What is the best edition of D&D / AD&D?

SuperTony

I started playing D&D back in the '80's - You know the one - boxed set with "Module B2 - The Keep On The Borderlands". Moved on to AD&D, then 2nd edition, 3rd, 3.5, and now 4th.

Is it just me or have the editions been getting worse? The game seems to have degenerated into a tabletop version of WoW!

If you ask me, the best edition ever was the first AD&D. The one with the big red efrit on the DM's Guide cover and the most Gary Gygax input. Nothing was dumbed down and the radical christian lobby in the US hadn't gotten their paws on the core rule books (so there was some gratuitous "side-boob" art work eg. Succubus in the Monster Manual).

What do you think?

gufnork

SuperTony wrote: »

I started playing D&D back in the '80's - You know the one - boxed set with "Module B2 - The Keep On The Borderlands". Moved on to AD&D, then 2nd edition, 3rd, 3.5, and now 4th.

Is it just me or have the editions been getting worse? The game seems to have degenerated into a tabletop version of WoW!

If you ask me, the best edition ever was the first AD&D. The one with the big red efrit on the DM's Guide cover and the most Gary Gygax input. Nothing was dumbed down and the radical christian lobby in the US hadn't gotten their paws on the core rule books (so there was some gratuitous "side-boob" art work eg. Succubus in the Monster Manual).

What do you think?

Even though i've never played a rpg in my life(except PBM(snail mail back in the old days)), i've long been a lurker on various rpg/D&D type sites, blogs, forums etc. There seems to be a lot of hoo-ha every time a new edition of D&D comes out. I wonder why this is? I might actually try D&D with mythic at some point just for the hell of it.

And of course anything with gratuitous side-boob can't be bad, so i vote for that edition ...even though i know nothing about any of 'em(except the side-boob. I like to think i know a lot about side-boob )

Allanimal

I, like you, played AD&D in the early 80's. I never got into 2nd edition, and only started playing 3.5 after 4th edition was already out.

I like how 3.5 made things consistent - all pass/fail die rolls (to hit, saves, skills) are d20 with modifiers, and the goal was easy and obvious to figure out. Ignoring issues of balance over this system, I find it easy to learn, teach and play. But AD&D did not require skills & feats, grids & minis, etc. it was more free form - I felt I could ask my DM if I could do something, no matter how outlandish, and the DM would roll and rule. With 3.5, I (and many fellow players) feel like "well, my jump check modifier is -1, I won't even try".
So, while 3.5's rules try to cover all the bases, it seems to keep the players more confined than 1st Ed. did. I also enjoyed the boobs in 1st Ed. I was particularly fond of the boobs in Dieties & Demigods. (naturally, the 1st printing with the Cthulu Mythos)

Conall Cernach

First edition does have its nostalgic charms but stuff like Unearthed Arcana with unstoppable barbarians and super cavaliers made it a bit messy to play. 2nd edition really pulled it together and made it much more consistent. I still play it from time to time.

I bought the 4th ed when it came out and had given it to a friend within a week. It is truly terrible.

Raphael

My preferred is the Pathfinder variant on 3.5, but that's probably because 3rd ed was when I started playing - I somewhat knew AD&D through playing the Baldurs Gate series, but the first DnD rulebook I owned was 3rd. 3.5 and pathfinder both tidied them up a lot, knocked a lot of the bugs out, and it annoyed me at the time that 4th ed wasn't more like Pathfinder - it was fixable!

Morag

Depends on what you are looking for.
My favourite will always be the one I know best due to the amount of time I played it both as player and as GM. That would be AD&D 2nd Ed. THAC0 forever!
Yes it had flaws, but that for me is part of the charm and that is was pretty simple.

D&D 3rd ed I found to be too imbalanced and had too many feats and too much to add up and to remember stats and skills and feats wise for playing and that mean even more dice rolling and all that dice rolling often got in the way.

3.5 ed smoothed out some of the issues so it felt less clunky but it still wasn't right.

4 ed was like someone let a gruop of accountants and probability boffins as it,
I don't want to feel like I need an accounting qualification to play a table top role-play game and it felt too much like it was aping mmos, really it was like your char sheets became excel sheets.

I do have 3/3.5 books but they never got as much use/abuse as my 2nd ed books.

dib

AD&D 2nd ED forever. Just started running a 2nd Ed game in Maynooth for the first time in years! Amazing how quickly everything came back. It's great to be running a game again and for a bunch of first timers at that. They're really enjoying it so far, as am I.

UpsidedownA

I played AD&D in the 80s and just recently bought the 4th edition books with a view to getting back into playing it. What a load of crap. They've made the fighters utterly ridiculous with all those specialist moves. And the fact that the board is mandatory now is a real step backwards.

gaynorvader

I started with 2nd Ed. Have to say 3.5e is far and away my favourite though. It's much easier to introduce new players too and I built an excel sheet to take care of the excessive sums you need to do (particularly carry limits!). I tried 4th ed and it's pretty awful. I disagree that there's less freedom with 3.5 over 2e, as a DM if a player wants to try something cool, I'll just slap on a circumstantial "heroic licence" bonus and let them have at it, you'd be amazed at the fighter's jump skill! Just never tell your players what they need to roll in circumstances like that and you can pull back some of the 2e freedom and combine it with the 3.5e structure.