I think my Dad wished he had put variable damage for larger weapons into Basic D&D. In his own game we used D4 for arrows and daggers and 2D6 for the two handed broadsword. this created a mini tactical problem if you wanted to wear a shield you had to give up the two handed weapons. Maybe too crunchy for some but I like it.
It is always such an honor and thrill when you drop into the comments to share your memories and thoughts regarding your dad's edition of Dungeons & Dragons. I am so happy you found my little channel and I truly appreciate you sharing your insights. I don't think that's too crunchy at all! In my B/X game, for a 2-handed sword instead of doing 1d10 damage, I have the the player roll 2D6 and keep the highest, then add +1 on top of that. It's a little house rule but hasn't really mattered yet since none of the players have taken a 2-handed sword! Thanks again for taking the time to watching and comment. I really appreciate it!
Realistically, average people didn't have the dice unless you were already hardcore into something. As a kid in the 1980's I had the D&D books first, but I was drawing numbers on paper out of a fishbowl for a couple months until I could afford to get dice.
After I read the O D&D rules for the first time back in 2005, it is baffling that anyone was able to play this game unless the played in the original gaming groups from Lake Geneva.
Supposedly the rules made a bit more sense when given the context of war games of the time, but I suspect that many groups just interpreted the rules how they wanted. I’m not sure if the actual transmission of the game from group to group outside the Midwest but I think it was probably marketed to war gamers almost exclusively in the first 3 years, with the Basic game and AD&D being the products put forth after the realization that there was a much wider audience to reach.
Most people in the mid-to-late 80s playing didn't even know about OD&D unless you were way older (like first wave D&D gamer). No one I played with then talked about it, mentioned, played it or even knew about it. And this was people who played in GenCon tournaments, etc. back then. It wasn't until internet when collecting, appreciation for history and forums became way bigger that people became more aware of it. Or lets say "cared" about it. Everyone else was riding the newest waves.
@@BlackEcology Yes -- very few people played until 1976/77. If you played in 74 or 75 you were super early -- and you're right probably had a strong war gaming background -- so IMO a piece of cake for war gamers to play the game. I started playing in 77 and yeah some weird DMs (monty haul, killer DMs, unbalanced encounters) sometimes -- lots of weird rules interpretations. Luckily in 77 I did find a good DM where I played in the City State of the Invincible Overloard -- good times!!
Your channel is so valuable, I love hearing people talk about the early days of the game. Even when you cover topics you've already gone over, I know I'm not alone in saying that sometimes you just want to hear about it again. It doesn't get old for me. As an aside, I believe the term "fighting men" is a reference to ancient and medieval military terminology, where it was a measure of the soldiers at your disposal. "The king has amassed a force of twelve hundred fighting men." I believe this was as opposed to farmers, craftsmen, artisans, the clergy, etc. Looking forward to a dedicated video on the First Fantasy Campaign!
Thank you so much for your very kind words, and for watching and commenting. I really appreciate it! That makes a lot of sense about the origin of "Fighting Men." I just always thought it was such a cumbersome term! I can certainly add a dedicated video on the First Fantasy Campaign. I feel like I've talked about it a few times over the past year and a half but it's spread across different videos, so consolidating it all could make sense. Thanks for the idea. Cheers!
Thanks for the video! A little tighter on the time at just over an hour. Not bad. It can be challenging to carve out over an hour and a half for videos which is why I often am playing catch up with your catalog but one hour or so can be easier to schedule. Unless there was more than one DM (and sometimes even then), a group might only have one set of books and one set of dice which were shared in those early days, from what I recall from my own experience and from game clubs, with as many d6s as might be plundered from older parlor games (Monopoly and the like). My first character was a Fighting-Man! I don't think I played a spellcaster of any kind until I churned through a dozen or more Fighting-Men but that doesn't take long in (O)D&D. I think I played a Cleric next, which remains my favorite class in any edition. I don't think I had a PC MU until we transitioned to 1E AD&D, even though I was DMing during the (O)D&D era. I tended to mainly play humans in those early days as the others felt more restrictive, probably because I read a some fantasy fiction beyond Tolkien which was my main reference for non-humans (though Poul Anderson added some options, as I recall). Although REH was primarily Conan, so many of his adversaries and companions were human fighter types to emulate it seemed like human options were more expansive. I did dabble with an Elf Fighter / M U later in 1E AD&D as a PC and just about maxed him out before retiring him with one group but that was rare. These days, a Dwarf Cleric is often the go to when I play (I mainly, by far, DM) though I will do convention one-shots with whatever the group needs once other players have chosen their favorites. I do not recall any time when we had the DM roll the ability scores for player characters. This might have been written as such because of limited dice sets and how quickly they could wear down to rounded-off globes. We always ran them in order / down the line in the early days. It was the challenge to play what you rolled and part of the game rather then to decide what you wanted to play and then move rolls around to suit the concept. It wasn't until the 1E AD&D DMG came out that we used the alt-rolling options for PC starting scores. The experience point bonuses, and even the others, were nice but were rare enough that we didn't drool over them too much. It's true that CHR matter most and hirelings were super important. BTW, I have been a big fan of Ability Score checks behind the screen by DMs. We came at (O)D&D from Chainmail but I recall we switched fairly quickly to the alt-combat system since it helped us recruit other players who were not Chainmail players. It feels weird now that we never questioned the armor class progression being different for (O)D&D despite coming from Chainmail. Perhaps we did and I simply don't remember. It's a long time ago. d6s were king in wargaming and so were the main dice in (O)D&D, and they were easy to get almost anywhere. It's no wonder why it was mainly used since (O)D&D was first thought of as a wargaming offshoot. This is true for hit dice, weapon damage dice, etal. I think it is worth noting, in regard to expansions, that a lot of wargames were expanded by the community through newsletters and in clubs, this includes new army lists and scenarios which might have some scenario-specific rules needed. If a group wished to use some wargame rules for early WWII, for instance, for later WWII scenarios, they might need to discuss and invent new rules for weaponry or new allies that were not available in the early part of the war, and these things might be shared through newsletters or in various communities. I think it is also true that when a new board-wargame was released, it would often use conventions / rules / aspects from earlier games, essentially being a new expansion of wargaming in general, if not for a specific game. Looking at counters used in wargames from one year to the next and the similarities are as remarkable as the additions. Greenbar is two decades old, eh? Many fruits were lost in the making of that funky stuff. Tim Burton (as well as Danny Elfman and Oingo Boingo) have long impressed me and been on the must see / must listen list no matter what they produce, even the near-misses. Happy Halloween!
My first module (as a player) was where the DM filled in 'Monster' & 'Treasure' choices for each room. This was 48 years ago so forgive me for forgetting which one it was. Without even knowing it, I told my brother about the fun I had & we played a 'house rules' version of the game with just paper, pencils, & 6-sided dice from the home 'Monopoly' & 'Chutes & Ladders' boxes (kind of like 'Chainmail', but long before I knew what it was!). It was another year or 2 before I got a 'Starter' box set & my beloved Dungeon Masters Guide (1980).
The weirdest thing for me in OD&D is that the dungeon is actually kind of a character in itself, and working against the PCs. Something I’ve occasionally heard referred to as the “Enchanted (or Mythic) Underground (or Underworld)” I don’t have the books in front of me, but I remember something about how doors would open and close automatically for monsters, but the players would find them locked and barred. And the whole “funhouse” vibe of even the sample dungeon in the book… with rotating rooms, hallways that suddenly slanted downward, dumping the players on a different level, and all kinds of teleportation portals. It was very “gamey” insofar that it seemed like a board game layout, and designed only to confuse and disorient players, especially those who were trying to keep accurate maps. It didn’t feel like something that a civilization would have built as an underground base of operations… and it clearly would have been a vast investment to build in the first place. As someone coming from starting with 1980’s D&D and AD&D, with its almost pathological fetishization of realism and immersion at the time, it was a surprising throwback. It felt out of place after playing with folks that wanted the game to feel very much like a pen and paper simulation of real life in another universe that just happened to have magic and monsters.
