@GygaxianProse Yes, I know things were up to the DM's discretion. But if you throw out everything you don't like, at what point is it no longer D&D you are playing, but something else? I don't recall feeling limited by the rules, I played damn near every race and class combo there was to be had. My favorite was a female human fighter, but hey, that was a preference. Isn't throwing out the rules so you can play a game the way you want doing exactly "trying to redesign the most successful one of its genre"?
@GygaxianProse Yes, I know things were up to the DM's discretion. But if you throw out everything you don't like, at what point is it no longer D&D you are playing, but something else? I don't recall feeling limited by the rules, I played damn near every race and class combo there was to be had. My favorite was a female human fighter, but hey, that was a preference. Isn't throwing out the rules so you can play a game the way you want doing exactly "trying to redesign the most successful one of its genre"?
That does bring it full circle. : ) I think where my comment is coming from is an attitude, not yours, but one that suggests Gygax had no idea what he was doing, and that we players, with no experience on the field, are better game designers. But at the same time, and despite its much lauded restrictiveness, house ruling AD&D was/is common, and even encouraged (albeit inconsistently). Apologies for caffeine fueled tones.... .....the point however, was that all the THAC0 confusion is theoretical nonsense and somantics. When playing, I'd look at the DM screen, and keep the combat moving. No major arcana required.
this forum thread is part of what makes D&D so great, the diversity of play styles... Gygax said early on that the rules were guidelines...take them or toss them as you will... as a young'un i played by-the-rules 1st ed. & Basic/Expert/etc...great stuff... the group i currently play with started playing in 1997 & still meets pretty much every week... we decided early on to axe race-limits; how does a 300 year-old elf not continue gaining wizarding powers? 1700 years of stagnation sounds pretty pointless... we came up with rules for multi-classing after 1st level (2nd ed.) the Wizard & Priest spell-casting/memorization rules have been heavily house-ruled... one might say the game is no longer 'true' D&D...is this a bad thing? we've had guests come into the group, learn our system & a year later tell us we ruined D&D for him because our group spoiled him; this is the highest compliment our style/version of play can be given, RAW be damned...
it doesn't make our re-write of the rules right or wrong, it makes the game, through our revisions, ours...
this forum thread is part of what makes D&D so great, the diversity of play styles...
it doesn't make our re-write of the rules right or wrong, it makes the game, through our revisions, ours...
One thing I would add is that generally house rules in AD&D do not break things. I found that the more rules strict systems like 3e+ do "break". Just simply saying we will ignore AoO's makes a host of feats worthless for example (we hated all the AoO rules and all of the tactical nightmares).
from @Celestian One thing I would add is that generally house rules in AD&D do not break things. I found that the more rules strict systems like 3e+ do "break". Just simply saying we will ignore AoO's makes a host of feats worthless for example (we hated all the AoO rules and all of the tactical nightmares).
i agree to a point...that being said, when we first got our grubby little hands on 3.0, we played it RAW before adding many of our house rules (spell-casting/memorization especially)... & certain rules from older editions crept back in--d10 for surprise in certain situations & 2nd ed. attribute checks...
why Celestian? i'm much more a Boccob fan, myself.
If you think of enemy AC as simply a + or - modifier to your dice roll, it's much easier to understand THAC0.
That said, I still like how 3rd Edition changed the atk/AC/Skill system. I do not like, though, how they basically ripped out many of 2nd Editions role playing elements, regarding classes limits, race limits, etc., out of 3rd edition and rather just made a "Rule system".
@rexreg "it doesn't make our re-write of the rules right or wrong, it makes the game, through our revisions, ours...
yes perfectly said. They aren't rules, they are someone else's opinion of how to play. We house-rule anything that maximizes our collective fun factor. The DM should always encourage imagination because joy is contagious.
I've played BG since 1999, but I didn't know its rules had anything to do with D&D until I read some posts on this forum a couple months ago where people were talking about it. I've read around 50 books that take place in the Forgotten Realms universe and obviously knew of their connection to the Baldur's Gate games, but never knew of any connection to D&D.
I've never played D&D. If I had I probably would have noticed the connection. For that matter, I didn't even know that D&D existed or was a game until several years after I started playing BG.
@GygaxianProse Gary readily admitted that "we players, with no experience on the field, are better game designers"
"The secret we should never let the gamemasters know is that they don't need any rules." - Gary Gygax
Thanks for that, interesting quotes. Like any of us, Gary had his contradictions. I mean, he was a published game designer & chess variant enthusiast well before D&D.
