Where have all the AD&D players gone?

>If you want to talk about AD&D, though, why not make a thread and introduce a topic of discussion about AD&D, rather than a thread discussing why there aren't more discussions about AD&D?

I dunno, I was more talking about how there are no more AD&D players around, rather than trying to talk about the system itself.

But I suppose asking the sudden lack of players made for a better starting point than asking for the lack of things to talk about. It gave us something to talk about. Now we can keep going.

Sure, but that has always been a house-rule. No where in the rules does it say "here are the search for secret door rules. By the way: you should ignore them when actual flavor is provided by your DM."

I'm just saying: that's more a mindset to the game than an aspect of the rules.

Well don't despair, user. We're still here.

Know what I want to run? Take a backwoods part of Forgotten Realms. Crash a Neogi Spelljammer into it. They infest and overrun a shield dwarf mine. The players are a cadre of dwarves sent from the far-off citadel to find out what happened to the mining colony. Game is secretly a straight-up rip-off of Aliens, and see how long it takes my players to notice, then play it up full-tilt.

>Rolling for secret doors is a 1d6, in AD&D. It absolutely had perception rules. The rest I agree with, but you seem to have missed a pretty fundamental rule.

You missed the part where the DM rolls that to see if they spot the secret door. Players don't annount "I roll to check for secret doors!," rather the DM rolls it whenever they pass one.

>Sure, but that has always been a house-rule. No where in the rules does it say "here are the search for secret door rules. By the way: you should ignore them when actual flavor is provided by your DM."

1st edition DMG brings up both options in an equal field. 2nd edition one doesn't mention rolls at all, save by talking about how elves have an easier time finding them: its DMG section about secret doors just talks about how long it takes to look through a bit of wall.

It does remind me of another thing I love about AD&D, though: modularity and ease of houserules. There's a million ways to do everything and nothing is standardized, which on one hand is kind of a bother but on the other hand it encourages you to pick and choose and find your own way of doing things.

And everyone is right.

>so it's not really D&D because it incentivizes combat over exploration.

God forbid someone have fun a different way then you!

He got a point, though. D&D fundamentally changed when they shifted the game over to being combat-centric. Many of the mechanics broke and the game was never as tightly focused again.

I'm convinced that anyone having fun with prioritizing combat has never tried an exploration-heavy game. They've never tried to roleplay their way out of a fight instead of going in crossbows blazing.

They're missing out.

>Many of the mechanics broke and the game was never as tightly focused again.

I think DMs just got lazy with their design. If you want to run a more mystery/exploration based campaign, you still can. Political intrigue as well.

Just takes effort from the DM to make it happen.

I spent a while in a 5e community where everyone was just obsessed with getting these combat one-shots going on to level up their characters. I realize this makes me sound like a grognard who doesn't accept people having fun in a different way he does, but it was honestly painful to watch. I couldn't stay for long.

Sure, but at that point you almost might as well go freeform. There are way better systems out there for mystery, exploration, and intrigue. D&D nowadays really just has the combat rules.

Sounds like a GM problem more then a player problem.

>You get XP for killing monsters,

No, you get XP for a lot of things, including finding treasure. If you wanted to, you could reward finding treasure more substantially than you would combat, if that was your preference.

I've still played more AD&D than I have played 5e, but the same can't be said for 90% of the players I know.

I find it's easy to get people to play though. The fact that most have only played 3.5e, PF, and 5e actually makes AD&D and OD&D kind of exotic to them. If you pitch it right, they will try it out.

OD&D is easier to pitch, since it's a lot simpler also it doesn't have combat segments- how the fuck do they work

No, I mean it alters the incentive structure and broke the game loop of old D&D.
For one example, take wandering monsters. These are a pillar of old-school play. As long as you're down in the dungeon, time passes, and wandering monster checks occur every so many turns. Searching for traps, secret doors, and hidden treasure all takes up time, meaning more wandering monster checks. Wearing heavier armor makes you safer, but also slows you down, meaning more wandering monster checks. Carrying a lot of treasure will also slow you down.

