AD&D: There and Back Again - a Role-Player's Tale

[thedungeondelver]

Tsk tsk! Here and I thought your first post was spot on, lumen.

But it seems you're missing a key quote from the DUNGEON MASTERS GUIDE, to wit:

IT IS THE SPIRIT OF THE GAME, NOT THE LETTER OF THE RULES, WHICH IS IMPORTANT. NEVER HOLD TO THE LETTER WRITTEN, NOR ALLOW SOME BARRACKS ROOM LAWYER TO FORCE QUOTATIONS FROM THE THE RULEBOOK UPON YOU, IF IT GOES AGAINST THE OBVIOUS INTENT OF THE GAME. AS YOU HEW THE LINE WITH RESPECT TO CONFORMITY TO MAJOR SYSTEMS AND UNIFORMITY OF PLAY IN GENERAL, ALSO BE CERTAIN THE GAME IS MASTERED BY YOU AND NOT YOUR PLAYERS. WITHIN THE BROAD PARAMETERS GIVEN IN THE ADVANCED DUNGEONS & DRAGONS VOLUMES, YOU ARE CREATOR AND FINAL ARBITER. BY ORDERING THINGS AS THEY SHOULD BE, THE GAME AS A WHOLE FIRST, YOUR CAMPAIGN NEXT, AND YOUR PARTICIPANTS THEREAFTER, YOU WILL BE PLAYING ADVANCED DUNGEONS & DRAGONS AS IT WAS MEANT TO BE. MAY YOU FIND AS MUCH PLEASURE IN DOING SO AS THE REST OF US DO!

Never hold to the letter written, never let someone else (you, to me, for example) try and force their interpretation of the rules if it goes against the obvious intent of the game. Major systems - not all - uniformity in general, not specifically. You (me, you, everyone else) are final arbiter: not the rules.

Want something concrete?

When secondary skills are used, it is up to the DM to create and/or adjudicate situations in which these skills are used or useful to the player character. As a general rule, having a skill will give the character the ability to determine the general worth and soundness of an item, the ability to find food, make small repairs, or actually construct (crude) items. For example, an individual with armorer skill could tell the quality of normal armor, repair chain links, or perhaps fashion certain weapons. To determine the extent of knowledge in question, simply assume the role of one of these skills, one that you know a little something about, and determine what could be done with this knowledge. Use this as a scale to weigh the relative ability of characters with secondary skills.

It's up to the DM, not the rules. An individual: not specific classes.

Oh! Before I forget, earlier in the thread you said that rigidly there were only a few classes that could "handle" animals. What about magic-users and familiars? What about elves and griffons (per the MONSTER MANUAL)? Especially elves and griffons: no rules are given, it's just said that they can use griffons as mounts. What about aquatic elves and dolphins? What about Drow and their affinity to spiders? Surely dragons can be tamed. There are rules for taking their eggs to sell: someone's buying them and it isn't someone craving a gigantic omelet. How about someone buying blink dog pups? You can purchase war dogs, too (something I intend to do in a current game), there's no rules for handling dogs for any class - I guess the DM will have to make it up.

Now, I don't give a fig for 1e/3e comparisons, I can only go by what I've seen in the numerous games I've played over the years. But I've got a rack of examples up there that sorta kinda point out some problems with your argument.

O snap! Arisoto with another great example - characters climbing up after the ill-fated gnome in the DUNGEON MASTERS GUIDE play example!

 

[Beginning of the End]

AD&D's rules were brilliant. Define everything that a player character can and can't do before the game even begins. If you're not trained in it, outside very few exceptions, you can't do it. In the very rare occasion that a character gets to attempt something he has no business attempting, you place extreme penalties on the roll.

Glad you're having a good time. But I have to confess that bears absolutely no relationship to AD&D as I know it.

 

[ExploderWizard]

Now you guys are just being silly here. I came to the conclusion on my own that 1st Edition was more strict and less freeform than 3rd Edition by objectively reviewing them.

I backed this up using comparative evidence from both editions.

I then have backed up my claim with quotes from Wikipedia which have verifiable sources. I have used Gary Gygax himself where his intention was a far more strict rule system. I have quoted where 3rd Edition's rules were designed to be much more "flexible" than it's previous editions.

