Background: I learned to play AD&D 1e, and learned to DM AD&D 1e Oriental Adventures. In all, I played or DM’d 1e for about 13 years, but I only was a player in 2e, and only for a year or so. I never played Basic, though I DM’d many modules and materials in B/X rules. I never played computer D&D prior to Temple of Elemental Evil (2003, 3e).
In recent years, my exposure to 2e has been reading Dungeon Magazine - I’m trying to read the whole thing. My impression of 2e issues is the rules can be overly complex compared to 1e. E.g., non-weapon proficiency, specialist MU’s, specialty clerics, spells not appearing in the other editions, references to books for underwater combat and ship-to-ship rules.
But the main reasons I didn’t get into 2e:
(1) I happened to be playing a half orc assassin in 1e, in 1988, when 2e came out. I was so excited to see the new rule book, until I realized my character was written out of the rules. That soured me on all the “Moms against D&D” inspired changes like Tanarii and all that.
(2) I’m a huge fan of Gary Gygax and Greyhawk, and the roots of the game. 2e is the era when TSR ran off Gary, made Forgotten Realms the default setting, published the joke version of Castle Greyhawk, published a revision of the setting I didn’t like (From the Ashes) that destroyed my favorite country (Bissel) and contradicted what had happened in “actual play” in my campaigns/what happened if the PC’s won in the biggest adventure path of AD&D 1e (G123/D123/Q1), and finally cancelled Greyhawk.
So, I stopped playing at all for a while, disillusioned by 2e, until I decided to start a 1e homebrew campaign … got on the Greyhawk home version kick … 3e … 3.5e … and even went to the 4e launch event in Seattle and got a signed book.
Before getting that feeling of 2e launch (where’s my half orc assassin?) again with 4e (played for a few years, but never converted what I DM’d), and deciding to stick with 3.5e and home brewed Greyhawk thereafter. Nothing against 5e, but I just haven’t invested the time to learn it.
So, assuming you folks do OSR AD&D, why? What’s your path and POV?
I started as I said mostly with B/X with very little 1e, then 2e for a few years, then I played in a 1e campaign group. I was mostly a player then.
Currently I run and play 5e. It's partially because of the support for it (including digital tools), partially because I find it easy to run, partially because it's the version my group really prefers, but mostly it's because I have a visceral
loathing for the 20th century attack roll and descending armor class; I simply refuse to play any edition of the rules that makes the most common roll in the game needlessly complicated. 5e gameplay suits my table's style well, which is pretty well split between OSR style players (who mainly want to run dungeons and find loot) and mechanical optimizers (who want to build characters that solve a lot of problems off the character sheet).
I developed an interest in OSR after becoming unsatisfied with late 3e and 4e and dissatisfied with the 5e adventure paths. I couldn't really grasp what I felt was missing, but I knew I was missing something. I found two things that clicked with me. One was the
Principia Apocrypha, which reminded me of the older campaign styles, and YouTube DMs like Matt Colville who were able to express ways to think about the game that I'd forgotten or discarded. I realized the thing that I miss most about D&D is going out on an adventure, finding a bunch of cool-as-heck magic items that gave you a bunch of abilities unique to your character and your campaign, and then solving problems and making memorable stories doing that.
I'm not interested in everything OSR. In fact, I'm not interested in many of the OSR elements. I'm not interested in reusing old mechanics; I think most of them are poorly implemented. I'm not going to roll in the open; I have no trouble fudging dice when I deem it appropriate. I'm not interested in only letting the PCs tell a story; I've tried and my players do nothing without a hook except complain that they don't know what to do. I'm not running a hex crawl; I think those are miserable as a DM, and my table likes the structure of adventure paths. I'm not interested running the game with random event tables, either. I don't care about wandering monsters. I'm not going to try to force my players not to solve problems using their character sheet; it would alienate them. I'm certainly not interested in making combat super deadly but avoidable.
Everyone at my table loves combat. It's a major draw. We like it to be Hard, Deadly, or Deadly+ because we don't like throwaway encounters, but I'm not going to design an area that requires my table to avoid combat. They don't want that. A lot of OSR comes from the adversarial DM vs PC play style. Even if people claim that that isn't true, that's exactly where parts of this style came from and I'm not having it.
What I pull from OSR into 5e is:
- Throwing out attunement on many items (often based on the party level) because it's not an interesting choice if most of your player rewards are loot.
- Letting the loot define the characters as much as race, class, ability scores, and feats. Base 5e is totally constructed around preventing that.
- Letting the structure of the story fade into the background. It's not why anyone is really at our table. We want a series of dungeons and encounters loosely tied together with a story.
- Ignore the rules if they don't serve the game as we actually play it. It doesn't matter what happens as long as everyone has fun and what you do makes sense.
OSR gives me the sense of freedom that I need as a DM to ignore the parts of the books that irritate me -- even when they seem quite important like attunement -- and just play the way we want without feeling like I'm breaking something.
As you can imagine, “revision churn” and ”rules bloat” annoy me. Part of the reason is perhaps that I’m more into Fluff (story) than Crunch (rules, CharOp), and part is I think the publishers audience is people playing 50 times a year. Whereas the game I DM’d today had its 21 session, and 3rd anniversary this weekend. That rate of play and attitude just doesn’t need or want “the game physics“ to keep changing with more rules, or changed rules.
Yeah, I definitely think they aim at the weekly or biweekly group. I wouldn't be interested in play less frequently than that, but you have to play when you can. For your needs I'd probably go with B/X rules or B/X rules with AD&D classes. I mean,
I wouldn't ever play with THAC0 to to-hit charts or descending armor class ever again. They're miserable mechanics. You'd have to pay me. If I personally were in your position I'd go with strict 5e Basic D&D and then cut out classes that didn't fit. But going with whatever you already know is perfectly understandable.