Gaming question.
Nov. 24th, 2003 11:18 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
tyggerjaiSo I'm terribly, teeribly out of touch with the D&D world, evidently. I don't mind that, at all, but my curiosity was recently piqued, and I'm sure some of you can answer my simple question.
When I played, back in the day, it was pretty clear that D&D(tm) and AD&D(tm) were different beasts. Forks, if you like, in software terms.
D&D had Basic, Expert, etc rulesets - a different set for each 5 (or ten?) levels of your characters, different classes, etc.
AD&D had Players Handbook, DM's Guide, Monster Manual, etc.
And they were utterly, *utterly* separate, even if they were both TSR products (and I'm not 100% sure of that, either). Point was, you played one, or the other. Some people played both, but it was like playing GURPS *and* Car Wars. Sure, they were both Steve Jackson, but they weren't the same game.
And D&D, to a large extent, faded away. It had its day, and was replaced by the far superior and more popular AD&D. Even when I was playing, that writing was on the wall. And then AD&D came out with Second Ed., which was a bit of a rewrite, but still definitely AD&D. IT said so, all over the books. AD&D. And then came 3rd Ed. Dunno what was on that - I'd long given up by this point.
Now, and this is the thrust of my query, there's Ed. 3.5. Which says ... D&D. No "Advanced" anywhere. But it *is* AD&D - there's no way *known* it's Original D&D as *I* knew it.
So what's the story? Is it just that WOTC have figured that AD&D is, to all intents and purposes D&D these days? Have they "merged" rulesets, as it were? Have they officially EOLed the "original" D&D? Was there an announcement I missed?
sol.
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When I played, back in the day, it was pretty clear that D&D(tm) and AD&D(tm) were different beasts. Forks, if you like, in software terms.
D&D had Basic, Expert, etc rulesets - a different set for each 5 (or ten?) levels of your characters, different classes, etc.
AD&D had Players Handbook, DM's Guide, Monster Manual, etc.
And they were utterly, *utterly* separate, even if they were both TSR products (and I'm not 100% sure of that, either). Point was, you played one, or the other. Some people played both, but it was like playing GURPS *and* Car Wars. Sure, they were both Steve Jackson, but they weren't the same game.
And D&D, to a large extent, faded away. It had its day, and was replaced by the far superior and more popular AD&D. Even when I was playing, that writing was on the wall. And then AD&D came out with Second Ed., which was a bit of a rewrite, but still definitely AD&D. IT said so, all over the books. AD&D. And then came 3rd Ed. Dunno what was on that - I'd long given up by this point.
Now, and this is the thrust of my query, there's Ed. 3.5. Which says ... D&D. No "Advanced" anywhere. But it *is* AD&D - there's no way *known* it's Original D&D as *I* knew it.
So what's the story? Is it just that WOTC have figured that AD&D is, to all intents and purposes D&D these days? Have they "merged" rulesets, as it were? Have they officially EOLed the "original" D&D? Was there an announcement I missed?
sol.
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(no subject)
Date: 2003-11-23 04:38 pm (UTC)Figuring that it's not necessary to officially EOL a product that a very small percentage of AD&D's current players will have played, or even know of/remember, I assume that they've just quietly changed the name out of convenience.
(no subject)
Date: 2003-11-23 05:41 pm (UTC)Waaaay back, Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson designed a game called "Dungeons and Dragons".
Then Gygax and Arneson had a falling out. Arneson put out "Basic D&D", along with Expert etc etc; Gygax put out "Advanced D&D". I'd quibble about the comparison to GURPS/Car Wars; they were closer to one another than that, close enough that you could more-or-less substitute stats from one game into another, but they were competing products made by different people.
3.0 and 3.5 are 'Advanced D&D' in the sense that they're successors to Gygax's version, not Arneson's. But "1st edition AD&D" is probably closer to its sibling, Basic D&D, than it is to its descendants 3.0 and 3.5 - they've changed a lot in that time.
I guess by the time 3.0 came out, Basic had finally breathed its last, and they no longer needed the 'Advanced' to differentiate themselves from the rival product. I don't think WotC ever owned Basic - maybe it still existed on paper somewhere, but it was a separate property and pretty much dead by the time they bought AD&D.
FWIW, as the name suggests, 3.5 is a rehaul of 3.0 rather than a new edition. 2nd Ed. is pretty widely despised among most D&Ders, including me; 3.0 was a vast improvement over 2nd Ed, and most (myself among them) prefer it over 1st Ed. AD&D these days.
