Quote from: flyerfan1991;689006Just because there were fewer absolute players doesn't mean that it was a thing.  And believe me, D&D was a cultural touchstone.  A haven for nerds and geeks and social outcasts of all sort.  Parents and Ministers --particularly in the South and Midwest-- were certain that something sinister was going on with that game, and the Pat Pulling campaign and the Michigan State steam tunnels only confirmed it.  ("Why don't you go out and play some sports instead?" my parents once asked me, forgetting that I sat on the bench in grade school basketball for four years.

Ah I missed the bus on that becaues I was still trying to deal with Haffrung et al.'s furious insistence that D&D has been losing players throughout the run of 3e. Because obviously there's no way the player base could like things they dislike ;3

You see in their dream they are the stars, It's them. Then Mike Mearls comes out for a little one-on-one. He looks deep into their eyes, longingly, and he says
"I'm sorry baby, I'm sorry that the game you love so much left you behind. I'm done with all those min-maxers and system-wankers, and they were so wrong when they said all those mean things about you on then internet. You're a beautiful angel and this game will never leave you again."
and then they fuck I guess :?

So when I come along and state inconvient facts like Mearls being a master ruseman or 3e actually being fairly popular. It sort ruins their fantasy wedding with Mike I guess ;3

Quote from: gamerGoyf;689002Your're referencing Monte's "Ivory Tower Game design" post aren't you. Given how he literally can't write balance material unsupervised I think that was the designer equivalent of ...
and he wasn't even on the team for all of 3.5

So here's your choice:

Blue pill, focus on Monte's half-assed confession and imperfect understanding of what was going on at the time.  Remember his thesis was about not paying enough attention to input, not the overall WotC RnD paradigm.  In fact, he openly mocks the concept.  A person can be comfortable in the warm and fuzzy logical wrap of this.  It's butthurt, for certain, and he took it down shortly before hopping back on the WotC bandwagon.  So maybe he never meant it.

Red pill, dig deeper.  Look into it yourself and ask yourself what this concept does to an RPG.

Quote from: deadDMwalking;688992You can't ruin something by releasing something else.  Phantom Menace is a terrible movie, but it doesn't make Star Wars any worse due to its existence.

In fact, it does.  At a minimum it requires the viewer to isolate the different films, making enjoying the original more effort.

Quote from: deadDMwalking;6889923.x can't be ruined by the release of additional product - if the core was solid than anyone could choose to use just that.

And if it was deliberately designed NOT to be that solid?  Then what?

Quote from: deadDMwalking;688992Even when all the players have access to all the splats, the DM doesn't need to use them all when designing monsters.  Heck, he can make his own material when designing monsters.

I believe a DM's role is greater than making monsters.  I'm pretty confident that you are aware of this, so I'll just assume I misunderstood you.

Quote from: deadDMwalking;688992Personally, I think that 3.x had systemic problems (Fighters vs Wizards is exemplary of most of them), but I wouldn't count splat bloat as a problem in itself.  Player entitlement might have been an issue when combined with splat bloat, but that's a people problem, not a rules problem.

I see.  So what's this mean, then, in that context:

QuoteSpike is the competitive player. Spike plays to win. Spike enjoys winning. To accomplish this, Spike will play whatever the best deck is. Spike will copy decks off the Internet. Spike will borrow other players' decks. To Spike, the thrill of Magic is the adrenalin rush of competition. Spike enjoys the stimulation of outplaying the opponent and the glory of victory.

Spike cares more about the quantity of wins than the quality. For example, Spike plays ten games and wins nine of them. If Spike feels he should have won the tenth, he walks away unhappy.

R&D makes plenty of cards for Spike. Unlike the Timmy and Johnny cards, Spike cards are relatively easy to make. Spike plays what wins, so if R&D makes a card good enough, Spike will play it. Good examples of Spike cards are Call of the Herd, Shadowmage Infiltrator, and Fact or Fiction.

