Celebrim
Legend
I love the feel and flavor of 1e. Just reading that 1e Identify spell it is so steeped in the sort of numinous weird magic that D&D ultimately lost, where everything comes easy to the player and it all feels like the "push button fireball shooters" we joked about back in the day when we were mocking easily accessible and controllable magic.
But I don't love the rules. And when I say I don't love the rules, I don't mean the sort of esoteric stuff that @Blue Orange mentioned in his earlier post that are IMO actually interesting and endearing - especially when you understand the intention and the context.
I mean rather I dislike the extreme lack of character balance, and the fact that published rules variants (like Unearthed Arcana) only made the problem worse. I dislike from a GM's perspective the lack of unified and functional skill systems for dealing with PvE of every sort that isn't combat, leading to the sort of one off rulings over rules nonsense that shows up most clearly in things like the flash flooding room in Hidden Shrine of Tamochan where the rules on drowning presented are the worst combination of incomplete, fiddly, unrealistic, and unbalanced on top of being essentially marginalized to a particular specific encounter. There was just no consensus in the published text at how to handle characters interacting with the environment, leading to massive headaches as a GM when you were forced to ad hoc those interactions. You didn't have a skill system. You had every encounter with its own set of custom rules that were usually bad in multiple ways. I dislike that you are essentially on your own for figuring out how to run a campaign beyond name level. I dislike that lack of guidelines for creating interesting monsters, and the fact that the designers of high-level monsters largely hadn't figured out how to do that even 10 or 15 years into the edition's existence.
I thought very long and hard about house ruling up my own OSR style version of 1e AD&D because I do have so many good feelings about it. But the more I looked at the problem, the more like 3e D&D the version got, to the point where the effort just wasn't worth the work.
There are things that I miss about the rules though. I miss casting times on spells. I miss weapon vs. AC tables. I miss exponentially increasing XP needed to level up. I miss having a real motivation to collect treasure and explore because 2/3rds or more of your XP was finding loot.
But most of what I miss I find portable between editions. I can in fact play later editions with a 1e feel since a lot of that comes down to setting and preparation.
But I don't love the rules. And when I say I don't love the rules, I don't mean the sort of esoteric stuff that @Blue Orange mentioned in his earlier post that are IMO actually interesting and endearing - especially when you understand the intention and the context.
I mean rather I dislike the extreme lack of character balance, and the fact that published rules variants (like Unearthed Arcana) only made the problem worse. I dislike from a GM's perspective the lack of unified and functional skill systems for dealing with PvE of every sort that isn't combat, leading to the sort of one off rulings over rules nonsense that shows up most clearly in things like the flash flooding room in Hidden Shrine of Tamochan where the rules on drowning presented are the worst combination of incomplete, fiddly, unrealistic, and unbalanced on top of being essentially marginalized to a particular specific encounter. There was just no consensus in the published text at how to handle characters interacting with the environment, leading to massive headaches as a GM when you were forced to ad hoc those interactions. You didn't have a skill system. You had every encounter with its own set of custom rules that were usually bad in multiple ways. I dislike that you are essentially on your own for figuring out how to run a campaign beyond name level. I dislike that lack of guidelines for creating interesting monsters, and the fact that the designers of high-level monsters largely hadn't figured out how to do that even 10 or 15 years into the edition's existence.
I thought very long and hard about house ruling up my own OSR style version of 1e AD&D because I do have so many good feelings about it. But the more I looked at the problem, the more like 3e D&D the version got, to the point where the effort just wasn't worth the work.
There are things that I miss about the rules though. I miss casting times on spells. I miss weapon vs. AC tables. I miss exponentially increasing XP needed to level up. I miss having a real motivation to collect treasure and explore because 2/3rds or more of your XP was finding loot.
But most of what I miss I find portable between editions. I can in fact play later editions with a 1e feel since a lot of that comes down to setting and preparation.
