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Mr. Friendly
2008-03-06, 10:30 AM
Although 1e is kind of painful to play to me now, there were certain things I like - Hell things I LOVED. I hope to see the return of them in 4e, but I won't hold my breath.

Illustrations: I loved the comics in the PH, DMG and MM. They, for me, encompass all that D&D is really supposed to be about... the Fighter in Full Plate leaping into the arms of the siging Wizard as a Rust Monster appears....
..the Wizard identifying the party treasure and holding up the wand with a hand on it and saying "Well it either casts the various Bigby spells or it's a +3 backscratcher"...
...the group sitting around playing 'Papers & Paychecks'....

and many more...

Tables: In the back of the DMG there were some really awesome and useful tables. Like the old alchemical stuff and a lot of useful flavor stuff. More than that though, my two favorites were: The random dungeon mapper/generator and the random fiend generator. Those were both GOLD!

I also miss Castle Greyhawk. Best. Module. Ever.

EvilElitest
2008-03-06, 12:17 PM
I've never played Castle Greyhawk sadly, what made it so good
from
EE

Indon
2008-03-06, 12:20 PM
Papers and Paychecks, is that the exciting role-playing game involving pretending to be an office worker?

Duke of URL
2008-03-06, 12:38 PM
What I miss about 1st Edition... are my books. I had the "big 3" (PH, GMG, MM) and a small collection of modules (B2, L2, G1-3, at the very least), but after I left for college, my mother threw them out.

:smallfrown:

Callos_DeTerran
2008-03-06, 12:43 PM
I've never played Castle Greyhawk sadly, what made it so good
from
EE

...Gary Gygax. x.x


It was the first dungeon that needed multiple random encounter tables (it was practically it's own enviroment).

It has portals that lead to dozens of demi-planes.

Nobody has ever been through all of it (Even the mighty DM-PCs)

It has the source of all Greyhawk magic in the basement.

Can help somebody along to deityhood if they know what they are doing.

Most legendary hereos of Greyhawk adventured and still do there so there is quite a feel of history to the place.

Sweet unique magical goodies. :smallbiggrin:

Castle Greyhawk is made out of win. I keep hoping that all of it will be updated to 3.5.


What do I miss about 1st edition?.....Nothing, except the comics and Gygax's direct involvement. You can never have too many random effect charts.

horseboy
2008-03-06, 01:38 PM
Papers and Paychecks, is that the exciting role-playing game involving pretending to be an office worker?
I imagine it'd be a lot like this (http://www.adultswim.com/video/?episodeID=001320ced1e0a3d800817181a16cbd95).
Yeah, I too miss that "we're a game and we know it," mentality.

SpikeFightwicky
2008-03-06, 01:44 PM
Ravenloft in its pure undistilled form, before they made a demiplane out of it (don't get me wrong, practically all my games in 2nd ed. took place in the 'Loft).

I've since obtained both original Ravenloft modules, but never had the chance to play them since I came in during AD&D times.

Ravenloft in 3.X seems to try real hard, but a lot of the d20 mechanics detract to the whole horror feel (IMO).

Caractacus
2008-03-06, 05:05 PM
I just loved it for the sense of freedom and that anything was possible. There were a lot of charts and tables, but I ignored a lot of those to promote flow.

I loved the simplicity of it. Wow, there weren't even non-weapon proficiencies at first. To me, this all meant more character development and role-playing and less of the maxing out feat efficiency, etc that I read about in the forums.

Great days... :smallcool:

Zincorium
2008-03-06, 05:26 PM
The fact that it seemed like some secret language that only myself and my friends knew.

Then again, I started playing first edition in '95, so the books we'd gotten as a gift from someone who'd stopped playing were already pretty old.

Megafly
2008-03-06, 09:40 PM
I miss buying individual dice because very few dice were sold in sets. I miss lead mini's (not pewter, not plastic) and you painted them yourself or they stayed unpainted. I miss 3 ring binders full of xeroxed errata and rules from Dragon Magazine.

I miss Druid and monks having to fight to even get a higher level.

WhiteHarness
2008-03-06, 09:49 PM
I loved the fact that Field Plate and Full Plate Armour reduced the damage you took by one or two respectively per die, as detailed in the original Unearthed Arcana.

It meant that, if struck by a broadsword--which did 2d4 damage--while wearing full plate, the damage was reduced by four points. Good stuff. Armour was worth your while to wear back then...not like in 3rd edition...

