My D&DNext Looks like Myth and Magic

I learned to play D&D during the AD&D 2nd edition era. Not everything about that era was great for the game (bankrupting TSR, for instance), but I still have a lot of nostalgic memories of it. That is the form of the game that is familiar to me, and certain things about earlier editions (Dwarves being a class, no baseline Bard class) and later editions (sorcerers, Dragonborn and Tieflings) will always feel a little out of place for me.

But nostalgia isn't everything. 2nd editions rules were baroque and confusing in a lot of places. There were arbitrary restrictions from earlier editions ported over whole cloth (restricted class/race combos, alignment restrictions for rangers and thieves) that never really seemed justified within the game. 3e cleaned up a lot of the mess and added a nice unified skill system for task resolution, but added things that over-complicated the picture like multi-class/PrC fever and complex feat/Prc 'builds' that varied from the unplayable to the game breaking. The refined math made the game more intuitive, but also introduced us to the arms race of optimization and 'effectiveness' that swallowed 4e whole.

So when the Next playtest packets started appearing, I was excited. D&DNext, to me, looks a lot like 2nd edition looked before kits and optional rules and torturous attempts at re-building the non-weapon proficiency system into a general purpose skill system turned it into a morass. Shortly before the second playtest packet came out, I started putting together my own criteria for what I wanted from a D&D-ish experience. As of a couple days ago, it appears that what I was looking for is already here: a 2e retro-clone(ish) called Myth & Magic.

Goblin PCs for Labyrinth Lord Advanced Edition

As I've mentioned a number of times, I really enjoy Goblins as a PC race.  For fans of old school gaming, James Maliszewski at Grognardia created these Dwimmermount Goblin PC rules for his Dwimmermount setting using the Labyrinth Lord rules.  James uses a mix of regular LL, LL Original Characters, and Labyrinth Lord Advanced Edition for his games, but his race rules for the Goblin lean strongly towards the original edition rules- split advancement, limited class selection, racial prime requisites, etc.

I'm currently working on putting together some OSR-style dungeon crawl adventures that I want to run via PbP.  I'd like to offer Goblins as a PC race (since I expect players will be running multiple different PCs over the course of things, death being a frequent possibility) but wanted to adapt the Goblin rules to be a little closer to the rule system I had in mind- essentially a simplified LL Advanced Edition that keeps the notion of race and class being separate, but focuses on the core four classes of Fighter, Magic-user, Cleric, and Thief.  With that goal in mind, I pulled together the following rules for Goblin PCs in Labyrinth Lord Advanced Edition:

5e feels familiar

I've had the 5th Edition (or D&D Next! or New D&D, or whatever they're calling it) playtest docs in my hands for about as long as anyone else.  Haven't actually played with it yet, but a few scattered impressions:

• Reminds me a lot of second edition AD&D.  This is very nostalgic for me, personally, because 2nd ed. AD&D was what was out and what I was playing when I got into roleplaying games.
• The OSR seems to have won the day.  Wizards is still claiming that the final version of the game will support styles of play that accommodate people who like the 4e style of play, but what they're giving people as their first taste of the game looks as little like 4e as 4e looked like 3rd edition.  Instead, we get something that looks like the style of game TSR published 20 years ago, with a few modernish tweaks.
• That being said, I know that AD&D 2nd Edition is where things really "went wrong" in the minds of some OSR purists (growth of tons of player options that unbalanced the game, endless supplements and official settings, added "realism", novel tie-ins, the Dragonlance "game is story" railroad, etc.).
• Based on looking over the book and the character sheet, I can see teaching someone 5e who was new to gaming.  It seems like a single character sheet actually contains enough information to give a newbie a reasonable idea of how to run their character.  I don't feel like I can say the same about 3e or 4e.  4e seemed to cater to kids who grew up with the Magic-style "cards are powers" paradigm, but not everyone who comes to an RPG is going to know collectible card games.
• Waiting for character creation rules to see how far back we're going on the race/class/level restriction stuff- will Dwarf Wizards and Elf Paladins get the heave-ho again?  Will we see the return of limited progression in non-favored classes?  Personally I hope not- I always found those things to be a pointless barrier to playing the sort of character that you want to play.
• Waiting with anxiety to see what indignity is going to be inflicted on my beloved gnomes by this new edition.  Current guess: left out of the core races for the 5e equivalent of the PBH, gain bug eyes and rock crystals instead of hair, favored class continues to be Bard, some obscure interaction between a STR penalty, size levels, and encumbrance renders them incapable of carrying both a missile weapon and sufficient ammunition for it.  You heard it here first.
• Backgrounds and themes/schemes look interesting.  Backgrounds look like an attempt to merge the old 2e Secondary Skills with the skill/proficiency system,  and Themes/Schemes hopefully prevent infinite class proliferation.  The difference between Themes and Schemes looks a bit unclear at the moment.

Read on for my take on the game as a whole and thoughts for the future.