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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Yora" data-source="post: 8591862" data-attributes="member: 6670763">The first D&D game is an absolute mess. It's not rulebooks as we understand them today, but more reference tables for people who already know to play the game.AD&D is also a trainwreck of editing. I think it's more a complete game where everything is somewhere in the PHB and DMG, but the presentation and organization is attrocious.I don't know about Holmes Basic.But the very important edition not really mentioned yet is the Moldvay Basic Rules from 1981. If you want to understand TSR D&D, this is the one to go! It's only 64 pages, but once you understand this game, AD&D suddenly becomes comprehensible.It's also a much smaller and streamlined game than AD&D. Which is why when the early AD&D Revival began to transform into the more creative and experimenta OSR around 2010, the 1981 Basic/Expert rules became pretty much everyone's edition to go.The most important thing about D&D in the first 10 years or so (the pre-Dragonlance period) is that it's neither a game about combat, nor a game about epic stories. It's a game of exploration, with a solid exploration system at its very core, and everthing else build around it. This is why combat is so dirt simple and you don't have feats or social skills or any such things in the game. That's not what the game is about. It's been a somewhat controversial statement that "combat is a fail state", but it does point at a fundamental design principle of the game. Combat is designed in a way to be unpreferable.OD&D, AD&D 1st ed., and Basic all revolve around three main mechanics: XP for gold, random encounters, and encumbrance. Which people will notice as probably the three mechanics that are today commonly regarded as the weirdest and most annoying nuisances of RPGs. That is why the old games seem so strange compared to D&D from the last 20 years. Ability scores, classes, and hit dice mask the fact that they are really completely different games.My theory is that the first thing that was thrown out was XP for gold. People wanted to play Lord of the Rings and Wheel of Time, and those stories just aren't about gold. And they were right, tying character advancement to loot makes no sense for such games. (Shouldn't have played D&D then, but that's a completely different topic.) The other source for XP in D&D was defeating monsters in battle. Though the game was designed so this would only be a fraction of the XP you get for treasure. The idea was that if you can creatively steal a monster's treasure without fighting it, you get 75% or so of the XP, but get to keep all your hit points and avoid your character getting killed. Fight the monster and you would get 100% XP, but lose some hit points in the progress that can spell your death. Either right now or in an unavoidable fight later on. Sneaking through the dungeons and trying to avoid the monsters is a critical design element.Here is where random encounters come into play. Monsters don't carry all their gold with them all the time. That stuff is kept in a stash in the monster's lair. Wandering monsters have no treasure. That means if you run into wandering monsters and fight them, you will get only 25% XP, but still have the full risk of losing hit point and getting killed. And they are not just annoying little critters. They can be as big and deadly as the big bad boss in the great lair at the bottom of the dungeon. You really don't want random encounters. Random encounters are tied to a timer, which means you want to minimize your time in the dungeon and grab as much treasure as possible (without fighting!) as quickly as possible.Once XP for gold is discarded and wandering monsters give 100% XP, they are no longer something to be avoided. Also GMs don't want the PCs to die because they are required to tell The Story, so they are made weak and mostly harmless. At that point random encounters are just an annoyance and also dropped.Which brings us to encumbrance. Encumbrance is all about slowing characters down. Bring a lot of supplies and tools to be prepared for any situation: You get slowed down. Carry everything of value you find to maximize XP: You get slowed down.When you're slower, you spend more time in the dungeon. More time in the dungeon means more random encounters. Which means you run out of hit points while having explored fewer areas and are at a greater risk of death. So what do you do? Pack less supplies? Drop supplies?! Leave some treasure behind? Those are critically important factors of creating tension in early D&D. But when you don't have to worry about random encounters, and don't get to haul literal wagon loads of treasure back to the surface (and then back to town), what's the point of tracking encumbrance? So out this went as well.At this point, what is left of the original exploration game? Basically nothing. Which is why everyone is complaining that exploration in 5th edition sucks. 5th edition only pays lip service to the hazy cultural memory of exploration, but actually has no exploration system in place at all. Neither did 3rd edition. Because post-Dragonlance, that wasn't what D&D was about anymore.There is no better explanation of this in greater detail that I know than <a href="https://alldeadgenerations.blogspot.com/p/the-classic-dungeon-crawl-theory.html" target="_blank">All Dead Generations</a>. And 1981 Moldvay Basic, of course.</blockquote>

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