D&D 1E [For ORCUS] Convince me that I can "do 1E" with 4E

[Shade]

Well, I didn't say they were female...

The intarweb is knee-deep in such beings...probably as thick as kobolds in a Great Cleave competition.

 

[billd91]

Actually, I few years back, I based a campaign on just this premise... The entire campaign consisted of old OD&D, BD&D and 1ed ed. AD&D adventure modules which I converted straight up to D&D 3.5.

It was a blast. There were a lot of points where either I or the players had to change up our usual tactics, because the encounter was considerably outside the usual CR range (either above or below) for characters of their level. Sometimes they kicked ass, sometimes they ran away, often they came close to death, and once or twice a character died.

All in all, the adventures ended up running just as well, if not better, converted to 3.5 than they did when I originally ran them almost 20 years ago. The experience was different, but not because the rules were different... It was because I'd grown up and now have all those years of gaming experience under my belt.

This has pretty much been my experience as well. The A series played out just great with 3.5 rules. The G series has been a little more bombastic (because the levels are higher and the PCs have more options) but not overly so. White Plume Mountain was fun and the efreet was murder! I appropriately terrorized them with Strahd in a rework of I6 Ravenloft (already converted before I got the EtCR adventure).
It's been some pretty good stuff. I don't miss the 1e rules at all.

 

[Dacileva]

You thought that the mechanics of 3E were closer to 1E than the 2E mechanics were? I can't even fathom that.

Yes, I do. Not that I have any chance of convincing you, but as a personal exercise, here's some stuff that drew me back in to 3E:

I'm with Ari here... Purely from memory, which may be faulty:

- Class options matching 1E.

All 2e classes except bard are closer to the 1e classes than the 3e classes are. The 3e bard is more like the 2e bard than the 1e bard.

- Racial options matching 1E.

2e races were more like 1e than 3e races are; the relegation of subraces to the MM actually means that, including subraces, the 2e PHB had much more in common with the 1e PHB than the 3e PH does to either, regardless of the restoration of the half-orc (the only race 1e and 3e have in the PH that 2e doesn't).

- Optional miniatures rules built into the core book.

1e didn't have optional miniatures rules so much as the measurements forced you to assume that miniatures were always being used (FFS, spell ranges were in inches). 2e added more reasonable miniatures rules, and 3e changed from both to fully integrate optional tactical rules that could use miniatures or not.

- Magic items with specified gold values & crafting techniques.

1e's gold values for magic items were amazingly arbitrary. 2e included the same information about crafting techniques as 1e did (talk to the DM). 3e's item creation feats, costs and prerequisites are a huge step away from both prior versions.

- Demons and devils and other potential adult themes.

These have been in every edition. For the early part of 2e, their names were changed due to rampant religious hostility towards D&D, but the plethora of demons and devils in 3e are more like 2e's ever-increasing varieties of baatezu and tanar'ri than like 1e's flat Type I-VI demons.

- Statistics available for deity figures.

Legends & Lore 2e was far more like Deities & Demigods 1e than the 3e Deities & Demigods is like either, and the more recent addition of Aspects makes things even more different (in good ways, IMO).

- Specifics on dungeon dressing and environmental hazards.

These were present in 2e as well, and 3e's treatment of them is much farther from either 1e or 2e than 2e was from 1e.

- Clerics defaulting to access to all core spells.

This one, I'll give you, except that 3e follows 2e's lead in having a given spell behave mostly the same regardless of who casts it (instead of having totally independent cleric, druid, magic-user and illusionist versions of each common spell).

- Designer commentary in DMG on motivation behind rules.

I never saw any of this in 1e. Some commentary on things like inherently contradictory initiative systems would have been nice.

- Focus on player-driven adventuring instead of NPC-driven narrative plots.

This is setting-based, not mechanics-based. Forgotten Realms started the NPC-driven narrative in 1e, and I wasn't very happy about the prevalence of NPCs linked to Gygax's games in 1e Greyhawk.

Let's add in:
- Arbitrary rules with no relation to any other part of the rules: 1e and 2e, not 3e.
- Thief skills: similar between 1e and 2e, totally different in 3e.
- Proficiencies: a bit different between 1e/UA and 2e, completely different in 3e.
- Saving throws: nearly-identical between 1e and 2e, totally different in 3e.
- Initiative: 2e tried to pick one of 1e's mechanics for initiative and go with it; 3e changed it completely.
- Demihuman level limits: similar between 1e and 2e; completely gone in 3e.
- Racial class restrictions: similar between 1e and 2e; completely gone in 3e.
- Geometric XP needed/level progression: similar between 1e and 2e, significantly changed in 3e (as well as 3e's removal of the 1e/2e different and often arbitrary XP charts for each class).
- Multiclassing: similar in 1e and 2e (basically a level behind, split XP), completely different in 3e.

THAC0 in 2e was a direct calculation from the hit charts from 1e, while 3e's BAB and flipped AC is a significant departure, and the d20 mechanic itself is a big change from 2e, which in general only contained slight adjustments of 1e's mechanics.

I think these are the kinds of reasons why people seem disconcerted at your description of 3e as closer to 1e than 2e was.

 

[Celebrim]

I think these are the kinds of reasons why people seem disconcerted at your description of 3e as closer to 1e than 2e was.

