Quote from: Phillip;789032"And so forth " proceeds not only from 56 pages to 360, but to infinity. That's the first part of the paradox that makes you seem confused. The implication, if you're not going to be subject to the same complaint about "needing to make up most of the rules," is heading down the road that leads through AD&D, RuneQuest and Champions to 3/4/5e D&D.

The other roads lead either to the board-game neighborhood of Panzerblitz (rules comprehensive because whatever does not fit is simply excluded), or the Forgista expressway (rules comprehensive because the game is reduced to pure mathematical abstractions).

Either way, we're talking about a different game.

I think there's a tendency to look at OD&D from the perspective of AD&D and/or Moldvay/Mentzer (or indeed, everything that came after 1975) and see it as a kind of "unfinished" product.  Like Gygax & Arneson were trying to make AD&D or Moldvay Basic and just failing.

I don't think that's an unreasonable conclusion, but I've come to a different one.  I think OD&D is something completely different.  I mean, you can take it to where AD&D went, or to where B/X went, picking and choosing resolution mechanics you like, or making them up as you go along.  But in intent I think it was much more open, with greater Arnesonian "There are no rules; only Referee" influence than anything that came after.  AD&D, B/X, even Holmes, they all in their various ways attempted to make it so that different tables would essentially be playing the same game, even if heavily houseruled.  OD&D, on the other hand, seems to me intended for every table to be playing a different game, because the Referee was the game.  The booklets themselves were just some simple structures the Referee could refer to.  The Referee could run combat entirely by adjudication if he wanted -- that would be playing as intended.  By the time we come to all the supplements, Holmes Basic, AD&D, and Moldvay Basic, such a method of playing could only be considered an unusual variant.

To put it another way, the game published by Tactical Studies Rules was one thing, while the game published by TSR Hobbies was something similar going in a completely different direction -- to where they saw the market was going.

Quote from: Iosue;789094I think there's a tendency to look at OD&D from the perspective of AD&D and/or Moldvay/Mentzer (or indeed, everything that came after 1975) and see it as a kind of "unfinished" product.  Like Gygax & Arneson were trying to make AD&D or Moldvay Basic and just failing.

I don't think that's an unreasonable conclusion, but I've come to a different one.  I think OD&D is something completely different.  I mean, you can take it to where AD&D went, or to where B/X went, picking and choosing resolution mechanics you like, or making them up as you go along.  But in intent I think it was much more open, with greater Arnesonian "There are no rules; only Referee" influence than anything that came after.  AD&D, B/X, even Holmes, they all in their various ways attempted to make it so that different tables would essentially be playing the same game, even if heavily houseruled.  OD&D, on the other hand, seems to me intended for every table to be playing a different game, because the Referee was the game.  The booklets themselves were just some simple structures the Referee could refer to.  The Referee could run combat entirely by adjudication if he wanted -- that would be playing as intended.  By the time we come to all the supplements, Holmes Basic, AD&D, and Moldvay Basic, such a method of playing could only be considered an unusual variant.

To put it another way, the game published by Tactical Studies Rules was one thing, while the game published by TSR Hobbies was something similar going in a completely different direction -- to where they saw the market was going.

It is hard to understand exactly what changed in the approach between OD&D and 1E. The content is more similar than most people realize; OD&D, including all the supplements, contained all the essential classes, spells, monsters, etc. and the basic mechanics for everything people really used in 1E were there (i.e., omitting armor vs. weapon tables and weapon speeds). So, it isn't quite right to think of OD&D as significantly simpler than 1E. But it was 'looser', perhaps because it accreted over time instead of being written all at once.

I was about 10 at the time and a 'consumer' of the products as they were, so I'm not sure what the thought process was at the time. But in retrospect I'm not really so sure Gygax was approaching it in a way that OSR purists approach it now. There is a lot of complexity in there when you really pay attention (hit location damage, the thief and monk class, etc.). And when he re-organized it and presented it as one volume it came out even more mechanically complicated and with a surprisingly rigid 'tone' (presumably because of the growing size of the hobby and importance of tournaments).