I suppose WotC was not aware of their own research when designing 3e, then?  It was an unknown, uncontrollable 'people problem', was it?

I'm happy to quit this particular soapbox.  It's a sad fucking story, and it pisses me off just to explain it.  I might have been better off not to learn it myself.

Sure am glad I have always just gamed with my friends.  Do not see how anything that any game company does could possibly harm my enjoyment of the hobby.  Now, life gets in the way a lot as responsibilities wax and free time wanes.  Never had a problem with saying, "hey guys, I feel like running X."  No idea how a game company releasing whatever books they want would harm that.

Once again they would have be secretly creating a complex web system mastery in the system while at the same time everyone involved was ruseing us by looking like buffoons when they talked about the game :?

Given the output history of 3e and especially 3.5 I'd say the answer is that they just threw a bunch of shit at the wall and didn't double check it. This is just like any other conspiracy theory, assuming that people are smart and evil is never a better bet then them being well-meaning and intelligent.

Quote from: gamerGoyf;689025Once again they would have be secretly creating a complex web system mastery in the system while at the same time everyone involved was ruseing us by looking like buffoons when they talked about the game :?

Given the output history of 3e and especially 3.5 I'd say the answer is that they just threw a bunch of shit at the wall and didn't double check it. This is just like any other conspiracy theory, assuming that people are smart and evil is never a better bet then them being well-meaning and intelligent.

Amen.
this goes back to the start of the game 3e just pushed the boat a bit further.

Wizards are simplified in play because its felt that they were too weak and 'bitty' not because the desingers wanted to reward players who realised wizards were no tougher than figthers or to trap people that took figther ...

In MtG a W2 bear with no special attacks isn't deliberately weak so as to trick foolish players its just meant to be a staple for sealed deck play etc. Jace doesn't get banned sao as to trick people who spent $500 on a play set, he gets banned because they undercosted the card due to not realising its versitility.

You're right.  What could I possibly have been thinking?

Carry on...

Quote from: gamerGoyf;688996Yeah let's not pretend the AD&D era was some kind of golden age of accessibility that system was byzantine as all hell ;3

As far as 1E goes, I think you are correct; it was, after all, intended as a genuinely "advanced" and standardised system for tournament play, with OD&D/BD&D for more freewheeling games, so I don't blame Gygax for designing it with the advanced player in mind.

As far as core 2E goes, I think TSR's strategy had moved on a bit - they were probably already side-eying the Basic line and wondering whether it was really worth the effort to continue supporting it, and I suspect they knew a significant portion of kids were skipping straight to Advanced (because let's face it, the last thing a tween or early teen is going to want to hear is "this is too complicated/grown-up for you"), so they adjusted accordingly. I find 2E's books much easier to navigate in and follow, and the rules really aren't that complex. Plus, in keeping with Zeb Cook's goal of making official the sort of house rules large numbers of tables were using anyway, AD&D 2E's system resembles a sort of blend of 1E AD&D with Basic D&D, with the Basic-inspired systems patched in over the parts of 1E which were held to be too complex for most tables to deal with.

So I'd say that whilst 1E wasn't very accessible, 2E wasn't that bad. It was the game I started on, for instance.

Quote from: Benoist;688966See this is this sort of remark that makes you sound very young dude. The 3rd ed era was successful for some time, but its success is nothing compared to the enormous cultural phenomenon that (A)D&D was in the 80s. I mean... nothing like. Really. We're talking of a scale of apples to peanuts, or Boing 777 to remote control model airplane, here. Wake up.

Joseph Goodman has stated that prior to getting into the publishing he was writing a book on the RPG business. That he identified two sales peaks, one in 1982 (fixed), and the other in 2001. Didn't mention which was higher.

On the Acaeum on their commentary on print runs they mention that in the late 80s there was 1,000,000 D&D basic set sold in a year.

In posts about Wizards 3.X sales I couldn't find exact figures but what was mentioned appeared to be in the high hundred thousands.