I don't think you showed what you think you showed. I think you just showed that 1e and 2e were very close mechanically. What just showed about 3e is that to the extent that it was close to 2e, it was also very close to 1e, and hense what you showed was that if it is derived from 2e it very likely could have been derived from 1e or 2e because the differences between the two are small.

My response is that 3e reversed course and undid virtually every change between 2e and 1e except for a few that I've already mentioned (bards and dragons). And this reversal of course is even more dramatic when you compare 3e to late 2e innovations and design direction (which was moving toward using point buy to create custom on the fly classes for your concept). You can still find a few 2e era players that think the game should have moved in that direction. But speaking for alot of 1e DM's I've heard relate the same story, alot of the 3e innovations where cleaner versions of house rules that grognards that never left 1e were using. I was using something very much like AoO in my games. Delta mentions independently using the D20 mechanic.

The 2nd edition game took me by surprise. I couldn't figure out why the changes were made. The 3rd edition game was like someone took the laundry list of problems I'd accumulated over years of DMing and then 'washed my clothes' for me.

 

[Dacileva]

I don't think you showed what you think you showed. I think you just showed that 1e and 2e were very close mechanically. What just showed about 3e is that to the extent that it was close to 2e, it was also very close to 1e, and hense what you showed was that if it is derived from 2e it very likely could have been derived from 1e or 2e because the differences between the two are small.

I don't, personally, find 3e to be derived much from 2e (or 1e), while 2e is unquestionably derived directly from 1e.

I just don't see how the huge differences between 3e and both 1e and 2e can possibly be considered to be 3e returning towards 1e, particularly when 3e tended to go in a completely different direction on many rules, and in the places where it retained some basis from prior editions, it was almost always based from 2e's evolution from 1e, rather than being based directly from 1e. The list of examples given wasn't compelling, given that the majority of items on the list existed in 2e (and thus couldn't have been instances of 3e returning towards 1e).

My response is that 3e reversed course and undid virtually every change between 2e and 1e except for a few that I've already mentioned (bards and dragons).

I completely disagree on this. 2e was an attempt to collect 1e's disparate, scattered and arbitrary rules into a single consistent ruleset. It failed miserably, but it was closer than 1e. 3e continued in that vein by starting with the consistency concept and going much more strongly with that in mind.

The most often-cited 1e->2e changes that 3e 'undid' were bringing back half-orcs (which were in a 2e supplement) and the assassin (who wasn't anything like 1e's assassin, being the brand new mechanic of prestige class), barbarian and monk (two classes which, again, aren't much like their 1e counterparts; these classes were also addressed (albeit poorly) in 2e supplements: barbarian and monk and assassin). (All links in this paragraph are to Amazon.)

The only actual 1e->2e change I can think of that 3e 'undid' was the removal of THAC0, but its replacement isn't anything like any 1e mechanics or rules, so even that can't be considered a move back towards 1e.

But speaking for alot of 1e DM's I've heard relate the same story, alot of the 3e innovations where cleaner versions of house rules that grognards that never left 1e were using.

More of 3e's innovations were cleaner versions of house rules that 2e players had been using for quite some time; that was explicitly stated by the 3e development team.

3e being similar to logical house rules used by some people who played 1e doesn't make 3e anything like a return to 1e, thankfully.

 

[Chocobot]

I don't think 3e was a reversal of Skills and Powers. I see it more as taking the lessons learned and redoing it in a way that made more sense.

Instead of using a point system to customize characters extensively (which led to the most rdiculous min-maxing I have ever seen in my life, I kid you not) they set aside specific customization points to allow that: Feats. In addition, to allow people to create characters with a mix of abilities from different classes, they opened up multiclassing with a new system that let you mix any classes together. Those 2 features of 3.x gave most of the benefits of S&P, without the drawbacks of ridiculous munchkin cleric builds. I mean there are still munchkin cleric builds in 3e, but they're nothing compared to S&P.

 

[Dacileva]

I don't think 3e was a reversal of Skills and Powers. I see it more as taking the lessons learned and redoing it in a way that made more sense.

Hmm, now that you mention S&P, I just realized that might be what the 1e people thought of as "2e" (as a note: they weren't, given that the actual names of the S&P books were "Player's Option", making them explicitly non-core)... But again, even if 3e was a reversal of S&P, it was a reversal back towards 2e without-S&P, rather than a reversal back towards 1e.

I find it easiest to call S&P "2.5" or "a mistake", myself.

Edit: I speek and logik gud.

 

[Pale]

I find it easiest to call S&P "2.5" or "a mistake", myself.

I detested the Player's Option stuff so much that I tend to forget it ever existed, myself.

 

[Mouseferatu]

I detested the Player's Option stuff so much that I tend to forget it ever existed myself.

Yep. I bought the "DM's Option: High Level Campaigns" book, but other than that, I ignored that particular sequence of books.

 

[Olgar Shiverstone]

"Lords of the Under-Flame" definitely sound like a group from a 1E module. What/Where/Who is the Under-Flame, and what does it mean to be a lord of it? And can you imagine their stronghold? Maybe they can make an appearance in the first "4E Rules, 1E feel" module! Hint, hint.

I definitely like Necro's work, and am a huge fan of the "3E rules, 1E feel" approach. I hope they continue to experience critical and commercial success with that style.