My feeling is that the game, in general, has been influenced by what players want, which IMO doesn't lead to a better overall system. Because they will always want one more attack roll, one more +1 somewhere, one more ability that waters down the classes. This is not to say a class-less, skill based RPG is bad, but D&D isn't that. I've never played it, but I believe Gary's own "Lejendary Journeys" RPG is not class based.
I also want to say I'm grateful to the forum that, despite my grognardian whinging, this isn't an edition war thread, but a good discussion. With a good foundation in basic D&D, I am to a point where I really don't care which PHB a player wants to use.
I started back in the late 90's with AD&D. In fact, Baldur's Gate is what got me onto D&D. I bought it thinking it was like Diablo, and boy howdy was I wrong. After dying a million times, I finally got the hand of the rules, as someone earlier said, through trial and error. Then I heard of a group actually playing PnP D&D, and I hooked up. I've loved it ever since, though I've had to give it up now that I have a family and ministry. I still play the computer games though.
I played 2ed until 3rd and played that through 3.5. I quit just as 4ed came out. (Though that was a complete coincidence, I have no hard feelings toward 4ed).
I really loved 3ed when it first came out, the positive AC and Save system were heavenly. But otherwise the rules became a lot more complicated. It never really bothered us until later, when people began to use the rules to their advantage requiring me as DM to become a dreaded "rules Nazi" in order to keep them in line. I had to become less generous, which I hated.
2ed was a lot of fun because about 90% of its rules were optional. I remember playing in several games and each one was vastly different. One would be strict core rules, while another would throw in Player's Options, and another had a book filled with homebrew goodies. (That one was my favorite!)
Yes true, you COULD do that in 3ed too, but something about how that game was designed made it much harder to just houserule stuff without serious consequences. Something changed in the gamers too, everyone expected you to run with the Core Rules intact and with whatever supplements they wanted. You could say no, but it produced a more mutinous attitude than it ever did in 2ed.
I have no real answers for why this happened with my gaming community, but I can honestly say by around 2005 I seriously missed 2ed.
With hindsight it's easy to see why AD&D 2nd ed was replaced by D&D 3rd ed. Third edition, despite having the same depth and complexity, had maths that was much easier to understand. Everything about 3rd edition was 'higher numbers best' (lowest value 0), wheras some AD&D 2nd ed mechanics (Thac0, AC) had a 'lower numbers best' system which included negative numbers. Replacing Thac0 with bonus to attack was for me, the single best gameplay improvement.
There's nothing hard about AD&D, I quite enjoy it for the most part. A few things I don't like which is why rules are meant to be flexible and not broken. I was brought up on the 1st edition rules but me and my friends mostly played with AD&D 2nd edition rules when we use to PnP.
With hindsight it's easy to see why AD&D 2nd ed was replaced by D&D 3rd ed. Third edition, despite having the same depth and complexity, had maths that was much easier to understand. Everything about 3rd edition was 'higher numbers best' (lowest value 0), wheras some AD&D 2nd ed mechanics (Thac0, AC) had a 'lower numbers best' system which included negative numbers. Replacing Thac0 with bonus to attack was for me, the single best gameplay improvement.
I get the streamlining in that respect. My beef is more in practice, and with a 1E perspective - as a game aid, in practical terms, I think the DM screen attack matrix was the best system yet devised. It was only when the designers "lifted the hood" in 2E that we really started hearing how confusing AC and thac0 are.
I prefer the attack/armor system of 3ED. It's actually exactly the same as 2ED but just explained a lot more clearly.
What I didn't like much about 3ED was that classes went out the window and got replaced by min/maxing of choosing levels of almost completely random classes to get bonus feats.
I quite liked the idea of some of the feats however - they allowed individuals to have some flexibility. I just thing they would have been better to keep them class related.
@karnor00: i also think that DM rule in 3ED helps. Like there's no reason to allow a fighter to suddenly take a level in wizard or paladin out of the blue. The player and DM together should make the 3E class choices make sense, like the fighter being religious, their father or mother is of the other class, etc. Feats, I have no use for. I think they create more limitations and min maxing. The characters in 1E did all the same stuff and more. You don't need a special feat to power attack or shield bash.
Some people are speshul and usually too lazy to make any effort to learn unless it it spoonfed to them (which BTW doesn't count as 'learning').
