I don't get "hating" games ...

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Gygax was a big influence on me as a child as well. Thanks to Gygax I was one of those weird little kids who used words like obfuscate in everyday speech (although as a teen I quickly learned that clear concise speech and simple language is preferable!). Seriously though, I credit Gygax for my excellent vocabulary and good SAT scores.
That reminds me of 4th grade at Catholic school. A teacher saw me reading the AD&D DMG and asked me why I should be reading it. I rattled off some fancy vocabulary like "miscellaneous" ... :grin: She left me alone after that.
 
Gary was pretty tight with the management at Random House and I've always wondered if the mass return of unsold books was a hostile takeover attempt on Gary's behalf. That might have been the better alternate reality: Random House owing TSR and bringing back Gary. Ah well, we'll probably never know.
That's an interesting idea and "could have been" scenario. I've also heard an unsubstantiated rumor that essentially this offer (not necessarily to run the TSR division but at least to write D&D 3rd edition) was on the table shortly after Wizards of the Coast acquired TSR, but that Trigee (Gary and Gail Gygax - with the latter apparently leading the negotiation) overplayed their hand and asked for too much so WotC walked away and went in a different direction.
 
Considering that the Random House return of books happened a decade after Gygax's ouster that sounds very unlikely.
 
But if people are having fun, then that's all that counts. Not need to be a dick.
Life doesn't have to be too complex - you just try to get along, and not be an idiot to anyone else if possible.
I think you summed it up pretty well :thumbsup:

(I initialy intended to add some lived-experience, meaniful content to this thread;
but by now I haven't a clue what it's about anymore heh heh) :grin:
 
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Considering that the Random House return of books happened a decade after Gygax's ouster that sounds very unlikely.
But only a year after the Dangerous Journeys settlement left TSR cash-strapped (apparently between the legal costs and the amount they paid GDW to buy up the already-printed stock TSR spent over $2 million on the suit) and Gygax - presumably - very angry, smarting at yet another defeat, and eager for revenge. I have no idea if there's any truth to that rumor (and therefore assume there isn't) but if it had happened it wouldn't have been unprecedented - it's actually pretty similar to the maneuver TSR used to take over SPI.
 
I think a well-made docu-drama might be something that could possibly work but they might need to take some artistic liberties to spice it up a bit. “Based on a true story”...and all of that.
 
That reminds me of 4th grade at Catholic school. A teacher saw me reading the AD&D DMG and asked me why I should be reading it. I rattled off some fancy vocabulary like "miscellaneous" ... :grin: She left me alone after that.

ie, mind your own business sister. :grin:

I think a well-made docu-drama might be something that could possibly work but they might need to take some artistic liberties to spice it up a bit. “Based on a true story”...and all of that.


With chicks and guns and fire trucks... :tongue:

 
I further comment on game-hating: the more I hear someone tearing down a game, the more I start itching to play it just to find out if it's really as bad as they say.

I'm like that with everything, though. Bad things are interesting. :grin: Good things usually smooth, functional, elegant and with absolutely nothing in them that hooks your interest.

That said, I have limits. I'm not going to try to run FATAL or read Fifty Shades of Grey. :tongue:
 
I think a well-made docu-drama might be something that could possibly work but they might need to take some artistic liberties to spice it up a bit. “Based on a true story”...and all of that.
David Fincher would be the director for this. The Social Network made a compelling story out of Facebook's founding and the lawsuit over it, with a bunch of characters who are probably terrible people. Just needs the right book to be adapted.
 
Seems that many have forgotten that the most hated man in rpgs in the 80s was Gygax himself for his lightining quick cease-and-desist copyright enforcement against fandom, the destruction of SPI, rabid attacks against APAs and dyspeptic Dragon columns.

That’s only because no one really knew who the Blumes and Williams were.:devil:
 
But only a year after the Dangerous Journeys settlement left TSR cash-strapped (apparently between the legal costs and the amount they paid GDW to buy up the already-printed stock TSR spent over $2 million on the suit) and Gygax - presumably - very angry, smarting at yet another defeat, and eager for revenge. I have no idea if there's any truth to that rumor (and therefore assume there isn't) but if it had happened it wouldn't have been unprecedented - it's actually pretty similar to the maneuver TSR used to take over SPI.

