AD&D 1E Best 1E AD&D rulebook?

[Ralif Redhammer]

TBF most of the monsters you just named originated in modules, and were later reprinted in the FF.

Even if the FF did introduce them to a wider audience, the Underdark had already been populated with all those iconic ones.

That's the thing - the reach of the hardcovers were greater than that of the modules. Back in the day I only had a few AD&D modules, but had almost all of the orange spine releases.

 

[Voadam]

This is really tough, I guess I don't really have a favorite. I could go with anything from Oriental Adventures and above here.

I really really like the art in the PH, DMG, DD&G, MM, FF, and MMII. MM has the Trampier goodness and the DSC devils and demons, FF has the Nicholson weirdness, and MMII has the fantastic non-silly Holloway stuff. MMII really develops the fiendish hierarchies fleshing out devils and demons but also stuff like the demodands and daemons plus celestial types too. Deities and Demigods art is top notch and mostly covers for the paucity of the narrative descriptions accompanying the cool but mostly unusable statblocks, the 2e Legends & Lore and FR god books are my favorite god books in all of D&D, but the 1e Deities & Demigods has better art. The PH and the DMG are just atmospheric, I love the evocative nature of the party seeing the magic mouth.

The monster collections are all cool, each has really stellar standouts.

OA introduced really cool martial arts for any character, so you did not need to be the weird 1e monk based off the crappy thief class chassis but with a lower d4 HD to have decent martial arts techniques in the game. I really liked that as an aspect of AD&D.

In the end I am going with the MMII, the Holloway Demon Lords and Archdevils really do it for me.

 

[sevenbastard]

Fiend folio as it was the first D&D that I bought so I didn't have to borrow from my older brother. Nostalgia trumps all.

In case you haven't seen it before, there's a 1E solo play campaign journal on Dragonsfoot in which the player uses the Fiend Folio tables for all the encounters. Which spices them up a good bit

This is how I ran solo play as a ten year old trying to level my ranger. I got a lot of use out of the tables in the back of the FF for both monsters and treasure

 

[timbannock]

I voted Monster Manual but frankly I view MM, MM2, and Fiend Folio as all equal parts of a whole.

Interesting to see the DMG as #1; it's definitely got the most personality, for so many reasons!

 

[darjr]

I picked the DMG but yea the Fiend Folio is awesome.

 

[darjr]

Oh dang, I forgot the goldbug was a save or die poison bite!

 

[GreyLord]

This will seem like an irony, especially with all the hatred it's gotten (and those who defend a singular Asian-Canadian who has a strong vendetta against it), but...

I play (now days, far more occasionally, as we have spread apart quite a bit), or played in the past with (now days, it's more like once or twice a year) a bunch of players from Asia (mostly Japan, but also one from China and Korea).

Universally they choose to play Oriental Adventures. If they play D&D, they want to use the OA. So...we use Oriental Adventures when we play. (We actually tried the 3e version once, they didn't like it, they preferred the 1e version).

So, with that memory fresh in mind, I chose the OA. I was highly tempted to choose D&DG (it has use to me outside of the actual game) or the DMG (as that is what I may normally choose, and I see many others chose), but the mood just struck me this time, especially with that period of time coming up this year where we will get the old group together again to play OA for our annual/bi-annual game session from parts all over the world (I being the lone non-asian gamer among them).

 

[darjr]

Wait! The MMII has the Froghemoth!

 

[Ralif Redhammer]

Oh dang, I forgot the goldbug was a save or die poison bite!

You know, something I've been thinking about lately is how the drastic reduction of save or die effects in the current edition has dramatically changed how PCs interact with the world. You didn't even have to use them a lot, but knowing that there was stuff that could kill your character in a single bad roll inherently affects how PCs behave. That noble you don't like might only have a handful of HP, but who's to say whether they keep a Goldbug in their coin purse just in case, or have a poisoned dagger.

 

[darjr]

You know, something I've been thinking about lately is how the drastic reduction of save or die effects in the current edition has dramatically changed how PCs interact with the world. You didn't even have to use them a lot, but knowing that there was stuff that could kill your character in a single bad roll inherently affects how PCs behave. That noble you don't like might only have a handful of HP, but who's to say whether they keep a Goldbug in their coin purse just in case, or have a poisoned dagger.

Oh absolutely.

i def appreciate the less combat/tactical style of game that encourages while also not wanting to go whole hog when running.