Quote from: Larsdangly;789096It is hard to understand exactly what changed in the approach between OD&D and 1E. The content is more similar than most people realize; OD&D, including all the supplements, contained all the essential classes, spells, monsters, etc. and the basic mechanics for everything people really used in 1E were there (i.e., omitting armor vs. weapon tables and weapon speeds). So, it isn't quite right to think of OD&D as significantly simpler than 1E. But it was 'looser', perhaps because it accreted over time instead of being written all at once.

I'm not talking about OD&D with all the supplements, really.  I'm talking about those original three booklets.  Everything that came after that was a result of chasing the market.  I think originally the intention was that people would create their own content; you see in some places an incredulity that people would actually pay for someone else's content.  What the original three booklets represent is essentially an idea: instead of commanding units, take control of one character, and lead him through an adventure.  The mode of play is black box: you say what your character does, the Referee handles the rest.  An overlooked aspect of OD&D is that the Referee would roll your stats, indeed they would roll everything.  The player's job was to communicate their intentions.  Resolution fell to the Referee.

The game soon evolved from that particular form.  ("Evolved" in the sense of changing to adapt to the environment, rather than any kind of sense of "improvement".)  The game came out, people wanted content to buy, they were saying, "Shut up and take my money!" and if TSR wouldn't, other companies happily would.  So the Thief class appears, even though in conception all three of the original classes were supposed to fill that function.  More spells appear, AC, originally strictly bound, is cracked wide open, to allow for more, and more powerful, monsters.  TSR got on the content train, with the supplements, The Strategic Review and later Dragon magazine, modules, and eventually AD&D finally appear.  There's no clear "OD&D vs AD&D" demarcation here.  There's the original three books, meant to be a stand alone game, but one of many games that Tactical Studies Rules intended to publish, and there's everything afterwards, when Tactical Studies Rules became TSR Hobbies, Inc., and became the Dungeons & Dragons Company.  I'm saying there was a distinct shift after the original set of three books was published, that is often overlooked when viewing OD&D, particularly through those three books, with the supplements tacked on as an afterthought.

QuoteI was about 10 at the time and a 'consumer' of the products as they were, so I'm not sure what the thought process was at the time. But in retrospect I'm not really so sure Gygax was approaching it in a way that OSR purists approach it now. There is a lot of complexity in there when you really pay attention (hit location damage, the thief and monk class, etc.). And when he re-organized it and presented it as one volume it came out even more mechanically complicated and with a surprisingly rigid 'tone' (presumably because of the growing size of the hobby and importance of tournaments).

You might find this of interest.  Particularly Kuntz's ideas of open form vs closed form.

Quote from: The Butcher;789006In any case, since you've already shown willingness to put your money where your mouth is in the recent past (love DD and Masks is my favorite FASERIP retro-clone, BTW), have you ever considered writing some OSR-friendly GD&GW modules, or even a setting?

My current project is a Known World conversion (including a conversion of the Immortals rules) for 5e.

QuoteHere I become intrigued, because 5e comes across as a fairly different game from BECMI/RC.

(1) In which way(s) do you feel 5e "feels close" to BECMI/RC? I have yet to play it but my reading impression was "3e lite" and/or C&C.

To me - and we are talking about feelings here, rather than objective measures - the main distinguishing features that the two games share are:

1) Very "chunky" character customisation. The 5e feats are more like BECMI Weapon Mastery levels than 3.x/4e feats in terms of of how big a character customisation element they are, and serve a similar function in that they tend to not just give you a bit of bonus damage or to hit (like 3.x feats and AD&D Weapon Specialisation) but distinguish between different fighting styles.

2) Spells in 5e remind me very much of those in BECMI as they don't have huge numbers of moving parts. Whereas in both AD&D and 3.x spells would have lots of fiddly variables that are modified by character level, BECMI and 5e both have spells that are pretty static and usually only have a single variable that gets modified (by character level in BECMI or spell slot level in 5e).

3) The fact that 5e really ramps back the "character build" and "optimisation" elements of the game makes it feel much more like TSR editions (both BECMI and AD&D) than WotC editions.

4) The "everything's an ability check, and having a 'skill' just gives you a bit of a bonus on some checks" way of doing skills feels very similar to the skill system used in the various BECMI Gazetteers.

