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Recently, Grognardia noted a Dragon Magazine article by Frank Mentzer about the then-new 1983 Basic D&D set.
James writes
The very first thing Mentzer mentions in his criticism of previous editions is that “you had to find someone to show you how to play.” He notes that, in fact, learning from others who had figured out how to play on their own was the norm previously. That’s because the game had “a devoted following, people who taught newcomers the ways of roleplaying.”
Mentzer put a lot of effort into making the 1983 Basic D&D set one that newcomers could use to teach themselves how to play. With lots of examples, a guided play-along, and easy-to-understand writing, I have no doubt that many readers were able to work out basic play without too much trouble.
This form of writing, while excellent for the neophyte and younger players, was quite off-putting for many of those who already grasped the fundamentals of paper and pencil roleplaying and is a big reason that I prefer the 1981 B/X version of the game over the 1983 BECM edition. Though I haven’t looked closely, I understand that the Rules Compendium version of the game does away with most of the hand holding and sticks to the actual rules, which makes that edition’s popularity with longtime players unsurprising.
In my own homebrew game, I completely dispensed with examples and learning guides. I wrote it for our own use and for others who might join our game, so I wasn’t concerned with whether or not some random person who read the rules could learn to play on their own. This is the extent of the “learning to play” section in the beta version of our game:
Learning to Play is easiest when playing with others who already know how. Teaching yourself the game from the rule book is possible, especially if you’re already familiar with most of the concepts from other similar games. But nothing beats playing a few sessions with those who already know the system.
That’s it, and I think that it should do the trick. There is a quick intro to the game which touches on the whole “what is an RPG” issue, but it’s quite brief:
Wizards & Warriors is a fantasy role playing game (RPG). When playing Wizards & Warriors (W&W), players control characters adventuring in an imaginary world controlled and moderated by the Game Master.
The point is to have fun while imagining fantastic realms filled with danger, mystery, and adventure. It’s basically a session of “let’s pretend” with a framework of guidelines to help determine the course of events.
Unlike board games or computer games, the options are virtually infinite, limited only by the imaginations of those playing.
Clearly, I didn’t put much effort into teaching. My idea was that if someone reads that much, flips through the book, and thinks it looks like it might be fun, the next step is to sit down at the table and join a game. You can learn far more in a one hour session than you can in a week of reading rules and looking at tables.
My own experience has a little of both. My first game was Traveller, and I pretty much taught myself. Though the three little black books are pretty sparse when it comes to how-to, I had Deluxe Traveller which included Book 0: An Introduction to Traveller and also had the freebie Understanding Traveller booklet. Both of these were great resources for a kid who didn’t really know what he was getting into but sure thought it looked fun.
I managed to struggle through quite a few sessions of Traveller with my younger brother and with some friends from school, but it was tough going even with the extra help from Book 0. Still, we had fun and I look back quite fondly on some of those sessions where a lot of crazy stuff went down.
Then a neighbor came home from his freshman year at college for winter break, and he brought with him a hardback book with a big orange idol on the front, a few weird-shaped dice, and a box of little lead figures. He’d been introduced to AD&D at school a few months earlier. We rolled up PCs and headed off to investigate the Tower of the Undead, something the neighbor just winged as he went.
We spent an afternoon of playing AD&D, and about the only time I looked at the Players Handbook was to buy equipment and pick my cleric’s spells. We didn’t have a DMG or a Monster Manual at all; the neighbor just did the best he could as we played.
And after a couple of hours of that I learned almost everything I needed to know about roleplaying. Almost everything else since that afternoon has just been details. And many of those are not only unimportant, they’re counterproductive. I’ve spent years trying to unlearn so many of them.
Learn from someone who’s played before if at all possible. If you play, teach someone new as often as you can. Sit them down, give them some dice and a piece of paper for a character sheet, and just play. As far as I’m concerned, players should be able to have fun without ever bothering to look in a rule book for anything more than equipment lists, spell descriptions, and experience point requirements.
Teaching yourself from a rule book should be the last-ditch, no-other-options-available method of learning.
World’s largest gold coin unveiled in Australia
Dragon hoards with 2 gold coins? Just not as much fun.
The giant coin weighs more than one tonne and is worth A$53.5 million (£35.1m).
It bears the image of The Queen on one side and a leaping kangaroo on the other…
The massive coin weighs some 2,231lb and is 99.99 per cent pure gold. It is 31 inches wide and is more than 4.7 inches thick.
