1st Edition PH Excerpts: Adventures

Its a DMG, not a PHB, excerpt.

And another one I have read multiple times. It nicely captures a style of DMing based on "what makes sense in the world, keeping in mind its a game" which I guess is sort of the touchstone for the OSR crowd and does have a real appeal.

It also holds up well, as it clearly speaks to some well established DM frustrations.

Man, I laughed reading that excerpt: one, because of the memories, and two, because of odd writing style, strange rules (determining keen-eared when someone first attempting "listening at doors"), and DM-as-adversary (frustrated with players using invisibility and listening).

I am so glad the game moved on from this.

I still have my 1E books, all of which are in 98% condition. As for being "glad the game moved on from this", I'd say it's been a mixed bag with nearly as much having been lost to cater to the fragile souls as has been gained to allow for more flexibility in character customization, monsters, and DMing.

Mattachine said:

...and DM-as-adversary (frustrated with players using invisibility and listening).

I am so glad the game moved on from this.

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I guarantee you that many DMs still get frustrated with Invisibility and other game-bending abilities -- but the trick is that the advice on how to handle it has changed over the years, from a tendency to just actively coming up with ways to nullify it, to better advice on how to work within these constraints and keep the players from feeling they've wasted their time on picking a given ability. I hope that excerpts from this book will show that Gary's advice wasn't always just "nerf them!" and argued in favor of being challenging, but fair.

I also loved his flavor advice in the DMG on how to plausibly break up treasure found in a monster's lair, that it wouldn't be just a mound of coins -- that to present a believable world that "people lived there", you'd have wealth in many different forms. Raiders in history didn't just loot coins -- they looted candelabras, tapestries, jewelry, garments, gold combs, and basically whatever they got their hands on that was valuable. In fact, that advice disappeared from the DMG during 2E and 3E and really didn't find its way back in until 4E's treasure parcels broached the subject again.