D&D General Understanding the Design Principles in Early D&D

[IvyDragons]

I think Gygax was incapable of writing anything without adding at least an additional paragraph, if not two

Gygax was brilliant. Those "extra paragraphs" were vastly important world building. Kids today learn the DnD world through movies like Lord of the Rings where they visually see the world and "get it', and only need to learn mechanics. Gygax built the same world through his descriptions.

Back in my day when I read 1e I already read the Iliad by Homer, so yeah reading his writing wasn't hard. I don't think most kids read much nowadays, everything is down to one sentence at a time, anything longer needs to be provided as a meme or anime.

 

[James Gasik]

That's just evolution of language in action. Language will eventually become more efficient over time. If you're a TNG fan, memes are just the new "Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra".

 

[Sacrosanct]

The biggest thing to realize when looking at how early D&D was written is to know that Gary was an insurance underwriter. Then it all makes sense why it was written as it was. He understood tables, math, risk, statistics, etc. And he carried all of that into his games. Many, especially kids, couldn't parse the rules very well on their own. D&D (especially OD&D) was meant to be taught by someone who already knew how to play miniature wargaming.

 

[IvyDragons]

Many, especially kids, couldn't parse the rules very well on their own. D&D (especially OD&D) was meant to be taught by someone who already knew how to play miniature wargaming.

And yet millions who never played miniature wargaming picked it up just fine. I agree it was ideal for 17-22yos, not young kids.

 

[David Howery]

The BIG thing to remember is that D&D was not just a New game.....it was a whole new activity. A new, unique activity that no one had ever seen before.

yeah, anytime you talk about OD&D/1E/Basic, you have to keep this in mind. And it gets even more warped by the fact that none of the early TSR's writers were all that good at explaining the rules clearly. Still, it was new and hella interesting, and those of us around back in the day had a lot of fun playing it, even if the rules seem broken by modern standards...

 

[James Gasik]

Hm. If that's the way miniatures wargames were written at the time, it makes you wonder how anyone who wasn't a wargamer got into wargaming without someone who was already into wargaming handy.

This quickly leads into "chicken or the egg" territory.

 

[Sacrosanct]

And yet millions who never played miniature wargaming picked it up just fine. I agree it was ideal for 17-22yos, not young kids.

No, millions didn't pick up OD&D and understand it just fine. For one, OD&D didn't sell nearly that many copies.

That was BECMI (and to an extent Moldvay B/X before that). I would posit that by the time hundreds of thousands of players played D&D, most either a) started with b/x or BECMI, or b) were taught by someone else.

 

[Sacrosanct]

Hm. If that's the way miniatures wargames were written at the time, it makes you wonder how anyone who wasn't a wargamer got into wargaming without someone who was already into wargaming handy.

This quickly leads into "chicken or the egg" territory.

I wasn't playing wargames in the 60s and early 70s, naturally. But I did observe at GaryCon in the Legends of Wargaming room (where all these old wargames were being played, including Chainmail), that grown adults who were familiar with rpgs struggled to understand many of the rules and had to ask questions of the person who was running the game (and was familiar with the rules). Every time I popped in that room, someone was asking the referee for clarification on some rule.

These are games where it was very advantageous to have someone who already knew how to play teach them. I'm sure people could pick up the rules and try to parse them out, and certainly could play a version of them. But as we saw with AD&D, nearly every table was different. Each group ignored certain rules, houseruled others, etc. I would be shocked if more than 10% of AD&D players played RAW. After more than 40 years of gaming myself (sticking with AD&D all the way up to 2012 as my primary game), I haven't met a single person who did. How they were written had a lot to do with that, I think.

 

[James Gasik]

I tried playing The Sword and the Flame once, a wargame based on British colonial wars. I left thinking "man, and I thought Battletech and Warhammer 40k had funky rules".

 

[Dausuul]

Which really makes me wonder how anyone who didn't play with Dave Arneson or Gary Gygax (and company) figured it out to tell everyone else!

(Or maybe they didn't, and just made it up, and that's part of why early D&D seems so mysterious...)

Got it in one.

I didn't really get much teaching on the rules--as I recall, my first ever D&D game was when a couple of my friends needed a DM and handed me a BD&D module to run, and I just kind of skimmed the book and winged it. I enjoyed reading the rulebooks away from the table, but I never sat down to go through them cover to cover--I just read the bits I found interesting, and almost immediately started hacking on the bits I didn't like.

You didn't really need much prior knowledge or training to play TSR-era D&D. All you needed was the basic gameplay loop, and a willingness to make stuff up when you didn't know the rule. Half the time the rule didn't exist anyway, so you'd be wasting your time looking for it.