The idea that a corporation like Random House would take 'revenge' for Gygax strikes me as wishful thinking with zero evidence to back it up. Similar to the claim that the $2M (supposed) settlement with Gygax left TSR 'cash strapped.'

These kind of speculations from fans based on internet rumours have proven to have little purchase with reality when someone actually researches it. I'll believe it when someone like Riggs or Peterson finds some actual evidence to back it up.
 
The idea that a corporation like Random House would take 'revenge' for Gygax strikes me as wishful thinking with zero evidence to back it up. Similar to the claim that the $2M (supposed) settlement with Gygax left TSR 'cash strapped.'

These kind of speculations from fans based on internet rumours have proven to have little purchase with reality when someone actually researches it. I'll believe it when someone like Riggs or Peterson finds some actual evidence to back it up.
Well, the guy who mentioned it ( David Johansen David Johansen) specifically said "I've always wondered if..." so he wasn't claiming it as a fact or even as something he'd heard rumors about. It's pure idle speculation and, yeah, at least on my part a bit of "what if" wishful thinking. We're not writing history books here, we're just fans chatting on the internet and speculating about possible might-have-beens.

As for TSR being cash-strapped in the mid-90s, the facts speak for themselves:
TSR Wikipedia page said:
Despite total sales of $40 million, TSR ended 1996 with few cash reserves. When Random House returned an unexpectedly high percentage of unsold stock, including the year's inventory of unsold novels and sets of Dragon Dice, and charged a fee of several million dollars, TSR found itself in a cash crunch. With no cash, TSR was unable to pay their printing and shipping bills, and the logistics company that handled TSR's pre-press, printing, warehousing, and shipping refused to do any more work. Since the logistics company had the production plates for key products such as core D&D books, there was no means of printing or shipping core products to generate income or secure short-term financing.[23] Despite high sales, the company was deep in debt and not profitable in large part due to returns.[21]:30 Thirty staff members were laid off in December 1996, and other staff left over disagreements about how the crisis was handled, including James M. Ward.[21]:30 In large part due to the need to refund Random House, TSR entered 1997 over $30 million in debt.[22]:174 TSR was threatened by lawsuits due to unpaid freelancers and missing royalties, but TSR made enough money from products already on the shelves to pay remaining staff through the first half of 1997.[21]:30 With no viable financial plan for TSR's survival, Lorraine Williams sold the company to Wizards of the Coast in 1997.
The $2M they'd sunk into the Dangerous Journeys suit wasn't the sole cause of their cash crunch and financial woes (and AFAIK nobody, not even Gygax, ever claimed it was) but it was surely a contributing factor, in that they would've been better positioned to pay off their other debts if they had that extra $2M on hand when the bills came due.
 
I don't think Random House's motivation would have been revenge for Gary. But I do think they saw all the numbers on novel sales verses boxed sets and saw that TSR was weak. Putting Gary in charge would just have been a rational next step and a bit of icing on the cake. But yeah, it's pure speculation. I'm not Gary's biggest fan but I am a big fan of creative control and direction. I think his second edition AD&D would have been a much better game.
 
I don't think Random House's motivation would have been revenge for Gary. But I do think they saw all the numbers on novel sales verses boxed sets and saw that TSR was weak. Putting Gary in charge would just have been a rational next step and a bit of icing on the cake. But yeah, it's pure speculation. I'm not Gary's biggest fan but I am a big fan of creative control and direction. I think his second edition AD&D would have been a much better game.

Considering Gary's former mismanagement of the company I find this all very fanciful.

As Peterson's The Ambush at Sheridan Springs shows part of the motivation to remove Gygax was because he was blocking outside investment that would have helped address the company's debt to maintain personal control of the board, the banks that TSR owed money to did not want him or the Blumes in charge anymore, they were refusing to extend any more credit to TSR until they cleaned house.

The idea of Gygax being brought in to 'fix' a company he had played such a central role in bringing to the peak of disaster years previously seems groundless. The last person a bank would want running TSR would be Gygax.

We've seen far too much of this groundless speculation and rumour-mongering becoming treated as fact in fandom, much of it even being put into print as 'history' by Shannon Appelcline in Designers and Dragons.
 
