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

[Lanefan]

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.

In the initial books up to and including MMII, yes; and the jettison-modification process is relatively straightforward. After that, however, in subsequent books (UA, OA, DSG, WSG, etc.) the signal-noise ratio gets much worse and the challenge becomes more one of finding and extracting the bits worth salvaging.

 

[Ben from Periapt Games]

AD&D 1e was arguably the first RPG I played: I had got my hands on a mishmash of D&D books from different series and editions, plus a third-party guide, and tried to paper over the cracks.

 

[kronovan]

AD&D 1e It was my 1st TTRPG experience in the early 1980s and I played it frequently for about 5 years. For a good part of that time, I played it at tables hosted by my College's wargamers club and those sessions were enjoyable. We used the 1977 PHB and being my 1st TTRPG I accepted the rules as is (most other players too), but got the impression there was room for improvement. Hosted adventures and campaigns went through a number of changes at our club evolving into 2 styles; advanced hexcrawls across the WoG or someones hombrewed world; highly narrative games more focused on collaboratve story tellinig where the rules were secondary. We had a number of DMs that houseruled and looking back for the most part they made good choices.

While I still have it in PDF, I don't play it now and instead play and run Advanced OSE to scratch that itch.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

AD&D 1e was arguably the first RPG I played: I had got my hands on a mishmash of D&D books from different series and editions, plus a third-party guide, and tried to paper over the cracks.

The real old school!

 

[CleverNickName]

AD&D 1e was arguably the first RPG I played: I had got my hands on a mishmash of D&D books from different series and editions, plus a third-party guide, and tried to paper over the cracks.

Same here: I learned to play D&D with the red box Basic rules in middle school, but that whole product line quickly went out of print. So for the first few years of gaming, my friends and I had to mash together whatever we could find and make up the rest.

 

[Sacrosanct]

AD&D 1e was arguably the first RPG I played: I had got my hands on a mishmash of D&D books from different series and editions, plus a third-party guide, and tried to paper over the cracks.

I think this was pretty common, especially if your group were kids. I started on B/X in 1981 but quickly moved to AD&D, but still used all those B/X modules and even monsters pulled from the B/X book if we had it handy and not the MM laying around.

 

[GreyLord]

I suppose the mish mash works. I started without even owning any books with a group that already was playing. I didn't get my own copies until later.

However, for AD&D, you had to play a mish mash at first. They didn't have the DMG and such stuff, or at least I didn't have it when the PHB came out, so you used the original rules for stuff that you didn't have yet.

I actually played AD&D before I ever played Basic (any version) D&D...or BX or BECMI or RC. (If I remember correctly, it's been a LONG while since I first started). I think I may have had Holmes at some point before I actually had all of AD&D, so it is possible I may have done Holmes prior to playing AD&D complete????

I think I had one of the earliest versions of Holmes (maybe even a prototype?) as my original copy has something no one else has ever said was contained in their (elves could choose to play as a Fighter or Magic-User, where as the Holmes that I've seen since and from what others say was in their copies, the Elf was the standard Elf which was both a fighting man and Magic-User at the same time).

Never used Holmes in conjunction with AD&D though.