Dungeons & Dragons: Should We Lose?

I've been thinking about Fifth Edition (5e, D&D Next, whatever) lately. Specifically how well the game is designed to allow characters to avoid death. This new design principle seems to be in accord with the  concept of character death as inherently bad and almost always to be avoided. Why has this single aspect of the game been allowed to so clearly depart from earlier versions of the game?

Games have increasingly created mechanics to allow players and DMs to make character death almost an impossibility. The games that have born the name D&D through the last half century have retained certain verities that people automatically associate with the name. Alignment, Ability Scores, Saving Throws, d20s, Armor Class, Classes and the like have all remained with the game. But, death. Oh Death. Where is thy sting in D&D? Much like the save or die mechanic, it has been rendered stingerless. Or at least the poison sacs have been excised. 

Thus the question presents itself. Should we lose? I mean if we equate character death as equivalent to losing--for let's be honest, you can't really lose in D&D--is this something we should cultivate as a part of our game? The PC answer these days is "it depends". "If your players like that then yeah incorporate it. But if not, don't be a d*ck and kill the characters. And in the rarest of cases when it does happen, the death should be amazingly memorable and preferably cinematic." Poppycock. Which in case you didn't know is euphemism for soft sh*t. 

Yes, death should be a part of the game--and not just because that is the way they did it in the old days. I would venture as much to say death should happen at least 50% of the time. I mean if adventurers were as by-the-gawds-all-mighty as powerful as they are in 5e there wouldn't be any monsters left--especially as weak as the monsters are in today's monster manuals. Monsters should be as commensurably powerful as the characters themselves if the ecology is to make sense at all. But this is not about fantasy ecology.

Long ago, before RPGs even were, the soon to be creators of RPGs played wargames. In wargames you pitted two or more people against each other in a military campaign or scenario. The play sessions were adjudicated by a referee or moderator who decided the results of the actions of each side. The referee was best as an impartial judge, preferably a knowledgeable one. The referee needed to know the rules of the games well, military tactics and strategies, as well as the histories surrounding the time period, forces and battle in question. Being able to have all this at their fingertips made them a better judge of whether one player could push his Prussian troops through the river and up the hill before being ambushed by the opposing player. Calls were often made on the fly, as rules didn't cover every eventuality. In other words the referee made tons of rulings without consulting the rules. Some of it was simply a judgment call. And both sides expected the judge to be fair, impartial and they usually accepted the referee's call, but of course there were rules lawyers then too. 

The end result of such games was that someone always lost. A battle is like that. Both sides generally had clear objectives, and even when they didn't, they measured victory in generally military terms. Body counts, land controlled, resources preserved and the like. Early RPGs came out of such an environment. However, things began to shift. What can best be described as LARPing began to take place in David Wesley's Braunstein game where roleplaying became critical and objectives were less militaristic and more strategic and political. And a critical shift in this type of gaming was that you were clearly playing not just against other players, but the referee as well. Thus as the two strains of play began to merge, what evolved was a strange mix of cooperative-competitive roleplaying.

Though there was an understood tension between players, the primary tension existed between the foes and environment and the players. It wasn't much of a leap to realize that those foes and the environment were controlled by the referee. The Braunstein gestalt of getting info gradually revealed from the referee was taken to a whole new level here. Figuring out this new social contract went through some strange phases, like some referees running the game behind a full body screen. I imagine this idea came from those Braunstein type games where the referee was often in a different room. The point of all this is that there evolved in the game the idea that, in a very real way the referee was the enemy.

 

Diplomacy, the 1959 game that inspired Braunstein

Sure we talk all about impartiality, fairness, being a neutral arbiter, simply dispensing what the scenario and the dice say. But let's face it, the early Dungeon Master Guide and Players Handbook is rife with subtext and out right plain spoken text that enforces this concept of player against DM. However, there is a different subtext that reminds players and DMs alike that we are all at the table to have fun. And if players keep coming back then they are having fun. These are not new ideas either, it is simply the case that old school games also retain the understanding that creating tough environments and critters to outwit, and defeat the players is a part of the DMs job. 

In those wargame days of old, everyone at the table knew there would be a loser. And it was usually a 50/50 proposition that it would be you. Chess, checkers, wargames all retain the idea that there is a winner and a loser. Sure, you sometimes got upset when you lost, disappointed, defeated -- literally. But that was part of the game, part of the fun of the game. Ask any old grognard and they'll tell you they died in their first game or two, sometimes within the first half hour of the game. I did. And we came back with a vengeance. We had to get back in there! We were hooked. Here was a cool new challenge that we knew could be beat, mastered, and in ways we had never experienced before! This challenge had the added thrill of never being the same! You couldn't crack just one code, there were literally an infinite variety of combinations in this game that could be "defeated"! Luckily for us, rolling up characters back in the day could be done in five minutes or less. I even had one friend who showed up at like our fourth game with a whole three ring binder of characters he had rolled up to sub in if one of the others died. (As an aside this kind of play is, I imagine, the inspiration for DCC RPG's Zero level Funnel concept. Which is brilliant by the way.)

Now, is it possible to play another way. Yes, of course it is. Such a playstyle as described above can go wrong. DMs can lose sight of some of the subtext and become outright unfair. The early books addressed this too--natural attrition would deprive those DMs from players when their players realized playing with that DM was no fun. The other end of the extreme were the DMs that forgot the other subtext and became Monty Hall DMs. They removed or made challenges far too easy and rewarded players far too much. The old books also assert that players will find such games boring and of no challenge, and eventually leave. Sadly, this last assertion proved much less true than the first.

And note, I have italicized of no challenge. This is because I want to highlight the idea that the early creators of D&D expected players of the game to want a challenge. They expected things to be difficult. This is reiterated in the words of Tim Kask when he pointed out that when they heard of groups with level twenty something characters they were floored. They couldn't see the challenge in such high levels. They got a character to 6th, 7th level and retired them in a castle somewhere. There was just no challenge in such play. This was the old wargaming ethos. And it was the ethos that filled early D&D. 

But that was not enough for some people. Evidently enough players wanted play that was, if not Monty Hall, that at least allowed them to enjoy seeing their character heroically overcome all challenges and not die. They wanted to be a hero! Thus they wanted to engineer into the game the impossibility of such "killer" DMs from occurring. Rules which made it more and more difficult to die if you played right. You only died if you didn't know the rules well enough. And when it did occur when players were "playing right" it could be laid at the feet of DMs "making it too hard by not following the rules". Encounters should be balanced and rolls should be fudged to keep the story going. And of course we could always make PCs so powerful that they could obliterate most obstacles. It allowed players to stride out of character creation as heroes already--able and willing to tackle whatever carefully balanced encounter the DM threw at them. Sure, they liked a challenge, and one in which if they didn't play right they might have a chance of dying. Might.

Are we talking about the dragon here or the player?

The game became something different. It became a story telling game. It wasn't even really a game so much as storytelling mechanism. Is such play wrong? No, of course not. It is just very different from old school play. But that is not my question. My question is -- Should we lose in 5e? I think the answer to that is no. It's not that kind of game. The point of todays D&D has become to tell a story, not to play a game. I mean do we die? Sure we do. We just had a death in a third level campaign last Sunday. Full on death. It was kind of a quirky situation, but the 3rd level monk died. I will say we have lots less death than in my 3.5, Pathfinder and 4e games, but again, the development of D&D has been towards avoiding death if it all possible. Death in 5e is more akin to death in a superhero game--rarely if at all happens. And if it does it should be memorable, part of the ongoing story. It is, I think, a default assumption of the game. Optional rules besides, there has a been a plethora of old school 5e hacks to try and make the game more like old school play, but my experience with such mods is that they seem somehow ill-suited to the character driven storytelling experience that is 5e. 