Wandering monsters are a threat that has to be avoided, because they give piddly XP, are not in their lair (so no decent treasure), and combat is lethal. Even at higher levels, all they do for you is wear your HP down, expend your healing spells, and give fuck all in return.
So you have to balance things carefully. You want to move as quickly as is prudent, and find as much treasure as possible with as few fights as you can manage, and carry it all out.

Modern D&D fucks this entirely, because wandering monsters suddenly become valuable. They all carry loot, and they give great XP, and they come right to you, and odds are you can kick their ass for free XP and gold, and then cheaply heal up afterwards to do it again. Wandering monsters are now little more than loot that comes right to you, which is why they aren't used much anymore.

For the most part I really like 5e, but there are certainly a number of things I think AD&D got better.

Henchmen being an assumption was one. The whole 'at X level you can build a keep and gain these followers' being another.

I really think some of that should have been added to the fighter class.

I also really dislike the current barbarian and bard class. Liked the older barbarian a bit more, it felt more Conan to me.

Huh. I actually started running a 2e game because I was sick to death of Pathfinder and its bullshit, but I still come from that sort of mind set. That actually makes a lot of sense.

>Liked the older barbarian a bit more, it felt more Conan to me.

The 1e barbarian was pretty Conan, but I actually like the 2e one the best: they emphasized the uncivilized stone age angle a lot more with that.

We've got a caveman in the game I'm running right now, and he's fucking awesome.

I really liked how kits worked. Thought that was the best way to do a number of things.

The 2e barbarian was based on jumping really far.

It was the weirdest ass take on barbarians and never made a lick of sense. Since when was Conan a god damn gummy bear?

>D&D nowadays really just has the combat rules.

What? I just opened up my players handbook. Pg189-198 are about combat.

10 Pages.

Adventuring has 7 pages, Skills has about 10.

If your game is combat focused in 5e, but you blame the PH/Rules, I think you should be blaming your DM instead.

Where do you actually find the 2e barbarian?

>Since when was Conan a god damn gummy bear?

Since never. The 2e barbarian took very little from Conan at all.

Which is all very well because Conan is a fucking fighter. What never made a lick of sense was why anyone would think he needed a class all for himself, then made that class nothing like him.

The Complete Barbarian's Handbook.

>They all carry loot, and they give great XP

Since when? As a DM I can make a monster give out exactly as much XP as I want it to. Ditto treasure.

Did you not read like pg 1 of any DM book ever? "You make the rules."

Barbarian's handbook. It's not on purpleworm or I'd link it. Lemme see if I can google a copy...

Success: theagencystar.com/trigger/ADND/TheCompleteBarbariansHandbook.pdf

I started with BECMI, and I absolutely prefer each new edition of D&D over all previous versions. I feel like they're gradually fixing, over the decades, loads of shit that bothered me from the beginning.

I do think the 5e core books could have emphasized non-combat XP awards a lot better, though.

>Did you not read like pg 1 of any DM book ever? "You make the rules."

Then why ever argue about rules at all?

>Since never. The 2e barbarian took very little from Conan at all.
Sure. I'm just saying. The main class power being "jump around like a fucking nut" is just weird as all hell.

I think his point is that the game is usually about advancing your character and in 5e advancement (experience) is generally handled only through experience points from combat.

In earlier editions loot provided experience that was usually higher than that you got from critters. So the game was often not about killing things, which played in to an older focus on resource management.

Using kits, or using the unearthed arcana version was the way to go. The complete book was not the right way in my opinion.

Thanks!

I'm right here. I just don't have much to personally talk about after 20 years. I've discussed everything that I wanted to a looonnnng time ago.

Because some players are fuckwits, and some DMs are autists.

If you want to slavishly adhere to the rules, just go play a computer game version of the RPG, with a DM mode.

If you want to run a real DnD game, use the books as a framework, and modify to choice.

Is this really such a foreign concept? What DM would ever bitch about monsters giving out too much XP, when they can literally control exactly how much xp to give out. Hell, you could just choose to level people at the end of an adventure rather then bother with xp.

Perception and alertness where around. They may have been in skills&powers.

>Since when?
Since the game started being built around monsters being wandering sacks of loot and XP that grant you a level after a certain threshold.

