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First I started in OD&D.

• Fast combats:
• Why is version X faster?  Please give an example (monsters, PCs)
• How long does it take a Player to complete a round/segment?
• How many Players that the table?
• Rules Differences:
• I see posters comment on "X was the rule in version X"
• I looked up one of these in my book and could not find the reference (rolling for spells when a level is gained)
• House Rules:
• D&D has always had LOTS of houserules
• How do you seperate Houserules from Core?
• Does it seem that a lot of posters that some issues were not really with Core but with Houserules (or "how I learned...")

Thanks!

May 21, 2012 -- 10:15AM, MWSAber wrote:

First I started in OD&D.

• Fast combats:
• Why is version X faster?  Please give an example (monsters, PCs)
• How long does it take a Player to complete a round/segment?
• How many Players that the table?
• Rules Differences:
• I see posters comment on "X was the rule in version X"
• I looked up one of these in my book and could not find the reference (rolling for spells when a level is gained)
• House Rules:
• D&D has always had LOTS of houserules
• How do you seperate Houserules from Core?
• Does it seem that a lot of posters that some issues were not really with Core but with Houserules (or "how I learned...")

Thanks!

Not sure what you want for commentary here, but as for what games are faster, there is disagreement. It kind of depends on what you mean by faster and what the situation is. IMHO TABLE TIME is the only time that actually matters. So the question with combat and 'speed' is not about speed at all. It is about how much plot do you like to get through in a session? How much that will be is going to heavily depend on your adventure structure. For instance I might have a big fight in 4e and resolve a bunch of stuff in that fight in 1 hour. In AD&D I might have 2 weak fights in the same hour and resolve the same amount of plot. Is there a meaningful sense in which one is 'faster' than the other at that point? Is faster even necessarily 'better'?

I think a big issue is that 4e seemed 'slow' to people when they naively assumed that a 1e combat was just a drop in for a 4e combat and it was all the same thing. They tried to play 4e with a 1e adventure/encounter structure. You can see this clearly in the published KotS module (H1). It just didn't work until you understood that more plot goes into each encounter. That means you have to put more structure INTO the encounter instead of AROUND the encounter. If you do it right it works fine and you can do dungeon crawls and whatnot with 4e. EVERYONE however, myself included, has to learn that lesson. Some do, some don't. Some just give up, some just never get it.

 There is NO DOUBT that AD&D and earlier editions can handle simple encounters faster than 4e can in a general sense. Not IMHO as much quicker as some people claim, but 4e puts more into an encounter by far than AD&D does. I think having the ability to vary this more will make a more flexible game, but that isn't going to be 'just like 1e' or 'just like 4e', it is going to be something else.

Can't comment on rules differences except to say that there are no firm rules to AD&D. Even 2e with its 'cleaned up' rules is simply too vague and contradictory to have anything like RAW as a concept. Every game is some interpretation of what the players THINK was meant or just whatever they like. Usually most groups are convinced that most of what they do is "the rules", so arguments arise because it is different for each group. They are all playing from the same book, in theory.

Depends on what you mean by house rules. We played AD&D pretty much by what we considered to be "the book". We had a LOT of homebrew stuff, but I actually never had house rules (aside from reversed AC in 2e so we got rid of THAC0, but the numbers all came out the same). Even the reversed AC rule I think we eventually got tired of bothering with. I'm pretty sure other people here would consider our interpretation of "AD&D RAW" to be wildly at variance with theirs.

May 21, 2012 -- 11:58AM, AbdulAlhazred wrote:

May 21, 2012 -- 10:15AM, MWSAber wrote:

First I started in OD&D.

• Fast combats:
• Why is version X faster?  Please give an example (monsters, PCs)
• How long does it take a Player to complete a round/segment?
• How many Players that the table?
• Rules Differences:
• I see posters comment on "X was the rule in version X"
• I looked up one of these in my book and could not find the reference (rolling for spells when a level is gained)
• House Rules:
• D&D has always had LOTS of houserules
• How do you seperate Houserules from Core?
• Does it seem that a lot of posters that some issues were not really with Core but with Houserules (or "how I learned...")

Thanks!

