People Still call D&D's system 'Vancian Magic' though it is far different now than from what it was in the past. What are your criteria for 'Vacian magic.' I am not looking for strict sourced definitions, i am looking for what you think off the top of your head. Sourced definitions can be provided if they are the Basis of your opinion. No Wrong answers, just seeking opinions. We are not burning at the stake for a different take.
Who are these "people"? I used to play D&D1e long ago and never heard any one call anything "Vancian". I only recently heard another game refer to that word, and it raised my eyebrow.
While I think that D&D /is/ collaborative story telling, I don't think Vancian magic helps tell the story. I've read most of the arguments people have made in favor of it. To me, it sounds almost like folks are trying to justify the system. I'm sure it worked well in Vance's books. I do not feel it does anything to improve the experience of D&D. I've played with Vancian magic in game, and I have used the subsequent systems as well. In my mind, it's no question that dumping Vancian magic made playing magic users a more pleasant experience.
That said, the pendulum needs to swing back the other way a bit. Without any restrictions at all, magic users are a bit too good. I am not sure where the happy medium is, but I'd rather have the overtuned wizards that we have now, than the undertuned and punished ones we had back in 2e. I say wizards specifically, because I am not convinced that the other spell casters are huge problems. It's the flexibility that wizards have to swap their loadouts super easy that I think cause the majority of the issues.
Whether you like it or not, or think it works for your game is an entirely different topic and mostly driven by personal tastes, which, as far as I'm concerned, requires no debate. Taste is taste and it's a matter for each player/table to determine their preference.
The topic is about the meaning and purpose of Vancian magic, and understanding why it exists at all is an important part of understanding it as a whole.
I think one way to look at Vancian magic and the concept of role-playing "systems" in a game in general is to understand that they are not all intended to be "fun" mechanics; they are more often intended to create a sense of drama, limitations, and often even drawbacks.
I mean for example is it fun to only have 1 Bonus action, rather than, say 3 Bonus actions? Is failing a skill check "fun"? Is casting a spell only to have an enemy make its saving throw "fun"? All of these limitations, drawbacks and potential failures could be construed by someone as not fun game mechanics. There are games that take the approach of taking something deemed "unfun" by the designer and altering how it works. For example, in Draw Steel, there is no such thing as a failed attack, when you make an attack, the question isn't if you hit or miss (everything is an auto hit), its a question of how much damage you do (a little or a lot). The designer of that game decided that missing attacks is not a fun mechanic.
As you point out "Without any restrictions at all, magic users are a bit too good." This is a common complaint about modern D&D by old-school gamers, though I think most would agree they are a bit more than just "a bit too good". Old Old-school gamers don't think its a fun mechanic to have the concept of The Magic-User being reduced to just a common thing anyone can do, The point of Vancian magic was to make Magic-Users very special. Evidence for that is in how OSR games typically debict mages as a unique class. You can look at pretty much any system, and it would be so.
About 75% of the classes/sub-classes in modern 2024 D&D are spellcasters of one form or another, it's more common to have magic abilities than it is to have good martial abilities in modern D&D. Modern D&D is in effect a game about different types of Wizards.
Vancian magic was one part of a larger eco-system of mechanics that defined the realities of a fantasy world, most notably that fantasy world was not "high fantasy" or "power fantasy", D&D was a low magic, low fantasy based mostly on a real medieval world. What magic did exist in the world was presumed to be the hands of the players, meaning it was a kind of expectation of the game that IF powerful magic-users existed, it was typically as a member of an adventure party or a villain in the story or some rare NPC that would help the players. It was intended to be limited, special, unique, rare.. whatever word you want to use to describe anything but common.
Powerful magic did exist, in fact, the magic in old-school vancian systems like AD&D was incredibly potent, came at very high levels and it was a rare part of the setting. Isolated to the Magic-User and Druid classes.
Modern D&D is a superhero power fantasy, and in that context, where everyone is a powerful magic wielder, Vancian magic doesn't make much sense, so with that I can agree. It is a system of magic that originated as an intentionally limiting concept, it doesn't fit into a setting where pretty much everyone is a powerful spellcaster superhero of one form or another.
