Check out our sponsor, Master of Realms! kck.st/3vobWUT Thanks to our guests @BobWorldbuilder, @DungeonMasterpiece, and Luka Rejec (check out his work at bit.ly/LukaPatreon). Original inspiration for the episode comes from @ggnorecast (watch the episode here: bit.ly/ggnoregameshow) Editing in this episode by @rulezeroedh844
You are correct. Additionally you don't even have to beat another Druid to attain a higher rank if there's fewer than the maximum amount at that rank, which can happen if one of the Druids of that rank dies for any reason.
The same applied for Monks going to 8th level and beyond. 1e PHB pg. 32 - "There can be only a limited number of monks above 7th level (Superior Master). There are three 8th level (Master of Dragons) and but one of each higher level. When a player character monk gains sufficient experience points to qualify him or her or 8th level, the commensurate abilities are attained only temporarily. The monk must find and defeat in single combat, hand-to-hand, without weapons or magic items, one of the 8th level monks..."
I am not sure if it was a real D&D edition or a retroclone, but I also read a rule somewhere that said the druid challenge didnt even have to be physical combat. A druid could challenge a higher druid to a game of riddles or chess or whatever if they so wanted and the challenged party agreed.
I found it funny that, even when they weren't sure of the edition, they could usually make a good guess based on the writing style (Gygax's cadence, in particular, is unmistakeable).
Ben showing off his DM skills. From prep and research, giving everyone the spot light, keeping the pace, helping without being noticed, while entertaining us too. .
what i love about this the most is that no one person is the end all be all for edition knowledge. The impression you can get from some content creators is that they know every edition cover to cover...makes you feel a little...less. Nice to see and hear that even the top tier creators are not walking encyclopedias and are humans after all :) cheers thanks guys
Baron is a sneaky player, playing two answers, and waiting for the other players to show their cards, and explaining their answers before he finalises his pick. Hmmm. Didn't expect that.
I think the aspect of a druid having to kill another druid to ascend in power may have been inspired by the Rex Nemorensis, who was a keeper of a sacred grove in ancient Roman times who could only lose his position if defeated in mortal combat by a pretender.
Fun fact: In 3.5 Innuendo was split between the Bluff skill (the messenger's part) and the Sense Motive (the eavesdropper's part). 3.0 also has the Read Lips skill. Apparently, the designers were expecting intercepting messages (be they secret, far away, or in a crowded place) to be a major form of obtaining information.
Dual classing existed in first edition. A human character (and only a human character) could start as one class, then start as another. Once their new class level equaled (or maybe exceeded) their old class level, they could use the abilities of both. It was clunky. Did I mention it was first edition?
As I recall, the 5-50 players in a campaign was for sandbox games where you would only play with a manageable number of players at any one time, but you had a large pool of players that were all playing in a shared world. So if one group cleared out the goblin cave, other groups would find it empty.
I wondered why the guys didnt mention Colville and his attempt to bring back the tactician in his MCDM game. 😂😂😂 which he IS the poster child for 4e. 😂😂😂😂
Question suggestion: "The tower can absorb 200 points of dawizard before collapsing. Dawizard sustained is cumulative, and the fortress cannot be repaired (although a wish restores 10 points of dawizard sustained)." Or "The user may look into the ball, concentrate on any place or object, and cause the iwizard of the place or object to appear. A crystal ball may be used three times per day, for up to one turn per use. The more familiar the object or area, the clearer the iwizard." These are, of course, quotes from the infamous Encyclopedia Magicka from 2e. An editor carelessly replaced "mage" with "wizard" throughout the book.
Really enjoyed it. It was fun when all the 5e questions came up and I felt like shouting at my screen: "No, it's the weird forgotten rules from the DMG that nobody ever uses!"
The ironic thing was that you weren't just killing the other druid for the XP, you had to do it even if you had the XP already. Sort of a Battle Royale org chart kind of a thing, there was only room for one person at each node.
One of the guideposts they used when developing 4e was "eliminating bogus symmetry" which justified them removing Chaotic Good, Neutral, and Lawful Evil alignments (Neutral became Unaligned).
Also the "just a box of notes" wasnt from Gary, I suspect. That sounds more like Tim Kask getting a box of notes from Arneson regarding Blackmoor. I've heard that particular story from Kask several times. Also, there WERE no other employees to dothe writing for OD&D. Kask was employee #1 and the little brown books were already published. Arneson was brilliant DM and had quite the imagination, but was apparently disorganized and not the best writer. Plus, we olde folke would never call it zero edition or 1st edtion. It was D&D or maybe OD&D and AD&D. "Edition" wasn't added until 2nd Edition. Basic doesn't really fit. The first two versions of basic were mostly OD&D. The BECMI version was a fusion.
