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

[Edena_of_Neith]

Yeah, exactly. And here's another common experience I had from those days:

DM: Ok, the party has initiative over the orcs. The fighter rolled highest, and he goes first.

Orc leader: 'since we lost initiative, we all come to a halt.'
Fighter: reaches back and starts rummaging in his backpack (which was securely closed, but somehow he opened it. We won't ask how.)
Orcs: 'Since our leader says halt, we halt. We aim our bows and ready our swords and wait.'
Fighter: finds the oil flask amidst all the other stuff crammed into that backpack, and pulls it out.
Orcs: wait patiently
Fighter: unstoppers the oil flask
Fighter: while holding the oil flask, opens and digs in one of his belt pouches for flint and tinder
Orcs: wait patiently
Fighter: finds flint and tinder, tries lighting the oil flask this way (since it is only common lamp oil, and it was never prepared as greek fire is, and even *were* it prepared, lighting it with ... flint and tinder?)
Orcs: wait patiently
Fighter: succeeds in lighting the oil flask
Fighter: rears back, ready to throw oil flask, his cloak billowing back (if he is wearing a cloak, just how did he reach through it to get to his backpack in the first place?)
Orcs: Still patiently wait, bows loaded and arrows ready to fly in a split second ... but as reasonable orcs they obey the initiative rules
Fighter: throws the oil flask! It hits! And somehow, a heavy leather flask designed to hold oil and not leak (and which survived being crammed in the backpack with all the other stuff through other battles) shatters into a million pieces! And oil splashes over all the orcs! 2 to 12 points of damage. The orcs burn. The orcs all die, except their leader.

Orc leader: Is it my turn yet?

DM: No. All these other people in the party go next. You gotta wait your turn, guy.

Orc leader: oh ...

 

[SuStel]

One thing I don't like about AD&D is that people misunderstand the rules and make fun of them on message boards.

Oh wait. That happens with every game.

 

[Hussar]

There's a lot more to excitement in a role-playing game than probability. Gambling is abstract. RPGs put you in the middle of a situation as if you were there. This is what made RPGs so successful.

That's a pretty big departure from what was described around a number of tables at the time. Immersive gameplay comes into the picture pretty late in the scheme of things. For many tables it was racking up kills, rerolling new PC's and doing it again and again. Campaigns with literally hundreds of PC deaths. That sort of thing.

 

[billd91]

I hated that rounds lasted one minute. I liked it when in 3rd Edition they changed rounds to 6 seconds.

There are games with even worse time abstractions. Traveller (Mega- version, I believe) had 20 minute starship combat turns. They did that so movement, in orbital scales, could be relevant in starship combat.

 

[Edena_of_Neith]

One thing I don't like about AD&D is that people misunderstand the rules and make fun of them on message boards.

Oh wait. That happens with every game.

LOL. What I was talking about, happened during the time of Space Invaders.
In any case, I am making fun of myself and my fellow inexperienced players, not the rules.

It's just a matter of that in 6 second rounds, that kind of misunderstanding could never occur. But it was common in one minute rounds. Heck, a lot of uproariously silly and funny and absurd misunderstandings happened over what you could do in one round of one minute (ala: 'you get to swing your sword ONCE. That's what the dice roll means.')