These are all such great thoughts and comments! Thank you for sharing. You're correct that in older versions of the game, the rules specifically state that monsters can open locked doors but PCs have to figure out a way to bypass them. This was one of the reasons in early games that players would spike doors with a hammer and iron spikes shut once they had bypassed the lock - to prevent monsters from sneaking up behind them. I love your description of an enchanted/mythic underworld setting - that's exactly how I picture it and try to convey that sense of wonder and mystery in my games!
@@daddyrolleda1 Yeah, I’ve been going in that direction the more I read about the games that Gygax and Arneson ran. With turnstiles at the dungeon entrance, holy water firehoses on the walls, a giant’s bowling alley, etc… It just seems a lot more fun. I still occasionally will have a gritty realistic reason for a dungeon to exist, and why the monsters who inhabit it are there. But having that random wild fantasy setting that doesn’t make much sense is such a blast that I will always go back to it now that I’ve been exposed to that aspect of the game.
We started in 1976. Our starting DM introduced the Supplements over a period of time. However, we started with Greyhawk in play, because so much of it made sense. Especially the class-differentiated Hit Points and the different weapon damage. Bizarrely the thing we struggled most with was each monster's Number Appearing. So, if you want Kobolds, there have to be 40-400 of them?? Even when they are found as a Wandering Monster in a random dungeon corridor??!!
The "Number Appearing" was always so goofy, although I always assumed that was specifically for "in Lair" rather than if they were found wandering about. But I could've been interpreting that incorrectly!
I kind of like how Searchers of the Unknown uses Descending AC. In Searcherers and Search like Ac is decendinf and (roughly) matches up to OD&D armor class for combat, but out of combat you can use AC for stealth and sneaking checks by rolling under with a D20.
We did not color in half of the D20 numbers to differentiate between 1s and 10s. We rolled both the D20 and a D6, with odd on the D6 being 1s(and 10) and an even being 10s(and 20).
When my friends and I first got our hands on D&D (late 70's) we all felt the d4, d8, d12, d20 to be "rule of cool". It was different. After a couple months it became a PITA because we didn't have more than one set. One of our group got Traveller and we suddenly realized that we could achieve all the same probabilities by simply using d6's. Suddenly all our groups households Yatzee boxes were emptied of dice.....
You can't generate a some of the probabilities that you can with polyhedral dice. A d20 generates a linear probability from 1 to 20. You can't do that with only six sided dice. Yes, you can do 3d6 which is 3 to 18 (bell curve) which is close -- but not exactly the same.
Thank you! I did a "10 Products I love" list: ua-cam.com/video/2WjYj5xqL6Q/v-deo.html and also a "Top 5 Mechanics I love" recently. But that's really it. I'm glad you enjoyed it. Thank you so much for watching and commenting!
I very much enjoyed this bit of retrospective analysis, the original white box got on my radar sometime in the early nineties..... I think I had a piecemeal version that was supplemented by some photocopies and whatnot or however it was done back in those days and I remember thinking to myself damn this is definitely a game that was made by enthusiasts who are not game designers it was so haphazard and semi and decipherable but just full of a charm all of its own.
Thank you so much for watching and commenting! For more about the rules from Original D&D, you'll want to check out my latest video that dropped about 20 minutes ago where I go over the changes that the 1977 Holmes Basic edition made to 1974 Original D&D. Cheers!
That is so nice to hear! Thank you so much for the compliment, and also for taking a minute to stop and share it with me. I truly appreciate it! With regard to our profile name and picture, I have very fond memories of sitting at the breakfast table as a kid eating my cereal and reading the comics section in the newspaper before school, and how my mom just loved Cathy so I read it aloud to her a lot while she was buzzing around making coffee and breakfast for my dad or packing my sister's or my school bags, etc. Cheers!
I have a long history with this game. Long enough to play a mishmash of the purple box with the white. In fact my initial game was using B2 where we rolled 2d6 and attempted to roll under the monster AC. Also, all damage was just a d6 as well. Ahhh the memories.
Very cool! I started with the purple (aka "Moldvay Basic" or "B/X") set in 1981 but didn't discover Original D&D until a couple of years later when at a sleepover at my friend's house and finding a copy of Greyhawk: Supplement I in his room, and realizing that D&D had existed BEFORE my boxed set! I had no idea up until that point.
Ha! Well, I guess that's a good thing for me (that you've watched my other videos)? I do hope you enjoyed the video none-the-less. Thanks for watching and commenting! I love having folks from different generations and from different "edition backgrounds" watching the channel. Cheers!
8:55 it could have been interpreted by players at the time that a 3d6 roll was needed instead of a d20. Since all of said numbers are between 3 - 18 (with the worst being a 16 and the best being a 3) and saving throws are specially roll above it still works (thought it changes the probability of "3" being a success from 85% to 99.50%).
While I know a few players who still stick by descending AC, it’s telling that even most retroclones and OSR games use ascending AC or at least present it as an option.
I believe there were only 7 printings of Original D&D. My set is ( I think) a 6th printing, the first one that changed Hobbit to halfling, Ent to Treant, etc. Mine I picked up as single copies at a local hobby store. I didn't find out till years later that they usually came in a box, so I guess mine were extra copies sold to the shop to get rid of them.
Yes, thank you! I was riffing off the top of my head and got the count wrong, but I did include a short comment on-screen (text-based) mentioning how many versions there were. There were 7 printings, but there's a First Alpha, First Beta, and First Gamma as well as a Third and a "Third +" so that's a total of 10. Very cool that you have a set! I'm always grateful to my mom for having bought this for me as a gift, as it's something I would've wanted but probably never would've picked up on my own. She asked the folks at the game store for something that would make a great birthday gift but that I hadn't already purchased and they had just gotten this boxed set in. Such a wonderful gift. Cheers, and thank you so much or watching and commenting!
According to the Acaeum Jeff is correct there were 7 printings. The Acaeum lists the Alpha, Beta, and Gamma printings but those are all considered again according to the Acaeum as 1st priintings. So 7 printings total. Also, it's never been confirmed according to the Acaeum, but it believed that some of the later printings may have been also sold without the box. No sure info on this one way or the other.
Okay here we go. 1 - I knew about the D6 substitutions for D20, about 0-9 twice D20s and I knew dice largely favored D6s - magic missiles/heal spells in OD&D. Didn't know about the exact counts using other dice but I did get that it was threadbare. 2&3&5&8 - not much to comment except I knew these. 4 - I'm as familiar with this notion as I am with playing D&D. I started playing with AD&D with my dad in the late 90s. Before I even completed my first read of the build rules he called my attention to the race/class table and said to ignore it. He asked me, a 9 year old child who had yet to read the class section of the book, why an elf couldn't be a druid. I couldn't answer then and y'know what all these years later I have yet to form a Watsonian answer. He did enforce non-magic halflings and dwarfs: his table rule was that they could play clerics that never actually gain spells from the class. Basically worse Fighters, with better initial saves and access to use cleric-specific magic items. This was my very first instruction to adjudicate for the milieu and not the RAW text. Reminding me of this is the reason I'm commenting. 6&7 - I did know about piggybacking off Chainmail but not about a self-contained combat ruleset for the initial OD&D release. I knew about THAC0 but did not know Chainmail had ascending armor. 9 - I knew about this. But only because I went through a period where I was absolutely frustrated at the notion that in AD&D Gauntlets of Ogre Power were worth more than every belt of Giant's Strength that I dug up older books to read about them. 10 - I didn't know this... but I guess I assumed it, especially knowing that D&D was an expansion for Chainmail. Even as simple as they are the booklets feel like they're meant to be expanded upon and collected into the same boxes the starter set was sold in.
Such a fantastic comment! I really appreciate you taking the time to comment on each of my thoughts with your own experiences. I love learning about other people's history with the game, and I especially appreciate that even though you already knew almost everything I mentioned, that you stuck with the video and then offered your own commentary. I really liked your points and memories of #4 and playing with your dad, and also learning to "adjudicate for the milieu" (love that description/explanation). Thank you so much! Cheers!
