... Where things would get ambiguous was situations like say where 2 characters are engaged with a troll. Can the troll be said to 'engage' both of them, or is one simply free to move away? Do the 'parting shots' count as the other parties' normal attack routine, or can they make an entire EXTRA set of attacks on top of "from the back as if stunned" (which against a fighter with a shield is AT LEAST the equivalent of getting +5 to all your attacks, and probably more). Would parting shots be 'split' (IE if 2 guys retreat from a troll does it get C/C/B against BOTH OF THEM, or just 3 attacks split in some way, or does it even get to try to follow both).
I think this is where you'd have to try and logic your way through it. It seemed that the parting blows were considered "freebies" in that it didn't count against the normal attacks/round economy, but maybe that is just how we played it.
Its also not clear in what sense missile fire for instance would 'cover a retreat'. If one character flees or 'disengages' is the opponent not still locked in melee given that it is now in pursuit? Is there any point at which missile fire is possible?
This was maybe just something we allowed as part of the 'rulings instead of rules' before it was cool. Does that make us AD&Ders the hipsters of the brand? I'm not sure, haha.
There are HUGE GAPS, and in any case the application of all this logic to the initial situation of opponents approaching and a fighter trying to keep them pinned down is ALL extrapolation! A perfectly reasonable reading of the rules would have it that you can only engage people that you end up within 10' of. Remember, movement and attacks are simultaneous (or near-simultaneous) in AD&D combat. Both sides plot their moves ahead, reveal them, initiative is checked, and the results are worked out, with the higher initiative party striking blows first (mostly, sort of, depending on which optional rules you use). 'Common sense' indicates that 2 opponents won't 'pass through' one another if they moved in from opposite directions, but AD&D doesn't even contain a rule, not even a suggestion, as to exactly where such opponents would end up, how to resolve just how close they came to each other if they're moving to different places at different rates from various directions, just how much faster you'd have to be than someone else to 'run around them' (assuming space exists, and how much would you need).
Yes, there was a great deal of wiggle room and inconsistency back in those days. Back then, unless we were having an epic battle, we exclusively used TotM and this occasionally led to some table arguments about peoples' differing perceptions of just what was *actually* happening. That's when the graph paper would come out.
Again, even the 15' wide bridge held by 3 PCs isn't a clear case in AD&D where you can prevent the enemy from going past, and its entirely unclear how many of them you can stop or 'OA' on their way by. ENTIRELY unclear, not just "it depends a little bit on how you rules lawyer this" its UTTERLY unclear and completely up to the DM, who can very reasonably make any of several different rulings. REALLY, go run AD&D at a Con and see what happens, this stuff comes up all the time and it can only be resolved by the ancient "DM is always right" of 'rule zero'.
This is certainly part of why I had so many bad experiences playing in other peoples' games during the AD&D era; the style of game makes heavy reliance on DM judgement calls, and if you have an Emperor or Viking-hat DM, sorry about your luck, but the fun of game will largely be in spite of them, certainly not because of them. Despite what it says in the books about "rules-lawyering" being a Bad Thing, sometimes the only way to ensure the rules were being applied fairly was to become a rules lawyer.
Needless to say, I have had plenty of
those DMs in my time, and the only way I could ensure what I considered a "fair" game, was to run it myself. Thank goodness I crossed paths with my future wife and ended up in her game, or I would have given up on D&D completely!
This is why, at first glance, the steps 3E took to codify everything and remove ambiguity seemed to be, and in many ways was, an improvement. By this time I'd mostly stopped playing with what I'd call Bad DMs, so I can't 100% compare apples to apples, and it also had the unfortunate side effect of making rules mastery the go-to path to Win, on both sides of the screen. That, and playing the DM, rather than the rules.
That's what made 4e such a breath of fresh air for me, even if there are other things I didn't like about it. It's also one of the things that makes me cringe when I hear that 5e is going back to the older style of DM-as-God. I always hated playing the "mother-may-I" game, knowing that I'd more than likely get shot down (such is the way with the Emperors). I mean, that aspect likely won't impact my game much if I ever do play 5e, since my group is fairly stable and we get along well, but I hate to think of all those new players that will be having a bad time of it because of crappy DMing.
