... for me the OSR was/is basically about two things: (1) historical curiosity about what these games actually said as texts and how this did or did not show up in play, and (2) a strong desire to "find freedom" from a lot of modern-day prescriptive rules BS by returning to an earlier generation of design–i.e., the Old School still had something to teach us. (Again, this is my own POV. Other people can be into the OSR for other reasons, among them the fact that D&D is a pretty fun game.)So, he's not attacking the OSR, and therefore I'm not attacking him.
But I wouldn't have even made the post yesterday if it were not for an insight I had when trying to figure out why he thought "nobody ever played this game [1st edition AD&D] 'by the book,'" essentially invalidated the OSR, even if only for himself.
The distinction, I realized as I read James N's comment, is: if you start playing AD&D now, or back in the day, completely fresh campaign, and try to stick as close to rules as possible, AD&D is going to seem very prescriptive. However, back in the day, many of us weren't starting with a fresh AD&D campaign and a dedication to playing the game as written to find out its secrets; we were upgrading our OD&D, Holmes, or B/X campaigns to AD&D, and discarding stuff that didn't fit what we wanted to do.
There were those who did play AD&D as written, back in the day. These possibly make up the bulk of the "we never stopped playing" AD&D crowd, which you may notice is often just as anti-OSR as 3e and 4e defenders. They are often still all about "rules as written".
James N. is certainly aware of OD&D, of B/X, of BECMI, but I think he perceived them and AD&D as distinct games that ought to be appreciated as themselves, which is frequently not the way the rest of the OSR perceived them. We often talk about different games, different playstyles that existed right from the start. We rarely talk about how, for many of us, game changes weren't clean breaks or reboots, but smooth transitions.
"There were those who did play AD&D as written, back in the day."
ReplyDeleteWere there? Back in the 1980's I played AD&D in three different states and with people from all over the country in college. I NEVER met a single person who used segments, weapon speeds, or weapon vs. AC. (To this day I don't really understand how segments or weapon speed are even supposed to work). As far as I could tell, virtually everyone used the Basic melee system when playing "AD&D". Of course, that ties into your main point (that people considered AD&D an upgrade of Basic rather than a separate game).
I didn't meet anyone I knew of who played AD&D RAW, but when the topic has come up on forums, there were a couple people who claimed they did. Either I could call them liars, without any evidence of that, or I have to accept that *someone* did it, even though a crude assessment of what I've seen people say suggests that it wasn't very common.
DeleteTournament play and RPGA were supposed to be RAW. That's what the strict language of AD&D was supposed to be *for*: making tournament play consistent.
I don't mean to call anyone a liar either. I'm sure you're correct and someone somewhere played the AD&D rules as written. (I must say I did attend some cons in major cities in the 1980's and they didn't use the AD&D combat rules at any of them either. Maybe at GenCon?)
DeleteA lot of the OSR things I enjoy reading, lots of Delta's stuff for example, tries to take the "valid kernel" of certain AD&D 1e ideas like weapons vs. AC but "recasts" them into a usable form. Gone are huge tables and 4 different kinds of rolls and what remains is the simple essence, stuff like "axes are better than daggers at getting through plate mail". And this is just great stuff in terms of game design, even if you don't actually use it even in its streamlined form. Sorry, just rambling.
ReplyDeleteI agree with you and, I think the scholarly digging in to minutia of the old games that can lead to the "the rules are always right" sort of explorations like finding interesting answers to questions like why can halflings only advance to 4th level or why are rations so expensive or whatever is more what the OSR is about.
ReplyDeleteThat flowchart is awesome though.
I came straight into AD&D without ever having heard of OD&D, B/X or Holmes. It's a long time ago but I dimly remember using weapons v armour modifications on the goldenrod character sheets (they had a space for that, IIRC). AFAIR, we used individual initiative rather than group (and that went for the monsters too) - it wasn't until I had been playing for about a year and got hold of the DMG that I realised just how many of the rules therein we'd not been bothering with - training time and costs for going up a level, for example was one area. But then on page 8 of the PHB, it does say "the rules are not cut and dried. In many places, they are guidelines and suggested methods only" so anybody who insisted that they be played as written was going against the spirit of the game as stated in the book itself.
ReplyDeleteYeah, I could have also distinguished people who came into AD&D because that is what they were taught, vs. those who came into it as part of a fresh group. But I didn't, which was wrong.
DeleteI cut out a lot of rambling, where I mentioned that there were suggestions that you could change even the rules of AD&D. I think those were obvious to people who'd already been making up their own rules, but were ignored or downplayed by those starting from scratch.
" many of us weren't starting with a fresh AD&D campaign and a dedication to playing the game as written to find out its secrets; we were upgrading our OD&D, Holmes, or B/X campaigns to AD&D, and discarding stuff that didn't fit what we wanted to do."
ReplyDeleteIndeed, that's what we did. Started with BECMI, and added stuff from AD&D 2e as we saw fit.
"we were upgrading our OD&D, Holmes, or B/X campaigns to AD&D, and discarding stuff that didn't fit what we wanted to"
ReplyDeleteyeah, a pretty good "edition" - HA! - remains, to me, what can be hacked out of these - http://www.acaeum.com/ddindexes/setpages/setscans/basic2rule.html
http://www.acaeum.com/ddindexes/setpages/setscans/phb6th.htmldohtt
http://www.acaeum.com/ddindexes/miscpages/dmscreen.html
"Edition" "Holmes-and-a-half" ??
Sorry, my bad, that 2nd url is
Deletehttp://www.acaeum.com/ddindexes/setpages/setscans/phb6th.html
and the three things are: Holmes, 1e Player's Handbook, and the 1e DM's Screen
Sorry, my bad, that 2nd link is
ReplyDeletehttp://www.acaeum.com/ddindexes/setpages/setscans/phb6th.html
And the 3 things are: Holmes, 1e PHB & DM's Screen