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

[Spatula]

Errr, how exactly did 1e players never set eyes on the contents of the DMG? Half of their characters' abilities are in there. To hit numbers? DMG. Saving throws? DMG. The 1e PHB is remarkably light on information that you actually need to play your character (but it does, oddly enough, have a map of the planes). The whole idea that players were never allowed to look in the DMG is absurd, unless they had the DM filling out their character sheets for them each time they levelled up (which is a DM I certainly wouldn't want to game with - can you say control freak?).

AD&D as a rules light, improvisational game: Yes, with a good DM that is trusted by the players, you can really rely on that DMs discretion, let him wing things, not look at the books too much, and have a good time.

I think this is key. It's fine if you have a good DM that you trust. Of course in that case, you don't need the rules at all, really. But too many people did not have such a DM, and that created a demand for a more equal GM-player relationship.

 

[Spatula]

1E initiative is a near-indecipherable, craptastic mess. It wouldn't help any player to have actually read it. I did run ONE campaign where I began with the intent of keeping it as close to RAW as possible and initiative was the first thing to get houseruled,

Really? I figured it would be the weapon vs AC type modifiers, which I am honestly shocked have not even been mentioned yet (unless I missed it). Absolutely unworkable, and probably the #1 thing I would point to as a Bad AD&D rule.

(the psionics rules, the grappling rules, the initiative "system", meaningless stats, and how race/classes worked would be up there as well)

 

[SuStel]

Errr, how exactly did 1e players never set eyes on the contents of the DMG? Half of their characters' abilities are in there. To hit numbers? DMG. Saving throws? DMG. The 1e PHB is remarkably light on information that you actually need to play your character

Players don't need access to the attack or saving throw matrices. The player rolls to hit, and the referee tells him whether he has hit or not.

I think the argument that players are not supposed to read the referee's book is correct, but has been overstated (in reaction to the overstated opposition to that idea). When a new player encounters his first monster, he has no idea what it will take to defeat it. That makes for an exciting game, and one in which player skill is paramount. If, on the other hand, he knows that hitting the goblin wearing studded leather armor (AC 6) requires a 14 or greater (35% chance to hit), and that to hit his own chain mail (AC 5) the goblin needs a 15 or greater (30% chance to hit), the anxiety of danger has been boiled down to a mere round of probability.

Likewise, it's a lot more exciting to know you're fighting a magic-user with a fireball spell if you don't know whether you can survive being hit with one.

If the game rules are kept hidden from the player, he must learn what works and what doesn't through experience rather than through calculation. This is what makes a skilled player. And this doesn't just apply to combat. What happens if I try to cast a lightning bolt when I'm under water? What determines how much time and money I must spend in training to get to a new level? How can I hire an alchemist to make a potion for me? How do I get a henchman? How maneuverable is my flying steed compared to that dragon? What's the problem with sending a joint goblin/gnoll force out after an enemy? All of these things are meant to be learned through experience, not looked up.

 

[Man in the Funny Hat]

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.

Also true and easy to forget. The release order of the the big three AD&D books was MM first, then PH, then the DMG with a great deal of time between. The AD&D MM is copyright 1977-1978, the PH 1978 and the DMG... 1979.

I'd suggest that the early development of D&D was also uneven, chaotic, even directionless. There was no "design goal" involved. They were professional game designers not because they'd formally studied somehow, somewhere for such a thing, and met in committees and task teams to forge new rules, but simply because they got PAID for pursuing their hobby. They added to the rules and used whatever they wanted simply because they'd developed the various bits and pieces for their OWN uses and figured that they'd be able to sell them to others.

That was partly true for the PH (as seen in the inclusion of the monk, the bard, and psionics - the latter two being appendices) but I understand that Gygax assembled its content more as the way HE ran the game. It is much more coordinated and organized. The DMG wound up being in part a catch-all for a lot of other material including (as has been established) stuff that he, even as the author, neither needed or used. And, of course, he wrote a lot of text to somehow tie it together. All the more reason to wonder whether his brief statements about keeping the entire book "secret" may have been hyperbole or merely careless commentary.

Clearly people DO have strikingly different experiences with whether the DMG was truly thought to be "secret", and whether anyone in ones group TRIED to keep it that way and how successful they might have been at that. I guess I'm still just having difficulty with anyone asserting one way or the other that no matter WHAT Gygax wrote he had clear, unambiguous intentions that EVERYTHING in the DMG was sensitive, secret material to be kept from players. Practical experience shows that some of it was necessary and used by players on a regular basis - saving throws, initiative (or not), etc. Hell, I believe such tables as saving throws were printed on the OUTSIDE panels of the official 1E DM screens for players to see (though sadly I no longer have one to actually verify that recollection).

