Post/Author/DateTime	Post
Titton 03-09-04, 06:52 PM	Ok guys, I got a question. Ive been hearing people talk about AD&D, Advance Dungeons & Dragons, and D&D, Dungeons & Dragons. Well, my question is this. Is there a difference between the two? And if so, what? Thanks in Advance Guys
Veton 03-09-04, 07:04 PM	Originally posted by Titton Ok guys, I got a question. Ive been hearing people talk about AD&D, Advance Dungeons & Dragons, and D&D, Dungeons & Dragons. Well, my question is this. Is there a difference between the two? And if so, what? Thanks in Advance Guys AD&D is used to refer to the 2nd edition of Dungeons and Dragons. Dungeons and Dragons is used to refer to the 3.0 or 3.5 version of Dungeons and Dragons
Rian Lightblade 03-09-04, 07:10 PM	Well, to answer your questions with out a lot fluff, back in the day there were basically two versions of the game D&D and AD&D. D&D was a simpler system and was released first, Then AD&D rules came out which were more "advanced", In D&D you were an elf and that was it, elf being both a race and class or you were a wizard and that was all. With the release of 2ed AD&D, D&D faded from the limelight. AD&D was the system that surived and was upgraded to 2nd ed and finally to 3.0. When WoTC took over TSR and released the new version of the game 3.0+ they decided to drop the word Advanced from the title and just call it D&D. For a complete history go here http://www.wizards.com/dnd/DnDArchives_History.asp
Wil_Hyral 03-09-04, 07:26 PM	Crappy relative timeline courtesy of me and 13 years of experience. That doesn't make me authority at all. D&D comes out as a board game of sorts, or at least an uber-simple roleplaying game. (I have the board game actually, but I think it was the second printing because I got it new in the mid-80s. Either way it followed D&D rules.) D&D comes out as a roleplaying game. We call this D&D 1e around here, if we're talking about the same thing. 1e stands for 1st Edition. AD&D acts as a revision of just D&D1e. It adds concepts much more advanced than just D&D, which if my memory serves (I played it for like 3 years), means someone has both a race and a class. It used to be you could play an "elf" or a "wizard" but not an "elven wizard." AD&D got rid of that I think. AD&D 2nd Edition - that's right, they scrapped even the revision and said "let's make a new version!" The difference between a revision and an edition is that editions are not compatible. Revisions generally are somewhat similar fixes. 2e introduced concepts like THAC0, different multiclassing rules and just more advanced settings, but kept some things as they were (if I remember, saves were the same. I could be wrong again, this was over 11 years ago for me, and I'm only 20.) TSR goes out of business. D&D 3rd Edition hits the shelves circa 2000. Wizards of the Coast mops up the mess that TSR made for itself and begins to pocket money by reviving a dead legacy of a game. Concepts like THAC0 are translated back into simpler (less algebraic) formats as to promote ease and to get rid of the fact that 2e had a finite way of gauging skills, attacks and armor class. I won't go further into that explanation unless requested. The summaries of what I just put up might be somewhat inaccurate. Again, I'm only 20 and I started with my older friends at the age of 7, and we moved from 1e to 2e pretty soon. My memory won't be precise. But the point is, AD&D versus D&D means different versions of a game. You might call the Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker "LoZ:WW" and the Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past "LoZ:ALttP," and that's a fairly good simile for what occurs with D&D and AD&D. Different system, same idea. Actually I have some other things I might call wind waker, but the COC forbids those words. :whatsthis
Polaris 03-09-04, 07:42 PM	Guys, I am somewhat older, and modesty aside, I have been familiar and played DnD from almost the beginning (circa 1974). Yes *sigh*, I am that old. First there was Chainmail and the first RPG published, Men and Magic. This was followed by other supplements....but all the RPG supplements were attachments to a rather arcane (and not very well done frankly) wargame (Chainmail). These supplements were tan booklets that were stapled together....and published by Tactical Studies Rules. Then Arneson and Gygax went their seperate ways....and not amicably or so I am told....and this let to a split in the DnD franchise. Arneson, IIRC, went on to produce DnD (Basic, Expert, and then Advanced). This is what many call 'old' DnD. This is the one that had three alignments (Lawful, Neutral, and Chaotic....in the old Chainmail tradition), and had the Elf, Dwarf, and Halfling racial classes along with the Fighter, Cleric, Thief, and Wizard. Gygax who kept control of TSR (no longer Tactical Studies Rules) went on to produce [i]Advanced Dungeons and Dragons (to distinguish it from Arneson & Co's work) in 1978. That was when Good and Evil were added to the alignment system (bringing the total