If you had to choose one edition of D&D....

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If the only RPG you could play was official D&D, which edition would you choose?

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3rik said:
I like gnomes, but I imagine them more like small foresty dudes with some magic, not annoying tinkerers. More like the gnomes of folklore.
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Same here. I feel that tinker gnomes pushes them a little too close to dwarves, who I feel are better suited to being the techie/crafting race. Tinkering doesn't mesh well in my mind with their already present affinity for illusions.
3rik said:
I think with simple B/X style race-as-class gnomes you could go for the small, foresty and slightly magical type and leave out the tinkering.
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This is a good, free B/X supplement for gnomes both for people that like forest gnomes and tinker gnomes.
 
Chris Brady said:
Tinkering was a cute attempt at trying to make Gnomes into something interesting. They were already too close to Dwarfs with their fascination with precious stones and metals, they needed something more than being 'half-Dwarfs'. It hasn't really worked, Gnomes are still as dull and boring and too close to being Dwarf and Halflings with no real identity of their own.
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If you are going to speak ill of gnomes, stay out of the woods.

 
3rik said:
Their fascination with precious stones and metals also goes out the door, obviously.
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Except that's what makes Gnomes, well Gnomes. And tinkering was a Dwarf thing before it they sectioned it off to Gnomes to differentiate the Gnomes. Which again, has failed in my opinion.

At least Halflings have had some real work put into them. Of course, they were lazily incorporated almost whole cloth back in the LBB to B/X days, although I would say up to 2e. 3.x tried to make them into Gypsy/River folks. 4e and 5e are rather non-commital about them. At least someone tried to redesign them into something playable in other settings. Gnomes have no such excuse, sadly.

As for Kender, they're a whole other kettle of fish because they've become a convenient excuse for anyone to hate on Halflings. Although to be fair, a lot of Dragonlance writers are to blame as well. Because they forgot the one thing that makes characters into heroes (And I'm using the Grecian sense of the word here) A hero is someone who does something about a certain situation.

Tasslehoff, the convenient excuse for both players to be dicks to their party, and players who hate the idea of Halfling without actually, you know trying to be unique with them, is considered the 'norm' for Kender. But that's not what a Hero is. He should have been an outlier, a unique problem that didn't fit into being like the other Kender, which is why he adventured. Instead we got a lazy and easy to hate archetype that most people never really encountered but could make up stories about. Almost as many lies as the Lawful Stupid Paladins.
 
If there's one thing that's become clear to me over the years and countless threads like this - it's that there's simply no way to really address the dullness of demihumans.

It's like trying to make stale bed fresh again.
 
Chris Brady said:
Instead we got a lazy and easy to hate archetype that most people never really encountered but could make up stories about. Alm
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My prime experiences with these awful halfling and dwarf clichés were in WFRP 1e, not D&D. To be fair, we were teenagers, but the experiences soured me forever. Like trauma.

Lawful stupid paladins wrecked Star Wars and Dark Heresy campaigns for me. Inter-party conflict, mostly. Deplorable “moral” choices in the name of the God Emperor. Stubborn Jedi Knights making choices for the party with noone able to say otherwise.

Crashed and burned because these concepts reinforced and enabled “but, that’s what my character would do” acts of unbridled assholery.

And so I usually encourage my players to be liberated from the clichés. Not a perfect solution, but it helped so far.
 
Necrozius said:
My prime experiences with these awful halfling and dwarf clichés were in WFRP 1e, not D&D. To be fair, we were teenagers, but the experiences soured me forever. Like trauma.

Lawful stupid paladins wrecked Star Wars and Dark Heresy campaigns for me. Inter-party conflict, mostly. Deplorable “moral” choices in the name of the God Emperor. Stubborn Jedi Knights making choices for the party with noone able to say otherwise.

Crashed and burned because these concepts reinforced and enabled “but, that’s what my character would do” acts of unbridled assholery.

And so I usually encourage my players to be liberated from the clichés. Not a perfect solution, but it helped so far.
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If I can claim anything as a success in my 30+ years of gaming and GMing, is that I once had a group of friends tell me (even years after the campaign) that I made D&D Paladins cool.