You may think that you're clever but if I helped take out an adult dragon and I find out that I only received half the XP and loot that I'm supposed to, I'm going to be pissed.
>Did you not read like pg 1 of any DM book ever? "You make the rules."
Then why the fuck are you arguing about the rules at all? By that logic, why even buy the book, you can make up anything you want so you might as well just go freeform.

>is generally handled only through experience points from combat.

Then his point is based on false information. XP from combat is a part of it, but you get XP from just about every thing you do, including sneaking past enemies, convincing people to help you out, disarming complex traps, and the like. If your preference is mostly about play style, you can simply reward the type of play you prefer more by giving more experience that way.

That's why I like AD&D. It and its players still had the modular toolbox mentality. Later editions dealt away with it, and relegated it to a token mention at the start of the book that very few people care for.

You say some players are fuckwiths and some DMs are autists. I say systems are different and their players and DMs have different priorities.

Yeah, but Skills & Powers doesn't really count: it's like a proto-3e and nobody in their right mind would use it.

>Henchmen being an assumption was one. The whole 'at X level you can build a keep and gain these followers' being another.
This is the one thing I really, really miss in 5e. I mean, I appreciate that both are a bit more setting-dependent than the rules have kept to since 3.X, they were very interesting and useful ways to inject different types of interactions and lash characters more strongly to a setting.

5e *kind of* started to dip their toes into that sort of thing with the faction/reputation score mechanic, but it hasn't been developed on very much at all.

Sure, you could do that, but that's only one part of the problem.

To run a proper old school game in 5e, here's a rough idea of what you'd need to change, probably missing a few things:

Reduce monster XP to a fraction of current levels.
Remove other sources of XP, replace with XP for treasure
Rework the methods whereby treasure is generated - monsters generally drop squat unless you track them to their lair
Enforce strict, unified time tracking for movement, hunger, light sources burning out and other actions
Reduce player power and capability to prevent short-circuiting the resource management - no free light sources, no free food, no cheap healing, no cheap ways to bypass obstacles
That includes combat, so while you're retooling, ensure that their feats and other abilities are nerfed so that combat is dangerous in a way that 5e does not natively support
Move search and miscellaneous other rules to the DM side to encourage roleplaying solutions over mechanical ones

There's probably a few things I'm not thinking of. But even so, you're better off using old rules than trying to houserule all that shit.

>I find out that I only received half the XP and loot that I'm supposed to, I'm going to be pissed.

And then you'll get some rocks dropped on you. Stop being an entitled whiny bitch of a player and just enjoy the game.

>Remove other sources of XP, replace with XP for treasure

I never had a problem letting thieves gain experience for using their skills or anything like that. Pretty sure even AD&D did that anyway.

>But even so, you're better off using old rules than trying to houserule all that shit.

I never said you weren't better off. I just postulated that the reason no one wants to play 2e as much anymore is that 5e is way more popular as a result of social advertising. 5e CAN do all those things you mentioned, but that is not why more people play it.

Why would you give less loot for dragons, anyway? Their whole thing is that they sleep on piles of gold and gems.

Oh yeah, I left out hirelings

Forgot:
Hirelings, as above
Strict encumbrance tracking, with weight slowing you down, meaning you'll need those hirelings both to hold torches when you're fighting, and to help carry out the thousands of coins you'll need to level.

2e does, as one of its optional rules. It has XP for mages casting spells, and thieves doing thief stuff, and things like that. 2e was starting to move towards the Epic Tell A Story mode and away from the tactical dungeon crawling that D&D always did best. It was just something in the air in the 90s.

>5e CAN do all those things you mentioned

Just not easily or well, is my point. Right tool for the job, user.

No, fuck you! If I fought an adult dragon at full power and won, I deserve to get all the XP and loot that I'm supposed to get for surviving that fight.

You think I'm going to enjoy the game knowing you're cheating me out of what I'm owed? You think anyone at the table is going to play in your shitty game when you threaten a TPK whenever someone hurts your fee-fees?

