Quote from: BronzeDragon on October 24, 2022, 10:16:16 PM
D - I'm not sure what you were gonna say here (you seem to have gotten truncated) but most GURPS players I know didn't really like 4E and mostly still play 3E.

I feel like that might have been exactly what he was trying to say. I'd have to agree. I have an extensive collection of GURPS 3E stuff, but only bothered to buy the character book for 4E and then called it quits. For all the claims that character generation was "more balanced" with the changes in CP costs for stats, they really should have taken the 3E approach and not tried to include all of the genre-specific stuff in the core book. Way too much for a beginner to sort through and figure out, and puts a much larger onus on GM to write up a list of what's allowed instead of handing a core book plus an appropriate sourcebook or two to a player.

Hero System 4E was generally well received, but that's a little misleading.  The progression from Champions 1E to 3E mostly involved cleanup on the margins.  The core system didn't change much.  Meanwhile, Fantasy Hero and other spin offs all were separate books in their 1E versions, built similar to Champions but with their own rules.  Hero System 4E combines all of those games into what was really the first edition of the "Hero System". 

Hero 5E and 6E are respectively the 2nd and 3rd editions of "Hero System", and they were not nearly so well received.  They managed to hit two of the major edition pitfalls hard, being excessively bloated in the name of completeness without fixing anything, and then making an attempt fix the issues while retaining the bloat.  A slimmed down game with the 6E changes that was billed as a easier version of 4E might have done well.  Then it could have been followed up with an options book to add back in the examples and complexity without changing the core.

Quote from: blackstone on October 24, 2022, 12:21:26 PM
2nd Ed is ok. I find the rules more clear to be sure, but in doing so I think it lost some of it's charm. Namely, the art is uninspiring. Secondly, from the mid-90s on, the game easier to min-max and lent itself to power gaming.

In the PHB, maybe. But then again the same could be said about the art in the 1e PHB (and fugly as well), except for the cover—that one was better for 1e than 2e. For later supplements, though, 2e got some of the best art in D&D and TTRPGs in general, hands down. Though, a lot of the 1e color art was similarly good.

3e onward was a huge downgrade in the art department. 5e art is better, but kinda stale.

2e didn't get that bad rules wise till the Player's Options line, which also saw a huge downgrade in art, maybe even worse than 3e. But all the Complete X Handbooks were gold.

WEG Ghostbusters 1E is definitely the best version of that game. The second edition reads like a textbook.

Mutants and Masterminds 1E is the best version of that game. Its selling point was that it could do 90% of what HERO could do, at 20% of the crunch. Subsequent editions got crunchier and less streamlined.

Quote from: Lurkndog on October 25, 2022, 09:11:50 AM
WEG Ghostbusters 1E is definitely the best version of that game. The second edition reads like a textbook.

Mutants and Masterminds 1E is the best version of that game. Its selling point was that it could do 90% of what HERO could do, at 20% of the crunch. Subsequent editions got crunchier and less streamlined.

That is a big part of if you ask me.  2nd, 3rd, or 4+ Edition usually is a lot longer.  I hate bloat.  I don't want to read a 3 page dissertation on how a 5 or a 6 is better or worse than a 7.  I've got a brain, and a notebook for house rules. 

Glaring rules loopholes aside, I don't think that going from a 130 page 1E rulebook to a 270 page 2E book is a good thing. 

Maybe my love of rules lite games, especially ones that let me GM without handcuffs.  I don't like rules to constantly look up or debates on gameplay.  I like to just play. 

There are exceptions.  As I mentioned my favorite D6 Star Wars is actually Mini-6 Bare Bones.  However, I'm seeing a lot of OSR stuff, and most are based on B/X.

Quote from: VisionStorm on October 25, 2022, 08:58:11 AM

Quote from: blackstone on October 24, 2022, 12:21:26 PM
2nd Ed is ok. I find the rules more clear to be sure, but in doing so I think it lost some of it's charm. Namely, the art is uninspiring. Secondly, from the mid-90s on, the game easier to min-max and lent itself to power gaming.