All I ever did was stress that (and this was a 3.x game, so the other alignment Paladins were NOT a thing I used) the class alignment restriction was made of TWO parts, Lawful and Good, and that both parts were important. One could lean more into the other but BOTH parts were important. I also made sure that in MY view, Lawful didn't mean following the local laws, as some could be detrimental to being Good. Like forced slavery. It meant having a code or set of principles you didn't break, like Batman's no killing self-imposed rule, and it had to conform to the popular understood concept of 'good'.

Also, I made sure to say that if they did follow a God, and they were Good Aligned, they weren't dicks. I mean, a Good God is GOOD, and would likely understand that sometimes compromises have to be made, as long as the goal is to make it better in the long run, or the Paladin is willing to make amends. It's the Lawful Neutral Gods that were dicks and sticklers for the letter of the law, as opposed to the spirit.

And these players had heard ALL the horror stories about Lawful Stupid Paladins and dick DMs who made them that way (As well as the Kender Creep player, as I like to call it.)
 
TJS said:
If there's one thing that's become clear to me over the years and countless threads like this - it's that there's simply no way to really address the dullness of demihumans.

It's like trying to make stale bed fresh again.
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Stale bread can't be made fresh again. But it can make great toast.

And that's the trick with demi humans. They aren't for making sandwiches with, they're for putting jam on.
 
Stevethulhu said:
Stale bread can't be made fresh again. But it can make great toast.

And that's the trick with demi humans. They aren't for making sandwiches with, they're for putting jam on.
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Well I do agree that the application of fire is the solultion.
 
I've only had one person ever play a hafling. In a Spelljammer game we had a psionist/thief that was an evil lil' fucker. He'd boil the face off enemies, hamstring people, vanish and reappear, and terrorize everyone he thought he could get away with. This included the ship's captain who was a mul that somehow escaped Athas. The hafling found about his cannibalistic brethren and took great delight in carrying a knife and fork while staring at the captain. Despite all this he was fiercely protective of his crew, from the captain to the lowest deck swabber.

He certainly wasn't your Tolkien halfling.
 
Ossian said:
After choosing one edition, you could alter it any way you like....
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Well dang, I am torn between multiple editions if I can modify at will.... I like simplicity, with the option for additional widgets. Whichever edition a really cool group of people wanted to play, I suppose; but if I am going to DM, let's play D&D 5E without feats. ASI instead.
 
Darth Maximus said:
Well dang, I am torn between multiple editions if I can modify at will.... I like simplicity, with the option for additional widgets. Whichever edition a really cool group of people wanted to play, I suppose; but if I am going to DM, let's play D&D 5E without feats. ASI instead.
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I hear ya. Having working AC can be very important if the game is going long. That's why we play at restaurants a lot.
7649434e-8ee4-4fff-b656-639047c44cf5.jpg​
 
TJS said:
If there's one thing that's become clear to me over the years and countless threads like this - it's that there's simply no way to really address the dullness of demihumans.

It's like trying to make stale bed fresh again.
Click to expand...
I had some hobbyists excited to play Halfling after reading my Halfling Shadow writeup.

Halfling Shadows

The Halfling race lack of physical strength and magical gifts often means that their only recourse to deal with threats is manipulation and guile. They will plant rumors, lie, and steal to nullify any threat to their race. Their ideal is to transform a potential conflict into one of mutual cooperation. But they will do what takes to nullify the threat if that can’t be achieved.

Centuries of survival have given rise to a group of Halflings known as the Shadow. Their deep love of family and home has inspired them to tap into their innermost selves to do what needed. Techniques, honed over generations, have let these select individuals develop almost magical powers. In times of peace, they serves as the eyes and ears of the Halfling realms. In times of crisis, they are called on to act when all other measures fail.

Many of their techniques relies on the almost magical power of Halfling luck. Through training and discipline, they are able to channel their lucks into tricks that produce magical effects and allows them to exceed their physical capabilities. Interestingly it seems this is not innate to the Halfling race. Humans who dwell among Halflings are able to master their luck as well as allied members of other races.