Get the fuck over yourself man! I killed a fucking adult dragon, a creature that gets its own legendary and lair actions, if I managed to pull it off by the skin of my teeth, I earned that XP and gold.

Dumbass McFuckwit brought up the situation as a counter to my argument that Xp can be doled out by the GM as they deem appropriate, rather then a guaranteed thing after each encounter.

Ask him why there would be less xp, he seems to like it because it reminds him of wandering monsters, but then complains when I say I could implement it easily in 5e.

>Since the game started being built around monsters being wandering sacks of loot and XP that grant you a level after a certain threshold.

So, never? I don't understand why you need to insist that the only way to play is in the worst possible way, rather than the way the DM's Guide actually recommends and the way the rules are structured. Monsters provide rewards relative to the challenge it is to overcome them, and there's more ways to overcome them than simply killing them.

More importantly, there's plenty of other ways to earn XP. If anything, the idea that gold makes you stronger is such an archaic and nonsensical idea, it's almost a joke to hear someone advocating for it rather than advocating what later systems chose to do, which is enable the DM to reward players for overcoming any challenge, not just challenges where gold was involved.

>Get the fuck over yourself man! I killed a fucking adult dragon, a creature that gets its own legendary and lair actions, if I managed to pull it off by the skin of my teeth, I earned that XP and gold.

Rocks fall on you specifically. Roll a new character.

If that pisses you off, you can leave my game, no one is forcing you to play.

See, problem solved. Bad player is gone, everyone else gets to have fun.

Win Win!

Certainly was an option. There were articles in Dragon magazine about how to treat a tower as a monster for exp, traps being special abilities, that sort of thing.

>Monsters provide rewards relative to the challenge it is to overcome them

They used to not to.

You might stumble upon a wandering band of goblins, lose the wizard in the fight, and get all of 30 exp and a few copper coins for your trouble.

This guy gets it.

Well fuck that hippie-noise.

Games have rules, and if you change the rules, you're playing a different game. If you put money on Free Parking in Monopoly, you aren't playing Monopoly, you're playing "house ruled Monopoly with money on Free Parking" (and you've also broken the game by making take longer to end than it should).

>gold makes you stronger

That's silly, it makes you more important, and pays for training.
It's no more silly than stabbing a bunch of goblins causes you to learn how to cast spells all of a sudden, which is what multiclassing can do for you.

So anyway, anyone here free on Tuesdays and Fridays and wants to do some 2e in the best setting of them all - Wilderlands of High Fucking Fantasy?

Your time zone matters little - we've got a game going on noon GMT, and another one on noon EST.

>I really think some of that should have been added to the fighter class.
The game simply doesn't work that way anymore. Making it a core class feature would render it useless in a majority of games played

People only play 2e for nostalgia. There's nothing "better" about it. Nostalgia dies off.

Smells Like AssBurgers up in here.

>Wanting to be rewarded for hard work is being a bad player.
In response, my Barbarian rages to become resistant to the Bludgeoning damage and rolls Athletics to claw himself out of the rubble.

>Game is secretly a straight-up rip-off of Aliens,
Hah, that's quite clever. I like it. Thanks, I'll probably run this as a one-shot.

That was actually how I did xp for gold. You could cash in gold for xp, but lost the gold. It was assumed that the gold went to the sort of things you describe. Time training, gaining access to a library, building a church, whatever. I handled the specifics as a description about what the characters did between adventures.

I liked giving out a good bit of loot, but liked the characters a bit poor as well. It ended up having some cool effects because it gave the players some control over their characters while balancing cost. Lots of discussions and planning went on.

>No perception skills whatsoever. As soon as they added that abomination, half the dungeon roleplay died. No one cares about dungeon details anymore, now it's just "You search for a secret door? Roll spot."
Have you considered that maybe a whole lot of people don't really find the whole "I poke everything with my 10-foot pole" routine fun? Not that "Everybody roll Perception" is fun, either. PASSIVE perception is okay, though. Mostly.

>Clerics were amazing. All the spheres and special powers of the various gods that you could homebrew almost without any limits.
Total agreement. The whole "specialty priest" class construction kit is the best way that clerics have ever been done in D&D.

