TSR Why would anyone want to play 1e?

Because once you cut the wheat (like weapon/armor AC differences etc) from the chaff and house rule the Thief it’s very playable.

Riley said:

We bounced off that 9d6, 8d6, 7d6… system from UA when it came along, as being just too inflated for us.

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I was never able to talk a DM into letting me use it. And when I DM'd I told my players no on that one as well. When you're used to 4d6-L, that amount of dice for stats seems ridiculous.

Sacrosanct said:

So basically, it comes down to how 1e rules were written so poorly* that everyone had their own house rules and/or ignored rules to make the game their own, which in turn meant of course it was better than any subsequent edition because those editions weren't your rules you were currently playing with. Plus, the aesthetic was freaking cool man!


*context is important. 1e rules are awful by modern standards. All over the place and contradictory in others, and not easily parsed. But compared to OD&D, they were a huge improvement. And they deserve credit since the genre was still pretty new.

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You also can't overlook that it was 1e. The FIRST edition of AD&D. All the rest came after and built off of it. Just being the first of something gives a bit of added oomph and influence in the minds of a lot of folks.

el-remmen said:

Except for one case, every thief I saw in 1E or 2E was a multiclassed character. The one case was a party where people played more than one character, so I played a thief who always was uber cautious and rarely got into direct combat and a elven fighter/magic-user.

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I think this was pretty common, yeah, to multiclass if you were going to have a thief character, so you brought other abilities to the table.

el-remmen said:

As for finding and then disarming traps, isn't that how it has always worked (and still works)?

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No, not always. There was no "Find traps" ability in OD&D or Holmes Basic. It wasn't introduced until the 1978 PH.

It's a pretty common position in the OSR to argue that hidden traps tend to result in boring play, with players incentivized to spend a lot of time "pixel-bitching", exhaustively checking for them, or just resigning themselves to periodic "gotchas" which zap them for random damage. A lot of folks advocate for a combination of A) obvious traps, which are visibly dangerous and encourage players to engage with them using logical problem solving and the dialogue loop, and B) making hidden traps infrequent, and signposting/hinting at them in some way, which makes them less of a gotcha.

I found this myself in my three year 5TD & B/X game, where I had a lot of hidden traps and it did slow down play. My players got trained to be really cautious. I've since cut down on them and the games flow better and play faster.

el-remmen said:

Finding a trap without disarming it can still be a very useful thing and it feels weird to auto lump it in with disarm as an example of an even worse chance to succeed. We often found traps and then tried to find a way to safely set it off, or find another route, rather than risk disarming unless absolutely necessary.

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That makes perfect sense- you guys found a way to run it, probably due to smart DMs, which didn't necessitate running the terrible odds (a 7th level human Thief has a 50% chance to succeed at either skill, which of course means a 25% chance of passing both in any given instance) of just having to make both percentile rolls.

That "risk disarming" bit, though, implies that you guys run it that a failed disarm roll automatically sets off the trap? I know neither edition of AD&D says that happens.

Mannahnin said:

It's a pretty common position in the OSR to argue that hidden traps tend to result in boring play, with players incentivized to spend a lot of time "pixel-bitching", exhaustively checking for them, or just resigning themselves to periodic "gotchas" which zap them for random damage. A lot of folks advocate for a combination of A) obvious traps, which are visibly dangerous and encourage players to engage with them using logical problem solving and the dialogue loop, and B) making hidden traps infrequent, and signposting/hinting at them in some way, which makes them less of a gotcha.

I found this myself in my three year 5TD & B/X game, where I had a lot of hidden traps and it did slow down play. My players got trained to be really cautious. I've since cut down on them and the games flow better and play faster.

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I think it's a pretty reasonable argument. The most exciting traps I know of in pop culture are the ones in Raiders of the Lost Ark, and they're all obvious or their presence can be easily intuited. The interesting part is overcoming what the audience knows is certain death, not Indiana Jones carefully poking each block with a 10' pole.

Mannahnin said:

It's a pretty common position in the OSR to argue that hidden traps tend to result in boring play, with players incentivized to spend a lot of time "pixel-bitching", exhaustively checking for them, or just resigning themselves to periodic "gotchas" which zap them for random damage. A lot of folks advocate for a combination of A) obvious traps, which are visibly dangerous and encourage players to engage with them using logical problem solving and the dialogue loop, and B) making hidden traps infrequent, and signposting/hinting at them in some way, which makes them less of a gotcha.

I found this myself in my three year 5TD & B/X game, where I had a lot of hidden traps and it did slow down play. My players got trained to be really cautious. I've since cut down on them and the games flow better and play faster.