More info at The $54 million gold coin that will smelt your face off
I have long been of the “100 coins to the pound” crowd, though I’ve reverted to the 10gp=1# rule for our AD&D games.
So as our AD&D game gets going, I’ve decided that I would like to have an electronic and searchable version of the rules available for use as needed. Now, I won’t try to pretend that I’ve never done an internet search to find less-than-legal versions of the books, but I’ve not been at all impressed with the quality. Even worse, from what I’ve gathered, the crappy PDFs I’ve dismissed as, well, crappy PDFs are, in fact, the PDFs that were offered for sale by Wizards. If I’d paid money for those, I would have been less than thrilled.
Anyway, I’ve been grabbing a few copies of the 1e AD&D books off of eBay, and I’ve now got a total of four playable Players Handbooks. One of the sellers I bought from had another chewed-up copy which I scored for next-to-nothing, so I nabbed that as well and immediately chopped the cover and lopped off the binding. The pages are in good shape and I’m now involved with scanning it in for my own use.
At some point I’ll be doing the same with cheap copies of the MM and DMG.
I cringed at cutting up one of the finite number of PHBs left, but the cover was totally shot and this will come in quite handy. It was an eighth printing.
Tags: AD&D
Here’s another AD&D rule that I came across in the section on doors that I don’t ever remember using:
Regardless of how a door opens, it is usual that its weight and condition require that force be used to swiftly operate it. This is represented by the roll of d6 for each person involved in pushing, pulling, lifting, sliding, or whatever. A roll of 1 or 2 typically indicates success, anything above indicates the door still remains unopened. (Cf. PLAYERS HANDBOOK, Character Abilities, Strength.) Very heavy doors might reduce chances by half. Locked doors might only open if two or even three simultaneous 1′s are rolled. (DMG, page 97)
Note the bolded sentence. I’m positive that I would not have allowed a locked door to opened. Broken down, but not opened. The wording of this and the description of Open Doors under Strength in the PHB seems to refer to opening (“operating”) doors, though I know some people (and maybe the rules of some editions) indicate that the result may be a broken open door.
I’m sure I read this many times back in the day, as I read the book cover to cover several times and often just opened up to a random page and started reading. But I don’t specifically remember it.
Did/does anyone play that rolling a couple 1s on Open Doors checks opens a locked door?
Tags: AD&D
While re-reading the 1e AD&D books, I came across this in the Players Handbook section on hit points:
In some campaigns the referee will keep this total secret, informing players only that they feel “strong”, “fatigued” or “very weak”, thus indicating waning hit points. (PHB, 34)
I remember reading this back in the day and I think I may have even tried it for a game or two, though I can’t remember for sure.
In concept, there are things I like about the idea. Players would be less certain about the exact condition of their characters and would be more likely to play their wounded as such due to moving the 1-hit-point-perfectly-fine-but-0-hit-points-means-dead issue “behind the screen.” The story/role-playing element of the game would probably be enhanced by this approach.
However, the book keeping burden on the DM would increase and damage rolls for monsters would probably have to be rolled behind the screen. Plus, and this is no small point, IT’S A GAME. Game-isms are allowed.
After all, if I do this with hit points, why not with ability scores? I could simply roll up PCs’ ability scores for them and tell them if they are “weak”, “average”, or “strong” and “dumb”, “typical”, or “smart”. And when they buy armor I could just tell them to write “unarmored”, “moderately protected”, or “well armored” on their character sheet while I keep track of their actual AC. In fact, I would probably have to keep their character sheet for them. They could just have a piece of scrap paper with a couple of notes on it.
Okay, that’s getting a little extreme. Even with a perfectly fair DM who was capable of keeping up with everything, I think most players would be frustrated with that style of play, at least in a game like AD&D or even the basic versions of the game. For an ultra-simple intro-type game for new gamers, maybe something like that would work.
Anyway, has anyone ever tried the keep-hit-points-secret method?
Tags: AD&D
Got in a second session of our new AD&D campaign which uses L1: The Secret of Bone Hill as a starting point. This session, my wife joined up and selected a PC from the “standby” folder I have ready for just such an event. She selected an elf fighter/thief (still un-named) and she and my daughter were off. My son was busy doing something else and apparently didn’t feel like playing, so his PC stayed behind.