>Bards were fucking awesome. The bard handbook kits had the best shit. Nowadays it's just "I insult him so bad he dies! lol!"
You are more wrong about modern bards than I can even begin to explain. But bards are an idiotic class that never should have existed, so I ain't gonna try.

>If you rolled a paladin you were automatically awesome, purely because of the class ability requirements.
That is absolutely not a good thing.

>Everyone getting the same amount of experience and needing the same amount to level up, with no class-specific special awards or anything. This one's probably also just me, but I like the math.
I've got a weird appreciation for asynchronous character advancement, myself. If you're just going to use XP as a pacing mechanic rather than a reward, what's the point of even tracking it? Might as well just say "Okay, you just completed the adventure; you can all level up" instead of tracking the same amount of XP for every PC, each of whome has the same XP thresholds. There's a videogamey kind of fun in collecting points, so if you're gonna use XP at all, you might as well do more with it.

You fail on both counts.

All the other players eat Doritos as you have an Aspie moment then storm out of the garage claiming you'll go make your own RPG group that is better.

Secretly they are all relieved because your incessant arguing and rules lawyering was hell to sit through, and your odd dry sweat smell was slightly nauseating.

Bye!

This guy does NOT get it and should probably try reading the 1e DMG.

XP for treasure is not "gold making you stronger". It is a particular kind of "story award" that has the superlative dual advantages of being concrete rather than arbitrary, and motivating the players to be heist-centric adventurers rather than murder-centric.

>To run a proper old school game

Honestly, if your list is what you consider to be essential to "proper old school" games, I'm not surprised that most people don't enjoy them.

That list sounds horrible and unfun. Only the last point seems to have any merit, except that the rules of later editions already encourage roleplaying solutions and things like encouraging players to specify how they search for things.

Also, resource management in later editions still exists, it's just far less cumbersome than having to track how many torches and pints of oil you have while tracking each minute you spend in the dungeon. Also, 2e had things like free light sources, and plenty of other "cheap" ways to bypass what you consider obstacles.

People tend to prefer to care about things that matter, and rather than being concerned with whether or not they are carrying enough food (which largely just translated into having to put aside a few pounds of their carry capacity and paying a small tax at towns), they want to worry about whether or not they can disable a particularly tricky trap, or save the princess in time, or convince the black knight to stop chasing them.

Hey, I was asked to give an OPINION on things I like better in 2e than in 5e. I gave my opinion. As with all opinions, you're free to disagree.

>"I poke everything with my 10-foot pole" routine

You do that and wandering monsters eat you. You only stop to poke stuff if it seems suspicious.

I disagree with that. You could simply make the fighter class 'better' at these things. The fighter can 'lead' hirelings better than other classes (so skill check bonus, etc). That sort of thing.

That the game doesn't work that way now, doesn't imply that it couldn't have been designed to work that way again.

Wouldn't have to be a big effect anyhow. Just a small nudge there would have given some cool identity stuff to the fighter that maybe he is missing a bit of now.

Try it. You may find it immersive and awesome, as anyone with any sense will.

>That's why I like AD&D. It and its players still had the modular toolbox mentality. Later editions dealt away with it, and relegated it to a token mention at the start of the book that very few people care for.
5e built a golden idol, named it "Do Whatever the Fuck You Want", and pays obeisance to it once every five pages in all DM materials.

>People tend to prefer to care about things that matter

YOU tend to prefer to care about things that matter. Speak for yourself.

>motivating the players to be heist-centric adventurers rather than murder-centric.

>YOUR FUN IS WRONG AND YOU SHOULD FEEL BAD

That is basically you.

>tracking each minute

You track in roughly ten minute turns, not each minute.

>Also, 2e had things like free light sources, and plenty of other "cheap" ways to bypass what you consider obstacles.

2e was a transitional period where TSR was moving away from the classic, tactical style to pushing story-centric railroad modules for great profit.

The first phrase does not imply the second. You have inferred erroneously.

Dure thats what gets a lot of new players into it, also that people will probably stick with the first system they tried which will generally be the newest one available.

But aside from that, 5e legitimately is a very solid system.

