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Message: <blockquote data-quote="the_redbeard" data-source="post: 8241114" data-attributes="member: 22644">So you didn't know what to say and decided to go with vaguely insulting and playing your grognard card? Ability checks against 1 of your 6 scores wasn't a mechanic until Moldvay, several years after AD&D, and skipped by many people who were already playing AD&D (as was the case with myself and the groups I played with). And if I recall, Moldvay only mentioned rolling under your ability scores in an example - it certainly isn't something you can find in the table of contents. I know it's there because it is in Old School Essentials but I'm halfway through a martini and I'd like to enjoy it and not waste any more time looking for the barely mentioned mechanic in an otherwise very explicit step by step instruction for playing D&D.Why is it not existing as a mechanic relevant? Because with few defined mechanics or character abilities, especially outside of combat the main mode of play was the DM describing the environment, the players choosing how to react to that description and the DM describing what happens. I didn't mentioned dice rolls there because there often weren't any. Players engaged with the imagined environment without referencing the rules or their abilities. DMs rolled dice if they wanted to.  Players didn't say, "my character solves the puzzle". The players themselves solved the puzzle. Our brains were not limited to the "1 action, 1 bonus action, 1 item interaction, 1 move, 1 reaction", with the options within those categories explicitly delineated. We imagined how to react to the dungeon and narrated it without having to reference or describe those reactions within the confinement of rules.Before there was a specific players handbook, as it was with OD&D, the players often didn't own or even hadn't read the rules. And even with the 1E players handbook, the mechanics of the attack tables and saving throws were still in the DMG. Adjudication was solely in the DM's hands. Players couldn't feel entitled to use a mechanic that they don't know exists.I never myself played at a table where the players didn't even keep their own character sheets, but I knew of a group that did and passed up an opportunity to play that way at a convention (it was supposedly "more realistic").  I certainly played many sessions of my first campaign I played before I got my hands on a Players Handbook. I kept a character sheet (1st few were just 3x5 cards), but what I wrote on it was basically what the DM told me to write on it. Not knowing the mechanics of the game certainly contributed to a sense of mystery and exploration of the unknown.I punched the first chit in my grognard card in 1977. I normally don't wave it about. I know there are others with older cards than that on this forum and that's certainly one reason why I don't.</blockquote>

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