Youre making 90% of that up. Gygax had to come up with something for his game, and lifted his magic system from Jack Vance, just like he lifted most things from elsewhere and taped it all together. There was no deep thought put into it.
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Any time an unfathomably powerful entity sweeps in and offers godlike rewards in return for just a few teensy favors, it’s a scam. Unless it’s me. I’d never lie to you, reader dearest.
Youre making 90% of that up. Gygax had to come up with something for his game, and lifted his magic system from Jack Vance, just like he lifted most things from elsewhere and taped it all together. There was no deep thought put into it.
The fact that you don't know the history of the game is not unusual; most people don't bother with it, and that is fine. It's not necessary to know the history of the game to play and enjoy the game today. The fact that you're trying to erase the history, re-write it, and otherwise deny it, is willful. You could have taken the time to perhaps do a simple google search and find out what Gygax thought about Vancian magic, why he added it to the game, why he chose it over something else, and you would have quickly discovered that not only is everything I said 100% accurate, but most of that post is me paraphrasing Ggyax words and in some cases directly quoting him.
I find it fascinating how in modern gaming culture, it has become cosmopolitan to bash both the original design and designers of the game.
50 years later after Gygax's and Arneson's creation, the current edition of the game and every edition before it have and are still using 70% of the same mechanics designed by Gygax and Arneson in the 70's and it is still the most popular game on the market by a wide margin because no one that followed them... NO ONE has been able to create something better. These guys were that good. 50 years of D&D and people are still copying them and people still insist that they were just fumbling idiots with no design skills. If they were such terrible designers, why has no one come with anything better? Why does every game designer that makes D&D since Gygax departed TSR in the 80's after putting out 1st edition AD&D copy/paste their work?
What's worse is that Wizards of the Coast design team have never had an original idea for D&D. You name a mechanic in any version of WotC D&D and I will show you where that mechanic was pinched from in the OSR or from original designers at TSR. Wizards of the Coast 5e D&D lives on the back of the geniuses that created the original game and the creativity of the 3rd party developers that show them how to evolve it.
Yet we still have this habit of re-writing history and pretending like Wizards of the Coast is somehow leading the future of D&D. It's a complete joke.
Vancian magic was just one of many D&D mechanics that were inspired by stories from Appendix N. They weren't arbitrary choices or some sort of fillers; everything that went into D&D was deliberately driven by the creative works of pulp fiction. Vancian magic was never about being mechanically good for a game, it was always about paying tribute to the fantasy works upon which the entire game is based.
I find it fascinating how in modern gaming culture, it has become cosmopolitan to bash both the original design and designers of the game.
50 years later after Gygax's and Arneson's creation, the current edition of the game and every edition before it have and are still using 70% of the same mechanics designed by Gygax and Arneson
Um... no. 5e probably manages 70% similarity to 3e, but 3e was an enormous design change that redefined most of the game's core mechanics (attributes, attacks, defenses, saves, skills, how monsters are designed and written up, ...).
AD&D was a good design for 50 years ago. People have actually learned things since then.
I find it fascinating how in modern gaming culture, it has become cosmopolitan to bash both the original design and designers of the game.
50 years later after Gygax's and Arneson's creation, the current edition of the game and every edition before it have and are still using 70% of the same mechanics designed by Gygax and Arneson
Um... no. 5e probably manages 70% similarity to 3e, but 3e was an enormous design change that redefined most of the game's core mechanics (attributes, attacks, defenses, saves, skills, how monsters are designed and written up, ...).
AD&D was a good design for 50 years ago. People have actually learned things since then.
I can't say I can call it a good design, even for then. It was exploring a completely new design space, and that is going to lead to making choices that you can't know will be bad.
Nonetheless, a lot of its systems design choices are questionable. They're explicable due to the way it was developed (piecemeal, adding on to existing wargame rules, then adding more subsystems as needed, and replacing others), but nobody ever sat down and made it a coherent design. (Maybe that was the way that wargame design was often done back then, but it seems unlikely.)
I can't say I can call it a good design, even for then. It was exploring a completely new design space, and that is going to lead to making choices that you can't know will be bad.
It worked. When you don't have prior art, simply being able to function is already doing pretty well. Other than that, well, AD&D was a system that was essentially unplayable as written, everyone used house rules because you really couldn't play it any other way.