5) The default setting for BECMI (The Known World / Mystara) is probably the most high-magic of any of the D&D settings, yet despite that it doesn't have the caster dominance that the other editions have. I haven't played very high level 5e yet, but it looks to be pitched at the same sort of balance. There's lots of magic around (there isn't a single class that doesn't have access to spell casting if they choose the right sub-class) but it doesn't appear to suffer overly from caster dominance at high level because of the changes to the spell slot system and the way concentration is handled.

Quote(2) What advantages do you feel 5e offers over BECMI/RC?

The biggest ones are the Advantage/Disadvantage system (even though BECMI has less round-to-round bonus tracking than most other editions, this is still a much nicer way of doing things), and the fact that there are so many more classes and races to choose from.

5e manages to be bigger than BECMI and offer more stuff, without being overly complex and shifting the emphasis to builds and optimisation. In fact I'd say that combat in 5e is actually simpler than BECMI (assuming you're using Weapon Mastery).

Darker Dungeons already adds a new class to Dark Dungeons, and shortly before 5e came out, I was in the middle of working on a new edition of Darker Dungeons which was going to include another three extra classes (the equivalents of Warforged, Warlocks and Warlords). Once I saw 5e I abandoned that new edition.

Quote from: Iosue;789094I think there's a tendency to look at OD&D from the perspective of AD&D and/or Moldvay/Mentzer (or indeed, everything that came after 1975) and see it as a kind of "unfinished" product.  Like Gygax & Arneson were trying to make AD&D or Moldvay Basic and just failing.

I don't think that's an unreasonable conclusion, but I've come to a different one.  I think OD&D is something completely different.  I mean, you can take it to where AD&D went, or to where B/X went, picking and choosing resolution mechanics you like, or making them up as you go along.  But in intent I think it was much more open, with greater Arnesonian "There are no rules; only Referee" influence than anything that came after.  AD&D, B/X, even Holmes, they all in their various ways attempted to make it so that different tables would essentially be playing the same game, even if heavily houseruled.  OD&D, on the other hand, seems to me intended for every table to be playing a different game, because the Referee was the game.  The booklets themselves were just some simple structures the Referee could refer to.  The Referee could run combat entirely by adjudication if he wanted -- that would be playing as intended.  By the time we come to all the supplements, Holmes Basic, AD&D, and Moldvay Basic, such a method of playing could only be considered an unusual variant.

To put it another way, the game published by Tactical Studies Rules was one thing, while the game published by TSR Hobbies was something similar going in a completely different direction -- to where they saw the market was going.

Gary Gygax stated as much. As with his statements on many things, there was nuance - which is anathema to rigid ideologies of whatever stripe.

The "meat and potatoes," though, was mainly a collection and revison of OD&D material already published in the Supplements and The Strategic Review/The Dragon.

So, there was a difference between the lens through which OD&Ders read the AD&D books, and that through which many (most?) newcomers read them. That includes many of the "old school," for whom the background we pre-AD&Ders took for granted is fascinating archaeology.

Once a text is "in the wild," gamer culture starts to impart its own definition of the game. I think that was one contributor to disenchantment with 3e, the initial reception of which appeared to me to have been almost as enthusiastic as that of AD&D.

For instance, if somebody gets a kick out of "building" non-player figures for 3e (or Hero System or GURPS or whatever), then more power to her. But if it turns into a drag, then it's like the proverbial guy who says, "Doctor, it hurts when I do this," and the doctor says, "So stop doing that!" But then you get a bunch of gamers who insist that it's necessary.

Likewise, whatever the writers had in mind or even explicitly wrote regarding "level-appropriate encounters" or persuasion skill factors or treasures or magic-item creation or feats or prestige classes - or anything else - often got trumped by a gamer-culture conventional wisdom.

I don't happen to think that 5E is old school but that is perfectly OK. I enjoy 5E for what it is and that doesn't diminish my love for old school games in any way.

When I want an actual old school experience, OD&D, B/X, and AD&D are still there. The idea that 5E has to be accepted as old school in order for those who enjoy old school games to enjoy it is BS and so is the idea that one must either love 5E above all other games or consider it a worthless piece of trash.