Yodaman23
2008-03-06, 10:11 PM
I sure do miss those little comics. They were funny and helped you slog through the convoluted rules. They were essentially the precursor to OOTS.

EvilElitest
2008-03-06, 10:25 PM
...Gary Gygax. x.x


It was the first dungeon that needed multiple random encounter tables (it was practically it's own enviroment).

It has portals that lead to dozens of demi-planes.

Nobody has ever been through all of it (Even the mighty DM-PCs)

It has the source of all Greyhawk magic in the basement.

Can help somebody along to deityhood if they know what they are doing.

Most legendary hereos of Greyhawk adventured and still do there so there is quite a feel of history to the place.

Sweet unique magical goodies. :smallbiggrin:

Castle Greyhawk is made out of win. I keep hoping that all of it will be updated to 3.5.


What do I miss about 1st edition?.....Nothing, except the comics and Gygax's direct involvement. You can never have too many random effect charts.
thanks or letting me know
from
EE

Jayngfet
2008-03-06, 11:30 PM
man, a lot of this stuff sounds awsome, either they put it back or I'm gonna borrow my buddies 1st edition books and DM a game of castle greyhawk.

Matthew
2008-03-07, 12:00 AM
AD&D 1e is awesome. No doubt about that (well, a lot of people might tell you otherwise, but don't believe them). Just remember that "Knowledge, logic, reason, and common sense serve better than a dozen rule books." - E. G. Gygax.

LibraryOgre
2008-03-07, 12:16 AM
For those jonesing for 1st editiony goodness, I would suggest OSRIC (http://www.knights-n-knaves.com/osric/), a OGL-compatible re-engineering.

Fhaolan
2008-03-07, 01:06 AM
What did I like about AD&D 1st edition?

1) I was in grade school & high school when I played it, and the utter randomness of some of it was very appealing in a game at that time. The random Demon generator especially.

2) The DMG. One of the worst edited D&D books ever produced, impossible to read from cover to cover, yet full of the strangest and most fascinating things if you just opened it to a random page.

3) That the rules were specifically set out to be guidelines rather than hard and fast rules, so that it was possible to customize it to suit the campaign. This was an astonishing idea at the time, as other game systems were usually based on very fixed and immutable campaign settings. The prior versions of D&D, the Guidon Games edition and the blue-book Basic set that was released only a few months before AD&D, allowed for that but I don't remember them really spelling it out. AD&D was the first game system that I remember explicitly saying 'these are just guidelines. Use it as a framework, and go for it.'

ShadowSiege
2008-03-07, 01:30 AM
I decided to take a quick flip through the DMG (the only one beside Deities and Demigods (yes, the one with Cthulhu and Elric) I could find). I like the alignment descriptions a lot more than 3.x's. The random dungeon generation and fiend generation is nice, and some of the illustrations are just classic. Be it the comedic warrior leaping into the wizards arms, or the guy riding through town randomly killing people, they may not have been the greatest illustrations in some cases, but they had character.

Fhaolan
2008-03-07, 02:05 AM
(the only one beside Deities and Demigods (yes, the one with Cthulhu and Elric) I could find).

:smallannoyed: I used to have one of those. It was destroyed, unfortunately, by a friend accidentally dropping it in a bog (long story, not really worth going into). At the time I didn't realize that it might actually have been worth trying to recover it, as it was only when I tried to replace it did I find out about the lawsuit revision. I was woefully ill-informed in the backwaters of Ontario at the time. Ah well.

ShadowSiege
2008-03-07, 02:13 AM
:smallannoyed: I used to have one of those. It was destroyed, unfortunately, by a friend accidentally dropping it in a bog (long story, not really worth going into). At the time I didn't realize that it might actually have been worth trying to recover it, as it was only when I tried to replace it did I find out about the lawsuit revision. I was woefully ill-informed in the backwaters of Ontario at the time. Ah well.

Sorry to hear that :smallfrown:, it wasn't until I read the wikipedia article on the book that I realized what I had. Deities & Demigods is what lead me to read Lovecraft and Moorcock. 3e's version just doesn't quite cut it when compared to that.

Funkyodor
2008-03-07, 03:20 AM
Hmmm, what I miss the most are all the house-rules we had which had to be beaten (and are still beating) into a 3.X'ish format. Ah, "back attack" percentages to notice theives that were ready to shoot you for back stab damage, which would have been CON damage, but since you noticed them their puny toothpicks merely annoy you. Priceless. House rules were fun back then, now, eh.

