that it is less like 1e than 3e is. The 2e mechanics are much closer to the 1e mechanics, the OD&D mechanics, the Holmes, Moldvay, and Mentzer mechanics, than the 3e mechanics are.

3e is D&D d20, a more-than-competent recreation of the older game within the Runequest/Champions/GURPS/White Wolf 'main line' framework of game design that held sway over the hobby's imagination from the early eighties to the late nineties.

Melan is right that esp. at lower levels you can more or less play 'real D&D' with it - I did. And Delver is right that there are many systemic elements - non-world-based generic prestige classes, open multiclassing, feat optimization which incentivizes minimaxing from as early in the game as possible, superfine ability differentiation and alchemical ability combination with only the roughest sorts of surface balancing mechanism, expected treasure values by level, challenge ratings, buying magic items, etc. - which ultimately make the game less and less supportive of that kind of play over time and as PCs get to higher levels as you figure out how the system really works. And Melan and Delver both know that what the other says is right as far as it goes.

Quote from: FrankTrollman;415441the point is that 3e is more similar to AD&D than 3e is 2nd edition AD&D. Which is true, because it diverged from D&D in a different direction.

This both is and isn't true. While I think 3e was a deliberate attempt to return to many aspects of 1e, it also takes a lot of influence from, for example 2e's "combat and tactics" book. The argument is stronger when you compare 1e core to 2e core, but I think 2e's 'specialist wizards' concept for example is the forerunner of 3e's approach to wizards, 2e's bards to 3e's bards, 2e's cleric births the 3e 'master of all trades' cleric (due largely to spell list expansion.)

Maybe we need sort of an edition planetarium to make an effective diagram ;)

Quote from: FrankTrollman;415441Interestingly, I think 4e actually is the spiritual successor to 2nd edition AD&D. The "builds" it keeps adding look an awful lot like "Kits".

-Frank

I disagree that 'builds' are like "kits," moreso like the "templates" of many 'buy a la carte' character creation systems. However, I do often think it's in some ways the spiritual successor of 2e, in others to a revisionist misunderstanding of 'basic' D&D.

Like any good philosopher with Forger sympathies, the shilling must under all circumstances be in the post.

Okay that was petty. But it IS getting on my nerves. Same with the stupid Gnomes.

No, I think this is another case of mistaking a par for course statement for shilling. An uncharitable reading.

Quote from: Cole;415553This both is and isn't true. While I think 3e was a deliberate attempt to return to many aspects of 1e, it also takes a lot of influence from, for example 2e's "combat and tactics" book. The argument is stronger when you compare 1e core to 2e core, but I think 2e's 'specialist wizards' concept for example is the forerunner of 3e's approach to wizards, 2e's bards to 3e's bards, 2e's cleric births the 3e 'master of all trades' cleric (due largely to spell list expansion.)

Maybe we need sort of an edition planetarium to make an effective diagram ;)

The conventional wisdom states that the Option books were a run-up to 3.x, and were designed to test the mechanics before implementing them.  Taken in that light, the changes made at the time were  unsurprising; had WotC not taken them over, I think we would have seen a 3rd edition not too different than the one we have.

QuoteI disagree that 'builds' are like "kits," moreso like the "templates" of many 'buy a la carte' character creation systems. However, I do often think it's in some ways the spiritual successor of 2e, in others to a revisionist misunderstanding of 'basic' D&D.

Well, in that 'builds' are not as strongly supported by the rules like kits were, I agree.  On the other hand, 'builds', 'kits', 'templates' and 'prestige classes' fall along a continuum of customization within a class based system, as you appear to note.

Quote from: StormBringer;415701The conventional wisdom states that the Option books were a run-up to 3.x, and were designed to test the mechanics before implementing them.  Taken in that light, the changes made at the time were  unsurprising; had WotC not taken them over, I think we would have seen a 3rd edition not too different than the one we have.

Well, in that 'builds' are not as strongly supported by the rules like kits were, I agree.  On the other hand, 'builds', 'kits', 'templates' and 'prestige classes' fall along a continuum of customization within a class based system, as you appear to note.

Both good points.

Quote from: StormBringer;415701Well, in that 'builds' are not as strongly supported by the rules like kits were, I agree.  On the other hand, 'builds', 'kits', 'templates' and 'prestige classes' fall along a continuum of customization within a class based system, as you appear to note.

Multclassing rules and the opportunity to make your own classes in OD&D (the part talking about how you could potentially play a dragon if you'd want to at the beginning of Men & Magic) are part of the same continuum, then.