Fifth edition's way to keep you from bringing a character back over and over is to limit how long a character can be dead and still be revived, per character level. Revivify has to be in the first minute, other resurrection spells will only work in a given amount of time like a week or a year. Though you're right, 5e is the most lenient edition when it comes to bringing characters back.
That's one thing I really like about the 3.x DMGs - they have a bunch of side bars about why they made certain rules in order to help a GM work out whether they're worth changing. 3.5 is one of my favourite editions still.
@@LukaRejec We ended last session on a cliffhager! 11 Bluelander degenerates attacks the characters in Violet city, two party members back in the camp. Just for fun we roll initiative at end of session so we know what's up for next session. DM rolls a nat 20! Party rolls a 1!! :)
The first quote "Once upon a time, long, long ago there was a little group known as the Castle and Crusade Society" is also printed at the start of the Holmes blue edition (and sourced to 0e).
This was amazing. This was just like watching an excellent British panel show like Would I Lie To You, or QI. Great structure and foundations, bolstered by excellent personalities and anecdotes. I hope you keep making more of these types of shows
"With Great power comes great responsibility" was a very well known Spider-man quote even before the movies. And, I assume the D&D people back then were frequent guests at comicbook stores.
You guys had fun It was interesting to see all the changes and inconsistencies across the ages. It ends up reinforcing the "my house, my rules" approach.
Thank you Baron, I thought I might've been the only one who noticed that the Warlock was the one class in 5e that was most clearly derived from its 4th edition version.
I love Questing Beast videos. This was a lot of fun. And exposed the gaps in my D&D play history. I played 0e, B/X, AD&D (the longest played, most read), skipped most of 2e, played 3e, 3.5e, skipped 4e, and played 5e. And these questions definitely exposed where the limits of my archive of information occurs. Fun! thanks!
26:20 It couldn't be third edition, because the quote said that "spellcasters" could change their spells. By 3e we have spontaneous casters who wouldn't be allowed to change their spells known for free like that, and the quote would have specified prepared spellcasters.
I empathise with Luka. I spent my first years of gaming equipped with a 1st ed PHB and a 2nd ed DMG… and a big❓over my head. Fun video, thanks Ben. And thanks Luka, too - UVG is amazing.
It may be of interest (based on an aside during the video) that Warlocks first appeared in the 2nd Edition supplement, "Players Option: Spells & Magic", (pg 83).
Woo! GG no re helped get me into the OSR scene as well as this channel. Loved their shenanigans. Also, awesome lineup here, some of my favorite content creators all in one place
This was not only hilarious, but I learned a lot about the earlier additions . I'm not a dnd player as I prefer to stick to games like knave, icrpg, shadowdark, and now crown and skull. But this was still fascinating to watch. Thanks qb.
13:42 OK, in the 1980s, maybe not all Marvel characters were well-known, but I guarantee more people were reading Spider-Man and X-Men comics in the 80s than were playing D&D. And often the same stores were selling both products. I picked up my first D&D books (late 1e/early 2e) from local comic book shops.
39:30 - not exactly, the higher ranking druid must be defeated in a ritual combat, that does not mean "killed" per se. Just establishing a new pecking order does not mean you need to execute the previous holder (though again, younger druids would be grateful, as this would create another opening in the ranks).
I'm sure someone else has mentioned it, but I heard the percentile increments for strength at 18 was a way of balancing a powerful fighter against casters, because magic is not linear power in early D&D, or even later D&D really. It allowed your fighter to advance at least a bit.
Fun video! Makes me miss AD&D 1e so much. 18/xx , the stats/class limits of the different races (the whole tradeoffs of 1 race vs another), multi- and dual- classing, less class choices, system shock loses 1 Con, the whole fragility of lower level characters, ... And for someone who stopped reading D&D books at 3.5 I got alot right.
Multi-Classing: It always bugs me when people these days say "Oh, you need a reason for why your character went from a Paladin into Warlock" and I'm like No... I'm playing a Death Knight from level 1, but it's built from Paladin and Warlock levels.
This was really great. Something I have been looking for in the OSR space is a bit more community and fun and this is exactly that! I love how many great new(ish) voices there are in the community and how inviting OSR play is becoming. It isn't just the system's ease of access but also the community that helps welcome new players in.
@@magdalenavalentinastegaru8531 Thank you so much for your support! Maybe one day I'll be big enough to get included on these types of videos about D&D history along with these bigger D&D Celebrity Channels!
The answer to the first question reminds me of the oldest song known to mankind, a Sumerian ballad which ironically begins with the lyrics "Back in the olden times"