I thought the "race as class" from Basic extended from original, but I'm surprised to learn that you did have choices in original D&D! I'm not surprised at combination restrictions, because that still lives on in the world of video games. When World of Warcraft launched, only humans and dwarves could be paladins, only night elves and tauren (native American coded minotaurs) could be druids, etc. Though in the case of video games I suspect it's less for balance reasons and more for animations. Class abilities use certain unique animations and it can be extra work to make sure the rigging for each of those animations looks good on each of the player skeletons.
There was a 2013 premium reprint of all 7 oD&D books, released in a wooden collector's box, along with reference sheets and dice, to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the game.
Ah, yes, I remember when those came out. I didn't pick them up since I had the originals, and I also seem to recall they changed the cover art. Did you end up getting them?
I love your videos! Listening them at work really helps the day go by quicker. Have you considered talking about how certain fantasy species had level requirements or equivalent levels if you wanted to play them? I recently read some of 3e and learned that playing as a werewolf as your race counted as two or three levels. Similar concepts apply to ogres, tieflings, and even hill giants in that edition.
Grey Hawk supplement was almost essential for us. Blackmore and Eldrich Wizardry were largely ignored. Too bad Gygax screwed up the easy logic of the D20 combat system. Another great episode, thanks.
Thank you so much for watching and commenting! I really appreciate it! I can add playing monsters to the list, but I'd most likely focus on the pre-3E discussion, since the majority of my channel viewers prefer that era of D&D. I remember the 3E era of monster playing and got the Savage Species book for that edition specifically to make interesting NPC adversaries for the campaign I was running! I also got the Complete Book of Humanoids for 2nd Edition which was a similar concept, although mechanically worked differently.
@chrisholmes436 That's interesting your group ignored Blackmoor and Eldritch Wizardry! Why do you think that was? And, thank you for the compliment and for watching and commenting.
Our game sessions in 70s where using the rules owned by older brother/cousin. The first times the rules were the blue mimeograph duplicates. We even spent a weekend to make a hand-written copy. Getting access to the special dice was rarer. Instead we used little glass jelly glasses with pieces of paper numbered one to four/eight/twelve/twenty. To get a result: · Put paper in glass · Shack glass · Then over to dump · Close eyes and pickup/touch a number
I hope that's a good thing! I do thank you for watching, even though you already knew most of this! And thanks for your support of the channel! Cheers!
Hi Martin, thanks for the video. It's obvious that you really love our hobby. I think I have something interesting for you to look into. I have a copy of Greyhawk, 9th printing!?!? May 1978 with an odd production error: There are no pages 5/6 or 63/64, but two of 7/8 & 61/62. I was given the 7 OD&D books by a friend many years ago without a box so I've no idea where it originally came from. The Greyhawk expansion is severely beaten up though, but still intact.
I own and run this game. This edition is the best edition for the skilled, veteran DM interested in running his world his own way. These rules were truly guidelines, the DM was expected to do it his way.
It is indeed a very flexible and forgiving system, which I think is its strength. In terms of presentation of information and teaching one how to play, especially if that person is not already familiar with RPGs or at the very least with wargames, I think it could've been done better. I don't mean changing the rules or adding more rules or anything, but just explaining better how to implement the rules, defining terms, etc.
I came up with descending AC and to hit/THAC0, but it always bugged me because I knew the math was simpler ascending AC and a to hit bonus. So 3e seemed right but I barely played it. Suffice it to say, you swapping out to ascending AC for your game makes sense to me!
Despite having played since 1981, I think in terms of total number of hours played, I've played the most of 3E/3.5/PF1E as I ran a campaign myself and played in at least three or four more over long periods of time (one campaign lasting around 10 years and several others running over 5, and my own campaign that's been running since May 2001). So, for good or bad, using Ascending AC just comes more naturally to me now!
Great video Martin! Though I do think that the text about determining abilities *is* clear that you roll 3d6 "down the line." Sure you can interpret "in order" multiple ways but the very next paragraph makes it clear that the player couldn't move around the stats. It says that "with a strength of only 6 there was no real chance for him to become a fighter." If the stats could be arranged as desired then he could easily become a fighter by putting the 13 in Strength. It then later goes on to say that the player really wants to be a magic-user and chooses that class despite having the higher score in Wisdom than Intelligence. Again, if "in order" meant anything other than "in the order that the abilities are listed" then he could have just put the higher score in Intelligence. Just my two cents.
That totally makes sense, and the context of the following sentences is important in understanding the intent. I just think it's a good example of how clearer language would've helped, especially for people who had no background in this kind of thing picking this up and trying to learn how to play! Thanks for watching and commenting!
@@daddyrolleda1 Agreed! It's like Gary just wrote the entire first three books in one continuous, singular draft, using future paragraphs to clarify past ones without ever going back to tweak anything after the fact, lol.
I think that the Orignal game from 1974 was intended to be an experiment. If D&D became popular, then great. If it failed as a game, then so be it because TSR had a multitude of other game experiments. Like the US Constitution, the Original D&D "rules" were intentionally left unfinished with the purpose of being "expounded" upon. That's a tough concept for people to wrap their minds around, specially those who covet a set of clearly written "statutes", published by a game company authority, and that define the rules for everything.
I think it's a mixture of that, but also that the design team made assumptions about just exactly what kind of knowledge people buying and playing the game would already possess, so a lot of things are left unexplained or terms are undefined. But yes, it was also intended that folks would take it and run with it and in a sense create their own game using the framework provided. Thanks for watching and commenting!
@@daddyrolleda1 Original D&D is more like a kit for creating your own game, than it is a "finished" game. We gotta remember that TSR consisted of about 3 people when they published it in 74. It's truly in its own class, separate from the editions that followed. The initial generation of DMs, then called "referees", discovered how fun it was to use the game as a jumping off point for making D&D their own. Like a set of "Lincoln Logs", Original D&D was offered to gamers to go crazy and make something out of it.
I'm sure it was floating around in fan-created stuff, but since originally *all* classes were considered to be "roguish" (they were adventurers, not heroes), there really wasn't a need for one. Once the Thief class was created, every race could operate as a Thief but Gygax specifically pointed out in Greyhawk Supplement I that Hobbits "have a better chance of doing most things" as Thieves rather than as Fighters.
I knew at least one person would want me to turn in my old-timer card! I did use it for two sessions but for the kids especially it made more sense to switch and it also means in my DM Notebook I can just put "AC 12" or whatever, and I know IMMEDIATELY what that means, and because my players aren't good of keeping track of things, I can't count on them to know what their THAC0 is (my daughter often forgets her character sheet) so having a single target number that works for everyone is easier for us. Thank you so much for watching and commenting!
43:40 One thing I found interesting from the 1973 draft recently unearthed is that its finally explicit about HOW these two combat systems interact. If you are doing man to man combat (or man to orc, goblin, or other similar types using normal weapons and armour) you are meant to use Chainmail for its detailed weapon vs armour type combat. But if you are fighting men vs monsters, you use the alternate d20 system because monsters dont have the same kind of weapons and armour and dont have the same differences (dragon hide is the same against swords or maces, etc) The two systems were meant to be used in tandem, decided by the situation. Not choosing one or the other unilaterally. Of course, it turns out the d20 system was more than apt to handle ANY battle in D&D, and you could just port over the weapon vs armour tables if you wanted to anyway. Probably by the 1974 version Gary realized this and ditched the tandem use aspect.
Careful with those stickies, although I suspect you're using them just for your production. I've left them on less precious tomes to find that they leave a bit of a sticky residue behind. Better long-term use for them: tracking commonly used resources on a character sheet (HP, HD, Spell Slots, Ammunition.) Once the eraser ruins the sticky, just replace it with a new sticky.
Yes, exactly! That's why I mentioned how people were probably freaking out, but I put them on right before I shot the video and you saw me pull them off as we went through, and then I discarded them. I was a little nervous about using them, but in the past I've spent too much time on camera trying to find the thing on the page I was talking about and I'm sure that's not a fun experience for a viewer/listener. Thanks for watching and commenting!
