"So once we've encircled Sedan, MacMahon can't make an attack of opportunity against von Moltke's infantry?"

"Correct."

"And then we release the dinosaur cavalry?"

"With the six-pound Krupp guns on their backs, yes."

"Brilliant! Dinner in Paris is on me!"

Added some more gamer stuff.

Often this is insincere at best, but I assure you I mean it: LOL!

Since I brought it up I'm gonna nit pick the editions.  Nobody asked but what good's a troll that cares about that eh?  Anyhow this is about the bad, every edition has a great deal I like in it and a handful of absolute deal breakers I wouldn't wish on Jack Chick, Tom Hanks, and Pat Pulling.

OD&D - Ridiculously low level limits, elves can't ride horses, only three classes, completely undifferentiated weapons, constant references to that copy of Chainmail you're supposed to have, not to mention a copy of Avalon Hill's Wilderness Survival game.

OD&D+Supplements - Well there's some improvements and good ideas here but they also introduced the monk and a variety of other bad ideas.  Bad Gary, no cookie.

Blue Book Basic (Holmes?) - You know, this almost hits the sweet spot for me.  The weapons are undiferentiated and the book is confusing at times but I like the four classes, four races structure and at this point the non-humans aren't significantly better than humans.  

AD&D - Okay, percentile strength, racial stat limits and level limits as supposed balancing tools, the beginning of the humans are simply inferior trend, truely limited and boring fighters with subclasses that simply out class them in every way.  Psionics, bards, monks anyone?  Level titles?  Man, the level titles are a sloppy mess.

AD&D + Supplements - Well Cavaliers and Barbarians are okay ideas if poorly executed, thief acrobats are a neat even if they only exist to legitamize Gord the Rogue non-weapons proficiencies should have meshed seamlessly with theif's skills from the beginning though and as implemented become a major fault of second edition.  Also, weapon specialization is almost more broken than cavaliers at this point.

Red Book Basic (Moldvey?) - Again with the level limits and now races are classes which removes so many interesting combinations.  It's cleaner and simpler but also very sterilized.  And while it's a nice thought that you need to make tenth level in fighter to become a knight or paladin it's probably a bit steep in terms of what levels mean in the game.  And face it, clerics becoming druids makes no more sense than a Lamma becoming the next pope did.

AD&D 2e - Again with the level and stat limits.  The racial unbalance hits its peak, the fine balance first edition created between weapons is tossed out and destroyed.  If you're not playing an elf fighter/magic user/thief with a long bow and long sword you're no good at this game.  Oh there's some fun stuff like specialist mages and the removal of level titles.

3rd Edition - Plenty of good changes here married to a dreadful system of feats that horribly restrict characters in the name of giving fighters something to write down.  Then the feats go and interact with skills and race abilities and the whole idea of optimized builds is enshined by the idiot who designed this crap fest.  Also combat bogs down worse than Phoenix Command.  Look, the whole escalating hitpoints and armour making you harder to hit are abstractions intended to speed up play.  If you're heading in the direction of more complexity they should be the first thing to go.  Kevin Seimbiada (of all people) got this right by eighty two.  How dumb are you Monty?

4th Edition - Or how can we change this game into an on-line subscription product that requires miniatures to play.  No I don't think making it look like an Mmporg was the objective.  Reducing the actual useful material per book and gouging the fans at every opportunity was.  Also crossbows suck.

Wow. I am sorry I stopped paying attention around here, for awhile... this thread is rather epic.

To hop onto the discussion regarding what it means for a game to be "rules-light" or "rules-heavy," I think the problem is that we're using relativistic terminology. Light as compared to what, heavy as compared to what? Without a baseline, the terms aren't useful... and since everyone comes to the discussion with their own baseline, there is no grounds for consensus.

Which isn't to say that the terms aren't useful - they're just only useful in a limited scope. If someone says to you, "I think 4e is a rules-heavy game," your response shouldn't be, "that's because you're a goddamned idiot," it should probably be, "what's your baseline for comparison?"

In order for the terms to be universally useful and accepted, there would have to be a universally-accepted metric. We all understand what a meter is, because there is an accepted definition for that. We can have reasonable discourse on things that are shorter-than-a-meter and longer-than-a-meter, because we all agree on what a meter is.

