AD&D 1E Snarf's Challenge: Was it Possible to Play 1e RAW? SHARE YOUR STORIES!

[Snarf Zagyg]

Have you seen the simple weapon keyword rules from Original Edition Delta? I think they do a pretty nice job.

It's been all downhill since Gygax sold out and introduced variable weapon damage.

Thinking...

Really, it's been all downhill since the invention of agriculture, and arguably since we left the water, but still.

 

[Mannahnin]

How long is the haft on a spear? A spetum? A halberd? I think any system which tries leverage the different qualities of weapons needs to account for an awful lot of variables, rather than try and shoehorn weapons into mechanical categories. I would also say there should be one guiding maxim when houseruling B/X:

If possible, do not introduce additional granularity. The strength of the system lies in its simplicity.

This is a 1E AD&D discussion, not a B/X discussion. OED is a house rule package for OD&D which attempts to incorporate a number of more complex concepts which later made it into AD&D, in cleaner and simpler fashion. You expressed frustration with your own efforts to come up with a simplified system for B/X, and I thought this one might helpful to look at.

Rather than getting into the weeds with you on the attributes of specific weapons, I'm going to note that any given system is necessarily going to represent some compromise between complexity/simulationism and simplicity/speed of play.

For my money, the OED system is one of the more elegant takes on weapon vs armor and on mechanically differentiating weapons in D&D. More playable and interesting than those in either version of AD&D.

If you prefer Moldvay and co's design choice to scrap those factors entirely a la B/X, I can totally respect that. I may be lucky that my own sense of verisimilitude does not put me in a position of thinking "everyone should just be carrying warhammers!" I'm happy enough with a system like this one which provides a pretty balanced range of options and I find it close enough to representative of how the historical weapons work, albeit I could make a few tweaks here and there if I wanted to nitpick.

 

[Sepulchrave II]

This is a 1E AD&D discussion, not a B/X discussion.

Sure. I was responding to a response to my observation.

OED is a house rule package for OD&D which attempts to incorporate a number of more complex concepts which later made it into AD&D, in cleaner and simpler fashion. You expressed frustration with your own efforts to come up with a simplified system for B/X, and I thought this one might helpful to look at.

Rather than getting into the weeds with you on the attributes of specific weapons, I'm going to note that any given system is necessarily going to represent some compromise between complexity/simulationism and simplicity/speed of play.

For my money, the OED system is one of the more elegant takes on weapon vs armor and on mechanically differentiating weapons in D&D. More playable and interesting than those in either version of AD&D.

If you prefer Moldvay and co's design choice to scrap those factors entirely a la B/X, I can totally respect that. I may be lucky that my own sense of verisimilitude does not put me in a position of thinking "everyone should just be carrying warhammers!" I'm happy enough with a system like this one which provides a pretty balanced range of options and I find it close enough to representative of how the historical weapons work, albeit I could make a few tweaks here and there if I wanted to nitpick.

Fair enough. I imagine I'll keep mulling it over.

 

[kronovan]

Baring in mind I haven't played AD&D1e since 1987, albeit I've since sat down to an OSRIC table for a few adventures. My 1st experience playing it in 1981, the DM did run it RAW and a lot of bickering and arguments ensued. That said, I did get him to admit later that he sometimes fudged in favor of the player.

My next play which was during an attempt at a campaign in 82, is harder to say. The DM style was random with lots of rolls on DMG tables. There wasn't much player agency with that DM even doing the attack and save rolls. It was a very dynamic and narrative attempt at a campaign with props on the carpet and Ral Partha, lead minis heroicly wading through the shag piles. It fizzled after 3 sessions, when some of the unethused players couldn't understand how a wooden chopstick could be a log, a 1-2" high candle could be a campfire, and how a lead mini Paladin could easily jump his steed over both.

At my university club which I joined in 83, no one seemed to run RAW. I was DMing by then and I did make an attempt at it, but I found that challenging. I can't remember exactly what I didn't run RAW, but can say that club had some near professional miniature and wargame designers and they printed & bound some very good houserules around combat and hex crawling - Wildeness Survival Guide wan't out yet. So I'm fairly certain I used some of those houserules.

 

[Mannahnin]

At my university club which I joined in 83, no one seemed to run RAW. I was DMing by then and I did make an attempt at it, but I found that challenging. I can't remember exactly what I didn't run RAW, but can say that club had some near professional miniature and wargame designers and they printed & bound some very good houserules around combat and hex crawling - Wildeness Survival Guide wan't out yet. So I'm fairly certain I used some of those houserules.

WSG doesn't really have hex crawling procedures; it adds more detail to the rules in the 1E DMG, which themselves actually lack a procedure.

The 1974 original rules for wilderness exploration come pretty close to being an organized procedure. It seems clear that the 1E DMG rules are really just an expansion of those and an attempt to de-couple them from the Avalon Hill Outdoor Survival map board they originally called for, but the DMG lacks a clear, step by step procedure for wilderness adventuring.

B/X finally repaired this, giving a step by step process (see page X23, though important parts of it are spread out a bit in the book, see X19 and X53-59). And this is one place where Mentzer's 1983 Expert set is actually better organized than the 1981 set, with most of the wilderness exploration rules consolidated onto pages 41-44 in the DM's section, with just the movement rate rules separated out in the player-facing pages on X21.

 

[Weiley31]

Id rather stick with OSE+/kitbashed with BX/Lamentations of the Flame Princess or DND 2ND edition(via For Gold&Glory) if I was going that route.

 

[Vaslov]

What I can share is I played at several different tables/groups across the 80s. No two of them played D&D the same way. The themes were familiar. There were always 'here is how we do things' to learn, few of which were written down. It was more like playing in a jazz band. You had to learn the local lingo to jam with a different crew. Across all of them I probably saw many of the 1e rules used at one point or another. Except psionics. No one I gamed with ever liked those rules. I do recall a few feeble attempts at them, but they never lasted.

What I don't recall is anyone trying or wanting to follow every rule by the book. Course that was true for Monopoly as well in most groups I gamed with. DIY was always the name of the game.

 

[haakon1]

We actually had psionics for the Elf Fighter that I played. We rolled the percentile dice and he got the 00 or whatever was needed.

I remember using Mass Domination in the Vault of the Drow. Since he was capped at 7th, it helped.