I grew up with AD&D. I'm very familiar with the descending armor class, the to-hit matrices, and THAC0, but I much prefer the current ascending armor class and attack bonus. It was never difficult math, but it was unnecessary.
Yup! I've mentioned this on the channel before, but even in language. I recall in Module S4: Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth, he mentioned that it would take a "sennight" to travel somewhere, and I was so confused what that means until finally looking it up and realizing that it means "week." He could've said, "Week" but deliberately chose a word nobody would know because he thought it made him look smart. That said, I did learn a lot of great vocabulary words from reading Gygax that helped me in school, but "sennight" was *NOT* one of them!
@@daddyrolleda1 That's an usual mistake among amateur/inexpert fantasy writers to try to sound old or elvish, one I also did until it hit me the lack of context.
10:41 While 4, 8 and 12-sided dice were not common, when I bought my boxed set of original D&D rules in mid 1975, the vendor also sold me a set of five dice so they were available at that time. (I have since lost the dice but still have the boxed set of the rules.
by 1977 when I started playing D&D. Polyhedral dice were fairly common and easy to get. I started playing in 1977 and always had polyhedral dice. So, this issue may have only affected people who played really early.
I read somewhere, but have no evidence of it, that descending AC can also be used in a 2d6 system. The attacker rolls 2d6 and needs to roll the AC or below to land an attack. So, plate and shield can only be hit on a 2, etc.
Descending armor class can be used with any dice system -- decending AC was never an issue in the beginning because charts were used. You can do almost anything with charts or lookup tables -- they even let you do things you can't do without them.
You don't have any magical hobbits, but when the dwarves find the troll hoard in The Hobbit, they place spells on the treasure they can't carry with them so that it is protected and they can find it later. I don't think Gary was very interested in Middle-Earth, and so had this idea of magic-resistant dwarves who can't use magic, but in M-E the dwarves could use limited magic, and they were resistant to coercion, not necessarily magic.
"For this is what your folk would call magic, I believe, though I do not understand clearly what they mean; and they seem to use the same word of the deceits of the Enemy. But this, if you will, is the magic of Galadriel. Did you not say that you wished to see Elf-magic?"
I know you pointed out that Gary wrote what was there in the final draft agreed. but Arneson, knowing his own failings had elicited the help of Gale Gaylord, David Megarry, and Rockford in order to print up the manuscripts that were submitted I can easily see Gary wanting to rewrite it into his own words so he could put the stamp of editor on. One thing that your research has made me think about is actually the term class technically, Arnesson already had classes in his game the nomenclature for that term may not have been defined yet. but since Ernest was into the role-play and he wanted simplistic rules, it was easy for him to use one structure for our class or player options and just modify their goals and skills were for that character The whole thing about no weapons I think probably derive from a conversation Ernest and had with Gugax at one point but there is a famous bishop in England, the name escapes me at the moment, which wanted to go into battle and he is justification right or wrong was he was not gonna use edge weapons. Somehow the use of the mace just is much nastier considering at the time everyone is wearing plate mail and if you concaved is there armor, it was much worse because now the armor was working against the person in it pushing and doing more damage because you had to push the metal back out. And bludgeoning damage is nasty in general. That’s a debate for another day Ernest and never specifically stated that was the reasoning, but we did talk about that historical character at one point and it leads me to believe it was on his mind. you are absolutely correct about how Dave Arneson did his campaign in terms of being science/fantasy but it wasn’t just a mishmash. They took each element that they put in relatively seriously kinda. lol I have a direct quote from (Dave Arneson’s) rules. He was using later as chain mail which was from the Domesday book issue number five, he mistakenly thought that was called chain mail, but due to time and memory he forgot he didn’t have that name yet, but it was a body of rules that became chainmail. I have a video interview with quite a few people directly stating that as well and yes, our class existed before, and was used in many naval games from my understanding. And yes, it definitely came from his set of rules that he was playing with others for his Napoleonic that he was playing with everyone in Minnesota and the group in Wisconsin that he was running. What I referred to is the fictional Napoleonics. Gary was in the Americas and Dave’s group was in Europe At a certain point of naval combat occurred and Gary needed to set a rules for naval and he had heard they definitely had a set It did not get polished off until Mike Carr assisted and they gave it a different name because they were aware of other side of rules with the same name another interesting thing and I’m glad you brought it up with the one dice equals the damage to the weapon to the opponent. The different dice use for different weapon types was I believe a Gary Gygax change. again to add a use for the other dice a.k.a. the excuse. Ernest was still not so keen on making people change out the dice for different weapon types I remember having a few discussions with him on that.
Totally. A lot of my early groups over complicated it by trying to turn AC into the target number instead of using it as a modifier as intended. I do think the new system is better, but thac0 was never as difficult as people make it out to be. Really you're just swapping the placement of two variables in the to-hit formula. AC and thac0/modifiers change places.
36:38 that magic-user’s name is Xylarthen. It looks like it was generated from a random table. Although it also tracks with Gary’s known naming conventions for characters.
36:38 that magic-user’s name is Xylarthen. It looks like it was generated from a random table. Although it also tracks with Gary’s known naming conventions for characters. Also It was Str Int Wis CON Dex Cha. Dex and Con traded places in later editions, probably due to Dex being the prime requisite for Thieves.
Yeah, I actually did correct that later in that segment once I read the table I was referring to. I started with B/X so that's the order that's always in my head, but thanks for catching it, too!
From what I've read, Gary assumed that most grognards that bought D&D would already be war gamers, familiar with and quite likely owners of Chainmail. Gary and Dave actually at first saw D&D as a supplement to and a logical continuation of Chainmail's Fantasy Section, and not really a completely separate game on its own, in spite of its innovations.
I've really come to appreciate the weapons all doing d6 damage rule. A dagger can kill you just as dead as a greatsword. I use an alternate system where each weapon has a special effect, so like if you roll a 1 on damage with a battleaxe you roll the damage again and add it. I see a lot of folks use hit dice in later editions as damage, but I don't like that, because it punishes the poor thief even more.
It's disappointing how many players of this game have no idea what Appendix N is, nor are they familiar with most of the works that comprise it. My 5th ed players (all of whom started playing in 2022) were having a conversation about how D&D is 'Lord of the Rings with dice', and that there was nothing before Tolkien. The authors I mentioned to them drew nothing but blank stares. One of them had heard of Moorcock, and while knowing who Conan was they had never heard the name of Robert E Howard. Fritz Lieber and Jack Vance were entirely alien to them. I've tried to get them interested in older fantasy, but they are convinced that they won't like it. So sad
It's so strange to be convinced you won't like something before you try it, but it's common with younger folks from every generation, I think. They may come around some day. Or they may like the stories if presented in a different medium - know a few of the Fritz Leiber stories have been done as graphic novels with art by Mike Mignola (of Hellboy fame), so maybe that would help? Thank you so much for watching and commenting!
@@daddyrolleda1 that might help. I haven't read those comics, but I've seen them. Time to hit up Amazon. And I love your content, keep up the good work.
@@daddyrolleda1 Ugh. My nephew drives me nuts. When growing up, my dad and I (along with various siblings) would roam all over 1980s Bay Area looking for mom & pop restaurants of every type of cuisine we could find. Absolutely loved exploring and finding new tastes and foods to try. And then there's my nephew. The guy is convinced he won't like anything and everything that isn't a hamburger, pizza, or basic macaroni and cheese. He's 14 now, and remains stubborn in his ways. My brother (his dad) has desperately tried to get him to try new things over the years, but the kid just won't budge. My nephew will be visiting the Netherlands and Germany next year, and I'm practically crying at all the amazing food he's going to refuse to eat. 😭
@@WarhavenSCOld people as well! I can't tell you how many people from older generations I've dealt with who scoff at anything out of their comfort zone.
@@arheru You are not wrong. A good friend of mine is in his 50s, and if it isn't Pizza Hut, Subway, or something his mom would have cooked, he won't even try it. He'll eat fried chicken. He'll eat ham, olive, and mushroom pizza. But we can't get him to try jägerschnitzel with mushroom sauce at our favorite German restaurant. We're like, "There's nothing in it that you don't already like! Just TRY IT!" Nope. Won't do it.
