Posted: Fri Apr 12, 2002 1:54 pm
I started out playing AD&D and thought it was a good RPG. I was 9. Then I started playing Star Frontiers, Champions, Top Secret and a slew of others.
AD&D's single greatest deficiency is its skills system (or lack therof). Under the AD&D system, if you take two fighters of equal level and white out their names and other biographical information (race, gender, etc.), they're basically the same character. If you look at the character sheet for Sturm Brightblade, Caramon Majere and Derek Crownguard, they're nearly identical. This of course is not how real life, nor any good RPG is set up.
When AD&D2 came out, they tried to address the skill problem by introducing the proficiency system in an attempt to make each character more individual. My problem with proficiencies was that if you had a proficiency, you could perform those tasks at a professional level and if you didn't, you were totally incompetent. Take swimming for example; if you had the swimming proficiency, your character was Mark Spitz (who won six gold medals in the Munich Olympic Games), if he didn't, the character would sink like a brick.
My friends and I tried to address this by letting players select "not-quite" proficiencies, where characters could perform tasks at an amateur or hobby level. Still, the system left much to be desired. At the extreme opposite end of the skill spectrum was a game like Top Secret which had a skill for everything. The level of detail was astounding, but the problem was that the game was cumbersome. It took two hours to roll up a character. I appreciate minutia, but for heaven's sake, let's play.
The happy medium between simplicity and detail that we found was in the Palladium RPG system, first with Robotech, then Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Rifts. I think the Palladium system leaves enough room for each character to be an individual, yet it's easy enough to understand and comprehend that you don't need a Cray Supercomputer to calculate "to hit" and skill rolls (like you did with Top Secret; I'm not joking! They even had a modifier for wind speed and wind direction!).
When D&D3 came out, I was excited to see that they've addressed the skills issue and that many of the game's other hang-ups have been eliminated (like level caps for non-humans, multi-classing restrictions and racial requirements for certain classes). Unfortunately, I don't think that D&D3 brought a lot of new players to the game; I think that the people buying D&D3 are old AD&D players who have wanted a fresh product for some time.
Also, for those interested in setting up an internet game, how about getting a bunch of people with NetMeeting and video conferencing cameras? Sure, you'd need a broadband connection, but at least you'd get to play.
AD&D's single greatest deficiency is its skills system (or lack therof). Under the AD&D system, if you take two fighters of equal level and white out their names and other biographical information (race, gender, etc.), they're basically the same character. If you look at the character sheet for Sturm Brightblade, Caramon Majere and Derek Crownguard, they're nearly identical. This of course is not how real life, nor any good RPG is set up.
When AD&D2 came out, they tried to address the skill problem by introducing the proficiency system in an attempt to make each character more individual. My problem with proficiencies was that if you had a proficiency, you could perform those tasks at a professional level and if you didn't, you were totally incompetent. Take swimming for example; if you had the swimming proficiency, your character was Mark Spitz (who won six gold medals in the Munich Olympic Games), if he didn't, the character would sink like a brick.
My friends and I tried to address this by letting players select "not-quite" proficiencies, where characters could perform tasks at an amateur or hobby level. Still, the system left much to be desired. At the extreme opposite end of the skill spectrum was a game like Top Secret which had a skill for everything. The level of detail was astounding, but the problem was that the game was cumbersome. It took two hours to roll up a character. I appreciate minutia, but for heaven's sake, let's play.
The happy medium between simplicity and detail that we found was in the Palladium RPG system, first with Robotech, then Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Rifts. I think the Palladium system leaves enough room for each character to be an individual, yet it's easy enough to understand and comprehend that you don't need a Cray Supercomputer to calculate "to hit" and skill rolls (like you did with Top Secret; I'm not joking! They even had a modifier for wind speed and wind direction!).
When D&D3 came out, I was excited to see that they've addressed the skills issue and that many of the game's other hang-ups have been eliminated (like level caps for non-humans, multi-classing restrictions and racial requirements for certain classes). Unfortunately, I don't think that D&D3 brought a lot of new players to the game; I think that the people buying D&D3 are old AD&D players who have wanted a fresh product for some time.
Also, for those interested in setting up an internet game, how about getting a bunch of people with NetMeeting and video conferencing cameras? Sure, you'd need a broadband connection, but at least you'd get to play.