In the PHB, maybe. But then again the same could be said about the art in the 1e PHB (and fugly as well), except for the cover—that one was better for 1e than 2e. For later supplements, though, 2e got some of the best art in D&D and TTRPGs in general, hands down. Though, a lot of the 1e color art was similarly good.

3e onward was a huge downgrade in the art department. 5e art is better, but kinda stale.

2e didn't get that bad rules wise till the Player's Options line, which also saw a huge downgrade in art, maybe even worse than 3e. But all the Complete X Handbooks were gold.

What you might consider "fugly" might be "very nice" to me. Art is so subjective...

I do like the Complete handbooks. The "core four" for the core classes are a must. The ones for the sub-classes (i.e. complete assassins book) I thought were a bit derivative and didn't purchase. Arms and armor guide was awesome. The campaign guides I kinda missed the boat. I only got the Crusades one. Looking back, I should have grabbed the ones about the Celts, Roman Empire, and the one on the Age of Myths (apparently is very rare)

Quote from: blackstone on October 25, 2022, 11:14:22 AM
I do like the Complete handbooks. The "core four" for the core classes are a must. The ones for the sub-classes (i.e. complete assassins book) I thought were a bit derivative and didn't purchase. Arms and armor guide was awesome. The campaign guides I kinda missed the boat. I only got the Crusades one. Looking back, I should have grabbed the ones about the Celts, Roman Empire, and the one on the Age of Myths (apparently is very rare)

Aw, man! I got the one about the Celts, but never got any of the other campaign guides and ended up regretting it later, if only for completion's sake. I ran into the Romans and Charlemagne's Paladins books a bunch of times, and might have seen the Crusades and Age of Myth books a couple of times too.

I'm not sure if I ever got the Complete Assassin's Handbook (it's possible I might have gotten it, but lost it to termites), and probably missed the Necromancer's book (only remember seeing it online years later), but I'm pretty sure I got every other class or race book, even the Complete Book of Humanoids. I loved all of them, but probably used the core class books most, and maybe Dwarves and Elves.

There was no Complete Assassin's Handbook for 2E--you might be thinking of the Complete Ninja's Handbook.

Quote from: Armchair Gamer on October 25, 2022, 06:37:59 PM
There was no Complete Assassin's Handbook for 2E--you might be thinking of the Complete Ninja's Handbook.

Got that one. The Complete Book of Villains too (think I may have confused it with this one, cuz it's blue and I kept seeing the Assassin's Handbook as blue in my head when people bring it up).

Quote from: VisionStorm on October 23, 2022, 08:28:56 AM
Basic D&D was so fucking awesome
5e is not really D&D either, but it's so streamlined and playable, I'd probably play that now over older editions, cuz I don't have to change as much to make it work. But 2e and 3e were the best.

5e is the best D&D since Basic. Hands down. The most playable, the most balanced, the most fun. And it pays such homage to the history of the game you really have to appreciate the care and craftsmanship they put into that game.

I don't have any confidence we'll ever get an edition as good as 5th again. You can really see it falling apart especially since the release of Journeys Through the Radiant Citadel. It is up to the OSR to carry the banner from here on out.

Quote from: thornad on October 26, 2022, 05:04:46 AM

Quote from: VisionStorm on October 23, 2022, 08:28:56 AM
Basic D&D was so fucking awesome
5e is not really D&D either, but it's so streamlined and playable, I'd probably play that now over older editions, cuz I don't have to change as much to make it work. But 2e and 3e were the best.

5e is the best D&D since Basic. Hands down. The most playable, the most balanced, the most fun. And it pays such homage to the history of the game you really have to appreciate the care and craftsmanship they put into that game.

I don't have any confidence we'll ever get an edition as good as 5th again. You can really see it falling apart...

