@@kylegrey1071 I sympathize, but, as I noted, all the editions are very similar. The subsystems and advice not included in the initial 6th edition rules are very much available in the earlier rule books. Edition 5.2 is in pdf for twenty dollars. If you just want to stick with strictly 6th edition, you do have a good amount of stuff available between the Starter Set, the Core Rules, and The Grey Knight. That’s an excellent short campaign right there. Chaosium also made the 5th edition bestiary available for FREE on their website if you’re looking for more adversaries. If you finish all of that and want more then you could just pick up the Great Pendragon campaign in pdf or as a POD, but there are a ton of other adventures you could easily run with 6th edition. I do hope the other 6th edition books arrive soon as, yes, it would be ideal to have them, but we can at least say that Camelot is just around the corner.

As I mentioned in my video on OD&D, the gaps in the early editions are essentially what birthed not only the D&D house ruling-fan culture, but also RPG game design in general. Within those gaps was the whole universe of gaming. More important than the rules was the promise and possibilities in the game.

I may eventually offer my perspectives on later editions like 4e and 5e, but, at the moment, my attention has been on other RPG systems including my own home brew systems. I’ve been thinking of sharing how I develop my short campaign “notebook” games.

@@nicholasbielik7156 I'd be interested in how you develop your campaigns. The real reason I became curious with old-school rules was trying to explore ways to provide enrichment for my first campaign. Ways to wield soft power to guide a narrative without impacting player agency. I was encouraged to explore BX/OSR and hex crawls, to gain a new perspective. So my curiosity over the evolution of the rule-set and the goals in each era stemmed from there. It seems with B/X it's low friction as long as you can rapidly furnish as you go. Since we play with the AD&D lineage 5e, I appreciate the modern efforts to reduce friction of a more complex time based system. But I think it could go a lot further, which is why I'm hopeful regarding the 5e24 action economy. (Which gets fixed on the ability/feat/spells block side, rather than any fundamental encounter format change.) But I'm really hoping to inject into my player's a sense of discarding the rules as much as possible, save for the scenarios that might require a balanced system to retain tension. (I.e. combat) I guess I'm always in conflict over using fiat to maintain tension, or truly leave it up to how my player's handle themselves. Provide them impetus, let it play out. From what I've gathered B/X might require more fiat, 5e tries to create a sense of fairness for letting the player's meet their fate. In particular because 5e is less deadly given player's are strategic, while B/X seems more deadly at all times and might require DM intervention to craft the macro scenario. I love both ideas, never sure how to balance the two. Especially when it comes to setting player expectation for a scenario. (Sorry this was long.) My main insight is it's less about crafting rules, but crafting story on the fly. I can't shake the imagery of burning through torches, staking doors open, and relying on your lone dwarf with Infravision to when torches run out. Clearly systems encourage a style of play, whether they are made on the fly, or homebrewed from the start. But will modern player's want to engage at the level, when so many more heroic freedoms are promised... outside of combat alone? That's my challenge as a new DM with these old-school new-school ideas.

@sucker4thewitch I can't say from personal experience, but I've heard that it is the Dorian Hawkmoon series

That’s wonderful to hear. I’m glad I could help inspire you to get back to the gaming table! I do plan on making more videos, but I’m not sure when the next one will go up. I would like to finish the Pendragon coverage I started, and I want to do videos covering a bunch of other topics and games.

Absolutely. The game wouldn’t exist without him. Please see my discussions of Origins of D&D and OD&D. But Dave didn’t write a word of the AD&D rules as they were apparently written to avoid Gary having to consider Dave’s competing ideas about what D&D should be and also to avoid having to pay him royalties. See Jon Peterson’s book The Game Wizards for more information. All these weird rules I talk about here are 100% Gary Gygax.

I’ve never been able to figure out BW’s Fight or Range and Cover systems whereas I’ve run D&D combat in multiple different editions, so, from my opinion, D&D is easier to understand than those subsystems.

​@@nicholasbielik7156it's easiest to think of Range and Cover as a chase system and Fight! as a duel system. They aren't meant to be used every time you fight, Fight! is generally for 1v1, and they're only for when an engagement involves character beliefs. So the big fight against Vader and Luke is a Fight! but the various fights against Storm Troopers are either Bloody Versus or just single rolls. Range and Cover is the same. Imagine if your campaign is a novel. If the fight is going to be just a few lines you use just a single roll, if it's a paragraph to a page use a bloody versus, if it's an important full chapter then use Fight!

I get the different uses for the systems, and I quite like core mechanics of BW, and the idea of the game and how all these systems are supposed to interact. However, I can’t imagine actually using Fight or Range and Cover to play out a combat at the table. I know lots of folks have done so, but it just doesn’t work for me. Anyway. . .hope you enjoyed my discussion of Pendragon.

Thank you so much for the kind comment! It’s something I’ve been meaning to get back to-hopefully soon. I have a ton more to say about the game!

Hahahha, wrote this too quick, you then immediately discuss the secondary skills.

I’ve never played in a D&D tournament but many of the classic TSR modules were originally run as tournament scenarios. By all accounts the tournaments were quite successful. I’m not sure if that translates to fun at the table, but they were well attended, and TSR kept doing them because players liked them. It was this situation which led to the formation of the RPGA which was the precursor to the “living” campaigns run by WOTC in later years.

I pointed out in my video on OD&D that OD&D was sort of a “make a game” kit rather than what might be considered a proper game. In this light, AD&D is essentially Gygax’s fully expanded version of OD&D. It’s a monumental piece of work. It has a strong identity of its own, and this means it clearly isn’t going to be for everyone. If you’re a bit of a mad scientist, a tinkerer, or a free wheeler then OD&D is clearly going to be more your jam.

Some people want to build a car in their garage and some folks want to walk into a dealer and buy a car. AD&D is like buying a fussy sports car that you’re probably going to have to tinker with to get it to do what you want, but it certainly isn’t a “assemble your own car” kit.

@@nicholasbielik7156 I'll need to watch that next then! I'm inclined to agree with you; for me it's better to have-- and be trained to use-- that make-a-game kit. You really can't anticipate everything in design, and even if you do, players will inevitably disagree with some aspect of the "official" system. Then they'll play it that way anyway simply because it's "official," grumbling about it the whole time. We seem to crave orthodoxy even when it is destructive.

Yeah, that’s KZbin. It’s massively ticked up in the last year or so. I’ve not monetized the channel, but it seems they show them anyway.

I made this video before I read Jon Peterson’s excellent book, Game Wizards, which explicates the attempt to shut Arneson out in great detail. I do feel that had I made this video now I would have landed harder on that point.

@@nicholasbielik7156 I wasn't criticizing your analysis. You had so much right, by which I mean so much I agree with. ;-')

@@willinnewhaven3285 no worries. I do with hindsight see that as a slight flaw in the video. Glad you enjoyed it though!

@@nicholasbielik7156 LOL: I'm watching your Origins of D D when I saw your reply

Anthony Huso on his blog “The Blue Bard” is probably the best advocate for AD&D 1e that I’ve ever run across, but I think that much of this comes down to what you are looking for in a game.

The GM and players have a lot of ability to set the dial toward your taste in terms of the material. The default approach is "classic Malory" but the game could encompass grittier approaches as well. The Uther period certainly has more of a gritty "dark ages" tone in order to contrast with the later Arthur period, but you could dial down the fantasy Arthur if you liked very easily.

I understand wanting to preserve those memories, but I will say that the game is a robust one that really delivers if you're players are up for it.

Thanks!