Would you please do a video on the more bizarre or monster races for the earlier editions of dnd like the hobgoblin I heard that they had two different charisma score your score and a human score
I can add it to the list, although I have to confess I'm not familiar with the concept you're talking about with the hobgoblin. I checked Original Dungeons & Dragons "Monsters & Treasure" and also the 1st Edition AD&D "Monster Manual" and there's no mention of a Charisma score in there for the Hobgoblin entry. Typically in older editions, Monsters did not have stats listed, and if they did, it was usually (not always) a physical stat (STR, DEX, or CON). Charisma in the older editions mainly controlled how many hirelings you could have and what their loyalty score would be, so it wouldn't have made sense to list that score for a Monster. Perhaps someone else will see your comment and be familiar with the concept! Thanks for watching and commenting!
>Dwarves, the stout brickhouses whose entire mythology centers around working mines and killing stuff with big axes... can't be a max level fighter >Elves, whose entire mythology is being highly attuned to nature and being magically gifted... can't be max level magic users >Halflings can't use magic because ??? This was always legitimately terrible design.
I hated level limits as a kid and while I don't really go out of my way to implement them now in my old-school games, I do understand the intent behind them, mechanically and thematically: 1) Mechanically: Dwarves, Elves, and Hobbits/Halflings all get a suite of abilities that Humans don't get, and they are all front-loaded, getting them at 1st level. So, they get a leg-up on humans from the get-go, and a way to balance this (in Gary's mind at the time) was to limit how far they could advance, so that a player wouldn't automatically pick to play a non-human just because of their extra abilities (infravision, detecting secret doors, etc.). It's not as elegant, perhaps, as simply applying an experience point penalty to them (e.g., making them have to earn more XP to advance in level as a way to pay for their racial abilities, the way Moldvay Basic did) but it definitely was an attempt at game balance. 2) Thematically: The inspirational resources Gary drew upon, primarily stories by Fritz Leiber, Robert E. Howard, and other pulp stories always features humans as the main (and most often, *only*) protagonists and he wanted D&D to emulate these kinds of source materials, so he implemented racial restrictions specifically as a way to make the game more human-centric. It was a deliberate thematic choice based on his own personal preferences for the kind of fantasy he enjoyed. Over the years, people have tried to retcon reasons for why a Hobbit was limited to being a maximum 4th level Fighter (it was Gary's way of saying, sure, you can play one but they aren't really suited as heroic adventurers - none of the Hobbits in LOTR are thought to be truly capable warriors on the level of Aragorn or Boromir, despite there being occasional instances of tactical genius and bravery on part of the little folk). Some will say that Elves are much more attune to nature, so the higher-level magics cast by higher-level magic-users go against that natural order of things and the elves *choose* not to explore them. These are, to me, weak excuses made to try to explain something that ultimately just comes down to, "This is how Gary wanted it."
I actually think there's some elegance in every weapon doing d6 damage (although I think for example a two-handed weapon should do +1 or something). It makes choice of weapon a character aesthetic, not a game choice. If I want my Fighting-Man to be a rugged barbarian, I might pick a battle axe. if I want him to be a sellsword, I might pick a sword instead. It's a choice of taste, not "This does more damage".
Regarding the "Fighting-Man" class, I once did a word lookup for Men & Magic and "Fighting-Man/Men" is stated 14 times while the more gender neutral "Fighter" is used *15* times. So the current day controversy really is much ado about nothing IMO, especially since as you mentioned in the video "fighting-man" was a common term to denote men of fighting age at the time (since there had been almost zero fighting women in the military in all of human history at that point) and both John Carter and Conan were given that label at various times in their own original published stories.
Yes, absolutely! If you caught the part where I mentioned in this video about how I talked about clerics only using blunt weapons and how I elaborated on that in, of all places, my video on Thieves, that was part of the mechanical design to match the flavor chosen for clerics only using blunt weapons. It meant that Clerics were much less likely to end up with a magical weapon since something like 80% of the magic weapons table was Swords or Daggers. That was the balance factor since Clerics could wear armor and cast spells.
For whatever reason, it was decided that "halfling" was a more generic term and not something that could be copyrighted/trademarked by Tolkien Enterprises, whereas Hobbit, Balrog, and Ent could be. Tolkien definitely created the term "hobbit" but I don't think anybody could definitively prove that he hadn't borrowed the term "halfling" from other sources, in the same way that he used terms like "dwarves" and "elves." Thanks for watching and commenting!
Dr1 said it well. Halfling is a term that has been around for ages not specific to LotR, i.e. Halfling is a word used in Scotland, Northern Ireland, and Northern England for a boy or girl who is not yet fully grown. So yeah -- not a copyrightable term. Hobbit is a LotR specific term.
@@daddyrolleda1 Totally doesn't invalidate your point haha. It makes you wonder if they were already working on Greyhawk's variable hit dice and weapon damage.
@@russellharrell2747 Yes -- it's basically that -- I always have to laugh though -- because I agree -- so easy to handle either way. Some people make such a big deal out of it -- like ascending AS is some kind of revolutionary thing -- yeah whatever.
Yes! There's a reason that I've not really done one before. But I did hope this might reach a wider audience than some of my more niche videos as of late. I was quite surprised more folks weren't interested in my video on Witches. I thought it was a great one! Thank you for watching and commenting!
@@daddyrolleda1 Trust me, I fully understand what your saying. Long or not, niche of not, your product is good and it shows that your putting a lot of effort into making the best videos you can. Eventually I'll get it into my head to do one video a week and make them great. Until then, I suspect I'll comment on many future videos of yours .
@@daddyrolleda1 I have found it interesting that videos made with deeper meaning in relation to our hobby, tend to do less well than what are mainly fluffy pieces? I do a half-baked review of some game supplement collecting dust on my shelf (giving me an excuse to re-read it after long ignoring it). I haven't viewed the Witches vid yet, but I will. I work a lot of long and weird hours, alone, so I listen to a lot of videos. Now, having not seen your video yet: Thinking back, I can honestly say that very few people actually read these game books cover to cover even once. Not very many in the hobby talks about how the Witches show up in an obscure section of the AD&D Guides. without grabbing the book, I'm wanting to say that the Warlock is also covered, as is something else. Merchants? I know that there is another section covering Level 0 characters/NPCs. Want a challenging and possibly humorous session or two? Start the group out at level 0 and have them earn the right to claim a 'class'. "Fighter, eh? Well lad, who was yer master o' arms, eh?" (Okay, that was a bit lame. I plead age and hunger).
Oh, I 100% believe this! I've even mentioned it on the channel before. "More options" (meaning, splat books, mechanical stuff, etc.) to me means "fewer options." It's exactly what you said - once you start over-defining what can and can't be done based on what skill/feat/power/etc. your character has, the fewer times your character is going to do anything that *ISN'T* defined on their character sheet. I'm probably not explaining that well, but I do agree with you. I used that wording in the video because in the modern days of playing TTRPGs, for whatever reason, most players seems to enjoy the idea of "building" their character through a series of more and more minutely niche "options" so that they are super good at a single thing, and then that's the only thing they want to do during the game.
Why are you even paying for a system then if you're just gonna make most of it up? Might as well just free form RP at that point. The grognard cope is real.
You said multiple times that the d4, d8 and d12 were only used in one place each, but did you say where they are used and I missed it, or did you not say?
@@willydstyle Yes, I pointed out where they are used in the video showing the page I was referring to (e.g., using D4 to determine the Elf Fighting-Man level for NPCs). I also added on-screen text blocks to indicate a few instances I'd forgotten.
@@daddyrolleda1 ah, thanks for the reply, that explains my confusion because I mostly just *listen* to your videos and like tab over if it sounds like you're talking about something interesting to look at.
Never understood the prime requisite xp boost methodology. Seemed to nudge players to only playing character classes that match their highest ability score. And why would a high dex score make a thief advance levels faster when xp was earned based on either gold recovered or monsters killed back on 1E and 2E.
Sorry... which guy are you referring to? Me? I've made several videos about 2nd Edition and have been playing since 1981. I'm not sure what your comment is in relation to.