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Well, the guy who mentioned it ( David Johansen David Johansen) specifically said "I've always wondered if..." so he wasn't claiming it as a fact or even as something he'd heard rumors about. It's pure idle speculation and, yeah, at least on my part a bit of "what if" wishful thinking. We're not writing history books here, we're just fans chatting on the internet and speculating about possible might-have-beens.

As for TSR being cash-strapped in the mid-90s, the facts speak for themselves:

The $2M they'd sunk into the Dangerous Journeys suit wasn't the sole cause of their cash crunch and financial woes (and AFAIK nobody, not even Gygax, ever claimed it was) but it was surely a contributing factor, in that they would've been better positioned to pay off their other debts if they had that extra $2M on hand when the bills came due.

It is kind of shocking at times to see the difference between the money taken in by a company vs the actual profits. Some businesses do very well for themselves, but many industries have very tight margins, a 1-2% profit margin is not uncommon, most large grocery chains come in around 2%. I like old trucks (big rigs) and we lost a ton of American truck manufacturers after WW2 for a variety of reasons, but a large part is their ratio of profit to costs was slim, so they had a hard time weathering downturns in the market, and they didn't have the resources to update frequently to follow trends (diesel engines, more modern styling etc). Even the big three (Ford 1998, GM 1987 and Dodge 1975) have dropped out of the big truck (Class 7 and 8) market.

Taking one of the (today) lesser known companies, Federal built trucks from 1910-1959 and built heavy trucks for the US military during both World Wars, 500 during WW1 and nearly 12,000 during WW2. Total military contracts during World War 2 for Federal came to $78 million, but in 1944 the company had its peak profit of $776,829, and total profit 1943-46 came to 2.5 million (this also included a small number of civilian trucks built during these years). In 1951 they had 20.8 million in sales, but only made $227,906 in profits, in 1952 they had sales of 13.5 million for a net loss of $1.17 million wiping out several years of profits. The company was for offered for sale in 1954 and built their last truck in 1959.
 
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Good thread, want to comment a lot, but I need to wait--so one quick note for now on one of the tangent subjects.

And supporting the thesis that quality in music is subjective, I actually thought [We Build This City] was quite catchy... :/

To be fair, I think the song itself is not a bad song. The song was written by Bernie Taupin, Martin Page, Dennis Lambert, and Peter Wolf. Look at their history and the hits they have. It was even nominated for a Grammy.

I personally think that it wasn't the song itself, but rather the remnants of iconic 60's superstars Jefferson Airplane--I say remnants since Starship was pretty much an exit of all the originals except Grace Slick--performing it that made it seem hollow, as it wasn't the type of song they were known for. These songwriters we doing stuff for Elton John and Heart at the same time--I'll bet if either one of them had done it instead of Starship it wouldn't have been considered as poorly received by critics.

There's an interesting oral history of the song.

 
Good thread, want to comment a lot, but I need to wait--so one quick note for now on one of the tangent subjects.



To be fair, I think the song itself is not a bad song. The song was written by Bernie Taupin, Martin Page, Dennis Lambert, and Peter Wolf. Look at their history and the hits they have. It was even nominated for a Grammy.

I personally think that it wasn't the song itself, but rather the remnants of iconic 60's superstars Jefferson Airplane--I say remnants since Starship was pretty much an exit of all the originals except Grace Slick--performing it that made it seem hollow, as it wasn't the type of song they were known for. These songwriters we doing stuff for Elton John and Heart at the same time--I'll bet if either one of them had done it instead of Starship it wouldn't have been considered as poorly received by critics.

There's an interesting oral history of the song.

Nice points here. Yah, I even recall some of the backlash focusing on typical 80s "Look at what's become of 60s / 70s counter-culture!!!" hand-wringing ...
 
I get so tired of artists that disown their 80s hits, as if they were forced to do them. Some of these songs went to #1. I remember watching a special on Flock of Seagulls and Mike Score going on and on about how “I Ran” wasn’t their only hit and how he was tired of it. Dude, that song put you on the map! Own it.
 
I get so tired of artists that disown their 80s hits, as if they were forced to do them. Some of these songs went to #1. I remember watching a special on Flock of Seagulls and Mike Score going on and on about how “I Ran” wasn’t their only hit and how he was tired of it. Dude, that song put you on the map! Own it.

