Author: T. Knight (---.co.uk)
Date: 05-07-2000 16:24
Yet again, the AD&D apologists crawl out of the woodwork. Ultimately, AD&D is only liked by those too inexperienced to have found better games that surpass it in every regard, or too hidebound to admit that they exist. Which one are you, Mr. Hols? To suggest that D&D merely supports different precepts that what people are used to is self-evidently false. It doesn't support any precepts whatsoever, which is the crux of the matter. I’ll return to that later, after working through your other arguments in order.
Firstly, your attempted defence of the class system. AD&D one fails miserably because it doesn't even come close to replicating the tropes of high fantasy. I must admit that I'm not expert on the genre, but as has been pointed out by others the majority of characters simply don't fit. The tropes of the genre are not related specifically to abilities. Both Feng Shui and the old Interlock version of Cyberpunk 2020 both had class systems that succeeds where AD&D’s fails. The genres they're both set in contain the idea of specialisation in a single career to a high degree, and the classes themselves are supported within the social context of the game world. In AD&D, your class inescapably pigeonholed you into a single role, from which almost you entire ability set sprung, reflected in the oh-so -blunt names of the classes themselves. A fighter, by definition, fought, and heaven help you if you wanted to do anything else. The Solo in CP2020, which I’m sure you’ll try and compare it to, fit within the idea of the soldier defining their self-worth by their job, and contained the minimum constraints necessary to support this idea. The roles, also, were semi - ludicrous, as is shown most bluntly by the entire idea of thieves as an organised profession.
Secondly, the ideas of heroism. AD&D totally fails to model this as well. Beowulf did not defeat the dragon by standing toe-to-toe with it and slugging away until one of them ran out of "Hit Points". Smaug, also, was not killed in the blunt stand-up fight that is the only type that AD&D can provide. Declaring that it's meant to be abstract is not an explanation, is a desperate no-prise retconning of what were originally poor rules. Feng Shui once more is an example of something that actually does what you claim AD&D can do.
>A close examination of the charges show that they are misplaced in much the >same fashion as the critiques of supported character types above. An >examination of how "realistic" falling damage and weapon damage and the like >are should be gauged using a typical inhabitant as posited in the game; in the >case of xD&D, that typical person is a 0-level NPC. Any such claims of >unrealistic outcomes should be examined with this in mind.
Ah, of course. However, you appear to have missed one of AD&D's shining triumphs, the fact that it perfectly models the ages-old cornerstone of fantasy, that practically defines the genre: An entire village of peasants and craftsmen can get the living @!#$ kicked out of them by a single housecat. You seem to only be picking out only the parts of the entire decaying corpse that support your point.
Your point about heroic dangers is ridiculous. No-where in fantasy literature does it suggest that heroic stature somehow makes you immune to the effects of deadly falls. Yes, its heroes shrug off damage that would kill a normal man, but said damage is almost always dealt in a fair fight. They rarely seem to be lackadaisical faced with the dangers of multi-ton rocks and firing squads of crossbowmen. Again, some fan-written GURPS super stun rules, residing somewhere in the GURPSnet archive show how this could have been done properly.
To sum up my argument, returning to your original point:
>A game designer sets out to build a game around a set of precepts that he (or >she) believes will best serve the specific genre, style, and setting (or range of >settings) he has in mind for play.
AD&D emphatically _wasn't_ created by a designer building around a set of precepts that he (or she) believes will best serve the specific genre, style, and setting (or range of settings) he has in mind for play. It was hashed together from the Chainmail miniatures wargame by two guys who didn’t have a fucking clue what they were doing. This in and of itself is totally understandable, due to the fact that they were the very first people to do it, ever. The Wright Brothers first plane is undeniably lacking in all reasonable degrees compared to a modern stealth bomber. No-one expects it to be, but that is essentially what your doing with your defence of AD&D. Everyone fondly remembers the Wright bother's plane as a faulty first expression of a very powerful idea, but the nostalgia would quickly sour if the brothers kept trying to sell it to military organisations for several million pounds as the future in air superiority. Likewise, it’s pathetically unlikely that their plane could be made to serve as a contender simply by bolting on further Victorian components, the approach that so far has been taken with AD&D.
What I feel you're trying to do with the apples and oranges metaphor is to remove the basis for any comparison with AD&D in a situation where comparison is the only basis for value judgements. If you do stick to your guns, supporting it as a system for heroic fantasy, I can only point to the multitude of games that succeed where it failed, most notably Feng Shui. To your credit, Mr. Hols, you avoid claiming that AD&D must be good due to it's popularity, but you've fallen into almost every other classic trap. Ultimately, if you've tried the other games I've mentioned and still prefer AD&D then, that’s life. Bad taste, fortunately, is a crime that is also it's own punishment.
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