I think my Dad wished he had put variable damage for larger weapons into Basic D&D. In his own game we used D4 for arrows and daggers and 2D6 for the two handed broadsword. this created a mini tactical problem if you wanted to wear a shield you had to give up the two handed weapons. Maybe too crunchy for some but I like it.
It is always such an honor and thrill when you drop into the comments to share your memories and thoughts regarding your dad's edition of Dungeons & Dragons. I am so happy you found my little channel and I truly appreciate you sharing your insights. I don't think that's too crunchy at all! In my B/X game, for a 2-handed sword instead of doing 1d10 damage, I have the the player roll 2D6 and keep the highest, then add +1 on top of that. It's a little house rule but hasn't really mattered yet since none of the players have taken a 2-handed sword!
Thanks again for taking the time to watching and comment. I really appreciate it!
I'm guessing the most exciting thing about Greyhawk's release was being able to use the rest of your dice. 😆
Realistically, average people didn't have the dice unless you were already hardcore into something. As a kid in the 1980's I had the D&D books first, but I was drawing numbers on paper out of a fishbowl for a couple months until I could afford to get dice.
@@kyleolson8977 I made polygonal spinners.
After I read the O D&D rules for the first time back in 2005, it is baffling that anyone was able to play this game unless the played in the original gaming groups from Lake Geneva.
Supposedly the rules made a bit more sense when given the context of war games of the time, but I suspect that many groups just interpreted the rules how they wanted. I’m not sure if the actual transmission of the game from group to group outside the Midwest but I think it was probably marketed to war gamers almost exclusively in the first 3 years, with the Basic game and AD&D being the products put forth after the realization that there was a much wider audience to reach.
@@russellharrell2747 miniature wargamers were a proven market…they actually spent money on games.
Most people in the mid-to-late 80s playing didn't even know about OD&D unless you were way older (like first wave D&D gamer). No one I played with then talked about it, mentioned, played it or even knew about it. And this was people who played in GenCon tournaments, etc. back then. It wasn't until internet when collecting, appreciation for history and forums became way bigger that people became more aware of it. Or lets say "cared" about it. Everyone else was riding the newest waves.
@@BlackEcology Yes -- very few people played until 1976/77. If you played in 74 or 75 you were super early -- and you're right probably had a strong war gaming background -- so IMO a piece of cake for war gamers to play the game.
I started playing in 77 and yeah some weird DMs (monty haul, killer DMs, unbalanced encounters) sometimes -- lots of weird rules interpretations. Luckily in 77 I did find a good DM where I played in the City State of the Invincible Overloard -- good times!!
Your channel is so valuable, I love hearing people talk about the early days of the game. Even when you cover topics you've already gone over, I know I'm not alone in saying that sometimes you just want to hear about it again. It doesn't get old for me.
As an aside, I believe the term "fighting men" is a reference to ancient and medieval military terminology, where it was a measure of the soldiers at your disposal. "The king has amassed a force of twelve hundred fighting men." I believe this was as opposed to farmers, craftsmen, artisans, the clergy, etc.
Looking forward to a dedicated video on the First Fantasy Campaign!
Thank you so much for your very kind words, and for watching and commenting. I really appreciate it!
That makes a lot of sense about the origin of "Fighting Men." I just always thought it was such a cumbersome term!
I can certainly add a dedicated video on the First Fantasy Campaign. I feel like I've talked about it a few times over the past year and a half but it's spread across different videos, so consolidating it all could make sense. Thanks for the idea. Cheers!
Thanks for the video! A little tighter on the time at just over an hour. Not bad. It can be challenging to carve out over an hour and a half for videos which is why I often am playing catch up with your catalog but one hour or so can be easier to schedule.
Unless there was more than one DM (and sometimes even then), a group might only have one set of books and one set of dice which were shared in those early days, from what I recall from my own experience and from game clubs, with as many d6s as might be plundered from older parlor games (Monopoly and the like).
My first character was a Fighting-Man! I don't think I played a spellcaster of any kind until I churned through a dozen or more Fighting-Men but that doesn't take long in (O)D&D. I think I played a Cleric next, which remains my favorite class in any edition. I don't think I had a PC MU until we transitioned to 1E AD&D, even though I was DMing during the (O)D&D era.
I tended to mainly play humans in those early days as the others felt more restrictive, probably because I read a some fantasy fiction beyond Tolkien which was my main reference for non-humans (though Poul Anderson added some options, as I recall). Although REH was primarily Conan, so many of his adversaries and companions were human fighter types to emulate it seemed like human options were more expansive. I did dabble with an Elf Fighter / M U later in 1E AD&D as a PC and just about maxed him out before retiring him with one group but that was rare. These days, a Dwarf Cleric is often the go to when I play (I mainly, by far, DM) though I will do convention one-shots with whatever the group needs once other players have chosen their favorites.
I do not recall any time when we had the DM roll the ability scores for player characters. This might have been written as such because of limited dice sets and how quickly they could wear down to rounded-off globes. We always ran them in order / down the line in the early days. It was the challenge to play what you rolled and part of the game rather then to decide what you wanted to play and then move rolls around to suit the concept. It wasn't until the 1E AD&D DMG came out that we used the alt-rolling options for PC starting scores. The experience point bonuses, and even the others, were nice but were rare enough that we didn't drool over them too much. It's true that CHR matter most and hirelings were super important. BTW, I have been a big fan of Ability Score checks behind the screen by DMs.
We came at (O)D&D from Chainmail but I recall we switched fairly quickly to the alt-combat system since it helped us recruit other players who were not Chainmail players. It feels weird now that we never questioned the armor class progression being different for (O)D&D despite coming from Chainmail. Perhaps we did and I simply don't remember. It's a long time ago.
d6s were king in wargaming and so were the main dice in (O)D&D, and they were easy to get almost anywhere. It's no wonder why it was mainly used since (O)D&D was first thought of as a wargaming offshoot. This is true for hit dice, weapon damage dice, etal.
I think it is worth noting, in regard to expansions, that a lot of wargames were expanded by the community through newsletters and in clubs, this includes new army lists and scenarios which might have some scenario-specific rules needed. If a group wished to use some wargame rules for early WWII, for instance, for later WWII scenarios, they might need to discuss and invent new rules for weaponry or new allies that were not available in the early part of the war, and these things might be shared through newsletters or in various communities. I think it is also true that when a new board-wargame was released, it would often use conventions / rules / aspects from earlier games, essentially being a new expansion of wargaming in general, if not for a specific game. Looking at counters used in wargames from one year to the next and the similarities are as remarkable as the additions.
Greenbar is two decades old, eh? Many fruits were lost in the making of that funky stuff. Tim Burton (as well as Danny Elfman and Oingo Boingo) have long impressed me and been on the must see / must listen list no matter what they produce, even the near-misses. Happy Halloween!
My first module (as a player) was where the DM filled in 'Monster' & 'Treasure' choices for each room. This was 48 years ago so forgive me for forgetting which one it was. Without even knowing it, I told my brother about the fun I had & we played a 'house rules' version of the game with just paper, pencils, & 6-sided dice from the home 'Monopoly' & 'Chutes & Ladders' boxes (kind of like 'Chainmail', but long before I knew what it was!). It was another year or 2 before I got a 'Starter' box set & my beloved Dungeon Masters Guide (1980).
The weirdest thing for me in OD&D is that the dungeon is actually kind of a character in itself, and working against the PCs. Something I’ve occasionally heard referred to as the “Enchanted (or Mythic) Underground (or Underworld)”
I don’t have the books in front of me, but I remember something about how doors would open and close automatically for monsters, but the players would find them locked and barred.
And the whole “funhouse” vibe of even the sample dungeon in the book… with rotating rooms, hallways that suddenly slanted downward, dumping the players on a different level, and all kinds of teleportation portals.
It was very “gamey” insofar that it seemed like a board game layout, and designed only to confuse and disorient players, especially those who were trying to keep accurate maps.
It didn’t feel like something that a civilization would have built as an underground base of operations… and it clearly would have been a vast investment to build in the first place.
