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Message: <blockquote data-quote="lumin" data-source="post: 5549094" data-attributes="member: 59785">I don't really "miss" these things, because I've found my new love in AD&D and I am now playing it all the time.  But, boy, where do I begin?  There is so much that I love in the old-school game.The most blatant thing I loved was the art.  To this day, I have never seen a cover so evocative and interesting as the 1st Edition PHB.  The cover pretty much summed up the entire game.  The characters (along with their henchmen or other villagers) had just finished slaughtering a group of monsters and were now having to meticulously count up the loot and carry it out.  What's going to happen next?  Nobody knows!In fact there was a section in the DMG that actually talked precisely about how important the act of "cleaning up" after a successful adventure was, and that slaying the dragon was probably the easy part (making reference to the Hobbit).  When I first read that, I was like, "Holy Crap, I have never thought of that before, but it's so true!"The rest of the art was fantastic as well.  It was gritty and sometimes irreverent.  The last picture in the 1E DMG comes to mind with the nude succubus sitting on a rock before an eerie sunset.  She had such a solemn, even sad, look on her face..  I've always wondered why she was so sad. Was she once a beautiful princess, transformed by an evil witch?  Was she banished to another dimension, condemned to live the rest of her life as a demon?  The thoughts the pictures evoked was wonderous.  Today D&D is just about dungeon crawling, min/maxing, and grabbing phat loot - back then, it was about living in a fantasy medieval world with REAL consequences to every action.  Today we just get art with some huge-breasted chick with a sword in her hand battling a giant dragon.  It just isn't the same as it used to be.Another thing I liked was the bizarre, long-winded fluff in the books.  I may be one of the few people that actually cherished the disorganized mess that the 1st Edition DMG was, over the more streamlined 2nd edition rules.  There's something visceral about cracking open a book that feels like an old wizard's personal journal (Gygax).  You have to hunt down or memorize where something was at, just like a monk would have done with an old tome during the dark ages.I loved how each magic user had their own completely unique spell list.  I loved how weapon hit rolls changed based on the target's AC, requiring players to pick their proficiency carefully.  It wasn't always "tanks up front", "wizards in the back" - it changed for each fight.  I loved that the DMG said it had no business being shown to players, and they should be punished in the game if they should try to peek at it.  I loved that not wearing a helmet would require a check to see if an attack injured the head.  I loved the fluff text about ecology and making sure your monsters went extinct if your players killed too many.There are just so many little things that make the old game so cool to play.  You didn't worry about buzzwords like "feats" or "skills" or "powers" or "prestige classes" or any other video game junk like that.  You were a character in a living/breathing world that was ready to kill you at any moment and you had to survive the best you could - any way you could.I loved that back then you weren't buying a rulebook, you were buying a guide on how you could experience a believable medieval fantasy world.  There's a big difference.</blockquote>

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