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

[Lanefan]

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.

"A cross between telephone and pictionary" isn't at all how I interpret his remarks in that article. He has some issues with a couple of the modules he ran...which is fair enough as it seems they were for a different version of Basic and he wasn't doing any conversions...but it seems he and his group really liked the system and the gameplay they got out of it.

 

[pemerton]

"A cross between telephone and pictionary" isn't at all how I interpret his remarks in that article.

This is from Luke Crane's Google+ post that I linked to:

I've learned that it's a hard game to run. Not because of prep or rules mastery, but because of the role of the GM as impartial conveyer of really bad news. Since the exploration side of the game is cross between Telephone and Pictionary, I must sit impassive as the players make bad decisions. I want them to win. I want them to solve the puzzles, but if I interfere, I render the whole exercise pointless.​

 

[Lanefan]

This is from Luke Crane's Google+ post that I linked to:

I've learned that it's a hard game to run. Not because of prep or rules mastery, but because of the role of the GM as impartial conveyer of really bad news. Since the exploration side of the game is cross between Telephone and Pictionary, I must sit impassive as the players make bad decisions. I want them to win. I want them to solve the puzzles, but if I interfere, I render the whole exercise pointless.​

I don't see that passage anywhere on the page that link leads to...including searching for "Pictionary". All I see is details of his experiences running B1, B2, B3 and then a partial transition into B10; and remarks on what he and his group thought of it all.

EDIT: that said, I'd missed that there's a pile of hidden comments. I just read the actual article.

 

[jasper]

...

I've been playing since 1980, and AD&D used attack matrices until 2e.

Here what we did on our 1E and 2E yellow notepads aka character sheets because we were cheap.

10	9	8	7	6	5	4	3	2	1	0	-1	-2	-3	-4	-5	-6	-7	-8	-9	-10
10	11	12	13	14	15	16	17	18	19	20	20	20	20	20	20	21	22	23	24

Either you grabbed your dm's Screen and copy the chart to the sheet. Or you just placed your THACO score in the 0 column and did the chart.

 

[Tony Vargas]

Here what we did on our 1E [..] yellow notepads aka character sheets because we were cheap.
... you grabbed your dm's Screen and copy the chart to the sheet.

B-but, players aren't supposed to look in the DMG!

 

[jasper]

B-but, players aren't supposed to look in the DMG!

you could by player screens but then I would have to shoot you.

 

[guachi]

I don't see that passage anywhere on the page that link leads to...including searching for "Pictionary". All I see is details of his experiences running B1, B2, B3 and then a partial transition into B10; and remarks on what he and his group thought of it all.

EDIT: that said, I'd missed that there's a pile of hidden comments. I just read the actual article.

It's in the comments, like you surmise. It's the first comment by the author.

I found the preceding paragraph relevant as well.

I'm still processing what's happening in the group. The group is often engaged, but not at the level I'm accustomed to with Burning Wheel. Interactions with the system are simple and brief. Either a die roll or two, or the selection of an expendable resource. The engagement via the caller and mapper is also very high. There's a little character play, but nothing as intense as what I'm used to. But the decisions are so fraught with peril, I have nightmares later that night (as does another one of the players). We call it PTSD&D.

After running X2 using the 5e rules, the last two sentences are very true. It's a brutal adventure. Two PCs died? Oh, well. Drag their bodies through the portal. Choose, basically at random, whether to go left or right on a road. Random encounter yields a helpful NPC who guides you to a castle. The owner of the castle is a magic-user who has Reincarnate prepared. Both the dead NPCs are reincarnated as (die roll... die roll...) gnomes. There are now three gnomes in the party, one real and two fake. Everyone now thinks the gnomes are the children of the only PC taller than three feet.

At the end of the adventure the PCs are wished back to normal. They get a good magic item at random. Paladin rolls and randomly gets a holy avenger. At 6th level.

 

[Lanefan]

It's in the comments, like you surmise. It's the first comment by the author.

I found the preceding paragraph relevant as well.

