TSR Why would anyone WANT to play 1e?

[Sacrosanct]

A couple months ago I posted a thread about why would anyone want to play RAW 1e, and gave reasons. As a follow up to that, and after several more sessions and talking with friends about OD&D, I realized why I loved 1e, and still do.

Hint: It's to NOT play it RAW.

A little context: We were talking about how OD&D was impossible to learn and play unless you had someone who already knew how to play teach you. After all, it was written with the assumption that you'd be using rules from Chainmail and knew how to play it. 1e was a big advancement, but was still extremely difficult to learn, especially for new players.

But that leads me to this thread, and why 1e was actually great. Because of those flaws, (and probably because rpgs were still pretty new), we all just played how we wanted. Made up our own houserules. Ignored a bunch of other ones. And it was glorious. Rules lawyers existed, but they seemed much fewer in number than now (or the past 25 years). And not just rules lawyers, but players looking to see what the rule is for something they wanted to do. Over the past few decades, as more people became familiar with rpgs and as the rulebooks became easier to comprehend, I've seen a lot less of winging things or making up your own worlds, rules, or features like classes or monsters.

So it sounds weird to say, but 1e's complicated and hard to follow rules was a good thing because it gave us more freedom to make the game our own. Easier to make it how our table preferred to play. And boy did we. It's one reason why I'm glad Shadowdark is so popular, because it shows that we weren't all just outliers. Rulings over rules can, and is, a fun playstyle for a lot of people. So....1e, take a back handed compliment

Edit edited the title for clarity, because the sarcasm didn't come through. the original thread was "why would anyone want to play 1e RAW" as a sarcastic title, meaning, "1e RAW is really bad I can't see how anyone would want to play it." This title was a mirror of that, but apparently the sarcasm didn't carry over. The intent was "why wouldn't you want to play 1e NOT RAW, because it's great!". Apparently that didn't carry over well.

 

[Tessarael]

There are plenty of things that were ghastly about 1E. Level drain. Imbalance between classes, including poor implementation of multi-classing. Non-Human level limits. Random rolling for ability scores and hit points leading to imbalance, players wanting to repeatedly reroll ability scores, etc. For these reasons, I would be very reluctant to play a long term 1E campaign, when 5E harkens back to 1E simplicity, but without these problems.

 

[Jahydin]

@Sacrosanct
Agree with everything you said.

Played a lot of AD&D using both 1e and 2e books with various groups as a teen and it was just an expectation that everyone played differently. Heck, I didn't even know what 1e RAW was until I finally read the core books during my downtime during COVID. Despite playing it daily for years, it really felt like I was learning a brand new game since we ignored so much of it.

How we played? Take the framework of AD&D, but just run it like BECMI. Which is kind of funny, because none of owned any Basic books or even knew of its existence; we just kind of played it that way naturally.

I think that's why I championed Castles & Crusades so much. That game really does read pretty close to how I remember playing D&D back with my friends, sans SIEGE engine of course.

 

[Sacrosanct]

I guess what I'm getting at is I see a lot of people cite how 1e was written or the 1e rules as to reasons why they would never want to play it, and I'm saying don't let that stop you, just make up your own or ignore them, because that's what we all did. The biggest benefit for something like that is that it made the game how we wanted to play it. Over the past few decades, I see more and more of:

"I like this edition, but I don't like how they did X, or Y, or Z in it. or ABC is missing."
"So...change it."
"What? But...those are the rules?"

When you make the rules so much of a chore to keep track of that everyone just comes up with how they want to play anyway, you don't have those types of conversations

 

[Rabbitbait]

To hit tables. It seems so amazing that something like that existed when the d20 system is so simple, and that THAC0 had to be developed in between.

 

[TigerDude]

Too hard to stay alive, too hard to level, race restrictions, MC restrictions.

 

[Kichwas]

I highly suspect this thread isn't meant for me - a person who actually does NOT want to play 1E. I suspect the thread is more meant as humor and fond memory digging for those who do want it.

