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

[Alas]

My college crew's longest 1e campaign ran from Fall 1993 to Spring 1995. This was after 2nd edition was well under way, but our DM wanted to use 1st edition, so that's what we used, happily. We had weekly 6-8 hour sessions, mostly pretty classic dungeon crawling (smash doors, get loot, retreat to town).

I want to say we used RAW, but it's actually hard to remember! Certainly I remember we kept a copy of the DMG open to page 75-76 for the combat tables, rather than using THAC0, but we used 1d6+Dex bonus for initiative. We didn't use the weapon vs AC type modifiers, and didn't count segments for spellcasting. We did consistently use miniatures (however improvised), and marching order was pretty important. Gold got counted towards XP. We paid training costs. Healing without spells took ages. I think it's notable that (other than arguably initiative) our DM didn't add any house rules-- they just skipped a bunch of the book rules.

If we had any rule disputes, I don't remember them now. I do remember the time our characters splurged at the tavern and we the players roleplayed getting progressively drunker for 90 solid minutes, falling off our chairs laughing. And I remember the time our DM and the elf F/M-U/T both forgot that elves are immune to ghoul paralysis, which contributed to a TPK that we had to retcon.

We switched to playing Vampire: The Masquerade for the rest of college, but later came back for D&D 3.0, then 3.5, then 4th...
And just this year our group had our first face-to-face game in ages using D&D 5e/2024. At our next game I'll have to ask our DM if they recall how closely they hewed to the book back in the day...

 

[Sacrosanct]

Are you using the RAW as written in 1979 or are you including UA and-or Dragon-article amendments and additions thereafter?

I ask because one factor in the early 1980s that we don't see today is that Dragon came out every month and sometimes had new rules or Gygax's interpretations in it that were intended to be "core" (not that we used that term for it then) and other times had new rules etc. that were intended to be optional. In other words, the game was a living and evolving document rather than a locked-in set of rules.

Then UA came out and made some of that optional stuff core and overwrote or discarded some of the previously-core bits from Dragon.

No, she's been very clear only the core books are used. I even tried to convince her to use OA one time, but that was shot down quickly lol.

I keep hearing you say, "That's all done," and talk about miniatures, but did you actually read what I posted?

I did. And I said we do in fact do that stuff you mentioned, and gave an example of why (because she's incredibly detail orientated and that's her vision). I already said I'm not the DM so I can't for sure say what she is or isn't tracking in the numerous binders she has full of notes and tables and whatnot, but based on how we're playing the game and from what i know of the rules as they are written, it seems more likely than not that she's also factoring in the behind the scenes stuff because of what I know about her and her style.

I've also fully admitted that I can't see why anyone would want to do that or put them though 1e RAW. But I'm not her, so more power to her. Despite the pain of actual play (especially the first few sessions), it's a good group of people at the table, so it's fun. And as someone who's been playing 1e for 44 years but never actually RAW, it's very interesting from an academic perspective.

You keep pointing out rules that are wonky, painful, or not user friendly, which I have always admitted exist, but they don't actually contradict each other, which is what was claimed.

 

[Lanefan]

No, she's been very clear only the core books are used. I even tried to convince her to use OA one time, but that was shot down quickly lol.

That alone probably removes most if not all contradiction issues; as those tended to rear their heads when later rules were added that hadn't been 100% vetted against what already existed.

You say the DM is quite young (wonderful to hear!) - mind if I ask what the age range of the players is?

 

[Sacrosanct]

That alone probably removes most if not all contradiction issues; as those tended to rear their heads when later rules were added that hadn't been 100% vetted against what already existed.

You say the DM is quite young (wonderful to hear!) - mind if I ask what the age range of the players is?

We're all over the board. Some folks have come and gone between sessions (she does an open session). I said she's late 20s, but might be early 30s--I didn't ask. As for players, of the 10 or so that have been playing in her game (half of us are every weekly 4 hour session, the other half are half that time), I'd say 4 of us are 50+, 2 between 40-50, 2 between 30-40, and 2 under 30. Just a rough guess. I'd say about 40/40/20 male/female/non-binary. 8 are Caucasian appearing, one Latino, and one African American. Again, didn't ask, just thinking back on who has all played.

 

[Lanefan]

We're all over the board. Some folks have come and gone between sessions (she does an open session). I said she's late 20s, but might be early 30s--I didn't ask. As for players, of the 10 or so that have been playing in her game (half of us are every weekly 4 hour session, the other half are half that time), I'd say 4 of us are 50+, 2 between 40-50, 2 between 30-40, and 2 under 30. Just a rough guess. I'd say about 40/40/20 male/female/non-binary. 8 are Caucasian appearing, one Latino, and one African American. Again, didn't ask, just thinking back on who has all played.

There's long-range hope for the old school yet, if the playerbase in that game is any indication!

 

[Sacrosanct]

There's long-range hope for the old school yet, if the playerbase in that game is any indication!

OH, I think old school style play is doing well. Shadowdark has that wrapped up pretty good. Lots of younger players playing that game.

 

[Tesral]

Pretty much skipping the whole thread.

Was it possible? Well, yes. If you picked up the rules in a vacuum what else would you do?

Was it done? No one played in a vacuum. You came from 0e, you joined such a group. You were influenced by Dragon Mag, or the guys at the game store, etc.. So I would say a vanishingly small chance. And if you did it was a grim game. I read it. More pontificating than a Puritan meeting house. Gygax wanted everyone to play HIS WAY. That ship had sailed.

 

[Marc17]

Back in the olden days, we certainly never played RAW and never tried. Realistically, we all started with one of the boxed sets and then bought the books and started using charts and tables from those, adding in other rules as we discovered them and decided to use them. Even then, there was a great deal of house ruling. While we mostly used the B/X initiative system, we tried pretty much every initiative system we could think of except the one proposed in the AD&D books. However, much like with Starfleet Lawyers or Squad Leader, while not our turn we'd read the rule books looking for advantageous rules we could use. The helmet rule came up occasionally from both players and DM. I remember one game stopping for an hour as somebody had discovered the psionic rules and we all had to stop and roll for all our characters since we were playing two each. In another game, after and adventure while leveling up somebody came across the Hirelings and Henchmen rules so we all needed some to complement our characters. Our party went from less than ten people to around 50. We went from dungeons to large scale combats as there was a war going on in world plot that we were already involved in and now we could take on large scale actions with just us. All fun times.

About fourteen years ago, we did run an 1E AD&D game with the explicit goal of running it RAW. We played Secret of Bone Hill to about 4th level or so. We were still trying to wrap our heads around initiative and combat. Every time we thought we had it down, there would be some corner case that would have us trying to fit it in. Even then, I don't think we used weapon modifiers against AC. Lots of questions got raised that there were no answers to. Later, during a read through of the 1E DMG on rpg.net, I discovered rules I had never even considered existing, thus had never looked for them. Even then, lots of cases of cross referencing things as explanations for things like spells would be scattered in different places throughout the book.