I find it fascinating how in modern gaming culture, it has become cosmopolitan to bash both the original design and designers of the game.
50 years later after Gygax's and Arneson's creation, the current edition of the game and every edition before it have and are still using 70% of the same mechanics designed by Gygax and Arneson
Um... no. 5e probably manages 70% similarity to 3e, but 3e was an enormous design change that redefined most of the game's core mechanics (attributes, attacks, defenses, saves, skills, how monsters are designed and written up, ...).
AD&D was a good design for 50 years ago. People have actually learned things since then.
Hardly... Attributes, defenses, saves, skills, and monster design in modern D&D are just slight variations of what already existed. Do you really think it's design when you decide "ok if you're a strength 17 you get +4 instead of +3... or reverse AC math? look at me, I'm a designer.
Give me a break. There hasn't been anything new in D&D in nearly 40 years. It takes zero talent to buy a franchise, take someone's design and adjust it. This is not innovation. it's not design; it's small adaptions of someone else's work that the community was doing long before Wizards of the Coast came along and charged 50 books for a printed book.
I can't say I can call it a good design, even for then. It was exploring a completely new design space, and that is going to lead to making choices that you can't know will be bad.
It worked. When you don't have prior art, simply being able to function is already doing pretty well. Other than that, well, AD&D was a system that was essentially unplayable as written, everyone used house rules because you really couldn't play it any other way.
You're citing an intended feature of the game as a bug. The whole point of AD&D was to be a guide to a method and tradition, it was not a rulebook. You're applying modern thinking to a classic premise. You didn't play AD&D; you created an AD&D game in your own vision.
Hardly... Attributes, defenses, saves, skills, and monster design in modern D&D are just slight variations of what already existed. Do you really think it's design when you decide "ok if you're a strength 17 you get +4 instead of +3... or reverse AC math?
Um.... none of those things are slight variants.
The fundamental change between AD&D and 3e is that in AD&D, everything you might want to do had its own special mechanic, generally involving table lookup. 3e collapsed the vast majority of those things into a single consistent mechanic (roll a d20, add bonuses, compare to target number), turned most of the table lookup into predictable and simple equations, rethought a lot of core mechanics (in AD&D, there was typically very little difference between an ability score of 8 and an ability score of 14), ...
You're citing an intended feature of the game as a bug. The whole point of AD&D was to be a guide to a method and tradition, it was not a rulebook. You're applying modern thinking to a classic premise. You didn't play AD&D; you created an AD&D game in your own vision.
Um... I suggest actually reading the AD&D DMG? Also, for clarity, I'm not criticizing the AD&D rules having gaps (every RPG has those), I'm saying that the rules that were actually published were essentially unusable as a body.
Hardly... Attributes, defenses, saves, skills, and monster design in modern D&D are just slight variations of what already existed. Do you really think it's design when you decide "ok if you're a strength 17 you get +4 instead of +3... or reverse AC math?
Um.... none of those things are slight variants.
The fundamental change between AD&D and 3e is that in AD&D, everything you might want to do had its own special mechanic, generally involving table lookup. 3e collapsed the vast majority of those things into a single consistent mechanic (roll a d20, add bonuses, compare to target number), turned most of the table lookup into predictable and simple equations, rethought a lot of core mechanics (in AD&D, there was typically very little difference between an ability score of 8 and an ability score of 14), ...
You're citing an intended feature of the game as a bug. The whole point of AD&D was to be a guide to a method and tradition, it was not a rulebook. You're applying modern thinking to a classic premise. You didn't play AD&D; you created an AD&D game in your own vision.
Um... I suggest actually reading the AD&D DMG? Also, for clarity, I'm not criticizing the AD&D rules having gaps (every RPG has those), I'm saying that the rules that were actually published were essentially unusable as a body.
I think this is kind of the principle misunderstanding of Vancian magic in particular but globally about how D&D was designed and how it was intended to be used. You're still looking at it like it's a "rulebook" in the modern sense, which I'm trying to explain to you (using an actual example of an actual AD&D game in progress in a video form). AD&D is a tradition and the most important part of that tradition was to take the many examples of "how you might handle different situations in a role-playing session"... from the instructions in the Dungeon Masters Guide to teach you how to participate in that tradition. It's not a rulebook, it's a guide.
