QuoteI suspect that you're viewing the RC through the lens of 3e D&D.

Could well be. But I find RC has more in common with 3.5 than it has with my memories of AD&D 2nd play as well as the textual artifact of my 2nd Ed. PHB.

RC is so close to what 3.5 is now, it's amazing! Somebody said RQ was an influence to 3.0. Look up you RC again, no need for RQ influences, it's all there, including skills and combat maneuvres, which are basically feats; five foot step; proto-AOO, ten second turns, even a whole entry on balancing encounters!

Pundit will hate it, but go and look up the chapter on encounters and on the Proto-CR. It's all there.
The RC is directly related to 3.x! Moreso than AD&D 2nd.

Quote from: Settembrini... The RC is directly related to 3.x!...

Why must you sully my love for the RC?

Quote from: SettembriniCould well be. But I find RC has more in common with 3.5 than it has with my memories of AD&D 2nd play as well as the textual artifact of my 2nd Ed. PHB.

RC is so close to what 3.5 is now, it's amazing! Somebody said RQ was an influence to 3.0. Look up you RC again, no need for RQ influences, it's all there, including skills and combat maneuvres, which are basically feats; five foot step; proto-AOO, ten second turns, even a whole entry on balancing encounters!

Pundit will hate it, but go and look up the chapter on encounters and on the Proto-CR. It's all there.
The RC is directly related to 3.x! Moreso than AD&D 2nd.

I can't speak for the development of D&D after OAD&D, but I would suggest that RQ wasn't the sole- or even the decisive- influence on the stuff you like so much in RC Settembrini. I say this because Aaron Allston had been writing Champions/HERO supplements for 8 years before the RC. He is widely regarded as one of the best writers ever for that game.

Look at the things you like in RC:

• skills- well RQ did actually do this first IIRC, in 1978
  
• combat manoeuvres- I'm pretty damn sure Champions pioneered this in 1981
  
• 5-foot step- early Champions had this too, although it was 1m IIRC
  
• proto-AOO- the 'held action' in Champions maybe?
  
• 10-second turn- well Champions' turn is 12, but RQ had a short combat turn too

I'll admit I'm speculating just a bit here about the influences, but what is not speculation is that everything you're saying is so good about the RC was done more than a decade earlier by RQ and Champions, 2 of the most important games to follow on from D&D (I reckon only Traveller is similarly significant in the history of rpg's at that point). It would surely've been odd if Allston hadn't carried over some key concepts from a ground-breaking game for which he had written some 10 supplements before RC was published. And obviously, Allston being such a great rpg writer, his RC would therefore have a strong influence on D&D3, which has a lot of HERO influences in it IMO.

I'm the wierdo here. I preferred 2nd ed to first, and either edition of AD&D to D&D, which is what I started with. D&D is more wargamery than AD&D by concious choice. I love wargames - I have a huge stack of them in my closet - but I prefer to keep my potatoes out of my peas and my war games out of my RPGs. Yes, the rules for RC are much clearer, and far better designed. I just don't like them. AD&D seemed to me more lifelike because of the bizarre byzantine rules - life is seldom neat. There was a lot of room for flaky, bizarre characters there, and the kits of 2nd edition made it even more roomy. Of course I houseruled the heck out of them, but so did everyone else - AD&D was a joy to house rule as there was no interdependence. D&D 3.x was a concious decision to go back to the basics, and that meant it was a continuation of D&D rather than of AD&D. D&D is a tightly designed, clean, interdependent whole while AD&D was an untidy, unsightly sprawl. I vastly prefer AD&D if I have to choose, but I don't so it doesn't matter. There are other games to play, and I spent twenty years not playing them. I have to make up for lost time.

-clash

Quote from: Elliot WilenJust a shot in the dark but I'll bet it's because AD&D 2e developed out of 1e, which was also a mess.

Pretty much.

Strictly in terms of mechanics, 2e was quite a bit better/cleaner than 1e when it first came out.  Fewer charts.  Thief abilities could be customized.  Proficiencies were standard.  A nearly playable bard.  It wasn't a big change; most of the changes were improvements, but there was no attempt to make a totally new, more playable game.

Kits and the class books added options but introduced power creep.  Later, Skill and Powers, added more options, most of them poorly done and poorly written, and hit the afterburners on power creep.

2e threw many people because of the top level meddling in content.  Demons and devils were replaced with random sounding names.  The art, while now done by professional artists, was generally less thrilling and action packed.  You could see attempts to be politically correct.

Quote from: NicephorusStrictly in terms of mechanics, 2e was quite a bit better/cleaner than 1e when it first came out.  Fewer charts.  Thief abilities could be customized.  Proficiencies were standard.  A nearly playable bard.  It wasn't a big change; most of the changes were improvements, but there was no attempt to make a totally new, more playable game.

Kits and the class books added options but introduced power creep.  Later, Skill and Powers, added more options, most of them poorly done and poorly written, and hit the afterburners on power creep.