Do I like this style of play? Well, the answer to that is not really. I mean I do participate in 5e and we have some fun times--you should have fun with whatever past-time you engage in. But it is not my "thing". I actually like game. And frankly I also like stories. But I much preferred the story that developed through playing D&D the old way than in the new way where someone thinks up a story beforehand that I participate in. I prefer the old school way of playing where losing may not be the point of playing, but it is certainly a part of the fun that keeps me coming back. In my opinion it makes coming back all that much more of an imperative. 

Rising from the ashes!

It's a Different World for Dungeons & Dragons

Recently, on a AD&D social media page, a member lamented the fact that on two different online locations he had tried to approach the subject of comparing authentic old school play with an eye towards defining the changes made in the game -- only to be rebuffed by OSR "modernists". That last term is mine not his. By OSR modernists, I mean people who are playing with clones and simulacra of Classic D&D who see reference to the original TSR materials as somehow subpar to what is being produced currently. Many of these players are actively seeking to publish their own material or are interested only in playing in the new world of OSR creativity. These I call OSR modernists. 

I suppose they could be contrasted to OSR "purists" that seek to play using the actual TSR rulesets and materials. I definitely consider myself more of a purist, but I certainly buy, read and use lots of new OSR material. In the end I'm kind of a play and let play kind of guy. I may be philosophically interested in defining what D&D is and what its origins and original intents may have been (by and large the content of this blog for the past eight plus years), but I am not one to decry that someone is having their fun wrong. For whatever it's worth, I am much more concerned about what we call our fun than what our fun actually is. Definitions matter after all. 

What I wanted to address today is the rather stout rebuff this person received from what was masquerading as a Classic or Advanced edition public forum and in reality was an OSR Modernist environment. Not only am I bothered by such situations, since I consider them to be perpetuating a falsehood, but it also confirms a growing realization I am coming to. Namely that today's world is a very different world for D&D.

I mean, not even considering the giant elephant in the room on the coast sporting a tiny wizard's hat, we have now witnessed a vast and global division in the OSR community. The schism is far worse than even what I pointed out above. We have the Rainbow OSR which is strongly influenced by the socially conscious Y & Z generations and the alt-Right OSR which is largely a reaction to the former . Or, who knows, maybe the former is a reaction to the latter. I myself have been torn in two by this division. I socially find myself very sympathetic to the Rainbow OSR causes all the while finding myself very much aligned to the alt-Right gaming preferences. I prefer my Drow dark, my orcs evil and my classic swords and sorcery without social health warning labels. Maybe I'm an insensitive, middle-classed, Christian, white male for saying so or maybe I'm just old--but I like to think that I simply like the games the way they were written originally.

I'm not taking a moral stand here. My own daughter played a lesbian character in my recent game, and another player we have is openly gay himself. But some will see my lack of judicious distinction and consideration for filtering past material as implying a hidden agenda. I can't argue that, because, well, I acknowledge that there certainly may be certain worldviews portrayed in our past that is today seen in a very different light. See -- torn.

So can I see the need for a community that is playing with very similar rulesets to the TSR versions, but have been scrubbed clean from the wrongs of the past, and are producing incredible new material? Yes indeed. But I can also admire James' Raggi's work on Lamentations of the Flame Princess and Geoffrey McKinney's work on his Carcosa material. Classic swords and sorcery old school goodness there with definitely un-politically correct content. I suppose in some cases such materials might be considered black books, banned material or a sort of social porn. I never would have thought that such a thing happened after D&D fought so hard against being censored and banned in the 80's. 

But social justice is not the only cross upon which the game as been crucified. No, today is the age of rich digitally produced art, video games, instant gratification and social presence. Almost the exact opposite of what the game was originally. Sure, D&D created the fantasy video game, but in titanic Greek fashion the son has dismembered the father and thrown him in the pit. Railing against the presentation of modern gaming books, slick production values and quick to print on demand availability is as hopeless a cause as railing against what is lost when our sins have been left behind. There is no right answer here, because there is no answer. Only progress of the existential machine. 

Before long even the original books will be gone and but a memory. Ghosts of a golden age? Or an age of barbarism superseded? 

And Confirmation from Skip Williams

The boys at Grogtalk did it again with their excellent Skip Williams interview! Good work on the depth and breadth of questions, and their respectful and insightful way of interacting with the old guard of the game. Skip has a unique perspective in that he has stayed in the business up to 3rd edition and beyond. And Grogtalk, being focused on Advanced Dungeons & Dragons pre-1985, often probes for insights into the time of transition between Original D&D and the Advanced edition. Getting to know Skip was a delight. I knew his name primarily from 2e, which sported numerous titles by his hand, and then of course in the 3rd edition, which he helped develop. But it's always cool to hear about how one of the old guard like Skip got into the game and his early days with TSR. The interview is a fun watch or listen, and I highly recommend it. 

This time, however, instead of a play by play, like I did with Tim Kask's interview, I just wanted to point out Skip's reply to James' question about the evolution of AD&D and how Skip perceived the shift. This is not an exact quote, but he put it even more directly than Tim's opinion. Skip said he saw AD&D as an effort to codify the way that D&D was being played among TSR employees and early pioneers. Where Tim was a bit more vague in alluding to guys didn't know how to DM like they DM'ed, Skip was more direct in his opinion. AD&D was the game they recognized, with the rulings they were using encoded now in a new edition. 

I don't want to stretch Skip's words, in fact, I don't want to to seem to be implying that everyone was playing by AD&D rules. I don't assume this is what Skip was saying either. Many of the old guard, Tim Kask and Frank Mentzer seem to prefer the earlier original version, and run this version when they are running games at conventions. I think the AD&D rules encapsulated a generally defined region within which DM's responsible for the evolution of the game generally ran their sessions. Now, having said that, there was also sort of a gonzo ethos among early gamers that I also think influenced their playstyle. They weren't beholden to rules in hard and fast fashion. Which brings up a truly interesting discussion point for another time--the most recent KODT issue played some with this very idea. 

Today, I just wanted to call out the point that my view that AD&D encapsulated the game as it was intended and played by the early founders seems to be backed up by more than one voice.   

Clarifying Thoughts with Tim Kask

Recently, Tim Kask gave an interview on the highly esteemed GrogTalk show, where Dan and James have hosted a number of the original D&D crew. Dan and James are a great listen; they are honest, straightforward, humorous and display an eagerly curious and humbly deep approach to the game that has filled a void in today's 1e community. And of course, Tim Kask is a true gem; also honest, straightforward, and a delightful storyteller to boot. He is simply fun to watch and to listen to. And deserves a great deal of respect, not just because of his roots and history with gaming, but because he is an awesome gentleman.

Now, I must mention, that in a search of the "ground" of D&D and its fertile subsoil, anyone we talk with is bound to give us their opinion of what occurred lo those five decades and more ago. But Tim brings a unique perspective on two counts. One, he was one of the very first at TSR, and two he was clearly a close confidant of Gary Gygax. The mere fact that Tim was asked to help "midwife", as he puts it, AD&D into existence speaks volumes for the trust Gary had in him and his, strongly held opinions aside, insight into what the game should and should not be.

Far be it from me to have to defend Tim's pedigree in the D&D history department, but original sources don't get any more authentic than Tim. Moreover, his story doesn't change much in the telling. I've listened to at least three different renditions in which he tells this story, and the basic story is the same. I go to the trouble to point all this out, because I am going to quote him here to back up some of my own thinking. And I feel this thinking is sound, based on the fact that it comes from a damn near impeccable source.

So about a quarter of the way into the interview, Dan eventually asks Tim about his "midwifery" of the AD&D game, and in doing so mentions that he knows Tim's preferred version is OD&D when Tim responds.

