I feel like OD&D and 1E had the same vision of the D&D Genre: you are down in the muck grubbing for treasure and murdering stuff and stealing shit, slowly depleting your resources until you die or run away, and often running against stuff you obviously can't handle (e.g., a random encounter of 300 orcs or something). The whole game is perfectly expressed on the cover of the original 1E PHB.

3E, 4E and 5E are also genre games, but present a different genre: you are an invincible Swiss army knife of abilities that heroically wins a fight and then reboots and then heroically wins another fight and reboots, and then heroically wins another fight and then reboots and heroically wins another fight and then reboots and o god do I have to keep doing this? please make it stop - I'd rather have the hose than this punishment...

BD&D and 2E both confuse me, though perhaps in a good way. 1E's genre is 'my' D&D, but I appreciate the fact that Basic and 2E can be pressure molded into a number of different shapes.

Quote from: Larsdangly;1028443BD&D and 2E both confuse me, though perhaps in a good way. 1E's genre is 'my' D&D, but I appreciate the fact that Basic and 2E can be pressure molded into a number of different shapes.

Judging by the cover, BECMI D&D is a game where you slice a dragon is his fucking face and steal his hoard. 2e is a game about badass heroes riding out of the dust to slice you in your fucking face.

Quote from: Larsdangly;10284433E, 4E and 5E are also genre games, but present a different genre: you are an invincible Swiss army knife of abilities that heroically wins a fight and then reboots and then heroically wins another fight and reboots, and then...

5e can be run that way (which only fully describes 4e IMO - 3e isn't really about the fight, it's about the pre-fight charop), but 5e is designed to be easily driftable to a 1e or a 2e approach, among others. I get a bit of a shock when I come across reaches of the Internet or the occasional player who treats 5e like 3e. In my game there's no encounter building, the focus is usually on exploration, resting takes a week, and PCs run away.

I think the similarity of the rulesets and the flavor are a big part of it. I find 2E works well and enjoy using it to play the 90s settings.

Quote from: S'mon;10284605e can be run that way (which only fully describes 4e IMO - 3e isn't really about the fight, it's about the pre-fight charop), but 5e is designed to be easily driftable to a 1e or a 2e approach, among others. I get a bit of a shock when I come across reaches of the Internet or the occasional player who treats 5e like 3e. In my game there's no encounter building, the focus is usually on exploration, resting takes a week, and PCs run away.

I agree 5E can play a lot like 1E (or 2E or Basic), but requires a couple of things: (1) use the alternate 'rest' rules so people aren't jacking the HP back to full every time they blink, or whatever the standard rules are. And (2) slow EXP progression so you don't have to deal with characters who all have a dozen Kewl Powrrrzzz.  And, obviously, ignore all the nonsense about spoon feeding the party their doctor-approved dose of lame walk-over encounters and 'scary' but actually fixed 'boss fights'. It definitely can be done.

I ran a couple of short 5E campaigns where I used a simple house rule to start everyone at 0 level (basically just 1d6 HP and their Background capabilities) and the whole thing transpired levels ~0-3. And rests were on the alternate 'slow' schedule. It felt pretty gritty.

That said, I think 5E raised the HP scale too high relative to typical damage. This doesn't improve, or even substantially change, the way combat unfolds, it just draws things out so it takes longer to get to the typical result, and thereby reduces the variability in outcomes (i.e., I am not confident I can predict the outcome of 1 roll of 1d20; I am very confident I can predict the average outcome of 20 rolls of 1d20). The mechanics of D&D work best when even power PC's have HP only ~5-10x the typical damage done by a foe on a successful attack. Fights are resolved quickly, each roll entails a higher level of relative risk (and so is more exciting).

When 2nd Edition AD&D introduced the Player's Option books. That is where 2nd Edition hit critical mass for me. And it stopped being fun for me.

Quote from: Darrin Kelley;1028628When 2nd Edition AD&D introduced the Player's Option books. That is where 2nd Edition hit critical mass for me. And it stopped being fun for me.

Oddly enough, I never read the Player's Options books or owned them.

For me, it's just the 1989 2E AD&D corebooks and maybe Ravenloft: Realm of Terror if I am running a Ravenloft campaign. That's all I need for my 2E AD&D experience.

Quote from: Armchair Gamer;1028439I know I'm on the hunt for a 'better 2E.'

How do you feel about Castles & Crusades?

To me, it feels like 2.5e.

I asked around the people who play the older editions around here and no one actually plays 1e among them.  It's either Rules Cyclopedia (the majority of them) or 2e.  Of the few that still play 2e, they claim it's the better AD&D.  Of course, this is not indicative of anything but the few local gamers that avoided anything new.

2e's unique selling point over 1e was the line of Complete Whatever's Handbooks, plus perhaps Skills and Powers for customizable classes.  And... both of those were pretty broken as I recall.  The Completes had no pretense of balance against each other, or against the core classes.  S&P character creation was abusable unless the GM kept a close eye and exercised veto power over some "legal" builds.  You can say, "oh, that's all fixable with house rules and GM discretion," and it is, but it's still a failure point, and one that requires extra GM investment to overcome.

