So, I've been wanting to try out the first edition of AD&D. I have just a tiny bit of experience with basic D&D, and own a good bit of OSR products (just haven't had a chance to run anything yet).
One of my goals this year is to finally start running a campaign in my homebrew world.
What can everyone tell me about it? The good, the bad?
Any personal stories?
When I was in high school, before I ever had access to the internet, I took the time to sit down, read the 1E core books, and understand them. I've been running core 1E BtB for 30 years now. Because I learned it independently, not from word of mouth or crowd sourcing my understanding of the game, I've got my differences from how a lot of other people view the game. I hear some straight up absurd things. Like it's not possible to play BtB. Or 1E initiative is Kobayashi Maru. Such ideas are entertaining and quaint in their own right. But that people actually were playing the game and using the initiative system before these ideas came up kind of limits how much stock anyone should put in them.
When I first switched to core 1E, it had to do with the 2E splat books getting out of control, I got sick of lugging so many books around, and I wanted to streamline. So I went with 1E PHB, DMG, and MM. I was running a Greyhawk campaign, so WoG box set was included in the mix. Beyond that, I'd only take things on a case by case basis. Although I love all of FF cover to cover, so that entire book is in, as well. Nowadays, I've got a fantasy RPG that I like better than any version of D&D, but I go back to core 1E because it has a unique feel and a strong spirit that is unsurpassed anywhere else.
The DMG is overflowing with useful information. Most of it never gets used. I think most people agree on these two points. But this also true of the entire game. The introduction to the DMG specifically instructs the DM to drop a rule if it isn't working. Yet for some reason, people act is if they're compelled to either use the weapon vs armor tables all the time, or just skip using them entirely. The intro seems to suggest you should use them when they enhance the game and skip them when they don't.
For example, if two high level ragtag bands of adventurers parties clash, you're probably going to have to look up a couple of dozen different modifiers throughout the course of the battle. And for what? A measly plus or minus 1 or 2 here and there? Big pain, little payoff. On the other hand, if you've got scores of homogeneous 0th level fighting men in a mass combat, then each lookup is representing scores of combatants. And the broadsword's -2 vs platemail means only one out of 20 men will hit, whereas the footman flail's +2 vs platemail means 5 out of 20 will hit. Making the flail 5 times more effective in that case, which gets you a lot more bang for a lot less buck.
You won't find any exact quote explicitly stating this in the DMG. It's not something someone opining on the internet can point to to say "see, I'm right." It's a combination play experience and understanding the overall philosophy of the game that's going to lead to the conclusion I've drawn. It's not easily citable or searchable, so you've have to forgive the internet hivemind for missing it, but it's there.
The original Monster Manual is a work of genius. It's not just a collection of the classic monsters. And it's not just that at the time it came out, it broke new ground. No game previously ever had that much content. What I think makes it really brilliant goes largely unnoticed. Each of the monsters are carefully designed with strengths and weaknesses such that a very low level party could conceivably beat any monster in the book, but any monster in the book could conceivably absolutely menace a high level party. It's simply widely assumed, erroneously in my view, that the game is one of level stratification. That there are low-level monsters and high level monsters, and a high level party easily defeats low level monsters and high level monsters defeats a low level party. And unfortunately this became the guiding principle for 1.5E and beyond. Sort of a self-fulfilling prophecy.
One thing that makes 1E unique that cannot be replicated is it came about late enough in the evolution of RPGs that it had years worth of experience it could draw upon, but it was early enough that we were still figuring out where RPGs were headed, and it was also the most popular, leading RPG of its time. What it means is, it provides valuable support for a wide variety of playstyles. Again, much of it was ignored. But it's actually got some real great support for things like nautical adventures, or placing an emphasis on character interaction. Interfacing alignments, encounter reactions, racial preference, loyalty, and morale adds up to a pretty fleshed out system that is still free enough to do what you want with it.
I could probably fill a book with this stuff, but I'm going to have to end it with just one last one. I'd be remiss if I didn't talk about hit points. We have this idea that hit points aren't meat. And there's a huge discussion of this in both the PHB and the DMG, the DMG being more in-depth and detailed of course. And if you pay close attention to that then... it turns out, yeah, hit points ARE meat after all. The idea that they aren't was included just to justify high level PCs having more hit points than a horse. For 0th level characters, hit points are meat. For large creatures, animals, and beasts, hit points are meat. For almost all monsters, hit points are meat.
The only reason any emphasis at all is placed on hit points not being meat is because the exception to hit points being meat happens to be the very characters the players play. But even when you have a high level player character, it's not like a "hit" only ablates abstract hit point without taking any slice of meat at all. To the contrary, hits are assumed to be mostly superficial scratches. Still making contact. Still subjecting the defender to additional effects associated with the attack such as poison. It's also not like characters don't acquire additional meat as they level. The DMG uses Rasputin as an example of a real world figure that had a lot of physical hit points.
The hit points of a 5th level fighter might be roughly 50% physical. A quick and easy way to interpret hits on such a fighter is that the hits are 50% physical. Meaning the skill, luck, et al of the fighter is working to mitigate damage taken by half. If the mechanics had literally done exactly that, none of the gripes people make about hit points would hold. But there'd be a whole new set of gripes concerning the math involved in executing such a mechanic. Hit points, as is, provides you with the exact results of this hypothetical mechanic while sparing you the math. And for some reason, gamers on the whole are neither astute enough nor grateful enough to recognize and appreciate how hit points work.
The challenge of providing you both the good and the bad--the bad in particular--is that there's this unwritten rule in 1E (which actually is a written rule in some RPGs) that if you're not having fun, you're doing it wrong. While I can appreciate and recognize that some RPGs, some systems, and some mechanics can actually produce you headaches, that it is not impossible to have a game have "bad" parts, it's also the case that "bad" more often than not is an artifact of the evaluator and of the artifact. I can produce a small handful of things that I would do differently, they are very minor, and may not even be things you would ever use or encounter. There is no substantial portion of the overall system that I would call "bad."