Ah here. Page 8, M&M: "Other Character Types: There is no reason that players cannot be allowed to play as virtually anything, provided they begin relatively weak and work up to the top, i.e., a player wishing to be a Dragon would have to begin as let us say, a "young" one and progress upwards in the usual manner, steps being predetermined by the campaign referee."

Quote from: Benoist;415726Multclassing rules and the opportunity to make your own classes in OD&D (the part talking about how you could potentially play a dragon if you'd want to at the beginning of Men & Magic) are part of the same continuum, then.

Multiclassing, I agree. Making your own class seems like a substantially different issue since you're working out something at the same level as the other classes with your DM.

Of course, on their respective levels you can make your own kits, PrCs, etc!

Quote from: Cole;415728Multiclassing, I agree. Making your own class seems like a substantially different issue since you're working out something at the same level as the other classes with your DM.

Of course, on their respective levels you can make your own kits, PrCs, etc!

:hmm: OK. I agree. I was thinking of the "customization" aspect of Stormy's post.

Quote from: Benoist;415731:hmm: OK. I agree. I was thinking of the "customization" aspect of Stormy's post.

I would agree with Cole.  While I wouldn't throw it off the spectrum, it would definitely be on one of the far ends.  The difference between modification and creation is how I would look at it.

Point taken. I think this is a good way to look at it.

Quote from: StormBringerWell, in that 'builds' are not as strongly supported by the rules like kits were, I agree. On the other hand, 'builds', 'kits', 'templates' and 'prestige classes' fall along a continuum of customization within a class based system, as you appear to note.

I'm talking about 4e "Builds" which are extremely dialed in to the game. If you take the "Artful Dodger Build" then not only do your base class features change what stats they are based on (Strength to Charisma), but there are a bunch of power selections you can make that not only tweak off the stats you presumably took with the Artful Dodger Build, but only provide their real benefit if you have the Artful Dodger Build. That sounds an awful lot like a Rogue "Kit" in that making that selection changes your abilities and presumptive attribute assignments and changes how you interact with advancement options.

The later builds are even more kit like. If you take the Knight or Slayer "Builds" for Fighter, you use a special advancement chart that doesn't interact at most levels with standard Fighter advancement. Further, Knights and Slayers simply get different abilities at most levels that are not available to other fighters or to the other build. They aren't even assigned the same "Combat Role". If that doesn't quack like a Kit, I don't know what even could.

Yes, people independently talked about "character builds" in 3rd edition. But that wasn't a game term, that was people describing how they would go about putting together various options within the system to represent certain things (whether it was to emulate a specific fictional character to be very good at some fighting style or whatever). In 4e, "Build" is a game term and they use it to mean "a package you take at first level that transforms your character into being very nearly a whole new character class, but still leaves the same character class title on your character sheet and possibly inherits some things from the class as originally written and conceived." And that, is a fucking Kit.

-Frank

Quote from: FrankTrollman;415823I'm talking about 4e "Builds" which are extremely dialed in to the game. If you take the "Artful Dodger Build" then not only do your base class features change what stats they are based on (Strength to Charisma), but there are a bunch of power selections you can make that not only tweak off the stats you presumably took with the Artful Dodger Build, but only provide their real benefit if you have the Artful Dodger Build. That sounds an awful lot like a Rogue "Kit" in that making that selection changes your abilities and presumptive attribute assignments and changes how you interact with advancement options.

The later builds are even more kit like. If you take the Knight or Slayer "Builds" for Fighter, you use a special advancement chart that doesn't interact at most levels with standard Fighter advancement. Further, Knights and Slayers simply get different abilities at most levels that are not available to other fighters or to the other build. They aren't even assigned the same "Combat Role". If that doesn't quack like a Kit, I don't know what even could.

Have you ever seen a 2e kit?  Because it certainly doesn't sound like it.  99% of kits provided a single special ability or single alteration to existing class abilities, provided at level 1.  They made no changes to how the class advanced.  They didn't change which stats were good for a class.  They left the vast majority of the class that they modified unchanged.

For example: the assassin kit:
Requires a minimum str 12 dex 12 int 11 (such high stat requirements!)
Allows any weapon proficiency
Requires trailing and disguise non-weapon proficiencies
+5% to find traps, -5% to read languages (again, huge changes here)
And, here is the big new ability the assassin kit gives you ... the ability to identify poisons, with a base 10% chance at level 1 (ooh, ahh)
-4 reaction penalty with non-evil races.

And that's it, that's the complete set of changes the assassin kit makes to the thief class.

How the fuck does this sound like a 4e build?

Quote from: 837204563;415833Have you ever seen a 2e kit?  Because it certainly doesn't sound like it.

