What DON'T you like about 1E AD&D?

[Man in the Funny Hat]

Oh, and ADDICT IMO has initiative wrong. Per Gygax statements at DF (and the DMG rules themselves), your role represents when the other guy goes during the round (segs 1-6) and vise versa. So if I role a 2 and you role a 6, I don't act until the 6th segment (near the very end of the round) while you get your telling chance near the very begining (2x6=12 seconds into it as an approximate).
To calculate when a spell goes off you simply add casting time to the role your opponent makes. So in the above example, if your an MU casting a 5 segment spell your spell will go off on segment 2+5=7 (of the 10 segment round, infact if the MU started casting on round 6 it wouldn't go off until segment 1 of the next round (6+5=11). That means I (going on segment 6) would actually be able to go before your spell is completed. When you use this interpretation of initiative (which I think is correct), casting time suddenly makes alot of since and figuring out who goes first (in a relative way) is a snap.

Q.E.D. I think it would work better to just use a simpler house rule method. I was merely noting my amazement that it had ever worked at all. It was possible, however, to have house methods even worse than that. I stood to inherit one from my first DM's that we'd used in their games for several years before I convinced them how obscenely broken it was. Each round was divided into four phases with Melee being resolved first, then Missile fire, Magic spells succeeded only if you survived that without being damaged, and then Movement was done followed by some end-of-the-round resolution. And Magic was further divided into four different sub-phases based on the casting time of your spell with spells in the same phase being simultaneously resolved. Surprise was, of course, a handwaived kludge of different die-types as actually suggested by the rules but I can't remember right now anything specific.

If I ran 1E now I'd use OSRIC or actually houserule in something like 2E initiative, surprise and length of rounds. But then, that's something that 1E was sort of about - you ignored what you didn't like, fixed what you wanted to fix (or could fix), and added whatever else struck your fancy - but the important part is that when you DID such things NOBODY BATTED AN EYELASH. They merely commented whether they liked or disliked your changes, not whether it was RIGHT OR WRONG to change them in the first place, or whether the RAW was better/worse, no matter how it all came up in conversation.

 

[Man in the Funny Hat]

Good comparison, and a great idea with the red binder. I need to put together my notes and do something like that.

You know, when I first started playing it was with the single-book Holmes edition of OD&D. The DM photocopied the player-relevant pages at the insurance company where his dad worked and handed them out. I still have those pages even though I now have a full copy (25th anniversary reprint). I keep it on a shelf in a small, RED binder.

 

[Valiant]

Which is it? When you first start playing? Or two years later? That's a pretty decent half life for most D&D groups.

I'm curious though. How does this differ between editions? Do 3e players pick up the DMG first?

Depends on the group. We had a really good DM and begged the guy not to stop. I took over as DM not by choice but as a last resort (and I wasn't as good). ANd as much as I love DMing and testing my players in a world I make up, I really miss the old days when I didn't understand the rules, but simply adventured keeping track of HPs and equipment only (when there was still some mystery left).


As far as when do players in 3e learn combat and save rules? Immediately, they are in the Players Handbook and players are expected to understand them before play. The 3e DMG and MM also seemed to be marketed to players when they were released (not just the DMs) a smart marketing move for sure, and maybe the reason they went with the D20 system in the first place (book sales are where all the profit is).

 

[Valiant]

- you ignored what you didn't like, fixed what you wanted to fix (or could fix), and added whatever else struck your fancy - but the important part is that when you DID such things NOBODY BATTED AN EYELASH. They merely commented whether they liked or disliked your changes, not whether it was RIGHT OR WRONG to change them in the first place, or whether the RAW was better/worse, no matter how it all came up in conversation.

That is the big difference, isn't it; back then there was no RIGHT OR WRONG, not only because the players (who hadn't read the DMG) didn't have a clue what was going on, or that Gygax said its up to the DM in the rules but because most of the core rules were written so screwy no one could figure them out if they tried; I was playing so off before getting online its not funny.

Yeah, I think OSRIC has it the closest. In the end though everyone playing AD&D at least knows its side A vs side B role a d6 high role goes first. It doesn't get any simpler or quick then that, and anyone watching wouldn't know or care what the details of your interp.were,
just as long as combat was quick and fun.

 

[Philotomy Jurament]

If I ran 1E now I'd use OSRIC or actually houserule in something like 2E initiative, surprise and length of rounds.

I've been using a modified version of the Chainmail/Swords & Spells combat sequence in my D&D games.

