Edition comparison: 1st edition—what are all the differences

[gaptooth]

Today Rick released PDF copies of T&T First Edition Reprint as a gift to all backers of Deluxe! I've been going over it, and I've found several interesting differences between this and the editions I know best—5th through 7.5.

I was wondering if there is a comprehensive list of the edition differences somewhere that I could consult. I know of several comparisons between 5.5 and 7.5, and I remember Dan published a series of blog posts that covered the evolution of T&T kindreds, but I can't remember any articles comparing 1st edition to a contemporary flavor of T&T. Do you know of anything?

One of the interesting differences that jumped out at me right away was the unique rules for missile combat—I have read 4th, 5th, M6E, and 7.5, and I've never seen anything like the simple rule on page 12 of 1st Edition Reprint. It makes me want to run a game of 1st edition raw, but it also makes me wonder what other differences aren't so obvious—perhaps hidden in the tiny print without OCR.

Any T&T historians want to point me in the right direction?

[ProfGremlin]

That's a very good question, Gaptooth. I've long wanted to pull together a post providing a comprehensive comparison of the various editions. I even went so far as to begin pulling together a few of the various posts from here on the 'Bridge to build a table. As life does on occasion, it got in the way and I haven't had the opportunity to revisit the project. I thought I had the info saved somewhere but I've just combed through my archive drive and apparently that project didn't make it past the "Searching-the-'Bridge-for-info" stage or if it did it was confiscated by a tribe of wandering gremlins.

I'd love to see a comprehensive comparison. I'd even go so far as to say that it would make a great TrollsZine! article, an update for Mosker's Tunnel's and Trolls Newsletter ([e-mail] / eepurl.com/MMoE5), and a wonderful stickied thread here.

[gaptooth]

Thanks, Prof! I'm afraid not even Ken knows. I just opened the Saving Fange 1e solo that came out as a Kickstarter reward, and in the intro Ken makes claims that aren't consistent with some of the rules I've read so far: He uses the 5th-edition rule to calculate monster attack dice (which give monsters +1 die compared to 4e and earlier), and he forgot or ignored the 1e rule about monsters getting only a quarter of their Adds after Round 1 of combat. I don't blame him: I prefer the 5th edition rule about Adds, but the rule about monster attack dice finally made sense of something that has puzzled me for a few years!

Until 7th edition, the spell "Yassa-Massa" (later called Spirit Mastery) could only be used on monsters that have been subdued, and I've never heard anyone explain, based on a reference to the actual rules, how you could subdue a monster, so I always thought it was based on fictional positioning and maybe a situational Saving Roll.

But 1e spells it out on page 10! Before 5th edition, monsters with a rating less than 10 get zero dice in combat, and the rules say that a monster knocked down to that level can no longer defend itself—"the conqueror may tame and enslave it, or he can finish it off."

Oh well, I can't blame Ken for forgetting. It was forty years ago, and he believes in progress, not the past!

[gaptooth]

The same rule for capturing monsters is preserved in 4th edition, page 14. I never noticed it, but I guess I didn't read it very carefully—I was playing mad Dungeon World by the time 4e was released as a gift to Deluxe backers.

[gaptooth]

On subduing, the same sentiment is expressed in 5th edition, under section 2.4, but with the inflated monster dice it lacks mechanical traction—in 5th edition, it's up to fictional positioning and GM fiat when a monster can no longer defend itself.

[derv]

I made a comparison of all the editions for SR's that included missiles. My info for 1e was second hand at the time. I may have to review it now that I actually have a copy of the 1e rules.

The thread is here: trollbridge.proboards.com/thread/2970/saving-rolls-4e-mm-5e

[mosker]

Prof:

I'd be very much interested in this for the newsletter. Three things of note (I'll probably do a more elaborate post later on):

1. Keeping to the schedule has been top priority from day one. FOTT issues related to beta announcements followed by a family health scare resulted in the recent disruption. We're back on schedule.

2. I'll spare you all how highly I think of the Trollbridge moderators and just how valuable this page is to the health and future of the game. When I first pitched the newsletter to Ken, I envisioned a regular section highlighting Trollbridge discussions.

3. We are slowly growing, getting click-throughs, and as soon as we find another editor--message me if interested--in case there are future disruptions in scheduling, we hope to have news of the newsletter gets spread to the Kickstarter donors, potentially widening our audience by a very large margin.

Therefore, by all means,if you see something of interest, assume I may miss it and email me and Ken at [e-mail] or just message me through the Bridge.

Thanks,
David

[gaptooth]

So, I've been poring over the 1st Edition Reprint over the past week or so, and I LOVE IT! I think I have a pretty good sense of the major differences between this edition and the 5th-and-later editions I'm familiar with.

Here's a question I have for anyone who might know: Is there any advantage, in the rules as written, to playing a Warrior instead of a Rogue? I can't find any reference to armor doubling or any other Warrior-specific advantage in the rules.

