It was a glorious mess, but it was fun.  

Also, and this is just a nebulous gut feeling here, gamers in general seemed to be more willing to just roll with it back then.  As RPGs evolved and more rules got codified it feels like a large mass of GMs and players have lost their willingness to trust one another at the table.

Sure, there were always killer GMs and problem players, but I want to believe those were the exceptions, not the rules.  Unfortunately those were the ones that seemed to have spoiled the broth and now we have so much baggage at the table that people forget that everyone is there to have a good time.

Quote from: GameDaddy;1058204Especially Fudge and Fate. I really do need to put up my comparison article of D&D and Fudge/Fate sometime. To summarize Fudge stripped out all the excess and conflicting rules of D&D and focused on like three of the core D&D mechanics to build a really elegant storytelling RPG game. You wouldn't notice it until it is pointed out to you, but once you see it, you will be all like, "Wow! I'm surprised I never noticed that before?"

I would really be interested in reading that.

Quote from: rgalex;1058247Also, and this is just a nebulous gut feeling here, gamers in general seemed to be more willing to just roll with it back then.  As RPGs evolved and more rules got codified it feels like a large mass of GMs and players have lost their willingness to trust one another at the table.

They still have it. Like GURPS deciding to cater to the gearheads, D&D decided to cater to the rules lawyers. I mean, one article I read recently noted that in some edition or other it said that if you were drowned you went to 0HP, "so if he's at -7 and bleeding out, you can drown him to heal to 0HP... why didn't the rules deal with this?" the writer said indignantly. That sort of idiot is a minority and always has been.

Running open game tables this year I never had problems getting people to play AD&D1e or Classic Traveller, in fact with CT we had the problem of too many players at the start, with 9. People will mostly just roll with it all, there's just a noisy minority that game writers like catering to, I don't know why. I guess if you're paid by the word then you have an incentive to listen to splatbook collectors and rules lawyers.

Quote from: Razor 007;1058117Does D&D 5E try harder to imitate OD&D, or AD&D 2nd Edition?  (With a little seasoning from 3.5 and 4E of course)

AD&D 1st Edition

The thing for me is that I never thought of OD&D as a "mess" at the time, and it was only years later when folks told me that they didn't understand the game that I even pondered if it was well written or not. From the perspective of a middle-school teen who had been playing hex-and-chit wargames and Chainmail for a year or two before discovering OD&D, the rules seemed pretty straightforward. I guess in retrospect there were probably things that we did "wrong" but at the time we never really considered that as an option. It made sense to us and we played it the way we interpreted it. I suppose that the biggest annoyance was that rules were scattered between the core rulebooks and the supplements, but as we assumed that the supplements were optional this didn't bother us much. We just used what we liked and ignored what we didn't like.

So, I guess OD&D could count as a "mess" when compared with later games which were built by using OD&D as a model, but it never seemed to be a problem to me.

OD&D is fun.  It's not perfect by any stretch but it's always fun to run events with it and explain to players, "No, you can do anything."  I was playing strictly by the 3 rulebooks, skipping Greyhawk etc., the (first level!) party had a run in with an ogre who had 18 hit points.  He ended up falling to repeated blows from the magic-user's staff. Not a staff of striking or anything, he just beat the hell out of it because everyone else was low on HP and terrified of fighting it.  Everyone was having a great time, nobody was asking about Advantage or Feats or anything.  Good times, man, good times.  It's always nice to put a d20 and a d6 in someone's hand and say "That's all you need, right there."

I'm editing thedungeondelver a bit because he said so succinctly and sometimes this deconstruction of games and adventures misses the point.

Quote from: thedungeondelver;1058278OD&D is fun.  
 "That's all you need, right there."

(No, I am NOT saying that the OP is wrong for asking. I'm saying that taken to extremes, nothing about our favorite hobby survives deconstruction.)