 
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I'd run it more or less like this:

Halflings
Gnomes: small foresty guys with some illusionist or druidic magic who like foresty stuff
Dwarves: rowdy miners who like precious metals and stones
Elves: aloof tall foresty creepy überguys with magic
 
3rik said:
I'd run it more or less like this:

Halflings
Gnomes: small foresty guys with some illusionist or druidic magic who like foresty stuff
Dwarves: rowdy miners who like precious metals and stones
Elves: aloof tall foresty creepy überguys with magic
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For which edition?
 
I very recently came up with a twist on demi-humans for some campaign prep. It's a tiny bit different but nothing genre-breaking. They are meant for DCC, so they are meant to explain the race-based classes, as well as an alternate race-based class that I designed for each one. Also note that I should really come up with a dark elf class for this fiction, so let's say that's pending.

Elves
Elves were a clan of faerie that were exiled to mortal existence for their excessive ambition. Individually, an elf is able to apply to the King of Faerie to be re-admitted if he or she has obtained sufficient Grace, a quality that He proclaimed they lacked. So each elf strives for greater and greater Grace, and entrance to their aristocracy gains access to the Paths of Grace. Only a trickle are re-admitted, so despite their long lives, they are desperate to rise in standing by proving their greatness.

All established elven nobles are powerful mages of very high level, so any first-level elven adventure is doubtless very young. Elven adventurers are typically young scions who journey to human lands ostensibly to expand their horizons, but also to seek shortcuts through feats of glory. Lower caste elves may join the ranger corps in order to earn admittance to the aristocracy. Rangers are skilled in survival, diplomacy and subterfuge, as well as some combat training.

Dark elves are merely elves that have forsaken the Paths of Grace. They're obviously the outcasts, and they run the gamut from cool rebels to satanic cultists. If nothing else, dark elves are very unpredictable.

Dwarves
The dwarves of my setting are the true great culture that has fallen from grandeur. In their impossibly vast cities beneath the Earth, the dwarves attained the greatest power and sophistication of any people. Their sorcery and natural sciences were peerless. The reason for this is because their gods were able to manifest in deep subterranean vaults to discourse directly with their elders and Rune Priests. The wisdom of the dwarven gods made their people great, and for many eons, they had no reason to interact much with surface peoples.

In the last couple of centuries, however, their gods have appeared less and less often, going silent one-by-one. The deepest highways and galleries are infested with nameless monsters, and the upper levels of the cities are mostly depopulated. Many exiles must endure the indignity of practicing their fading crafts for lesser races.

Dwarven wardens are warriors trained to fight in caves and corridors in tight formations with shield walls, elite knights who pledged their souls to their cities. The rune priests use their arcane glyphs to invoke ancient compacts between dwarf and god and so perform miracles.

Halflings
These halflings are a bit of an enigma. This is a dangerous points-of-light setting, and the halfling people are not known for their military prowess. In this corner of the world, at least, they are confined to a fairly small area of the map. There is a great primeval forest is inhabited by witches and wild fae, and due to ancient pacts, they tolerate and even protect the halfling villages that live on the fringe of their woods. For their part, the halflings are very respectful of the true sovereigns of the wood and obey a bewildering code of edicts and superstitions. Neither party remembers how this state of affairs came to pass, or even where the halflings come from.

Some halflings leave their home and coexist with humans in the relatively peaceful river valleys and even the nearby metropolis. However, they are a very wary folk, and rarely leave their homelands for long without the protection of one or more doughty scouts. Halfling wizards are usually called "gnomes," and their spells have a distinctly faerie influence - which is only proper, since they learn spells from their peculiar neighbors.
 
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I love how Tolkien presents Dwarves, Elves, and Hobbits.

But I don't really dig the pastiche versions of them that appear in D&D, WFRP, WoW, etc
However they are very much part of D&D, so I expect Greyhawk and Forgotten Realms portrayals of these races to be quite cliche.