Yes. Yes I have. In fact, I have the Complete Book of Rangers open right now.

Quote99% of kits provided a single special ability or single alteration to existing class abilities, provided at level 1.  They made no changes to how the class advanced.

That is not how I remember it. And since I am in fact right now reading the Complete Book of Rangers to refresh my memory, my memory seems to be pretty good. The Seeker trades in your ability with weapons, changes how you buy proficiencies at chargen and later in life, and gives you a different and faster spell progression. The Stalker has their weapon list truncated and gets a bunch of bonus skills, and subsequently their follower progression is reduced, but they get better advancement in stealth and interrogation abilities, and at higher levels picks up improved detective abilities . The Warden has limited secondary skill choices but draws a salary that increases as his level does and garners a number of social bonuses and penalties that are likewise scaled to his level.

In short: you're wrong. Kits totally change how your class progresses, that's one of the major things they do.

QuoteThey didn't change which stats were good for a class.  They left the vast majority of the class that they modified unchanged.

The Seeker has his special class features based on Wisdom. The Stalker has his special class features based on Intelligence. The Warden has his special class features based on Charisma. You were saying?

-Frank

Quote from: FrankTrollman;415837That is not how I remember it. And since I am in fact right now reading the Complete Book of Rangers to refresh my memory, my memory seems to be pretty good. The Seeker trades in your ability with weapons, changes how you buy proficiencies at chargen and later in life, and gives you a different and faster spell progression.

That's one of the "later generation" kit books, from the sound of it. (Bard and Paladin are the books that stand out in my mind as part of this subset.)

The first generation books really didn't make you trade in anything. The kits there gave you a power for a supposedly equal (but often trivial) weakness, and gave you bonus proficiencies as icing on the cake.

Quote from: FrankTrollman;415837In short: you're wrong. Kits totally change how your class progresses, that's one of the major things they do.

Except for, you know, the kit I quoted to you out of a book.  And all the others around it.  But yeah, except for all those kits, kits totally change how your class progresses, and never make minor tweaks to its abilities.  Exactly like 4e builds.  You are starting to sound like someone who started playing D&D with 3e, who only understands the earlier editions in a passing and superficial way based more on what people have told you about them than actual experience.

If anything kits are the predecessor to 3e's feats.

Quote from: Caesar Slaad;415840That's one of the "later generation" kit books, from the sound of it. (Bard and Paladin are the books that stand out in my mind as part of this subset.)

The first generation books really didn't make you trade in anything. The kits there gave you a power for a supposedly equal (but often trivial) weakness, and gave you bonus proficiencies as icing on the cake.

Yes, Complete Fighter and Complete Thief were the first two and I'd say were the most conservative - maybe just since they were first, or it could be just that fighters and thieves didn't have many actual class abilities to trade in. One special ability, one special hindrance, 1-2 bonus slots and possibly a couple of thief skill modifiers was standard. Offhand the Swashbuckler thief kit has warrior THAC0 progression, but progressions largely don't vary much.

On the far end, Ranger and particularly Bard kits were very variant from the core classes.
Bard kits usually swapped over the bard's standard 3 or so bonus non weapon proficiencies for other choices and had up to about four special benefits different to the four benefits of the 'core bard', as well as having different allowable multi-class combinations, ability requirements and even allowed races. My personal favourities here were the Blade (offensive spin, ambidexterity, defensive spin, but slowed spellcasting) and the Gypsy (free wild talent psionics).

Quote from: BSJYes, Complete Fighter and Complete Thief were the first two and I'd say were the most conservative

That is true. The Amazon Warrior was incredibly simple. You got a bonus to sucker punch low level warriors from misogynist cultures, and a corresponding penalty to get taken seriously by low level people from misogynist cultures. Also, you got vaguely Greek starting equipment, and I think that was pretty much it. The later ones went apeshit. The Priest's book? Holy shit, that opened with a rant about how the PHB Cleric was totally over powered and the specialty priest kit was a point-buy system to make your own class virtually from scratch. Every kind of progression was on the table, including bonus special abilities later in life and spell progressions.

Bottom line of course is that the guy with a bunch of numbers in his name is wrong. Quoting some of the early conservative kits to try to show that kits didn't have far reaching implications in your character's advancement shows that he either has very limited experience with 2nd edition AD&D, he has extremely hazing recollections about 2nd edition, or he's being deliberately disingenuous. There is no option 4, because the reality that kits existed that fundamentally altered class progressions is verifiable objective fact.