"Well, my game of choice is frozen in amber right between, forget Swords and Spells, that's for minis. Right before that and the publication of AD&D."

Just in case you aren't aware, this is considered the Original plus supplements age. It included almost all classes, races and optional rules in AD&D, but was still a very open ended game that encouraged lots of freedom and flexibility.

"The operating ethos of OD&D was, "We are the Borg." See an idea, take it. See a setting, use it. Spin it into a new web. It's what I do with the Wheel of Blame. You give me things and it's up to me to weave a story out of them. It's like story dice. So, we wove tapestries. That's what we did. We wove tapestries, and we tried to show other people how to do it."

This is an important statement, and is backed up by the phrase "imagine the hell out of it!" This was a game that encouraged, even required improvisation, creation and radically different approaches to the game, its milieu and the rules. This was the fire in a bottle that was the original game. And in my opinion was the fire that blossomed into a creative inferno with the OSR. It was also an incredible success in terms of the last part of the above quote, "and we tried to show other people how to do it." That they did, in spades. more on this to come. 

"At that point in time, Gary said, "Alright it's time." Now, there were a lot of reasons we did AD&D. One of the primary reasons was monetary. We made stupid amounts of money on the tournaments that we ran at conventions. Stupid amounts. For what it was back then. Different economy. But stupid amounts of our operating capital and our profits came [from tournaments]. We would have 400 people sign up for our tournaments. Well there were only 1100 people at that particular con. We started making regional cons bigger because of the draw we had. We had a DM shortage. O.K., we can't train DMs to think like we do, let's straighten out the rules."

Now, this is one of the most interesting statements I think has ever been made about the genesis of AD&D. Not the part about needing to maximize the money, or create a set of rules that could facilitate tournament play. That is fairly common knowledge. But the way Tim puts it when he says, "we can't train DMs to think like we do" opens a window into the possible etiology of their thinking. And this isn't contradicted by what Tim has said previously. He has said that Gary and he were simultaneously shocked and entertained by the letters they got from players saying that DMs were running games where players were fighting and killing gods! The extreme nature of some of the games inspired by Original Edition clearly showed that D&D had been turned into something they had never intended. But how could this be if they were playing the same edition? Well, saying that "we can't train DMs to think like us" possibly means that there was a style of the game that old schoolers were used to playing with 0e that you had to be of a certain mind to understand. You certainly could take it in crazy new directions, but that is not what they intended. In this light, much of what Gary says in RolePlaying Mastery makes so much more sense. I could go on now, but there's more to come. 

"So, Gary told me on a Thursday or Friday what's your next week look like. Or no, that was a Tuesday,  I said well I put a magazine to bed on Thursday, meaning it goes off to the printer for the final shot, which means I had four or five, six days before they would come back, depending upon where the weekend fell. He said, "Clear your next week." "Okay," I did. So I cleared my next week. He didn't tell me why. I came in, and well, over the weekend, we are still in the old gray house, across from the card station, next to the Pizza Hut. Well, he had gone around and taken every bulletin board, every cork board in the whole damn place down. He screwed every one of the boards to the walls! He covered every available square foot of his office. He had two windows in his office, he had the best office in the house, because he had two windows. He covered every other square foot and had two standing up against the wall. I looked at it and said "Okay, I guess I won't ask what we are gonna do." He said "We are gonna re-do the game." "Oh!" So I believe, it might be that Kevin's wife was hanging around then. Whoever was on phone duty was given orders that no calls were to be forwarded to either of us unless it was our wives. And we closed the door, and there was a little pile, I say a little pile, there were seven or eight brown box sets which we proceeded to cut up and mark up and trashed generally as we put them on the different bulletin boards. "Okay, this is for Basic and this is for Advanced. Okay, in Basic how are we gonna modify this?" And we put up the notes on how it's gonna be modified for Basic. And basically over the course of, well, it was all that week and most of Monday and possibly part of Tuesday the following week, that's what we did. We took breaks for lunch. He'd walk home. I'd go across the street to Pizza Hut or go up to the A&W or you know, whatever and we'd have lunch and we'd come back And that's how AD&D was born. And sometime later he showed up--we used to use these big gray cardboard boxes for manuscripts--and a couple of weeks later he showed up with the first manuscript and started churning them out. Because this was all typewriters back then. We had no digital files. We had to rewrite it every time. And Gary was a machine when it came to punching out typewritten pages. He was an absolute machine. And, it was decided that Mike Carr would be the editor and so he gave it to Mike to edit and then, on a Friday, and it was years and years later that I told Mike about this. On a Friday, Mike was supposed to have it back on such and such a Friday. Mike was a workhorse, god love him, I'm still friends with him. He had it finished before Wednesday before the deadline and Gary literally dropped it on my desk and said "Check this out and see how he did." I was appalled. I was being asked to check the work of my co-worker. I was really embarrassed. But I did it, and I brought it back on Monday and I said, "he did a great job." And so Mike became the editor for the series.

I left this in not for the newness of if, as I said this part has been shared by Tim multiple times before, and not just because it is a great story--because it is--but to point out the seemingly arbitrary way in which the division was originally made. Now, I know this is just a rough start to the process, and I'm sure the hefty manuscripts that Gary subsequently turned out only partially resembled the initial brainstorm that Kask and Gygax undertook. It would be interesting to know how much of a match there was. But the fact is, this massive revision of the game, if it were to be the masterwork, would have seemed to have required a more elegant masterplan. Certainly Gary had a specific vision in mind of what the game was going to be. Apparently not. This point informs what I believe was the organic nature of the development of D&D. We are going to expand on this as Tim expounds further.

After this, the next question Dan asks is how decisions were made in cutting up the original books and how decisions were made about what went in AD&D and what went in Basic. He also points out that we are talking about Holmes here, since that was the first Basic rewrite. Tim again clarifies,

"There's a distinction. The Holmes edition was way, way way watered down with the violence and the demons and the devils and the dragons and the lethality was way watered down. Because we wanted that to be for neophytes. Whether there were children of 9 or young adults of 17, we wanted a watered down version. Also we were taking tremendous shit from the religious right who thought we were calling up demons. We laugh about it now, that was real back then. They threatened our livelihood. Had they gotten more traction, they would have hurt us. As it was they brought us a lot of negative publicity and for awhile I'm sure they dampened sales. So, Holmes was a step away from that. It's not gonna have the dark stuff.

This is interesting as well. The idea that Holmes was designed as a reaction to the Satanic Panic. This is the one thing I was unaware of, because Holmes was published in 1977, and this seems a tad early for the Satanic Panic, James Dallas Egbert disappeared in 1979, but regardless of these Tim was there, so I don't doubt him. And it is clearly stated elsewhere that Holmes was designed to be a beginner's game. Anyone can see that AD&D did not make clear the way to actually start playing the game. It was perhaps ore clear than Original had been, but Advanced was not for newbies to gaming any more than Original had been. Holmes is clearly for people new to the game. And it is also clear fro the frequent references that to get more one had to go to AD&D. It failed at this, and even Gary admits as much when, in Dragon 35, he forecasts an entirely new game to follow in Holmes' footsteps, what we'll call true basic. But, that's another story. 