Of course you can run without the Handbooks or Skills and Powers, but then you're basically running AD&D with clearer init, some specialist wizards that are pretty flavorless and mechanical, and fewer GM tools in the DMG.  

Quote from: Larsdangly;1028443I feel like OD&D and 1E had the same vision of the D&D Genre: you are down in the muck grubbing for treasure and murdering stuff and stealing shit, slowly depleting your resources until you die or run away, and often running against stuff you obviously can't handle (e.g., a random encounter of 300 orcs or something). The whole game is perfectly expressed on the cover of the original 1E PHB.
...
BD&D and 2E both confuse me, though perhaps in a good way. 1E's genre is 'my' D&D, but I appreciate the fact that Basic and 2E can be pressure molded into a number of different shapes.

In tone I get the impression that 2e was trying to make space for more epic quests and overland journeys, more Tolkien and perhaps more romantic fantasy (young adult, not bodice-ripper).  I also have the idea this wasn't top-down, that some groups and GMs were moving that direction anyway as soon as D&D expanded out of the small circle of people who started with wargames and all read Vance and Lieber, so there was a demand they were trying to meet.  Of course dungeons were still in there, but they were no longer the tentpole they used to be.

The problem for 2e in 2018 is, we've got a lot of choices for epic quests or romantic fantasy.  When people rediscovered grubbing in dungeons for murder and loot they had to go back to early D&D, but 2e's effectively competing against a number of games that aren't obviously anything like it.

Quote from: Larsdangly;1028250Perhaps an aside to the main discussion here, but I've always felt like weapon specialization of any sort, either in 1E, 2E or BECMI/RC, is just another form of grade inflation - a kind of power creep similar in effect to all the goofy schemes people use to jack up their stats or give themselves extra EXP or whatever. Basically, weapon specialization is a way for a 2nd level fighter to seem like a 5th level fighter, because you don't want to wait.

I think it's not an accident that every edition past original has found a way to power up fighters.  BECMI gets weapon mastery, AD&D gets specialization, 3e got bonus feats (except they blew it everywhere else so fighters still got shorted).  ACKS has bonus damage by level and cleaves because it started as someone's by the book B/X campaign before finally house-ruling those in.  These all do more or less the same thing, giving fighters additional damage as they level.  I don't see it as "grade inflation", I see it as fixing a problem in the beta version of the game.  Gygax didn't bring OD&D down on tablets from Mt Sinai, he tried some stuff out, and it wasn't all perfect out of the gate.

Quote from: Christopher Brady;1028649I asked around the people who play the older editions around here and no one actually plays 1e among them.  It's either Rules Cyclopedia (the majority of them) or 2e.  Of the few that still play 2e, they claim it's the better AD&D.  Of course, this is not indicative of anything but the few local gamers that avoided anything new.

I've met quite a few who also really love Rules Cyclopedia. I didnt see or hear of it till long after TSR was gone.

The 2E complete books were nothing like the 3E ones. They were mostly flavor, the mechanics were emphatically optional and mist kits gave mild bonuses and stuff. They were pretty easy to contain (i GMd both and while you certainly had min mixers in 2E, they couldn't get anywhere near the power breakage people got in 3E with it's splatbooks). Skills and powers, and the patio if books were broken though. But most people I knew refused to use them for that reason.

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;1028702The 2E complete books were nothing like the 3E ones. They were mostly flavor, the mechanics were emphatically optional and mist kits gave mild bonuses and stuff. They were pretty easy to contain (i GMd both and while you certainly had min mixers in 2E, they couldn't get anywhere near the power breakage people got in 3E with it's splatbooks). Skills and powers, and the patio if books were broken though. But most people I knew refused to use them for that reason.

I used Skill & Powers. We experimented with the split ability scores, but that got old fast. What I mostly used from it was the Psionic rules which first appeared in Will and the Way. Combat and Tactics was kind of fun when I ran games with a battle mat and miniatures. I think I still have Spells and Magic on my shelf and I kind of like how Clerics and the Druid were treated. I think the book I used most was High Level Campaigns, which had rules for statting out monsters which was very handy for making custom NPCs.

In my age group (late 30's), 2nd Edition is what a lot of people started out with, so I know a number of people for whom it's still their preferred edition of D&D. I started out with BECMI myself, and never got into AD&D2E that much, though I did use some of the less crunchy supplements in my BECMI/Rules Cyclopedia games. I got into 3.0/3.5 fairly heavily, but moved away from it after a while and never got into any later editions. Nowadays I'd use the Rules Cylopedia for any D&D game I ran, if I wanted to use a D&D rule set.

Quote from: Spinachcat;1028386If the first edition is good, that means tremendous energy, creativity, focus and sheer will went into its creation. I rarely have seen that blast of joy appear in later editions. The only counter-example that comes to mind is the early Chaosium editions where the 2nd, 3rd, 4th editions where almost just re-printings with supplemental material tossed into the new core book.

I somewhat agree, though I can think of several games where the second edition was improved over the first without losing anything significant and with a number of things improved. But I can't think of anything that I've played or run that was improved by a third edition or beyond, not counting examples like you mentioned where the editions are really just reprints with a few things added.