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After Take 10 debuted in 3e, one of my players cottoned on to the possibilities of speeding play with it while finding traps. As they explored a trap-riddled gnomish ruin, his rogue, who was well designed for being a trap finder, took 10 on searching for traps as they explored except for specific instances when examining special features. It GREATLY simplified the process. Same with using passive perception in 5e. We haven't audited pixels in many years now.

Mannahnin said:

It's a pretty common position in the OSR to argue that hidden traps tend to result in boring play, with players incentivized to spend a lot of time "pixel-bitching", exhaustively checking for them, or just resigning themselves to periodic "gotchas" which zap them for random damage. A lot of folks advocate for a combination of A) obvious traps, which are visibly dangerous and encourage players to engage with them using logical problem solving and the dialogue loop, and B) making hidden traps infrequent, and signposting/hinting at them in some way, which makes them less of a gotcha.

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or making a houserule like I've done in my 5e games with rogues:

C) You are also an expert trapfinder. You have a passive ability to detect traps or pitfalls within 10 feet if that trap’s DC is equal to 10 + your level + your WIS bonus or less.


Which I've found helps reduce the boring and repetitive trap searching.

Mannahnin said:

That "risk disarming" bit, though, implies that you guys run it that a failed disarm roll automatically sets off the trap? I know neither edition of AD&D says that happens.

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AD&D 2e did have a rule for triggering on a failed roll, though it was not all failed rolls.

2e PH page 56 in the thief class description under find/remove traps:

Once a trap is found, the thief can try to remove it or disarm it. This also requires 1d10 rounds. If the dice roll indicates success, the trap is disarmed. If the dice roll indicates failure, the trap is beyond the thief’s current skill. He can try disarming the trap again when he advances to the next experience level. If the dice roll is 96–100, the thief accidentally triggers the trap and suffers the consequences. Sometimes (usually because his percentages are low) a thief will deliberately spring a trap rather than risk a botched disarming attempt. This can have unpleasant side effects if he triggers it while standing in the wrong place."

So basically a 1 in 20 critical fumble rule.

Voadam said:

AD&D 2e did have a rule for triggering on a failed roll, though it was not all failed rolls.

2e PH page 56 in the thief class description under find/remove traps:

Once a trap is found, the thief can try to remove it or disarm it. This also requires 1d10 rounds. If the dice roll indicates success, the trap is disarmed. If the dice roll indicates failure, the trap is beyond the thief’s current skill. He can try disarming the trap again when he advances to the next experience level. If the dice roll is 96–100, the thief accidentally triggers the trap and suffers the consequences. Sometimes (usually because his percentages are low) a thief will deliberately spring a trap rather than risk a botched disarming attempt. This can have unpleasant side effects if he triggers it while standing in the wrong place."

So basically a 1 in 20 critical fumble rule.

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Which is funny, because every game of 1e and 2e I ever played, the DM always set the trap off on a failure. One of those things where no one really checked the rule I guess.

I just had a conversation with one of my players about the feel of combat in 1st-2nd edition vs 3rd & 5th edition.
For context, the party is playing Village of Hommelet and just finished the boss battle in the moathouse.
He was struck by two differences:
First, there is a lot more missing but the hits count more. Part of that was bad luck on both sides of the screen, but it's true that it is relatively easy in AD&D to get an AC so good that you are hit only 10-15% of the time. In the module, 2 of the major NPCs have plate mail and a high dexterity. The PCs do not have ACs that good yet but they could get there before long. So compared to recent editions, the big fight took longer and a lot of rounds went by without seeing progress.
Second, magic is more powerful, for both players and enemies. The party blew threw the first two waves of enemies using hold person to good effect... then ran up against the final boss and got held themselves (one PC and 2 NPC allies). Between losing two fighters and the enemy's very good AC, the rest of the party fought on for a couple of rounds then decided to flee.
Both of these differences are mixed blessings, to be sure. It feels great to one-shot a battle with the right spell, but feels terrible to be on the receiving end. It feels great to laugh your way through a horde of kobolds in your plate mail but terrible to come up against a boss that you have almost no chance of hitting.
But in both cases, the key to success and survival is tactical thinking. If you can't hit the AC, is there something else you can do? If the enemy is likely to have a cleric, how can you avoid being the target of their spells? (The party managed to distract the cleric from spellcasting for a couple of rounds with a well-aimed flask of flaming oil.)
And this is exactly why I like AD&D. Because tactical thinking as a player or DM is just as important as the numbers on the paper.