"Rules heavy AD&D was [because] we needed rules to run the tournaments by. "These are the rules." We dropped the guise of Tom Bombadil, making it up on our own. Making it up as we went. Everybody's campaign being different. Now, to this day, everybody's campaign is different. To this day, unless you're one of these RAW goose steppers about rules as written, everybody's campaign uses different interpretations of the rules. Let's face it, you got six buddies sitting there and they all think rule so and so is stupid, then you modify it to whatever you all can agree to. That's the ethic of the old school of war gaming. With minis. That's where it all started. Miniatures are the beginning, they are the root-stock of our hobby--are miniatures replaying at the world. Prussian wargames. Flats(?). Those are the roots of our hobby today. The original game was written for minis players. Because Gary didn't know who to aim it at, other than minis players, because it came out of a minis campaign. Minis guys were campaigning all along. A club like the Minnesota group, a club like the Lake Geneva group, a club like the Chicago group. Okay what are you buying this year. Well I'n gonna field up the Prussians, okay I'm gonna field out the Hanniverians. Clubs would do that. Tom Wham was known for his Brunswickers. Black uniforms with yellow facings. Now, if Tom's Brunswickers were from 1746, they fought in the Napoleonic wars, they fought in any kind of war they found a place in, because that's the way minis groups did it. Alright? So that is the ethical, the moral basis of where this whole hobby started. Never forget that. Know that and you'll have a better understanding of it. We are a collegiate group because we share a very small shared interest and a lot of people think we're weird. Well we've always kind of thumbed our noses at 'em."

And here it is. The real key, I feel to this article that I perhaps never truly appreciated. Thank you Mr. Kask! And I think we, as roleplayers, are averse to realizing this point. Our game is an outgrowth of miniature wargames. Why does OD&D read the way it does? Because that is the way that minis supplements were written, and quite frankly, read and understood. Minis players understood what he was referring to, and most of the early D&D players, contributors and TSR employees were wargamers. And as much as we might not like our connection to this aspect of gaming, it is strongly ingrained into the foundation of the game. Not so much in the Original rules themselves, but in the style in which they were intended to be played. What I never understood until I listened to Tim Kask in this interview, is that minis players had style of playing that was assumed in the the Original ethos. They were, of course, used to making rulings and rules up on the fly, and changing them when they came up with something better or that they liked more. As Tim points out with Tom Wham's Brunswickers, that they didn't just fight in Napoleonic wars, they would fight anywhere he could get a war up. This idea, that we aren't just playing "strict by the book" is what minis players also brought to the game. When the fantasy supplement came around all of a sudden anything was possible. However, you had a general agreement that you wouldn't go completely crazy. You kind of knew generally that there were some accepted limits, some boundaries to keep verisimilitude.  I think that is what Tim is talking about that we couldn't train DMs to think like us. The new generation of DMs weren't miniature gamers, and they they didn't have that collective background. They were going a bit crazy. It's like a mini gamer coming to an 1920's era aerial battle with UFOs run by a godlike alien beings, or pilots who upbuilt their biplane so quick and easy they have laser canons, guided missile systems and fission bombs. At least that's what I'm hearing here. And this is not contradicted by Tim in earlier speeches either. In speaking of those Monty Hall games where over the top PCs are overthrowing the Gods he points out, "what's the point?" The early guys saw 6th level as huge, and that the fun was in the early struggle, blood, sweat, laughter and tears in grappling with dangers that you barely overcame to arise a hero. By that time you retired, became a desk general, inherited a keep and 1,000 men. So, at least in part, AD&D was an attempt to spell out the scope of the game they were playing, the way they were playing it. An this argument goes to my recent post on defining the possible set of all D&D worlds. Notide that Tim says we dropped the guise of Tom Bombadil. The make it all up as you went along was fine, but they weren't imagining just any old thing, there was an ethos and a style they wanted to impart as well as a set of rules. They now needed to craft a game that could not only unleash the imagination, but define it within a set of relatively well understood boundaries. Or else if you changed too much, as Gary has said in Roleplaying Mastery and elsewhere, you weren't playing D&D anymore. 

Later when talking about Magic Missile and the differing opinions on how it should work, particularly with Len Lakofka, Tim says something else enlightening,

"As I recall one time Lenny was espousing the spell spoint system.Well that was the worst abomination I had ever heard. And Gary was first time I that showed up in a one of the fanzines, Alarums & Excursions, one of those, that's the only name I remember, Lee Gold's old thing, and I read it to him and I swear to God it visibly shuddered. What a horrible Idea! Cause he saw it as making magicians more powerful, cause if they had all those points at their beck and call then they had more choices. That's why you have to read The Dying Earth by Jack Vance, you have to read at least one of those books to understand how magic works in the old game and why it worked that way. He says from the very beginning, anybody that ever asked him, where does that stupid magic come from? Jack Vance and Dying Earth. He's always been real up front about that. And if you don't like it, well, we were always of the opinion back then that if you didn't like it change it! But then we had to do AD&D and we said quit changing it."

Len Lakofka was known for his radical changes to the core rules and his "out there" ideas, such as the Pyrologist, a specialist in fire magic not to mention the spell point system referred to above. The point worth making here is that Len was thinking in the Original mode here. He was taking the genie in the OD&D bottle and pushing it for all it was worth. There is nothing wrong with coming up with a spell point system, or a Pyrologist. And OD&D encouraged those kinds of things. The only reason Gary poo-poos the idea is because it will overpower Magic Users, of which he was not fond. I don't know if they would have said they couldn't get Len to think like they did, but they did shoot him down, often it seems. Now, Len was a wargamer, so clearly it isn't just being a wargamer that makes you think like Gary did. He did have an idea in mind of what should and shouldn't be done in his game, perhaps apart from his wargaming roots. Thus the minis roots helps us understand the make it up as you go sort of ethos that defined the Original game, but the unleashing of "fantasy" perhaps extended the boundaries further than they were comfortable. The idea too, expressed at the end of this quote that if you don't like it change it, which even though it has been reiterated in every edition ever written, was really only adhered to in the original version of the game.

And then in an effort to clarify and perhaps avoid edition wars, James seems to want to make it all okay. Tim generally agrees, but clarifies.

"The thing that makes us grogs consistent is, you know that we're gonna be close. There's gonna be little idiosyncrasies. Just like if you go to France, you got a good idea of what's going on, but there's little idiosyncrasies. Screw the language, cause everybody speaks English to one degree or another, so English aside. You go to Portugal, you know what's going on, but there's gonna be little idiosyncrasies. Well, you go to any of us old school guys, you're gonna know what's going on and we're each going to have our own little idiosyncrasies. But you're gonna have enough of a framework to feel comfortable being there. I was very reluctant for many years to play in celebrity games. I didn't want to wave my bare fanny in front of all those people. You know, showing my ineptitude. But, I got comfortable with it. Finally because, what it was they were doing was ... for charity and stuff. Okay, so what? I wave my fanny [and it] ends up being bare and waving in the breeze, alright I'll follow along with everybody else. And I learned to live with the idiosyncrasies of people running those celebrity games. They were all basically the game that they were running, but not quite. All the games that we play are the game that we're running but not quite. And that's good. You know, the bottom line is if you're having fun, fine. If you're not having fun, find something else to do, a different game to play, a different DM, whatever the case. A different group to play in, if you're playing style doesn't fit their playing style. God knows there's enough playing styles out there, just judging from all the interesting Facebook pages that I've been asked to join. There's some things, there's some playing styles I wouldn't, I would just rip their throats out. The thing that really, really is aggravating me and totally understandable is, why do we have to have, what is it, 30 some player classes now? Are you kidding me?! Our thief, our Hobbit, started as a fighter. He was always a fighter, 'cause we didn't have the thief class back then. But why do you need, you know, an Ethiopian Sun Dancer or, you know, I mean, my God I saw a list on Facebook the other day of character classes that have proliferated down into 5e. Geezus! Are you kidding me?! You gotta have one of those Zocchi d100 just to decide what you're gonna be! And then you've got all the rules that only apply to you! Are you kidding me?! There's way too much complication. I suggested on my video last night that all the DMs that are locked in here and looking for something to do, is watch some Forged in the Fire episodes, look at the weapons they create, and then you can make your own chart of how those incredibly wicked and vicious weapons are really good against this kind of armor, but really not so good against [another], and you can really write yourself into or spin yourself into a Mobius strip I guess. You know how detailed do you need it to be to sit around with a bunch of people and have fun?"