 

[Man in the Funny Hat]

1. I don't like segments for both surprise and casting time purposes. I'd convert casting time to an initiative penalty, like the dex bonus for firing missiles. For surprise, I'd try to systemize a d6 or d8 roll, with a standard bonus/penalty value. I'd also drop the casting time v. weapon speed initiative variant and only use weapon speed to adjudicate ties.

Whereas I'd question why there is a fanatical obsession with ELIMINATING ties. If that first intiative roll indicates a tie somewhere - just CALL it a tie and resolve simultaneously. Heck, just saying "initiative ties go to the player", or, "initiative ties resolved by random die roll" would be more sensible than, "Tied initiative? Okay, compare weapon speed factors. Still tied? Check if there are alternating attack routines. Still tied? If someone's charging, check weapon lengths. STILL tied? Well if the attack is a weapon against a spellcasting opponent there's different ways we go about breaking the deadlock..." Honestly, it's all a bit much when the likelihood is that the PC will kill his opponent 19 times out of 20 regardless.

But that IS still part of its charm, isn't it?

 

[Man in the Funny Hat]

Really? I figured it would be the weapon vs AC type modifiers, which I am honestly shocked have not even been mentioned yet (unless I missed it). Absolutely unworkable, and probably the #1 thing I would point to as a Bad AD&D rule.

(the psionics rules, the grappling rules, the initiative "system", meaningless stats, and how race/classes worked would be up there as well)

The weapon vs. AC modifiers my have been a bad idea for one reason or another but they were easy to apply. Before 2nd Edition we had already begun practical use of THACO amongst ourselves. For use of the WvAC adjustments we just had a bar of boxes numbered from 10 to 0 on our character sheets (which I always designed myself anyway), and entered the adjusted THACO results for use against actual armored opponents. The practical result of their use was simply that there wound up being a disproportionate number of morning stars (after the player who was an army engineer announced his calculation that of ALL the PH weapons its average damage and armor adjustments made it the best all-around choice - essentially he converted them all to average damage per round for comparison because engineers are like that). 2H swords were still uncommon though because fighters could seldom be parted from their shields despite the hit and damage advantages.

 

[T. Foster]

The more important point isn't that players shouldn't know what's in the DMG, but rather that they don't need to. The oft-overlooked back section of the PH (pp. 101-107) gives a fairly detailed "player's eye view" of the rules and procedures of the game (exploration, encounters, surprise, combat, saving throws, morale, experience, etc.), it just leaves out most of the tables. By reading these 7 pages a player will know as much as he really needs to about "how the game works," enough to play it effectively. He won't know the exact target numbers and percentages for everything, be it attacks, saving throws, or morale, which is both "realistic" (the players will be able to surmise the numbers on the DMG tables through play, generally at first and then more and more exactly, which represents a sort of gradual acquisition of knowledge-through-experience -- until you've actually survived being poisoned or an attempt at mind-control or some other exotic attack you probably don't know how likely you are to survive/resist it, but once you've done it a couple times you begin to get a better idea; likewise, it seems appropriate to me that players shouldn't necessarily be able to look at a single table to determine exactly what they need to do to guarantee their own troops' morale and inflict morale checks on the enemy -- this is something that should be based on common sense and trial-and-error -- the players should be able to surmise that slaying the enemy's leader is likely to hurt their morale without necessarily having the benefit of knowing exactly that it will cause an immediate check at +30%, etc.) and also liberating to casual or immersion-based players who don't want to be focused on the numbers.

That said, there absolutely is at least a couple areas where I believe info in the DMG should've been included in the PH and was left out by error or oversight rather than deliberate design. These are the armor bulk and encumbrance rules on p. 27 and the encumbrance of standard items table (Appendix O) on p. 225 of the revised edition (note that Appendix O wasn't included in early printings of the DMG, strengthening my hypothesis that this is something they simply forgot to include, and had they remembered it would've been in the PH alongside the encumbrance values for weapons (p. 37) and the general encumbrance rules on pp. 101-102).