The goal isn't to play this conceptualized idea of a "rule system" like you would in modern 5e (aka read the rules, follow the instructions), the point was to learn how to run a role-playing campaign and more importantly on how to devise your own method, structure and style for that tradition. It is the intention of AD&D for you to take it and make it your own and that tradition which you know today as "homebrewing", was the ONLY way to play AD&D... that is not a bug or a problem to be solved; it's quite literally the entire point of AD&D.
I understand modern gaming and I understand why people want everything to be quantified into clear, streamlined mechanics and I fully understand why someone would take a game like AD&D and start messing with it to create their own version. Well 5e is one such version, but its not yours; its someone else's version of the game. Its no more official or legitimate than every other DM that has ever run a D&D campaign.
The 'post-Vancian' system now in place incurs similar limitations. If that Wizard uses up all its spell slots of a particular spell's level and greater then encounters something against which that particular spell would have been useful or even critical ...
And this has happened to me in almost every session of 5E I have ever played in in which I played a caster.
It still exists to an extent but it's a great deal more forgiving in 5e. Because you only have to prepare a spell once to have as many iterations of it as you need (or more accurately, have ammunition for), there's a lot less guesswork involved. It also means that in a pinch, you can use a higher level spell slot for that thing you really need. e.g. the party gets ambushed by some trolls and you've used up all your 3rd-level fireballs for the day but you have a 4th-level slot you've been saving, well, not only do you get to save the day, but the last one actually hits harder than the previous ones. Or your Fighter gets paralyzed by that lich and you have a 5th level slot, now might be the time for that clutch Freedom of Movement you weren't sure you'd need.
Am I to believe Gygax and Arneson were 'bad game designers' like you expected me to believe I was 'overstating the prominence and regard' of a recipient of the World Fantasy Award for Life Achievement, a grand master of Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, and an inductee into the Science Fiction Hall of Fame?
Believe it or not, people can be important and successful and still make mistakes. Yes, there are plenty of ideas in early D&D that have stood the test of time very well. There are also plenty of ideas that are hot garbage, and both are outnumbered by the number of ideas that are ... okay but nothing special.
As for Vance... he's definitely top 100. That doesn't mean his concept of magic was particularly influential.
Believe it or not, people can be important and successful and still make mistakes. Yes, there are plenty of ideas in early D&D that have stood the test of time very well. There are also plenty of ideas that are hot garbage, and both are outnumbered by the number of ideas that are ... okay but nothing special.
As for Vance... he's definitely top 100. That doesn't mean his concept of magic was particularly influential.
Nor particularly well-suited for an evolving game.
When D&D was a more niche hobby for wargaming enthusiasts, those were probably the kind of people that would meticulously plan out "tomorrow I'll need 3 flame strikes, 4 cure wounds, 2 restorations" etc. That's not a reasonable expectation for a mainstream audience, especially newer players who might need to look up what restoration does every time they cast it.
Believe it or not, people can be important and successful and still make mistakes. Yes, there are plenty of ideas in early D&D that have stood the test of time very well. There are also plenty of ideas that are hot garbage, and both are outnumbered by the number of ideas that are ... okay but nothing special.
As for Vance... he's definitely top 100. That doesn't mean his concept of magic was particularly influential.
Nor particularly well-suited for an evolving game.
When D&D was a more niche hobby for wargaming enthusiasts, those were probably the kind of people that would meticulously plan out "tomorrow I'll need 3 flame strikes, 4 cure wounds, 2 restorations" etc. That's not a reasonable expectation for a mainstream audience, especially newer players who might need to look up what restoration does every time they cast it.
It was more a strategy game. While I never really fit the mold—being more 'freak' than 'geek' if you will—that forethought required by players was part of the charm.
There's nothing wrong with finding that charming, all kinds of niche gameplay expressions have their charm. That's what houserules are for. If you and your table want to return to "hard vancian" of not just preparing the spells themselves but the slots that go with them, you can absolutely do that. The printed game does not have to follow suit, your table has the tools it needs to find your own localized bliss.
