Rekindling an old flame (and an old blog)
I wanted to be able to easily post to G+, and I figured the easiest way would be to post here.
View previous posts at your own risk... they were written a long time ago and it was a very different me.
Last Monday I started playing in a new roleplaying campaign. But when I say new, I kinda mean old. We decided to play with the old 2nd ed, AD&D rules. We've been playing Pathfinder (aka D&D 3.75) for a while now, but we'd been nostalgic and talking about the old game. And so we decided to try it out.
My first impression, when rolling up my bard, was that it's much harder to create a new character. Not because the process is all that different, but because there's all that reading to do. It took me a while to work out my hit points (because that's logged under thief - a bard being a sub-set of thief), my specialist skills had no name so I had to study the text to work out what they were (fortunately we had specialist character sheets printed out which summarised them), some parts of the text referred to other sections making me do lots of flicking back and forth; e.g. the thief skills that a bard has needs you to read both the bits under the bard and the thief pages so that you have the full set of information. Actually, it wasn't until halfway through the session that I realised all my skills were lower than they should be.
From 3rd ed onwards (or, in fact, from the specialised books), they improved the process greatly. It's much easier to roll a quick character in the later versions of D&D, which is particularly useful if you feel like doing a one-off.
After that pain (and some much needed cottage pie) we began the game proper (accompanied with a ppt which was a really cool way for us to discover background info about the setting). I think the first thing we had to actually roll for were skill checks - con checks as our characters were drunk. For those who don't remember, or never played the old system, the way stats checks used to work is that you'd roll a D20, adjust it up or down depending on the difficulty of the situation, and then compare it to your stat. If it's under your stat, you pass, so the higher the stat the better. The downside of this approach is that the GM has to tell you what to add (and so give you an idea of how hard it is to do, which might not always be realistic). The bonus? In the later versions of the game, the only point of the stat number is to give you a plus or minus value, which you add to stat rolls. Having a 15 intelligence means little - you could just say that you have a +2 intelligence to mean the same thing (well, it's not exactly that simple, as other things depend on it too). But my point being, that skill checks feel rather meaningless in D&D games from 3rd ed onwards.
One thing on the character sheets we were using was the addition of a perception score, which I don't remember from the original game so I think it must be either a custom edition by the person who created the sheets or from one of the later books (feel free to correct me on this one). This was a cool addition, but made the thief/bard skill of "detect noise" a little pointless. That said, having a skill that should be fairly simple have an incredibly low percentage chance to start seems quite mad. A bard starts with 60% chance of climbing walls and a 20% (ish, the figures are off the top of my head so could be slightly wrong) chance of detecting noise. This seems quite mad. Fortunately the addition of perception made this skill defunct, but also removed one of the bardic benefits.
Okay, so what about fighting? Initiative checks had me completely confused. Rolling a D10 rather than a D20 (or, indeed, a percentile), is aggravating as it's something extra to remember. I can't remember whether you need a low or high score to go first, but in general it works pretty much like in the newer games, except you have to roll every round of combat. While time consuming, this makes sense, because someoen who is quicker one minute, may be slower in the next.
And then we come to the dreaded THAC0 - to hit armour class 0. You roll a D20, add or take away any bonuses from your weapons or strength/dexterity (depending on the weapon), and then compare it on a table - which alters depending on your level. The table goes from 10 to -10 where 10 is no-armour and -10 is ridiculously crazy good armour that you hopefully never get to see. So if you need a 20 to hit AC 0, you need a 10 to hit AC 10 (and a 30 to hit AC -10, which is going to be a tad impossible on a 20-sided dice). One thing I remember of AD&D from way back when is that it used to take a while to work out the AC of the enemy, while it seems much easier in the newer games. Maybe this is just my perspective. Anyway, this is a good thing because it makes it hard to power play. That said, it is a little complicated and over-the-top. When roleplaying you want combat simple, so that you can focus on the role bit, rather than the rolling... don't even get me onto the mechanics for punching! Yeah, fighting is a bit of a pain, but is okay once you're used to it.
That's a rather long, and no doubt boring, overview of the basic differences between AD&D and the later versions. AD&D was quite complex, whereas 4th ed got rid of the complexity but became too boring and rigid to play - more like a war game or board game. The 3rd ed to Pathfinder versions are a much better balance, with more flexibility (I haven't discussed multi- and dual- classing which were a pain), and simpler rules. You also have to consider the 'addons' that were later written - the handbooks for different races and classes added much variety, the skills and powers and spells and magic books created more flexibility and choice (being a mage was much more fun with the introduction of spell points, for example). We're just playing the original AD&D game, which isn't exactly what I remember with nostalgia.
All the systems have their pros and cons, and I think it's good to go back every so often and remember what the old rules were like. It doesn't really matter what rules you use, after all, as long as you get to role play and can make the rules work. After all, that's what house rules are for.
Which leaves me with one final comment... looking back is better than looking at the present (4th ed), but what will the newly announced future hold?
