I think the caller could have been a residual from the wargaming days. I saw the Prime video about Arneson (First Campaign?) and they showed how the old wargames were run with the judge (DM) sitting in an entirely different area. The "Caller" would bring to the judge notes with every "teams"...
Lots of great comments on 1e. As someone who wants to start sharing my homebrewed adventures with a community of players (yes, and publish them for a few bucks), I realize that I'm going to have to make the move to 5e, or even just wait for this new version of D&D to come out. I hate to admit...
I wrote a fun little adventure for 1e low level magic users/illusionists. They usually are pretty worthless early on--really until level 5. So I wrote this to give them some XP and tailored to their skills. A link to it is on the thread where you can promote kickstarters: Kickstarter - Ten Days...