alignments to nine), and Races and Classes were formally seperated (allowing you to be an Elven Thief for example). He continued (unlike the other branch of DnD) classes from Chainmail such as the Ranger, Paladin, and Thief and added some like the Assassin, and Bard (as a specialty class). The 'other' DnD went through some changes and eventually came out with the 'Immortals' set and others....but frankly died out by the late 1980s for the most part. ADnD, OTOH, was for the most part the defining RPG throughout most of the 1980s....and then Gygax was forced out in a hostile takeover of TSR in 1989. Unsuprsingly ADnD 2E (which many now call ADnD) was published. I could say a great many things about ADnD (most unpleasent) but what eventually killed it as an RPG was the fact that it didn't evolve along with the gamers that supported it.....and TSR did not know how to listen to their customers. As a result GURPS, Hero, Vampire TM, and many others started cutting into ADnD....and by the mid to late nineties, ADnD was a joke in poor taste in many gaming circles. Yes, it was the grandfather of all RPGS....but it was also on life-support. Enter WOTC in 1998 who bought out a bankrupt TSR and made a concerted effort to revitalize the game......culminating in DnD (no longer advanced) 3E which was almost a complete rewrite of the system. The rest I think you know. -Polaris
Rian Lightblade 03-09-04, 08:20 PM	I going to repost the link I added to my previous post. http://www.wizards.com/dnd/DnDArchives_History.asp
Seeker95 03-09-04, 08:35 PM	Ignore everything these folks have told you. They are trying to make it sound glorious. The real difference between D&D and AD&D is the A. :P
Hengwrt Ellesmere 03-09-04, 09:10 PM	The following article is a bit more descriptive with the history. It also debunks the urban myths behind the anti-D&D movements of the 80's (the current ones are so stupid they don't need debunking). http://www.cgonline.com/features/011218-f1-f1.html
JoAT 03-10-04, 05:26 AM	Originally posted by Polaris The 'other' DnD went through some changes and eventually came out with the 'Immortals' set and others....but frankly died out by the late 1980s for the most part. If you don't mind, I'd like to add some of my own observations to this, just on the weird nature of D&D and AD&D - I may not be one of the older members out there, but I do have a good memory, and the point I started at was the old stuff (second hand stores rock). I found it fairly interesting, that, by the time D&D finally ended it's run, it seemed to be about as 'A' (Advanced, in this case refering to complexity of the rules) as AD&D, ablit in diffrent ways. There was a skill system, which I'd seen tacked on, either in the game, or in some issues of Dragon (don't remeber which), which seemed fairly useful, and pretty close to the thief skills system, the weapon mastery system was fairly advanced as well, not to mention all of the classes that began joining in - each race had it's own, of course. Then there was the immortal rules... Once I started getting into other game systems, I remember thinking that if one combined the two systems together, maybe you'd actually have a complete, workable RPG...
Qui-Gon Jinn 03-11-04, 04:41 AM	I grew-up on the original D&D. Then, I mixed it with 1st edition AD&D. I didn't like 2nd edition AD&D at all, so I went back to 1st edition AD&D. Then I jumped to 3rd edition about a year before 3.5 was released. I really like 3rd and 3.5 edition, but the original D&D will always be special (to me) because it was the first.
TieraStarr 03-11-04, 04:59 AM	Shortly after the release of AD&D 2E, was the release of the Rules Cyclopaedia. Which was unofficially labelled D&D 2E. It was a compilation of many of the unique rules for the D&D version into a single book. The front section was the players information, then followed the DM's section including it's own world (which had been rather detailed in the release of 14? gazeteers. This release gave D&D a brief resurgence and it survived for another two years. The death knell was the conversion of it's campaign world, now named Mystara to AD&D2. At the time the official line was that this was a good thing for D&D players. Now there would be twice as much stuff (including both versions) released for their campaign world. However, that was not the case and no further D&D material was released. This was about the same time as the AD&D 2E manuals were re-released with minor changes, and a set of optional rule books. This was unofficially labelled AD&D 2½. I dropped out at that time (I preferred D&D and Mystara myself, and was also starting on raising a family). The new DnD (3rd edition), in my opinion, contains many of the best features of both lines (D&D and AD&D). It brought myself back to the game.
qstor 03-11-04, 12:00 PM	I started playing 1e. I didnt play much 2e until right before 3e. I like the changes that 3.5 brought to the system. For me :) 1e is special too. I'm thinking of running a one shot game of 1e for old times sake. Mike