Just so we're all clear, I was just joking with Johansen back there.

Second edition, no splats. Just The DMG, PHB, and whatever monster manuals were at hand. A few maps and some setting materials (usually Forgotten Realms, but I also used Greyhawk, Dragonlance, Dark Sun, and anything else my players showed interest in).

Quote from: Dr Rotwang!Just so we're all clear, I was just joking with Johansen back there.

Damn it and I had a great rant against hot pants all ready to go.

Quote from: Dr Rotwang!Yeah, but Unca Gary calls it "The game as it was meant to be played", so...thence my frame of mind.

That was my first choice too, but alas... trademarks and all that.  Anyhow...

Mentzer BECMI is what I started with, and I suppose it's why I love the damn game, warts and all.  I played a bit of the Moldvay version and liked it quite fine too - actually, I can't recall if we even noticed a difference as some of my friends had one version and I had the Mentzer stuff and we all played in the same glorious mess of a game.

I also voted for AD&D 1e (w/o UA) and 2e (w/o S&P).

When 3e was announced I was anxiously awaiting it, but ultimately it proved to be an enormous let down.  All the coolness and simplicity promised by the unified mechanics was completely obliterated by all the bullshit rules minutiae.    Way to codified and rules-laweryish for my tastes.  Hence my desire to vote for C&C, which is about as perfect a form of D&D as there has ever been.

3.0 got my vote, but that's for the core 3 rulebooks only.  The splatbooks ruined it for me.  I had started with 2nd edition after the player's option books were already out and I enjoyed the game sessions but was never a fan of the rule set.  I played in a good Rolemaster campaign after that, then came 3.0 which I thought was a big improvement over 2nd ed as I knew it.

I maybe should have also voted for AD&D 1e, pre-UA.  Just after 3.0 came out I played in a really good long-running 1e campaign (but never had the books).  I just recently got the AD&D DMG after hearing good things about its advice and random tables, and I'm actually warming up to it.

Wow, look at the 1E love. I thought I was being crushed between the RC and 3.x camps.

There's a lot to be said for the singular artistic vision of the guy who created the game.  It may be a mess, the art may be amaturish, there may be a million and three rules nobody ever knew about (1 in 10 attacks hit the head which is AC 10 if you don't wear a helmet did you know that?)  His writing is at best baroque and at worst a bad Thor monologue, but it doesn't matter.  Because the whole is so much greater than the sum of its parts.

Quote from: David Johansen1 in 10 attacks hit the head which is AC 10 if you don't wear a helmet did you know that?

News to me. :haw:

I voted for pre-UA 1E, splatless 2E, and all the various versions of the Basic game (which filled a niche which Wizards has basically abandoned). My favourite is RC D&D, simply because it presents the most complete and coherent of the various Basic/Expert editions in one single book, and how can you possibly beat that?

Post-UA 1E lost me; pre-splattification 2E managed to recapture some of the simplicity of the pre-UA game (and tidied up the system a heck of a lot), but the splats more than made up for it. 3.X lost me with its rampaging rules; it's not that it's too complex so much that it's too detailed, if you see what I mean - the rules aren't difficult, there's just too damn many of them.

Quote from: David Johansen(1 in 10 attacks hit the head which is AC 10 if you don't wear a helmet did you know that?)

I knew that, but what idiot didn't wear a helmet?

I voted for 1st ed., because I think I'd actually stopped playing D&D altogether before Unearthed Arcana et al appeared.