What is Gygaxian Gaming: An Opinion

Now that I've spent some time with the opinions of others, and distilled those comments into some kind of a consensus on the definition of Gygaxian Gaming--it's time for me to consider what my opinion is on Gygaxian Gaming.

What the heck is it anyway?

I started playing D&D in 1981. I've described the complete story earlier in my blog, but the salient point here is that I learned from guys that had started playing with the small woodgrained box Original D&D with supplements. By the time I started they already had the AD&D PHB, DMG and Monster Manual. That was April 1981, and of course I was hooked right from the start. But it wasn't until December of that year that I got some of my own books, a PHB, Monster Manual and Moldvay Basic Set myself. At the time I saw the Basic Set as, well, basic. I had the advanced rules and that was what I had been playing with my friends--why would I go back to basic?! But to be clear, we really were playing a style more reminiscent of Original D&D with supplements. We used the tables from the PHB for experience, abilities, weapon damage, spells and the like, but little else. We knew there were a lot of rules, and we sort of acted like we played with them all, but we were really playing a pretty light and fast version of the game. We made up most of what we didn't know, hand waving questions about rules if we couldn't look it up in a minute or less.

It was nice to think there was all this rulesy richness in the game, and that we were a part of that somehow. But when it came down to playing, Gygaxian meant the impression of depth, with the reality of maximal creativity and imagination. That was probably the biggest thing I have realized over the years. As we matured in the game we began to understand more and more about racial level limits, ability maximums and minimums, etc. In fact I recall even now when I first read the DMG, years later that we could roll 4d6 for ability scores and that most characters should have at least two 15's?! We had been rolling 3d6 in order for years. We began to debate rules more and more as I aged, but in truth, when we played, it was still that old familiar wild and wooly days of old where anything could happen and anything was possible.

Now, don't get me too wrong here. The fact was, D&D always had the impression of rules depth for us. We knew there were guidelines and lines we shouldn't cross and that if you did you were not only cheating, you were a Benedict Arnold of some sort or other. It wasn't exactly anything goes ... at least in principle.

So when I think about what Gygaxian means to me, it does mean crazy zaniness at times, but it also means a game more or less rooted in medieval fantasy. It means death and danger. It means roll your HP and if you got a 1 you kept it. And 3d6 straight down the line. It definitely meant GM fiat and at times the game was adversarial within the bounds of the friendly contest. And as much as I love High Gygaxian and think it should be preserved, I didn't ever read the manuals all the way through from cover to cover. For you see Gygaxian to me was the magic in a bottle captured back in 1974 and illustrated so well in the supplements through 1977 or so. D&D was once described as make believe like you used to play as a kid, cops and robbers or cowboys and Indians, but at a table in your mind's eye with rules. And when it comes right down to it, you don't need many rules to play either of those make believe games. The barest minimum of guidelines will do and if there are problems, we'll make a call along the way. That was the way we played D&D.

If I had to encapsulate the extent of the rules we used it would probably be something like:
Dice of course,
Ability scores and their modifiers, mostly to hit/dmg/and AC,
Classes, their abilities (and they were few) and spells,
Races and their abilities,
Money & equipment,
Saving throws,
Armor Class and a to hit table,
Monsters, their AC and HP and abilities,
Magical Items,
And that was about it.

Chase rules, how far you could move, grappling, how infravision actually worked, or the fact that lair treasure type was different from individual treasure type, and all the rest, well, we just didn't use them. So it wasn't a surprise to me when one of the hosts of the Grogtalk Podcast, Dan, began to realize that actually trying to use all of these rules can not only be intimidating, it can be irritating. No matter how much I like the Knights of the Dinner Table parody of the rules intensive version of D&D, I never really played that way. Oddly I didn't find KODT funny back in the day probably because it made fun of something I took so seriously. Call it lack of maturity or lack of awareness, probably both, the fact is the perception of play vs the actual play was something that hadn't been clarified for me until years later.

Thus the odd marriage of a weird fantasy roleplaying game of light rules, flexible, highly creative play, filled with bizarre strangeness, high risk for high reward, and the rich depth of a plethora of optional rules presented in classic High Gygaxian is what I experienced as Dungeons & Dragons in my youth, and what continues to truly inspire me now. 

The problem is in achieving that now in my adult years. Even I have fallen into the trap of thinking  First Edition AD&D played RAW is the way to achieve what I remember. But that isn't the case at all. I have never played 1e RAW, and don't even know if I could. Just take a look at the AD&D BtB Combat Flowchart for a taste of what including all the rules might look like in regards to AD&D combat!! Not something I have ever done, nor will likely ever use. And from what I understand, neither did Gary Gygax. The fact is if we are going to play 1e to achieve this we have to agree we are only playing with a small selection of the rules. This was the idea behind Labyrinth Lord's Advanced Edition Companion. "The way we all played AD&D back in the day." And it was certainly closer to the way we played when I started playing.

Now, that being said, what the rules actually are matter, and they matter a lot. For me 3d6 for abilities, random rolls for HP, humanocentric play, death at zero HP, save vs death, descending armor class, to hit tables, 9 point alignment system, and the like all create a game that is much more distinctly Gygaxian in feel. But there is some bend in some of these areas. 4d6 drop the lowest doesn't kill it, max HP at level 1 doesn't either. Doing away with racial level limits is iffy, but what it mostly does is cheapen the racial differences in the game. It tends to make dwarves and elves play like nothing but funny looking humans. Increasing AC and a d20 foundation doesn't kill the feel, and certainly speeds things up, but it feels different. And I actually think playing alignment with a strong Law vs Chaos ethos deepens play and avoids lots of the alignment related issues people seem to have with it nowadays, and I would say is more truly Gygaxian, than the moral code it has evolved into.  So there is some give even on these rules. And quick death can be enforced simply by only allowing magical healing and a healing restore after a night's rest. Even that isn't canon, but is much better than healing surges, spending HD or allowing faster healing. Additional rules like wounding, crippling, thresholds of pain, bleeding and exhaustion are all cool and sound good, but they can be cumbersome and limit play more than deepen it. Even Gary acknowledged this when he dissed Arneson's hit location rules. Of course then he turned around and added weapon speed and armor class adjustments, so ...