Artist's pfffft. :tongue: I have a similar reaction when I see actors dismissing a movie they were in. Micheal Caine managed to find something nice to say about Jaws 4, so put on your big boy shoes and say something positive about a song, film, painting that put food in your belly (or in Mr Caine's case, bought him a terrific house).

 
I have a similar reaction when I see actors dismissing a movie they were in. Micheal Caine managed to find something nice to say about Jaws 4,

Jaws 4 isn't a favorite movie or anything, but I would watch it whenever it came on TV and whenever I'd notice it on Netflix. Because it's excellent neutral noise. There's nothing to really follow. The movie just painlessly runs for an hour and a half and then it's done. Just grab some RPG stuff to work on, start the movie up, work on RPG stuff, look up whenever Caine is on screen or something really stupid happens, great time waster!

I mean, it has Alex Rogan in it!
 
I get so tired of artists that disown their 80s hits, as if they were forced to do them. Some of these songs went to #1. I remember watching a special on Flock of Seagulls and Mike Score going on and on about how “I Ran” wasn’t their only hit and how he was tired of it. Dude, that song put you on the map! Own it.
THat's funny, I was just thinking of that a couple of days ago. I can understand their frustration, but a little gratitude, folks!

Anyway, "Wishing I Had a Photograph of You" was a WAAAYYYYYYY better song ...
 
I think his second edition AD&D would have been a much better game.

Do you? Because... comparing his first edition AD&D to original D&D, and what I know of his work after TSR... if Gary Gygax really was the main creative genius behind Dungeons & Dragons, he clearly had a truly staggering case of Lucas Syndrome. Whatever credit he rightfully deserves in the creation of the original Dungeons & Dragons game, everything he did concerning TSR and D&D after 1980 involves repeatedly barely avoiding destroying them both and then blaming everyone else for it.

Frankly... when it comes to useless speculation, I think Advanced Dungeons & Dragons was a mistake that both TSR and Wizards of the Coast doubled down on... and I'm much more curious to see what the game would look like now if TSR had gone the other direction in the late 80s.
 
I think BECMI was the best thing TSR ever did with D&D regarding clarity of the rules, scope of the product and just the production values. I consider the Rules Cyclopedia a masterwork and one of the top ten RPG products ever.
 
I think BECMI was the best thing TSR ever did with D&D regarding clarity of the rules, scope of the product and just the production values. I consider the Rules Cyclopedia a masterwork and one of the top ten RPG products ever.
Yah, when I have a hankering to play old-school D&D, I keep looking at Moldvay/Cook B/X. Ironic, since I never gave it much attention BackInTheDay(TM).
 
Yah, when I have a hankering to play old-school D&D, I keep looking at Moldvay/Cook B/X. Ironic, since I never gave it much attention BackInTheDay(TM).
Yeah almost the same story here...

I loved the idea of Dungeons & Dragons back then, but due to playing other rpgs first, by the time the Basic D&D mechanics were explained to me, I just didn't dig how it worked. AD&D only compounded this by tenfold; it felt like B/X in clumsy shoes tripping over itself.

However these days when I get a hankering for classic fantasy, I will often reach for D&D 5E. I'm not evangelically into the new slick vibe, although it does feel better than the WoW vibe of 3E and moreso with 4E. When I run D&D 5E I'm more mentally playing it with all the artwork and notions from DDC or the old D&D B/X era. Very classic high fantasy, very much with a Fritz Leiber vibe to it, with occasional touches of Michael Moporcock and Robert Howard at times. Fritz Leiber hits spot on for D&D and me.

Even using some cool character sheets like this (by Dyson Logos on DrivethruRPG), to capture some old school classic fantasy flavour:

1594369416424.png

But yeah the irony is that in truth I rarely played D&D WayBackThen (TM)*



(* Covering a similar time period, but not to be confused with the already trademarked "BackInTheDay')
 
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I started with Fighting Fantasy in primary school. In high school I had a AD&D2E group but despite the fact that we talked a lot about playing the game, we didn't actually end up playing it very much and we weren't very good at it, so it mostly descended into arguments and fizzled out after one or two sessions.