The only thing I see is that a Rogue can't advance past 7th level. But that's not a clear advantage in the Warrior's favor, because you can start out as a Rogue and then switch to Warrior at 8th. Even if you lose all your Experience Points and go back to level 1 as a Warrior, that doesn't seem so bad, since you would keep the ability score increases you gained along the way.

Knowing the direction that later editions took—armor doubling and some form of bonus to Adds (7th) or Combat Roll (Deluxe)—it wouldn't be that hard to pull those in as house rules. But one thing I really like about 1st Edition is that it doesn't have such a fixation on Lots Of Dice and Big Numbers!

So I have other ideas about how to give the Warrior some distinction in 1st Edition T&T, but I want to make sure I'm not overlooking anything.

Do you know if the Warrior has any abilities that the Rogue doesn't?

[branderwydd]

We've recently played two sessions using straight 1e rules as we wait for the new edition. I expect we will play 10-20 sessions before we complete the min-campaign I have developed. This very issue came last session - why play a warrior over a rogue? Having read through the rules several times now, there seems to be no advantage to playing a warrior, while as a rogue you get access to magic, and as you mentioned, you can always reboot as a warrior (or wizard) and keep all of your attribute raises. My son (age 15, but a lifelong T&T player, albeit new to 1e as am I) who was metagaming, as always, was first to note this and develop a "career plan" based around it. We'll see how it plays out.

[gaptooth]

Thanks, Branderwydd! Good to know I'm not alone. I posted the same question over on G+, and I thought of three possible ways to run it, without house rules:

1. You prefer to play a character with fewer moving parts. Pick a Warrior.
2. You prefer to play the game on Hero Mode—sure it's more difficult, but you relish the challenge. Pick a Warrior.
3. Because of the name, the group agrees that the Warrior gets better fictional positioning in combat. You can do stunts and apply tactics that Rogues and M-Us just can't do, by social contract alone. Well, by social contract and it says that the Warrior is "modeled after Conan".

The house rules I'm brewing are based on the third option.

[derv]

I found this to be a useful review of 1e & 4e when I was looking into SR's prior to obtaining copies of the rules. The forum discussion is interesting too and contains some familiar faces.

www.rpg.net/reviews/archive/13/13683.phtml

Basically, the Rogue will be giving up his ability to use magic or his ability to use all weapons when he progresses beyond 7th level and decides to become either a warrior or magic user. So, yeh, why be a warrior if you can be a rogue? The draw back seems to be level progression.

[bigjackbrass]

Not exactly part of the first edition (none were written for it), but one thing Warriors can do that Rogues cannot is play in Warrior-only solitaire adventures.

The idea that certain items are restricted for certain types is in the first edition, which logically leads to such things as magical swords usable only by Warriors. Sure enough, these crop up in later adventures. It's perhaps worth remembering that early on in RPGs the assumption was that GMs would be extrapolating from the rules in exactly that sort of way, rather than having everything laid out in numerical terms to balance the game from the start; section 1.6 in the 5th edition is a very clear demonstration of that ethos which stuck with the game, as opposed to endless Monster Manuals. That's not to say that the lack of obvious reasons to play a Warrior isn't an error, of course, as changes were made to the system in later editions, which then led on to the Warrior-Wizard to answer the question as to why Rogues forgot all their magic at level seven.

[derv]

I'm not sure how many people incorporate Berserker Fighting in their games, but it seems to be pretty well established (though optional) in the 1st edition. Maybe it appears that way because of 1e's brevity? I looked at my Corgi rules and 5.5 rules where this option was in the Elaborations section. Interestingly, very little has changed in it's wording from 1e. The only thing that was noticeable to me from 1e, that was not included later, was that Ken makes a comment "even a magic-user fighting with 1 die may go bannanas on you". So, the first edition explicitly points out that any character can go beserk (within the limits established).

If Ken did not include that statement, I would probably suggest that this could be a way of distinguishing the Warrior from a Rogue or Wizard.

It seems that whatever a person would do to add some balance to the Rogue or incentivise the Warrior, it's going to boil down to being a house rule. If you want to avoid the escalating weapon dice, you would probably want to avoid going down the road of 5e by doubling armor for warriors. Maybe there should be more restrictions on the Rogue instead of adding to the Warrior?

Rogues are already pretty restricted in their ability to learn or earn spells. But they don't have any real restrictions in regards to fighting, though it is expected that they did not devote years of practice at the art like warriors have.

Some possible options might be to limit them to 3 die or less weapons, to require double the ep's to advance to the next level with 7th still the cap (instead of 1000, they would need 2000 ep's for 2nd level), make a minimum score of 12+ on LK a requirement, or limit the Rogue to 2d6 x 10 for starting gold.

On the side, I kind of enjoy the level titles that are included with the character types in 1e and the literary comparisons to Conan (gaptooth mentioned this), Gandalf, and Cugel the Clever.

This idea that the Rogue was modeled after Cugel might shape people's imagination of the type in different ways. I always thought Cugel was a bit of a clumsy con who always seemed to step in it, yet ended up coming out smelling like roses. Luck would definately fit in with my idea of a Cugel