Hiya.
The original designers didn't always do good design work, though. A lot of their assumptions don't apply today, or were bad even back then. Consider ideas like the "Caller", which has fallen by the wayside - it made sense for certain groups, but rarely applies now.
The reason there was a Caller was because in the early days, at least with AD&D, having 8 to 14 players wasn't unusual. In my experience, with AD&D 1e at least, my campaigns had 6 or 7 players. Largest I ran was with about 9. Any time there were more than 6, a Caller is an EXCELLENT idea and time saver. Nowadays, with the focus on small 'special-ops' style adventuring with 4 players and a GM, a Caller simply isn't needed. Different times and needs is all. Definitely *not* bad design.
Intense mapping by players has problems. At its worst, the game turns into a discussion between the DM and the mapper, while the other players wait for something interesting to happen. In some dungeons, it turns into mapping lots of empty rooms before finally getting into a fight. I was running a 4e conversion of Mordenkainen's Fantastic Adventure last Friday, and that's exactly what happened: the encounter count was very low compared to all the confusing passages and rooms the group had to go through, and so the mapper got to do stuff while the others waited around.
Again, not bad in any way...actually, the opposite. What the problem was from what's written above, is players with such a low attention span and such a built in sense of self-worth that anything that isn't directly affecting them at any given minute is somehow relegated to "bad design" or a "crappy adventure". I'm not saying that 4e's style of spending 3 minutes game time walking down a hall and opening a door, then an hour on a small combat, followed by another 3 to 5 minutes of 'mapping', and then yet another hour long combat isn't "badwrongfun"...but what it is, is *not* what AD&D was built on. AD&D was focused on exploration of a fantasy milieu that the DM crafted. That exploration involved vicious monsters, deadly traps, and devious puzzles of all sorts; combat was only part of the reason people played and had fun. Mapping is FUN, be it a dungeon, castle ruin, or wilderness expanse. Taking notes about strange sigil's, or marking down possible leads on where to find the Mystic Foozle of Davendorph, and short comments about NPC's names, professions, attitudes, etc...all part of the FUN of RPG'ing. If a new person shows up at my table with a character they've been "playing forever", and that character is in the form of two character sheet pages and on page of notes, I'm not impressed or expecting much. If a new person shows up at my table with a character they've been "playing forever", and that character is in the form of two character sheet pages and a veritable 32-page plastic folder with maps, notes, doodles, drawings, etc. Now *that* shows someone interested in playing a RPG as opposed to playing a combat-simulator in the guise of an RPG.
Running Isle of Dread last year for my AD&D game was slightly more bearable, but did lapse into intense boredom as I'd say, "You go northwest. To the northwest are mountains; to the east is forest; to the north-west a river runs through a chasm" again and again and we'd have to pause for the mapper to mark that down. This was a game with eight players, so the conversation really was between one mapper and the DM while the other players sat back and waited.
I hate to say it, but this does sound boring. The problem wasn't the rules though; it was you and your players not enjoying the exploration of it and not initiating anything. I have also had players like this. My current group was like that in the beginning (having learned and primarily played 3e from a rather dry DM). It took me over a year to get them to actually *do* stuff without having to cattle-prod them into it. This is where, as a GM, you should have, basically, capitalized on the fact and gave a nice little narration of the area. I could espouse your description, but just assume I waxed poetically for a few sentences describing the mountains, how the forest stretches out, and how the long ribbon of a river snakes through it and then into a deep, dark chasm a few miles off, etc. In short, it is those "boring" parts that are the glue to a campaign setting. Players will remember, visually, locations of the game world just as much as they will remember the epic battle with the Demon-Mage of the Icy Peaks.
It should also be noted that the advice in those early products was strongly slanted towards adventures in "megadungeons" and areas where adversarial DMing was pretty much a thing. The game is a lot broader than that today.
Yes, but then the game was/is called DUNGEONS and Dragons, isn't it?
That said, it also came from wargaming roots, and so the likely recruits to "that new game everyone's talking about" would most likely have been those with a definite desire for battle and a "us vs. them" attitude. YMMV, but in my experience, and my preference, an adversarial Players Vs. DM makes the game significantly more entertaining...as long as the DM is doing his job and being *FAIR*. It is his job to challenge the PLAYERS as well as their CHARACTERS...this will result in PC death. This is expected. While the amount of death should be infrequent, it should always be in the back of the players heads that their character could die at any moment, and that it isn't the DM's job to 'let the players win' by having their characters survive with certainty.
I would like the older style to remain as an option, but in general I'm in agreement with Mike's position.
Cheers!
I would like the older style to remain the BASE FOUNDATION. It's a LOT easier to add stuff than to take away. Looking back at, say, Initiative. In Basic D&D, it was each side rolled d6, highest won, those with 2-h weapons went last. Simple. That is a solid base. It is easier to add options in to get more detailed. Play style is the same. If the play style assumption is "The DM is fair and trying to challenge you. You wander around in dungeons and unknown wilderness to kill monsters and take their stuff."...then it becomes exceedingly easy to add in different rules to adjust to different play styles. Want more role-playing? Add in skills like Diplomacy, Gather Information, Intimidate, etc.
Sorry for the lengthy reply. I do that sometimes.
new players is something that I've been missing.
