Poll: Your relationship to pre-AD&D rules and play

[tetramorph]

Hey folks, please take my poll. You can answer one, two or all three. If you do more than one, please post why.

Folks who play some form of D&D prior to the full publication of AD&D form a niche of a niche (old school D&D in general) of a niche (D&D in general) hobby.

How many of us are there even out there? I am starting to get the feeling that merely looking at the numbers of members here -- or even of frequent posters here -- is not giving me an accurate sense of how many pre-AD&D campaigns are actually active out there.

I'd like to get a sense of our membership here. What brings you here? What is your interest? Do you play pre-AD&D? Are you in an active campaign or have you ever been a part of one for a significant period of time? Do you referee it? Frequently?

Is it interesting to you and you wish you could play or ref it? If so, what is holding you back? Is it interesting to you, but for hobby scholarly or curiosity purposes only?

Do you come here to learn about things, &/or to reason about rules, or to make a point that we shouldn't reason about rules, or some other point?

In other words, please take the poll and comment and elaborate on your response.

I will take the poll and comment in an additional post.

Fight on!

_____
Note: I am phrasing it "pre-AD&D" because I want to cast the widest possible net: 3LBB only, 3LBB+one or more other supplements, 3LBB+ house rules, Holmes Basic, 3LBB+ MM only, etc. You get the point.

[Deleted]

I voted "they frequently form my core play experience" since I exclusively run from the 3lbb and some mix and match OSR blogs and books in recent years.

I find most modern systems that aren't OSR or story-game too mechanically complicated for me to enjoy running, and those systems have a tendency to have fully fleshed out settings and lore for everything, whereas I enjoy how in old school D&D there's a lot of empty spaces for me to fill in and personalize for my campaign. I don't exclusively mine old D&D for ideas, though. I enjoy pretty much anything from the late seventies and early eighties and can mine those books for ideas, if not mechanics. I also really love the modern DIY rpg scene in general for that similar feel.

[tetramorph]

Pre-AD&D rule sets, and approaches, and play-style, form my core play experience, both as player and ref.

I run a regular house-ruled campaign based in the main off of the 3LBBs with house rules derived from associated literature and conversations on these boards and related blogs. My first play of this kind of rule-set began in 2013 and I joined this board. My first public refereeing started in 2014 in someone else's campaign. In 2015 I started my own campaign. It has been running continuously ever since, starting at a frequency of monthly and moving in about 2017 to weekly.

I know there are at least two other such campaigns in my city. They are run by two other members of this board.

I benefit from these boards by learning about things, learning new ways of understanding and interpreting things, both play-style and rules, and for reasoning out rulings, house-rules, and play with fellow members of the board. I prefer fora to things like social media because I hate buried, disappearing content and because I hate the signal-to-noise ratio of social media.

Like @ampleframework, I also benefit from later rule-sets and other DIY OS material. But my core rule-set and ethos is pre-AD&D.

Fight on!

[Punkrabbitt]

I have switched to OD&D 3LBB-only, plus whatever random crap I discover that I want to throw in.

[captainjapan]

I chose "They provide an interesting area of hobby archaeology or research". I only referee, occasionally, for my children. In return, they referee for me. I wouldn't call what I am doing, campaigning. It's just adventuring.

My binder of historical notes and rules sets is now about 5 times thicker than my table copy of D&D. Sometimes, I'd rather spend time chasing after the origin of some obscure rules reference than play, as my eldest daughter will attest. That's probably not a healthy thing.

I noticed that my join date is a full year prior to my first post on these boards. If I had to guess what my interest was, when I was still just lurking here, I would say it was pinning down the quintessential D&D. Coincidentally, the Monster Manual(1977) is where I've drawn the line.

These boards are just great, BTW, for losing yourself in research. Conversations, here, can get real fiddly. And, when you think you've had some epiphany about one point or another, you only have to read back through past threads to see that it was already hashed out, at length. For instance, it totally slipped my notice that elven infravision wasn't part of the 3lbb's. I always thought it was original to the game. I never wanted to restrict "darksight" to npc's so badly as I do right now. Thanks to ODD74 discussion, now I know it's permissible. Would never have thought to look, otherwise.

I'm always game to unearth new-old D&D knowledge.

[Finarvyn]

Even when I run 5E, I try to use the style and philosophy behind OD&D as my core. The notion that rules are guidelines, that I can "wing it" instead of looking up a rule, even the advantage/disadvantage dice mechanic … they all can emphasize a more relaxed game than the rulebooks might suggest.