-Frank

Quote from: Caesar Slaad;415840The first generation books really didn't make you trade in anything. The kits there gave you a power for a supposedly equal (but often trivial) weakness, and gave you bonus proficiencies as icing on the cake.

I agree. The comparison between builds like the Slayer and the Knight and kits in 2e seem like a stretch to me. If anything, the Slayer and the Knight remind me straight of alternate classes like Ranger and Cavalier as sub-classes of the Fighter in ye olde Dragon.

Quote from: FrankTrollman;415823Yes, people independently talked about "character builds" in 3rd edition. But that wasn't a game term, that was people describing how they would go about putting together various options within the system to represent certain things (whether it was to emulate a specific fictional character to be very good at some fighting style or whatever). In 4e, "Build" is a game term and they use it to mean "a package you take at first level that transforms your character into being very nearly a whole new character class, but still leaves the same character class title on your character sheet and possibly inherits some things from the class as originally written and conceived." And that, is a fucking Kit.

-Frank

Sure, Frank, no one would dispute that 4e builds are quite tied to the rules.  But we are talking about 3.x in comparison to AD&D.  In 3.x, a 'build' was just a more or less agreed upon set of multi-classing options that opened a set of feat trees, as you mention.

Quote from: StormBringer;415894Sure, Frank, no one would dispute that 4e builds are quite tied to the rules.  But we are talking about 3.x in comparison to AD&D.  In 3.x, a 'build' was just a more or less agreed upon set of multi-classing options that opened a set of feat trees, as you mention.

Well, I was enjoying the tangent...

1st ed: lots of character classes
2nd ed: few classes, lots of kits
3rd ed: lots of character classes
4th ed: few classes (though more than 2nd), builds.

I'll qualify that when I mean 'lots of character classes' for 1e, I have to include all the wacky Dragon content which had classes like Sumotori (two different versions), Escrimador, Swordsman, Merchant, Archer, and so on.
In 1e, your mechanical options for customizing characters were quite limited so whenever a concept was found that an existing class didn't quite fit a new class got created (ito use Frank's term, classplosion!)

In 2e, they decided they didn't want that because (I'm guessing)
-the chassis for classes was much more standardized anyway (i.e. you inherit most of your features like hit dice, save and attack progressions from the class group anyway, so they wouldn't be creating classes with 2d10 at 1st level like the Knight of Solamnia, or that needed 6000 xp at get to 2nd level like the Barbarian)
-it was easier.
So they had kits. I do agree with Frank at least to an extent, that these are analogous to 'builds' - at least in function, though I like the roleplaying depth of 2E kits more). There's perhaps a parallel with 4e in that the first kits did little while later ones were more extreme - compare 4e PHB builds with the later Essentials builds, which can change actual 'role', don't have dailies, and so on.

Then in 3e, customization via feats came in so 'kits were thrown out, except they still needed to sell books so there was, again (like in 1e), an explosion of classes.

In 4e you have again fewer classes, I'm guessing just because writing out 50 new powers to make a functioning class would be really annoying to do. Therefore, builds to customize characters. The key difference to 2nd ed being that you can sometimes pick up two build feature in 4e e.g. wizard Dual Implement Mastery whereas having multiple kits is (I think) mostly illegal in 2e. I have to qualify that since each book has its own set of Kit rules, and they don't all say that specifically, so it might be possible to squeak through a multi-kit character with some effort.

excellent thread all!

Neat new avatar BSJ...kinda cool/creepy...:eek:

(I'm still right.)

Quote from: thedungeondelver;415989(I'm still right.)

(http://batmancomic.info/gen/20101109164219_4cd9ea6be6004.jpg)

Batman doesn't like it when he's left out of this thread for too long.

Quote from: thedungeondelver;415989(I'm still right.)

(that's not what you told me backstage)

Quote from: Cole;415991(http://batmancomic.info/gen/20101109164219_4cd9ea6be6004.jpg)

Batman doesn't like it when he's left out of this thread for too long.

Considering the artwork, I think that is the Gosh Darn Batman.  :)

Quote from: Bloody Stupid Johnson;415971Well, I was enjoying the tangent...

1st ed: lots of character classes
2nd ed: few classes, lots of kits
3rd ed: lots of character classes
4th ed: few classes (though more than 2nd), builds.

I'll qualify that when I mean 'lots of character classes' for 1e, I have to include all the wacky Dragon content which had classes like Sumotori (two different versions), Escrimador, Swordsman, Merchant, Archer, and so on.
In 1e, your mechanical options for customizing characters were quite limited so whenever a concept was found that an existing class didn't quite fit a new class got created (ito use Frank's term, classplosion!)

