Nikolas Lloyd on the evolution of D&D

Greyhawk GrognardUncategorized, , , , 7 Comments on Nikolas Lloyd on the evolution of D&D
Who is Nikolas Lloyd, you may ask? Only the purveyor of a series of outstanding videos on YouTube concerning armor and weapons (among many other things). And he runs a most excellent website that deals with all manner of eclectic things, from archaeology to evolutionary theory to swing dancing. I found him thanks to one of the comments in my recent post on swords, and damned if he doesn’t have a series of videos that explain his views on some of the various editions of Dungeons and Dragons.

Some of the things he says in these videos will piss off a lot of my readers, I’m sure, but rest assured I don’t agree with everything he says (well, I do agree with everything he says about 4th edition). He seems to not realize that most of his objections to Holmes Basic were solved in 1E, doesn’t seem to know that there was a 2E, and mentions 3.x but only in the context of how annoying it was that his own game product couldn’t be translated easily from that to 4E (which he crucifies). He is a big RuneQuest fan, however.

But they’re hilarious (and, in many cases, spot-on) regardless of whether you agree with everything he says, and thus do I present them here. I may not agree with his views on the value of archetypical character classes, but I’ll die to defend his right to be wrong.

Do look up his channel on YouTube and check out his many and varied expositions on various weapons and armor from the perspective of a reconstructionist archaeologist, and you’ll probably find at least some of his other offerings either funny or informative or both.

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Wargamer and RPG'er since the 1970's, author of Adventures Dark and Deep, Castle of the Mad Archmage, and other things, and proprietor of the Greyhawk Grognard blog.

7 thoughts on “Nikolas Lloyd on the evolution of D&D”

  6. Daaaaaaamn. I could have just posted part I and saved myself a year of blogging. I really did end up hating Holmes as a rule set by the time I was done re-examining it. Still love it, though, for reasons having nothing to do with rationality.

  7. Interesting videos, and pretty amusing. I found myself disagreeing with a lot of his ideas, but I can understand where he's coming from. And man, did he nail 4E right! I've got the same complaints about that system.

    Glad he found what he liked in Runequest. I'm fine with my illogical mishmash of rules that is D&D because of a lot of the non-realistic things about it. I do wish he'd spent a bit more time talking about what exactly he disliked about AD&D rather than what he did like about Runequest, though.

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