D&D 1E Giving an AD&D feel to 5e

[House_Of_Dexter]

I did not say that no one used Unearthed Arcana, or no one used any of it, ever. Making any type of sweeping generalization of 1e is notoriously difficult. But it is true that just based on the date alone (publication in Dec. 1985, with widespread availability in 1986, and 2e published in 1989), it was certainly not core 1e. Moreover, many tables that played 1e IME quickly rejected most or all of UA, given that it was a cashgrab that was wildly unbalanced and made little sense in toto.

The only thing I remember about UA in my group at the time was Barbarians...I had a great adventure where the Barbarian in the party found a magic sword and tossed it in an underground stream...The party flipped out not expecting that...

I don't remember anything else from UA. Our group broke up in '87(I moved) and I didn't play D&D again seriously for the next 20 years.

 

[tetrasodium]

Correct, It was called the DM's Best Friend and it was in the 3.0 DMG. In 3.0, there was also an additional note called "Going Beyond the Rule" in which the DM could use modifiers from 2 to 20 (not sure if it was in 3.5, but I seem to recall that, in the past, others have stated it was). The example given was applying a +20 modifer to DC for practically impossible tasks.
I can't believe that I forgot to mention the DM's Best friend in my prior post on skilled play in 3e as I have noted it in the past in addition to discussing players needing to figure out the lever combination and how the two could be used in combination in 3e. The DM could use the the DM's best friend to find clues when searching, but still require the players to state that their character is taking an appropriate action for success . For example, when trying to find a a secret door that must be opened by pulling the sconce or a specific book on a shelf, the player find visual clues on the sconce or disturbed dust on the shelf which could point to the correct method of opening the door. Someone, specifically, searching the sconce or shelf would get a big bonus to notice the clue. Someone less specific might get no bonus or penalty. If either discoves the clue, the player would still have to state their character is pulling on the object. And, or course, if the players just randomly happen perform the correct action on their own, they are still successful.

Thanks for pointing me at that! Never taken the time to find it but I've long wondered where we all got the +2/-2 since 5e so oddly left it & bonus types out when they did so much to enable both players & GMs. Looks like it was on 3.5 dmg30 with the bonus types & stacking stuff a few pages earlier on pg21

Spoiler: since not everyone was around then

Spoiler: bonus types

Spoiler: GM's best friend

Rereading it after all of these years it's almost inconceivable that wotc has spent so long ignoring it in favor of 5e's theory that an absence of rules for this stuff is what somehow really enables people.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

The only thing I remember about UA in my group at the time was Barbarians...I had a great adventure where the Barbarian in the party found a magic sword and tossed it in an underground stream...The party flipped out not expecting that...

I don't remember anything else from UA. Our group broke up in '87(I moved) and I didn't play D&D again seriously for the next 20 years.

The whole backstory of UA is pretty simple ...

At the time, TSR badly needed money (this is a recurring theme with the company).

Gygax returned from Hollywood (the less said about that, the better) to try and right the ship. We had two hardcover books come out in quick succession in order to raise revenue- Oriental Adventures and Unearthed Arcana. OA was primarily written by Zeb Cook.

UA was authorized by Gygax, and was primarily prior Dragon Magazine articles (most of them by Gygax, and most of them prior to 1983) with a few changes and edits.

The irony of his authorization of his work to save TSR is that by the time of its publication, he was already out of the company. Anyway, UA is interesting because it is both terrible (it was really just a grabbag of half-baked and non-baked ideas floated in Dragon Magazine) while also providing the seed for ideas that would later become part of the game-
A skill system (previously in OA as well).
Cantrips.
Barbarians, cavaliers.
Expanded non-human races and lifting (just a little, but still) the level and class limits on non-humans.
etc.

But, yeah, comeliness? Barbarians that almost couldn't exist in a party (along with cavaliers and paladins that also couldn't exist in a party)? Allowing you to play new races like Duergar and Drow, unless, you know, you ever wanted to play above-ground, or around other people.