As someone coming from starting with 1980’s D&D and AD&D, with its almost pathological fetishization of realism and immersion at the time, it was a surprising throwback.
It felt out of place after playing with folks that wanted the game to feel very much like a pen and paper simulation of real life in another universe that just happened to have magic and monsters.
These are all such great thoughts and comments! Thank you for sharing.
You're correct that in older versions of the game, the rules specifically state that monsters can open locked doors but PCs have to figure out a way to bypass them. This was one of the reasons in early games that players would spike doors with a hammer and iron spikes shut once they had bypassed the lock - to prevent monsters from sneaking up behind them.
I love your description of an enchanted/mythic underworld setting - that's exactly how I picture it and try to convey that sense of wonder and mystery in my games!
@@daddyrolleda1 Yeah, I’ve been going in that direction the more I read about the games that Gygax and Arneson ran.
With turnstiles at the dungeon entrance, holy water firehoses on the walls, a giant’s bowling alley, etc…
It just seems a lot more fun.
I still occasionally will have a gritty realistic reason for a dungeon to exist, and why the monsters who inhabit it are there.
But having that random wild fantasy setting that doesn’t make much sense is such a blast that I will always go back to it now that I’ve been exposed to that aspect of the game.
We started in 1976. Our starting DM introduced the Supplements over a period of time. However, we started with Greyhawk in play, because so much of it made sense. Especially the class-differentiated Hit Points and the different weapon damage. Bizarrely the thing we struggled most with was each monster's Number Appearing. So, if you want Kobolds, there have to be 40-400 of them?? Even when they are found as a Wandering Monster in a random dungeon corridor??!!
The "Number Appearing" was always so goofy, although I always assumed that was specifically for "in Lair" rather than if they were found wandering about. But I could've been interpreting that incorrectly!
A dungeon corridor with an entire Kobold tribe walking down isn't just an encounter, it is a story idea waiting to happen.
I kind of like how Searchers of the Unknown uses Descending AC. In Searcherers and Search like Ac is decendinf and (roughly) matches up to OD&D armor class for combat, but out of combat you can use AC for stealth and sneaking checks by rolling under with a D20.
We did not color in half of the D20 numbers to differentiate between 1s and 10s. We rolled both the D20 and a D6, with odd on the D6 being 1s(and 10) and an even being 10s(and 20).
We did that too, when we found some percentile dice. I made a set of polygonal spinners at first.
Never thought of that. I colored in the numbers. 🙂
When my friends and I first got our hands on D&D (late 70's) we all felt the d4, d8, d12, d20 to be "rule of cool". It was different. After a couple months it became a PITA because we didn't have more than one set. One of our group got Traveller and we suddenly realized that we could achieve all the same probabilities by simply using d6's. Suddenly all our groups households Yatzee boxes were emptied of dice.....
You can't generate a some of the probabilities that you can with polyhedral dice. A d20 generates a linear probability from 1 to 20. You can't do that with only six sided dice. Yes, you can do 3d6 which is 3 to 18 (bell curve) which is close -- but not exactly the same.
Is this your first top ten list? Love it, cool video. Please do more top ten lists (modules, monsters, weapons, spells etc)
Thank you! I did a "10 Products I love" list: ua-cam.com/video/2WjYj5xqL6Q/v-deo.html and also a "Top 5 Mechanics I love" recently. But that's really it.
I'm glad you enjoyed it. Thank you so much for watching and commenting!
🎵 Fighting Man, Fighting Man, does whatever a Fighter can 🎵
Well now that's going to be stuck in my head the rest of the day! 😀
"..so they threw in a copy of Chainmail." I didn't know whether to laugh or cry.
Ha! Yeah, I don't think that would happen these days!
I very much enjoyed this bit of retrospective analysis, the original white box got on my radar sometime in the early nineties..... I think I had a piecemeal version that was supplemented by some photocopies and whatnot or however it was done back in those days and I remember thinking to myself damn this is definitely a game that was made by enthusiasts who are not game designers it was so haphazard and semi and decipherable but just full of a charm all of its own.
Thank you so much for watching and commenting! For more about the rules from Original D&D, you'll want to check out my latest video that dropped about 20 minutes ago where I go over the changes that the 1977 Holmes Basic edition made to 1974 Original D&D. Cheers!
Honestly love your work, youre super consistent and always pleasant. The clean communication style is lovely, very refreshing.
That is so nice to hear! Thank you so much for the compliment, and also for taking a minute to stop and share it with me. I truly appreciate it!
With regard to our profile name and picture, I have very fond memories of sitting at the breakfast table as a kid eating my cereal and reading the comics section in the newspaper before school, and how my mom just loved Cathy so I read it aloud to her a lot while she was buzzing around making coffee and breakfast for my dad or packing my sister's or my school bags, etc.
Cheers!
I have a long history with this game. Long enough to play a mishmash of the purple box with the white. In fact my initial game was using B2 where we rolled 2d6 and attempted to roll under the monster AC. Also, all damage was just a d6 as well. Ahhh the memories.
Very cool! I started with the purple (aka "Moldvay Basic" or "B/X") set in 1981 but didn't discover Original D&D until a couple of years later when at a sleepover at my friend's house and finding a copy of Greyhawk: Supplement I in his room, and realizing that D&D had existed BEFORE my boxed set! I had no idea up until that point.
It's funny that while i am relatively new (a 2014 D&D 5e spawn), I had almost no new info from this video because I've watched so many of yours lol
Ha! Well, I guess that's a good thing for me (that you've watched my other videos)? I do hope you enjoyed the video none-the-less. Thanks for watching and commenting! I love having folks from different generations and from different "edition backgrounds" watching the channel. Cheers!
8:55 it could have been interpreted by players at the time that a 3d6 roll was needed instead of a d20. Since all of said numbers are between 3 - 18 (with the worst being a 16 and the best being a 3) and saving throws are specially roll above it still works (thought it changes the probability of "3" being a success from 85% to 99.50%).
While I know a few players who still stick by descending AC, it’s telling that even most retroclones and OSR games use ascending AC or at least present it as an option.
I'm glad descending is pretty much gone. Remember the days of crazy negatives ACs? -5 anyone?
I believe there were only 7 printings of Original D&D. My set is ( I think) a 6th printing, the first one that changed Hobbit to halfling, Ent to Treant, etc.
Mine I picked up as single copies at a local hobby store. I didn't find out till years later that they usually came in a box, so I guess mine were extra copies sold to the shop to get rid of them.
Yes, thank you! I was riffing off the top of my head and got the count wrong, but I did include a short comment on-screen (text-based) mentioning how many versions there were. There were 7 printings, but there's a First Alpha, First Beta, and First Gamma as well as a Third and a "Third +" so that's a total of 10.
Very cool that you have a set! I'm always grateful to my mom for having bought this for me as a gift, as it's something I would've wanted but probably never would've picked up on my own. She asked the folks at the game store for something that would make a great birthday gift but that I hadn't already purchased and they had just gotten this boxed set in. Such a wonderful gift.
Cheers, and thank you so much or watching and commenting!
According to the Acaeum Jeff is correct there were 7 printings. The Acaeum lists the Alpha, Beta, and Gamma printings but those are all considered again according to the Acaeum as 1st priintings. So 7 printings total.
Also, it's never been confirmed according to the Acaeum, but it believed that some of the later printings may have been also sold without the box. No sure info on this one way or the other.
Okay here we go.
1 - I knew about the D6 substitutions for D20, about 0-9 twice D20s and I knew dice largely favored D6s - magic missiles/heal spells in OD&D. Didn't know about the exact counts using other dice but I did get that it was threadbare.
2&3&5&8 - not much to comment except I knew these.
4 - I'm as familiar with this notion as I am with playing D&D. I started playing with AD&D with my dad in the late 90s. Before I even completed my first read of the build rules he called my attention to the race/class table and said to ignore it. He asked me, a 9 year old child who had yet to read the class section of the book, why an elf couldn't be a druid. I couldn't answer then and y'know what all these years later I have yet to form a Watsonian answer. He did enforce non-magic halflings and dwarfs: his table rule was that they could play clerics that never actually gain spells from the class. Basically worse Fighters, with better initial saves and access to use cleric-specific magic items. This was my very first instruction to adjudicate for the milieu and not the RAW text. Reminding me of this is the reason I'm commenting.
