Comments on: Retro Gaming: AD&D 1st Edition, Part 2

By: Alamar

Alamar — Mon, 17 May 2010 15:59:52 +0000

The DMG had a number of ‘official’ optional rules(if that phrase makes any sense) which became so widely adopted they influenced the next edition. The stat-rolling we did was one such rule. For the most part, I’m doing pretty by-the-book play, with the exception that I do allow level acquisition during the adventure… so long as the players are willing to put in the weeks of training time to level up.

This really isn’t that strange an idea, since if you didn’t allow this, there’d be no reason to attempt the longer-running, campaign-based adventures. Gygax himself assumed the characters can retreat and train in some modules, particularly Keep on the Borderlands. The assumption of ‘one level per adventure’ comes from the dungeon crawl idea, where the characters would have no access to a safe home base and a trainer.

Of course, in a time-based adventure like the one we’re playing, stopping to train might not be that great an idea…

We’ve actually done another session, but I keep forgetting to drag out the log and type it up here when I have time.

By: JoeSnow

JoeSnow — Mon, 17 May 2010 15:22:04 +0000

And let’s not forget in 1st Edition you don’t level up on the fly. You have to wait for the end of the adventure and even then you can only level up once even if you have enough accumulated XP to reach an even higher level. Treasures don’t get divided up until the end, either, so that nice +5 sword or disintigration scroll sitting in the treasure chest is useless on your current adventure no matter how badly you may need it. That’s if you stick strictly to the rulebooks, though. Most people had house rules that superseded the official rules, which I really thought sucked. Why did they write all those books if nobody was going to play by them? by my count there were at least 13 hard cover manuals that could be used with 1st Edition rules. You’re just going to ignore all that material and make your own rules as you go?

By: Alamar

Alamar — Sat, 06 Feb 2010 19:48:11 +0000

I told you. First Edition is hardcore!

By: Katyrnyn

Katyrnyn — Sat, 06 Feb 2010 15:54:24 +0000

Clearly your party is foolish. The only proper response to opening a door and finding two Huge Spiders is to close the door and act like it never happened. Unless of course they don’t have doors, then you just turn the corner and act like it never happened.

Copperfield? Really?? I can guess who that was…..

“After a valiant struggle that critically injured the Ranger and Monk, the party killed both and settled down to rest.”

They killed both the Ranger and the Monk just because they were critically injured?? Man, is First Edition tough or what!