Quote from: Steven Mitchell on April 17, 2023, 08:56:35 AM

Quote from: VisionStorm on April 16, 2023, 09:47:41 PM
Late to the party, but my hot take on this is this...

1e is more popular due to nostalgia and all the grognards being from that era.

Your bias is showing again.  I skipped 2E for the exact opposite of the reason you list:  About the time when 2E came out was when I got a little irritated with the way D&D worked and went off and explored other systems in earnest.  I'd dabbled before that.  It took all that time during the 2E run to learn that there were things about D&D I really liked better.  Objectively.

I was kinda trolling anyway. But this is basically a D&D edition preference thread, which basically ties to edition wars--everyone's bias is showing. I'm just showing bias against the prevailing side on this thread.

Everyone's experiences and history with the game are also different. So not everyone's circumstances are going to align with what I said. I was just speaking in generalities based on my basic impressions of what I've anecdotally noticed.

I remember the usenet edition wars of the mid -90's, and I had predicted 1E would be more popular than 2E in the long run. 2E was only more popular at the time because it was the current edition. Some reasons why I thought that then:

First, a lot of people who were playing 2E literally told me it was because it was the current edition. Maybe not the majority, but I'd say for at least 30% that was their first reason they'd list right out of the gates. That's just those who would admit it, or those for whom it was a top reason. As soon as there was a 3E, of course they were going to jump ship.

Second, was while you could find instances of 2E actually making a rule simpler, there were too many instances where straight up bad design was justified under the banner of simplicity.

Take the ranger class, for example. It's not like Rangers getting a d8 hit points instead of d10, and 2 HD at first level instead of 1 were brain-breaking ideas. This change wasn't about making the Ranger simpler. It was about making the Ranger more uniform. It's one thing if nuance is traded off for ease of play. At least there'd be some benefit gained for what was lost. That wasn't the case here. And going by the opinions I hear from D&D players since, the ranger has never been cool again in any edition after. 2E killed the ranger.

Another example of what I would call false simplicity is the obsession with making everything as generic and formulaic as possible. Like spell lists. In 1E Magic-Users and Illusionists had their own separate spell lists. In 2E these are all swilled together, and then when you go to play an Illusionist, you have to weed out from the master list those spells in forbidden schools of magic while also noting which are within your specialty school. That was definitely not simpler than having your own dedicated list. The benefit there was having a generic formula for creating other types of specialist wizards. It was only simpler for the designer who can now claim they're offering 8 specialty wizards without having to do any real design work. It's more work for the end user.

These are just a couple of obvious examples. But this design mindset permeates the whole in ways that are a lot more subtle since for the most part the mechanical differences between the two games are subtle.

But a third reason that I didn't fully appreciate nearly 30 years ago but I do now is that the most significant difference between the two editions is the difference in their mission statements. For 1E, the aim was to provide the most fun for the most people for the longest amount of time possible. For 2E, it was to streamline and incorporate what people were already doing. And some gamers might disagree that 1E is fun just like I disagree that 2E is streamlined. But it is still the case that 1E's mission is forward-looking and visionary. 2E was all about looking back and trying to optimize what had been. And I think that makes all the difference in the world in general, but especially when the thing we're talking about is a game fueled by imagination.

Quote from: Lunamancer on April 18, 2023, 09:14:27 AM
Another example of what I would call false simplicity is the obsession with making everything as generic and formulaic as possible. Like spell lists. In 1E Magic-Users and Illusionists had their own separate spell lists. In 2E these are all swilled together, and then when you go to play an Illusionist, you have to weed out from the master list those spells in forbidden schools of magic while also noting which are within your specialty school. That was definitely not simpler than having your own dedicated list. The benefit there was having a generic formula for creating other types of specialist wizards. It was only simpler for the designer who can now claim they're offering 8 specialty wizards without having to do any real design work. It's more work for the end user.

This is one of the biggest reasons I hated 2nd edition...that and what they did to the druid. Remove all flavor in the name of uniformity. Throw in statements like "anyone can be an assassin, it's a mindset not a class" and dumping half-orcs for whatever reason, they really went high fantasy. That said, if you treat 2nd like you're supposed to just play Forgotten Realms, then okay, it works pretty well. But it's definitely not the right game for Greyhawk, Blackmoor, or any of the swords and sorcery/pulp stuff D&D started with.

But of course when it came out we all moved to 2nd. I actually like the layout of the original PHB, and I really like how they handled the Bard. But then you get the DMG which could have easily been rolled into an appendix of the PHB instead of being a separate book. The differentiation between player and DM was watered down quite a bit in 2nd, and by 3rd I think the DM lost most of the mystique present in AD&D, and that's unfortunate.