I never played pure tabletop D&D just because it all seemed way too complicated to me, to be honest. I never really got the AC thing, the dice rolls and the bonuses and penalties. There just wasn't anyone to help me with it either, as it's not something that's actively done in my neighbourhood. I also had little interest in the game mechanics, I liked the lore better. I just never really got 'into it'. Seems that if you aren't 'hardcore' like most of you guys, you apparently are lazy and have a feeling of elitism to have the game being streamlined just so you understand. Keep that ego in check and don't generalize, thanks. I played both Baldur's Gate games 8 years ago and that is what brought me here. Couldn't care less about some numbers on a sheet of paper, sorry.
Some people are speshul and usually too lazy to make any effort to learn unless it it spoonfed to them (which BTW doesn't count as 'learning').
I never played pure tabletop D&D just because it all seemed way too complicated to me, to be honest. I never really got the AC thing, the dice rolls and the bonuses and penalties. There just wasn't anyone to help me with it either, as it's not something that's actively done in my neighbourhood. I also had little interest in the game mechanics, I liked the lore better. I just never really got 'into it'. Seems that if you aren't 'hardcore' like most of you guys, you apparently are lazy and have a feeling of elitism to have the game being streamlined just so you understand. Keep that ego in check and don't generalize, thanks. I played both Baldur's Gate games 8 years ago and that is what brought me here. Couldn't care less about some numbers on a sheet of paper, sorry.
The point I'm trying to make here is supportive of what you say. All the talk, theorizing, and confusion about AD&D doesn't hold up to the reality of playing it. In AD&D, rolling high is good. Except percentile rolls, for self evident reasons. AC goes down, no big deal. Thac0 is irrelevant to playing the game. You glance at a chart to see your to-hit number. I dont get the confusion around AD&D because none of this stuff was confusing playing it. It's a lot more confusing talking about it. Like driving as opposed to working on a car. Drivers may make the best mechanics, but they are few. Same with players/designers. Most just want to play, and AD&D is a comparatively smooth system.
The point I'm trying to make here is supportive of what you say. All the talk, theorizing, and confusion about AD&D doesn't hold up to the reality of playing it. In AD&D, rolling high is good. Except percentile rolls, for self evident reasons. AC goes down, no big deal. Thac0 is irrelevant to playing the game. You glance at a chart to see your to-hit number. I dont get the confusion around AD&D because none of this stuff was confusing playing it. It's a lot more confusing talking about it.
totally agreed, you have your straight numbers right on yer sheet and they only get modified "occasionally", which is easy to add or subtract. What I found more intriguing was switching to Battletech after 2nd or 2.5 edition AD&D ^^ This is what you 'sometimes' can call unfairness and depends on the DM, how several rules can be used or abused or depend on different rule-books. You have only your gunner skill (which should be = thac0) everything else is measured, rolled and depends on other stuff like movement, distance etc... Further it's taken in account if you play either a trueborn or freeborn pilot, and this is there the disagreement and hate starts Trueborn are counted as elite get 3d6 and pick their best 2 dices after the roll, have typically the best mechs anyway, higher base-stats and.... While the freeborn only have the 2d6 rule, pieces of metalcrap on the table, shitty guns .. if not necessary in contract with mercenaries. [based on older rules...with 305x+ Inner SPhere got really comparable stuff & updates]
Anyway, your stats on your sheet just don't change every 10 minutes, independent of the game And for every PC game you don't even need to bother..even if you sometimes wonder how the heck the roll is counted. For that matter you can use TobEX in at least BG2 and re-enable the complete dice-roll (+an entry in the baldur.ini), which lists up every freaking penalty and modifier. I'm not quite sure but it was unlocked in vanilla BG1 afair..just in case: "Extra Combat Info=1" [Game Option] Sadly it doesn't work in BGEE
Nah, not gonna get into any which D&D edition is best. But what I do enjoy about 4th ed. is that it's easy to pick up and play and non-magic classes are more fun(as long as you completely ignore the names of the powers and just make up what you do yourself). Stuff we don't like, we houserule. Different strokes, I guess.
We've done cyberpunk, steampunk, ninjas, arabia, Forgotten Realms-ish and greek campaigns in 4th Ed.
Here's some of my character concepts:
Knut Grimsson, captain of a airship(that we destroyed..). He has a mechanical arm as off-hand weapon and a 1h/2h hammer, depending on if he uses both hands to swing it or if he punches someone with the other hand instead. His daily power is a grab attack. He grabs the enemy with his mechanical arm and hits him with his hammer. I didn't even really need to change his power names, the system fit him perfectly. He has a headband of perception, which is essentially his monocle and hearing aid http://i124.photobucket.com/albums/p25/Alarim/knut23.png
Tokk, an invoker in tune with nature, and gone crazy because of it. He's essentially the prophet of the God of Small Things. He spends his days, for example, helping ants to cross a puddle. http://i124.photobucket.com/albums/p25/Alarim/TokkFix.png
Nah, not gonna get into any which D&D edition is best. But what I do enjoy about 4th ed. is that it's easy to pick up and play and non-magic classes are more fun(as long as you completely ignore the names of the powers and just make up what you do yourself). Stuff we don't like, we houserule.
