Is the AD&D 1E Revival here to stay?

[Crothian]

a bunch of people bought 20 or 30 copies at Gen Con of it to sell on ebay.

There is a Buy It Now for 145, and a regualr auction for a buck

 

[tx7321]

Diaglow wrote: OD&D(1974) is the only true game. All the other editions are just poor imitations of the real thing. I find AD&D 1E an improvement in its complexity.


Yeah, I also think the majority of sales from these indys are late 30-50 somethings, not younger 3E players getting interested in a simpler more freewheeling system. Too bad...and I hope that changes. I don't like the way WOTC/HASBRO is going. There has been a fair amount of chatter amongst the 3E players about wanting to learn more about 1E since OSRIC gained in popularity. Also, I personally know 3 individuals that switched from 3E to 1E in the last 3 months...if that means anything (they have purchased from PPP and ER as well as TLG).


You know, I wonder if these companies (ER, TLG, PPP, OSRIC) have any way of keeping track of who is buying or downloading there products.

 

[PapersAndPaychecks]

The revival's here to stay.

OSRIC is an Open Game product and I couldn't revoke it even if I wanted to -- so there's a 1e-compatible ruleset that won't be going away. And any publisher can use it.

There are people who've been playing their 1e homebrew in their little silos for upwards of twenty years, and a lot of them have publishable material that they've written during that time. So there's a glut of stuff to publish and there's also a glut of 3/3.5e conversions to be made -- most of the OSRIC releases so far have been stuff that people wrote last century and just had floating around. There's a deep well of material to be dipped into there.

So the only question that remains is how many people will keep buying the products. I think that's down to whether they feel they've had value for money, so it's really up to the publishers to keep delivering.

For the record, I will just say that I think OSRIC products so far have been very good value. My personal favourite -- aside from my collaborator Matt Finch's excellent Pod Caverns of the Sinister Shroom, of course -- is James Boney's Red Mausoleum.

 

[Dykstrav]

I'd love to get my hands on some 1E stuff.

I started playing D&D when I was about eight years old, back in the good ol' 1E days. My parents wouldn't buy me any of the material so I just had to check it out from the library every weekend I wanted to have a game.

It wasn't until about 1993 (when I was 15) that I was actually able get a job and start buying gaming material. I spent most of the rest of high school assembling my 1E collection. Fortunately for me, alot of people wanted to clean out their attics when I put the word out that I was looking for old gaming stuff.

These days, I have a sizable 1E and 2E collection. The older material is GREAT, it just has a much more epic, legendary feel to it than the 3E material. I like the 3E rules set but I still tend to bring 1E or 2E material into 3E rather than play 3E-specific stuff. My next campaign is going to be based around Pommeville (from Cleric's Challenge) and include the "first adventure" with Castle Mistamere included in the D&D basic set in 1983.

I loved Rappan Athuk and the Dungeon Crawl Classics series. When I see flashy art, it makes me think that they may be trying to distract you from sub-par content. Like the old NES system, the games had to be fun to play, you couldn't rely on graphics to try to get players in. I really grew up on 2E and 3E but I'd buy all kinds of new 1E adventures.

 

[RFisher]

I wouldn't say that nostalgia and a revival are mutually exclusive terms. My personal criteria for reviving a game system (economically, at least) would be enough people buying the new stuff to keep the authors making new stuff. If nostalgia accomplishes this, then so be it.

That's the thing to me. I've already got enough role-playing material to probably last me the rest of my life. Sure, I still buy things, & I'm quite happy to see the Osric-based products, but I don't see my hobby as something that needs an industry behind it.

(Heck, the most interesting new material to me these days tend to be free. e.g. at the moment: Dungeon Squad, Pace, Wushu.)

The revival I'm looking for is kids--not just old nostalgic geezers like me--discovering the fun of the classic games.

They'd just mess it up. It's perfect as is.

Exactly!

 

[theredrobedwizard]

I'm happy to see a 1stEd revival. Personally, I fervently dislike the system; but that's just my preference. There's a pretty decent untapped market out there for such things, and it's good to see that Third Party types are taking the bait. I love the work that Goodman Games and the Castles & Crusades kids have done. Bravo.

[edition tomfoolery] That being said, I've played all the editions from OD&D to 3.68345E; and I've gotta say, I like the new stuff more. It's like Zelda II vs Zelda: Twilight Princess; just because it was around first doesn't mean I'll like it better. Of course, YMMV. [/edition tomfoolery]

-TRRW

 

[Deuce Traveler]

I took eight copies of Castles and Crusades and twelve copies of Lejendary Adventures and some modules/campaign setting books for Troll Lords to a military base that only gets 3.5 DnD, last Saturday. It garnered enough interest that I was left 3 Lejendary Adventure copies, and one C and C set (the two rulebooks) remaining. I heard a lot of grumbling from buyers that they wanted an alternative to the painstaking time DnD 3.5 takes to play.

I advertised C and C as 2nd edition DnD imagined by Gary Gygax and a team underneath him. I would say that the interest was surprisingly high once the gamers heard I was there. And generally, people really liked the artwork.

 

[JoeGKushner]

I see no AD&D revival.

I see a few nods to that game engine but that is all.

 

[greywulf]

I think it's a response to the "too many rules" syndrome. All those "Complete...." books, etc have made us hit saturation point.

So, we're looking for something smaller. Simpler. Less complex. We want rules that don't get in the way of the role-playing and put the fun back into the game.

That why I made Microlite20, anyway, and I'm sure that the folks behind C&C. Quick20 and all the rest feel the same.

And the music was better in the '70s

 

[pawsplay]

I know of at least two gaming groups that were active until a few years ago that never stopped playing AD&D 1e.... in fact, my informal experience from talking with bearded gaming store guys is that people over a certain age definitely tend to stick with AD&D rather than embracing D&D 3e, HARP, and the like.