AD&D and Battletech

Warning: Long and opinionated blogpost ahead –

So two of our players are leaving for to work at Yellowstone for the summer in about a week. Due to the lethality of Battletech combat I will be shelving the game until they return. This is because we will be going from being able to spread damage between five people to three people. In it’s place I will be running a AD&D 2nd edition game. Yep. That’s right. I’m going back to my roots and running an old school AD&D game. For those who don’t know me, my very first gaming experience was running an AD&D 2nd edition Forgotten Realms game. Yeah I jumped in head first when it came to gaming. I started as a DM. So you could say that’s what I cut my gaming teeth on.

Weird thing is I don’t think I ever really stopped liking the edition. I was just pulled in by the new shininess of 3rd, that and everyone was switching to it. I hugely regret selling off my 2nd edition stuff so I could buy the new shiny 3rd edition stuff. I hate myself for it now. 3rd edition (and the d20 system in general) ended up being an abortion of a game system and I really, really, wish I had kept my 2nd edition stuff and followed my initial instinct which was to ignore 3rd (and by association 3.5).

Don’t get me wrong, I like 4e, it fixed a lot of the d20 problems for the most part, but I feel that’s it is suited to a specific type of game – one that is primarily dungeon delves and it does have its share of problems. Mainly in the fact that I honestly think there are too many choices for the player and they can begin to feel overwhelmed at times, especially at the higher levels.

I think some streamlining would also do 4e a world of good, especially when it comes to feats. Seriously all those “If this and this, then you gain a +1 bonus to hit”, or “If that or this, then you gain a +2 to damage” need to burn and die. Feats need to be pared down and streamlined. Powers need to be somewhat pared down and streamlined as well, primarily a lot of the ‘Until end of next turn” stuff needs to somehow go away, and I think some powers need to be tweaked to help with the “Must take or you’re an idiot” feeling for some of them. And lastly on the player side, I would roll certain unsupported classes (Seeker and Runepriest specifically) in with the others (likely Ranger and Cleric respectively . Also monsters have never quite worked. At all. They have too many hit points, and with characters really only ever having one attack each round, some of their defenses are just too damned high. A single miss could cause the battles to drag out for an additional two rounds. No joke. So monsters need to be tweaked overall.

Eventually I plan on writing up a setting specifically built around how 4e works. As I do this I will be streamlining the system to work better and smoother. I want to have the option to play both 2nd edition (since I am rebuying the books and rebuilding my collection) for one type of game, and play 4e for another type of game. I think they are both great systems and they each fill a playstyle niche that the other can’t touch. Although they are both D&D, it really is like comparing apples and oranges when it comes to playstyles. So ultimately I will have 2 homebrew D&D settings. The one that I will design specifically for 4th, and Eldritch Empires which I will be rebuilding from scratch for 2nd edition.

At this time I don’t think I’m even going to worry about Next. Unless I personally take a look at the books and I am completely knocked over, blown away, and completely wowed by what they did, I may well ignore it. WotC had their chance. They couldn’t get it done in 2 editions (they came close with 4e, if they had just…I don’t know, less. Less of everything. More on expanding the product rather than extending it) and they keep building the game in ways that forces you to buy more than just the core books to enjoy the game, and I believe that Next will be a really bad example of this with the ‘modularity’ that they are going for. I think maybe it’s time to let someone else try.

If you aren’t understanding my stance let me put it this way: 3rd edition. You wanted more feats, more classes, more options. So in order to do that you had to buy more books. Now it was mandatory or even necessary to enjoy the game (the most broken classes were right there in the PHB after all), but well, everyone likes more options. Enter 4th edition. Sure the PHB came with some interesting races, and some classes that were unique. Problem was it didn’t have what we came to expect as core classes and races. No sorcerer. No gnome or half-orc. No druid. No barbarian. No monk. Nope. Not only that but the number of powers was such that you really couldn’t have 2 of the same class and not come out looking almost identical because you would be a fool to not take certain powers at specific points in your leveling. So of course you wanted more books for more feats and powers, as well as classes and races. In fact the game still feels slightly incomplete.

Now with Next they are doing this ‘modularity’. My guess is that they are going to make you feel like you want more books so you can get this modular rule in this book, and that modular rule in another book so you can play the game you want to play with the rules you want. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a good business model, and they are a company and in order to stay afloat they need that money. I just wish it didn’t feel like such a blatant money grab. But I know that’s not WotC per se, that it’s Hasbro having unrealistic expectations for the brand. It happened with the Star Wars license too. It didn’t make money so they didn’t renew the RPG (FFG has it now). Seriously I would like to see D&D not in Hasbro’s control and have it go elsewhere simply because I think that someone not looking over their shoulders at a bottom line would make a better game overall.

There’s a reason I’m going back to 2nd editon. There’s a reason it did last as long as it did (and yes there is a reason that TSR went under, but that had to do with mismanagement of finances rather than their business plan for the game). That reason is they knew how to make a gaming product that had people wanting to spend money on their product, rather than making them feel as though they had to spend money on their product. You could run a perfectly good game with just the three core books (PHB, DMG and MM) and your imagination. You didn’t need a setting since you could easily take the time and build your own because the rules were much simpler. The more complex the rules, the harder it is to build a unique setting. Take this from someone who has been trying to build his setting around complex rules for the past 15 years. Eldritch Empires was its most successful in 2nd edition and there is a definitive reason for that. Sure there were a lot of supplemental material for 2nd edition. Hell there is far more supplemental material for 2nd than there has been for any other edition, even 3rd edition (not counting third party and OGL stuff btw). I haven’t compared the two directly yet, but I am pretty sure my assessment on that is correct.

Despite all that supplemental material, you never felt like you were missing something if you didn’t have it. Sure it was nice to have some new spells, but the ones in the PHB were just fine and there were just enough of them that you didn’t feel like there were fewer options than what you wanted. Sure it was nice to have access to kits from the Complete Handbook series of books, but again you weren’t really missing anything other than a minor tweak or two to your original class if you didn’t have them. Sure it was nice to have a premade setting if you didn’t have the time to put one together yourself, but again you could put one together and it didn’t take much due to the elegant and simplistic nature of the rules. No clunky prestige classes or delicately balanced powers or even more delicately balanced feats that you had to come up with to make a setting feel complete for that edition. You didn’t need premade modules since it was easy to come up with your own adventures, and the DMG spelled out how to make them step by step, unlike later editions. Though the 4e DMG had some good general DMing advice that should have been in the books since 1st edition. And guess what sold for TSR primarily? Setting boxed sets which were awesome in the sheer amount of material you got for the price at the time, and the premade modules, with the Complete Handbooks coming in a close 3rd.

As I said earlier, D&D needs to get out from under Hasbro’s shadow and get into the hands of a smaller company that will make the game what it should be by taking notes from the TSR era. Just my thoughts on the subject.

Anyway, again, really looking forward to this 2nd edition game, and I think my players are psyched for it too. Once we have characters made and established, I will post bios on the main D&D page as well as make blog updates as we play like I do for all my other games. So look for that in the near future.

If you’ve stuck it out this long, thanks for reading my long rambling thoughts on the state of D&D. Until next time…

Category(s): Dungeons and Dragons, General

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