Would You, Could You...Your Least Favorite Edition?

Scrivener of Doom piqued my curiosity in an ENworld thread, so I thought I'd ask here: Given a group of good friends, would you play a one-shot of your least favorite edition? Would you DM a one-shot of it? Or neither?

Me, I'm happy to play just about anything once in a while. And if I'd rather be playing 4e, well, no DM is perfect! So I can file his choice of edition away as one of his DMing flaws, and have some fun with my friends anyway. But if I'm DMing, an edition's flaws are that much more visible and obtrusive, and it drives me crazy. (Hence the seven pages of 3.5 house rules I had compiled by 2008. And those were just the absolute essentials!)

Scrivener feels the opposite; how do you feel?

(I'll understand if this thread gets moved to the general forum, but well, I'm hoping to get replies. )

DMs can and do hide the some distinctions between editions from in play perspective In general that ... but not pre-play and character design perspective. I could like 1e a lot better with the right DM but I couldn't get over the impoverished choices in character capability personalization. I couldn't DM it without seriously spending effort making that so it wouldnt drive me crazy.
3e isnt my least favorite but I know it less than 1e (I own the basic 2e books but didnt get to play with add ons that might have made martial types interesting). 3e looks too complex for me to DM but from a players perspective? Other than not likeing the amount of heavy handed DMing it could end up taking to keep casters in line in that revenge of the nerds edition I might be convinced without much effort.

I can play or DM 4e without house ruling if I want that is utterly relaxing.

For me, it's 3rd/ 3.5.  I have never played a 1st Edition game, so I cannot say anything about it.  I started in 2nd Edition as a player and enjoyed my Elf ranger (thought about resurrecting him as a Elf Warlord with the Skirmishing Warlord build).  And I am all about 4E.

The reason I got fed up with D&D with 3.5 was for 3 reasons:
1.  I didn't like the way they did the skill system.  I prefer the non-weapon proficiencies in 2nd edition and the skill training system in 4E.  The idea that you get points and you can put them wherever you want when you level up was absurd to me.
2.  They kept the Vancian Magic system.  I didn't like it, I have ranted about it in different threads, and I am not going to repeat myself here.  It is dumb and the system should compensate for your level of experience and expertise in a field.
3.  The type of gamers the system seemed to attract (at least the ones I kept running into).  When 3.0 first came out, it was fine, everyone was having fun figuring out the new system.  But over time, the players got more into maxing out their characters.  For as much as people complain the 4E is too gamey for them, they would work the game rules to maximize their options (play like a free flow Sims game).  When it became obvious that these people were living vicariously through their characters as the "ideal" selves and would use it as a mini power trip under the disguise of "I'm just playing my character", I was done.

I pretty much like all forms of D&D but I feel like the ones that bother me most are all editions that are pre-3e. Just for the fact that they deliberately try to limit you based on class and race. I've been told I can't do something too many times with those games. And it's just plain frustrating.

I kinda get the sense that some all of us aren't reading the OP...

I'll be honest, I only ever tolerated prior editions of D&D because it was what other people wanted to play, but until 4E came out I actually preferred Palladium for my fantasy gaming on the theory that, if you're going to have borked rules anyway, they may as well let me play the sort of I actually enjoy (unarmored swashbucklers who gets by without any magic items what-so-ever and mages who only knew a few spells, but could cast them all day long... God bless the GM who let my wizard take a few super abilities from Heroes Unlimited in place of spellcasting).

When I was able to convince the DM to let me trade class features (like armor proficiency) for improved AC when unarmored I didn't mind prior editions all that much and the 3e Warlock was a Godsend for me when the GM would actually let me use one. But I didn't truly fall in love with D&D until 4E came out and let me do the sort of characters I wanted to play out of the box (then they throw in inherent bonuses my fantasy RPG needs were complete).

So no, I wouldn't play a prior edition of D&D. My free time is way too limited to waste on something I don't thoroughly enjoy... for me that 4E, Mutants and Masterminds and Mage the Ascension (white book then purple book if I had to).

I started with 3E, I learned 3E on my own...and 3E sucks balls. I hate, hate, hate Vancian magic and the gutting of Martial characters. one of the reasons I am so anti Next is that it went back on a bunch of improvement 4e made.

Will I play or GM my least favorite edition with my good friends?

