Re-Reading 1e

[thedungeondelver]

Oh, I plan on it. I've warned my players re: character death. Everyone's rolling up 2 characters to start with, and more if we have time. Those are going into a collective pool, so we have a ready supply of characters laying around.

-O

Good. Remember, a few abandoned dead comrades at the Moathouse showing up in the Temple's upper levels as zombies (or worse) is a nice way to start the big show. It's a find method to shock the players out of any notion of complacency. If they have any by the time they reach the temple, that is.

 

[Delta]

It's very good - but organized kinda funny, to my mind. And it's not quite as comprehensive as I want. I was trying to find Spell Resistance yesterday and came up empty.

"Magic Resistance" in 1E. See the Glossary.

(Needless renaming of stuff in later editions, I frown on you.)

 

[Obryn]

"Magic Resistance" in 1E. See the Glossary.

(Needless renaming of stuff in later editions, I frown on you.)

Amazingly, it's still not in there...

-O

 

[Whimsical]

I think only the balrog had magic resistance in 1st edition.

Or am I thinking of Basic D&D?

 

[Tewligan]

Amazingly, it's still not in there...

Check page 5 of the Monster Manual.

 

[Darrin Drader]

Sadly, I sold my copy of ToEE back in 1996. However, thanks to the incessant musings of Obryn, I've decided to get my ToEE PDF printed up. I'm not sure if I'll actually get around to running it, (I never have run it, even when I was running 1E originally), so it might just happen.

 

[Edgewood]

I too have jumped onto the band wagon and have started my 1E Open RPG campaign. I'm running the same campaign world that I started way back in 2E, moved onto 3E and 3.5 and now going back to my roots with 1E (well actually if I were going to really go back to me roots it would be BECMI). And I'm also having a blast reading through my old 1E books. In fact, I was at the local Con here in Manitoba and I bought The Wilderness Survival Guide. So much fun!

 

[Hypersmurf]

Where the books got kinda intolerable, IMHO, was in Dance of Demons where Gord and Gellor make Drizzt, Elminster, and every other godlike NPC ever created look like a Commoner.

I adore Saga of Old City and Artifact of Evil, and I'm fond of Sea of Death.

We had a chance to play a game with Gary last year - he ran the EN World mods through one of the upper levels of Castle Greyhawk - and I knew about it several months in advance. I went through the scene in Saga of Old City where Gord - in the guise of a Velunese knight - plays a gambling game with a bunch of high rollers, and I put together a ruleset and had a set of plaques constructed. After the game, I gave it to him on behalf of the group - it went down really well. (I was rather proud of how it had turned out ) Saga of Old City is one of my reread-frequently novels

Dance of Demons, on the other hand, is an unpleasant chore to read.

-Hyp.

 

[Treebore]

I too have jumped onto the band wagon and have started my 1E Open RPG campaign. I'm running the same campaign world that I started way back in 2E, moved onto 3E and 3.5 and now going back to my roots with 1E (well actually if I were going to really go back to me roots it would be BECMI). And I'm also having a blast reading through my old 1E books. In fact, I was at the local Con here in Manitoba and I bought The Wilderness Survival Guide. So much fun!

Yep, thanks to C&C I started rereading all my old D&D books and realized (relearned) they are darn good games in their own rights. To the point where I am going to run RC games, 1E games, and 2E games for my kids, so they will know it too. They all learned on 3E, so that ones covered.

 

[PapersAndPaychecks]

Gonna un-advertise my game system here.

If you're going to play 1e, the best way is to read it in the original. Gary's sublime (and occasionally purple) prose is what gives the game a lot of its charm... OSRIC can serve as an index, summary and ready-reckoner for some of those rules, but that's it.

The 1e DMG is the single most helpful book for a GM of any kind, of any level of ability. I've now been playing RPGs slightly in excess of thirty years and I still consult it.