Just poorly thought out in so many ways. Kind of like a Dragon article!

 

[House_Of_Dexter]

I'm really skeptical it ever happened as strictly as is being described, because any casters would constantly be pestering the DM about which spells they had memorized and what exactly those spells did. So I strongly suspect any casters involved had records of their spell lists at the very least, and in reality unless this was basically the D&D equivalent of consensual sub/dom, I strongly suspect players gradually accrued notes which effectively became character sheets.

yes...you did keep notes about your character, but they were descriptive and not number-based. You might have a list of known weapons and that you were strong. If you were a mage, you might keep a name, list of spell components, range, and description of what the spell did.

 

[TwoSix]

There is a I think a genuinely interesting underlying point here, which is mostly to do with spells. In early D&D, spells were basically the only time you got to tell the DM what happened, as it were. I mean, he/she was still in charge, but if you wanted to do something without a spell, it was kind of "Mother May I?". Whereas if you had a spell, it said it what it did, and the DM kind of had "put that in his pipe and smoke it", as it were. And what we've seen evolve is characters who don't have spells gradually get access to more abilities which aren't "Mother May I?", but rather stuff like, "My character can jump 30ft", so you don't have to say "Oh DM, can my character jump 30ft?" "No.", because it's on your character sheet that you could.

But spellcasters have always had that.

And I think did we just find the root cause of LFQW? Kinda? Of the basic imbalance between casters and non-casters? I'm sure it's actually a well-visited place with a gift shop and so on, but I think this is a kind of key point - casters got to say what happened (which is thematically kind of appropriate from a sort of Sparrowhawk-ish/TH White Merlin-ish perspective especially), whereas other people had to ask.

Oh yeah, that's absolutely true. I mean, codified rules in general (as we saw from 3.0 on) are a way to move authority from the DM to the players; spells are just the original and most successful implementation in D&D of giving the player more control over the story.

This conversation popped up all the time during the Edition War, a lot of times it got contrasted with "Mother-May-I" play, where the players had to check with the DM about the feasibility of most of their actions.

 

[Sacrosanct]

The whole backstory of UA is pretty simple ...

At the time, TSR badly needed money (this is a recurring theme with the company).

Gygax returned from Hollywood (the less said about that, the better) to try and right the ship. We had two hardcover books come out in quick succession in order to raise revenue- Oriental Adventures and Unearthed Arcana. OA was primarily written by Zeb Cook.

UA was authorized by Gygax, and was primarily prior Dragon Magazine articles (most of them by Gygax, and most of them prior to 1983) with a few changes and edits.

The irony of his authorization of his work to save TSR is that by the time of its publication, he was already out of the company. Anyway, UA is interesting because it is both terrible (it was really just a grabbag of half-baked and non-baked ideas floated in Dragon Magazine) while also providing the seed for ideas that would later become part of the game-
A skill system (previously in OA as well).
Cantrips.
Barbarians, cavaliers.
Expanded non-human races and lifting (just a little, but still) the level and class limits on non-humans.
etc.

But, yeah, comeliness? Barbarians that almost couldn't exist in a party (along with cavaliers and paladins that also couldn't exist in a party)? Allowing you to play new races like Duergar and Drow, unless, you know, you ever wanted to play above-ground, or around other people.

Just poorly thought out in so many ways. Kind of like a Dragon article!

When UA gets brought up, everyone talks about Cavaliers and Barbarians, but the biggest game breaking thing in that book was the new method for stat generation. 9d6 for your primary stat, 8d6 for the next, etc as you work your way down. You were assured to have 17s or 18s in your top 3 or 4 abilities, and that was just...too much.