I think there is a lot of bias coming from some of you because you don't want to be proven wrong here. You've spent years of your life being told that 1E is a free-for-all game and 3E is the UBER tight, strict system. This has been proven to be false from examples, from wikipedia, and from Gygax himself.

The facts are the facts, and I think I have presented them pretty well. There really can be no other conclusion.

I'm with you guys. I was just as shocked as the rest of you, when I started reading the 1E rules. I was fed a load of BS my whole gaming career about 1E (and AD&D in general). Can't we just accept that maybe our conclusions have been wrong and get along?

Congratulations you have just won the internet, what are you going to do now?....................

[From the 1E DMG Foreword]

Use the written material as your foundation and inspiration, then explore the creative possibilities you have in your own mind to make your game something special.
[End quote]

I would say thats a fairly good indication that the game (and thus the rules) do not stop with the published material, although it was written by Mike Carr and not Gygax.

[From the 1E DMG Preface]

As the creator and and ultimate authority in your respective game, this work is written as one Dungeon Master equal to another. Pronouncements there may be, but they are not from "on high" as respects your game.

[End quote]

Imagine that. Even the great Gygax knew that it was the DM in charge of the game and not the rulebook.

I have reached my conclusions through 31 years of play and do not believe them to be in error.

 

[WHW4]

I just have to say that the AD&D lumin describes sounds exceptionally boring and unimaginative; the polar opposite of what I expect from an RPG.

If I am a person in a game-world, why should I not be able to even attempt something just because my class lacks an entry or table for it? I'm no cat-burglar here in the realworld, but I could sure try; and fail miserably. To have a DM flat-out say "Sorry, you don't have a table telling you how to pick tomatoes, so you cannot even TRY" is like playing a friggin' computer game and finding the invisible wall. LAME.

(Note, I'm not saying I should be able to cast spells as a fighter, before another tangent is drawn out for three pages)

I think, lumin, and I mean this with the utmost respect, that you have failed to understand what everyone else has posted and are clinging to what you feel is correct. You can do that all you want, but you must realize that no one will be agreeing with you. I started with 3.5, and only recently played a game of 1st edition; I came to the opposite conclusion that you did. I found we had to come up with a lot of random things just to get a believable and immersive game-world going (had a blast though). I like 3.5 for the fact that I CAN definitively find the page where it tells me how hard something is to accomplish, what circumstances might help or hinder, and then, through the magic of math, find out exactly how out of my league/pushover it is.

Does me coming to the opposite conclusion invalidate your observations? Nope. But at a certain point, you have to realize you're basing all of your arguments off of "feel" and bias towards a certain system. I don't think you HAVE looked at it objectively, or you'd more than likely agree with the other posters who have presented exhaustive evidence.

This thread reminds me of when I was a kid: I was baffled by the concept that it was called a "weekend," when all calendars showed Sunday at the beginning of each weekly cycle. I confronted my mother about this, and she explained, that yes it was indeed called the weekend and yes, the first day of the week is indeed Sunday. My response? The calendars were wrong. All of them. Everywhere.

 

[Ariosto]

Hear Noise*: 1d100 vs 10
Climb Walls*: 1d100 vs 85
Read Languages*: 1d100 vs NEVER (at lvl 1)

* These skills can never be attempted by any other class that is not a Thief or Assassin. Again, there is NO place in the PHB or DMG that describes how another class can attempt Thief skills if he is not a Thief or Assassin. Anyone that says otherwise is making it up.

Thief functions are just what the rules define them to be.

"Hear noise" is in fact, per the PHB, listening at doors. Not only can other characters do that, but they were doing it before the thief class existed. The base chances by race given at DMG page 60 range from as good as a 1st- or 2nd-level human thief to twice as good.

Furthermore, the first time any individual listens at a door, there is a like chance that he or she shall be discovered to be keen-eared, thus gaining an additional +5% or +10%.