Letting the chilli dog pot sit for 2 weeks until the day of the gaming session before finally remembering and going, "Eww, um, I guess it's pizza today!"

Being able to move and still get all your attacks off.

Double Specialization bounses. Can't beat a 3rd, or was it 4th lvl fighter with an additional +3 to hit and damage.

LibraryOgre
2008-03-07, 04:01 AM
Double Specialization bounses. Can't beat a 3rd, or was it 4th lvl fighter with an additional +3 to hit and damage.

Screw that, you could get it at 1st! And still have another WP slot! I was just working on a ranger who double-specialized in hand-axes; with a 16 Dex, he was slinging them with a +1 on his primary hand and a -1 on his off hand, getting 3 attacks a round at 1st level, and doing 1d6+4/1d4+4 (he had a 16 strength, too); and that didn't COUNT the bonus he got against "giant class" creatures, which included basically every non-demi-human humanoid.

The man was a cuisinart!

Charity
2008-03-07, 04:12 AM
If you want to break it horribly just specialise in in darts...
4 attacks at 1d3+2+str damage each.
I do miss 1e, but its only nostalgia really, no particular mechanic stands out to me.

Edits-

Actually Mark doesn't he get 2 attacks in the first round and then three in the second?
IIRC specialisation gives you 3/2 +1/rnd for the offhand makes 5/2 doesn't it?
Or am I missing something

V UA is 1e to me but call it whatever you like it is still the most effective ftr build especially as it meant you only needed a good dex, which as we know is the king of the stats in 1e.
You could be almost unhittable at 1st level with banded 18 Dex and a sheild giving what.. an AC of -1, and 4 attacks at (for double specialisation) +7 hit and 1d3+3 dam, though admittedly bow double specialisation was pretty dangerous as well.

nagora
2008-03-07, 06:44 AM
If you want to break it horribly just specialise in in darts...
4 attacks at 1d3+2+str damage each.
I do miss 1e, but its only nostalgia really, no particular mechanic stands out to me.

Specialisation was really ed1.5 (Unearthed Arcana).

Generally speaking 1ed was superior to later editions for the simple reason that it didn't have skills, which suck mightily, and it didn't try to have rules for everything. 3ed is a failure in both areas. Combat in 3ed is also turgid compared to 1ed.

The consistant problem with later editions is that the designers thought that having a system for things which sucked was better than having no system at all and relying on the DM to run his/her own game. They were wrong.

Edit: The Castle Greyhawk module that TSR released was a bad joke and a calculated insult to Gary after Williams forced him out of TSR. Castle Zagyg is the actual Gygax version which should still be going into publication soon (parts are already out) from Troll Lords. The real Castle Greyhawk has never been published before.

Meat Shield
2008-03-07, 08:28 AM
That old Deities and Demigods has certainly stuck with me through the years. Those pantheons are ALWAYS available in my games, and I have had more clerics of Norse gods than I can think about. Tended to stay away from the completely unpronounceable Aztec ones though.....

Funkyodor
2008-03-07, 08:42 AM
Oh, Oh, Almost forgot. Thanks for bringing up Deities & Demigods/Legends & Lore! Comliness! The 7th and coolest of stats that separated how you looked from your inner machismo. Comliness, the stat that could charm viewers if high enough and scare construction workers if low enough.

LibraryOgre
2008-03-07, 02:05 PM
Actually Mark doesn't he get 2 attacks in the first round and then three in the second?
IIRC specialisation gives you 3/2 +1/rnd for the offhand makes 5/2 doesn't it?
Or am I missing something


I don't think you are, but I'm trying to remember why it made sense. I think you actually get full attacks with both hands in 1e.

Matthew
2008-03-07, 02:12 PM
As it goes, you can read it either way. It was never specified whether Two Weapon Fighting applied to all Attack Routines or just the first. In AD&D 2e, they came down heavily on the side of only one extra attack. There are a few controversies tied to Two Weapon Fighting in 1e, such as exactly how many targets a character can attack with one routine. I had a good discussion about it a few weeks ago over on Knights & Knaves: Fighting Styles (http://www.knights-n-knaves.com/phpbb/viewtopic.php?t=3740).

Two Weapon Fighting Double Specialised Hand Axe wielding Level 10 Rangers with four attacks per round are a possible result of interpreting the rules in a particular way.