 

[Philotomy Jurament]

I have a red binder of DM-only tables and rules-item information...I'd think every DM would have such a binder, as a matter of course...

I do. Mine is blue. It has those clear "pockets" on the outside where you can insert something, so I put the "blue book" cover of a fallen-apart copy of the Holmes rules as the "front cover" of the binder.

It holds everything I need (except dice) in one binder: pockets containing the OD&D TLB, the Judges Guild Ready Ref Sheets (3-hole punched), the Monster & Treasure Assortments (3-hole punched), current adventures, house rules, and paper (college rule and graph).

I've heard "Where're your books?" quite a few times...

 

[Jackelope King]

I'll confess that I absolutely don't understand the "ignorance of the rules makes it more fun" idea. I've been playing Shadowrun with my girlfriend's gaming group down in Baltimore when I go for a visit, and other than the very basic task resolution (roll a number of d6s determined by your abilities and your skills in the relevant area and count successes), I don't understand the rules at all. I don't have the rulebook, and even if I did, I wouldn't have the time to read it (except at their table). It's often frustrating to find out that I lost my turn because an action I wanted to take just didn't jive with the rules.

For example, in the first session, we were fighting some enemies in a hotel stairwell. My troll, being a melee monster (pun intended) decided he wanted to jump down and dismember the guy with the rocket launcher down there and his mage buddies. So he handed off his shotgun to an orc and perched himself on the railing, readying an action to jump after the gun bunny's grenade went off.

Unfortunately, I didn't know that grenades explode at the end of the turn, not immediately after being thrown (allowing for a sort of "hot potato" minigame). So what happened? I lost my action as after the grenade went off, it was a new round, and my initiative pass was lower than everyone else's. So in the entire fight, my troll took and missed one shot and tried to spot the bad guys twice. That was his entire contribution for the night, and a potentially cool moment was ruined because I didn't know the rules.

However, I still had a good time. It wasn't because I was in an air of mystery and wonder thanks to not knowing the rules, but because my troll wound up being my girlfriend's character's sidekick (the gun bunny). He rode around in the side-car of her motorcycle and had dreams of one day buying a good-looking suit. He introduced himself as, "Ziggy, short for Zigian, short for Bob" and when people inevitably looked at him strangely, he replied, "It's a troll thing; you wouldn't get it." He later helped to unravel an evil plot surrounding a radical revolutionary group and some evil-er corporations because an effort to clamp down on the revolutionary broadcast interrupted television service, and he missed his soaps. It was the roleplaying in spite of the rules that I had such a good time with, not ignorance of the rules themselves. For me, being left ignorant of the rules and forced to grope blindly through an adventure isn't more fun: it's more frustrating.

Luckily it also doesn't preclude me from playing a witty troll whose idea of disarming someone is to lop off the offending limb above the elbow with a monofilament sword...

 

[Philotomy Jurament]

I'll confess that I absolutely don't understand the "ignorance of the rules makes it more fun" idea.

I think the concept is getting a lot more attention and argument than it deserves.

 

[Numion]

That is the big difference, isn't it; back then there was no RIGHT OR WRONG, not only because the players (who hadn't read the DMG) didn't have a clue what was going on, or that Gygax said its up to the DM in the rules but because most of the core rules were written so screwy no one could figure them out if they tried; I was playing so off before getting online its not funny.

Gygax forgot to send the memo to our group. We had some pretty wild rules arguments in our 1E group. Confusing rules made those worse.

As far as when do players in 3e learn combat and save rules? Immediately, they are in the Players Handbook and players are expected to understand them before play. The 3e DMG and MM also seemed to be marketed to players when they were released (not just the DMs) a smart marketing move for sure, and maybe the reason they went with the D20 system in the first place (book sales are where all the profit is).

Nope, I DMed my first game of 3E with players that had no rules experience at all - they didn't even own the PHB. The session went well, so from my POV the players aren't expected to know the rules. In the coming years some wanted to learn to rules, some never bought or actually read the PHB outside the gaming table.

All in all, 3E is suited pretty well to that kind of play - almost every task is a d20 roll, and the modifiers are on your character sheet, while the DM sets the difficulty. The most difficult part for a clueless player is playing a spellcaster, because it speeds up the play if you know what your spells are doing, but that's the same in previous editions.

 

[Keldryn]

I am inclined to think that many of the rules that were printed in the 1e DMG (combat, saving throws, etc) were not done so in order to "keep them secret from the players and preserve a sense of mystery" but simply because Gygax didn't have them fully developed and written when the Player's Handbook first saw print in '78.