Quote from: thedungeondelver;1058278OD&D is fun.  It's not perfect by any stretch but it's always fun to run events with it and explain to players, "No, you can do anything."  I was playing strictly by the 3 rulebooks, skipping Greyhawk etc., the (first level!) party had a run in with an ogre who had 18 hit points.  He ended up falling to repeated blows from the magic-user's staff. Not a staff of striking or anything, he just beat the hell out of it because everyone else was low on HP and terrified of fighting it.  Everyone was having a great time, nobody was asking about Advantage or Feats or anything.  Good times, man, good times.  It's always nice to put a d20 and a d6 in someone's hand and say "That's all you need, right there."

If strictly by the 3 LBBS, How did the MU get the staff?  For some odd reason they were not listed for sale along with other weapons or equipment.  MU's were not *allowed* to use them anyway They could only arm themselves with  daggers.  Although they could apparently carry magical staves, including the Staff of Wizardry, which was +1 to hit.  But the MU could not *technically* use it, at least as a weapon.

This, I think, was the first rule that we deliberately ignored.  Of course a MU could carry a staff., and crack a few skulls with it too.  I always thought it a strange omission.

The rulebooks were terribly organized.  The game was marvelous.  It had been heavily play-tested and everything worked pretty well. Until Greyhawk released at any rate.

Quote from: Franky;1058284If strictly by the 3 LBBS, How did the MU get the staff?  For some odd reason they were not listed for sale along with other weapons or equipment.  MU's were not *allowed* to use them anyway They could only arm themselves with  daggers.  Although they could apparently carry magical staves, including the Staff of Wizardry, which was +1 to hit.  But the MU could not *technically* use it, at least as a weapon.

This, I think, was the first rule that we deliberately ignored.  Of course a MU could carry a staff., and crack a few skulls with it too.  I always thought it a strange omission.

I always thought it strange that people expect bookish scholars to be able to pick up a quarterstaff and suddenly turn into Robin Hood, when he gave Little John a drubbing in the fight on the river-spanning log. Using a quarterstaff is a very athletic, specialized skill, and not one possessed by any wizard in myth or fiction that I'm aware of. They usually use the stick to throw fire, which is unrelated to a weapon proficiency. Or to haplessly throw it between them when threatened by someone with a real weapon. At best, they flail around a bit with the tip, like an oaf with a long club. Wizards of myth are more likely to use swords with some degree of proficiency, than staves.

Of course, it's also strange that they're proficient in the shiv. Orange is the new starry robe.

That's why their to-hit roll is so shitty.

Even a 0-level commoner can pick up a 2x4 and try to donk you with it

I'm with everyone else, from the one time I read it, a few years back, I'd say Glorious Mess, and there's absolutely nothing wrong with that.

Quote from: jeff37923;1058096Is Fate a RPG?

Actually, I'd like to take a step back, to one of Fate's predecessors and sincerely ask, is Amber an RPG?

Quote from: Christopher Brady;1058303is Amber an RPG?

Yes, but being diceless, it is incomplete. A roleplaying game without dice is like porn without the moneyshot: it can still be fun, but there's something missing.

Quote from: Kyle Aaron;1058306Yes, but being diceless, it is incomplete. A roleplaying game without dice is like porn without the moneyshot: it can still be fun, but there's something missing.

I would argue no, less so than Fate because it has no randomizing component, no real 'Game' to it.  Can you still use it as a system to role play?  Yes.  But it's not a game.  In MY opinion.

Quote from: Kyle Aaron;1058292That's why their to-hit roll is so shitty.

Even a 0-level commoner can pick up a 2x4 and try to donk you with it

Try to reconcile that with the magic-user's -5 non-proficiency penalty in 1e. Many if not most magic-users are clearly trained by Robin Hood in the rather esoteric martial art of spinning and parrying and bruising knuckles. Or in Basic, where a fighter who has struggled to reach 3rd level hits an opponent in plate and shield (AC 2) on 17+. While a wet-behind-the-ears 1st level magic-user with no experience at all hits the same opponent... on 17+ as well.

I always had the impression that the MU was simply swinging the staff like a long baseball bat and hoping for the best.  Not much training needed for that.

Not only hit the same, but did the same d6 damage.