I stopped playing around the time 2nd Ed. came out, and only got back into D&D last year. (Ratboy found some of our old books and wanted to play, so my wife started running a game. Then I grabbed the 3rd Ed. books and was pleasantly surprised to discover that they'd fixed a lot of the annoyances that turned me off 1st Ed.)
(no subject)
Date: 2003-11-23 06:29 pm (UTC)Because, indeed, I stopped playing with 2nd Ed. - I bought a number of the 2nd Ed. books when they were released (I think I was 15), but since I didn't play much anymore anyway, I sold them, and kept my originals (to this day!) because the 2nd Ed. sucked so much. 3rd ed I was aware of, but have never seen, because 2nd Ed. sucked so hard :)
According to the Intarweb, D&D and AD&D both belonged to TSR, but Arneson sued in 81 and they came to "an agreement", which seems to indicate TSR just quietly let D&D die, and that WOTC (who presumably also technically own both) have indeed decided that AD&D == D&D.
Fair enough too, I just wondered if there was anything more exciting to it than that.
sol.
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Memories ....
Date: 2003-11-23 06:38 pm (UTC)Semi-regular games in the CGS Junior School library. We're talking ... 1984-85 ? I believe we may have played together once or twice :)
sol.
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Re: Memories ....
Date: 2003-11-23 07:01 pm (UTC)I had no idea AD&D was a different game until I borrowed the books from Greg, one of my mother's workmates. He dressed all in orange and lived under the floor at the ANU computing centre.
Once when I was very little we had a school excursion there (Where Your Parents Work or some such - although I don't think I was actually there for this one, or if I did I've blotted it from memory). Greg burst out of the floor, threw his cloak around one of the mothers who was chaperoning the kids, and disappeared into the floor with her. I'm told the children were utterly terrified...
Re: Memories ....
Date: 2003-11-23 07:33 pm (UTC)sol.
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Re: Memories ....
Date: 2003-11-23 07:40 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2003-11-23 07:09 pm (UTC)Dons gamer nerd hat..
Date: 2003-11-23 07:49 pm (UTC)Dungeons & Dragons c1975. Three books, Gygax and Anderson, several supplements come later. Published by TSR. Original had three(!) character classes. As a truly deep gamer nerd, I own this (and the supplements).
Then along came...
Advanced Dungeons and Dragons. Gygax rewrite. Players Handbook, Dungeon Masters' Guide, Monster Manual...
Dungeons & Dragons, version 2. Several supplements with gradual upgrades. Basic (levels 1-3, Expert 4-10 I think, Masters, Immortals etc). Not entirely compatiable with AD&D. Sort of like comparing MERP with Rolemaster.
Advanced Dungeons & Dragons (2nd and 3rd edition). Gygax and TSR have a falling out. Lots of books, I lost track at this point.
Dungeons & Dragons (WOTC). A lot simpler. A lot cleaner. A lot more "realistic". Still a bit of a hack and slash game tho'.
Re: Dons gamer nerd hat..
Date: 2003-11-23 08:52 pm (UTC)Often played that way, but doesn't have to be. 3.0/3.5 handle social interactions rather better than previous incarnations (Bluff, Diplomacy, Sense Motive, and Intimidate skills cover a lot of ground between them, augmented with various other stuff). It's still a class/level-based system, but it has a fair component of skill-based now, which greatly improves flexibility in that regard.
And the PHB now specifically states that overcoming an obstacle by noncombat means (talking, sneaking, etc etc) is worth just as many XP as solving the problem by Killing Stuff. (Also, pointless bloodshed isn't supposed to earn you XP - although I suspect this is often overlooked.)
Our 3.0/3.5 game has a fair bit of combat in it (hack-and-slash is fun!) but there's plenty of social play and problem-solving going on too...
http://www.livejournal.com/community/shinyshinyelves/14170.html
http://www.livejournal.com/community/shinyshinyelves/17933.html
Hrm
Date: 2003-11-24 12:39 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2003-11-24 02:47 am (UTC)The SRD (system reference document) for DnD 3.5E can be found here:
http://www.wizards.com/D20/article.asp?x=srd35
You can download and print off (assuming a BMF printer and lots of time and paper) the bulk of the core rules books yourself.
cheers
(no subject)
Date: 2003-11-24 03:00 am (UTC):>
(no subject)
Date: 2003-11-24 09:54 pm (UTC)Ah!
Date: 2003-11-24 10:00 pm (UTC)Does sound like maintaining the "A" in the absence of a meaningful non-A D&D just became silly, and since WOTC own them both, they figured no-one would care.
sol.
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Re: Ah!
Date: 2003-11-24 10:03 pm (UTC)