2e threw many people because of the top level meddling in content.  Demons and devils were replaced with random sounding names.  The art, while now done by professional artists, was generally less thrilling and action packed.  You could see attempts to be politically correct.

I agree entirely. I liked the idea of kits, and the first couple of books, but the later implementations were terrible - very real power creep. Sort of like Rifts. I refused character kits from the later supplements out of hand, and looked over all earlier kits carefully before allowing them.

Skills and Powers were mostly horrible from my viewpoint. There were a few good ideas, but mostly huge jumps in both power and complexity for very little gaming return.

I also thought the top-level content meddling was stupid. I just houseruled it back to the way it was in 1e. Political correctness can bite my shiny metal ass.

-clash

Quote from: NicephorusStrictly in terms of mechanics, 2e was quite a bit better/cleaner than 1e when it first came out.  Fewer charts.  Thief abilities could be customized.  Proficiencies were standard.  A nearly playable bard.  It wasn't a big change; most of the changes were improvements, but there was no attempt to make a totally new, more playable game.

In terms of character customizability, 2nd edition was a huge leap forward for D&D.  (Admittedly other games, like the aformentioned Champions, were lightyears ahead in this regards.) And I still think the 2nd ed bard was the best official version of the class we ever got.  But Pundit is right too, in that all the lifeblood was drained from the game.  The decision to omit assassins and half-orcs and demons robbed the game of some of its most awesome adversaries.

Also, the Monstrous Manual was excellent.  I never bought into the binder system they first tried to sell, but the hardback is still one of the best monster books I've ever seen.  One critter to a page.  An illo with every monster.  Some ecology notes to go with the stats.  Simple black text on a white page.  I wish the 3.5 MM used the same format.

Also worthy of note was the rise of the "speciality priest" class, which was essentially a re-working of one of the core classes through the back door.  By the time the 2nd edition Forgotten Realms book came out the Cleric class was essentially pointless.

Quote from: Mr. AnalyticalAlso worthy of note was the rise of the "speciality priest" class, which was essentially a re-working of one of the core classes through the back door.  By the time the 2nd edition Forgotten Realms book came out the Cleric class was essentially pointless.

That did add quite a bit - wide range of spells with only moderate overlap between religions.  The domains of 3e are basically a simplification of specialty priests.

Quote from: Mr. AnalyticalAlso worthy of note was the rise of the "speciality priest" class, which was essentially a re-working of one of the core classes through the back door.  By the time the 2nd edition Forgotten Realms book came out the Cleric class was essentially pointless.

Which was a good thing in my book. Clerics were so bland as to be tasteless. Specialty Priests were so much better that no one ever wanted to be one in my group once Specialty Priests were introduced.

-clash

Quote from: flyingmiceI agree entirely. I liked the idea of kits, and the first couple of books, but the later implementations were terrible - very real power creep. Sort of like Rifts. I refused character kits from the later supplements out of hand, and looked over all earlier kits carefully before allowing them.

Skills and Powers were mostly horrible from my viewpoint. There were a few good ideas, but mostly huge jumps in both power and complexity for very little gaming return.

I disagree.

Not that skills & powers didn't have problems... because it did. The very little gaming return bit. Adding some measure of choice and flexibility is what kept my playing D&D. I was on my way out of D&D before Players' Option arrived.

I did have to do some nips and tucks and some major nerfings to get it to run right, but at least it resulted in a game that I could enjoy. The straightjacketed pre-PO 2e was to confining for me.

Yeah but frequently they made up for bland by basically allowing the priest to play a completely different class like priests of thief gods who got thief skills and gods of magic who gave their priests mage spells and warrior gods who gave their priests the right to specialise in one weapon.

As a player you'd pick speciality priest every time but from the point of view of system design and coherence it was an ugly piece of bodging to remedy a class who needed a more subtle form of re-working.

It's like that version of the bard where you started off as a fighter then advanced as a thief and then as a mage... ot was inelegant design.

Quote from: Mr. AnalyticalYeah but frequently they made up for bland by basically allowing the priest to play a completely different class like priests of thief gods who got thief skills and gods of magic who gave their priests mage spells and warrior gods who gave their priests the right to specialise in one weapon.

Was that at the normal cleric level progression? because clerics went up faster then anything aside from thieves. I never dealt with them so I ask. (and if so, I know what I'm playing if I'm ever stuck playing 2nd ed. )

Players Options and kits were quite different though.

The kits WERE power-creep in that you chose your class and then you got a whole load of free proficiencies and powers from your kit.  In some cases these were used as a way of bodging problems with the basic classes.

Eventually there were so many classes that the game became unplayable hence the PO partial re-design which supposedly gave you more flexibility whilst maintaining game balance.

Ultimately the PO stuff came a couple of years too late though and have since been airbrushed from history.  However, they were a far more substantial and revolutionary rethink of D&D character creation than even D&D 3 managed.

Whether they worked is another issue, they started to appear after I stopped taking any interest in D&D but I remember looking at the first book and thinking it was quite clever.