Short answer: Only if I don't want to stay "good friends" with them them for long.

Long answer: I look at each edition for their merits and shortcomings, independent of my comparisons of them with other editions and systems, so as a GM I would pick the system/edition that supports me the best as my most favorite, while the system/edition I have to fight against the most as my least favorite - so far that would be 13th Age and 3.xE respectively, with Next being a very close second (and could overtake 3.x as least favorite system, depending on how it pans out). And of course, the more I houserule, if my players/friends don't like my changes, the less likely that they'd want to play with me at all.

As a player, I like my written and implied options, and I *love* to improvise, so the more opportunities I get for both character building and improvising, the better. This makes me have this weird love-hate relationship with both 3.x and 4E, making them both my most AND least liked editions mechanically (though culture-wise anything pre-4E is far more likely to fall in the least liked, thanks to the player/DM divide and antagonistic play). If my so-called "good friends" will allow me to do crazy fun stuff (just like I enjoy and encourage them to do the same, as both fellow player and GM), then the system is irrelevant... but if they decide to rain on my parade by enforcing a military-like protocol that i didn't agree to -- or to be more precise, if my good friends and I aren't on the same page -- don't expect me to show up very often, if at all.

If I'm the GM, 4E all the way. Simple to run with almost zero prep. The party is always fair no matter where on the roleplayer to munchin scale each player is on.

If I'm a player in the game, the people I'm playing with are far more important than the system. If it's about having fun, it's about hanging out with people I enjoy being with and playing games. I can have fun with just about any system that's reasonably playable with the kind of people I like to be around.

If its the wrong kind of people, they will sap the fun out of even your favorite system.

tl;dr: The people make the fun, not the game; but I will only GM a system of my preference.

TjD

As a player I'd play any edition no problem.

As a gamemaster however I wouldn't want to run a 3/3.5/pathfinder campaign again with the rules as written, if my friends insisted I'd probably run it, but I'd manage encounter, campaign and scenario building as if it was 4e and just custom build adversaries to fit the challenge I had in mind for the players and readjust the math to fit with the math of 3/3.5/pathfinder.

But the idea of creating a more or less fully fledged character for every evil wizard, bandit leader, orc warlord etc. the party was to encounter, I could NEVER do that again.

If I could actually remember the rules from one edition to the next, I'd be happy to play in or run games in any of them. But, unfortunately, I seem to suffer from a condition where once I've learned a new system, others fade.

I feel like at this stage in my DMing experience, I better understand what each of the editions of D&D is going for aesthetically and could play to that easily. I think the reason why people don't like certain editions is because they are meant to accomplish certain things so if you try to accomplish something else with it, it doesn't work and sucks. The most common example I see are DMs running 4e as if they're playing 3.Xe and hating it. Yeah, of course - you're doing it wrong, playing to the wrong aesthetics. If you go straight for the goals the game is trying to achieve by design, it works and is fun enough. So I apply the same to previous editions of the game if I took the time to re-learn the rules.

I really didnt like many elements of my least favorite edition many have been repaired in 4e to my thinking and some of those are suprisingly fundamental but are probably NOT the main reason I wouldnt want to play 1e ... The ones I really cant see my way around are probably aesthetic - like the mechanics/writing etc all shooting for (or is that often achieving) a sort of of Fantasy Vietnam montage with people poking slowly in front of them with a ten foot pole and dying from landmines and ear mites at the door they listened at one too many times.

If I'm going to DM, I will only run 4E. For the time and effort it requires to DM a game, I would not DM my least favourite edition at all. There's really no point.

As for playing, I could probably be talked into playing in a 3.x game if someone else was running it. But that's not my least favourite edition. I don't think I could be talked into playing any D&D edition other than 4E and 3.x with a LOT of convincing. And if it was 3.x, I'd likely only play if it was a mini-campaign. I don't think I could get into a long term 3.x game, even as a player.

So to answer the original post, there's no way I'd DM my least favourite edition. In fact, I wouldn't DM any edition other than my favourite. And I also wouldn't play in my least favourite edition.

I think that sums it up as a "no" all around.

I do still play AD&D 1st Edition in 2 groups every other week, and wouldn't mind to DM one of them.

But if i'd start a new game i would always prefer 4E, and it would be very hard to convince me to DM a 3E/3.5 game again.

It's just a waste of creativity and time.