But even if we assume such a baseline can be found and agreed upon, the terms "light" and "heavy" are still nebulous at best. Are we discussing volume of rules, or complexity? Or is it a combination of both? Game systems have a tendency to be rather involved things, and attempting to distill those systems down into a single descriptor - "light," "moderate," "heavy" - would be a Herculean task in and of itself.

I suspect that, much like alignment in D&D 1e to 3e, that a two-axis system would do wonders to clear up such confusion (again, predicated on the idea that a baseline already exists). Perhaps volume of rules as one axis, and complexity as another. So GURPS could possibly be said to be a "moderate-complexity, high-volume" game (though it could just as easily be said to be a "high-complexity, low-volume" game, depending on what the origin of the axes is).

It is also entirely possible that more axes would be required. Or, perhaps, that a coordinate-plane-like system is simply untenable as a means to describe the volume and complexity of rules in a system: there may be too many variables to be accounted for reasonably.

Quote from: David Johansen;374396Red Book Basic (Moldvey?) - Again with the level limits and now races are classes which removes so many interesting combinations.  It's cleaner and simpler but also very sterilized.  And while it's a nice thought that you need to make tenth level in fighter to become a knight or paladin it's probably a bit steep in terms of what levels mean in the game.  And face it, clerics becoming druids makes no more sense than a Lamma becoming the next pope did.

You've managed to conflate at least three different editions of the game in this paragraph.

Quote from: Sigmund;374292To you.

No, to everyone. You'll simply never get anything remotely close to a reasonable level of consensus about what the categories mean and which games fall into them.

Seanchai

Quote from: Sigmund;374293Nope, you're wrong, as I proved and pointed out.

No, you quoted bits of the thread. As I can provide page numbers for the skill system in question and you yourself admitted that the skill system exists, I'd say that makes me correct.

Seanchai

Quote from: Sigmund;374342Stormbringer wrote that the vast majority of us here on this site and in this thread are ok with the terms as we've understood and used them (which is at odds with Seanchai's fictional definition).

How many folks out of the 2,795 board members weighed in again? Is it more than 10?

Seanchai

Quote from: David Johansen;374396OD&D - Ridiculously low level limits, elves can't ride horses, only three classes, completely undifferentiated weapons, constant references to that copy of Chainmail you're supposed to have, not to mention a copy of Avalon Hill's Wilderness Survival game.

Still need to pick it up, by the way - Outdoor Survival, I mean. It's completely optional, though. It's basically the board you use as a "default" hex map to explore in the game. If you build your own campaign milieu, then you don't need it, unless of course your milieu happens to be based on Outdoor Survival's board...

Quote from: David Johansen;374396OD&D+Supplements - Well there's some improvements and good ideas here but they also introduced the monk and a variety of other bad ideas.  Bad Gary, no cookie.

The Monk is in Supplement II - Blackmoor. Bad Dave, bad!

Quote from: David Johansen;374396Blue Book Basic (Holmes?) - You know, this almost hits the sweet spot for me.  The weapons are undiferentiated and the book is confusing at times but I like the four classes, four races structure and at this point the non-humans aren't significantly better than humans.

Dude I completely see where you're coming from on this. With/after OD&D and AD&D, Holmes is actually one of my favorite iterations of the game. It's tight, simple, it just makes sense in its own particular way. Now, be sure to get Meepo's Holmes Companion to extend its rules to level 4 through 9. It's win win.

Quote from: David Johansen;374396Red Book Basic (Moldvey?)

This is Moldvay/Cook Basic D&D:



This is Mentzer Basic D&D:

Quote from: Benoist;374459Still need to pick it up, by the way - Outdoor Survival, I mean. It's completely optional, though. It's basically the board you use as a "default" hex map to explore in the game. If you build your own campaign milieu, then you don't need it, unless of course your milieu happens to be based on Outdoor Survival's board...

You still don't need it. Rob redrew and posted the map on this forum somewhere.

Quote from: Elliot Wilen;374470You still don't need it. Rob redrew and posted the map on this forum somewhere.

You're right: I don't "need" it. Besides, I got Rob's map somewhere on my hard drive.
It's not the same thing as the actual physical board of 1972, though.

Quote from: Seanchai;374455No, to everyone. You'll simply never get anything remotely close to a reasonable level of consensus about what the categories mean and which games fall into them.

Seanchai

Other than for you and DU, we already have. How does it feel to be wrong yet again?