I know what Tim is getting at here, but honestly, the snarky part of me wants to answer, well apparently at least 540 pages if you count the AD&D DMG and PHB. Now, Tim might disagree with this, as his favorite edition has far fewer pages, but according to the line of thought presented above AD&D was, at least in part, created because DMs weren't having the "right kind of fun". I suppose, if my snarkiness were to be analyzed in any depth it would have to be said that you need far fewer pages to have fun, but lots more to have the "right" kind of fun. And clearly AD&D is a lot closer to the "right" kind of fun Gary had in mind as the game developed. To truly give it the definition and direction he desired you had to understand and come to terms with the spirit as expressed in AD&D--a much more focused Genie. 

Though as we all know, AD&D can be pushed off the rails too. Monty Hall games are as possible there as anywhere. The difference was you really have to stretch your acceptance of the "rules are only suggestions" guideline to go all out wacko in AD&D that you do in the Original version. Antyhign was possible in Original D&D and noone could really say anything about it. I surmise that Gary and the early writers knew this, and so they had to define a game that followed the spirit they had in mind and the result of that effort of communication was AD&D. I also know that Gary even rarely used all of the rules or restrictions in AD&D when when played. He violated level limits and other seemingly sacrosanct rules in his own game, but he did so keeping the spirit of the game he had in mind. After all AD&D still mentions that there is space for flexibility in the game and even rules alterations--as long as you are staying within the spirit of the AD&D game. That was, I believe the ultimate purpose of AD&D. I believe it is the epitome of the spirit of the game Gary originally intended.

...But then I have to answer the question of why they continued to publish the Basic game ...

Defining the Set of All Possible D&D Worlds

Caveat lector: I am not an expert in philosophical logic, nor set theory, though I've taken classes in both subjects. So don't take my use of these clearly technical terms too strictly. 

Several times in the Dungeons & Dragons canon the concept of other worlds are mentioned as a part of the expansive vision that is D&D. In fact the first time it sees actual men is in the 3rd little brown book, The Underworld and Wilderness Adventures:

"OTHER WORLDS:

There should be no "natural laws" which are certain. Space could be passable because it is filled with breathable air. On the other hand the stars could be tiny lights only a few hundred miles away. Some areas of land could be gates into other worlds, dimensions, times, or whatever. Mars is given in these rules, but some other fantastic world or setting could be equally as possible. This function is up to the referee, and what he wishes to do with it is necessarily limited by his other campaign work. However, this factor can be gradually added, so that no sudden burden will be placed upon the referee." (p. 24)

And of course, Gary Gygax had already created the wargame rules for Burroughs' world Barsoom.

So even before D&D hit the shelves the idea of having fantastic adventures on other worlds was forming as a foundational aspect of the game. Of course this makes sense, as by the time Gary was creating D&D with those around him, speculative fiction of all types were based on this idea of strange and fantastic worlds of adventure. Exactly how this fit into D&D would become more clear as the rules developed. 

In the Blackmoor supplement Gary refers to the Blackmoor campaign as Arneson's "world".

"This writer always looks forward with great anticipation to an adventure in the "BLACKMOOR" campaign, for despite the fact that I co-authored the original work with Dave, and have spent  hundreds of hours creating and playing DUNGEONS & DRAGONS, it is always a fresh challenge to enter his "world". I can not recommend him more highly than simply saying that I would rather play in his campaign than any other — that other dungeonmasters who emulate Dave Arneson will indeed improve their games." (intro)

So we see that there is a growing idea that different campaigns are seen as different worlds. And later in Temple of the Frog we read of the usurper High Priest, that "This fellow is not from the world of Blackmoor at all, but rather he is an intelligent humanoid from another world/dimension." Thus we see the admission that these D&D worlds were connected to each other in some way and travel between them was possible. Again the game was based on fantastic fiction in which such things were a given. In fact that this genre had opened up the possibility of an infinite number of such worlds -- the imagination was literally the limit i.e. there are no limits!

And by the time we get to Eldritch Wizardry, we see the development of astral travel, dimension door, dimension walking and probability travel. Other worlds are literally opening up before our very eyes, as well as how to access them. The beautiful thing here is how the game is being woven to encompass all such possible worlds. And by the time of Gods, Demigods & Heroes we are encompassing the worlds of the Gods as well.

This expansive vision of an infinite possibility of worlds was eagerly grasped by early players. So much so that it began to create some concern among the game's creators. Regardless of their injunction to take the game to the limits, literally "imagine the hell out of it!" They saw the need to begin to reign in the extremes some players were going to. Admittedly the ones most frequently written about were Monty Hall type campaigns, super high level campaigns and so called god-killing campaigns. These and other hyperimaginative worlds were likely what Gygax had in mind when he cautioned against taking the rules so far as to create something "so strange as to not be AD&D."

I've written before on the "reigning in" quality of 1e, and the many reasons Gygax may have felt for doing so. But the one I am interested in today is the defining the set of all possible D&D worlds. 

The term "the set of all possible worlds" is used in formal logic to define the terms of truth in modal, or propositional logic. So, for instance, if I make an assertion such as "the sky is always blue", the extent to which this statement is true depends on certain conditions. For instance the sky is blue during the day. And, on the moon the sky is not blue. The condition sets under which the statement is true is often called a "world". And this idea, that there are sets of worlds can be used to extend truth claims, For instance the set of all possible worlds is all the worlds that could ever be said to exist. 

That's about as far as we need to go with the idea. But if you didn't find that helpful, lets just think of all the possible fantasy worlds that could be imagined under the basics of D&D concepts. We don't need to think far to come up with some ready examples -- Metamorphosis Alpha, Gamma World, Boot Hill, Top Secret, Gangbusters, Hyperborea of Astonishing Swordsmen and Sorcerers of Hyperborea, McKinney's Carcosa, the world of Dungeon Crawl Classic RPG, Yoon Suin, The Slumbering Ursine Dunes, Fever Dreaming Marlinko, Veins of the Earth, The Misty Isles of Eld, Vornheim, The Midderlands, The Gardens of Ynn, A Thousand Thousand Suns, Woodfall and countless others that have followed this tradition. 

But then consider, the types of campaign worlds available for AD&D. The official products: Greyhawk, Forgotten Realms, Al Qadim, Kara Tur, Maztica, Dark Sun, Dragonlance, Lankhmar, Ravenloft, SpellJammer, and Planescape. With the exception of perhaps the last three, all of these are largely medieval type fantasy games with the variation being in flavor and culture more than mechanic influencing content. AD&D in the middle east, in east Asia, in space, in horror, in a dying world, etc etc. The difference between the worlds of AD&D and the worlds mentioned in the previous paragraph are that the game changes very little from setting to setting. This was of course, by design. The DMG clearly stated that DMs should stay within the bounds the First Edition set as being legitimately AD&D. Thus the set of all possible AD&D worlds became noticeably smaller than the set of all D&D worlds. 

The marvelous thing is that as AD&D was released, the outcry of those who feared losing the raw, imaginative freedom of the original game, brought about a preservation of the original power in the basic line. First with Holmes, then with Moldvay Cook. Despite the fact that the B/X line became more and more staid and stable through TSR releases, eventually reaching a level of depth and complexity through the BECMI and Rules Cyclopedia that it was in the end as tightly restricted as AD&D. But the premise of the basic game, that original genie in a bottle could be turned to in a way that AD&D was not quite meant to. 