We are in complete agreement.  I actually prefer more classes in a class based system.  Prestige classes are kind of OK-ish, but the multiclassing in 3.x was pretty messed up from the get-go.  If they hadn't gone completely off the deep end with kits, that is a better way to tweak the character in my opinion; all the benefits of prestige classes without the penalties.

QuoteIn 2e, they decided they didn't want that because (I'm guessing)
-the chassis for classes was much more standardized anyway (i.e. you inherit most of your features like hit dice, save and attack progressions from the class group anyway, so they wouldn't be creating classes with 2d10 at 1st level like the Knight of Solamnia, or that needed 6000 xp at get to 2nd level like the Barbarian)
-it was easier.
So they had kits. I do agree with Frank at least to an extent, that these are analogous to 'builds' - at least in function, though I like the roleplaying depth of 2E kits more). There's perhaps a parallel with 4e in that the first kits did little while later ones were more extreme - compare 4e PHB builds with the later Essentials builds, which can change actual 'role', don't have dailies, and so on.

Again, 4e builds are very much like kits, no question.  My biggest problem with 2nd edition is really all the squandered potential.  All the pieces were in place to have a really great game, but the execution was piss poor and catastrophically misfired at random points.

QuoteThen in 3e, customization via feats came in so 'kits were thrown out, except they still needed to sell books so there was, again (like in 1e), an explosion of classes.

Which was made more difficult for the homebrew guys because of the unified advancement charts.  Instead of tacking on 10% or 20% per level for some features from another class, you have to make sure that the Hide In Shadows evens out with an extra second level spell per day (or whatever).

QuoteIn 4e you have again fewer classes, I'm guessing just because writing out 50 new powers to make a functioning class would be really annoying to do. Therefore, builds to customize characters. The key difference to 2nd ed being that you can sometimes pick up two build feature in 4e e.g. wizard Dual Implement Mastery whereas having multiple kits is (I think) mostly illegal in 2e. I have to qualify that since each book has its own set of Kit rules, and they don't all say that specifically, so it might be possible to squeak through a multi-kit character with some effort.

Honestly, this would have been the perfect opportunity to move to a template/class system.  Make the powers more generic (with a point cost), provide the standard classes as templates, then point-buy whatever classes you want to make.  Hell, the categorization of powers by level is practically point buy anyway, group them by 'martial' or 'arcane' or whatever and just decide how many of each a particular class can take at each level.  Classic Gith: One martial at will, one arcane encounter, and one martial daily, then reverse it next level or something.  Blam.  Swords are implements.  Done.

A planet where 3e evolved from AD&D...?
















(http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_NB2lAI4RIvw/THPQZtsQhDI/AAAAAAAABCg/gb6xHP1914s/s1600/e2a881b0c8a008e44a06a110_L.jpg)

IT'S A MADHOUSE!

(http://www.batmancomic.info/gen/20101109185156_4cda08cc2f67f.jpg)

oh the humanity...enough already,my side hurts.
:rotfl:

I'll fix your "timelines" for you :) :

(http://i646.photobucket.com/albums/uu181/owlrune/editionwormhole.jpg)

Aren't worms basically living holes? You got mouth, intestines, sphincter all basically in one single slithering hole... so ... "wormhole". Really. What the hell is that supposed to mean? ... :D

Quote from: StormBringer;416004We are in complete agreement.  I actually prefer more classes in a class based system.  Prestige classes are kind of OK-ish, but the multiclassing in 3.x was pretty messed up from the get-go.  If they hadn't gone completely off the deep end with kits, that is a better way to tweak the character in my opinion; all the benefits of prestige classes without the penalties.

Yup...I liked kits better than PrCs just since you start out as a gladiator or pirate or outlaw, instead of having to go off and do adventures to qualify to be a real pirate or whatever.

Quote from: thedungeondelver;416007A planet where 3e evolved from AD&D...?

IT'S A MADHOUSE!

Heh. Well the build  vs. lots of classes thing at least may be "parallel evolution" :)

Quote from: skofflox;415973excellent thread all!

Neat new avatar BSJ...kinda cool/creepy...:eek:

Cheers, its a neurovore (Talislanta monster).

Quote from: winkingbishop;416020I'll fix your "timelines" for you :) :

(http://i646.photobucket.com/albums/uu181/owlrune/editionwormhole.jpg)

Heh.

Quote from: Melan;415684No, I think this is another case of mistaking a par for course statement for shilling. An uncharitable reading.

That's what I thought too. Friendly conversation? Here's what I'm doing now?

But, I edited my personal information out of the post because I am sensitive to Settembrini's accusation that putting it there displays a lack of integrity.