My conclusion is that Goodman is right that there are two sales peak. The late 80s one was higher but not by an order of magnitude (which means 10 times).

Culture wise 80s era D&D had a much bigger impact as far as the game itself. Circa 2001 the cultural descendants of D&D hold sway. So while the D&D game itself is out of the culture battle, it won the war. Only Star Wars and its cultural descendants hold a comparable grip.

Quote from: Warthur;689095As far as 1E goes, I think you are correct; it was, after all, intended as a genuinely "advanced" and standardised system for tournament play, with OD&D/BD&D for more freewheeling games, so I don't blame Gygax for designing it with the advanced player in mind.

From reading accounts and the books themselves I think the deluge of questions was a major factor in its development.

And the way most people in my neck of the woods played AD&D is that they used the stuff (classes, races, items, monsters) but ran combat like they did in with D&D and ignored most of what Gygax wrote in the combat chapters. I know I tried to figure it out and it was stupidly complex and not well explained. Not until the release of AD&D A.D.D.C.I.T on Dragonsfoot that I understood it.

Also since I learned more of the history its development I don't hold as much respect for AD&D as I do for OD&D now. I have come to believe that actual play translated into rules is the best way of designing a RPG. That AD&D is afflicted with too much made up shit that wasn't played enough. The Grappling, Pummeling, and Overbearing rules are a good example of this.

Still love the books tho especially the DMG.

Quote from: estar;689099Joseph Goodman has stated that prior to getting into the publishing he was writing a book on the RPG business. That he identified two sales peaks, one in 1989, and the other in 2001. Didn't mention which was higher.

On the Acaeum on their commentary on print runs they mention that in the late 80s there was 1,000,000 D&D basic set sold in a year.

In posts about Wizards 3.X sales I couldn't find exact figures but what was mentioned appeared to be in the high hundred thousands.

My conclusion is that Goodman is right that there are two sales peak. The late 80s one was higher but not by an order of magnitude (which means 10 times).

Culture wise 80s era D&D had a much bigger impact as far as the game itself. Circa 2001 the cultural descendants of D&D hold sway. So while the D&D game itself is out of the culture battle, it won the war. Only Star Wars and its cultural descendants hold a comparable grip.

Also don't forget to factor in population. It's easy to forget but in the US there were 50 million fewer people in 1981 than in 2001 (100 million fewer from '74 to today).

That makes a difference. It's largely why newer movies always blow older movies out of the water in terms of attendance.

You can have strictly MORE people buying something but have that be a smaller slice of the overall pie. So even if D&D sold the same in '81 and '01 the '81 number IS more significant because it's a smaller pond.

Quote from: estar;689099Joseph Goodman has stated that prior to getting into the publishing he was writing a book on the RPG business. That he identified two sales peaks, one in 1989, and the other in 2001. Didn't mention which was higher.

1982, actually.

Not 1989.

QuoteDungeons & Dragons has had two, and exactly two, peak years. The first was 1982. The second was 2001. The mid-80's were a declining period, and the 90's were a trough.

http://www.circvsmaximvs.com/forum/showthread.php?61346-(Joseph)-Goodman-Games-on-the-State-of-4E

Quote from: estar;689101And the way most people in my neck of the woods played AD&D is that they used the stuff (classes, races, items, monsters) but ran combat like they did in with D&D and ignored most of what Gygax wrote in the combat chapters. I know I tried to figure it out and it was stupidly complex and not well explained. Not until the release of AD&D A.D.D.C.I.T on Dragonsfoot that I understood it.

That's exactly what I was thinking about with the simplification of combat in 2E. If you compare 1E, 2E, and OD&D/Basic combat, 2E is far closer to the latter than it is to 1E in RAW - it's just that, like you say, back in the day lots of people just carried assumptions over from Basic/OD&D and ignored the complexities of it . 2E only ceases resembling Basic combat if work in some of the more complex options relating to weapon type, and most tables in my experience don't do that.

