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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Snarf Zagyg" data-source="post: 9747911" data-attributes="member: 7023840">This is true. Which is why I always try to write something about it in the disclaimers. It's in this one--As always, if you get five 1e players to tell you how they played the game, you will get seven different versions. I am sure that your table played with different rules, or discarded some of these rules, or maybe you might be thinking of the time you were playing Traveler. It's all good. The joke aside, this gets to the interoperability of TSR-era D&D.At a very basic level, the entire line of D&D products from TSR is the same game. I don't mean that some details aren't different. And they can be major; obviously, the Moldvay Basic split (race as class, otherwise referred to as "Basic") has some key differences. And the gradual accretion of rules over time made the play experience of late 2e wildly different from that of 1975 OD&D....and yet, all of these games are fundamentally the same. They are all interoperable. Perhaps the best, and easiest, example of this is B2 (Keep on the Borderlands). B2 was originally written for OD&D (Holmes). But the module shipped with Basic (Moldvay). The module was so ubiquitous, that it was commonly run as an introductory adventure for 1e characters; and became so entrenched as a "popular trope" that it continued to be run well into the 2e era.All of this is to say that while there are numerous small differences over time, the entire structure of all of the D&D systems from 1974 through 2000 is so similar, so based on a common core, that the materials made for them are easily used without any adaptation.This doesn't mean that things did not change; obviously, a 1e UA character (or a 2e Kit character) would be much more powerful than an OD&D character. But because these systems didn't use "CR" or other balancing material, this wasn't really seen as a problem (just add or subtract an ogre).I'd also point out that not only were there house rules (often compiled in binders by DMs) ... there were plentiful "official materials" (supplements), "semi-official materials" (Strategic Review, Dragon Magazine), and 3PPs (everything from Grimtooth's Traps to the Compleat Adventurer) that people used, as well as borrowings from other sources (e.g., using Talislanta as a campaign world in D&D, or my home campaign that had a bespoke psionics system based on Julian May's books).It's a fool's errand to parse the TSR rules in the same way that we parse current rules (and that's why it's usually obvious if someone didn't actually play at the time ...). So why do I like to do it?1. I'm a fool.2. I think it's always a good exercise to see what the original Gygaxian rules were. 3. Looking at how rules interact and how they should be interpreted in a system that doesn't require pitchforks and torches like we have currently is a useful skill when it comes to interpreting rules in general.</blockquote>

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