View previous posts at your own risk... they were written a long time ago and it was a very different me.
Last Monday I started playing in a new roleplaying campaign. But when I say new, I kinda mean old. We decided to play with the old 2nd ed, AD&D rules. We've been playing Pathfinder (aka D&D 3.75) for a while now, but we'd been nostalgic and talking about the old game. And so we decided to try it out.
My first impression, when rolling up my bard, was that it's much harder to create a new character. Not because the process is all that different, but because there's all that reading to do. It took me a while to work out my hit points (because that's logged under thief - a bard being a sub-set of thief), my specialist skills had no name so I had to study the text to work out what they were (fortunately we had specialist character sheets printed out which summarised them), some parts of the text referred to other sections making me do lots of flicking back and forth; e.g. the thief skills that a bard has needs you to read both the bits under the bard and the thief pages so that you have the full set of information. Actually, it wasn't until halfway through the session that I realised all my skills were lower than they should be.
From 3rd ed onwards (or, in fact, from the specialised books), they improved the process greatly. It's much easier to roll a quick character in the later versions of D&D, which is particularly useful if you feel like doing a one-off.
After that pain (and some much needed cottage pie) we began the game proper (accompanied with a ppt which was a really cool way for us to discover background info about the setting). I think the first thing we had to actually roll for were skill checks - con checks as our characters were drunk. For those who don't remember, or never played the old system, the way stats checks used to work is that you'd roll a D20, adjust it up or down depending on the difficulty of the situation, and then compare it to your stat. If it's under your stat, you pass, so the higher the stat the better. The downside of this approach is that the GM has to tell you what to add (and so give you an idea of how hard it is to do, which might not always be realistic). The bonus? In the later versions of the game, the only point of the stat number is to give you a plus or minus value, which you add to stat rolls. Having a 15 intelligence means little - you could just say that you have a +2 intelligence to mean the same thing (well, it's not exactly that simple, as other things depend on it too). But my point being, that skill checks feel rather meaningless in D&D games from 3rd ed onwards.
One thing on the character sheets we were using was the addition of a perception score, which I don't remember from the original game so I think it must be either a custom edition by the person who created the sheets or from one of the later books (feel free to correct me on this one). This was a cool addition, but made the thief/bard skill of "detect noise" a little pointless. That said, having a skill that should be fairly simple have an incredibly low percentage chance to start seems quite mad. A bard starts with 60% chance of climbing walls and a 20% (ish, the figures are off the top of my head so could be slightly wrong) chance of detecting noise. This seems quite mad. Fortunately the addition of perception made this skill defunct, but also removed one of the bardic benefits.
Okay, so what about fighting? Initiative checks had me completely confused. Rolling a D10 rather than a D20 (or, indeed, a percentile), is aggravating as it's something extra to remember. I can't remember whether you need a low or high score to go first, but in general it works pretty much like in the newer games, except you have to roll every round of combat. While time consuming, this makes sense, because someoen who is quicker one minute, may be slower in the next.
And then we come to the dreaded THAC0 - to hit armour class 0. You roll a D20, add or take away any bonuses from your weapons or strength/dexterity (depending on the weapon), and then compare it on a table - which alters depending on your level. The table goes from 10 to -10 where 10 is no-armour and -10 is ridiculously crazy good armour that you hopefully never get to see. So if you need a 20 to hit AC 0, you need a 10 to hit AC 10 (and a 30 to hit AC -10, which is going to be a tad impossible on a 20-sided dice). One thing I remember of AD&D from way back when is that it used to take a while to work out the AC of the enemy, while it seems much easier in the newer games. Maybe this is just my perspective. Anyway, this is a good thing because it makes it hard to power play. That said, it is a little complicated and over-the-top. When roleplaying you want combat simple, so that you can focus on the role bit, rather than the rolling... don't even get me onto the mechanics for punching! Yeah, fighting is a bit of a pain, but is okay once you're used to it.
That's a rather long, and no doubt boring, overview of the basic differences between AD&D and the later versions. AD&D was quite complex, whereas 4th ed got rid of the complexity but became too boring and rigid to play - more like a war game or board game. The 3rd ed to Pathfinder versions are a much better balance, with more flexibility (I haven't discussed multi- and dual- classing which were a pain), and simpler rules. You also have to consider the 'addons' that were later written - the handbooks for different races and classes added much variety, the skills and powers and spells and magic books created more flexibility and choice (being a mage was much more fun with the introduction of spell points, for example). We're just playing the original AD&D game, which isn't exactly what I remember with nostalgia.
All the systems have their pros and cons, and I think it's good to go back every so often and remember what the old rules were like. It doesn't really matter what rules you use, after all, as long as you get to role play and can make the rules work. After all, that's what house rules are for.
Which leaves me with one final comment... looking back is better than looking at the present (4th ed), but what will the newly announced future hold?
Labels: advanced dungeons and dragons, dungeons and dragons, roleplay
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