Rediscovering Original D&D

It's been  a while since I've put any thoughts on this blog. Guess I've just been tired as hell and bored with what I've been doing for the past few years. This past weekend I happened to pick up my Original White Box D&D copies and remembered that I was in the process of making Word docs out of them. So I fired up the computer and began scanning and editing, reading all the rules again in the process.

It's amazing how simple and elegant the original game truly was. Three classes (Fighting Man, Magic-User, and Cleric), four races (Man, Dwarf, Elf, and Hobbit), and a slew of very familiar monsters. The obvious outgrowth from miniature gaming is evident in the lack of combat mechanics (it was assumed that everyone already owned the Chainmail miniatures rules). The spells were also very sketchy in their descriptions, assuming that everyone knew certain aspects of the game already from using the Chainmail rulebook. What I find very interesting is the lack of power inherent in the game. AD&D dragons may seem like pushovers to us now, but to an Original D&D gamer they were death machines. No one got more than one attack per round, hit points were limited, AC adjustments were few, and combat was very quick and deadly despite using one die for all damage (with some modifiers of course).

What really got me were all the rules that never really translated into AD&D, like most of the information in the back of the Underworld & Wilderness Rules booklet (Part 3). Several pages devoted to aerial combat, naval battles, and some campaign development were very enlightening. It was obvious that D&D was meant purely as gloss on a miniatures combat scenario. This explains the reason why all the original adventures were dungeons - simply a combat scenario in another form. Instead of placing armies on an open field and randomly determining the outcome, the party took the place of the armies storming the dungeons as the battlefield with the hordes of monsters as opponents. This explains the "Number Appearing" entries for humanoids (typically in the hundreds) and the enormous party sizes back in the day (filled out with henchmen, hirelings, etc.). It wasn't until much later that such large parties were pared down to a more conventional 4-to-6-player size. The scale inch rules also make more sense when seen from a wargamers point of view since terrain was often depicted at large scale and minis represented whole units of the army (at a 20:1 ratio or thereabouts). Moving large parties through a dungeon would have been like moving working class people along a subway tunnel during rush hour - the difference being the armor and gear carried. When visualized in that way it is more conceivable that parties could never hope to surprise monsters unless they had advance scouts and/or magical scrying to determine what lay ahead. In this way, the Thief was added to the mix of characters to allow for a more discreet method of entering a dungeon, using tactics instead of bullrushing through the place and hoping you survived, and to prevent deaths due to traps and poison needles set to take out the unwary.

I also learned that Advanced Dungeons & Dragons was created as a tournament version of the game. Basic/Expert D&D is much more in line with what D&D began, using the basic four classes (Cleric, Fighter, Magic-User, and Thief) and four races (Human, Dwarf, Elf, and Halfling). However, Basic diverged by combining demi-human races with their usual classes (Dwarf = Dwarf Fighter, Elf = Elven Fighter/Magic-User, and Halfling = Halfling Fighter). So Thief and Cleric were never an option in Basic for anyone but a Human! It would be interesting to break race from class in Basic and make it more like the way Original D&D had it. If only I had kept the Basic game I got for Christmas back in 1980! But without a lot of players my own age (like maybe 2 others were interested and one was my 4 year old brother) it made more sense to buy the DUNGEON! Boardgame. Oh well, I would probably have stuck with Basic D&D longer had I learned to play at an earlier age with people who understood what the game was really about. I really prefer the Moldvay Basic D&D set.

So it seems that AD&D, what I prefer to play now, actually began as more of a Basic D&D game with tons of little rules thrown in to keep everyone playing the same version of the game for tournament rulings. I can understand that. But at the same time it opened other cans of worms and made the game overly complicated. I was able to condense the OD&D rules down to 3 booklets of 15-20 pages each, together comprising a Player's Handbook (Men & Magic), a Monster Manual (Monsters & Treasure) and a Dungeon Master's Guide (Underworld & Wilderness) in under 60 pages of rules! Comparing AD&D and OD&D, one can see that there were 1/3 the number of classes, 1/2 the number of races, much more simplified spells and numbers thereof, and easier and faster combat resolution. It is also interesting to see how everything was based on the number "6". There were six levels of spells for each class, supposed to be six or so dungeon levels for a typical adventure, there were six levels of monsters, and every weapon/attack did a d6 damage (with d6 hit points for each class, with modifiers). Now I know why the DUNGEON!(TM) game was set up the way it was with six levels, character types of Elf, Wizard, Hero, and Superhero (actual level terms for some characters), and the monster selections (including Witches, Evil Superheroes, and various humanoids). What I find very interesting is the lack of level reference in the rules. You were a Wizard or a Necromancer, not a 9th or 8th level Magic-User. Same for the Fighting Man - you would refer yourself as a Swashbuckler, Hero, Myrmidon, Champion, or Lord. There also seemed to be a greater emphasis on the end-game levels when you were able to construct a castle since this is the time where you would be entering the wilderness to conquer the surrounding territory and make it your own (before Name Level one would be gaining fortune in the multi-level dungeon).

I did come across something interesting last night in Underworld & Wilderness. Curiously, I found a reference to a "Thoul" on one of the encounter charts and I have no idea where it was detailed. My original thought was that they meant Troll, but had Ghoul there and only partially edited the entry. It then made print and was made into a monster years later in the Moldvay Basic set. Either that or it was a typo (the "T" is above the "G" on most keyboards) and since the book was written apparently by typewriter that would explain things better than making a new creature that was part Troll, part Ghoul, and looked like a Hobgoblin..... Some people just can never admit they made a mistake (sigh).

It would be interesting to give this ruleset a run given the premises of little character background information, a multi-level dungeon very close to a nearby town, and the reward of title and land once the character has achieved the appropriate level, then moving into the campaign world using all the knowledge gained from clues and history in the dungeons (perhaps old books provide information on the campaign world, and sages can fill in the gaps). I think this is more in line with the way Greyhawk came to be, more of a mishmash of information provided over time that was reworked and rewritten into a campaign world. Also keep in mind that the campaign maps used during Gygax's campaign were NOT the ones produced for the Greyhawk Folio or Boxed Set; this was done because Greyhawk was a campaign in progress and Gary Gygax would not provide information so openly to his players! So all the years I spent trying to reconcile the descriptions in modules, books, and first hand accounts with the published books was for naught. None of the information provided on Greyhawk in any of those sources is the original, now lost forever with the death of E. Gary Gygax. So sad, but what a legacy!