B/X vs. AD&D Experience?

All topics including role playing games, board games, etc., etc.
Post Reply
User avatar
Persimmon
Ulthal
Posts: 551
Joined: Thu Mar 02, 2017 5:11 am

B/X vs. AD&D Experience?

Post by Persimmon »

I find myself continually alternating between B/X (as currently manifested in Old School Essentials) and AD&D/1e (C&C right now) in terms of my gaming interests. For me I love both, but they scratch slightly different gaming itches. Obviously B/X is a bit more streamlined and often a bit faster at the table due to fewer options in the way of classes, spells, abilities, monsters, etc. Even bolting on the Advanced Fantasy material (where we keep race as class, so you have gnomes, half-elves etc. as classes), it still feels stripped down. Some of my players, particularly the newest, really like keeping it simple. But I also think it just feels a bit more light in tone; more fairy tales and Saturday matinee monster movies as opposed to darker, grittier AD&D, with its demons, devils, and more complicated alignments etc. So sometimes I like that.

In some ways, it's like the difference between The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. I'll always love The Hobbit for introducing me to Tolkien, and by extension, fantasy as a whole. But LOTR is richer and more satisfying on the whole and it gets even more so when one adds in The Silmarillion and Unfinished Tales, etc. So that's how I've come to feel about B/X vs. AD&D and their respective derivatives. I'll often spend extended time with the stripped down experience, but I always eventually come back to the more complex stuff, which nowadays is C&C because it's just so flexible.

Just curious as to others' feelings on the subject?

P.S.--I just heard that my OSE KS Advanced Fantasy tomes have shipped so that got me thinking about this. Excited to get the tomes and play the adventures that come with the KS, but we're also really enjoying C&C right now.
Behind closed eyes, realize your sight....

User avatar
Lurker
Greater Lore Drake
Posts: 4348
Joined: Thu Jan 18, 2007 8:00 am
Location: Oklahoma

Re: B/X vs. AD&D Experience?

Post by Lurker »

I'm there with you on this.

Well, I don't play old or new versions of O D&D, but I can see what you mean.

I've actually been doing some converting of old OD&D and old 1e/2e adventures for ideas for my girls C&C Tolkien game and can see the difference between the feel for the rules/style of game.

I agree with you there on the Hobbit v Lord of the Rings v Simarillian. With that, I've had to tone down the grit a little for my girls game. I don't want to throw 3 12 1/2 to 14 year old girls, nd my girl's friend's dad (who hasn't gamed in 20 years) into a grim dark feel right out of the gate (so I have to resist converting the old Ravenloft module for at least another year maybe two :twisted: )
"And so I am become a knight of the Kingdom of Dreams and Shadows!" - Mark Twain

Forgive all spelling errors.

Knight Errant & Humble C&C Society Contributor
C&C Society

serleran
Mogrl
Posts: 14094
Joined: Mon Oct 13, 2008 7:00 am

Re: B/X vs. AD&D Experience?

Post by serleran »

I see no reason to not play both simultaneously, even in the same game.

Unless you like to keep rules entirely apart. I've no personal issue having a dwarf and then a dwarf fighter/thief in the same party using a slightly different set of rule mechanisms. Actually, I find it rather interesting.

One thing is a problem - communal resolution but we agree on that in advance like "do we use attribute checks or saving throws?"

Post Reply