Playing AD&D · Game Master's Laboratory

Playing AD&D

I think a lot of GMs who started in 5e get the itch to try the older editions. I got some reprints of the AD&D core books, and eventually some friends decided we wanted to give it a try! We have lots of old-school players in the lab that've given some cool perspectives on modern games, and since I started with modern day Pathfinder 1e and D&D 3.5 and 4e, I figured I'd try my hand at the opposite. I'd love to hear some more perspectives, if any folks here have read or played some old school games after starting with some of the newer games/editions, or vice versa!

In all honesty, we had a great time, but that might have been due more to liking the group than the game. With that said, it definitely has a lot of fun stuff in it---although we didn't have time to use them, I had a lot of fun reading through the base-building rules where you buy different pieces of castles and assemble your own map of one. The magic item tables were super fun, the Monster Manual was very evocative, and the art is scruffy but in a pretty cool way.

Combat definitely required some interpretation, which I was fine with, but players who prefer ultra-precise rules may be somewhat miserable. We weren't entirely certain how combat segments worked, but after we googled it for a bit, we realized no one seems to know quite how they work, so we did we thought made sense but kept combat working. We did actually like the Initiative system a lot---having one side go all at once was fast, even if it can skew combat sometimes in favor of the side to act first. The combat itself was usually pretty deadly and fun---the game really encourages using your wits, not your character sheet, to overcome challenges, which I really really enjoyed. The tables to hit took a bit of getting used to, and armor class representing both difficulty to hit but also the type of armor being worn, but not always the type of armor being worn, which interacted differently with different weapons (a rule we ended up ignoring lol) was a bit confusing at times.

Using gold for XP was fun and kept everyone pointed in the same direction---it honestly felt a lot like proactive play, although this was a brief one shot, so we were playing pretty fast and loose. Treasure was impactful, and my players got excited whenever they found some. Magic items felt impactful in a way they don't really in 5e or Pathfinder. We've all played very few true dungeon crawlers, and we enjoyed it a lot more than we expected. I've got a very strong desire to play Shadowdark---it looks like the fun pieces I enjoyed about AD&D with some modern day sensibilities.

For anyone interested, Matt Colville (who started playing with AD&D) has a great video about what modern D&D is "about" and how it's fundamentally different from AD&D dungeon crawlers. They really are a pretty different experience. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BQpnjYS6mnk&ab_channel=MatthewColville

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