Original D&D Explanations and Thoughts

After attempting to make an AD&D Primer, converting my original campaign to Basic D&D format, and transcribing the original Gygax modules into digital format, I've finally decided to head back to the original version of the game I love - the "Little Brown Box" version of Dungeons & Dragons by Gygax and Arneson.

A while ago I was converting all the original booklets to digital format (i.e. painstakingly editing from a bad .pdf file and typing in sections of text and tables that did not translate). I spent a few days reading and converting these rules and found them to be incomplete. In order to play the game it seemed that you needed the original miniatures rules published back in 1974 by Gygax and Perren named CHAINMAIL. I've never really liked miniatures warfare, not being so enamored with the complex military terms you needed to learn in order to understand what the hell was going on. Besides, my needs were in Man-to-Man combat, specifically Fantasy based, not military maneuvers of 20:1 ratio minis on some random outdoor map. These rules contained the information I needed somewhere between the covers, but it's been out of print for decades. Luckily I was able to buy a digital copy of one through Paizo before Wizards converted to 4th edition.

I spent a few days typing the info over since the tables didn't translate and apparently all the "a"s and "o"s looked the same to the computer due to the font used (can't tell you how weird it is to have to correct every word with an "a" and "o" in it, especially since most of those are valid words that spellcheck won't pick up). During my transcription I discovered that the DUNGEON! game borrowed heavily from this version of D&D in terms of how it was played. The combat tables are based not on level as in current D&D but on character type and armor worn. Since there were only 3 classes (Fighting Man, Magic-User, and Cleric) a table was easy to determine using Fighting Man as the basis. The main entries were for Hero (level 4 or 4 men) and Superhero (level 8 or 8 men). All human combatants use the same two fighting types, modifying by level or down. For example, a 1st level Fighting Man (Veteran) attacks as a Hero -3, a 2nd level Fighting Man (Warrior) attacks as Hero -2, and so on all the way to 6th level Fighting Man (Hero +2) at which point it switches at 7th level to Superhero -1. Now the table used is very simplistic depending on who you are attacking and with what weapon. Interestingly, the damage for ALL hits is 1d6 regardless of whether you're using a dagger or a halberd - its the hit that makes the difference, not the damage of the weapon. A mortal strike, after all, is a mortal strike whether it be a blade to the gut or being cleaved in twain.

The numbers on the table are very close to those in the DUNGEON! game. In other words, 2d6 are rolled to attack instead of a d20. Therefore, a +1 or +2 bonus makes a big difference in the results of the roll. Therefore, all magic weapons were either of +1 or +2 value, Strength was not even considered for purposes of damage or to hit, and missile fire only applied a +/- 1 as a modifier for high or low Dexterity scores. Ability scores had little effect on combat. Number of combatants were more important in the great scheme of things.

In order to attack you had to work off one table or another as the Chainmail rules built on themselves, from standard combat with troop types, to Man-to-Man skirmishing at the individual scale, all the way to fantasy creatures and magic weapons/armor determination. Since creatures did not normally use weapons there was a table to be used for generic combat between creature types (Fantasy Combat Table or FCT). When fighting someone in armor you used the weapon vs. armor combat table. All very confusing. Gygax came up with a new combat table presumed to be used with a d20 (precursor to the Basic D&D combat rules). In Basic, all weapons did the same damage as well, unless you opted for the Variable Weapon Damage rules as introduced in the Greyhawk Supplement I rulebook. It's a shame that the simple D&D combat rules couldn't be made to work as well as hoped, but then the game had to evolve to cover more complicated situations. I wonder if it's possible to work within the strictures of the Original D&D game and use a more evolved version of the game. Likely much of the complexity would be removed and we'd all go back to a hack'n'slash fest - the core fun of the game in any case!