Quote from: Ulairi;845308So, I was watching a review of D&D 5E on YouTube and the host did this thing about how he got started through AD&D and then played 2E in college, yadda yadda, and mentioned that he cannot play those games anymore. He really liked 5E (which I do, too). Then, yesterday on G+, I was reading a post and had the same thing about how AD&D was great and helped them get hooked into the hobby but he could never play it anymore. This made me realize that I hear from a lot of people (online) sort of the same thing. It makes me feel like an odd duck because I still really like AD&D. I got started on 2E but what my friends and I play is AD&D. When I go to Nexus Milwaukee or Gary Con, I play AD&D. I go to Half Priced books regularly looking for product. Why do so many people seem to dislike AD&D now?

Saying that you can't play AD&D any more is not an apology.

Are you asking why people don't like AD&D any more?

The difference in Free Kriegspiel is that the rulings ARE the rules; there is no authority vested in text, only in the referee's judgement.

Quote from: Harime Nui;851419a lot of people read the AD&D combat rules and they think you can't shove someone out of their square because there isn't a rule that says "to shove someone out of their square do XYZ" (maybe there is, I haven't read the AD&D book in a while, but you get my meaning).

This is exactly why the players should never read the AD&D combat rules. Or any combat rules, really. Every single time when I play with newbies, they ALWAYS come up with all sorts of shit "not in the rules". Every time. This tells me not showing them the combat rules and just coming up with rulings is the way to go.

Quote from: Harime Nui;851389I think a big part of what makes AD&D unappealing to the generation of gamers who came in after 3e is that the scale of play is almost totally different.  Battles are fought at a more removed, strategic scale; PCs will frequently have a bunch of redshirt hirelings to throw away and likewise the usual monster foot troops (orcs, hobgoblins etc.) come in greater numbers; combat in of itself carries no reward and players are encouraged to avoid it where possible.  The Dungeoncrawl itself really feels much more like a "campaign" where players are encouraged to take a longer view, flee or avoid individual fights and think laterally with the ultimate goal being Get To the Treasure At the Bottom.  

3e was all about the fancy new combat system, whereas AD&D was more about getting to the results and left most of the details of a fight to the imagination.  3.x is the edition where you can feel the difference between Greatsword Guy and Rapier Guy because it's built into the rules.  The game almost completely lost the grander strategy elements (with all its associated bookkeeping) and became more about tactics---using elevation, flanking, grappling or defensive fighting all became important aspects of the game.  This was great and let players feel like proper Action Heroes, but it also created a mentality of "if it isn't in the rules/if there isn't a feat for it, it doesn't exist!"  and made combat into a long slog unless everyone at the table was well read and prepared ("he'd be a great warrior if he only knew his math a little better!")  When getting into a fight with a squad of Hobgoblins eats up the entire session other aspects of the game necessarily get truncated.  Shopping, castle-building, hiring NPCs all sort of became vestigial at best in 3.x, and when newer players read the AD&D Player's Handbook or (especially) the DMG they can understandably come away with the impression players aren't allowed to do much of anything because so much is left uncovered by the rules, and what is covered is stuff like "how many people might settle your new Barony after you build a stronghold" which 3e players are trained to think of as unimportant stuff to be handwaved----your character is an Action Hero who stabs people in the face in order to get better at stabbing people in the face (or learn more spells or w/e) and their personal progression matters more than decorating their house.

now what i find interesting is that my group bent and made up a lot of rules
for stuff that wasn't in there but we felt made sense

Quote from: Harime Nui;851419Thanks, glad to be here!

I want to stick up for crunchier rules systems, but I don't basically disagree.  The ability to make a ruling that doesn't suck will always come before rules knowledge, in actual play.   That said one of the great things about a more detailed combat system like 3e has is it tells you what's possible to start with.  This might sound silly but like I said, a lot of people read the AD&D combat rules and they think you can't shove someone out of their square because there isn't a rule that says "to shove someone out of their square do XYZ" (maybe there is, I haven't read the AD&D book in a while, but you get my meaning).  It's good that 3.x has rules for jumping over an obstacle and attacking someone from above, or whatever, because it tells players (and DMs) that that's totally the kind of thing that can/will happen in this game.  So if the DM doesn't like swashbuckling antics because he's fat and doesn't know what athletic people can actually do or w/e you are much more allowed to give him sass for not letting you chandelier-swing than in a game where he's like the on-set scriptwriter.  

