Earlier D&D: did you use supplements/expansions?

[Psion]

Those who played (or currently play) earlier editions of D&D:

Did you use any supplement/expansion book rules, or any official magazine rules in your game?

Oh lord, yes.

Though much of the stuff that came out in Dragon was too wacky to consider (why, oh why, did I allow the uber munchkin that is the archer ranger), I used lots of Dragon magazine & various supplements.

And my lurve of Psionics started out with a dragon years ago.

 

[Crothian]

Yes. in those days we took different ghames and used what we liked and found ways to make them work along with the expansions that we had for the game.

 

[thundershot]

I had all of the OD&D boxed sets (through Immortals) and I think the only "extra" books I owned were the Creature Catalogue, Bestiary of Giants and Dragons, and the Book of Wonderous Inventions. And they still sit on my shelf...



Chris

 

[Ravellion]

Far more than I do today. All players in my group enjoy customization, so we had pretty much every 2e complete splatbook, since we thought 2e didn't allow enough custimization. I still mine those books for ideas occasionaly (their balance, or lack of it, doesn't matter anymore, thankfully). My 3.0 splatbooks... I think I'm going to have to put them on EBay. I now run Core 3.5 + Maybe 20 extra feats from the 3.0 splats + lots of Unearthed Arcana.

Rav

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Oh yes, my brother and I snatched up the Gygaxian Unearthed Arcana like the unbalanced temptress it was, recycled artwork and all. Mmmmm, insanely overpowered cavaliers and barbarians ...

I don't think we picked up any more after Oriental Adventures, though. The various survival guides and so on did nothing for us.

 

[JamesDJarvis]

B/ED&D didn't really have supplemental books unless you count the Companion, Master, and Immortal rules. But there were official rules articles in The Dragon/Dragon magazine.

Quasqueton

Basic/expert D&D had a number of supplements of varying comprhensiveness and utility.
There were 11 accessory modules AC1-AC11, maybe only 3 or 4 of these count as true supplements. The 14 Gazeteers and the Dawn of the Emperors boxed set. The four books of the creature cruicble series, The Hollow World Boxed set, The Warth of the Immortals Boxed set and Champions of Mystara. I used most of them.

For thrid party products i used the Arduin Grimoire series, Dragon Tree Spellbook, Dragon Tree Monster Folio, All thow Worlds Monsters (from Chaosium) and Field Guide to Encounters (from judges guild/ dragon byte). These third party books also found their way into my AD&D games as well.

 

[Wombat]

Back in the OD&D days we needed that first supplement ... without Greyhawk you didn't know how much damage different weapons did!

Yeah, I used Greyhawk, Blackmoor, and Eldritch Wizardry pretty heavily; the gods' jokebook was left by the wayside, as was anything to do with psionics. We also relied on The Strategic Review and The Dragon and supplemented our material with Alaurams & Excursions and Arduin, along with a bit of material from Empire of the Petal Throne and various off-print books by third parties. OTOH, we never, ever used any setting material, only the rules, spells, and monsters.

And after I dropped OD&D I didn't come back (except for brief times, other people running the game) until 3e. Nope, not big on pre-published settings at all.

 

[Staffan]

Never played 1e or Basic, but for 2e I used plenty of splatbooks, though not all of them and definitely not everything from those books I did use. I used different combinations of books depending on the campaign and, of course, what books were available when I ran the campaign. I think my most successful campaign used the core books plus the Player's Option books (though I had made the PCs ahead of time, so they weren't as cheesed out as they could be with Skills & Powers) plus various FR stuff (notably Faiths & Avatars - great fluff, broken priest classes). That was the Night Below campaign I ran several times a week in one summer and got about half-way through.

 

[Akrasia]

My first gaming group tended to stick close to the 'core' for 1e AD&D (PHB, DMG, MM, MM2, FF, D&DG). Then we started using the charts from Arms Law. After a brief time, we just switched to MERP/Rolemaster. This coincided with the release of UA, which saw very little use, as we were drifting away from AD&D by that point.

I ran some games using the D&D Rules Cylcopedia during the 1990s. There were plenty of optional rules in that book, and I used some of them. Those sessions were really fun.

 

[ThirdWizard]

Oh, tons and tons. I could do a count, but I might have more 2E material than 3E material, counting boxed sets as single entities. One reason for this, though, is that some of my players are finally buying books and we don't double up on them.

For 1E all I had was the PHB, though. 2E came out so soon after I started, that I didn't bother buying any of the other 1E stuff.