But... here I go anyway. Oops.

I've never understood people who said it was confusing and hard to learn. We played it RAW when I started in this hobby in 1980 because we didn't know any other choice and there were articles from Gygax over the years telling us we were 'wrong' if we even looked at the book from the wrong angle.

Well, I did know other options. I knew redbox basic D&D which I found more fun because I didn't have a thousand charts and different rules for males and females bogging me down.

That all said...

I just mentioned those reasons why I didn't care for it. I soon developed others. The moment I found 'The Fantasy Trip' by accidentally spending my allowance on a book I thought was just a module in a weird little box called 'Melee' I realized there were options. That game was too simple though - but it's why when it became known as GURPS and got it's edition number 'rebooted' to 1.0 with a lot more structure added in I got that.

And with the combo of that and Autoduel Champions (which then resulted in my buying Champions because I'd bought Autoduel Champions for the Car Wars side) I encountered games where you could design a character rather than roll one, and had a skill system instead of classes.
- That's still something a lot of people pick over D&D, especially 1E: non-random characters with depth on the sheet. Oh, that also have the same stat caps regardless of penis size because back them most of my players didn't have one.

The monsters is another thing. I really don't like how some of them are ---> this close <--- to something in mythology, only the part that's off is too much for me to not keep seeing. Like how D&D made Naga evil when they're actually benevolent river spirits in India. I've had multiple friends and co-workers named Naga now that I know so many South Asians. That's just the 'obvious one' for me. There's a lot more out there and I was and still am a 'global mythology geek'. I got random bits of lore from all over the world in my head - rather than being expert in any one culture.

I never really cared for Elves, Hobbits, and Orcs in my fantasy. I've played stacks of them - but I prefer creatures from mythology that are closer to their bases. Elf, Goblin, Gnome, and Troll all meant the same thing before TSR changed that - though what that thing was often varied. Hobbit just means 'Englishman', and Orc was 'I need a bad guy and here's a made up word' that turned out to not actually be made up, but also not mean the same thing.

Give me Fauns / Satyr, or Firbolg / Minotaur if we're going European. If we land somewhere else, there are many other choices. Naga would even be a good one.
- And this has all happened in later editions.

To me AD&D had way to much detail in all the areas I didn't care about, and no where near enough detail in the places I wanted more.

Also... I'm not too big on Nostalgia. I still can't even re-read The Lord of the Rings because I read it and The Silmarillian in the summer after middle school in 84 and that means if I open the book, it's all already old to me. The appeal of OSR flies right over me because been there done that and didn't care for it when it wasn't false memory but was instead present reality.

I could probably go on for many pages, but this is already kinda long.

 

[The Soloist]

We never played AD&D 1e as written because we played BX first. We assumed many things worked the same way. Everything was 'hidden' inside the DMG. Weapon speed and weapon factor against armor types were out the window very quickly. We kept segments for spells. Having Area of Effect for each spell was great. Other wise, we had great fun with all the classic named spells, magical items, building castles and Greyhawk. At the time felt like an improvement over BX. We were finally playing the 'real' D&D.

I tried playing 1e solo, as RAW as I could, last winter. The initiative sequence. Ouch. I couldn't go back. OSE + OSE Advanced is friendlier, with ascending AC. I play that when I want my TSR D&D fix. I use AD&D area of effects when in doubt.

 

[Clint_L]

1e will always be my first love, and I would still play it but not run it. 5e keeps the vibe but is miles easier to run and doesn’t punish players for wanting to play something that wasn’t Gary Gygax’s preference.

 

[MGibster]

I think the biggest reason a lot of people don't want to play 1st edition AD&D is the rules. If you can get past that hurdle, it's a really good edition of the game. Who wants to deal with the myriad rules you may or may not use, different point amounts for leveling based on class, THAC0, level caps based on race (we don't have species yet), or trying to have a Barbarian in the party who insists on destroying magic items? Is the random harlot table and the bonkers number of polearms really worth it?