D&D 1E What makes a D&D game have a 1E feel?

[Flexor the Mighty!]

See this is what I mean by people thinking "1e" means different things. To me when I think of AD&D 1e the last thing I think of are "rules that stay out of your way". To me the 1e AD&D rules were things that stifled creativity - I gave up trying to run AD&D and stuck with B/X or BECMI right up until 3e came out because 1e and 2e had lots of ticky-tacky rules that just got in my way and made the game less fun for me to run. (3e did too, but at least the rules were fairly cohesive and close enough to B/X that I was comfortable ignoring them when I needed to.)

But that was likely because of how the guys around me were running AD&D 1e. If I'd been around a different group of 1e gamers, I'd likely have kinder, more nostalgic thoughts for 1e AD&D than I do.

I found that ignoring entire sections of the rules worked just fine and didn't have the cascading impact on things that ignoring major parts of d20 did. So for me the tightly integrated system of 3e made the game more of a chore to modify to my liking.

 

[Monayuris]

Back in the day, used maybe a tiny subset of the full AD&D rules... in reality we were really playing Basic with AD&D classes.

But yeah the beauty of it was you can use what you want and toss what you don’t and it still works. There’s not a lot of interdependency.

As far as role playing goes... 1E is very much a role playing game as is any other edition.

The act of pretending to be a fighter or magic-user or elf exploring a dungeon and interacting with that environment as your character is the very definition of role playing (in he context of D&D).

 

[Monayuris]

Back in the day, used maybe a tiny subset of the full AD&D rules... in reality we were really playing Basic with AD&D classes.

But yeah the beauty of it was you can use what you want and toss what you don’t and it still works. There’s not a lot of interdependency.

As far as role playing goes... 1E is very much a role playing game as is any other edition.

The act of pretending to be a fighter or magic-user or elf exploring a dungeon and interacting with that environment as your character is the very definition of role playing (in he context of D&D).

 

[Lanefan]

What that term means for me is "survivalist". You're in a world where everything is trying to kill you and your goal is to kill them first - generally by accumulating power and wealth. Because that's how the AD&D 1e players played the game around me in the early 80s. It was often fun at the time, but I drifted away from that style with my own B/X D&D games where the players tended to want to be more "heroic" - more "save the princess" less "grub in a hole in the ground and hope we find a magic sword".

Of course, you could always grub in a hole in the ground and hope you find a princess...

 

[Ath'kethin]

Trapper Keeper?

Look it up or ask your mom. Who, come to think of it, might need to have been an American to know anything about it.

Basically they were a kind of fancy binder that we were all nuts about back in the early-mid 80s. Not customizable, but you could buy them with just about any junk you wanted printed on the cover.

They were awesome. I

 

[Zardnaar]

The 1E core books

You can pluck on the ol heartstrings with art and presentation though along with adventure design and optional rules.

 

[howandwhy99]

I assume they are modules for a strategy game where the players succeed or fail at their objectives based upon their actions.

And they copy stuff from the 70s and 80s. (not necessary)

 

[Voadam]

All the people who said homebrew settings and how official worlds are the opposite of 1e to them crack me up a bit. From 1e I've got the World of Greyhawk Folio, World of Greyhawk Boxed Set Campaign Setting, Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting, Dragonlance Adventures, and Lankhmar. I used Greyhawk as my 1e setting for a long time.

For me the 1e feel is a contrast to 2e's core default heroic storytelling focus. 1e had a more of an anything goes mercenary base (PC options for incompatible LG paladins, evil assassins, true neutral druids) where PCs were default free form exploratory dungeoneering over more scripted story plots. It also had more evil stuff from the get go with named demon princes and archdevils, Cthulhu and Melnibonean Mythoses in Deities and Demigods, and so on. Dragonlance and Ravenloft were more story based from the start, and 2e eventually branched out to many different niches including extraplanar evil in the Guide to Hell, but 1e feel is generally more Elric/Conanish short story than Lord of the Rings epic.

 

[Andras]

Bring three characters, expect two to die.

Once you step out into the world you have no idea what to expect, no nicely scaling-with-level encounters. The random encounter table for forest has a green dragon on it regardless of what level you are. Characters had lower hp and once you hit name level you stopped getting HD.

The action economy was much harsher. If you moved more then 10ft you couldn't attack unless you charged (and suffered double damage from spears set to receive which also automatically went first). Spell-casters had a chance of a spell getting ruined before they could get it off. Surprise could devastate the party, with opponents getting 2-3 rounds of attacks before you can reply. Shields didn't protect you if you are attacked from behind.

Larger parties, offsetting the lower action economy and lower spell count, you had parties of 7-9 characters plus henchmen and hirelings.

Magic items couldn't really be made or purchased easily, but they were everywhere. Wizards had a harder time getting spells.

9th (ish) level was a thing, your character was someone important at that level. A Fighter could charge tax on the occupants of the land he cleared and made safe. Or a Wizard could set up a tower and gain apprentices.

Attributes- no improving attributes except by a wish, in general. What you rolled is what you got. Ability scores also had to be pretty high before they had a significant effect. Less reliance on high scores for spell casting in combat.

 

[der_kluge]

As much as I generally like the stuff Frog God (and previously, S&S Studios) put out, I've never really understood the selling point of "1st edition feel", since I "feel" like 1st edition was pretty terrible for many, many reasons. 2nd edition was even worse.

Racial level limits
Lack of cohesive rules
Really terrible art
Terrible design choices - "room 2 has 3 orcs in it. Room 4 has 5 giant beetles in it. Room 6 has a vampire...."

Not 1st edition... but I came across someone running 2nd edition D&D with the Skills and Powers option. I went back and re-read that book for nostalgia's sake. OMG, that has to be the worst book ever made. It's just.... I don't even know where to start. Terrible. The 1st edition books were also terrible. Just... awful. They were completely disorganized, had all kinds of rules that made no sense; were overly complicated.

To me, "1st edition feel" is 100% about nostalgia. Because there really isn't much there worth revisiting. The game is just so much better these days. In every possible way.