I'm still processing what's happening in the group. The group is often engaged, but not at the level I'm accustomed to with Burning Wheel. Interactions with the system are simple and brief. Either a die roll or two, or the selection of an expendable resource. The engagement via the caller and mapper is also very high. There's a little character play, but nothing as intense as what I'm used to. But the decisions are so fraught with peril, I have nightmares later that night (as does another one of the players). We call it PTSD&D.

After running X2 using the 5e rules, the last two sentences are very true. It's a brutal adventure. Two PCs died? Oh, well. Drag their bodies through the portal. Choose, basically at random, whether to go left or right on a road. Random encounter yields a helpful NPC who guides you to a castle. The owner of the castle is a magic-user who has Reincarnate prepared. Both the dead NPCs are reincarnated as (die roll... die roll...) gnomes. There are now three gnomes in the party, one real and two fake. Everyone now thinks the gnomes are the children of the only PC taller than three feet.

In my current game there's been three reincarnations over the last two adventures, and by the whim of dice all three came back as Hobbits. Put that together with the two Hobbits the party already had and this really is a party that marches on its (insatiable!) stomach.

More seriously, the peril is what makes it great. You cherish survival, rather than just take it as a given.

This is why I don't like systems such as 3e that somewhat encourage you to plan out your character build from 1-20: the system assumes you'll survive that long.

It's also why I don't like systems or even individual adventures that are built around a single character's story and-or drama - if that character dies, the story is hooped.

 

[Myrdin Potter]

From my early days of playing 1e in the early 80’s, the higher level parties (getting close to 10) would end up trying G1-G3. If they survived the giants, then the Drow in D1 to D3 would get their crack at them. Finally, Lloth herself waited in Q1. I was the groups GM and not every attempt at even “Against the Giants” succeeded.

We never worried about character getting too powerful, I would just adjust whatever I had to and make it challenging.

As for the original post about Mearl’s reaction, AD&D was a fun mess (weapon speed factors and spell timing for initiative was normally just ignored, for example, the DMG had the combat rules and one of the first character discussions was knnwhat diseases they would catch). Mapping was a pain in the ass but needed. As miniatures and battle maps too over (even in the AD&D day’s they were popular), play shifted away from the old player mapping based on DM describing paradigm. I had to map in a Matt Finch game last GaryCon and the brought back old memories, not all of them good.

i am glad that Mike got a chance to play and enjoy himself.

 

[MNblockhead]

I think it's hilarious (and somehow appropriate) that most of this thread is arguing about the provenance of THACO.

Less eloquently than Mearls, I'd say Classic D&D is comprehensively and pervasively weird, and immersion in the weird is indeed a unique experience.

* The books and boxes were weird. The physical product didn't look like anything else in my house.
* The art was weird.
* The fonts were weird.
* The language was (very) weird.
* The rules were weird.
* The creatures and spells were weird.
* The names were weird.
* The environment of play was weird.
* Actual play -- what you did when playing the game -- was super-weird.

The weird rules -- along with all the other weird elements -- definitely contributed to the pervasive weirdness of it. The game is such fertile ground for nostalgia precisely because of this pervasive weirdness. You ditch some of the weird elements and keep others, you lose some of the weirdness, the pervasiveness of the weirdness. D&D with slick art isn't as weird. D&D after all of its unique genre elements have been subsumed into pop culture can't be as weird. D&D with more sensible and accessible rules and language isn't as weird. D&D where actual play is a "heroic quest" or "adventure path" or "epic story" isn't as weird as rounding a corner in the Caves of Chaos and getting turned to stone by a medusa.

Immersion in the weird is part of the Hero's Journey, but not all of it. It's the part that pretty much every Classic D&D game had, even when most of them lacked most of the other elements of the Hero's Journey. Immersion in the weird is a unique experience, and the comparison to the hard-to-describe experience of a horror movie is apt.

Yes. This.

5e brought me back to TTRPGs, by offering nolstalgia AND something new and shiny.

I love 5e. But...

When my friends showed me the DCC book and took me through a level-0 campaign. Seeing that artwork and re-experiencing that style of play, it just washed me a way with a nolstalgic high.

That said, I prefer running and playing with 5e rules.

That's why I'm excited with Goodman Games releasing the old modules both with original scans and reworked for 5th edition. For someone that played 1e and then skipped to 5e, it really scratches an itch.