TSR Why would anyone want to play 1e?

[Gus L]

Nobody actually liked having their character drained of levels, but I also think the all-too-common mindset, for both designers and players, of "bad things that can happen to my character should never be permanent" is unfortunate. The possibility of level drain, ability score loss, etc., adds excitement to the game(s).

I agree with this - I don't like love level drain myself, though it's easier if HP are rerolled at the start of each session ... but also it's a terrifying effect reserved for especially horrible undead. Don't let them touch your PC...

The other issue is that levels in AD&D and similar editions mean less then one might think. Power is at least as much tied to magic items... which brings up rust monsters (and those should also be used). In a risk reward focused game there have to be risks. Risk beyond "your character loses HP until they die" are both interesting and useful, and not just because they offer another penalty for mistakes besides HP loss/death.

 

[Bill Zebub]

which brings up rust monsters (and those should also be used).

Yes!

Forty years ago, losing a beloved magic item to a rust monster was hilarious fun for the whole table.

Today I half expect people to quit the game if it happens.

("But you tell that to kids nowadays and they don't believe you...")

 

[Mannahnin]

Let's not forget item saving throws!

OD&D specifies that carried items are assumed to be fine unless the bearer/user is killed (with helms noted as being an exception, but it's not explained), at which point they have to save.

The 1E DMG is vague about when to apply them, seeming to mostly leave it up to DM judgement, but the Fireball spell description in the PH specifies that items carried by a character who makes their saving throw are not affected. 2E codified that Fireball rule as the standard- carried items are fine and don't have to save unless the character fails their save.

One example of 3E carrying forward AD&D concepts but softening them is that it spells out a process for carried/held items getting blown up, but it only applies if the bearer rolls a 1 on their saving throw, and you randomly select an item (d4 to select one of the four most-exposed being carried, with a table on page 177 of the PH). This cropped up occasionally for us in 3.x and it was an interesting wrinkle.

 

[Bill Zebub]

I'm thinking about the "Attack the Light" directive (ok, suggestion) in Shadowdark. I suspect to a lot of modern D&D players that seems like a jerk move for the GM. It's one thing for those player if a written adventure says, "There is a 1:6 chance of any torches being extinguished" but somehow it's out of bounds and confrontational for a GM to decide to arbitrarily attack the light just because it's fun.

(Not that many 5e players would even understand why that's a thing. "Huh? Who uses light?")

 

[MGibster]

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

For me it always comes back to the random harlot table. No other edition of D&D has offered me the opportunity to run into a wealthy procuress, a sly pimp, or a brazen strumpet. That was back in the day when AD&D was not only entertaining but also educational. (I kid. Mostly.)

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.

By the time I started playing AD&D, Gary and TSR had gone their own separate, and amicable I'm sure, ways a few years previous. Other than a name in the credits, he was never an official part of AD&D since I've been playing. I honestly suspect it's more about nostalgia and the good feelings they associate with that edition. I have the warm & fuzzies from 1st edition AD&D, but I'd rather shave with a cheese grater than play it again. The same goes for 2nd edition as well. I appreciate both games for what they were, but I'm not the same fisherman I was in 1988 and the river isn't the same either. Casting my line in the hopes I'll catch that nostalgia fish is sheer folly.

 

[Bill Zebub]

For me it always comes back to the random harlot table. No other edition of D&D has offered me the opportunity to run into a wealthy procuress, a sly pimp, or a brazen strumpet. That was back in the day when AD&D was not only entertaining but also educational. (I kid. Mostly.)

"Strumpet" is just one of the many vocabulary words I learned from D&D in those days.

Some years later, fresh out of college, I had a corporate job in an office tower. One evening I walked into a conference room where a number of other younger employees were working on a crossword and eating dinner (working late came with the perk of being able to expense delivered food...a key form of compensation in NYC).

As I walked in, they looked up and said, "What's a seven-letter word for 'ass' or 'catapult'?"

"Onager," I replied without hesitating.

"How about a five letter word for a race of Norse Gods?"

"Depends," I said, does it begin with an 'A' or a 'V'?"

Thank you, Gary Gygax.

 

[TiQuinn]

By the time I started playing AD&D, Gary and TSR had gone their own separate, and amicable I'm sure, ways a few years previous. Other than a name in the credits, he was never an official part of AD&D since I've been playing. I honestly suspect it's more about nostalgia and the good feelings they associate with that edition. I have the warm & fuzzies from 1st edition AD&D, but I'd rather shave with a cheese grater than play it again. The same goes for 2nd edition as well. I appreciate both games for what they were, but I'm not the same fisherman I was in 1988 and the river isn't the same either. Casting my line in the hopes I'll catch that nostalgia fish is sheer folly.