Yeah, they've already done so much damage to the game with Tasha's et al forced onto D&D Beyond characters. I've started a White Box S&W game to get away from the cruft. It's a big shame as I really liked 5e, but the prevalence of e-tools combined with terrible rules accretions is wrecking the game.

Quote from: APN on October 23, 2022, 02:19:28 AM
Tunnels and Trolls 5.5 remains many peoples' 'sweet spot' for that game. I think we're currently up to 8th edition (Deluxe) but that's somewhat bloated and gets away from the easy/cheap to buy/play feel that previous editions had (like the UK Corgi 5th edition which was a cheap paperback when it came out). Not saying Deluxe is a bad game (I run a play by post with it) but it doesn't do anything better or worse than previous editions and is considerably more expensive/harder to get hold of in dead tree format and is a weighty tome containing plenty of stuff I'll never use.

6th was a bootleg, 7th (the metal tin if I recall) was quickly tweaked and forgotten as 7.5 came out and the kickstarted Deluxe edition threw everything into a kitchen sink bullet stopper and finished up as the last time Ken St Andre would have anything to do with his own game. It's tricky to see where the T&T game goes from here as the current owners (Webbed Sphere) have done nothing with it.

In terms of 'older version is the better one' it's hard to say in this case. The system has been tweaked and refined (and spell names changed) but remains more or less the same for every edition with the main changes (for me) being how magic is powered, levelling and experience (based on stats rather than an experience bar that needs to be reached) and spite rules. With that in mind I'd say the smaller/cheaper books were better than the harder to get hold of more expensive books. You could get away with a much smaller/easier to handle book and apply 2-3 house rules to play the same game to a large extent.

What's worse is that there was never an official pdf release of 5.5 as far as I know. 

I was not a big fan of either version of 7, but Deluxe is my go to version these days.

I think why it works so well compared to the two 7s is they got Liz back to ride herd on Ken. Her hand of editor really shows.

That said, I'd love softcover rulebook with all the Trollworld material removed. That would be in the range of my original 5 with the brown cover with smaller art in the center. Still thicker than the later 5 and 5.5 with the full image cover (despite the larger page count of the later, the paper on that brown cover 5 was so heavy it was about twice as thick). It would be cheaper as befits T&T.

Rolemaster. 1st and 2nd are great, but ever since the switch to RSS it's been downhill. Even the new RM Classic had to deal with split player community.

Odd fact on RM, the charts change within 2nd edition with each printing as they were tweaked. The differences are small, but every now and then I had a player whose charts for weapons disagreed with mine.

GURPS is kind of a "pick your poison". I think 3rd is an improvement over 2nd and generally like 4th, but would be happy either way. The only "must have" from 4th for me was optional in 3rd after the Compendiums, the ST/HT switch for hits and fatigue. I will say certain genres, anything superpowered, is going to work much better in 4th but even then I'd suggest using Hero if you want that kind of constructability with superpowers.

Since it hasn't come up yet, I'll go with Legend of the Five Rings.  I played a bit of 1e and generally liked it, but then my player base moved away.  So I was away from it for a long time.

I tried to get into 5e and while it looks impressive, they screwed with the lore, made things way too complicated, put tons of SJW garbage into it, and added weird proprietary dice, trying to make it some kind of feminized story game.  Can't speak to the editions in between, though I know at one point it was adapted for 3e and became the default "Asian" setting for that version of D&D.

Quote from: Persimmon on October 26, 2022, 05:12:19 PM
Since it hasn't come up yet, I'll go with Legend of the Five Rings.  I played a bit of 1e and generally liked it, but then my player base moved away.  So I was away from it for a long time.

I tried to get into 5e and while it looks impressive, they screwed with the lore, made things way too complicated, put tons of SJW garbage into it, and added weird proprietary dice, trying to make it some kind of feminized story game.  Can't speak to the editions in between, though I know at one point it was adapted for 3e and became the default "Asian" setting for that version of D&D.

4e was good when it was owned by AEG