 

[Ridley's Cohort]

The weapon vs. AC modifiers my have been a bad idea for one reason or another but they were easy to apply. Before 2nd Edition we had already begun practical use of THACO amongst ourselves. For use of the WvAC adjustments we just had a bar of boxes numbered from 10 to 0 on our character sheets (which I always designed myself anyway), and entered the adjusted THACO results for use against actual armored opponents. The practical result of their use was simply that there wound up being a disproportionate number of morning stars (after the player who was an army engineer announced his calculation that of ALL the PH weapons its average damage and armor adjustments made it the best all-around choice - essentially he converted them all to average damage per round for comparison because engineers are like that). 2H swords were still uncommon though because fighters could seldom be parted from their shields despite the hit and damage advantages.

Even what you are describing is a half-baked application of the table. What about the monsters? Do you apply them to monsters or not? What is the modifier if my AC is 1?

WvAM is simply a very poor retread of an already known mechanic of strong "Armor Type vs. Weapon Type" effect in historical miniatures wargaming taken to the extreme.

The idea may have been workable in pre-1e days when on the fly fluctuations to AC were rare and the expected range of AC was modest, but it just falls apart in full blown AD&D1.

Gary just got seduced into trying to be too simulationist. Nice try, but it was a error. I do not consider that a mark against Gary as he was wise enough to realize that it was not worth using this chart in his own campaign.

 

[Spatula]

Players don't need access to the attack or saving throw matrices. The player rolls to hit, and the referee tells him whether he has hit or not.

Character sheets from the time had space devoted to your character's saving throws and target hit numbers.

When a new player encounters his first monster, he has no idea what it will take to defeat it. That makes for an exciting game, and one in which player skill is paramount.

The first time I ever fought a goblin, I had no player skill. I was 8 years old and probably playing my first ever game of D&D.

 

[Ridley's Cohort]

If, on the other hand, he knows that hitting the goblin wearing studded leather armor (AC 6) requires a 14 or greater (35% chance to hit), and that to hit his own chain mail (AC 5) the goblin needs a 15 or greater (30% chance to hit), the anxiety of danger has been boiled down to a mere round of probability.

Yet somehow a game between skilled gamblers is exciting, even though the rules and probabilities are out in the open.

No, the element necessary for suspense is hidden information. Simply hiding some specifics of the encounter is all that is really necessary.

Only a foolish DM says: "You meet 5 goblins, AC 6, HP 4, To Hit +1 in the room." Better to say: "You see 2 goblins. A door is open on the other side of the room from which you thought you heard movement." More goblins? Something nastier?

Simple randomness also injects unknowns into the encounter that can help suspense, although this can be clumsy.

The most clumsy choice is to hide rules.

Likewise, it's a lot more exciting to know you're fighting a magic-user with a fireball spell if you don't know whether you can survive being hit with one.

The very first two or three times you were playing RPGs, sure. But reading the book would not have helped out much either way, as you would not have yet realized how to assess the danger of 6d6 damage.

The first few times I played chess, those knights were pretty exciting, too.

You cannot get much of a rise out of genuinely skilled players out of that type of suspense. Whether the rumors tell me that the Necromancer can cast Lightning Bolt or Horrid Wilting or the dire-sounding custom spell Xurwec's Kiss of Doom is only window dressing. As a player, I have to choose in a specific encounter whether to choose tactics that escalate or de-escalate the level of violence based on an ongoing guesstimate of relative strength.

There are many different ways to inject suspense into this decision making process. As I said before, hiding the rules is the most clumsy.

If the game rules are kept hidden from the player, he must learn what works and what doesn't through experience rather than through calculation. This is what makes a skilled player. And this doesn't just apply to combat. What happens if I try to cast a lightning bolt when I'm under water? What determines how much time and money I must spend in training to get to a new level? How can I hire an alchemist to make a potion for me? How do I get a henchman? How maneuverable is my flying steed compared to that dragon? What's the problem with sending a joint goblin/gnoll force out after an enemy? All of these things are meant to be learned through experience, not looked up.

Ah. I would call much of this arbitrary setting information, not rules. Yes, part of the fun is exploring the campaign setting which will necessitate a strong dose of trial and error.

But much setting specific knowledge should be character knowledge. The world may be 100% new to the players, but many specifics are not new to the characters.

My wizard is very likely to know how water and lightning interact. As a player, I ask my DM to interrogate my character's brain on my behalf. Or I can look it up. Which is the better choice depends on how much DM tolerance has for fielding a potentially endless stream of questions.