Here's "rigid rules for everything" Gary on lack of acuity:

Player characters will not initially have hearing problems (as they wouldn't have survived if they had them). During the course of adventuring, great noise might cause hearing loss. Handle this as you see fit. A loss of hearing might negate the chance to hear something behind a door without any other noticeable effects.

A thief's ability to climb walls, as already noted, never makes any reference to employment of lines or pitons. That is what makes it both exceptional and uncertain.

Literacy is normally taken for granted, provided a character can speak the language in question. Thieves develop a more eclectic linguistic ability, which applies in particular to the treasure maps that should otherwise (in a peculiarity of the D&D game) require the read languages spell -- just as thieves later become able to use magic-user scrolls without the read magic spell.

Thieves have a special ability to detect and remove small devices such as spring-loaded poisoned needles. It does not follow that any normal operation of physics must suddenly be altered bizarrely the moment it might convey information conducive to someone else's discovery or destruction of a trap (including such little ones as covered by the thief function).

On dungeon doors, here's more of Gary's style:

Very heavy doors might reduce chances by half. Locked doors might only open if two or even three simultaneous 1's are rolled.... Doors can also be blasted away by fireballs and other spells, for example.... Finally, metal doors (usually locked) will be very difficult to open, requiring a knock spell or similar means most of the time.

 

[Ariosto]

So the rules state that the DC for opening a lock "varies". In AD&D, the DC for opening a lock does NOT vary.

It need not, but THE TIME TAKEN surely does.

The act of picking the lock to be opened can take from 1-10 rounds, depending on the complexity of the lock.

Which edition is more free-wheeled and which is more strict?

The variation in DCs in 3.5 is a factor of but 2. The variation in times in AD&D is a factor of 10. AD&D is 5 times as "free wheeled" in this case.

 

[Ariosto]

Then show me a DC table that is in both 1E and 3E where 3E is more strict. I've shown that both the "pick pocket" and the "pick lock" tables were more strict in 1E.

I dunno what you think you think you have "shown" about picking pockets, but here are the facts about the factors involved.

AD&D: thief level, thief race, thief dexterity, victim level

3.5: trained character level (skill points), trained character dexterity, armor check penalty, victim level (skill points), victim wisdom

In 3e, different characters can distribute skill points in different ways. This is one thing that weakens the character class system, but it strengthens the far-reaching and thoroughly quantified "character build" system.

 

[Ariosto]

Actually the rule for handling animal is defined in 1E, but they were extremely strict on who could use them.

So again, here is another example of how 1E is far stricter with handling animals. Only certain classes could do it at certain levels or with spell. On the other hand, 3E handed the skill out like candy.

AD&D DMG p. 12, SECONDARY SKILLS TABLE
05-10 Farmer
28-32 Husbandman (animal husbandry)
55-57 Teamster

When secondary skills are used, it is up to the DM to create and/or adjudicate situations in which these skills are used or useful to the player character.

 

[Ariosto]

Actually, that is untrue. There are many examples in 1e modules where a lock changes the chance for opening it, applying either a bonus to the roll or a penalty.

Some of these adventures were penned by the author of the rules.

The point is that there was a very specific rule for that. In 3E there wasn't.

Uh, no.

Your "point", lumin, was that it supposedly did NOT vary in AD&D.

Please tell us where to find this alleged "very specific" 1st ed. AD&D rule. I am curious just how much more specific it is than the range in 3.5.

 

[Ariosto]

How do you define "simple door" in 3E? Again, this is UP TO THE DM TO DECIDE. In 1E, it's always a 1d6 vs 2 (on str 8-13) regardless of the type of door being opened.

Nope. I quoted selections from the DMG section in question, but you can read the whole thing for yourself.

Bending "iron" bars. What about copper bars? What about marshmallow bars? The DM makes this up too for the target DC in 3E. In 1E it's always 1d100 vs 10 (for str 16) regardless of the type of bars.

In your utterly bizarre personal house rules, that is. "Marshmallow bars"? Really?

Gary sure liked puns, but he also liked common sense. I think you need some evidence for your claim that he meant people to treat 1/8 inch of milk chocolate the same as the counter at Sweeney's Pub, and both of those in turn with a rule normally interpreted as referring to iron rods in gaol windows.