I play in 5E games—both 2014 and 2024—but when I DM use a version of the game based on the 1983 revision of the basic rules. The current printed version does not have to follow suit. And I would not suggest it does. I have simply explained the reasoning behind the Vancian magic system. And had to wade through a number of false claims to do so: Vancian magic in the game has 'little to do' with how it works in Vance's Dying Earth series, 'little to no' thought went into the decision to use it, Vance is an author of 'little to no' significance, D&D 'isn't ' a form of storytelling because a story 'must' have a predetermined plot ...
Beyond those false claims all I see are opinions. And opinions are fine. If you don't like something don't play it. Ultimately it comes down to what you want to play.
None of those opinions came from me, so wade on. What I was supplying is the reason why 5e's looser version of Vancian is the way it is, and why it's ultimately better for the printed game.
Believe it or not, people can be important and successful and still make mistakes. Yes, there are plenty of ideas in early D&D that have stood the test of time very well. There are also plenty of ideas that are hot garbage, and both are outnumbered by the number of ideas that are ... okay but nothing special.
As for Vance... he's definitely top 100. That doesn't mean his concept of magic was particularly influential.
Nor particularly well-suited for an evolving game.
When D&D was a more niche hobby for wargaming enthusiasts, those were probably the kind of people that would meticulously plan out "tomorrow I'll need 3 flame strikes, 4 cure wounds, 2 restorations" etc. That's not a reasonable expectation for a mainstream audience, especially newer players who might need to look up what restoration does every time they cast it.
Agreed. AD&D was definitely not for a mainstream audience, but that was also the point of AD&D. It was a Gygax and Arneson invention, but more generally, it was super fans of pulp fantasy, war games (and gaming in general) inventing/creating something for other super fanatics. The 1st edition AD&D DMG was written as a conversation and love letter between one veteran gamer and fan for other gamers and fans.
This is why modern games have developed and evolved the way they have. Every evolution of the game has been about stripping it down and streamlining, making it more accessible, easier to use, easier to learn and teach, and easier to read and, most importantly, easier to sell to the masses.
The problem is that most of what made D&D special and unique as well as the reasons for things existing, have been slowly stripped away with each iteration of the game, to such a degree that most of what existed with purpose now exists as a stand-in.
For example 5e 2024 edition still uses 3d6 (3 to 18) for its attribute score, but there is absolutely no logical or mechanical reason left in the current edition that explains why. It's a stand-in mechanical structure that literally serves no purpose anymore. All the reasons why this was created and existed in the game have been stripped away a long time ago. Its almost like the game wants to hold on to its past, but it no longer understands its past and its this silly notion that as long as we have 3-18 its still D&D, when the reality is that D&D stopped being D&D a very long time ago and these old sacred cows are left in because removing them means admitting that fact.
Its the same with Vancian magic, the way it works today in 5e quite literally no longer has a point it, it no longer serves any purposes or has any narrative connection why it was created and what it was for. Its just an old sacred cow left in because removing it would mean that the game is no longer D&D, which again, is something that already happened long ago.
It is the strangest phenomenon about D&D where modern gaming rejects its past passionately, yet it insists that the very pieces that once defined that past, that once served a purpose (which it hates) remain in the game for posterity. Modern gaming has taken concepts like Vancian magic, stripped it of any recognizable purpose or reason for existing, yet continues to use this bizarre and completely unnecessary stripped-down version of it.
Why? Why not just redesign it for modern audiences?
What alternative magic system are you proposing? D&D's had rules for alternate magic systems for numerous editions now: spell points date back to at least 3.5 and the functionally identical psyonics rules date back to AD&D. There were also a host of other options in previous editions like the Warlock (only knew a few spells but had no limit on how often they could be cast) and the Truenamer (a skill check system that was interesting in theory but an actual dumpster fire in execution). What change would actually improve the game vs the current rules?
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"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
What alternative magic system are you proposing? D&D's had rules for alternate magic systems for numerous editions now: spell points date back to at least 3.5 and the functionally identical psyonics rules date back to AD&D. There were also a host of other options in previous editions like the Warlock (only knew a few spells but had no limit on how often they could be cast) and the Truenamer (a skill check system that was interesting in theory but an actual dumpster fire in execution). What change would actually improve the game vs the current rules?
