OD&D 4 me (April Fools)

[Matthan]

While I still hold to my theory. I want to hear more about the glories of OD&D. I understand there are a lot of charts. Can you play without them or do you have to carry them around all the time?

 

[Crothian]

While I still hold to my theory. I want to hear more about the glories of OD&D. I understand there are a lot of charts. Can you play without them or do you have to carry them around all the time?

Carrying around the books really isn't an issue. I haven't weighed them but I'd imagine that all the books published for OD&D weigh less then the three core 3e books. Heck, they might even be less then the PHB since they aren't even hard bound.

There are charts. But the charts are wondering monsters, treasure, basic equipment lists, and other things that are still in the game today just presented differently. It's not like rolemaster.

 

[Thulcondar]

While I still hold to my theory. I want to hear more about the glories of OD&D. I understand there are a lot of charts. Can you play without them or do you have to carry them around all the time?

Bear in mind that it's not too difficult to carry them around all the time. They all fit in a couple 8.5"x5.5" booklets. AD&D is a tad tougher since the books are physically larger, but the basic three still fit easily in the average backpack, with room for a couple cans of Jolt thrown into the bargain.

I've been running an AD&D 1E campaign myself for about a year now, with players who have a mix of experience with 3.x and nothing, and it's been a blast for all (I hope). My gripe with the newer versions is the difficulty in "winging it". Perhaps 4E will change that, perhaps not. I'll certainly buy the core books just to get a feel for it. But when they market what is essentially a completely new game as a "version" of an old game, I fail to see why I should invest the time and effort into learning it. I've been happy with AD&D for 20 years. There's some nostalgia involved, but it's also the fact that I know the system so well.

"Newer" doesn't necessarily mean "better" any more than "older" does. In the case of 3.x (and, from what I can see, 4.0) it just means "different". Why change?

 

[Wulf Ratbane]

I recently got out my old 1e books (to study the graphic design, actually, such as it was...)

Not only is there a 1e feel, there's a very specific 1e smell. My 1e books smell like no others I own.

Opened a floodgate of memories and emotions.

The DMG still falls open at my touch to all the most heavily trafficked pages. I can literally hold it by the spine, think of a section, and just let it fall open to that page.

 

[Kid Charlemagne]

Mine smell like the duct tape I used to hold the bindings together! I am however chagrined to learn that I don't remember the page of the combat charts correctly off the top of my head anymore. I thought pg101, it was actually 74.

 

[Matthan]

My breadth of roleplaying game experience is very limited, but I remember having the old TSR Marvel Super-heroes game and, if memory serves, they had a chart for damage dealt and to hit stuff (it was very complicated to my third or fourth grade mind, but I remember puzzling over that chart). I always assumed that was a carry over from OD&D, but it isn't?

So would you describe OD&D as just covering the basics of a roleplaying game with the participants (players/dms) encouraged to fill in the blanks?

 

[Derro]

I recently got out my old 1e books (to study the graphic design, actually, such as it was...)

Not only is there a 1e feel, there's a very specific 1e smell. My 1e books smell like no other

I miss my 1e DMG. The original with the battle at the City of Brass not the Easley with the wizard. The only good 1e originals I have are the Cthulhu/Moorcock Deities and Demi-gods and three (WTF?) copies of Fiend Folio. And I'd sooner part with my left walnut than those.

 

[Crothian]

The DMG still falls open at my touch to all the most heavily trafficked pages. I can literally hold it by the spine, think of a section, and just let it fall open to that page.

We always joked that you could tell a used DMG by the way it would always open to the to hit tables.

 

[Crothian]

I miss my 1e DMG. The original with the battle at the City of Brass not the Easley with the wizard. The only good 1e originals I have are the Cthulhu/Moorcock Deities and Demi-gods and three (WTF?) copies of Fiend Folio. And I'd sooner part with my left walnut than those.

I recently got my books out of an old box and found out I have three copies of Oriental Adventures. I have no idea why.

 

[Korgoth]

But even that's not entirely true, is it? I mean, it's one that to put that as a stat block for an Orc, but quite a different thing for a troll - which regenerates (how much? How often) or a skeleton (takes half damage from slashing weapons) - so some monsters have *other* things that can complicate the stat block.

Well, if a monster does something special I might note it, like Ghouls: AC 6, HD 2, Move 9", damage + paralyze.

Everything does a base of 1d6 damage in the game. Some monsters get a bonus (like an ogre gets 1d6+2), but instead of that I actually base damage dice on a comparison of attacker's hit dice to defender's hit dice, like in Empire of the Petal Throne. Basically, if a 4 HD creature attacks a 1 HD creature, it rolls 2 dice; it progresses in steps of two based on that (though it counts 1+1 as a step, but not other plusses as steps; I don't find this hard to remember). You can run it either of those two ways, or assign a flat number of damage dice based on Hit Dice (an idea I also like; you can make it roughly equal the Fighting Man progression on the To Hit chart... so 1 die at lvls 1-3, 2 dice at lvls 4-6, etc.). Any of those three are easy, transparent methods.

Which highlights more of the strengths of the system. Virtually nothing changes based on which style of damage rolls you pick, except the narrow thing you were hoping would change.

Also, monster creation is easy. Abomination of Yondo: AC 5, HD 9, Move 9", poisoned. Done!

I think the game, in its simplicity, allows for a ton of options. I think that feats limit options because if you don't have the feat, you can't do what it defines. So every feat that gets added, the less characters are allowed to actually do (without the feat). In OD&D there are no such things, so it's all a Ref call and a roll.

Bascially, it's a question of whether you like rules-light. If you do, and you like hacking together your own unique snowflake of a game, you're golden and OD&D is what you want. If you want rules-light but "plays straight out of the box", you're looking for Classic instead. And if you want feats, skills and all the rest of it, well clearly there are those choices out there too.