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

[Zardnaar]

Not I.
The only reason lv 9+ seem so epic is because of the sheer amounts of XP (& by default ALOT of hours of play) you need for each new lv.
Reaching one of these lvs was a mythic event. Often marred somewhere along the line by getting lv drained.

Its because the game is missing the higher levels for some classes (without UA at least) and the games monsters all seem geared for level 1-10. Balors and Dragons for example are kind of weak.

 

[Greg Benage]

I think it's hilarious (and somehow appropriate) that most of this thread is arguing about the provenance of THACO.

Less eloquently than Mearls, I'd say Classic D&D is comprehensively and pervasively weird, and immersion in the weird is indeed a unique experience.

* The books and boxes were weird. The physical product didn't look like anything else in my house.
* The art was weird.
* The fonts were weird.
* The language was (very) weird.
* The rules were weird.
* The creatures and spells were weird.
* The names were weird.
* The environment of play was weird.
* Actual play -- what you did when playing the game -- was super-weird.

The weird rules -- along with all the other weird elements -- definitely contributed to the pervasive weirdness of it. The game is such fertile ground for nostalgia precisely because of this pervasive weirdness. You ditch some of the weird elements and keep others, you lose some of the weirdness, the pervasiveness of the weirdness. D&D with slick art isn't as weird. D&D after all of its unique genre elements have been subsumed into pop culture can't be as weird. D&D with more sensible and accessible rules and language isn't as weird. D&D where actual play is a "heroic quest" or "adventure path" or "epic story" isn't as weird as rounding a corner in the Caves of Chaos and getting turned to stone by a medusa.

Immersion in the weird is part of the Hero's Journey, but not all of it. It's the part that pretty much every Classic D&D game had, even when most of them lacked most of the other elements of the Hero's Journey. Immersion in the weird is a unique experience, and the comparison to the hard-to-describe experience of a horror movie is apt.

 

[Yaarel]

Immersion in the weird is part of the Hero's Journey, but not all of it. It's the part that pretty much every Classic D&D game had, even when most of them lacked most of the other elements of the Hero's Journey. Immersion in the weird is a unique experience, and the comparison to the hard-to-describe experience of a horror movie is apt.

Thats a good point.

D&D adventures can intentionally model the heroes journey. Start at ‘home’, where life is normal. Discover an unfulfilled desire. Go on an adventure to find out how to fulfill the desire. While on the adventure play up the weirdness. Gain strength in unfamiliar dangerous environments. Discover what prevents the fulfillment. Come back home to overcome the challenge that prevented the fulfillment. Then end the adventure with a new normal.

 

[Tony Vargas]

Heh, my impression of 1e is:

Levels 1 to 4: mess.

Levels 5 to 8: sweet.

Levels 9 to 12: ok.

Levels 13 to 16: mess.

Levels 17 to 20: absurd.

Oh, so you have played 1e...

Seriously, though, thats not an unfair assessment. The sweet-spot of 1e seemed like 3-7 to me at the time, though in retrospect there can't've been anything going too wrong at 8th...

The huge improvement made in later eds wasn't expanding that sweet-spot in terms of levels, though, it was the exp progression.

In 1e, gaining 2nd level was grueling, but as soon as the game started getting good, that changed, and the sweet spot went by in a blur, then as it started getting problematic after name level you hit the wall.

5e has the exact opposite cadence: the crappy first few levels fly by, advancement slows down and savors the sweet spot, then speeds up again, so if you simply must see your campaign through to 20, it at least won't take forever.

 

[Saeviomagy]

1e in a nutshell
1. "Characters" are disposable and you can make a new one in a heartbeat. The most difficult bit is making a new name.
2. Flowing on from that, everything is ridiculously deadly, and you'll probably go through several characters until you learn how ridiculously cautious you need to be to survive. Then you'll probably die again, because almost everything is a new type of deadly, explicitly designed to overcome the latest tactics you are using.
3. You're expected to metagame to survive. Each new character will be incrementally more cautious and world weary, despite (probably) being lower level than the previous one.
4. Most rules are made up on the spot, because they simply don't exist in the books.

Compare with the current edition where making a new character is a PITA, rules for a situation are more likely to be shoddy than to not exist, and very few things will actually kill you even if you make terrible decisions and have an awful character, let alone kill you in an unfair way.

 

[delericho]

Well, as Gygax TELLS you to alter/change rules right there in the 1e books to suite your particular game.... I'm going to say that whatever Mearls played was 100% 1e.

Sigh.

Okay: I'm curious to what extent Luke has changed things to suit his particular game. And I'm also curious how closely the resulting ruleset matches up with the one his father preferred.

 

[ExploderWizard]

It appears to me that in this experience, Mearls got a glimpse of what it was like to play D&D as a strategic puzzle for perhaps the first time. It is a different kind of experience than the narrative fantasy approach and sometimes difficult to explain to those who have not experience it. I am glad that he had an opportunity to discover the joys of this play style.

 

[nedjer]

Sitting working some Old School sensibilities into 5e content - and seeing a few maybe rather tired stereotypes about 1e. If the game has more jeopardy, more reaching for your own solutions and characters who have to become heroic rather than get made heroic . . . hard to see those as bad things for them as enjoy that.

In this instance it seems what I would describe as 'creep', perhaps liminal or threshold appears to be largely what's striking a chord for the player. A sense things could go wrong at any moment; the need to invent and pitch solutions that don't just walk off the PC sheet; and a touch of the Otherworldy.

We can serve up creep in all sorts of ways in any edition, but where characters can fire off a fusillade of blows or spells at low levels there's going to be a weighting towards relying on those options, which works against keeping players in a space where they feel something, anything, could just leap out and present a genuine threat.

 

[Celebrim]

Its because the game is missing the higher levels for some classes (without UA at least) and the games monsters all seem geared for level 1-10. Balors and Dragons for example are kind of weak.

The game is definitely designed for classes leveled 1-10. In classic AD&D, dungeons are designed with levels designed to match the level of the PC's. So first level characters primarily explore in the first level of the dungeon, and second level characters primarily explore in the second level of the dungeon. Likewise, most of the encounters in the first level of the dungeon will be with monsters of the first rank, as determined by the XP offered for slaying them.

The highest rank monsters were all level X, or '10'. If you wanted to develop dangers significantly more challenging than 10th level, you had to go beyond the published rules or else very carefully regulate the sort of items and the like that players might acquire.

A well equipped reasonably large party of 10th level characters can beat anything in the monster manuals. Gygax's own works intended for high level play demonstrate that he understood that quite well, for they consistently feature things that are beyond the power of most or all monster manual challenges.

I've written about this a couple of times in the older editions forum.

 

[Celebrim]

Anyone else think 1E is basically level 1-10 and the epic levels are level 9 to 14 or so?

Yes. 1e modules basically prove this. Adventures for beyond 10th level characters basically involved thwarting the gods - Tiamat, Loth, etc.

I think forgotten realms basically multiplying all NPC levels by 2 compared to most prior demographics, really changed how we perceived character level in the game. Also, I think 3e's adventure paths, with the assumption that you would get to level 20 before you completed an epic story really represented a huge shift in thinking.