D&D 1E Mearls on AD&D 1E

[Lanefan]

We started our 1E campaign about 18 months ago, meet weekly for about 5-6 hours, and we've played the following modules:
UK5, T1, part of U2, UK2, UK3, UK4, UK1, I1, C1, I3, I4, I5, S2, S4, WG4

Man, you're banging through those modules at almost one a month!

15 adventures with my crew would normally take about 4 years. I've run WG4 three times (once per big campaign) and it's taken 8 months (with lots of distractions), 6 months, and 6 months. In all cases we'd play weekly for 4-ish hours each time, with occasional weeks being skipped due to other commitments.

The party have reached: F8, F5/MU7, MU10, C8, Cav 8, Mk 8, T11, D11

The MU gained a level from a book, the Cavalier, Cleric (twice!), and the F/MU have all been level drained at some point. Most have died and been brought back, and time spent dead has led to missing sessions, and thus uneven xp gains.

Those levels are about what I'd expect.

 

[Lanefan]

Maybe in the groups you played with. But my books don't indicate that I should be retiring my characters. Indeed, if I did that, how would I ever get to make use of those followers, strongholds, etc? How would I ever get to play with spells of 5th lv +?

There's kind of an unwritten expectation, I think, that the in-game pace of adventuring slows right down at that point - that instead of cracking straight on from one adventure to the next the PCs are going to slow down and spend most of their time sorting out their strongholds, adventuring maybe only once or twice a year when the mood (or need for cash!) strikes.

So the PCs don't retire, they just adventure less often.

 

[Lanefan]

Seriously, though, thats not an unfair assessment. The sweet-spot of 1e seemed like 3-7 to me at the time, though in retrospect there can't've been anything going too wrong at 8th...

I see the sweet spot as about 3-9, though I also really like 1-2. After 9 things tend to get a bit over-the-top, despite all sorts of houserules we've brought in to try and mitigate this.

The huge improvement made in later eds wasn't expanding that sweet-spot in terms of levels, though, it was the exp progression.

In 1e, gaining 2nd level was grueling, but as soon as the game started getting good, that changed, and the sweet spot went by in a blur, then as it started getting problematic after name level you hit the wall.

I don't mind low level taking a while but I agree with slowing down the 4-8 range. I also don't mind each level after name level taking some time and effort to achieve, as it makes getting one feel like a real accomplishment.

Lanefan

 

[Tony Vargas]

I see the sweet spot as about 3-9, though I also really like 1-2. After 9 things tend to get a bit over-the-top, despite all sorts of houserules we've brought in to try and mitigate this.

Nod. It may be that I focus too much on spells, but at 3rd, every class has some really useful spells that make a real difference when you cast 'em. Starting at 9th, with 5th level spells they maybe start getting too good or game-capsizing. So, in retrospect, that where I cut it off. At the time though, modules seemed to have level ranges like 1-3, 4-7, 8-12 & 13+ pretty consistently, so I guess I sorta used those like 5e 'Tiers of Play...' and thought of 4-7 as the 'sweet spot.'

I also don't mind each level after name level taking some time and effort to achieve, as it makes getting one feel like a real accomplishment.

Lanefan

One problem is the themes at that level don't lend themselves to drawn out many-encounter 'days' and adventures, but more towards far fewer, more epic confrontations. Another is that the game - 1e or 5e - really has been showing cracks for awhile at high levels (back to spells, by 12th you're firmly into spells Gygax originally envisioned only the Big Bad at the climax of the adventure having. ), and if even there's not some players getting sick of it, the DM himself, might well welcome wrapping things up a little quicker.

 

[JonnyP71]

Man, you're banging through those modules at almost one a month!

15 adventures with my crew would normally take about 4 years. I've run WG4 three times (once per big campaign) and it's taken 8 months (with lots of distractions), 6 months, and 6 months. In all cases we'd play weekly for 4-ish hours each time, with occasional weeks being skipped due to other commitments.

Those levels are about what I'd expect.

They 'got' the point of UK1 very quickly and finished it in a single session. It was only 1 encounter from U2 I used (the Pan Lung), and they don't do much town roleplay so T1 was only a couple of sessions (though it continues to feature as that is now their town base). We get through periods of 'downtime' very quickly, they're not interested in roleplaying shop visits for example, and training is dealt with by simply deducting cash and adding time.