By the time I got to university and started gaming regularly everyone was playing White Wolf games or Cyberpunk and AD&D was regarded as primitive as basically crap. Even when we played the 2E settings such as Dark Sun or Planescape we tended to use other systems, mostly Gurps. It was only after 3E was released that there was actual interest in getting an actual D&D campaign together.

I have a certain nostalgia for 2E but it's mostly from endlessly reading and rereading Dragon magazines during the early 90s.
 
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I started with Moldvay B/X at 8 but moved on to AD&D. At 45 I regret that move. Honestly though, I think 5e does old school better than many old school games.
Other than Race-as-Class, you could probably do just as much with less, which is why I think the B/X rules worked well for the 'pulp fantasy' of D&D.
Swords & Wizardry is a decent set of rules that imports a few things from AD&D, and adds the optional ascending AC from the 3E+ era, but keeps the majority of mechanics chugging around the B/X level.

If I didn't have D&D 5E to play with my lads, I would probably be just as content playing Swords & Wizardry instead.
It's got that vibe I like, and it keeps things simple.
 
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I started with Fighting Fantasy in primary school. In high school I had a AD&D2E group but despite the fact that we talked a lot about playing the game, we didn't actually end up playing it very much and we weren't very good at it, so it mostly descended into arguments and fizzled out after one or two sessions.

By the time I got to university and started gaming regularly everyone was playing White Wolf game or Cyberpunk and AD&D was regarded as primitive as basically crap. Even when we played the 2E settings such as Dark Sun or Planescape we tended to use other systems, mostly Gurps. It was only after 3E was released that there was actual interest in getting an actual D&D campaign together.

I have a certain nostalgia for 2E but it's mostly from endlessly reading and rereading Dragon magazines during the early 90s.
Sounds eeriely similar to me, it seems alot of us are from a similar vintage

I started out in the 1980s with Fighting Fantasy, but by my mid-teens I wanted to have a more fully fledged rpg like D&D, but my cousin convinced me to buy the BRP game RuneQuest. RQ2 (and later RQ3) were great for simulation, and I became a BRP GM from then on. Later I was exposed to D&D B/X as a player (not GM), and although I loved all the flavour and trappings of D&D, I just found the mechanics quite odd and inconsistent.

Back then I was thinking too 'simulationist'. That's probably why I felt AD&D was the worst offender, as it expanded on D&D B/X, which wasn't even trying to be simulationist in the first place. These days I can view it all with different eyes, but back then it almost felt harrowing how I could like the vibe so much, but found the core mechanics too inconsistent for me to run.

I went back to running RQ as a GM, but showed up as a PC for many games of D&D B/X, MERP/RM, and GURPS. MERP and RM probably stood out as the best of those back then. Yes the ICE system had lots of tables, but that added colour, and it had a great vibe, almost as good as D&D. RM was the AD&D for us.

By the time AD&D 2E was kicking, I was at Uni and heavily into RQ, as well as other BRP games, such as Stormbringer and occasionally Call of Cthulhu. We also played Battletech/Mechwarrior a little bit, and a few others.
I actually was quite interested in pursuing some of the cool AD&D 2E settings however, such as Dark Sun and Al-Qadim, and I was considering porting these into BRP or GURPS (which my friends were also running). Having limited funds was my main barrier around this time, so I just kept playing the stuff I had.

By the mid 1990s we all getting into Shadowrun and World of Darkness, which consumed us for almost a decade. For most of my 20s it seemed that the Sword & Sorcery and Heroic Fantasy genre faded a bit until WotC changed all that. The full-on marketing bomb of D&D 3E blew away all that Grungey-Urban-Gothic-Fantasy angst. We played D&D 3E for a while, but it felt flat to me. The only D&D 3E line I liked was Mongoose's CONAN, and that was because the source material was really evocative. Other than that, I found most D&D 3E stuff not to my tastes, especially the WotC offerings, and I remember thinking at the time that it felt like a tabletop version of Everquest (mmo) more than feeling like classic D&D.

By the mid 2000s I had drifted back to being a BRP GM, it just did what I wanted. Plus having babies around then knocked the steam out of everything for a while, heh heh.