I think that's why several people like myself roll our eyes a bit whenever someone makes an argument that since UA was officially 1e, then 1e was played using those rules. Because, no, they weren't. Even if you ignore how the 1e game was being played for almost 10 years before UA came out and only lasted 2 years after (therefore the vast majority of people who played 1e didn't even have UA to use), there is the fact that every game table and group I played with when UA came out, immediately banned 90% of it unless you were playing a Monty Haul game.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

Oh yeah, that's absolutely true. I mean, codified rules in general (as we saw from 3.0 on) are a way to move authority from the DM to the players; spells are just the original and most successful implementation in D&D of giving the player more control over the story.

This conversation popped up all the time during the Edition War, a lot of times it got contrasted with "Mother-May-I" play, where the players had to check with the DM about the feasibility of most of their actions.

Eh, I think that there are two completely different debates that have happened, and it totally depends on when you joined up in the debates.

The original debate was, in fact, the exact opposite of what it later became! As far back as the introduction of the thief class, many players did not want continuing codification of abilities because, to borrow the Latin expression, expressio unius est exclusio alterius (by explicitly stating that something must be done under a rule, you are excluding its ability to be performed any other way).

In fact, I'd go so far as to say that this is a classic Gygax/Arneson issue- wherein one side might want more and more codification (thereby making it more war-gamey and more ascertainable), and the other wanting it more free and improvisational.

Rules may bind the DM, but they also bind the players; in effect, instead of assuming that players can do what they want (subject to a neutral referee saying no), it becomes an issue of, "Can you find a rule that would let you do this, and then will the DM have the same interpretation of that rule?"

It's always a matter of perspective.

 

[grimslade]

Everybody brings up UA and no one mentions the Thief-Acrobat... Lousy barbarians smashing all my potion loot get all the attention. Plus pretty pictures of polearms! The horrible cheap binding on UA made it impossible to use.
The more I think about it. There doesn't need to be rule overhauls to 5E to make it feel like AD&D. You need a perspective shift. Less murder-hobo and more grave robbing diplomacy. Reward problem solving and use the rules to adjudicate the player's plan's success. You want it more gritty use the gritty realism adjustment. You want save or roll a new character? Go ahead. Really the more extreme the roll of the dice result could be, the more players will want to avoid rolling the dice. And that was what 1E felt like to me. I didn't want to risk that bit of probability because my luck was always bad it seemed.

 

[TwoSix]

Rules may bind the DM, but they also bind the players; in effect, instead of assuming that players can do what they want (subject to a neutral referee saying no), it becomes an issue of, "Can you find a rule that would let you do this, and then will the DM have the same interpretation of that rule?"

I'd push back and say those are two different types of restriction. Codification of rules will restrict the options open to the character, but the overall balance of authority still swings towards the player.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

I'd push back and say those are two different types of restriction. Codification of rules will restrict the options open to the character, but the overall balance of authority still swings towards the player.

And I'd push back on that, and say that this distinction makes no sense. Allow me to illustrate:

A: "One thing I don't like about {insert game here} is that because everything is governed by abilities, I feel like I'm just looking for buttons to push."

B: "Oh, that's not correct. See, you as a player can do anything. Only your character is limited by the fact that you have to have an ability to do something!"

A: "Uh ......"

I understand your point vis-a-vis authority. That's a trivially simple one that anyone can illustrate:

Rule A: If you hit, you do damage to the target.
Rule B: If you hit, you do d6 damage.

Rule A (until the parameters have been determined) does not provide clarity to the player; how much damage? What effects? What, exactly, can their character do?

Rule B is clear. There will always be some interpretation, or Rule 0, but the player knows that if they mash Button B (Rule B) and hit, they will do d6 damage, and the DM will acknowledge this.

HOWEVER, the player who relies on mashing B will only mash B. Will they try to do the damage of a disarm? Will they aim a blow for the head to know the enemy unconscious? Will they try and bash the target over the cliff?

You quickly lose the ... Arneson-ian freedom of play (even if it is negotiated) in favor of a constrained certainty. "I do d6 damage, and nothing else. I can't open that lock, because I'm not a thief. I cannot create a new spell because there isn't a rule for it. Etc."