How close to the RAW did/do you play AD&D1?

[Ariosto]

Eventually, we redid the initiative system (because we really didn't understand it)

I think that there in fact is no single, 100% unified initiative "system" in 1st ed. AD&D. Claim to be using everything "as written", and with as much justification so can someone doing it differently. There are lacunae that absolutely require interpretation, and if there were a non-arbitrary, clearly correct interpretation ... then we should not have had 30 years of debates with no end in sight.

The 1st ed. Advanced books assumed a "basic" familiarity with Dungeons & Dragons. There was a reminder of the real rule in the PHB:

Your DM will adjudicate such matters with common sense.

Although it was implied that one would refer to the Chainmail miniatures rules, there was no initiative system in the D & D books prior to Supplement III (which presented a complex precursor to those later found in Starfleet Battles and Champions). Holmes Basic used Dexterity, while later Basic sets presented the "d6 for each side, high roll goes first" fundamental from Chainmail.

That is still the fundamental in 1st ed. AD&D; the rest is commentary. The one big tangled snarl in that commentary has to do with spell-casting. In particular, the issue is how the dice-rolls, spell casting times in segments, and weapon attacks (especially versus spell-casters work).

At the end of the day, you've just got to decide for yourself what the cryptic phrase "whichever is applicable" means, and how to harmonize p. 65 with pp. 66-67 ... or else just use whatever works for you.

It is most reasonable to assume that Gygax had something more coherent in mind, but that somewhere in the course of writing and editing it got lost. The text was never corrected, though, and "what Gary said" depends on when he was asked!

 

[Holy Bovine]

What is the helmet rule for those of us who never played 1e?

Heck I played 1E for over 7 years and I've never heard of the 'Helmet Rule'.

 

[Riley]

We prefered the "Finish fights faster" method from The Dragon #74.

That was a very good system. There was also an initiative system from Dragon that we used which gave long weapons an advantage while closing, and gave small fast weapons an advantage up close.

We were in the "mostly" camp. We were always trying out new houserules/variant rules, but discarded more than we kept.

 

[Philotomy Jurament]

My percentage varied throughout the years. In the beginning, it was lots of house rules and ignored rules. Later, I made an effort to play by the book, and I'd guess I was in the 90%+ range, then. After playing in that range for a while, it dropped back down, again (but probably still around 80%).

And I'm not sure how you're counting stuff like Unearthed Arcana and the survival guides. For example, UA was described as "further definition" and as "change and expansion" of the system, rather than as a collection of optional rules. If you consider ignoring material from UA, DSG, WSG, etc. as not following the RAW, then my percentage drops significantly.

 

[ExploderWizard]

I never understand players who don't use weapons versus armor class modifiers: "An extra +1 or +2 to hit? Nah, no thanks, I can't be bothered to write down a few numbers on my character sheet for that."

Heh. If the rule was a blanket vs the AC it would be simple to apply the modifier. Note that this rule was a weapon vs armor type modifier and had nothing to do with actual AC. Monsters wearing armor were subject to the adjustments for the type of armor worn, while those with natural hide/skin became a DM judgement call as to the type of armor to be used for an adjustment if any.

Check page 28 of the DMG. Its on the same page as the helmet rule.

 

[Holy Bovine]

I never understand players who don't use weapons versus armor class modifiers: "An extra +1 or +2 to hit? Nah, no thanks, I can't be bothered to write down a few numbers on my character sheet for that."

If it was as simple as that I wouldn't have any problem at all with it. Sadly this wasn' really the case as others have pointed out it was a bonus/penalty vs. armour types not armour classes. Made for a real DMing headache deciding if a crocodile's hide was like scalemail, leather, studded leather...bleh.

Don't get me wrong I would run/play 1E again at the drop of a hat but we had a fair number of house rules (mostly just ignoring stuff we couldn't be bothered to keep track of).

 

[Wormwood]

. . . but we had a fair number of house rules (mostly just ignoring stuff we couldn't be bothered to keep track of).

This.

