Michael Linke
Adventurer
What I've gathered from a lot of passionate AD&D fans is that they never really played AD&D. They played a game they mostly made up with their friends during the years when TSR was actively publishing AD&D books, but most people seem to be largely oblivious to, or intolerant of, the rules as written.
I started being led down this line of thinking in a thread a year or two ago about how strong (or not strong) dragons were in 1e, and ran up against someone who believed that the reference to dragons "charging" an enemy in the first edition Monster Manual had nothing to do with the rules for "charging" as presented in the DMG, as if dragons had some supernatural power to inspire terror in everyone on earth, whether they were aware of the dragon or not, as long as the dragon was moving in their general direction. I'm not saying their interpretation doesn't make a VERY cool dragon, but it's in complete disagreement with the actual rules in the books.
This isn't a phenomenon isolated to that specific conversation. Frequently people will claim that AD&D was more elegant or faster to run than later editions, but if pressed admit to ignoring or modifying or simplifying huge swathes of rules.
So, I disagree. TSR D&D didn't even define how the game was played in practice when TSR was making D&D. TSR's philosophy on roleplay in general, however, was hugely influential then and now.
I started being led down this line of thinking in a thread a year or two ago about how strong (or not strong) dragons were in 1e, and ran up against someone who believed that the reference to dragons "charging" an enemy in the first edition Monster Manual had nothing to do with the rules for "charging" as presented in the DMG, as if dragons had some supernatural power to inspire terror in everyone on earth, whether they were aware of the dragon or not, as long as the dragon was moving in their general direction. I'm not saying their interpretation doesn't make a VERY cool dragon, but it's in complete disagreement with the actual rules in the books.
This isn't a phenomenon isolated to that specific conversation. Frequently people will claim that AD&D was more elegant or faster to run than later editions, but if pressed admit to ignoring or modifying or simplifying huge swathes of rules.
So, I disagree. TSR D&D didn't even define how the game was played in practice when TSR was making D&D. TSR's philosophy on roleplay in general, however, was hugely influential then and now.
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