Yeah, this has been more discussion than edition warring. Although I have to point out that what you're saying about feats is full circle back to early editions. It's interesting that you say fighters are more fun IF you ignore the feat system and make up your actions. Usually the criticism of early edition fighters is they had "nothing to do", thus needing all these extra rules for "balance". Yet creative players did all of these things w/o the need for those rules, and some would say choosing feats and powers is more limiting by implying you can't do something without them. : / Ultimately it just depends on the group which ruleset will work best.
I'm not saying ignore the feat/power system. I'm saying ignore the names. I've never made a spellcaster that casts fireballs either, regardless if I have a spell called it or not.
Comments
I think where my comment is coming from is an attitude, not yours, but one that suggests Gygax had no idea what he was doing, and that we players, with no experience on the field, are better game designers.
But at the same time, and despite its much lauded restrictiveness, house ruling AD&D was/is common, and even encouraged (albeit inconsistently).
Apologies for caffeine fueled tones....
.....the point however, was that all the THAC0 confusion is theoretical nonsense and somantics. When playing, I'd look at the DM screen, and keep the combat moving. No major arcana required.
Gygax said early on that the rules were guidelines...take them or toss them as you will...
as a young'un i played by-the-rules 1st ed. & Basic/Expert/etc...great stuff...
the group i currently play with started playing in 1997 & still meets pretty much every week...
we decided early on to axe race-limits; how does a 300 year-old elf not continue gaining wizarding powers? 1700 years of stagnation sounds pretty pointless...
we came up with rules for multi-classing after 1st level (2nd ed.)
the Wizard & Priest spell-casting/memorization rules have been heavily house-ruled...
one might say the game is no longer 'true' D&D...is this a bad thing?
we've had guests come into the group, learn our system & a year later tell us we ruined D&D for him because our group spoiled him; this is the highest compliment our style/version of play can be given, RAW be damned...
it doesn't make our re-write of the rules right or wrong, it makes the game, through our revisions, ours...
Gary readily admitted that "we players, with no experience on the field, are better game designers"
"The secret we should never let the gamemasters know is that they don't need any rules."
- Gary Gygax
... 2 hours and counting!
One thing I would add is that generally house rules in AD&D do not break things. I found that the more rules strict systems like 3e+ do "break". Just simply saying we will ignore AoO's makes a host of feats worthless for example (we hated all the AoO rules and all of the tactical nightmares).
i agree to a point...that being said, when we first got our grubby little hands on 3.0, we played it RAW before adding many of our house rules (spell-casting/memorization especially)...
& certain rules from older editions crept back in--d10 for surprise in certain situations & 2nd ed. attribute checks...
why Celestian? i'm much more a Boccob fan, myself.
That said, I still like how 3rd Edition changed the atk/AC/Skill system. I do not like, though, how they basically ripped out many of 2nd Editions role playing elements, regarding classes limits, race limits, etc., out of 3rd edition and rather just made a "Rule system".
"it doesn't make our re-write of the rules right or wrong, it makes the game, through our revisions, ours...
yes perfectly said. They aren't rules, they are someone else's opinion of how to play. We house-rule anything that maximizes our collective fun factor. The DM should always encourage imagination because joy is contagious.
I've never played D&D. If I had I probably would have noticed the connection. For that matter, I didn't even know that D&D existed or was a game until several years after I started playing BG.
My feeling is that the game, in general, has been influenced by what players want, which IMO doesn't lead to a better overall system. Because they will always want one more attack roll, one more +1 somewhere, one more ability that waters down the classes.
This is not to say a class-less, skill based RPG is bad, but D&D isn't that. I've never played it, but I believe Gary's own "Lejendary Journeys" RPG is not class based.
I also want to say I'm grateful to the forum that, despite my grognardian whinging, this isn't an edition war thread, but a good discussion. With a good foundation in basic D&D, I am to a point where I really don't care which PHB a player wants to use.
Then I heard of a group actually playing PnP D&D, and I hooked up. I've loved it ever since, though I've had to give it up now that I have a family and ministry. I still play the computer games though.
I played 2ed until 3rd and played that through 3.5. I quit just as 4ed came out. (Though that was a complete coincidence, I have no hard feelings toward 4ed).