5E is simply a game like many others, to be enjoyed or not.

Some things Larsdangly might find worth a look:

Legendary Lives
Talislanta
Savage Worlds
The Pool
Risus
TWERPS
The Window
Dungeon World

John Kim's Bigass List of Games

There are literally thousands of published rules sets, catering to every dice-rolling fetish or other "school" that 4 decades of invention could contrive. A too-special snowflake for everything therein might as well pack it in.

Sooner or later, this hobby is going to confront you with its basic nature, which demands creativity.

Quote from: Exploderwizard;789181I don't happen to think that 5E is old school but that is perfectly OK. I enjoy 5E for what it is and that doesn't diminish my love for old school games in any way.

When I want an actual old school experience, OD&D, B/X, and AD&D are still there. The idea that 5E has to be accepted as old school in order for those who enjoy old school games to enjoy it is BS and so is the idea that one must either love 5E above all other games or consider it a worthless piece of trash.

5E is simply a game like many others, to be enjoyed or not.

AD&D and 3e were products I liked, but did not fall in love with. I'm happy to play those rules sets when the occasion arises, but I have no reason to abandon my OD&D books (which are for one thing easier to carry).

4e just did not hold my interest at all, and I think it was probably a bad move for the brand. But again, if I had enjoyed it enough for what it was, that would have implied nothing whatsoever as to my continued enjoyment of older games.

I don't get the contrary attitude. If I introduce a D&Der to Columbia Games' Napoleon and Rommel in the Desert, does that mean we can never play SPI's Napoleon's Last Battles or Avalon Hill's Afrika Korps?

Quote from: Exploderwizard;789181The idea that 5E has to be accepted as old school in order for those who enjoy old school games to enjoy it is BS and so is the idea that one must either love 5E above all other games or consider it a worthless piece of trash.

Happily, the only person I'm getting that vibe off of is Marleycat, who seems to think 5e is a gift from God itself.
5e isn't going to have much direct impact on my gaming unless my Wednesday group adopts it or something happens that makes me actually want to run it... like if some little third party starts pumping out really cool stuff for it that tweaks it out of its bland corporate coccoon.

Quote from: Phillip;789183Some things Larsdangly might find worth a look:

[list of games everyone knows about]

There are literally thousands of published rules sets, catering to every dice-rolling fetish or other "school" that 4 decades of invention could contrive. A too-special snowflake for everything therein might as well pack it in.

Sooner or later, this hobby is going to confront you with its basic nature, which demands creativity.

You are acting like such a pretentious little puke.

5E is to me the soccer of rpgs.  I'm aware that it exists, but I can't fathom why anyone would want to play it.  Friend?  Enemy?  It's more like the weird neighbor that keeps borrowing my tools and bringing them back broken.

Quote from: JRR;7892845E is to me the soccer of rpgs.  I'm aware that it exists, but I can't fathom why anyone would want to play it.  Friend?  Enemy?  It's more like the weird neighbor that keeps borrowing my tools and bringing them back broken.

Um, okay?

I've briefly looked through the 5e Basic rules.  Based on that, I think of basic 5e in much the same way I think of one of the modern RPG influenced "pseudo-clones."  That is, not really a clone, but a mostly compatible "inspired by" kind of rule set with some elements from recent editions or other modern RPG systems.

Seems okay for what it is, but I can't say I'm interested, just like I'm not terribly interested in most of the pseudo-clones.  I don't think of 5e in terms of "enemy" or "friend," mostly I just don't think of it (except when I read forums).

I think 5E may be most like C&C with a glossier art style. Which works fine for me; 90 % of the D&D I've been playing in the last couple of years has used C&C as the base rules.

Quote from: Larsdangly;789322I think 5E may be most like C&C with a glossier art style. Which works fine for me; 90 % of the D&D I've been playing in the last couple of years has used C&C as the base rules.

I'd been wondering about that. I don't know C&C but I've heard it described as 'streamlined 3.5'... and seen similar descriptions of 5e.
What are the main differences between them (besides the art/gloss)?