TSR Why would anyone want to play 1e?

[Sacrosanct]

OK, the title is a bit click baity.

Background: I started playing in 1981 with BX and quickly moved to AD&D. I've been saying for years that one of my favorite editions is 1e but I always have a disclaimer: "With 2e elements."

Note: This is not an edition war thread. Please don't make posts about "this edition just sucks" and leave it at that. This is meant to be an honest discussion about why one would prefer 1e over 2e.

I was playing another session of 1e yesterday and something that's always been in the back of my mind really came out. Why would anyone still play full 1e when 2e is right there? 1e is painful by comparison. Again, I say this as a fan! But let's be real.

• THAC0 is more intuitive than attack matrix tables
• 1e has a ton of rules and charts that slow the game down to a crawl and are handled better in 2e. Rules and charts that pretty much everyone ignores anyway.
• 1e thieves are garbage. You suck at everything you're supposed to be good at until you get near name level, but 95% of the game is played before that, so....
• 2e cleans up that mess by being able to distribute your points at at least be decent at a few things.
• Don't get me started on 1e bards (even if I am not a fan of the class to begin with)
• If you're a fan of psionics, stay away from 1e's rules

So what does 1e have that 2e doesn't?

• Aesthetic: Trampier, Otis, etc. I get this, because I prefer the art of 1e more than 2e, but I don't think it's a reason to stick with 1e rules.
• Gary wrote 1e, Lorraine was in charge of 2e. Weird reason, because Gary and Lorraine don't game at your tables. Pretty sure they don't care which rules you are using. (also, Lorraine didn't design 2e, Zeb Cook did, who is regarded as one of the best designers of all time--look at his portfolio).
• Devils and demons and assassins and half orcs. Yeah, 2e was sanitized, but it's super easy to use demons and devils in a 2e campaign. Why you would use 1e rules just for this reason is kinda weird.
• Classic modules. 2e was designed intentionally to be backwards compatible. You can run 1e modules without conversion in a 2e game.
• Nostalgia. This one I get, because I love me some good nostalgia.

And yet, we see a lot of 1e clones, but IIRC, there's only one 2e clone, and almost every single OSR group I've seen plays a 1e version and not 2e. Does it really come down to "Gary's edition vs. Lorraine's edition?" Or I'm hoping it's more for nostalgia and the memories.

 

[sevenbastard]

Combat in 2e is also simplfied to the way many people actually played 1e combat.

But most importantly it's organized in a way you can actually find stuff. The 1e players Handbook doesn't have the rules you need to play.

 

[Raptorstorm]

Because I own all of the core 1e books and only one 2e book?

But in all seriousness, I run a combination of the two at my table (they are overall highly compatible). The 1e ranger is, in my opinion, much more fun of a class than the 2e ranger with its really nice scaling damage bonus and the MU spells it gets later on, while the 2e ranger only gets priest spells. I also use the 1e demons and devils for when the party is on the Prime Material, whereas I use the buffed 2e versions of fiends when they're out planeshopping.

 

[billd91]

Does it really come down to "Gary's edition vs. Lorraine's edition?"

I don't know that it would be Gary's edition vs Lorraine's edition, per se, as much as it's just Gary's edition. I'd be surprised if many people thought of 2e as Lorraine's edition - in fact, I'd probably think something was really wrong with them if they did.

We always largely played a hybrid version - mostly 2e but with 1e's ranger and freely using 1e adventures and monsters.

 

[TiQuinn]

I agree. The intent of the 2e PHB even back in the day was to clean up the 1e rules, but leave it in such a way as to ensure backwards compatibility with any 1e product, which it was very successful at. I understand having a preference for artwork or Gygax's writing style versus the textbook-iness of Cook's writing, but when it comes to the actual rules, I think 2e is a far better foundation to build on.

 

[Dire Bare]

Play 2E . . . but only look at the black-and-white illustrations from 1E. Problem solved!

 

[Sacrosanct]

I agree. The intent of the 2e PHB even back in the day was to clean up the 1e rules, but leave it in such a way as to ensure backwards compatibility with any 1e product, which it was very successful at. I understand having a preference for artwork or Gygax's writing style versus the textbook-iness of Cook's writing, but when it comes to the actual rules, I think 2e is a far better foundation to build on.

Based on a lot of what I'm seeing in OSR circles and in person, it's a lot of "Play the way the creator played!" as a sales pitch to people who haven't played D&D back in the day. Which really struck me odd yesterday, because man, was it painful to go back to playing straight 1e lol.