Yeah but that is the crux of the problem for modern D&D. It has no idea as a system what it's trying to achieve narratively as an RPG, so how do you build a design goal for something like the magic system? Because that's what its about, its not about us coming up with a "system", there are a million and one ways to do something mechanically. the question is what are you trying to achieve with that system in the context of a narrative role-playing game.
In AD&D this was clear. The goal was to replicate a pulp magic system from a specific classic fantasy novel beloved by the designer of the game.
The question is, what is modern D&D's design goal? When you're designing for the masses and to the mainstream, the answer is "streamlined" or "easy to use" for example, but these are not the ambitions or design goals of a passionate RPG designer trying to create something; these are ambitions of a corporation trying to sell something.
Hence the issue. Modern D&D has no spirit, passion, setting or inspiration of its own, its a corporate product designed to sell books, but it's completely devoid of anything interesting enough to produce a worthwhile design goal for an RPG.
So yeah, I have no answer and neither does Wizards of the Coast, which is why modern D&D is just a lifeless and cold game mechanic, there is nothing behind it. They slap "fantasy art" on every page of the book, throw in a few creative adjectives but it's all derivative of a D&D that once existed in which things meant something. Now it's just pretty pictures.
Who are these "people"? I used to play D&D1e long ago and never heard any one call anything "Vancian". I only recently heard another game refer to that word, and it raised my eyebrow.
Youre making 90% of that up. Gygax had to come up with something for his game, and lifted his magic system from Jack Vance, just like he lifted most things from elsewhere and taped it all together. There was no deep thought put into it.
Any time an unfathomably powerful entity sweeps in and offers godlike rewards in return for just a few teensy favors, it’s a scam. Unless it’s me. I’d never lie to you, reader dearest.
Tasha
So, I ran through the pregenerated characters for the G-D series. They are
So, 8 of 12 characters are spellcasters of some sort. Is that really significantly different from 5e?
The fact that you don't know the history of the game is not unusual; most people don't bother with it, and that is fine. It's not necessary to know the history of the game to play and enjoy the game today. The fact that you're trying to erase the history, re-write it, and otherwise deny it, is willful. You could have taken the time to perhaps do a simple google search and find out what Gygax thought about Vancian magic, why he added it to the game, why he chose it over something else, and you would have quickly discovered that not only is everything I said 100% accurate, but most of that post is me paraphrasing Ggyax words and in some cases directly quoting him.
50 years later after Gygax's and Arneson's creation, the current edition of the game and every edition before it have and are still using 70% of the same mechanics designed by Gygax and Arneson in the 70's and it is still the most popular game on the market by a wide margin because no one that followed them... NO ONE has been able to create something better. These guys were that good. 50 years of D&D and people are still copying them and people still insist that they were just fumbling idiots with no design skills. If they were such terrible designers, why has no one come with anything better? Why does every game designer that makes D&D since Gygax departed TSR in the 80's after putting out 1st edition AD&D copy/paste their work?
What's worse is that Wizards of the Coast design team have never had an original idea for D&D. You name a mechanic in any version of WotC D&D and I will show you where that mechanic was pinched from in the OSR or from original designers at TSR. Wizards of the Coast 5e D&D lives on the back of the geniuses that created the original game and the creativity of the 3rd party developers that show them how to evolve it.
Yet we still have this habit of re-writing history and pretending like Wizards of the Coast is somehow leading the future of D&D. It's a complete joke.
Vancian magic was just one of many D&D mechanics that were inspired by stories from Appendix N. They weren't arbitrary choices or some sort of fillers; everything that went into D&D was deliberately driven by the creative works of pulp fiction. Vancian magic was never about being mechanically good for a game, it was always about paying tribute to the fantasy works upon which the entire game is based.
Um... no. 5e probably manages 70% similarity to 3e, but 3e was an enormous design change that redefined most of the game's core mechanics (attributes, attacks, defenses, saves, skills, how monsters are designed and written up, ...).
AD&D was a good design for 50 years ago. People have actually learned things since then.
I can't say I can call it a good design, even for then. It was exploring a completely new design space, and that is going to lead to making choices that you can't know will be bad.