And this was fine. AD&D was meant to be one thing and B/X another. B/X was a toolbox begging to be houseruled and changed and invented in your own image. Hence the basic chassis of the game was what gave birth to most of TSR's other RPGs. It is a little harder to take such liberties with AD&D. Sure, a DM can choose to ignore a few detailed rules or implement a few options from the menu. But In almost all games the classes were the same, magic worked the same and so did combat. Not so easy to assume this was the case with a game grown from the original roots. This was the very reason quoted in Dragon magazine: that the game needed formalized so that other players and DMs could get together and play under a system that was agreed upon. That system was AD&D. 

Now, truthfully, as mentioned above, D&D also became a fairly tame beast as the company evolved. So much so it was generally dropped and the game became one thing in the late 90's until the buyout. What we have seen in the OSR is that people have been incredibly inspired by the raw power of the original game. In fact do yourself a favor and head on over to DriveThruRPG and set the filters to D&D OGL, 1e, Setting Guides. Yep. I didn't find any. Reset it to Basic/Classic and there's a literal deluge. The supports being produced for 1e are very much like what was produced in the old days. This doesn't mean they can't get gonzo wild and push the boundaries of what's possible. They simply do so within the bounds set by Gygax when he outlined the rules some four decades ago. 

For me, I don't see this as limiting, not at all. I see the B/X game as the version of D&D with infinite possibilities, containing a vast almost endless set of possible worlds. Worlds composed of medieval fantasy, weird magic, strange, alien beings, star spanning science fiction, irradiated post apocalyptic landscapes, twisted graveyards of abysmal horror, spies, crime bosses, desperadoes and cyber-tech geniuses. And AD&D, one of the finest games ever written for the possibilities contained in a certain genre of medieval fantasy. A set of worlds admittedly more limited, but still filled with millions of fantastic possibilities. 

The Rising Price of AD&D

How many of us have gaming shelves at home that look something like the above? I know I do. In fact I'm flat out of room in our rather modest home. That, however, has not stopped me from seeking to round out my collection. I have a fairly large 1eAD&D collection, but have always wanted to complete it with copies of all D&D related TSR publications pre 1990. However, this has become very hard to do on an educator's salary.

My recent energy has been on Judges Guild's publications and other stuff Gary Gygax wrote or worked over the course of his life. I'll tell you what though, JG stuff has begun to be out of reach as well. I was looking for a copy of Temple of Ra Cursed By Set

And the cheapest I could find was 34.95! Now, that may seem like a reasonable amount, but we were buying old TSR modules fro under 10$ not too long ago, and you now can't find a lot of them for under $50! For a guy with a tight $20 a month game budget it makes me pause.

I was also hunting down a little gem called The Abduction of Good King Despot by Will Niebling from the Gary Gygax Presents line. I think the reason it has risen to $40 is because Gary happened to make the off hand comment that this was his "favorite module of all time." Talk about a comment increasing the market value! So for the nonce, this gem will be on hold for me as well ...

All of which I should take as a good sign, since what I would hope these prices mean is that there is a growing crowd of 1e players out there looking for old product. At least that's what I hope is happening. It could be newer gamers looking for the old stuff just to have a piece of the past, with little intent to use it or game with it. I mean, I'm not wanting to begrudge a collector their treasures regardless of intent. But all the better for collectors who are actually involved in the game. Said the same thing for years of comic collectors who bought rare issues just to have them and hardly read the comics they purchased. Something evil in that approach if you ask me.

Playing a Sheep in Wolf's Clothing

So of course the question with AD&D is: are we playing the real thing, or are we playing some version of classic D&D dressed up in an AD&D suit?

I should define my terms. "Classic" D&D has been defined as the line of Holmes Basic, Moldvay-Cook Basic/Expert, Mentzer BECMI, RC D&D. But I prefer a slightly more nuanced definition. Because BECMI/RC are so expansive they are almost a beast unto themselves. Mentzer B/X is also a classic era game, but played with Companion and up, or the Rule Cyclopedia, it is a more complex extension of the game, much like Advanced.Whereas Holmes and Moldvay-Cook are much more of a reflection of Original D&D. This, in my mind, is the classic age of the game. From original into the basic and expert lines, which essentially cover a refined version of the original game. The supplements, in terms of additional classes, race as class, variable weapon damage, etc. can easily be ported into the the basic game, to give a late original+supplements feel.  So to be concise, playing "advanced" like Labyrinth Lord AEC, is basically classic D&D. Hence a sheep in wolves clothing. And, I posit, what a lot of people do with AD&D 1e.

Now I'm not overplaying the sheep-wolf thing, I mean there's not value bestowed here. It may seem like I'm splitting hairs, or being purist, and I am sort of, but all in an effort to more deeply understand what it is we do once a twice a week on Thursday or Saturday night. Classic isn't a sheep anymore than AD&D is a wolf, or vice versa. But, see, D&D is more of a continuum up through 3e. On one end of the continuum there is the original game, which truthfully can't really be played as written because it's so hard to read. So lots of people made stuff up, houseruled it and worked it into something resembling what we know as D&D. AD&D, as well as the Basic+ lines come along and it makes the rules more clear and cohesive. We are now all playing basically the same game, some with a few rules variations in turning power, cleric spells at first level, race as class, paladins and other subclasses or not, all of these little variations, but we really aren't playing AD&D.

I mean, sure, we might have called friends together and said we are playing basic, or more likely just D&D, and we might have different editions, but we would agree elf is a class, you can't be an elf thief, or whatever. arguments might ensue, and we would clear up that we were playing basic rules, or advanced rules or whatever. But it didn't make that much difference. And the majority of the people I knew who were playing AD&D were not playing AD&D RAW. I think those people were very few and far between. It is more common now, as older grogs get back into the game, or newer gamers want to know what all the old fuss was about and try the old games. That's when we start thinking about playing with all the rules, or at least try to abide by most of them.

In the first few pages to the Dungeon Masters' Guide, most notably on pages 7 and 9, Gary Gygax speaks to the nature of AD&D as a game system. These passages are liberally quoted now when such discussions arise. It clearly says that Gary says the DM is the ultimate arbiter and will decide what rules they use and what rules they don't. But, I feel, that case is often overstated. What they fail to see or quote as regularly are the injunctions to abide by and trust the system first;

"Dictums are given for the sake of the game only, for if ADVANCED DUNGEONS & DRAGONS is to survive and grow, it must have some degree of uniformity, a familiarity of method and procedure from campaign to campaign within the whole. ADVANCED D&D is more than a framework around which individual DMs construct their respective milieux, it is above all a set of boundaries for all of the "worlds" devised by referees everywhere. These boundaries are broad and spacious, and there are numerous areas where they are so vague and amorphous as to make them nearly nonexistent, but they are there nonetheless." (7)

"In this lies a great danger, however. The systems and parameters contained in the whole of ADVANCED DUNGEONS & DRAGONS are based on a great deal of knowledge, experience
gained through discussion, play, testing, questioning, and (hopefully) personal insight." (7)

"Limitations, checks, balances, and all the rest are placed into the system in order to assure that what is based thereon will be a superior campaign, a campaign which offers the most interesting play possibilities to the greatest number of participants for the longest period of time possible." (7)

"These facts are of prime importance, for they underlie many rules." (7)

"With certain uniformity of systems and "laws", players will be able to move from one campaign to another and know at least the elemental principles which govern the new milieu, for all milieux will have certain (but not necessarily the same) laws in common. Character races and classes will be nearly the same. Character ability scores will have the identical meaning - or nearly so. Magic spells will function in a certain manner regardless of which world the player is functioning in. Magic devices will certainly vary, but their principles will be similar. This uniformity will help not only players, it will enable DMs to carry on a meaningful dialogue and exchange of useful information." (7)

