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I don't think I ever played RAW. As a teenager, we didn't master the rules, ignored things we didn't understand fully or that were too fiddly (WvsAC, detailed initiative decision tree vs simple d6) made liberal use of suggestions in Dragon; I don't think we even used surprise correctly at that...

My interpretation of p.65 is that if a spellcaster begins a combat round adjacent to a melee combatant then they should not even attempt casting. "Spells cannot be cast while violently moving -- such as running, dodging a blow, or even walking normally." To get your normal AC during melee you...

See this is one of those cases where GG shot himself in the foot and then insisted it was fine. RAW initiative is MUCH easier to run with one simple change (my house rule): "The side with the lower result on the d6 goes first and their actions start on the segment indicated by the result. The...

Fun idea and nice write-up! I always had the impression that Snarf was about 5 feet tall (medium). Shorter than most humans he meets but significantly taller than the robot (Aveear?) and goblins/kobolds/etc. I have the softcover collection somewhere, and I think it has AD&D stats for the main...

No. 1 - Mage (as a player). No. 2 - Iron Heroes (Monte Cook one-off, kind of a 3e reinvention with 12 non-magical PC classes). Runner-up: his Diamond Throne setting. No. 3 - Traveller

Magnificent cover. One of my all-time favorites! @M.T. Black reading this column motivated me to pick up a few back issues from a local used bookstore. Training costs in AD&D are primarily a way of siphoning off the gold that players need to collect to gain levels. If you do away with...

AD&D is a statistically interesting case. The odds of rolling 15 or better on 3d6 are about 10% (19/216). In Gary's world we can infer that to get tangible bonuses from ability scores your PC should be in the 90th percentile. A few months ago I asked myself: how many NPCs in Hommelet have at...

I have used AD&D psionics in serious games, and I like psi in my fantasy, but I won't lift a finger to defend the PH appendix version either.

If the PC doesn't spend any game time on collecting and tracking mistletoe, reduce all spell power by 50% assuming oak leaves or other improvised natural ingredients. The PC is still casting 3rd level spells at level 3 and using one of the fastest XP tables in the game, so that spell power...

Randomness, lucky rolls and treasure drops, and exploiting luck to build your PC's legend were definitely part of the core game. However, the enormous power gap between randomly generated characters, via ability score and hit points, is one of the very few things about AD&D that I actively...

Weapon spec is so good that in my campaign I felt the need to give single-classes clerics, thieves and MUs their own forms of specialization. Clerics - similar to the Suel pantheon series in Dragon but with more consistent bonuses. Not as powerful as 2e specialist priests. MUs - similar to 2e...

Let's give the full arcane spellcasters a d4 hit die again! :devilish:

Fighters also had the interesting choice of becoming nearly unhittable even at low levels by putting their second highest stat in dexterity instead of Con. Plate + shield + 17 dex = AC -1, and you get effective two-weapon fighting as a bonus.

Players dig the barbarian, starry-eyed from the prospect of double Con bonus and huge hit dice, only to be let down in play when they realize they have no special abilities for offense. Meanwhile, the fighter has specialization, the ranger is getting sick damage bonuses against most humanoid...

When UA came out my group was famished for new 1e content. We were playing with material from Dragon but a new book was special and OFFICIAL! In the end, we only really used weapon specialization, some of the new weapons, the expanded race/class options, and the new spells and magic items. The...

I'm an advocate of 1e but in the spirit of the thread, here is what might make me less enthusiastic about playing it without any house rules at all: 1. Too much differential between PCs due to randomized ability scores and hit points, unless everyone agrees to play in a funnel / meatgrinder...

Here's an excerpt from the room description in my version (the T1-4 compilation, product no. 9147):

Lareth in T1 uses a staff of striking in one hand and a mace in the other, and the room description specifically says he is using TWF so has -2 to the mace attack based on his Dex. That's some serious NPCheese!

I went through a DMing phase where I wanted my world to be innovative and weird. I invented strange races and cultures, and had a blast statting out character options. That phase ended when I started trying to run games in my weird world. The number of players willing to immerse themselves in...