Quote from: estar;689101Also since I learned more of the history its development I don't hold as much respect for AD&D as I do for OD&D now. I have come to believe that actual play translated into rules is the best way of designing a RPG. That AD&D is afflicted with too much made up shit that wasn't played enough. The Grappling, Pummeling, and Overbearing rules are a good example of this.

This is precisely why I like 2E better in actual play! Say what you like about Zeb Cook, but if you read the intros he penned for it it's clear that even though Lorraine Williams had mostly shut down internal playtesting at TSR, Zeb still reached out to get people's feedback about the game through Dragon and in effect crowdsourced a lot of the ideas for the revisions, so he ended up proposing things which resembled what a lot of people were doing at their game tables anyway.

QuoteStill love the books tho especially the DMG.

True that, they're great resources, though I only ever use the PHB to get PC assassin and half-orc stats. (My only real gripe with the design philosophy of 2E are the concessions to family-friendliness, and even then I can swallow them as part of the process of making a "big tent" RPG and reflecting then-current tastes in fantasy, and it's so utterly trivial to bring back the nastier PC types and call a devil a devil that I don't consider it a major flaw.)

Quote from: estar;689101Also since I learned more of the history its development I don't hold as much respect for AD&D as I do for OD&D now. I have come to believe that actual play translated into rules is the best way of designing a RPG. That AD&D is afflicted with too much made up shit that wasn't played enough. The Grappling, Pummeling, and Overbearing rules are a good example of this.

I too believe that rules translated from actual play make for a better framework.

I have come to consider OD&D and AD&D as being part of the same paradigm. To me, OD&D is the starting point, the game's core, if you will, and the AD&D books are added to that (the compilation of supplements, articles from The Dragon, new additions) as a set of ADVANCED rules that are like a salad bar coming along with the guy who made the food and tasted it next to you, explaining what's in all these different bowls and what they're intended to achieve as far as your meal's concerned.

The ADVANCED books expand the framework of the original Dungeons & Dragons game, and I think that a familiarity with the original game is actually best to make the most out of them. Note the ADVANCED books don't rehash the material of The Underworld & Wilderness Adventures, unless the ADVANCED material updates, expands, and/or contradicts the original.(*)

So for me, OD&D and AD&D are the same game. Whether you use the original game with or without supplements and, by extension, with or without the ADVANCED framework, will affect the feel of the game tremendously.

PS: When WotC makes an artificial separation in the evolution of the game between what it calls "0e, 1e, 2e, 3e and 4e" it has got its understanding of the game completely backwards and wrong, to me. That's a telling card, as far as I'm concerned.

PPS: (*) This is actually the reason I can't really consider Swords & Wizardry White Box to be the exact same game as OD&D. To me, the particular expression of U&WA is integral to the "lightning in a bottle" I see in the original game. The fact the detail of its contents were largely excised when the retro-clone was built (for copyright reasons, I asked Matt Finch about it) makes it a game that replicates some of the rules of the original game with a particular, personal take which to me, isn't the original game itself. I think it is enough for most people, and you certainly could project the OD&D game onto S&W rules and in effect have the same actual game play, not to mention, you can publish for S&W and have close to 100% compatibility of your supplement with the OD&D rules (which is actually the whole point of the clone in the first place), so don't read too much into it. But my personal perspective is that S&W and OD&D are distinct in their particulars and appeal. Of the three S&W versions (S&W Core, S&W White Box and S&W Complete), the one that might come the closest to what I have in mind when I think of the O/AD&D paradigm I describe here is S&W Complete Rules published by Frog God Games, and perhaps paradoxically so, because of the greater freedom of interpretation the authors injected when building the game material (see the ranger, for instance, which isn't the ranger we're accustomed to, and an awesome take in its own right, I might add). I'm actually very impressed by the results.

Quote from: Benoist;689143I too believe that rules translated from actual play make for a better framework.

I have just come to consider OD&D and AD&D as being part of the same paradigm.