"The danger of a mutable system is that you or your players will go too far in some undesirable direction and end up with a short-lived campaign." (7)

"Similarly, you must avoid the tendency to drift into areas foreign to the game as a whole. Such campaigns become so strange as to be no longer "AD&D". They are isolated and will usually wither. Variation and difference are desirable, but both should be kept within the boundaries of the overall system." (7)

"Keep such individuality in perspective by developing a unique and detailed world based on the rules of ADVANCED D&D." (7)

"It is incumbent upon all DMs to be thoroughly conversant with the PLAYERS HANDBOOK, and at the same time you must also know the additional information which is given in this volume, for it rounds out and completes the whole." (9)

"I have attempted is to cram everything vital to the game into this book, so that you will be as completely equipped as possible to face the ravenous packs of players lurking in the shadows, waiting to pounce upon the unwary referee and devour him or her at the first opportunity." (9)

"Thus, besides the systems, I have made every effort to give the reasoning and justification for the game." (9)

"And while there are no optionals for the major systems of ADVANCED D&D (for uniformity of rules and procedures from game to game, campaign to campaign, is stressed), there are plenty of areas where your own creativity and imagination are not bounded by the parameters of the game system. These are sections where only a few hints and suggestions are given, and the rest left to the DM." (9)

"Read how and why the system is as if is, follow the parameters, and then cut portions as needed to maintain excitement. For example, the rules call for wandering monsters ... Wandering monsters, however, are included for two reasons, as is explained in the section about them." (9)

"Know the game systems, and you will know how and when to take upon yourself the ultimate power. To become the final arbiter, rather than the interpreter of the rules, can be a difficult and demanding task, and it cannot be undertaken lightly, for your players expect to play this game, not one made up on the spot." (9)

"Remembering that the game is greater than its parts, and knowing all of the parts, you will have overcome the greater part of the challenge of being a referee." (9)

I could comment on each emphasized portion, but I think they are clear enough, and also illustrate that while there are comments encouraging individual creativity, inspiration and even rule deletion at times, there are at least as many if not more injunctions to follow the game system and play the rules as written. I personally think, and it is back up in some of the quotes above that the modifications of which he is speaking are largely in regards to monsters, treasures, even spells (as long as the general structure and principles of such additions are in line with those presented within the game) can be added, changed or deleted. And yes such rules as grappling, even weapon armor and speed factors might be eliminated to "keep up excitement" I believe that they too were written carefully for portions and elements of the game where other options were rejected. And as he explained in the quote about rolling for wandering monsters, the rule wasn't ejected wholesale, it was allowed that the DM could determine, based on the reasons given for such rolls in the text itself were considered, to use or not use given a set of circumstances such as Gygax outlines.

Now, this is not to say that such a rules arbitrary game could not be played. It is quite regularly. I have drafted such rules myself. Only that, as mentioned above, "it becomes so strange as to not become AD&D." Call this the purist interpretation if you will. After all, you can play whatever you like at your table and even call it what you like. But let's call a sheep a sheep and a wolf a wolf. Otherwise in our zeal to appeal to others that they come join us play AD&D, we lose what AD&D really is.

The Dilemma of Original D&D's Influence on Advanced D&D

I've spent the last few days perusing reviews of old school products compatible with various OSR clones. There are definitely some high quality products being released out there. The injunction given long ago to "imagine the hell out of it" has been taken to heart by numerous "amateur" designers today. And I say amateur only because most do not make a living doing what they do. But make no mistake, their products are not amateur productions. The quality of these supplements are top notch, creative and a lot of fun page through.

All this work has made me think. The Original edition of the game required that DMs and players to create the game as they went. Not only the adventuring environment, but classes, gods, spells, magic and the like. The first few supplements were more to show what was possible with the game instead of define it. DMs were expected, and again required, to make up rules, fill in things that were missing from the game, make judgment calls on the fly, playtest the results and refine as needed. I've written about this powerful "genie in a bottle" effect Original D&D possessed that once released could not be easily stoppered again.

And in fact TSR's attempt to stopper it was Advanced Dungeons & Dragons. Strange that it got the moniker "advanced". Was that due to the depth of rules, or that it was to be seen as "better" than what had come before? Probably a bit of both. And even though the "advanced" version of the game stated that it still preserved GM fiat and as needed rules interpretation, it was clear that the game had changed. The official game had been more expansively defined, rules for most situations could be found, and layers of rich crunch and interpretation were to be found throughout. Truly playing the game "as written" required a knowledgeable and well read GM with a remarkable memory and organizational skill. You couldn't get by on a general gist of the rules and a good imagination.

Well, the thing is, you could. If others didn't really call you out on it. As long as everyone at the table was willing to roll with it, very few references had to be made to the official books. Essentially we were all playing "classic" D&D with advanced books. You see, this influence on AD&D, the genie in a bottle, ran through most games of the day regardless of the "advanced" moniker. Sure there were rules we changed to, but these were mostly already available in classic D&D. Race as class, nine point alignment, variable hit dice and weapon damage. We did enjoy the to hit tables, that made things simpler, but these also were already in development before compiled in advanced. And we really shouldn't be surprised. Advanced was a project of vivisection and reassembly of the original books according to Tim Kask. Most of what was in the books was already there before advanced was "created". It was just a matter of suturing the parts together with Gygaxian Prose and viola! Advanced Lives!!

But what as become clear to me is that advanced, true advanced, is a magnificently different beast than most of us have ever realized. Because, despite its Rube Goldbergian construction, AD&D does get the job done. It fits together, and while there appear to be contradictions, they are usually found to be contrivances that don't apply in some situations. Clearly improvements could have been made, but the man who was the true brainchild behind its cohesion is, sadly, no longer with us to do so. And he wasn't allowed to say much about it when he was here after the rights were sold. Thus we are left with his first edition, which, keep in mind was really a third edition. Original being the first, supplements being the second and advanced coming as a global third attempt to write the full definition of the game.

I have run into the labyrinth of AD&D when I truly did try and run RAW some years back. Originally we started with OSRIC so the rest of the table could get the rulebooks without buying used ones. But I quickly ran into problems trying to use the original books while my players used OSRIC. They are not the same. Some say the changes are minute, but truthfully they aren't. The problem is the layers of meaning and rules implications in the prose of the 1e books. They are simply lacking in OSRIC, and in fact come in slightly more clear in Matt Finch's second attempt Swords & Wizardry Complete where he sidebars numerous rules explaining some of the behind the curtain history and thinking that went on about certain rules and mechanics. So in our case we decided to make the actual AD&D books the rules default. But I played with savvy players and they began to actually read the books and challenge me on calls I was making in game. Why? Because I was making calls like I always had: because I either didn't know the rule from the books as written, or I knew but I didn't like it. d6 initiative being one--I preferred the 2e d10.

So what I began to find out that we were beginning to have rather deep discussion and sometimes disagreements about the way the game was to be played. The fact is, I rather enjoyed them, but also found my weakness in terms of game knowledge being sorely tested. As it happened this was about the time a slew of Pathfinder players began making noise and we shifted to play PF for a time. And I can tell you what, that didn't do much for my confidence. The point is I have experienced myself the terrible truth about "advanced" D&D. Not many of us are truly advanced players.

In point of fact I don't think Gary was. From what I've heard most of his games were fairly fast and loose, much more "classic" in style than "advanced". And for that matter if you talk to several old grogs they all prefer the original game, Tim Kask included. This influence of the original game on subsequent editions has always been a marvel to behold. In that way I think D&D has remained more or less the same over the years. At its heart, D&D is about a few constants woven together with the imagination of those present. And some people really like that. For myself it creates a real dilemma. More on that later. 

