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

[lowkey13]

*Deleted by user*

 

[Helldritch]

Most people, if not all, saw the UA as bag of additional rules. You took what you wanted from it and discarded what you did not. Not unlike modern editions, you take what you like in a book. We took most of it but I'll give you that. It was put hastily together for a quick buck. That much is true. Instead of the Thief-Acrobat they should've printed the witch we saw in the Best of dragon vol IV.

 

[lowkey13]

*Deleted by user*

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Unearthed Arcana was mostly for the new spells in our group. The cover remains a classic for me.

Easily one of the all-time great pieces of TSR art. I was so happy to see it get the full page treatment in Art & Arcana.

 

[nharwell]

Official List of Best "NPC" Classes in AD&D, In Order (Published in Dragon Magazine):

1. Incantrix (under powered, but a really good class)
2. Death Master (legendary)
3. Witch (quite nice, quite nice indeed)
4, Duelist (best non-OP, non UP martial option)
5. Bandit (eh, it worked)
6. Cloistered Cleric (suprisingly good!)
7. "Original" Samurai (that's a mighty fine ginsu knife... I mean, katana of sharpenss)
8. Anti-paladin (because if you throw one at a paladin, they both explode ..... science!)
9. Shaman (for people that don't like druids)
10. Beastmaster (given the total lack of balance, this should have been a slam dunk for UA!)

Good list, but I would replace #8 with Christopher Woods "Plethora of Paladins" - while not perfect by any means, they all have great flavor and were quite fun in play.

 

[Helldritch]

They could've put so much more in the UA. But they had the intention of doing more books like it but they did not for the reasons we all know.

 

[atanakar]

I used the Witch (Dragon magazine #144) and her coven to annoy the hell out of the Heroes of my first AD&D campaign.

[Edit] 5e edition version :

DriveThruRPG

www.drivethrurpg.com

 

[Lanefan]

We used Unearthed Arcana quite a bit - Grugach, Cavaliers, Barbarians, Thief-Acrobats, Illusionists, and so on were staples of our games. I don't recall any one character feeling that OP, but we were young and not exactly the most sophisticated of gamers.

Illusionists were original PH.

Cavaliers, toned down a bit, were very much worth keeping; and their percentile-stat-increment system was a revelation which we immediately applied to all classes. Some (but by no means all!) spells and magic items were also worth keeping. Most of the rest was more or less garbage.

Edit to add: cantrips were also a decent idea, once all the similar ones were combined (i.e. turn a list of 80-ish into a list of 25-ish).

 

[Orius]

Never played it. Closest I've come is 2e, which isn't too terribly different. I have looked at a good bit of the rules though, and there are some impressions I've gotten of it over the years.

People can say what they want about the humanocentric approach, but I think the reality behind it is much simpler. Gary did not like LotR, but he certainly liked the idea of Tolkien fans playing his game. I think it's telling that halflings, the most Tolkien demihumans of all, get the hardest restrictions.

Gary generally balanced things to his taste, but I don't think he really explained his rationale BitD. The conversations with him here and over at Dragonsfoot might have some of his reasonings, but of course those came long after the fact. So some of the restrictions seem arbitrary and strange. However, some of the restrictions make some sense if one really examines things. It didn't help that Gary tended to responded poorly to criticism or look down upon ideas he didn't like.

Balance by rarity, such as one gets with powerful classes is fake balance. If a player legitimately gets something powerful from good rolls, the power issues still exist, and at times this leads to nonsense like asinine catch-22 ethical dilemmas for paladins. There's a number of fake balance issue like this in the older versions of the game.

The rules are kind of messy and occasionally contradictory, and Gary's rather unique prose doesn't help matters either.

But there's still a lot of good ideas in the rules, and the best survive even today. Earlier 1e material is pretty evocative and vivid, while late 1e and early 2e gets dry bland and dull, mired in irrelevancies.

 

[Ralif Redhammer]

Whoops, not sure why I thought they were a UA class.

One thing to keep in mind with Unearthed Arcana is that it was put out quickly, if I recall correctly after Gygax had come back from California and discovered TSR in financial trouble.

Illusionists were original PH.