D&D 1E Seriously contemplating an attempt at a retro AD&D

[deganawida]

I pretty much gave up trying to figure this out from reading just the books. I don't think it's possible. That said, I am having my first session of 1e tomorrow night as a player. Should be interesting.

 

[rabindranath72]

I pretty much gave up trying to figure this out from reading just the books. I don't think it's possible. That said, I am having my first session of 1e tomorrow night as a player. Should be interesting.

Let us know how it goes!
I am running it for the first time for my kids this Saturday (we are converting a B/X campaign).

 

[deganawida]

Let us know how it goes!
I am running it for the first time for my kids this Saturday (we are converting a B/X campaign).

Will do. Am playing a human ranger. Really wanted a barbarian, going to have to settle for a ranger that I play like a barbarian. Set in Greyhawk.

 

[Mannahnin]

Will do. Am playing a human ranger. Really wanted a barbarian, going to have to settle for a ranger that I play like a barbarian. Set in Greyhawk.

Rangers are so stronk in 1E. Congrats on qualifying!

 

[Man in the Funny Hat]

I pretty much gave up trying to figure this out from reading just the books. I don't think it's possible. That said, I am having my first session of 1e tomorrow night as a player. Should be interesting.

I actually started writing a thing a while back that I titled, "AD&D: How This S*** Works," to simply explain in clearer, more concise wording, what the AD&D rules are trying to say regarding major topics. 1E, by Gygax's own admission, was written in a stream-of-consciousness style. It explains why there actually AREN'T EVEN ANY CHAPTERS in the 1E rule books. It explains why rules governing one topic are too often spread here and there throughout the books instead of being gathered all in one place for clarity and easier reference. It often isn't until you DO gather rules together like they really should be that you start noticing contradictions and inconsistencies (and explains why those contradictions and inconsistencies didn't get fixed in the first place before being published). It's why people keep noticing rules they never noticed before every time they do a dedicated read-through of the 1E rules, or maybe just happen to open a particular page and a sentence from a particular paragraph suddenly rocks their world and they start to question things they THOUGHT they knew about the game.

There's no SECRET rules, and it wasn't written to intentionally confuse anyone. It's just very imperfect writing, imperfect editing (in a genre of writing that calls for really REALLY brilliant editing to begin with), and 5 decades of people repeating misinterpretations since publication. 1E is a game that will therefore inherently fight against anybody new trying to come in and just "get it" on a single reading. People play 1E for decades, all the while thinking they're doing things as-written, only to realize they had it wrong since they started, so you're not the first.

 

[McXanaxinAlcohol]

That reminds me why I made my own notes on how mechanics and character generation works in 2E. Across both (original and revised) they put important details about things scattered around in a non-intuitive way! Like movement and how throwing grenade like projectiles work; everything is not in one place!

I actually gotta go back and read through the original 1e rule books to see how much has actually changed. I dont recall exactly how the DM explained it when I played through 2 modules on it being hand held through it all. I just remember it being eerily Similar to 2e

 

[Theory of Games]

What's even crazier to me is, given decades of game design evolution, you'd think modern ttrpgs would be better organized. But, most are worse than the older works

 

[howandwhy99]

This may be counterintuitive to everything you've heard before but think about it rationally.

The most rules laden tabletop game up until its time was D&D, a game published as an RPG. (Supposedly an improv story making game where tracking points is laughed at). Well, AD&D contains more rules than even any wargame of its time, all these included in multiple hardcover books. Gary himself says then RPGs are basically designed and balanced according to the same philosophy as wargames. The term game was wholly believed to mean something other than storytelling, in other words: a strategy game, an activity to test and score players in accomplishing an objective. Millions of players, young and old, were addicted to the D&D game striving to score more points so they could advance the powers of their gaming piece, the character. There were no "roleplaying" rules, personality performance rules, in D&D until 40 years later, in 5e. Balancing the game was all some DMs ever talked about. A new game element could not be added to the game (monsters, spells, gear, etc) until it was thoroughly checked and playtested. And then there are those of us who were there, who remember the difficult to swallow attitude of how a DM was never to improvise when running the game lest they invalidated the players scores.

These base assumptions you won't find in OD&D's LBBs or AD&D vastly expanded tomes.

The key takeaway here is: someone hid a beat-the-game strategic simulation game behind a screen and the wargamers treated it as such. This is the cardinal moment of RPG design. If you don't assume a gameboard hid behind a screen and tracking all the time and positioning, nothing else in those AD&D tomes will make sense.

From the 40s to the 80s "roleplaying" meant role training. The thing all the CRPGers are doing when they are not acting out a personality. RPG players are scored for their successful gaming of their class (role) making the activity synonymous with strategic gaming in D&D.

Things to avoid as non sequiturs to the 20th century RPG hobby: narrative theory, storytelling, and acting "in character".

 

[Mannahnin]

I actually started writing a thing a while back that I titled, "AD&D: How This S*** Works," to simply explain in clearer, more concise wording, what the AD&D rules are trying to say regarding major topics.

Didn't Anthony "The Blue Bard" Huso write one of these? I know he's got a series of articles on his site , but I could swear he also had a whole downloadable guide, though I'm not seeing it right now.

 

[Gus L]

These base assumptions you won't find in OD&D's LBBs or AD&D vastly expanded tomes.

The key takeaway here is: someone hid a beat-the-game strategic simulation game behind a screen and the wargamers treated it as such. This is the cardinal moment of RPG design. If you don't assume a gameboard hid behind a screen and tracking all the time and positioning, nothing else in those AD&D tomes will make sense.

This seems a rather cynical take. While it is obvious that OD&D was intended to be a skirmish wargame to some degree, its failure to become that (even during publication - see the late addition of the alternate combat system) shows that it really is something else. While for some I'm sure it's tempting to write D&D out of the history of RPGs, much as reactionaries in the post-OSR space like to write everything post OSRIC out of the OSR, it seems rather reductive.

Gygax's adventures are often focused on war game style scenarios of infiltration and conflict, but he always includes elements where negotiation and problem solving beyond grid and ruler combat. Even 0D&D includes rules for many things beyond grid combat. Its spells include all sorts of non-combat applications, including ways to divine the intent of things one encounters, befriend strangers, and speak to creatures without speech. Likewise there have always been mechanics related to negotiation in the game from its first iteration: morale, reaction rolls, and even alignment are there to help determine the success or possibility of non-combat interactions. It's just that these areas aren't mechanically modelled to the same degree as combat ... and there are reasons for this beyond disinterest or oversight. Remember also that D&D started as a very simple set of rules, and the "negotiation" rules aren't much smaller then the rules for things like establishing domains or making a character -- everything is a line or two, maybe a couple of paragraphs in 0D&D.

I can't believe I'm defending AD&D, it's an absolute messy stinker of a system, but it's got a lot more in it then grid combat.