Yeah, when I've waded through the various retroclones and OSR games, I've been looking for my Goldilocks version of 2e but always coming to the same results - this one is too hot, this one is too cold, but never finding one that I thought was just right. Then I decided I'd just go back to the original 2e rules and run those for a game, and I realized there's a reason I moved on from them. I love the idea of them but then what's printed on the page runs against my memories of the rules and what I wanted to change, and what I wanted to change inevitably led to the same kinds of decisions that gave birth to Skills and Powers and 3rd Edition. If I were to create my own fantasy heartbreaker for personal use, it'd still be a 2e base but I also get the feeling that in the end, the sum total wouldn't be worth the effort.

 

[Theory of Games]

I think it's also (and I might have already mentioned this earlier in the thread) that there's a missing context for most of us who learned elsewhere than at Gary's or other original tables, that levels weren't that hard to earn in the first place. If magic items grant XP, and if a Wish-granting fountain or something enabling you to gain a level all at once is a not-uncommon dungeon feature, than the occasional energy drain isn't the heinous kick in the crotch that it is if you expect it to take months of work to recover from.

Easy come, easy go makes the losses easier to roll with.

I never thought the grind to level-up as being easy. There was tons of treasure, but surviving the traps and monsters was the hard part

 

[James Gasik]

It really, really depends. There are lots of ways to gain levels from magic items- the Deck of Many Things, The Book of Exalted Deeds, the Manual of Puissant Skill at Arms, etc. etc.. One of my earliest memories of AD&D was a discussion about whether or not the gems and money produced by a Robe of Many Pockets counted as "treasure" for xp purposes.

The DM made what I felt was a fair ruling- he admitted that the argument for why such things would count was valid in his opinion, but since it was theoretically possible to craft a Robe at some point and gain xp for that, allowing a caster to "double dip" by then cashing in said Robe's randomly generated treasure seemed against the spirit of the system.

This cut off several similar debates regarding the Bag of Beans and being pelted by gems from a Wand of Wonder.

Tricks and Traps that did strange things to characters were discussed in the DMG- and an infamous example of such things can be found in the Tomb of Horrors (I've seen more than one character have their gender and alignment inverted over the years!).

But despite all of this, it did seem that ways to lose levels were more common overall. If that was the intent I'll never know- the DMG didn't give much guidance, and ways to avoid such things were few and far between.

People like to say "well that's what you get for fighting certain enemies" but sometimes you literally have no choice. It was in The Ruins of Undermountain that my Cleric died despite taking every precaution in the book. We'd come upon a door- the Thief didn't detect a trap, but did hear rustling noises on the other side.

We waited a bit, and nothing came out, even when we made some noise. I suggested casting Augury- and, of course, got "weal and woe", which could mean anything, really. I had the most hit points (being a little higher level than the other characters), so I borrowed our Fighter's shield +1 and opened the door.

Immediately we were swarmed by "wraith spiders"- undead spiders each armed with a level drain. We didn't stand a chance. Even if I'd had Negative Energy Protection going, that only guards against one level drain, so that was that.

(Sure, you could argue I died for opening a door knowing that there could be danger on the other side, but with that mindset, you'd never leave your house in a D&D world, let alone go on an adventure!).

After that, my favorite magic item became the Scarab of Protection, and I was incredibly happy any time I could get my grubby paws on one (such items are amazing for multiple reasons, but among them was the fact that they could negate up to 12 lost levels due to drain before being destroyed)!

 

[Theory of Games]

People like to say "well that's what you get for fighting certain enemies" but sometimes you literally have no choice. It was in The Ruins of Undermountain that my Cleric died despite taking every precaution in the book. We'd come upon a door- the Thief didn't detect a trap, but did hear rustling noises on the other side.

We waited a bit, and nothing came out, even when we made some noise. I suggested casting Augury- and, of course, got "weal and woe", which could mean anything, really. I had the most hit points (being a little higher level than the other characters), so I borrowed our Fighter's shield +1 and opened the door.

Immediately we were swarmed by "wraith spiders"- undead spiders each armed with a level drain. We didn't stand a chance. Even if I'd had Negative Energy Protection going, that only guards against one level drain, so that was that.

(Sure, you could argue I died for opening a door knowing that there could be danger on the other side, but with that mindset, you'd never leave your house in a D&D world, let alone go on an adventure!).

Your DM was clearly a master of their craft. I'm impressed