When I'm not playing in Middle Earth, then I'm often running games in Glorantha where the nonhuman races (The Elder Races) have very little to do with Tolkien's versions. The Aldryami, Mostali, and Uzko are about as far from Tolkien's archetypes as you can get
 
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I liked Elves and Halflings in Warhammer Fantasy as they were originally presented circa 1st-3rd edition -

Halflings are dirty little bastards, basically a cross between Nobby Nobbs from Discworld and Garbage Pail Kids

GWPreviews-May19-HalflingHotpotMTO21tcw.jpg

While Elves were basically Melniboneans by way of David Bowie androgynous glam rockers...

img5b23ddf08b75a.jpg
 
TristramEvans said:
While Elves were basically Melniboneans by way of David Bowie androgynous glam rockers...
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Melnibonean "elves" are definitely a trope, with several ones that come to mind: the Soulless from Fantasy II: The Madlands, the Eld from Dwimmermount and (again, by no coincidence) the Eld from Hydra Cooperative's Hill Cantons setting. Oh, also the Hot Springs Island books have evil glam elves. Sick bastards the lot...they make the drow look merely naughty.
 
TristramEvans said:
While Elves were basically Melniboneans by way of David Bowie androgynous glam rockers...
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Damn I liked a lot of those Oldhammer sculpts. That brings me back to when I started collecting a High Elf Army; I wish I could find more of those minis.

Edgewise said:
Oh, also the Hot Springs Island books have evil glam elves.
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Hell, there's a lot to like about Hot Springs Island and I thought it blew away MotBM (which feels more like a weird performance art gallery than a dungeon). I hope these guys collaborate on another project. This supplement sealed the deal on my preference for system neutral adventures and settings.
 
Brock Savage said:
Damn I liked a lot of those Oldhammer sculpts. That brings me back to when I started collecting a High Elf Army; I wish I could find more of those minis.
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The Grenadier ones (now sold by Mirliton (Campaign Game Miniatures in the UK) are pretty close in style

elfunit.jpg

Wood Elves

Wood Elves
www.mirliton.it www.mirliton.it

Before I switched to a Thunderbolt Mountain elf army, I had a bunch of these mixed with the old GW ones
 
TristramEvans said:
Mirliton (Campaign Game Miniatures)
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I am really digging the Mirliton fantasy line, thank you for the recommendation. So many of these sculpts look familiar but I can't place them. You really know your miniatures! It's a shame about Thunderbolt Mountain though.
 
TristramEvans said:
I liked Elves and Halflings in Warhammer Fantasy as they were originally presented circa 1st-3rd edition -

Halflings are dirty little bastards, basically a cross between Nobby Nobbs from Discworld and Garbage Pail Kids
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Not just that. WFRP took the obvious (but at that time relatively unexplored) point that halflings natural abilities suited them to be assassins and ran with it. I also like their crude sense of humour - the "tall tax" and putting a cockrel on their coins for purile reasons.

The Ardwin setting for Reign is good as well. It takes demihumans with most of the stereotypical traits (dwarves are grumpy, elves are haughty, goblins are sneaky etc) and then looks at how that plays out in societies.
 
I’d pick 3.0/3.5. My personal collection contains a ton of material in these rule sets and it’s a solid system. Almost all of my complaints came from system bloat, and that is a problem easily fixed.
 
Bourbonjack said:
I’d pick 3.0/3.5. My personal collection contains a ton of material in these rule sets and it’s a solid system. Almost all of my complaints came from system bloat, and that is a problem easily fixed.
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I've got a soft spot for 3.5 myself.
 
Chris Brady said:
If I can claim anything as a success in my 30+ years of gaming and GMing, is that I once had a group of friends tell me (even years after the campaign) that I made D&D Paladins cool.

All I ever did was stress that (and this was a 3.x game, so the other alignment Paladins were NOT a thing I used) the class alignment restriction was made of TWO parts, Lawful and Good, and that both parts were important. One could lean more into the other but BOTH parts were important. I also made sure that in MY view, Lawful didn't mean following the local laws, as some could be detrimental to being Good. Like forced slavery. It meant having a code or set of principles you didn't break, like Batman's no killing self-imposed rule, and it had to conform to the popular understood concept of 'good'.