Got back into rpgs somewhere between 2010 and 2012, and played a lot of different rpgs since then. D&D 4E was on the shelves, but it reminded me so much of World of Warcraft (mmo) that I kept clear of it. However my tastes are much wider than they were in my youth, and my rpg collection grew rather large during these days, lots of different games and genres. Despite the range of titles, the dust is settling again with the many BRP games, Fate Core, and, surprisingly, D&D.

I took an interest in D&D 5E because it seemed like it could be used to portray some of the earlier Classic Fantasy vibe to an extent, at least much better than any of the other D&D editions that WotC has done. I like the consistent mechanics, and it doesn't feel bland to me, so it's a winner. Not my favourite, but at least I can run a D&D game now. I'm pretty happy with D&D 5E, but I would like to see if they could try and bring back Dark Sun or Al-Qadim to run it in (although given the contemporary sensititives this is unlikely to occur).

The nostalgia from the TSR D&D era still grabs me like it does for most of us who were there - the artwork, the approach, the fanzines, etc, it all captures that lightning-in-a-bottle for many of us, myself included :thumbsup:
 
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I like the specific flavor and details of Gary Gygax’s version of AD&D - I like the detailed listings of magic types and material components for spells (even though it’s mostly background color that’s only rarely relevant in play), I like the absurd multiplicity of spells, magic items, and monsters, and the Vancian element of many of the spells and magic items bearing their creators’ names. I like gnomes, I like bullywugs and jermlaine and mind flayers and kuo-toa, I like that there’s a secret international cabal of druids and bards. I REALLY like his multiversal concept of parallel Prime planes (the dimension of probability) surrounded in one dimension by elemental and energy planes and in another dimension by the outer planes keyed to the alignments, the inhabitants of which are waging a proxy cosmic war in the prime(s) that PCs who were initially self-interested in gathering treasure and acquiring power will eventually become embroiled (and perhaps even come to play pivotal roles) in. I like the content and flavor of the adventures he wrote and the world they build up through hints and suggestions of things just outside the frame. I like Graz’zt and Iuz and Lolth and Iggwilv and Zuggtmoy and Obmi and Eclavdra and Fhlarlanghn and Celestian and Boccob and Ehlonna and Rexfelis the Cat Lord and the lurking, looming threats of Tharizdun and the Elder Elemental God. I like Greyhawk City as equal parts Lankhmar, Dickensian London, and Depression-era Chicago - an impossibly large and cosmopolitan metropolis where all the extremes of good and evil, high and low, rich and poor, exist side by side in an uneasy and fragile balance. All of those things combine to build up a feeling of a fictional world that I find really engrossing and compelling - that draws me in and makes me want to explore it.

Sure I could lift out most of that stuff and graft it into a simpler or more elegant rules system, but (1) doing so would be a whole lot of extra work for me, and (2) I also like the baroque quirkiness and flavor of the 1E rules themselves and consider it part of the package alongside the setting elements. I like the colorful (if pointless) level titles and all the pole arms and the big table of weapon vs AC adjustments that’s almost never actually used (but is there if you want it), and all of the giant charts and tables that feel more like actuarial tables (Gygax’s old day job) than mathematical formulas, and the sense that the game rules are describing the fictional world rather than prescribing it and you can always add more detail and new elements and it's pointless to worry or fret about how it fits within the rules framework because there isn’t really a “rules framework” as such - it's all just a compilation of more and more and more modular descriptive Stuff.

Yeah it makes the game harder to learn and explain and pretty much required that you have an experienced mentor on hand to teach you - it's not something you can really study so much as just immerse yourself in - and I totally get why TSR moved away from it (and almost certainly still would’ve done so had Gygax remained in control - Frank Mentzer who wrote the BECMI sets and devoted many pages in Polyhedron to trying to systematize and regularize AD&D for tournament play is who Gygax had pegged to head up the AD&D revision he had planned) but for someone who doesn’t face those obstacles - who already knows and understands the rules and the logic behind them (subconsciously at first, consciously now), I really like the freedom it gives me. Because there’s no formal system or inviolate underlying mathematical formulas I don't need to concern myself about maintaining consistency and coloring within those lines, so the game is, effectively, infinitely expandable - I can always add new elements and more detail to existing elements as I need or want them in my games, and can do so just as I want them to be.

