TSR Why would anyone WANT to play 1e?

[Kichwas]

These days everyone keeps saying the bad writing encouraged them to houserule a lot. For us back in 1980 it just meant reading better.

After all, the hobby was new. And why would I cheat at AD&D if I wouldn't cheat while playing Chess, Basketball, or Tag? The idea that houserules weren't cheating hadn't set in yet because technically it is - it's just agreed upon cheating.

The norms folks take for granted today didn't exist for us back then. We brought our norms in from other hobbies.

I listen to all these folks who made things up instead of playing the written rules and just wonder if ya'll weren't a bunch of cheaters at everything back then. Because back in the day before 'homebrew' was a well communicated norm for this hobby - your only point of reference would have been 'be the same kind fair you are when you play sports or boardgames.'

The younger folk who homebrew now sure. That's different as the hobby has its own norms now. But us old folk back then? Where'd that idea come from for you?

Was it a thing in wargames? I didn't encounter those until I was already in the RPG hobby for some years, and never bothered with them. But they were a related prior existing hobby that might have set norms for other people.

For the first 5 years I was in this hobby I didn't know a single other person in it who I hadn't brought to it other than a cousin who'd brought me in and then I hadn't seen again since... well I still haven't seen him since 1980 because his family didn't want mixed race people in their home.

It didn't occur to anyone I encountered back then to "cheat" when we wouldn't do it at a chess or poker table.

I didn't see much 'houseruling' until the D&D 3E era, and that was initially in other games. So I had a bit of a reaction when I first did, and still don't like sitting at tables with houserules over the mechanics, and will just avoid the homebrew for my own characters.

So when I found games that took less work to do, we moved on. That was easier than 'cheating'.

And these days well, there's nothing to be gained by looking back at a system that makes penis size important for stat caps and says people of a certain breed can't do certain things. I'd covered the first point forgot about the second one. Tolerated that kind of BS for years in a different game in a different medium while my Tauren Rogue hid out off screen.

I'm not a nostalgia person, but even more so when thing to be nostalgic over is essentially bad. We knew the rules back then, didn't make them great. In fact that we knew and used all the rules kinda helps me not want to play it again. I can put up with highly detailed games - but not when they're also inconsistent about it.

 

[Sacrosanct]

Read this back to yourself.

Well, Occam's razor says I'm an idiot. That's the best answer. The alternative is, "listen to what I mean, not what I said."

Man, I let myself get mixed up with double negatives.

 

[Voadam]

These days everyone keeps saying the bad writing encouraged them to houserule a lot. For us back in 1980 it just meant reading better.

After all, the hobby was new. And why would I cheat at AD&D if I wouldn't cheat while playing Chess, Basketball, or Tag? The idea that houserules weren't cheating hadn't set in yet because technically it is - it's just agreed upon cheating.

The norms folks take for granted today didn't exist for us back then. We brought our norms in from other hobbies.

I listen to all these folks who made things up instead of playing the written rules and just wonder if ya'll weren't a bunch of cheaters at everything back then. Because back in the day before 'homebrew' was a well communicated norm for this hobby - your only point of reference would have been 'be the same kind fair you are when you play sports or boardgames.'

The younger folk who homebrew now sure. That's different as the hobby has its own norms now. But us old folk back then? Where'd that idea come from for you?

80s D&D was always the DM sets the rules and has a lot of discretion in what to apply and how to handle things. So as a player you just go with whatever the DM says and it could vary DM to DM. One DM just roleplays NPC interactions while another rolls on a reaction chart which is modified by PC Charisma scores.

D&D also had a huge basis of telling DMs to make things up, new monsters, new magic items, adventures, weird stuff, the whole setting. The 1e DMG has a whole loose section on making up your own PC races like if a player wants to play a dragon or whatever.

There was also a lot of gaps where you had to make things up.

Homebrewing stuff was no more cheating than playing monopoly with house rules. Cheating would be violating the rules of the specific individual game you are playing, not whether or not you violated official rules you are not using in the game you are playing.

 

[Kichwas]

Homebrewing stuff was no more cheating than playing monopoly with house rules. Cheating would be violating the rules of the specific individual game you are playing, not whether or not you violated official rules you are not using in the game you are playing.

See we would have thrown any kid that cheated at monopoly right out of the house.

The first time I met anyone that figured the idea of doing that could be acceptable was around the year 2000 or so from the author of BESM on his then forum. Had never seen it in boardgames as a kid or after.

I get it now, but at the time my reaction was to be shocked that the BESM guy had so little faith in his own game engine. It just wasn't how I'd been brought up in the hobby or any other pastime.