People don't want to manage henchmen anymore though. Building the game to accommodate them would not appeal to modern players. Wargamers and dnd players have long since parted ways

Nice fanfiction.

My Barbarian rages in response to the rock slide, becoming resistant to the bludgeoning damage, and then claws his way out of the pile thanks to his rage giving him advantage on STR while raging.

Yep, which is why some of us like to play the older games, it supports stuff that the newer games don't without houseruling to hell and back.
I also like new school games and hippie story games. I just like games

I don't know. I started with 3.5e because it was the newest back in the day, then moved on to 2e and legitimately found it better.

I know a lot of people with similar experiences.

And yeah, 5e is pretty legitimately better than 3rd or 4th edition, mainly because it continues their philosophy and mindset with vastly better rules. But AD&D's philosophy is an entirely different one, which is why it still has merit to it.

It is a story award that is largely nonsensical, even moreso than the idea that stabbing enough goblins can make you a better spellcaster. At least in the latter case, we understand that the person is going through trying experiences, while in the other we see people getting stronger just by getting money but not spending it.

>advantages of being concrete

This is so stupid of you to say, I'm saddened that you said it wholeheartedly. It's really a bizarre kind of rule-slave mentality that I thought had largely died out.

>motivating the players to be heist-centric adventurers rather than murder-centric.

At the disadvantage of making "get the gold" the most important thing, restricting potential goals and encouraging grab-and-go gameplay. In the case of XP for challenges overcome, there's substantial versatility, enabling DM's to largely choose whether to make games more heist, murder, or otherwise centric, or simply not centric at all by rewarding players for the methods they themselves choose.

Basic is better than AD&D

Your rage ends in 6 seconds because you are not attacking or being attacked and you lose advantage to your rolls

In the context of the original post quoted, there is the suggestion that because things are done differently in 5e then in 2e, somehow the people playing 5e are WRONG and are not having FUN the CORRECT WAY.

>You may find it immersive and awesome, as anyone with any sense will.
>as anyone with any sense will.

Yes, because we can only play a game the way you want it to be played... Any other way just wouldn't be fun.

Some of us like exciting adventure, rather then tracking every nonsense detail.

When I GM, I use the common sense rule. "Do we have food/rations?" Yes, of course you do, you would have been stupid to not get any before your trek.

"Do I have a torch?" Sure, you were in a forest, you found a branch and lit it.

Tracking Minutae can be fun for some, but not for me, or my group. Why count out litres of lamp oil when they could be scaling a cave wall, chasing the BBEG who is making a daring escape?

6 seconds is enough to get out from under the rock slide.

>Why count out litres of lamp oil when they could be scaling a cave wall, chasing the BBEG who is making a daring escape?

Because then you could have the oil run out in the middle of a cold dark dungeon, and now you must fumble your way back to civilization while your food runs out as well.

It's fucking tense and amazing in ways setpiece chase scenes can never find, and you would see sense as well if you ever tried it.

Not to mention the DM has an unlimited supply of rocks.

This guy speaks the truth, the only thing I like in AD&D is the kits from 2e, I really love to have lots of options for classes.

That's why I'm playing ACKS

>It's fucking tense and amazing in ways setpiece chase scenes

Nah, it's boring.

I'm going to keep having fun my way, and no argument you can make is going to change that.

I like to mix and match 1e and 2e. The latter for the most part just smoothens the former out and deals away with the rough edges, and is much easier to get into and keep track of - but the former has a lot more feel to it.

I agree ACKS is great though.

>Nah, it's boring.

How can you tell if you've never tried it? You're just talking out of your ass based on preconceptions and prejudices.

>Implying six seconds is all I'd need to claw out of a rock slide.
Also, if I'm taking damage then the rage will last for a full minute.

Now that I think about it, my Barbarian would have danger sense as well, so he'd be able to just jump out of the way with a good DEX check, which I'd also have advantage on as well.

So how'd I get buried under a rock slide in the first fucking place DM?

>5e is pretty legitimately better than...4e
They are different beasts and as a 4e fan, 5e is largely unappealing

Lucky for wizards, no one liked 4e to begin with