I get the appeal of minimalism and simplicity too - depending on my mood and who I'm playing with I'm happy to play a minimalist game, and can do so with simple rules or no formal rules at all - but that's not always what I want. Full, hard-core, baroque 80s-style Maximalist AD&D scratches a different itch and engages a different part of my brain. To me taking a deep dive into Gygax's world is less intellectual and more emotional and experiential than the DIY approach. I don't have to do the mental work and think about everything at a meta level; I'm free to immerse myself into the details and flavor of the fictional world and live in its moments - that my decisions and creations (as both player and GM) can be made based on the fictional milieu (what works for the setting and situation) rather than at the meta-level of system. Sometimes a toolbox is cool, but other times it's just as cool when the scene has already been set and you don't have to build it all yourself and can just get lost playing in the sandbox. And that's what Gygax's AD&D does for me.
 
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I like the specific flavor and details of Gary Gygax’s version of AD&D - I like the detailed listings of magic types and material components for spells (even though it’s mostly background color that’s only rarely relevant in play), I like the absurd multiplicity of spells, magic items, and monsters, and the Vancian element of many of the spells and magic items bearing their creators’ names, I like gnomes, I like bullywugs and jermlaine and mind flayers and kuo-toa, I like that there’s a secret international canal of druids and bards. I REALLY like his multiversal concept of parallel Prime planes (the dimension of probability) surrounded in one dimension by elemental and energy planes and in another dimension by the outer planes keyed to the alignments, the inhabitants of which are waging a proxy cosmic war in the prime(s) that PCs who were initially self-interested in gathering treasure and acquiring treasure will eventually become embroiled (and perhaps even come to play pivotal roles) in. I like the content and flavor of the adventures he wrote and the world they build up through hints and suggestions of things just outside the frame. I like Graz’zt and Iuz and Lolth and Iggwilv and Zuggtmoy and Obmi and Eclavdra and Fhlarlanghn and Celestian and Boccob and Ehlonna and Rexfelis the Cat Lord and the lurking, looming threats of Tharizdun and the Elder Elemental God. I like Greyhawk City as equal parts Lankhmar, Dickensian London, and Depression-era Chicago - an impossibly large and cosmopolitan metropolis where all the extremes of good and evil, high and low, rich and poor, exist side by side in an uneasy and fragile balance. All of those things combine to build up a feeling of a fictional world that I find really engrossing and compelling - that draws me in and makes me want to explore it.

Sure I could lift out most of that stuff and graft it into a simpler or more elegant rules system, but (1) doing so would be a whole lot of extra work for me, and (2) I also like the baroque quirkiness and flavor of the 1E rules themselves and consider it part of the package alongside the setting elements. I like the colorful (if pointless) level titles and all the pole arms and the big table of weapon vs AC adjustments that’s almost never actually used (but is there if you want it), and all of the giant charts and tables that feel more like actuarial tables (Gygax’s old day job) than mathematical formulas, and the sense that the game rules are describing the fictional world rather than prescribing it and you can always add more detail and new elements and it's pointless to worry or fret about how it fits within the rules framework because there isn’t really a “rules framework” as such - it's all just a compilation of more and more and more modular descriptive Stuff.

Yeah it makes the game harder to learn and explain and pretty much required that you have an experienced mentor on hand to teach you - it's not something you can really study so much as just immerse yourself in - and I totally get why TSR moved away from it (and almost certainly still would’ve done so had Gygax remained in control - Frank Mentzer who wrote the BECMI sets and devoted many pages in Polyhedron to trying to systematize and regularize AD&D for tournament play is who Gygax had pegged to head up the AD&D revision he had planned) but for someone who doesn’t face those obstacles - who already knows and understands the rules and the logic behind them (subconsciously at first, consciously now), I really like the freedom it gives me. Because there’s no formal system or inviolate underlying mathematical formulas I don't need to concern myself about maintaining consistency and coloring within those lines, so the game is, effectively, infinitely expandable - I can always add new elements and more detail to existing elements as I need or want them in my games, and can do so just as I want them to be.