 

[fuindordm]

Hmm...
Pure 1e (without Unearthed Arcana or later books) is still a petty tight system for short adventures and long-term campaigns. Without adding anything from 2e, it holds together well--but you need to take it for what it is, and not try to make it what it isn't. For example:

What about skills? In 1e, if they are important for adventuring you have them through your class. All other skills are either diceless (You were a sailor? OK, you can steer the boat) or handled by DM fiat (which may be a d20 ability check). If you need an obscure and difficult skill you're supposed to hire a specialist. In 2e, on the other hand, there are just too many NWPs, they are too closely tied to ability score and class, and they create the assumption that the NWP is required to perform the action. I'm not a fan of the system.

What about thieves? In 1e thieves are arguably underpowered but still fun since they can do so many things that other PCs can't. Personally, I rule that thief skills only have a bad consequence for a failed roll if the skill specifies one (pick pockets, climb walls, and assasin's disguise). If you fail a find/remove trap roll, you have the same chance to dodge the trap as everyone else. If you fail a move silently roll, you have the same chance to surprise as everyone else. In this framework the low % scores are not crippling, they just show your chance of getting a bonus. You don't suck at everything, you are actually good at everything. Remember, even a fighter clanking around in plate mail can achieve surprise.

What about psionics? Unlikely to happen but frankly the system is not that bad for an appendix. In a world without a psionicist class, it works well enough to model the occasional wild talent and "weird science" of genre crossovers. In a world with a psionicist class, I prefer the 2e complete handbook and still think it is the best psionics system of all the editions.

What about useless tables? Well, I don't use some of them either. I don't use weapon vs AC for example. I use THAC0 in my notes but it's not too difficult to remember the repeating 20s rule and implement it on the fly.

My personal AD&D campaign is about 80% by the book, pre-UA 1e, 10% 2e-inspired house rules (mainly specialist wizards & priests, and my own option for specialist thieves), and 10% own house rules (e.g. some mods of class abilities and skills possible when you create your character). The nice thing about using 1e as a base is that these house rules plug onto the system without any fuss, and there is not much that I have to take away. On the other hand, if I were playing 2e I would take away bards (personal distaste for that implementation), weapon speed factors, NWPs, priest/druid spheres, and probably a few other things... so it might not feel much like 2e.

 

[Deset Gled]

And yet, we see a lot of 1e clones, but IIRC, there's only one 2e clone, and almost every single OSR group I've seen plays a 1e version and not 2e.

I'm going to ignore everything related to preferences, aesthetic, nostalgia, hero worship, etc, and look at the simple issue of defining 1e and 2e (and other early editions).

AD&D 1e has the most defined set of "core" books and rules in all of early D&D. It has a PHB, a DMG, and a MM. Beyond that, it has a limited number of clearly identified supplements. The settings that exist for 1e are likewise limited, and reasonably well defined in their difference.

AD&D 2e starts as a well defined core with Zeb Cook's books. But it immediately goes off the rails with over a dozen "Complete ____" books, and continued with supplements like the Arms and Equipment Guide, multiple monster manuals, and multiple rules expantions. The number of settings is just bonkers, with lots of creativity but also lots of overlap. The number of rules that a re-written multiple times is extreme. I was at a con panel once where one of the 3e designers mentioned that they found 6 completely different sets of drowning rules publised by TSR in different 2e books.

The result of the above is that there really is much of a less defined zeitgeist for exactly what "2e" means. Different groups at different times have completely different ideas of what the rules are, what the baseline of the system is, and what "D&D" means in terms of setting and flavor.

It's also worse noting that Pre-AD&D 1e is messy, with Chainmail rules falling in and out, Holmes Moldvay and Mentzer all vying for dominance, and the whole BECMI branching thing. There are a lot of good rule sets, but no One True Ruleset. Lots of good supplements, but it's all mix-and-match.

The net effect of all this is that AD&D 1e simply has the best branding for history and notariety. It has the clearest focus. It gives the clearest set of "this" without too much "that". It has just enough expansion for people to explore alternate rules and settings without being overwhelmed. It has just enough books for collectors to enjoy hunting down products without there being too many to attain. You can come up with an example of things that beat it on almost any front, but no example that beats it on all the fronts that collectively give it strength.

 

[overgeeked]

Why do people play "worse" games when "better" games are right there? It's a question for the ages. The prevailing answer seems to be "because they like it." See any discussion of why people play 5E instead of any other game for plenty of examples.

At a guess, most gamers will house rule by omission most things that get in their way or bother them about a game, thus rounding out those rough edges. Or they will explicitly house rule things to work the way they want. As mentioned, many of the 2E changes were how lots of people already played AD&D, so for a lot of people there was no reason to switch. They were already doing most of that stuff in their AD&D games anyway. I know we were back then. So switching over just meant spending money on redundant books and spending time relearning where things were in the books or getting caught out on which version of the rule to use. Do we go with AD&D RAW, our house rule, or 2E RAW on this one thing? Repeat that across every rule in the game. It's way, way easier to simply stick with what we'd been playing for years rather than switch. Though we did do over some of the 2E core and bring stuff in. Not much, but we did.