My view is that everything from OD&D + Greyhawk to 2E before Skill & Powers are variations of what I call classic D&D. The differences are matter of inches.

Quote from: Benoist;689143To me, OD&D is the starting point, the game's core, if you will, and the AD&D books are added to that (the compilation of supplements, articles from The Dragon, new additions) as a set of ADVANCED rules that are like a salad bar coming along with the guy who made the food and tasted it next to you, explaining what's in all these different bowls and what they're intended to achieve as far as your meal's concerned.

Most of AD&D is like that but there is a lot of "Oh hell lets add this because it cool, or I manage to get Gary's ear on a good day." I point to the Grappling, Pummeling, and Overbearing rules as Exhibit A along with certain sections like the whole deal with segments and combat.

In addition there is too much "Oh my god we got all these letters and questions to stop" going on.  I currently view 80% of AD&D as the greatest D&D ever and the remaining 20% as poison pills that setup the major problems for D&D in later years.

Quote from: Benoist;689143So for me, OD&D and AD&D are the same game. Whether you use the original game with or without supplements and, by extension, with or without the ADVANCED framework, will affect the feel of the game tremendously.

Having played three volume only OD&D I don't agree that it is the same game as the editions between OD&D + Greyhawk and 2E without skills and Powers. The power curve is a lot flatter, the differences between character are less dramatic.  Three booklet only OD&D campaigns plays out differently than the later edition. Just like 3.X campaign plays out differently than a AD&D 1E/2E campaign.

Again I am talking something like feet here. Obviously OD&D is not miles apart from OD&D + Greyhawk.

Quote from: Benoist;689143PS: When WotC makes an artificial separation in the evolution of the game between what it calls "0e, 1e, 2e, 3e and 4e" it has got its understanding of the game completely backwards and wrong, to me. That's a telling card, as far as I'm concerned.

Perhaps in the various classic edition but there are some major differences between classic, 3.X, 4e, and now 5e. Although while 5e has its own mix of mechanics that is different than it predecessors I don't see any major compatibility between using older material with 5e and hopefully vice versa. It will be a similar situation to what exist now with Castles & Crusades.

Quote from: Benoist;689143PPS: (*) This is actually the reason I can't really consider Swords & Wizardry White Box to be the exact same game as OD&D. To me, the particular expression of U&WA is integral to the "lightning in a bottle" I see in the original game. The fact the detail of its contents were largely excised when the retro-clone was built (for copyright reasons, I asked Matt Finch about it) makes it a game that replicates some of the rules of the original game with a particular, personal take which to me, isn't the original game itself.

They play out the same in the parts where they do overlap. And where they don't the original material can be used as is. To me that is the test that the retro-clones need to pass. If the only thing I have is White Box can I use it to create material or run a campaigns that Old Geezer would recognize as usable with OD&D?

While I can't answer for him, to me it been yes. I can. I have older materal like Tegal Manor that I ran and I can't see any meaningful difference.

However in a literal sense you are right. They are not the same game because the only game that can be the same as OD&D is OD&D. Not just in terms of mechanics. But because it was so poorly presented that a revised edition would make have to make decisions on how to present the ambiguous sections.  So there can never be a true OD&D 2nd edition (in the sense of a book edition).

Like the OD&D Dispel Magic spell I mention before. Is it area effect? Single spell or item? The text can be read both ways.

Quote from: Benoist;689143The closest to what I have in mind when I think of the O/AD&D paradigm I describe here is S&W Complete Rules published by Frog God Games, and perhaps paradoxically so, because of the greater freedom of interpretation the authors injected when building the game material (see the ranger, for instance, which isn't the ranger we're accustomed to, and an awesome take in its own right, I might add). I'm actually very impressed by the results.

Personally I prefer the second printing of Core with the d6s for hit points and the version I build the Majestic Wilderlands supplement off of. That and a few other thing that were changed in later printing makes the power curve closer to that of the original book. But it has more of the options I do want for a campaign. (spells, items, etc)