D&D 1E Mearls on AD&D 1E

[AriochQ]

I played a 1e game with Ernie Gygax this year at Gary Con and had the same experience. It had been so long since I had played 1e, I had forgotten how the game 'felt'.

 

[Tony Vargas]

It's like people don't understand how you can have fun with older D&D lol.

A fellow grognard who graced my playtest table would sum it up with:
"You have to make your our own fun."

 

[Mercurius]

That's beautiful from Mearls.

I'm reminded of how Alan Watts used to say that philosophers tend either towards "prickles" or "goo." The Prickly philosophers want everything clear and defined, no rough edges or dangling bits, whereas the Gooey philosophers like things messy, and always emphasize the spirit rather than letter of the law.

AD&D was gooey. I like gooey. Gooey facilitates imaginative wonder (imo).

I know someone is going to come in and say that imaginative wonder is not a function of Goo or Prickles, but perhaps on a different axis, and they may be right. But I do agree with Watts that there is this spectrum, and also that it applies to gamers, game styles, rules, etc.

It may also have something to do with how much the emphasis of play experience is on the rules themselves, vs. the story and narrative; "crunch" vs. "fluff."

Regardless, it was very well written and emphasized a lot of what I like about RPGs.

 

[Guest 6801328]

I wouldn't say that was because of the system, but the setting and the adventure content (as I explain above). I think that's backed up by his friend's recommendation of Joseph Campbell.

Yeah this is a totally fair point.

 

[the_redbeard]

What I think Mearls is referring to, especially in regards to Joseph Campbell, is the concept of the "mythic underworld" as discussed in Philotomy's musings:

...it is an underworld: a place where the normal laws of reality may not apply, and may be bent, warped, or broken. Not merely an underground site or a lair, not sane, the underworld gnaws on the physical world like some chaotic cancer. It is inimical to men; the dungeon, itself, opposes and obstructs the adventurers brave enough to explore it.

AD&D and OD&D are a rules fit with the mythic underworld due to the rules being under the control of the Dungeon Master. Remember, even your "to-hit" chances are defined on tables in the DM's Guide, a book not intended to be read by players. Rules were not defined the physics of the world and accessible to the players. In playing, you are fumbling in the dark, risking your character against dangers unknown and unknowable.

You are off the edge of known maps; here be dragons.

This play experience can be achieved with other rules sets and even with player knowledge of the rules. The difference though is the attitude to the rules and whether they are gospel, holy writ to be used by players during play to make claims upon the "reality" of the dungeon, or if they are mere tools to aid the DM's task of adjudicating the PC's attempt to negotiate the hazards they face.

 

[AmerginLiath]

When my group played 1E, we played by the book as much as humanly possible. Gygax's rules were sometimes a challenge to interpret, but it was like meandering down a maze. If you review the initiative rules, you'll know what I mean. Everytime we rolled a d6 for initiative, I was the designated expert to determine who would go first, because I was the only one who spent the most time going down the rabbit hole. "Is he casting a spell? What is the speed factor of his weapon?" I think unarmed combat was almost as bad, but we generally avoided it because it was a sub-optimal tactic.

I always thought that coming to the game through 1st Edition was the best preparation for studying Anthropology in college, Gygax’s rulebooks not being the usual “create rules for a game we’ll play” one sees in most RPGs, but rather “distill the rules of the world we’re playing in to a form that we can share,” like a sort of participant-observation text with a combat matrix. Having Dr. Holmes then come to look through the extant versions to distill Basic I was that even more so!

 

[MichaelSomething]

Luke really should stream some of his games cause I don't the spirit of ADnD can be expressed in text.

 

[Gansk]

I always thought that coming to the game through 1st Edition was the best preparation for studying Anthropology in college, Gygax’s rulebooks not being the usual “create rules for a game we’ll play” one sees in most RPGs, but rather “distill the rules of the world we’re playing in to a form that we can share,” like a sort of participant-observation text with a combat matrix. Having Dr. Holmes then come to look through the extant versions to distill Basic I was that even more so!

That's true, someone did a fascinating analysis of Holmes' adaptation of OD&D rules - it might have been the guy who wrote the Holmes retro-clone, as I think he got access to some rare document that would have expanded on Holmes Basic to go past level 3.

 

[Yaarel]

The reason why D&D 1e is so revolutionary, so socially threatening is,

it is a game about reality itself.

Players create their own universes.

When taking responsibility for creating a reality, there is a realization that reallife reality, is also just a game. If you dont like something in reality, make up a different reality, a better one. And make that reality happen.

D&D 1e (more than later versions that imposed an official setting) tapped into the player as an author of a setting, a decider of reality. The inventor of a universe. A creator of reality.

Make the world a better place.

 

[Schmoe]

The specific tasks and stats are largely irrelevant. You are a person brave enough to go into an unexplored territory, the Underworld say, to slay monsters, possibly a Dragon, and take their gold to share with the community. If you betrayed someone, then you're representing the human Shadow. In the end you're reborn into something more powerful. It hits all the beats.

I think you're being way too dismissive of what he actually said.

But there was something else at work. AD&D worked in part because the entire game is one, giant puzzle. Everything is just out of conceptual reach. The rulebooks themselves are dungeons to explore, treasures hidden here and there.

The game and its approach to the dungeon crawl isn’t about story, or world building, or any of the concepts that have grown around D&D over the years. The game dwells at the edge of perception, its lack of definition its defining trait.

When I played D&D, because the rulebooks are so opaque, a large part of the game was rife was subsystems, idiosyncratic approaches to microcosms of encounters, and exploring the game was about exploring these subsystems. This ladder required a save vs. petrification to descend due to moisture in the air, that ladder required Wisdom checks every 20' to ascend because of the fear of heights. Sometimes you would find a gem of a ruling tucked away in the corners of a book, and knowing when to apply that ruling was an "aha" moment that brings a certain sense of satisfaction. Other times an adventure would contain marvelous mini-games that brought challenge and uniqueness to each scenario. 1e was rife with rules and systems like that due to its very nature.

In my mind, D&D gradually moved away from the arbitrariness that 1e required, and 3e finally codified everything in a unified system. Whereas in 1e a Death Dog might do 1-10 per attack "just because", maybe because the designers wanted it to be really freaking deadly, in 3e it would just do 1-6 because medium creatures do 1d6 with a bite attack. Things became much more formulaic and, in the process, may have lost some of the charm of the earlier systems. But unquestionably the game lost the aspect of rules exploration that was so prevalent for me and my friends, and that was always something I enjoyed. It's a pleasure all its own that is hard to replicate in any other way.