Nonetheless, a lot of its systems design choices are questionable. They're explicable due to the way it was developed (piecemeal, adding on to existing wargame rules, then adding more subsystems as needed, and replacing others), but nobody ever sat down and made it a coherent design. (Maybe that was the way that wargame design was often done back then, but it seems unlikely.)
It worked. When you don't have prior art, simply being able to function is already doing pretty well. Other than that, well, AD&D was a system that was essentially unplayable as written, everyone used house rules because you really couldn't play it any other way.
Hardly... Attributes, defenses, saves, skills, and monster design in modern D&D are just slight variations of what already existed. Do you really think it's design when you decide "ok if you're a strength 17 you get +4 instead of +3... or reverse AC math? look at me, I'm a designer.
Give me a break. There hasn't been anything new in D&D in nearly 40 years. It takes zero talent to buy a franchise, take someone's design and adjust it. This is not innovation. it's not design; it's small adaptions of someone else's work that the community was doing long before Wizards of the Coast came along and charged 50 books for a printed book.
You're citing an intended feature of the game as a bug. The whole point of AD&D was to be a guide to a method and tradition, it was not a rulebook. You're applying modern thinking to a classic premise. You didn't play AD&D; you created an AD&D game in your own vision.
The point of AD&D was what this guy is doing.
Um.... none of those things are slight variants.
The fundamental change between AD&D and 3e is that in AD&D, everything you might want to do had its own special mechanic, generally involving table lookup. 3e collapsed the vast majority of those things into a single consistent mechanic (roll a d20, add bonuses, compare to target number), turned most of the table lookup into predictable and simple equations, rethought a lot of core mechanics (in AD&D, there was typically very little difference between an ability score of 8 and an ability score of 14), ...
Um... I suggest actually reading the AD&D DMG? Also, for clarity, I'm not criticizing the AD&D rules having gaps (every RPG has those), I'm saying that the rules that were actually published were essentially unusable as a body.
I think this is kind of the principle misunderstanding of Vancian magic in particular but globally about how D&D was designed and how it was intended to be used. You're still looking at it like it's a "rulebook" in the modern sense, which I'm trying to explain to you (using an actual example of an actual AD&D game in progress in a video form). AD&D is a tradition and the most important part of that tradition was to take the many examples of "how you might handle different situations in a role-playing session"... from the instructions in the Dungeon Masters Guide to teach you how to participate in that tradition. It's not a rulebook, it's a guide.
The goal isn't to play this conceptualized idea of a "rule system" like you would in modern 5e (aka read the rules, follow the instructions), the point was to learn how to run a role-playing campaign and more importantly on how to devise your own method, structure and style for that tradition. It is the intention of AD&D for you to take it and make it your own and that tradition which you know today as "homebrewing", was the ONLY way to play AD&D... that is not a bug or a problem to be solved; it's quite literally the entire point of AD&D.
I understand modern gaming and I understand why people want everything to be quantified into clear, streamlined mechanics and I fully understand why someone would take a game like AD&D and start messing with it to create their own version. Well 5e is one such version, but its not yours; its someone else's version of the game. Its no more official or legitimate than every other DM that has ever run a D&D campaign.
It still exists to an extent but it's a great deal more forgiving in 5e. Because you only have to prepare a spell once to have as many iterations of it as you need (or more accurately, have ammunition for), there's a lot less guesswork involved. It also means that in a pinch, you can use a higher level spell slot for that thing you really need. e.g. the party gets ambushed by some trolls and you've used up all your 3rd-level fireballs for the day but you have a 4th-level slot you've been saving, well, not only do you get to save the day, but the last one actually hits harder than the previous ones. Or your Fighter gets paralyzed by that lich and you have a 5th level slot, now might be the time for that clutch Freedom of Movement you weren't sure you'd need.
Believe it or not, people can be important and successful and still make mistakes. Yes, there are plenty of ideas in early D&D that have stood the test of time very well. There are also plenty of ideas that are hot garbage, and both are outnumbered by the number of ideas that are ... okay but nothing special.
As for Vance... he's definitely top 100. That doesn't mean his concept of magic was particularly influential.
Nor particularly well-suited for an evolving game.