I get the appeal of minimalism and simplicity too - depending on my mood and who I'm playing with I'm happy to play a minimalist game, and can do so with simple rules or no formal rules at all - but that's not always what I want. Full, hard-core, baroque 80s-style Maximalist AD&D scratches a different itch and engages a different part of my brain. To me taking a deep dive into Gygax's world is less intellectual and more emotional and experiential than the DIY approach. I don't have to do the mental work and think about everything at a meta level; I'm free to immerse myself into the details and flavor of the fictional world and live in its moments - that my decisions and creations (as both player and GM) can be made based on the fictional milieu (what works for the setting and situation) rather than at the meta-level of system. Sometimes a toolbox is cool, but other times it's just as cool when the scene has already been set and you don't have to build it all yourself and can just get lost playing in the sandbox. And that's what Gygax's AD&D does for me.
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Funny how a hating games thread turns into a D&D thread... :hehe:

Anyway since we've gone there, how tied to the current game world is 5E? Something I've always liked about classic editions of D&D is they were relatively generic in regard to the world. Greyhawk was sometimes implied, but it was easy to make your own world or buy one of the other options like Forgotten Realms. I see a lot of discontent with the current default world as being bland and aimed at being politically "safe". Can it be ignored and something better easily substituted or are the rules closely tied to the setting? Obviously things like Adventure's in Middle Earth exist, but that is a pretty heavy adaption so may have made changes to the core.

Since we are all baring our gaming souls here, I'm another that started with and primarily played AD&D. At a time where many of us felt mo' rules, mo' better BD&D felt like a step backwards. I quickly moved into RQ2, and then other games leaving D&D behind, but then in college there was a "D&D" club and AD&D featured heavily, so I started playing again after years of not. With the explosion of D&D based retro clones over the past decade or so, I have gained some appreciation for OD&D and BD&D vs AD&D.

My biggest disenchantment these days with levels is simply that starting at higher power levels feels like skipping ahead in a way that other games that allow for varying start levels doesn't. Starting at 5th level still feels like cheating, but a 250pt starting level in GURPS or HERO is simply setting the games power level. It is a stupid differentiation, but a tangible one to me. An artifact left over from my youth, where you just started at 1st level, period, end of story, no discussion.
 
Yah, the default setting for 5e seems to be Forgotten Realms, but the core books themselves barely favor FR over any other "generic" setting.
 
Anyway since we've gone there, how tied to the current game world is 5E? Something I've always liked about classic editions of D&D is they were relatively generic in regard to the world. Greyhawk was sometimes implied, but it was easy to make your own world or buy one of the other options like Forgotten Realms. I see a lot of discontent with the current default world as being bland and aimed at being politically "safe". Can it be ignored and something better easily substituted or are the rules closely tied to the setting? Obviously things like Adventure's in Middle Earth exist, but that is a pretty heavy adaption so may have made changes to the core.
Not really. It's nominally set around the forgotten realms, but has plenty of other options and pantheons (For example), and anything really tied to a setting tends to be in a specific setting book (But is also exportable elsewhere, if you want to). It's not quite as fully generic as I think it wants to be, but it's still pretty generic.

I wouldn't call it bland either; the base MM is quite vague and scattershot, but the expansion monster books (Volo's and Mordenkainen's) dig deeply into various Bad Guy cultures. It's not content with just saying "They're evil", it wants you to understand what makes them evil and what their goals are. Each of the evil cultures is quite distinct.
 
This is still the case with 5e. For all my niggles with D&D, fifth edition is the best game of that name in my book.

I see the second part mentioned often which added to the fact it is still the 8000lb gorilla has me contemplating getting it. My wife was one of those kids who was always interested in "D&D" but was in an area where "those games" were discouraged. I introduced her to 3E thinking that was the best odds of finding games, and she then found Pathfinder and was able to get into some games, and ran some for my older son and some of his friends. Unfortunately I really don't care for 3E / Pathfinder preferring the simplicity of earlier D&D or something like GURPS or HERO which I feel are superior with little added complexity (my opinion).

The structure of level / class is a plus in her case as she is one of those who will glom onto the "you can do anything" with a game like GURPS or HERO and quickly over complicate char gen until she loses interest. 5E sounds like it might meet us in the middle, but the last thing I want to do is introduce her to another game that I find I'm not actually into playing, or doesn't fit well with her preferences (she really only likes Fantasy games).


To the two posts that popped up while I was typing

I'm familiar with Forgotten Realm's I was under the impression they set it in an entirely new game world. FR is not an issue for me.
 
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