AD&D 1E Edition Experience: Did/Do you Play 1E AD&D? How Was/Is It?

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Here's another fun quote. Remember kids, 3rd party products are the Devil!

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Some folks have really taken that to heart.

 

[TheHand]

Yes I played it in the day, and while I still go back and read some of the materials and even adapt some of the old adventures, I’ve never played it since. AD&D 1e was like being on the frontier in the Wild West; it was new, it was a little forbidden (at least by some Moms), and paradoxically there were lots of rules and almost no rules. No two tables I gamed with played it the same, and I ended up with my own huge collection of house rules printed out on Dot Matrix and Dragon articles I liked (all neatly hole punched in a big binder).

2e did a lot to create a more consistent experience, but for myself and many others it was hard giving up all the (now obsolete) house rules and quirks of 1e. My group ended up playing it much less and started switching to other game engines - even going so far as to play in D&D settings without using D&D rules (using a modified BRP engine to play Darksun really brings out the grit and desperation!)

 

[mixmastashizz]

Playing 1e as my rpg of choice for the past two years.

It rocks!

 

[The Soloist]

I want to add that 1e is also Greyhawk to the core. After I bought the Greyhawk Folio in 1981, I marvelled at the map and the gazetteer for hours. The named spells in the PHB, the magical items in DMG, the gods, the modules, all fit perfectly into one very attractive package for the 16-19 year old me.

 

[Arkham Attic]

I had wonderful times playing AD&D 1e with great and dear friends back in the ‘80s, for years and years. I am blessed to have those memories.

Admittedly our games were more of a melange of Basic and AD&D but those adventures were simply fantastic. I still have those character sheets on Golden Rod.

 

[Thomas Shey]

My play by post campaign (going since 2006) has characters all over the world, side campaigns, split groups, etc., and if we didn't have a detailed timeline that explains who was where when, and what they were doing, it would be a contradictory mess.

I don't know if it meets Gygax's "strict timekeeping" definition, but it definitely is important in my game, which isn't even a West Marches.

That's kind of the key to the assumptions Gygax was making when he said that; that there'd be multiple characters or at least character groups operating independently where you needed to know where they were and what they were doing at any given time.

If you only had one group and they didn't have a huge number of downtime activities, at most you need to know time gap between one session and the next.

 

[Lanefan]

That's kind of the key to the assumptions Gygax was making when he said that; that there'd be multiple characters or at least character groups operating independently where you needed to know where they were and what they were doing at any given time.

This. And from running that type of campaign for ages I second Gygax's words fully: nothing is more important than keeping track of in-setting time.

If you only had one group and they didn't have a huge number of downtime activities, at most you need to know time gap between one session and the next.

That is, if you didn't pick up next session right where you left off this one in terms of in-setting time (never did quite grok Gygax's idea that a real-world day between sessions maps to a day passing in the setting). Not a biggie in downtime but really messy if they're in mid-adventure.

The main reason you still need to track time with a single group is to line up with pre-planned setting events e.g. if you know a volcano is going to erupt here on June 22 then it's important to know where the PCs are on that day in relation to said volcano.

 

[Thomas Shey]

This. And from running that type of campaign for ages I second Gygax's words fully: nothing is more important than keeping track of in-setting time.

That is, if you didn't pick up next session right where you left off this one in terms of in-setting time (never did quite grok Gygax's idea that a real-world day between sessions maps to a day passing in the setting). Not a biggie in downtime but really messy if they're in mid-adventure.

Even "five minutes" is knowing the time gap. But sometimes you know what people are doing for longer periods, and there's no need to take up in-game time with things that are basically logistical in nature.

The main reason you still need to track time with a single group is to line up with pre-planned setting events e.g. if you know a volcano is going to erupt here on June 22 then it's important to know where the PCs are on that day in relation to said volcano.

Its not like "I know the last session lasted four days and the gap between was ten days" doesn't handle that, too.

 

[Ron]

Although I initially played B/X in a friend’s house, AD&D was the first game I acquired. I loved it. I immersed myself in the game throughout the 1980s, but I eventually stopped playing RPGs when the second edition was released. Years later, I rediscovered the hobby. In hindsight, the game’s rules were not clearly articulated. Gygax’s writing infused the book with personality, but some rules were poorly explained.

 

[fuindordm]

Although I initially played B/X in a friend’s house, AD&D was the first game I acquired. I loved it. I immersed myself in the game throughout the 1980s, but I eventually stopped playing RPGs when the second edition was released. Years later, I rediscovered the hobby. In hindsight, the game’s rules were not clearly articulated. Gygax’s writing infused the book with personality, but some rules were poorly explained.

I'd say that sums it up nicely.
When you have the time and patience to do a deep dive into the books, the rationales for many rules become understandable and you can see how about 70% of the content holds together in a nicely balanced system, while 30% can be jettisoned or modified. But that bar was way too high for teenager-me and my teenager friends.