Edition reccomendations? (Earlier d&d)

[Twichyboy]

Hello enworld, recently I read a story of Gary Gygax playing a game with a bunch of mods on the forum a long time ago, an kind of got inspired to run a game more from "the roots" so to speak

I mean a more dungeon crawl oriented one, course that could be the complete wrong vibe of the previous games but no matter, I was wondering what version of d&d prior to 3.0 people preferred? And some of the best elements for
Them

Also one other question, what edition did Gary mostly run? I think it was AD&D but I could be wrong,

 

[S'mon]

AD&D 1st edition. They are putting out a new collectors' set of the 1e core books, so you could buy that, or they're usually fairly cheap on Ebay.

 

[Daztur]

Gary's home version of D&D was a good bit more simple than the published one, AD&D 1ed can be pretty hard to get if you haven't played other versions before. I'd pick up one of the Basic games or one of the more simple retroclones (there are a lot floating around for free).

For a simplified stripped-down version of AD&D 1ed, try the Holmes basic booklet, it only covers levels 1-3 but it's a really good start before trying to dig through all of AD&D.

 

[trancejeremy]

From what I gathered, he pretty much ran the old D&D with the Greyhawk supplement - basically most of the class/race combinations of AD&D, but not a lot of the deeper rules.

Swords & Wizardry is a pretty good re-creation of it.

Mythmere Games Core Rules

 

[Twichyboy]

Interesting! Thanks for the replies, keep em comin!

I will definitely check out swords and wizardry, more flexibility is always good


It has actually come to my attention that a friend has a few copies of 2nd edition dnd material (and i actually own all the spelljammer books which I usuallyconvert mostly into 3.5 stuff) and I was wondering what people thought of the two (1st edition AD&d and 2nd edition d&d) comparitivly, but I dont want to accidentally incite a edition war so let's be civil

 

[Daztur]

Interesting! Thanks for the replies, keep em comin!

I will definitely check out swords and wizardry, more flexibility is always good


It has actually come to my attention that a friend has a few copies of 2nd edition dnd material (and i actually own all the spelljammer books which I usuallyconvert mostly into 3.5 stuff) and I was wondering what people thought of the two (1st edition AD&d and 2nd edition d&d) comparitivly, but I dont want to accidentally incite a edition war so let's be civil

They're really pretty damn similar the main differences:
-Lots of little rule tweaks and simplifications and removing 1ed rules that most people didn't use.
-Moving gold as XP to an optional rule (having gold = xp works great for the sort of dungeon crawling you want).
-The presentation of the rules is a lot clearer in 2ed but it doesn't have the mad disorganized genius of 1ed. The problem with 1ed here is that it takes too much knowledge on your part for granted, it can be hard to get a handle on what the rules are supposed to be doing unless you're already familiar with old school D&D. This is why I'd recommend doing a retroclone first and then reading the 1ed stuff later when you have a context to place it in.
-2ed is bowdlerized (reverences to demons and devils removed, all references to anything sexual expunged, etc. etc.) and the general kind of fantasy it's aiming at is a lot more like Terry Brooks while 1ed is a lot more old school S&S.

Also you can mix and match stuff just fine, for a long time I DMed with a 1ed DMG, a 2ed PHB and a Rules Cyclopedia for the monsters. The 1ed DMG is just so full of ideas that even if you don't use it for the rules it's an awesome idea mine and the 2ed MM has the best monster ecologies of any edition.

 

[kitsune9]

If I was to get back into an older edition, I'd pick BECMI.

 

[Stormonu]

If I was to get back into an older edition, I'd pick BECMI.

Same here, though I actually prefer the '81 B/X books over the BECMI boxes or Rules Cyclopedia. My second choice would be 2E, as I like the rule cleanup over 1E (with UA).

Then there's always Castles & Crusades...

 

[Halivar]

Playing a mish-mash of 1st Edition AD&D and OSRIC and loving it.

 

[kitsune9]

Same here, though I actually prefer the '81 B/X books over the BECMI boxes or Rules Cyclopedia. My second choice would be 2E, as I like the rule cleanup over 1E (with UA).

Then there's always Castles & Crusades...

Your choices are good there! I'm so with you on some C&C!