We played AD&D by the book, with our 'house rules' limited to ignoring needlessly complicated rules like Overbearing, weapon vs. armor and the like.

 

[Jhaelen]

Based on various accounts I've read (maybe just worthless internet crap), EGG himself didn't always play "RAW" or even necessarily endorse the idea of "RAW."

Well, based on my memory of EGG's comments in the old dragon magazines (see the thread here on ENWorld) he was very concerned about people playing AD&D 'correctly'. My impression was that while he himself didn't feel bound to play by RAW (it were his rules after all!), he very much expected everyone else to do it.

His vision was that players from everywhere could visit a Con somewhere and play in a group using 'official' rules and fit right in. Imho, the game didn't really get close to that vision until 3e.

Anyway, after reading this thread, I probably should have voted for 50/50 rather than mostly. Apparently, there's been a lot of rules we didn't use because we either didn't know about them or found them to be too complicated.

 

[Chainsaw]

Well, based on my memory of EGG's comments in the old dragon magazines (see the thread here on ENWorld) he was very concerned about people playing AD&D 'correctly'. My impression was that while he himself didn't feel bound to play by RAW (it were his rules after all!), he very much expected everyone else to do it.

His vision was that players from everywhere could visit a Con somewhere and play in a group using 'official' rules and fit right in. Imho, the game didn't really get close to that vision until 3e.

I think it probably depended on when and in what context the topic came up. I can see the importance of having some sort of unified system for tournament/con play. For example, in our 4E RPGA games, we use the RAW to keep things comparable.. but in the 4E home campaign, not so much.

 

[Celebrim]

If it was as simple as that I wouldn't have any problem at all with it. Sadly this wasn' really the case as others have pointed out it was a bonus/penalty vs. armour types not armour classes. Made for a real DMing headache deciding if a crocodile's hide was like scalemail, leather, studded leather...bleh.

The best way I found to handle this was to create 'to hit' tables specific to each character in the party. Instead of cross referencing a fighter table to figure out if 'Black Joe' hit AC 3 after adding up all the modifiers, you instead created a 'Black Joe' table which cross referenced his sword +3 vs. each AC. Then, all you needed to know was the dice throw and any temporary modifiers because his strength, magic sword, and the long sword vs. AC modifers were already calculated. Ditto for Black Joe's short bow +1, his backup dagger, and his unarmed attack.

It was a small headache to prepare the tables, but it saved an enormous amount of time in play and made using the 'weapon vs. ac' modifiers no harder than not using them. And once you had the tables, they were really cool, because suddenly the game started to make sense at a tactical level. Realism jumped up enormously. You could see that a whip or a unarmed attack were virtually useless against an armored foe (as you'd expect). A heavy weapon designed to penatrate armor was great - if the foe was armored - but suffered compared to a finesse weapon against a lighter unarmored foe. Your longsword, damage king though it was in most cases, could have real issues penetrating something as protective as plate so that there really was reasons to consider using other types of weapons. It wasn't obvious which weapon was best.

As for the AC of monsters, you didn't have to calculate them all in advance and you really didn't have to concern yourself too much with what AC the monsters hide had. Instead, you decided roughly what dexterity the monster had, and then the rest of the monster's AC translated as armor by necessity. This seems like its just as hard, but figuring out if the monster ought to qualify for non-armor AC seemed easier to me than figuring out what armor it had. So, if the monster had an AC 4, but didn't seem particularly agile, that was obviously all armor. Or, if the monster had an AC 2, but was a small lithe fairy, then perhaps that was all 'bonus' (size, dexterity, swiftness, magical enhancement), and its AC was 10 (with a AB of +8). Once you decided for one monster, you just made a note and then you 'knew' and could write it in a stat block (which was like 2 lines back then) when prepping for an evening. And you were really unlikely to introduce more then two or three new monsters in a session, and after a while it didn't much come up.

No, the real complexity - and one that I had just started to consider - was what weapon did the monsters attacks qualify as? Near the end of my 1e career I started making specific monster vs. AC attack tables to go with each monster entry.