Legends & Lore - Get out the vote

[YHWH]

Lately he's been talking about "optional complexity" in a single game, simple characters balanced and compatible with more complicated fiddly ones. Race-as-class came up.

You could even collapse race down into the core options: The dwarf could be expressed as a core class, a fighter progression that focuses on durability, defense, and expertise with an axe or hammer. The core elf uses the multiclass rules to combine fighter and wizard, and the core halfling uses a preset rogue advancement chart.

Smells like 5th might have some BX DNA in it.

[scadgrad]

I keep hammering away at this, but it seems absolutely insane that they don't put out a D&D Classic edition w/ some version of 0E or B/X. They could still come out w/ 5E, but really, a Classic Edition is a no brainer. Classic D&D in its many forms is just as good a game as Monopoly or Risk, both IPs that Hasbro continues to crank out. And sure it's true that the grand daddy of RPGs is different than those old board game dinosaurs, I'm willing to bet they'd sell them by the truckloads.

Change does not always represent progress.

[Thakazum]

Yeah I'm surprised they don't release classic editions marketed as such.

[Wizardawn]

The best way of persuading people that OSR, especially LL, is best is not by intellectual arguments but by getting them to experience game-play. Once they see how easy and straightforward (and inexpensive) LL is, I'm sure many would want to continue with it, maybe in parallel with other editions.

I was talking at work with a friend the other day. This "friend" I have known since 3rd grade and we played AD&D together back in the 80's. Some temp 17 year old overheard me say "D&D" and he asked, "Do you play 3.0 or 4.0?" I looked at him and said, "we play 1.0". His first response was "wow!" So he was describing 3rd and 4th to me and then I began to explaining how 1st edition goes. He was amazed on how I have the 10 minute battles and that we can get through almost 100 rooms in a night (with 3 players and 1 DM). He was just impressed with the simplicity of what I was describing. He was asking things like "how do you stock a 100 room dungeon?" and "how do you balance encounters?"...this one made me chuckle. He was telling me how it would take a 4e game 4 hours to get through 3 rooms...3 ROOMS! F#@k that! I gave him my printed OSRIC (in a binder) book the next day and he thanked me profusely for it. If he takes that binder off to college, and find a group, that would be cool...but we'll see.

Back on Dyson's "1e hating" comment...I agree with what he is getting at. Keep in mind that many 1e players don't play BtB. Although I say I play AD&D, I have stripped out so many rules you would think it was Basic (except for the race/classes in my games). My combat system is pretty much an old D&D style combat system...hence the 10 minute battles. I am not alone that we are gamers that like the look and feel of those hardcover books from the 70's. From our point of view, it is easier to take away rules than it is to add them. If GG saw me running an AD&D game, he would simply scold me and say, "I don't know what you are playing...but it is not AD&D". That is why I adopted the term that I play MyD&D. These rule books are mine...and because they are mine...I can do whatever I want. If I want to allow players to make ogres and chase Smurfs through the forest*...that is what I am going to do.

- Djeryv

*I actually had smurfs in an adventure back in 1987...but the players were not ogres.

[Agrippa]

I'd have to agree with Dyson and say that 3X was less complicated than 1st and 2nd edition AD&D but more complicated than BECMI. And BECMI is just right for me. Of course the main problems in 3rd edition are the lack of risk and price for high level spells, their decision to nerf any non-caster they could, the class weakening skill system (why not just leave things like pick pocketing for thieves?) and elimination of seperate experience tables for classes. Seriously, they took all the risk out of spellcasting and then stripped fighters and similar class of their ability to move and use all their attacks in the same round. So now a fighter has to chose between using all four of his attacks or moving closer to another enemy. Nor can he move inbetween attacks, because that would be "overpowered". At the same time they removed the aging penalty from the wish spell and made it safer to cast!

[scadgrad]

With all due respect to Dyson, I think it would be fair to say that 1E RAW (which almost no one ACTUALLY played) and 3E were of a very similar level of complexity, but I don't think it's a less complicated game. My 2E games were far less complex than either 1E or 3E, and I ran those 2E games pretty much RAW. If nothing else, the complexity of the monsters is completely overwhelming for the DM, if not at first, certainly after many sessions of play. Still, I don't want to turn this into an editions war.

My version of 1E AD&D was really about the same as running LL/AEC. If 5E seems something like that, I'll give it a shot. If it's just more of the same 4E Build-o-ramas, I'll keep voting with my wallet.

[LordPrissyPants]

I can't imagine saying that 1e was less complicated than 3e. I just finished playing a 1e campaign that used the rules as written. It was nightmarish. But that's my personal hate-on for 1e, I *love* B/X and enjoy 3.x as the two most perfect iterations of the game.

I never felt that 3e was more complex. Honestly, 1.0 isn't that bad, as long as it's organized in a semi-coherent fashion. (Thanks Goblinoid)

[nextautumn]

"My 2E games were far less complex than either 1E or 3E, and I ran those 2E games pretty much RAW."

Same here.

[Brad]

If GG saw me running an AD&D game, he would simply scold me and say, "I don't know what you are playing...but it is not AD&D".

I don't believe he'd ever say that, to be honest. I've been reading a lot of Dragon articles recently, and I think most of the vitriol about playing D&D "wrong" was directed at other companies producing what EGG though were inferior products cashing in on the D&D name. If you take AD&D and strip out all the overtly complex rules, it's still AD&D. If you add your own classes, still AD&D. Etc. I've looked at your website and read your blog posts; nothing on there leads me to believe you're not playing AD&D at all. EGG in the voice of TSR representative might have said your changes were not kosher and to buy more products, but as a man, no way in hell he'd advocate such nonsense.

[DavetheLost]

If you really want old school complexity play 0E with all supplements and options.Hit locations and distributed hit points, weapon length, all sorts of fun things hidden in those little brown booklets.

I ran 0E for about 20 years and mutated the he'll out of it before I was done. My players liked it better tha AD&D