 

[Horwath]

I would like to play 1E same way that I would like to drive Ford model T.
Maybe once, so I can say I have driven it, but that is it.

 

[Voadam]

See we would have thrown any kid that cheated at monopoly right out of the house.

The first time I met anyone that figured the idea of doing that could be acceptable was around the year 2000 or so from the author of BESM on his then forum. Had never seen it in boardgames as a kid or after.

I get it now, but at the time my reaction was to be shocked that the BESM guy had so little faith in his own game engine. It just wasn't how I'd been brought up in the hobby or any other pastime.

Whether or not you got bonus money for landing on Go would vary and just be the way your group did it, not cheating if it was not the official way. Whether or not when you choose not to buy a property that you landed on it opens it up to an auction for all players. That sort of stuff varied and was not cheating.

Cheating would be stealing money from the bank or altering dice rolls, not playing by the same rules as everyone else in the game with you.

Playing one on one basketball was not cheating even though official basketball requires five people on a side.

Variants of poker were not cheating, just different rules.

 

[Seramus]

OK folks, that thread I posted to in the OP? That's the thread about why would anyone want to play 1e. This one is about why would anyone NOT want to play it. If you want to post why you wouldn't, the original thread is perfect for that. Thanks

My brain computes this as "The other thread is where we post reasons we want to play it. This thread is where we post reasons we do NOT want to play it."

 

[Mannahnin]

Isn't the most important thing for playing 1E a DM who already has been playing it for decades already???

This is a very underrated comment!

I was going to say, "or a DM who had been running OD&D already for years", which is basically what the 1E books are written assuming.

These days everyone keeps saying the bad writing encouraged them to houserule a lot. For us back in 1980 it just meant reading better.

After all, the hobby was new. And why would I cheat at AD&D if I wouldn't cheat while playing Chess, Basketball, or Tag? The idea that houserules weren't cheating hadn't set in yet because technically it is - it's just agreed upon cheating.

The norms folks take for granted today didn't exist for us back then. We brought our norms in from other hobbies.

I listen to all these folks who made things up instead of playing the written rules and just wonder if ya'll weren't a bunch of cheaters at everything back then. Because back in the day before 'homebrew' was a well communicated norm for this hobby - your only point of reference would have been 'be the same kind fair you are when you play sports or boardgames.'

The younger folk who homebrew now sure. That's different as the hobby has its own norms now. But us old folk back then? Where'd that idea come from for you?

Was it a thing in wargames? I didn't encounter those until I was already in the RPG hobby for some years, and never bothered with them. But they were a related prior existing hobby that might have set norms for other people.

Yes, you've hit on it. It was a huge thing in wargames. The hobby wargame community (especially miniatures gamers, somewhat less so board-wargamers who could play Avalon Hill stuff off the shelf if they didn't want to make tweaks) was absolutely rife with house-rulings, modifications, and amateur design.

Gygax's classified ads in the Players Seeking Players section of AH's periodical The General included a note "will collaborate on game design", and were not unusual in doing so. As post-Playing at the World research turned up, the Chainmail wargame was in substantial part an iteration on and expansion of a little two page amateur Middle Earth wargame designed by a college student named Leonard Patt which was played at a gaming convention in 1970, but the rules for which got circulated a little bit in fanzines.

The Diplomacy zine fandom and play by mail community of the 50s-60s was also overflowing with homebrew variants with new rules, homebrew maps and settings. Including Middle Earth-based ones, a fanzine for which was where Gary's first color-coded and mock-latin named dragon descriptions appeared, years before Chainmail or D&D.

This was indeed the norm and the context in which D&D was originally published, expecting the customer base to all be hobbyist wargamers accustomed to designing rules and scenarios. Which is part of why OD&D gives examples of dungeon concepts but no pre-written scenario or dungeon. It tells us that the DM has to design their own dungeon from scratch.

Here's the famous afterword/final notes from the original boxed rules:

 

[Clint_L]

OK folks, that thread I posted to in the OP? That's the thread about why would anyone want to play 1e. This one is about why would anyone NOT want to play it. If you want to post why you wouldn't, the original thread is perfect for that. Thanks

I’m confused. “Why you wouldn’t” and “why would anyone not” are the same question, except the latter is more general.

Is this thread supposed to be why anyone SHOULD want to play 1e? Like, just give the positives?

 

[DeadlyUematsu]

To start with something more aligned with the OP's intent:

There is a degree of hard fun, accommodation for the DM, lack of player centrism, lack of focus on RAW, and enforced human-centric milieu that makes 1E an admirable and different experience from its modern successors. Also, the game was obviously designed and played by... aggressive people so it is a lot more antifragile as well.