Like the short first session, this one was a lot of role-playing and wandering about town. When headed up to the castle to confront the rumored-to-be-evil local baron, however, they decided they might need a bit more muscle. At this point my daughter went to successfully coax her brother into joining the game. I ruled that his albino half-orc fighter had slept in (keeping in character with the PC’s player) but was roused from bed and ready to adventure.
I believe that the start of this session might be the first time I’ve run an all-girls group of players where there was more than one player.
Since I know a lot of readers aren’t necessarily interested in reading full session reports from other peoples’ games, I’ll put the write-up below the fold.
Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: AD&D, Restenford, session
I might be the last person on earth to know about this, but all of the Sage Advice columns from Dragon Magazine issues 31-134 are available online. This covers the 1e AD&D period nicely and will be a useful resource.
Here’s one from Dragon #39 that should help settle some arguments:
Aside from the obvious ones (pole arms and bows), which of the listed weapons are two-handed?
A battle axe, spear, morning star and bastard sword can be, and a bo stick, quarterstaff, two-handed sword and a trident always are.
Straight and to the point. Often, however, the response includes details which can give a little insight into the thinking behind the rule. Here is one from Dragon #42:
How much experience are the various Girdles of Giant Strength worth? I seriously doubt 200, when Gauntlet; of Ogre Power are worth 1,000.
The Girdles are only worth 200 points for several reasons. First, while they do add to the strength of an individual, they do little to add to the intelligence or cautiousness of that being. Secondly, while the strength of a giant is given, the giant’s innate toughness is not conferred upon the wearer. This means that while a giant could smash its fist through a wooden door, a human would break bones when doing it. While a giant could hurl bars apart, a human would rip flesh in the attempt. The gauntlets, on the other hand, offer a great deal of protection for the hands and arms and thus are worth more.
That’s official, even though I don’t necessarily buy it.
And page numbers are often referenced.
Tags: AD&D
We kicked off our new AD&D campaign Monday evening with PCs that had been rolled up over the weekend. Initially, the only two players are my two kids, but we are hoping to add a couple more (players, not kids) as things get rolling. A blow to our plans is the fact that a few friends of my son who we’d hoped to recruit have parents who are opposed to D&D, which I thought seemed real 80s but is what it is.
We didn’t have a lot of time Monday evening and it took a bit for the players to get their bearings, but we got things started. PCs are starting at level 3 but with 0 XP and normal starting money and gear. So though they’ll be a lot more survivable and have a good boost in power, they’ll still have to earn enough XP to advance and they’ll have to find magic and treasure the old fashioned way.
Here’s the log of the first session:
Session: 1; Date: 9/5/2011; Location: Home (1.5 hrs)
Game Dates: 9/1 – 9/2; Start: Restenford; End: Restenford
Characters: Hearth, Gork, (Hearnora)Hearth (F Half-Elf F3), Gork (Half-Orc F3), and Hearnora (NPC F Half-Elf MU3, sister of Hearth) arrived in Restenford in search of adventure. Got meals and rooms at the Inn of the Dying Minotaur.
RUMOR: A child was bitten by a giant rat.
RUMOR: There are ruins on top of Bone Hill.
RUMOR: A band of brigands lairs on Bald Hill.The party debated whether or not to head for Bone Hill but decided to investigate the rat attack and began searching along the western bank of the river. While looking under the dock at Falco’s Tavern the owner sees them and invited them in for a drink.
RUMOR: There are huge wolves in the Kelman woods that serve a giant.The party continued the search along the river and surrounding area, including a burned-out stone building at the end of the road near the stockade wall. GORK got pricked by a needle trap on a chest of drawers in a bedroom but it had no effect. They also dug through the warped remains of an armory in the building but didn’t find anything of interest in the ruins and gave up for the day.
They got rooms at Falco’s Tavern because it’s cheaper than the Inn of the Dying Minotaur.
Not a lot accomplished, but things are underway. The second session (actually already played last night) didn’t have to deal with introductions and background, and the PCs already had some idea of what they’re wanting to do.
I also decided to institute a 100 XP/level session award for each PC. This session consisted of no combat and no treasure found. I’m not really interested in subjective “roleplaying” or “story” awards, but I also don’t want PCs going completely empty-handed after this sort of session. 100 XP/level/session is my compromise, though I might have to cap it at higher levels. We’ll see.
Tags: AD&D, Restenford, session