They started off briskly, but I1, I3-5, S4 and WG4 all took a fair while to get through - though none close to 6 months!

It might be because they have now learned they need to be more careful - their previous 'smash it all' tactics have led to a lot of casualties, especially in S4 and WG4.

 

[ccs]

They 'got' the point of UK1 very quickly and finished it in a single session. It was only 1 encounter from U2 I used (the Pan Lung), and they don't do much town roleplay so T1 was only a couple of sessions (though it continues to feature as that is now their town base). We get through periods of 'downtime' very quickly, they're not interested in roleplaying shop visits for example, and training is dealt with by simply deducting cash and adding time.

They started off briskly, but I1, I3-5, S4 and WG4 all took a fair while to get through - though none close to 6 months!

It might be because they have now learned they need to be more careful - their previous 'smash it all' tactics have led to a lot of casualties, especially in S4 and WG4.

I'm not sure your use of the Pan Lung encounter from U2 counts as having "used" that module. Afterall, we're talking about a non-fleshed out 2? line entry on a random encounter table....
By that reasoning you could just open a MM or the FF, flip to a creature, & claim to have run any module that includes it.

 

[Zardnaar]

Man, you're banging through those modules at almost one a month!

15 adventures with my crew would normally take about 4 years. I've run WG4 three times (once per big campaign) and it's taken 8 months (with lots of distractions), 6 months, and 6 months. In all cases we'd play weekly for 4-ish hours each time, with occasional weeks being skipped due to other commitments.

Those levels are about what I'd expect.

The old school modules take around 4 sessions to do YMMV but 20-30 hours seems about right maybe less if you rushed or avoided a few of the encounters. We mostly played Dungeon adventures which were 1-2 sessions at least thats what the DM used.

 

[pemerton]

mearls played 1e...and during that game, when it ended, and he thought about it all....he "got it". I have no idea if Mearls even played 1e before (I doubt it...but you never know)

Wasn't he running an AD&D game set in GH around 8 or so years ago?

I do find myself wondering just how close to 1st Ed the game in the OP actually was. What I mean by that is that as we know, Gary played a game that was sort-of 1st Ed but didn't use all of the bells and whistles - perhaps something of a hybrid of AD&D1 and OD&D. I wonder if Luke was doing much the same, or if he does run 1st Ed as-is.

I'm not at all sure it matters - I'm just curious.

(Also, my experience has been that the dominant element in determining the quality of a game session is the other people around the table. System matters, but is much less important. I'd rather play a system I hate with friends that play my favourite system with people I don't like.)

System matters for AD&D too - but it's important to be clear where the system is.

What rules you use for initiative are not a key part of the AD&D system (and I'd be surprised if Luke Gygax used the virtually unworkable system in the DMG). The key system for AD&D is some of the stuff Mearls mentioned: mapping; extrapolating from the map to unexplored parts of the dungeon; opening doors to see what's behind them; wandering monsters; etc. These elements of system are common across OD&D, B/X and AD&D. There are changes on the way through (eg to hit point rules, stat generation and stat bonus rules, etc) but those are secondary elements (or, in the case of the minutiae of the combat system, probably tertiary).

It appears to me that in this experience, Mearls got a glimpse of what it was like to play D&D as a strategic puzzle for perhaps the first time.

That's how it sounded to me too.

Here is a different game designer's take on this. It's more analytic than Mearls' remarks. Whereas Mearls refers to indefinability, Luke Crane describes it as a cross between telephone and pictionary.

 

[Lanefan]

The old school modules take around 4 sessions to do YMMV but 20-30 hours seems about right maybe less if you rushed or avoided a few of the encounters. We mostly played Dungeon adventures which were 1-2 sessions at least thats what the DM used.

Yeah, the Dungeon ones were generally smaller to begin with - some not much more than mini-adventures - and I'd kind of given up on Dungeon by the time they started putting some meatier adventures in there...which is handy in hindsight as my current DM has been happily mining them for adventures to run us in, knowing I've never seen them.

 

[JonnyP71]

I'm not sure your use of the Pan Lung encounter from U2 counts as having "used" that module. Afterall, we're talking about a non-fleshed out 2? line entry on a random encounter table....
By that reasoning you could just open a MM or the FF, flip to a creature, & claim to have run any module that includes it.

Hardly... it's a couple of pages, so a little more significant than a random encounter. Plus I gave it some story significance in terms of linking the various modules...