Teasing AD&Ders

[murquhart72]

Gloat? No no no no no no no no no.











Well yes, but that was honestly just secondary and subconsciously, so there

[simrion]

themattjon said:

Like my own OD&D house rules.

Here is hope that you share your house rules. As a long time AD&Der (using the original stuff as expansions for early Basic/Expert D&D) I'm finding myself drifting ever closer to OD&D as the "ultimate" system to DM by...Sorry, trying to quote from Redpriest...I'm lousy at this

[Finarvyn]

falconer said:

We must TRANSFORM their EXISTING love into OD&D love, rather than try to CONVERT them AWAY from their games. Regards.

I think that Falconer is a Cleric of OD&D and is trying to do something similar to "turning undead" on the unenlightened.

[redpriest]

simrion said:

themattjon said:

Like my own OD&D house rules.

Here is hope that you share your house rules. As a long time AD&Der (using the original stuff as expansions for early Basic/Expert D&D) I'm finding myself drifting ever closer to OD&D as the "ultimate" system to DM by...Sorry, trying to quote from Redpriest...I'm lousy at this

I'll certainly share, when I have something worth sharing that is. First, as has been said before, I "must first unlearn what I have learned", by stripping away everything and just starting with the rules as if it were 1974 and I'd just put my Avalon Hill Midway game to the side and picked up this odd looking "miniatures" game.

Going form AD&D (since 1980) to D&D in a single bound is a leap for a superman, not a humble gamer.

One change I am totally jazzed about is the elimination of the thief from the game. Now, this isn't a house rule, of course, it's just something I'm happily looking forward to implementing. foster posted somewhere (don't have the thread handy) that the thief could be a slippery slope to RQ, and I tend to agree. As far as I'm concerned, it only makes a little more work for me as referee, in that, I have to be a bit more specific about exactly how a trap works, so that the players can describe to me how they attempt to circumvent it.

d**n, I'm as giddy as girl on prom night.

[murquhart72]

Hey, once you realize that (as an AD&Der) you house rule, you are actually an OD&Der, the better off you'll be!
It's all the same game, really! AD&D = by the book. OD&D = by the Ref. Everything else is essentially identical!

[redpriest]

themattjon said:

AD&D = by the book.

Opinion. Not fact

Even if you house-rule the heck out of AD&D, you still have a different bird than OD&D. I can tell that already. Especially when you consider that most house rules for AD&D tend to add structure to what is already much more highly structured than OD&D. The exceptions to this, of course, being the common house rules of ignoring weapon speed factor and adjustments to hit by armor class.

Schizophrenically (misuse of the word though), I will admit that AD&D is super-house-ruled version of OD&D, but I think it's sooo house ruled as to have nearly earned the right of being considered a new game. Certainly not as far afield as the more recent versions of the game of the same name, but still, far out enough.

Really though, I need to drop the AD&D -v- OD&D discussion at this point. Remember that it's 1974 for me and the only Advanced game that I think I know of it at this point is Advanced Panzerblitz.

[doc]

Actually AD&D (or,if you want, 1E) is simply a home-brewed system in exactly the same was as EPT and Arduin. All were games that took the core of OD&D and just added their own spin to them, then got them published. AD&D is considered "official" because it was put out by the same guys who put out OD&D.

Just think of it like this:

OD&D= 90% imagination, 10% rules.
AD&D= 50% imagination, 50% rules.

Doc

[James Maliszewski]

doc said:

Actually AD&D (or,if you want, 1E) is simply a home-brewed system in exactly the same was as EPT and Arduin.

It's not quite as simple as that, though. AD&D is at least partly an attempt by TSR to rein in the proliferation of home-brews and establish One True Way to play D&D, both because they felt that was good for the sales of future products (by making "official" important and by marginalizing publishers who created variants) and important for tournament play, which was growing in popularity at the time. Lots of people talk about how AD&D was just Gary's houseruled OD&D but that overstates the case, I think, because I don't believe Gary ever played AD&D as written. AD&D was (mostly) a mass market consumer product version of D&D, while OD&D is still clearly a hobbyist's game.

[murquhart72]

Yeah, that sounds about right. And Gary never played AD&D "by the book". He disliked psionics and weapon vs. AC adjustments (among other unpopular rules) and rarely used them.

[brumbar]

He disliked psionics and weapon vs. AC adjustments (among other unpopular rules) and rarely used them.

As much as I liked psionics from a player point of you it could quite easily unbalance a game. Example was a Ranger I played that at level 16 entered single combat with Orcus and after DEFEATING him went after Demogorgon. The one psionic attack killed the opponent if they failed. This let the Ranger slay Orcus and destroy one of the 2 heads of the other demon. Was fun at the time but where do you go from there.

[doc]

Then you get into the realm of player groups pulling out GDG&H and going out gunning for gods.

And that's never pretty.



Doc

[James Maliszewski]

doc said:

Then you get into the realm of player groups pulling out GDG&H and going out gunning for gods.

Funny you should mention that.

The other day I snagged a nearly mint 7th Printing of GDG&H for less than $20 and, as I was admiring my trophy, I re-read the foreword written by Tim Kask. As he explains it, the logic behind giving the gods stats was to set an upper limit of power and to show the absurdity of any who claimed to have a 44th-level character with hundreds of hit points. If Zeus only has 300 hit points, any player who claimed his character had in that range would be derided as a fool.

It just goes to show how naive the times were back then. To think that the head of a pantheon having only 300 hit points would make a Monty Hauler feel foolish is to underestimate the aberrant psychology of those guys

(It's also worth noting that the same foreword claims that GDG&H would be the last D&D supplement ever, with further development of OD&D being relegated to TSR's periodicals or left to individual referees. Now that I think about it, Kask may well have meant it when he said that, since Gary was already at work on AD&D at the time.)

[Deleted]

jamesm said:

It's also worth noting that the same foreword claims that GDG&H would be the last D&D supplement ever, with further development of OD&D being relegated to TSR's periodicals or left to individual referees.

Too bad that never literally happened!!! Funny the way money works... ;D

[murquhart72]

redpriest said:

Opinion. Not fact

All I can picture is someone squeezing their eyes shut, clapping their hands over their ears and singing "La la la, I can't hear you!" over and over.
Poor soul...