The other thing is the more of this stuff you put in there the more surprises there are, and surprises are cool and good.  A game with injury tables is a game where your Fighting Man can lose his hand, and then instead of dumping him you have an iron cap with a big-ass pata attached set on the stump and have him return to the Dungeon harder and stronger and that's totally a thing that happened because of the dice, not because I wanted to be an asshole or we decided together it would be a cool thing to happen to your guy.  Of course that doesn't work if you decide having one hand doesn't mesh with the image of the Fighting Man you had in your head and now the character is ruined.... which is an attitude sadly encouraged by more recent editions but that is definitely a separate issue from how much crunch you like in your blow-by-blow.

welcome im the guy who has pour spelling and punctuation
on another note im also a fan of heavier systems being introduced to the hobby through 3.5 i tend to lean that way but not always

Quote from: TristramEvans;851421Ah, to be clear, its not necessarily a matter of crunchy vs lite rules, which is more of a preference thing. There are some games that try to actively restrict the role of the GM, which is what I was referring to, but thats well played out internet drama around here.

I'm just as good playing a crunchy wargame as a freeplay game of Risus, myself.

truth in all gaming right here

Yeah.  Restricting the DM is completely counterintuitive.  He's supposed to be the referee, not the opposition.

Quote from: Harime Nui;851828Yeah.  Restricting the DM is completely counterintuitive.  He's supposed to be the referee, not the opposition.

A little of both. Just not in the way some players seem to think, and not in the way some DMs act.

The DM is supposed to run vaugly fair encounters. IE: There is usually some way to deal with the encounter, be it combat, talking, or running away. And some risk for the players. The DM plays the enemy intelligently where applicable. Kobolds set traps and ambushes. Hobgoblins use sound battle tactics. The villain may have various contingencies. etc.

Its the DMs who throw the dragon at the 1st level characters. Or an assassin sniping the PCs with poisoned arrows from out of the blue and the like, with no outs for talking the thing down or running, that you end up with players who get the impression the DM is the enemy.

The monsters are out to kill you. Maybee. The DM is not. Hopefully.

Quote from: Omega;851845The monsters are out to kill you. Maybee. The DM is not. Hopefully.

Your character. They are out to kill your character.

Quote from: Bren;851869Your character. They are out to kill your character.

You've never stepped on a mini with a sword... :eek:

Quote from: Omega;851876You've never stepped on a mini with a sword... :eek:

I had not considered that...I sit corrected.

Quote from: Omega;851876You've never stepped on a mini with a sword... :eek:

I haven't either, but I've stepped on a d4. I wish the standard d4 was an octahedron labeled 1 to 4 twice. The tetrahedron is too stable to roll, too hard to read, and it's a fucking caltrop.

Quote from: Omega;851876You've never stepped on a mini with a sword... :eek:

Its how they hobble you, slow and weaken you until you stumble and fall then like they say in the nature shows "There can be but one conclusion..." :eek:

Quote from: Xúc xắc;852003I haven't either, but I've stepped on a d4. I wish the standard d4 was an octahedron labeled 1 to 4 twice. The tetrahedron is too stable to roll, too hard to read, and it's a fucking caltrop.

this is giving me flash backs to the time one of the players in my old group stepped on a d4.
actually it was more of jumped on it not seeing the bugger and well lets just say that with no shoes on we got him some ice.

I can only wonder how seriously Prata takes his 'ADDICT' follies. Citing a "convert to percentiles"  rule that makes sense only in somebody's house-rules variant published in a magazine 9 years after the DMG? If that's not a joke, I'm not sure what it is.

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;851400OD&D.

Free Kriegspiel.

The referee's judgement is the only rule.  All else is supplementary material to help the referee.

The ogre tries to crush Aragorn?  I adjudicate it.
You try to throw beer in a guy's face?  I adjudicate it.

If I can't, I shouldn't referee.

Agreed! The notion that the purpose of the books is to be combed minutely by rules lawyers -- which seems to typify the attitude of a 3E/4E player culture that is more ultramontane than the designers of those games --is anachronistic in respect to the common understanding in the hobby in 1979, and plainly contrary to what Mr. Gygax states in the AD&D books.

Gary suggested that a player who cites the DMG should be charged a fee for "consulting sages" -- perhaps a magic  item or two -- with no guarantee that he'll succeed in browbeating the DM (who is to be "the final arbiter, rather than the interpreter of the rules").

Every RPG handbook I recall from that time stated what was taken for granted anyhow by people coming from the prior hobby-game culture. The algorithms presented are just a tool kit, and the GM is master of the tools --  not vice-versa, as the recently fashionable ethos has it.

"Free Kriegsspiel," as I understand it, was a response to the circumstance that abstractions that were not too unwieldy would yield incredible results when applied indiscriminately. A knowledgeable referee's common sense and experience could efficiently avoid those problems.

Detractors argued that it was too much to expect such competence to be readily available, especially when the subject was prospective major engagements between European powers (as opposed to colonial affairs of which there were increasingly plenty of veterans). They saw too much becoming dependent on the whims of referees, and thought it better to have experts compose more extensive sets of rules.

In any case, simulations can convincingly teach us things that are not true. The Imperial Japanese Navy for instance went to blatant lengths to rig things in favor of what the high command wished were so! This of course is not a big issue in unabashed fantasy games played solely for entertainment. Instead, the controversy surrounds preferences in the nature of play.