I really loved 3ed when it first came out, the positive AC and Save system were heavenly. But otherwise the rules became a lot more complicated. It never really bothered us until later, when people began to use the rules to their advantage requiring me as DM to become a dreaded "rules Nazi" in order to keep them in line. I had to become less generous, which I hated.
2ed was a lot of fun because about 90% of its rules were optional. I remember playing in several games and each one was vastly different. One would be strict core rules, while another would throw in Player's Options, and another had a book filled with homebrew goodies. (That one was my favorite!)
Yes true, you COULD do that in 3ed too, but something about how that game was designed made it much harder to just houserule stuff without serious consequences. Something changed in the gamers too, everyone expected you to run with the Core Rules intact and with whatever supplements they wanted. You could say no, but it produced a more mutinous attitude than it ever did in 2ed.
I have no real answers for why this happened with my gaming community, but I can honestly say by around 2005 I seriously missed 2ed.
In other words i don't recognize it.
There's nothing hard about AD&D, I quite enjoy it for the most part. A few things I don't like which is why rules are meant to be flexible and not broken. I was brought up on the 1st edition rules but me and my friends mostly played with AD&D 2nd edition rules when we use to PnP.
3X is okay but I prefer 2E.
:-(
What I didn't like much about 3ED was that classes went out the window and got replaced by min/maxing of choosing levels of almost completely random classes to get bonus feats.
I quite liked the idea of some of the feats however - they allowed individuals to have some flexibility. I just thing they would have been better to keep them class related.
Feats, I have no use for. I think they create more limitations and min maxing. The characters in 1E did all the same stuff and more. You don't need a special feat to power attack or shield bash.
I dont get the confusion around AD&D because none of this stuff was confusing playing it. It's a lot more confusing talking about it.
Like driving as opposed to working on a car. Drivers may make the best mechanics, but they are few. Same with players/designers. Most just want to play, and AD&D is a comparatively smooth system.
What I found more intriguing was switching to Battletech after 2nd or 2.5 edition AD&D ^^
This is what you 'sometimes' can call unfairness and depends on the DM, how several rules can be used or abused or depend on different rule-books. You have only your gunner skill (which should be = thac0) everything else is measured, rolled and depends on other stuff like movement, distance etc...
Further it's taken in account if you play either a trueborn or freeborn pilot, and this is there the disagreement and hate starts
While the freeborn only have the 2d6 rule, pieces of metalcrap on the table, shitty guns .. if not necessary in contract with mercenaries. [based on older rules...with 305x+ Inner SPhere got really comparable stuff & updates]
Anyway, your stats on your sheet just don't change every 10 minutes, independent of the game
And for every PC game you don't even need to bother..even if you sometimes wonder how the heck the roll is counted. For that matter you can use TobEX in at least BG2 and re-enable the complete dice-roll (+an entry in the baldur.ini), which lists up every freaking penalty and modifier.
I'm not quite sure but it was unlocked in vanilla BG1 afair..just in case: "Extra Combat Info=1" [Game Option]
Sadly it doesn't work in BGEE
We've done cyberpunk, steampunk, ninjas, arabia, Forgotten Realms-ish and greek campaigns in 4th Ed.
Here's some of my character concepts:
Knut Grimsson, captain of a airship(that we destroyed..). He has a mechanical arm as off-hand weapon and a 1h/2h hammer, depending on if he uses both hands to swing it or if he punches someone with the other hand instead. His daily power is a grab attack. He grabs the enemy with his mechanical arm and hits him with his hammer. I didn't even really need to change his power names, the system fit him perfectly. He has a headband of perception, which is essentially his monocle and hearing aid
http://i124.photobucket.com/albums/p25/Alarim/knut23.png
Kat, an arabian half-genie monk type of guy. (does a lot of meditating and flying attacks)
http://i124.photobucket.com/albums/p25/Alarim/KatPurple.png
Tokk, an invoker in tune with nature, and gone crazy because of it. He's essentially the prophet of the God of Small Things. He spends his days, for example, helping ants to cross a puddle.
http://i124.photobucket.com/albums/p25/Alarim/TokkFix.png
Mr.CantRememberHisNameIt'sBeenTooLong, a cyperpunk riot police.
http://i124.photobucket.com/albums/p25/Alarim/cyperpunkdblastfixed.png
Then I have a greek archer and a Nordic/Chinese Runepriest Indiana Jones graverobber type(he has a whip), but haven't made the pictures yet.
Ultimately it just depends on the group which ruleset will work best.