TSR Why would anyone WANT to play 1e?

[Sacrosanct]

I've never understood people who said it was confusing and hard to learn.

I shall point you to the initiative rules in 1e.

 

[TiQuinn]

If you go into it with the mindset that the system is flexible and you can discard what doesn’t work for you, then it’s perfectly fine…though I do prefer the organization of 2e and would probably do that instead.

 

[MGibster]

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.

If you say Gygax three times while looking into a mirror he will appear and run you through Tomb of Horrors.

 

[dave2008]

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

While I agree with your conceit about 1e, we applied the same philosophy to 4e and 5e: lots of "...winging things or making up your own worlds, rules, or features like classes or monster." So I don't see the need to play 1e as we play 5e the same way!

 

[Deset Gled]

If you say Gygax three times while looking into a mirror he will appear and run you through Tomb of Horrors.

If every grognard who says he plays by Gary's rules actually played with Gary Gygax, Lake Geneva would have been like Woodstock.

I actually played a Woodstock RPG with Gary Gygax (he called it Castle Stickwood). That was a weird gig. I rolled one on a poison save, and my character spent the next six hours watching his hand move.

 

[billd91]

I personally wouldn't want to play 1e straight up. But I would play 2e with some elements of 1e hanging on or mixed in (particularly the ranger which, I feel, is superior to 2e's ranger). The main positive attraction for me in the 3e/4e days was AD&D's magic items - a factor that's now been thoroughly taken on by 5e.
The main attraction now would be playing some of the setting material - particularly OA or Al-Qadim. I know there are various adaptations in 5e out there for much of that, but I'd still be tempted to play the earlier editions because I feel they were largely done pretty well. Plus, anything we wanted to play with from 1e days was compatible-enough to fit into a 2e game.

 

[Sacrosanct]

If you go into it with the mindset that the system is flexible and you can discard what doesn’t work for you, then it’s perfectly fine…though I do prefer the organization of 2e and would probably do that instead.

Sure. See my other thread I linked to in the OP

 

[TiQuinn]

Sure. See my other thread I linked to in the OP

Ah.

Well, yes. Right-O. Carry on.

 

[MGibster]

I actually played a Woodstock RPG with Gary Gygax (he called it Castle Stickwood). That was a weird gig. I rolled one on a poison save, and my character spent the next six hours watching his hand move.

In my current Greyhawk campaign, a recurring villain threw a bunch of dried plant matter into a campfire and it sent the PCs on a magical quest. As I described the psychedelic scene it was accompanied by Ina-Gata-De-Vita by Iron Butterfly blaring out of my phone. That's how you kick it old school!

 

[payn]

Oberoni the thread!