Not sure what you want for commentary here, but as for what games are faster, there is disagreement. It kind of depends on what you mean by faster and what the situation is. IMHO TABLE TIME is the only time that actually matters. So the question with combat and 'speed' is not about speed at all. It is about how much plot do you like to get through in a session? How much that will be is going to heavily depend on your adventure structure. For instance I might have a big fight in 4e and resolve a bunch of stuff in that fight in 1 hour. In AD&D I might have 2 weak fights in the same hour and resolve the same amount of plot. Is there a meaningful sense in which one is 'faster' than the other at that point? Is faster even necessarily 'better'?

I think a big issue is that 4e seemed 'slow' to people when they naively assumed that a 1e combat was just a drop in for a 4e combat and it was all the same thing. They tried to play 4e with a 1e adventure/encounter structure. You can see this clearly in the published KotS module (H1). It just didn't work until you understood that more plot goes into each encounter. That means you have to put more structure INTO the encounter instead of AROUND the encounter. If you do it right it works fine and you can do dungeon crawls and whatnot with 4e. EVERYONE however, myself included, has to learn that lesson. Some do, some don't. Some just give up, some just never get it.

 There is NO DOUBT that AD&D and earlier editions can handle simple encounters faster than 4e can in a general sense. Not IMHO as much quicker as some people claim, but 4e puts more into an encounter by far than AD&D does. I think having the ability to vary this more will make a more flexible game, but that isn't going to be 'just like 1e' or 'just like 4e', it is going to be something else.

Can't comment on rules differences except to say that there are no firm rules to AD&D. Even 2e with its 'cleaned up' rules is simply too vague and contradictory to have anything like RAW as a concept. Every game is some interpretation of what the players THINK was meant or just whatever they like. Usually most groups are convinced that most of what they do is "the rules", so arguments arise because it is different for each group. They are all playing from the same book, in theory.

Depends on what you mean by house rules. We played AD&D pretty much by what we considered to be "the book". We had a LOT of homebrew stuff, but I actually never had house rules (aside from reversed AC in 2e so we got rid of THAC0, but the numbers all came out the same). Even the reversed AC rule I think we eventually got tired of bothering with. I'm pretty sure other people here would consider our interpretation of "AD&D RAW" to be wildly at variance with theirs.

Funny you should mention KotS.  We are running that now.  Yesterday they cleared most of the first Level (4 encouters, 6 players) in @ 4 hours.  Typical combat lasted @ 4 rounds.  Mosters and players had individual initiative.  That seems to keep with the 1-2 munites per player per round

May 21, 2012 -- 2:32PM, Phoenix182 wrote:

When you talk about rolling for spells at level gain, are you talking about making a chance to know spells roll, or rolling to determine which spell you gain as you level or what? And in what edition do you want the info for?

I saw a post that said in AD&D you "rolled to see what spells you got when you leveled" .  I looked in my 1978 PHB high and low and never saw that you did that.  I did not look in 3.x (I can tonight) but then I never played 3.x enough to need to know that.


It just sounded like a house rule that the poster stated as RAW  

May 21, 2012 -- 3:05PM, Phoenix182 wrote:

May 21, 2012 -- 2:45PM, MWSAber wrote:

May 21, 2012 -- 2:32PM, Phoenix182 wrote:

When you talk about rolling for spells at level gain, are you talking about making a chance to know spells roll, or rolling to determine which spell you gain as you level or what? And in what edition do you want the info for?

I saw a post that said in AD&D you "rolled to see what spells you got when you leveled" .  I looked in my 1978 PHB high and low and never saw that you did that.  I did not look in 3.x (I can tonight) but then I never played 3.x enough to need to know that.


It just sounded like a house rule that the poster stated as RAW  

Could be a merger of house rule and pg 39 of the 1e dmg. Or Pg 61 of the 2.5e dmg which talks about random rolling. Or it could be a misunderstanding about the chance to know spell roll.

Agreed.  I'll look at Page 39 too.


I don't have any 2.x books.


But is does seem to be a trend that the most "strident" posters do not seem to be able to cite where thier information came from. I guess that is the closet academic in me that wants to verify information.