[jeffb]

Started bfore AD&D. However l, I would say I have a fairly equal mix of OD&D and modern Indy/Narrative influence. I am not a stickler for OD&D in the letter of the rules, but rather in the Spirit of the game.

[makofan]

I started with Holmes back in 1979, then moved to AD&D about 1980. I started my play-by-post game on this forum back in 2007 to learn about the first rules, and if they would hold any interest for me. I meant to run for 6 months, and it lasted 10 years, so I stayed longer than I intended! I have always preferred rulings to rules, so I found myself enjoying the ideas and simplicity. I tend to now play later edition rules like BECMI, as the players don't like me making things up on the spot, and they have more things nailed down

[muddy]

I started playing after the Greyhawk supplement came out. Boot Hill, Gamma World, Metamorphosis Alpha were all played, but D&D was always central. We even played our own made up version Star Wars RPG for a while. I was DM 95% of the time, and the looseness of OD&D as we played it originally always carried through whatever edition/game we were playing. So we transitioned pretty seamlessly through OD&D, Holmes, and AD&D. It was all just D&D to us. During that time I ran two campaigns, the original one and a second after(I think)the players handbook came out. The switch though was really inspired by City State, which showed me what could be done outside of a dungeon. Gaming slowed down through high school and died out by grad school. A few years ago I came across this site and found the discussions of the rules interpretation surprising and fascinating.

[creativehum]

Jul 25, 2020 13:56:04 GMT -6 Finarvyn said:

Even when I run 5E, I try to use the style and philosophy behind OD&D as my core. The notion that rules are guidelines, that I can "wing it" instead of looking up a rule, even the advantage/disadvantage dice mechanic … they all can emphasize a more relaxed game than the rulebooks might suggest.

This isn't a challenge to you running 5e, Fin. (I'm running an OD&D game on Wed. nights, but tonight I'll be playing in a 5e game!)

But I'm curious as to why you're running 5e instead of using OD&D. (You probably have explained this here, somewhere, already!)

[Otto Harkaman]

I was lucky to have played OD&D in 1975-76 when 11 or 12 with a group of kids in high school. It was such a unique experience, hard to imagine with all the games today. I think the rpg rules I first purchased was Metamorphosis Alpha, it was hard to find the D&D rules. Prior to that I remember playing Milton Bradley's "Dogfight" I don't remember if I had "Risk" before or after.

[Finarvyn]

Jul 27, 2020 4:45:04 GMT -6 creativehum said:

Jul 25, 2020 13:56:04 GMT -6 Finarvyn said:

Even when I run 5E, I try to use the style and philosophy behind OD&D as my core. The notion that rules are guidelines, that I can "wing it" instead of looking up a rule, even the advantage/disadvantage dice mechanic … they all can emphasize a more relaxed game than the rulebooks might suggest.

This isn't a challenge to you running 5e, Fin. (I'm running an OD&D game on Wed. nights, but tonight I'll be playing in a 5e game!)

But I'm curious as to why you're running 5e instead of using OD&D. (You probably have explained this here, somewhere, already!)

My players like 5E's options. One of my players is new and has pretty much only played 5E. My wife likes the way the 5E magic system works a lot better than any previous edition. I do run OD&D sometimes, but nowadays I have found that running 5E with old school modifications works pretty well.

[retrorob]

I voted for #1 and #3. I'm a retro-judge and a researcher combined into one!

Since 2016 I run OD&D on a weekly basis, some 170 game sessions so far. At first it was just 3LBB, though from time to time I added some house rules to give my campaigns an unique flavour. Than I began to experiment with other texts, especially Chainmail (2d6-based combat), EPT (damage dice) and Holmes D&D. I'm also very interested into pre-D&D period (Blackmoor, Guidon manuscript, BTPBD). I guess I'll play some form of OD&D as long as I can. Why? The older I get, the more I value light rules. Why I came here? To meet new people, to learn new things, to understand the old texts better and to improve my written English

[Parzival]

I voted for #3. My only “pre” AD&D version of D&D was Holmes. I played mostly 1e until it started to morph into 2e, at which point I took a lateral, slightly “backwards” move to the BECMI/RC system, and that system is my primary interest now. OD&D for me is useful both as a study of the game’s origins and a source for ideas for house rules and approaches to BECMI. If I were to take up playing it, I’d probably use a retro clone like S&W (for which I have the PDF).
I’m here largely to glean ideas and study the original game, as it were.