What DO you like about 1E AD&D

[Raven Crowking]

Very much agreed. In part, I think 1E feels this way, because Gygax was passing on a grand tradition, that of the pulp fantasies he read as a younger person, the knowledge of which was already passing from memory when 1E was new. When I began playing 1E, I felt as if I were being initiated into a secret club, where I was being taught about stories and heroes I'd never heard of before and whose exploits I could now emulate and expand upon. In short, 1E challenged my imagination by introducing me to writers and ideas I'd not encountered in the fantasy stories then current. It's why, even now, after decades of reading the authors from whom Gygax drew inspiration, 1E has a magical quality that no edition since has ever matched.

There are so many posts in this thread that I agree with.....But none more than this one.

RC

 

[Delta]

What do you like about First Edition AD&D?

The fact that for the population at large, when you say D&D, more people think of rules & mechanics for 1E AD&D than anything else. (The number of people playing at that time far outstrips anything that's come since.) So in theory, it would make it easier to get a game started with any non-hardcore-RPG'er friends you might have (of a certain age, I suppose).

 

[PaulofCthulhu]

The relative simplicity & speed of combat and character generation.

NPC stats that weren't half a page long.

The more genuine 'tome-like' feel of the original books versus the synthetic/deliberate faux-tome feel of the newer books. Nothing wrong with matt paper and B&W line art, full glossy colour isn't necessarily superior. It depends what it evokes.

More of a sense of freedom with the rules, the feeling the DM had more discretion and players could be more inventive in their reactions to situations than being bound by rule 'X', 'Y' & 'Z(a2)'. Fewer official rules meant fewer targets for the rules lawyers.

I still have my first ever RPG purchase, The Player's Handbook (hardcover, 1980).

 

[Doug McCrae]

1) The core system - character classes, levels, hit points, armour class.
2) The default adventure - go down a hole, kill things and take their stuff.
3) The plethora of monsters and magic items to support the default adventure.

 

[Fifth Element]

The rose-coloured glasses?

Seriously, though:

The "yes, we have a table for that" nature of the DMG.
Hobbit-like halflings.
Naked things in the MM.
Rangers with 2d8 Hit Dice at 1st level.

 

[ejja_1]

what I like about Advanced D&D

Simplicity.
Easy bake adventures with easy to digest rules.
No hassle combat, and no need to have prestidge classes to cover every flavor of class.
If you wanted a certain feel for your character you bought specific equipment and roleplayed it. Advanced was what made me want to keep playing roleplaying games, it sparked my imagination and gave me hours of enjoyment.
Advanced junkies will remember things like the sword of kas, the wand of orcus, The adventure example in the dmg where the thief gets paralyzed by a ghoul and the paladin in hell fighting a horned devil. The modules my god the modules, keep on the borderlands, expidition to the barrier peaks and white plume mountain when they first came out. The giant series and the slaver series, fiend folio and unearthed arcanum. Waiting for the next module or monster manual to come out, it was like cristmas all year long.
The Grimtooths traps books that made you giggle with murderous glee at the many ways to dice slice and puree your players.
It was the best.

 

[Matthew_]

I really like the simultaneous action within combat rounds. Much smoother than initiative counts, sequential actions, Ready Actions and Attacks of Opportunity.

 

[Psion]

1. The Adventures. Loved bumping around in the underdark, and when drow were villains.
2. The Newness of, well, newness. I remember the fascination with which we greeted the Fiend Folio for example.
3. The Manual of Planes.
4. Oriental Adventures martial arts. Those were some fun rules.
5. The DMG... the quirky resource and random gen tables.
6. The lack of feeling of player entitlement; living in a time were a rust monster nuking your plate mail was a fair cop.
7. The elven JoT. fighter/magic-users and F/M-U/T. The rules were way too giving on those, and they were a lot of fun.
8. The Psionicist class in the Dragon (PHB psionics... no so much.)

 

[Herobizkit]

?!?

LOL! That's right, Tewligan! PSIONICS! There was nothing more exciting to have a Warrior or Thief score a whole host of powers thanks to a random die roll. And lest we forget, these were carried on (not so wonderfully) into 2nd ed and brilliantly into 3.5 -- so brilliantly, IMO, that I use the Psionics point system for regular D&D magic.

 

[PaulofCthulhu]

The modules my god the modules, keep on the borderlands...

In fact, we just went back and started playing them again with the original systems, this year.

Rose-tinted glasses, perhaps, but rose-tinted glasses that work.