Writing 1e AD&D Adventures is Easier

My favorite adventure of all time. Does that say more about me or the adventure? Not sure, but this adventure epitomized the deadliness, capriciousness and evil whimsy that was AD&D. The reputation ToH earned placed it forever more in the trophycase of great adventures of all time, and a model of what Gygaxian gaming could truly be. And if you think it is just me, this module took 3rd greatest adventure of all time in Paizo's Dungeon Magazine's 30 Greatest Adventures of All Time.

My second favorite adventure was ranked 9th overall in the same contest and takes its place for gonzo whimsy to an all new level. Yes, this  adventure is also deadly in new and tricksy ways, but not in the same death trap spirit of ToH. Going through this adventure is like climbing on the haunted roller coaster at the amusement park without seatbelts and the mortality failsafes turned off. Which brings up something else about these early gems. You might see them as somewhat "railroady", but this is an illusion. The idea here, and with all three of my top picks, is to place before characters a truly strange, wondrously, bizarre and immanently deadly location filled with amazing treasures (not to mention bragging rights for surviving) and allow a story to unfold. Sure there is a storyline in the background, an evil lich protecting his horde while tauntingly tempting PCs to their deaths, or a trio of hidden artifacts kidnapped by an insane wizard and his gnomish henchmen. But the real story unfolds as the players and their characters face the challenge of the module itself.

My last pick for top three adventures of all time: Expedition to Barrier Peaks. Here we have the uniquely pulpy blend of science fantasy of which so many great novels of yore were made. Inspired to one degree or another from Metamorphosis Alpha, Gamma World, or Dave Arneson's penchant for including science fantasy tropes in his Blackmoor campaign. Barrier Peaks hits all the right notes for including such "otherworldliness" into a fantasy campaign. This module also went to great pains to guide the DM to running such a "never before seen" environment with medieval fantasy characters. Thus the whole adventure becomes a puzzle of sorts that is just as fun running as it is figuring out. Also deadly in wholly new ways, but so satisfyingly bizarre simply because trying to describe a robot or a laser gun or powered armor to a medieval wizard or paladin is about as awesome as it gets! And rated in the article cited above as 5th greatest of all time.

All three of these works have several things in common. Note that they are all dungeon crawls. They are all special adventures originally designed for tournament play. This lent their use as one shot, all in one, "self-contained" adventures. Such was the play in much of the early days of D&D. And note as well, they reside in that special place of AD&D before 1981 when the lines between AD&D and Original D&D were blurred. They are all extremely deadly, surprising, puzzle oriented, trap heavy and gonzo to one degree or another. And as of 2004 all three in the top ten.

I consider such work to be the epitome of AD&D, the game at it's height, for me, and indicative of the type of game we generally played. It was also indicative of the kind of adventures which we wrote and ran. I start this way in a post titled Why Writing 1e AD&D Adventures is Easier (for me) to perhaps give the reason with adequate explanation. Is this background what makes writing these kinds of adventures so much more approachable for me?

If we look at the time span I played games it might also help: I played

• 1e from 1981 to 1989 or 8 years
• 1989 to 1995 I read 2e stuff sometimes, but never liked it and mostly didn't play--these were my college years and I think I played less than three times.
• from 1995 to 2004 I took off from gaming and had sold all of my gaming stuff.
• from 2004 to 2006 I played 3.5 with a club at the school I taught in.
• from 2006 to 2008 I played Castles & Crusades and some OSRIC with the same club and in my home group from time to time.
• from 2008 to 2010 I played 4e with my school club.
• from 2009 to 2012 I played Pathfinder/3.5
• from 2012 to 2015 I mostly read OSR stuff but wasn't gaming very much
• from 2015 to present I play in a 5e game at my home. 

So, 8 years with 1e (10 if you count OSRIC and C&C), 5 years with 3.5/Pathfinder, 2 years-ish with 4e, and now 5 years with 5e. That could certainly account for some bias. but truthfully stacked to 1e for 10 years, I have been playing d20 based higher powered versions for a total of 12+ years.

However, I was talking to a good gaming friend the other day, who has played since like 1990-ish and is now playing 5e about why I might feel this way. I thought his response very interesting and helpful. Says he, "I would say it's gotta be old school gaming ethos. But hear me out ...

"OSG was rooted in the idea that adventurers were regular people trying to survive in a deadly environment, but newer editions of D&D promote the idea that adventurers are heroic at level 1 and superheroic at level 9 (when wizards start casting 5th level spells). It's an idea that permeates the core rules of the game and makes a DM feel like s/he needs to write an adventure endorsing this belief."

"But whatever the root cause, comfort with a campaign setting and fluency with game mechanics / rules are the two main factors that influence my personal confidence when I am writing an adventure."

"The third reason my creativity can feel stifled, is when I feel like I am going to be challenged in-game by other players. I don't know if that helps explain what you're feeling, but in my case, all of the guys I play with have been playing longer than I have. My players have both challenged me in the past and disrupted the game. It's usually because they feel like I'm being too harsh or unfair, but it really takes the wind out of my sails."

"I prefer a truly deadly game and none of my players are like that."

"One player feels like a character should be developed over many levels and I feel like that should be earned not given. But in his defense he spends lots of time on his characters and doesn't want them chewed up and spit out in some Gygaxian dungeon. It's not that he feels his characters should be super powerful, he just doesn't want to open a secret door and have his face blown off by a kobold trap just because he rolls a 1 on his save and I roll max damage. Which is totally fair."

"In his mind, adventurers really are regular people trying to survive in a deadly environment. And that accepting the chance of death makes them heroic. And he's not wrong; no right minded adventurer would EVER walk into a dungeon in which survival was not at least 50-50. He believes in making plans and contingencies. He wants all the information and to be able to prepare as much as possible for success before walking into a deadly situation."

So, I am quite convinced now, that much of my problem is born out of what my friend calls the Old School Gaming Ethos. Even though I could say I know the rules RAW in 5e better than I do 1e RAW, I am more comfortable designing for the old school ethos than with the new school assumptions. I struggle because of exactly what he is talking about here. In fact it is the reason I am still playing 5e. I am too afraid of players complaining, or not wanting to play, or feeling shafted because playing adventures like S1, 2 or 3 with standard AD&D characters was an exceedingly risky proposition. I would be hard pressed to give any 10th through 14th level PC a 50/50 chance of surviving in ToH. 60/40 maybe if they were 14th level with high magic potential, but still ...

From Whence to Whither?

Day & Night by M.C. Escher

Knowing oneself is not a simple matter. Knowing one's direction is much easier.

For the past four plus years now, I have actively played Fifth Edition D&D with a home based group of twenty somethings and my teenage children. That has been my direction. Sadly, it has not been "myself".

Aligning the direction you're traveling with the truth of your inner self, is something I've rarely managed to attain.

If you were to ask me I would say that I am still more comfortable and more at home with First Edition AD&D than any other ruleset. However, I have come to believe even this isn't exactly true for me. There is the age we remember and the age that really was.

If you asked me to dig a bit deeper and be more true, more real with myself ... In the case of D&D, as mentioned in my last post, what I thought I was playing and what we actually played was not in perfect agreement. This has become clearer the more I have listened to old 1e players talk about AD&D and their play. As we revisit the rules as they were written we begin to see what we didn't see, realize or play by back in the day. There are exceptions, of course--guys who played with 1e rules and were very strict in enforcing them. And then there was my group.

And not just my group, but a whole network of guys who only agreed upon the loosest interpretation of what might be called 1e rules. Instead we were bound by an idea of imaginary worlds flexibly defined as D&D. And the closer I get to being real with myself, I probably know 5e rules better than I do 1e rules. But yet I still feel more comfortable, more at home in 1e; when I am designing 1e adventures, creating 1e characters, and playing (what I consider) 1e.