Wait, is THAT how that works?!

I think I was like 11 or 12 when we first played AD&D 1E with my two cousins, who we only got to see once or twice a year. So a few months after that first session, a neighborhood friend of my little brother got the D&D boxed set and offered to run a game for us. (It was his first time as a DM.) He had somehow gotten mixed up between gaining XP for monsters killed and gaining hp, so every time we killed a monster we added their hp to our own hp total. By the time our 1st-level PCs were each at 60+ hp or so, I realized something was very different from the time we had played with my cousins....

Another thing about that first session with my cousins: not wanting to waste time having us roll up PCs, they just made a bunch of pregenerated PCs and let us choose from about a dozen or so. But they did it by programming their new computer, and they did so by having the six ability scores each be a random number between 3-18, rather than being the sum of three random numbers between 1-6. As a result, a "3" was just as common an ability score number as, say, a "12." I didn't even know how to play AD&D yet, but once I learned that high numbers were good and low ones were bad, I noticed all of the pregenerated PCs had at least one or two really subpar ability scores. I ended up playing a human druid named "Jon" just because his lowest ability score was a "6" - considerably higher than most of my other options.

Johnathan

My group just re-read the Surprise rules.

This is a problem: our 'let's start a fight' instigator rolls poorly for Initiative; we found out that he can cost the rest of us the surprise round.
(Good thing there's no Assassin in the group; might have a PvP issue upcoming if there was.)

I think it was a collective revelation that bards could apply their Jack of All Trades feature to Dexterity checks made to determine their place in the initiative order.

Whole hobby was like, "OOOOOHHHHH!!!"



My entire understanding of 5e shifted and matured when I realized that.

This is sad, but:

First few times we played 1e we REALLY messed up the magic-user. We thought they got 1st level spells at 1st, 2nd level at 2nd, 3rd level at 3rd and so on. So at 9th level they had 9th level spells....magic-users be strong in 1st edition!!

I wonder if my friends, upon seeing such a thread, would think "Ah yes, even after 8 months of D&D I still have no clue whether to roll a D20 for almost everything, and what my attack bonus is!".

I used to think you had to roll against Spell DC to cast a spell. I couldn't understand why the greater your casting stat the harder it was to cast.

Jester David said:

I cut my teeth with the video games first. Like Eyes of the Beholder. I was always confused how the wizard had the best Armour Class. Even after I took off the fighter's armour, it wasn't as good.
My brain refused to accept negative AC as better.

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I rerolled 18(00) in that game because I didn't know it meant 100 and assumed 18(01) was better.

I played with my friend who was using the BECMI black box and Rules Cyclopedia, but since they had DM rules we almost never saw the actual books (he would level us up).

So when I decided I wanted to DM, but bought a module (The Haunted Tower box set for BECMI, still a favorite) and 2e Dungeon Master's Guide...

Lets just say I was thoroughly confused...

Ganymede81 said:

I rerolled 18(00) in that game because I didn't know it meant 100 and assumed 18(01) was better.

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Yes! I did the same thing.

I remember having no idea how to read a d4 back when I first started playing basic. It was quite the "Oh, right, that's how you read it" when it was pointed out that the number on the bottom was what you rolled. I had a brief moment of confusion when, after years of not playing, I bought some new dice and the d4s had changed so that the top numbers were read.