When D&D was a more niche hobby for wargaming enthusiasts, those were probably the kind of people that would meticulously plan out "tomorrow I'll need 3 flame strikes, 4 cure wounds, 2 restorations" etc. That's not a reasonable expectation for a mainstream audience, especially newer players who might need to look up what restoration does every time they cast it.
There's nothing wrong with finding that charming, all kinds of niche gameplay expressions have their charm. That's what houserules are for. If you and your table want to return to "hard vancian" of not just preparing the spells themselves but the slots that go with them, you can absolutely do that. The printed game does not have to follow suit, your table has the tools it needs to find your own localized bliss.
None of those opinions came from me, so wade on. What I was supplying is the reason why 5e's looser version of Vancian is the way it is, and why it's ultimately better for the printed game.
Agreed. AD&D was definitely not for a mainstream audience, but that was also the point of AD&D. It was a Gygax and Arneson invention, but more generally, it was super fans of pulp fantasy, war games (and gaming in general) inventing/creating something for other super fanatics. The 1st edition AD&D DMG was written as a conversation and love letter between one veteran gamer and fan for other gamers and fans.
This is why modern games have developed and evolved the way they have. Every evolution of the game has been about stripping it down and streamlining, making it more accessible, easier to use, easier to learn and teach, and easier to read and, most importantly, easier to sell to the masses.
The problem is that most of what made D&D special and unique as well as the reasons for things existing, have been slowly stripped away with each iteration of the game, to such a degree that most of what existed with purpose now exists as a stand-in.
For example 5e 2024 edition still uses 3d6 (3 to 18) for its attribute score, but there is absolutely no logical or mechanical reason left in the current edition that explains why. It's a stand-in mechanical structure that literally serves no purpose anymore. All the reasons why this was created and existed in the game have been stripped away a long time ago. Its almost like the game wants to hold on to its past, but it no longer understands its past and its this silly notion that as long as we have 3-18 its still D&D, when the reality is that D&D stopped being D&D a very long time ago and these old sacred cows are left in because removing them means admitting that fact.
Its the same with Vancian magic, the way it works today in 5e quite literally no longer has a point it, it no longer serves any purposes or has any narrative connection why it was created and what it was for. Its just an old sacred cow left in because removing it would mean that the game is no longer D&D, which again, is something that already happened long ago.
It is the strangest phenomenon about D&D where modern gaming rejects its past passionately, yet it insists that the very pieces that once defined that past, that once served a purpose (which it hates) remain in the game for posterity. Modern gaming has taken concepts like Vancian magic, stripped it of any recognizable purpose or reason for existing, yet continues to use this bizarre and completely unnecessary stripped-down version of it.
Why? Why not just redesign it for modern audiences?
What alternative magic system are you proposing? D&D's had rules for alternate magic systems for numerous editions now: spell points date back to at least 3.5 and the functionally identical psyonics rules date back to AD&D. There were also a host of other options in previous editions like the Warlock (only knew a few spells but had no limit on how often they could be cast) and the Truenamer (a skill check system that was interesting in theory but an actual dumpster fire in execution). What change would actually improve the game vs the current rules?
Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
Yeah but that is the crux of the problem for modern D&D. It has no idea as a system what it's trying to achieve narratively as an RPG, so how do you build a design goal for something like the magic system? Because that's what its about, its not about us coming up with a "system", there are a million and one ways to do something mechanically. the question is what are you trying to achieve with that system in the context of a narrative role-playing game.
In AD&D this was clear. The goal was to replicate a pulp magic system from a specific classic fantasy novel beloved by the designer of the game.
The question is, what is modern D&D's design goal? When you're designing for the masses and to the mainstream, the answer is "streamlined" or "easy to use" for example, but these are not the ambitions or design goals of a passionate RPG designer trying to create something; these are ambitions of a corporation trying to sell something.
Hence the issue. Modern D&D has no spirit, passion, setting or inspiration of its own, its a corporate product designed to sell books, but it's completely devoid of anything interesting enough to produce a worthwhile design goal for an RPG.
So yeah, I have no answer and neither does Wizards of the Coast, which is why modern D&D is just a lifeless and cold game mechanic, there is nothing behind it. They slap "fantasy art" on every page of the book, throw in a few creative adjectives but it's all derivative of a D&D that once existed in which things meant something. Now it's just pretty pictures.