Also, I made sure to say that if they did follow a God, and they were Good Aligned, they weren't dicks. I mean, a Good God is GOOD, and would likely understand that sometimes compromises have to be made, as long as the goal is to make it better in the long run, or the Paladin is willing to make amends. It's the Lawful Neutral Gods that were dicks and sticklers for the letter of the law, as opposed to the spirit.

And these players had heard ALL the horror stories about Lawful Stupid Paladins and dick DMs who made them that way (As well as the Kender Creep player, as I like to call it.)
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I don't want to diminish the sound of your ideas, because they're cool, but you did basically pre-invent the way Paladins work in 5e, with their own particular-but-basically-good oaths :smile:
 
I don't really give this theory too much support - it proposes that whatever music you listened to in your early teens remains your favourite music:
www.theverge.com

Our musical tastes peak as teens, says study

Spotify data shows our favorite songs as teens form our taste in music as adults
www.theverge.com www.theverge.com
However maybe it's the same this with rpg editions?
Given the rise of OSR and the return of old school games etc
Who knows? - they may be onto something
Just putting it out there! :grin:
 
Mankcam said:
I don't really give this theory too much support - it proposes that whatever music you listened to in your early teens remains your favourite music:
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pffft, no. Tastes in music, like anything, refine, change, and mature over time. I loved stuff in my early teens that these days I find insipid at best. Plus I didn't discover probably more than half of my favourite musical artists until late teens and twenties.
 
Mankcam said:
I don't really give this theory too much support - it proposes that whatever music you listened to in your early teens remains your favourite music:
www.theverge.com

Our musical tastes peak as teens, says study

Spotify data shows our favorite songs as teens form our taste in music as adults
www.theverge.com www.theverge.com
However maybe it's the same this with rpg editions?
Given the rise of OSR and the return of old school games etc
Who knows? - they may be onto something
Just putting it out there! :grin:
Click to expand...

A New York Times analysis of Spotify data...Wow, color me convinced. :tongue:
 
It certainly ain't true for me, otherwise my playlists would still mainly consist of New Wave and Hard Rock heh heh, which would indeed be a sad state of affairs :grin:

But this article just struck my eye as a analogy with this rpg edition thread

Just wondering if many people choose earlier editions of D&D because they find the rules actually better, or they find the editions more comfortable from a nostalgic sense as they played those editions in their teens?
 
Mankcam said:
It certainly ain't true for me, otherwise my playlists would still mainly consist of New Wave and Hard Rock heh heh, which would indeed be a sad state of affairs :grin:

But this article just struck my eye as a analogy with this rpg edition thread

Just wondering if many people choose earlier editions of D&D because they find the rules actually better, or they find the editions more comfortable from a nostalgic sense as they played those editions in their teens?
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I started with D&D B/X, but as a new, inexperienced gamer, I never ran or played a proper campaign of it before moving on to other games entirely. My experience ten years ago and revisiting the game was really the first time I gave it a fair shake, so I don't think nostalgia can be the reason that I found it so satisfying to run. I was running it for a group mainly in their twenties too, so they had no nostalgia at all for the edition.

I'll freely admit that looking through the B/X books is good for a nostalgia hit, but my appreciation of the gameplay it provides is something that didn't come until much later.
 
Mankcam said:
I don't really give this theory too much support - it proposes that whatever music you listened to in your early teens remains your favourite music:
www.theverge.com

Our musical tastes peak as teens, says study

Spotify data shows our favorite songs as teens form our taste in music as adults
www.theverge.com www.theverge.com
However maybe it's the same this with rpg editions?
Given the rise of OSR and the return of old school games etc
Who knows? - they may be onto something
Just putting it out there! :grin:
Click to expand...
TristramEvans said:
pffft, no. Tastes in music, like anything, refine, change, and mature over time. I loved stuff in my early teens that these days I find insipid at best. Plus I didn't discover probably more than half of my favourite musical artists until late teens and twenties.
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CRKrueger said:
A New York Times analysis of Spotify data...Wow, color me convinced. :tongue:
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www.smbc-comics.com

Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal - 2011-05-22

Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal - 2011-05-22
www.smbc-comics.com www.smbc-comics.com

Zach Weinersmith is the true authority here! And he beat them to it by eight years! :tongue:
 
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