6&7 - I did know about piggybacking off Chainmail but not about a self-contained combat ruleset for the initial OD&D release. I knew about THAC0 but did not know Chainmail had ascending armor.
9 - I knew about this. But only because I went through a period where I was absolutely frustrated at the notion that in AD&D Gauntlets of Ogre Power were worth more than every belt of Giant's Strength that I dug up older books to read about them.
10 - I didn't know this... but I guess I assumed it, especially knowing that D&D was an expansion for Chainmail. Even as simple as they are the booklets feel like they're meant to be expanded upon and collected into the same boxes the starter set was sold in.
Such a fantastic comment! I really appreciate you taking the time to comment on each of my thoughts with your own experiences. I love learning about other people's history with the game, and I especially appreciate that even though you already knew almost everything I mentioned, that you stuck with the video and then offered your own commentary.
I really liked your points and memories of #4 and playing with your dad, and also learning to "adjudicate for the milieu" (love that description/explanation).
Thank you so much! Cheers!
I thought the "race as class" from Basic extended from original, but I'm surprised to learn that you did have choices in original D&D!
I'm not surprised at combination restrictions, because that still lives on in the world of video games. When World of Warcraft launched, only humans and dwarves could be paladins, only night elves and tauren (native American coded minotaurs) could be druids, etc.
Though in the case of video games I suspect it's less for balance reasons and more for animations. Class abilities use certain unique animations and it can be extra work to make sure the rigging for each of those animations looks good on each of the player skeletons.
There was a 2013 premium reprint of all 7 oD&D books, released in a wooden collector's box, along with reference sheets and dice, to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the game.
Ah, yes, I remember when those came out. I didn't pick them up since I had the originals, and I also seem to recall they changed the cover art. Did you end up getting them?
I love your videos! Listening them at work really helps the day go by quicker. Have you considered talking about how certain fantasy species had level requirements or equivalent levels if you wanted to play them? I recently read some of 3e and learned that playing as a werewolf as your race counted as two or three levels. Similar concepts apply to ogres, tieflings, and even hill giants in that edition.
Grey Hawk supplement was almost essential for us. Blackmore and Eldrich Wizardry were largely ignored. Too bad Gygax screwed up the easy logic of the D20 combat system. Another great episode, thanks.
Thank you so much for watching and commenting! I really appreciate it!
I can add playing monsters to the list, but I'd most likely focus on the pre-3E discussion, since the majority of my channel viewers prefer that era of D&D. I remember the 3E era of monster playing and got the Savage Species book for that edition specifically to make interesting NPC adversaries for the campaign I was running! I also got the Complete Book of Humanoids for 2nd Edition which was a similar concept, although mechanically worked differently.
@chrisholmes436 That's interesting your group ignored Blackmoor and Eldritch Wizardry! Why do you think that was? And, thank you for the compliment and for watching and commenting.
Our game sessions in 70s where using the rules owned by older brother/cousin. The first times the rules were the blue mimeograph duplicates. We even spent a weekend to make a hand-written copy.
Getting access to the special dice was rarer. Instead we used little glass jelly glasses with pieces of paper numbered one to four/eight/twelve/twenty.
To get a result:
· Put paper in glass
· Shack glass
· Then over to dump
· Close eyes and pickup/touch a number
I knew most of these because I have been subscribed for a long time. ☺
I hope that's a good thing! I do thank you for watching, even though you already knew most of this! And thanks for your support of the channel! Cheers!
Hi Martin, thanks for the video. It's obvious that you really love our hobby.
I think I have something interesting for you to look into.
I have a copy of Greyhawk, 9th printing!?!? May 1978 with an odd production error:
There are no pages 5/6 or 63/64, but two of 7/8 & 61/62.
I was given the 7 OD&D books by a friend many years ago without a box so I've no idea where it originally came from. The Greyhawk expansion is severely beaten up though, but still intact.
I own and run this game. This edition is the best edition for the skilled, veteran DM interested in running his world his own way. These rules were truly guidelines, the DM was expected to do it his way.
It is indeed a very flexible and forgiving system, which I think is its strength. In terms of presentation of information and teaching one how to play, especially if that person is not already familiar with RPGs or at the very least with wargames, I think it could've been done better. I don't mean changing the rules or adding more rules or anything, but just explaining better how to implement the rules, defining terms, etc.
I came up with descending AC and to hit/THAC0, but it always bugged me because I knew the math was simpler ascending AC and a to hit bonus. So 3e seemed right but I barely played it.
Suffice it to say, you swapping out to ascending AC for your game makes sense to me!
Despite having played since 1981, I think in terms of total number of hours played, I've played the most of 3E/3.5/PF1E as I ran a campaign myself and played in at least three or four more over long periods of time (one campaign lasting around 10 years and several others running over 5, and my own campaign that's been running since May 2001). So, for good or bad, using Ascending AC just comes more naturally to me now!
We did enjoy this video. Thank you, old school gamers, we did know these things ;)
Great video Martin! Though I do think that the text about determining abilities *is* clear that you roll 3d6 "down the line." Sure you can interpret "in order" multiple ways but the very next paragraph makes it clear that the player couldn't move around the stats. It says that "with a strength of only 6 there was no real chance for him to become a fighter." If the stats could be arranged as desired then he could easily become a fighter by putting the 13 in Strength. It then later goes on to say that the player really wants to be a magic-user and chooses that class despite having the higher score in Wisdom than Intelligence. Again, if "in order" meant anything other than "in the order that the abilities are listed" then he could have just put the higher score in Intelligence. Just my two cents.
That totally makes sense, and the context of the following sentences is important in understanding the intent. I just think it's a good example of how clearer language would've helped, especially for people who had no background in this kind of thing picking this up and trying to learn how to play!
Thanks for watching and commenting!
@@daddyrolleda1 Agreed! It's like Gary just wrote the entire first three books in one continuous, singular draft, using future paragraphs to clarify past ones without ever going back to tweak anything after the fact, lol.
I think that the Orignal game from 1974 was intended to be an experiment. If D&D became popular, then great. If it failed as a game, then so be it because TSR had a multitude of other game experiments. Like the US Constitution, the Original D&D "rules" were intentionally left unfinished with the purpose of being "expounded" upon. That's a tough concept for people to wrap their minds around, specially those who covet a set of clearly written "statutes", published by a game company authority, and that define the rules for everything.
I think it's a mixture of that, but also that the design team made assumptions about just exactly what kind of knowledge people buying and playing the game would already possess, so a lot of things are left unexplained or terms are undefined. But yes, it was also intended that folks would take it and run with it and in a sense create their own game using the framework provided.
Thanks for watching and commenting!
@@daddyrolleda1 Original D&D is more like a kit for creating your own game, than it is a "finished" game. We gotta remember that TSR consisted of about 3 people when they published it in 74. It's truly in its own class, separate from the editions that followed. The initial generation of DMs, then called "referees", discovered how fun it was to use the game as a jumping off point for making D&D their own. Like a set of "Lincoln Logs", Original D&D was offered to gamers to go crazy and make something out of it.
"Dungeontube" ... Lol .... yeah, that tracks.
I just heard people referring to it as that just last week! But apparently it's pretty common. 😀
@daddyrolleda1 Yeah. It totally makes sense. Just never heard it before. Then again, what else would we call this area of UA-cam.
Somewhat surprised that they didn't have Hobbit Burglar as one of the first class combinations before Tolkien reps caught up with them.
I'm sure it was floating around in fan-created stuff, but since originally *all* classes were considered to be "roguish" (they were adventurers, not heroes), there really wasn't a need for one. Once the Thief class was created, every race could operate as a Thief but Gygax specifically pointed out in Greyhawk Supplement I that Hobbits "have a better chance of doing most things" as Thieves rather than as Fighters.
You could use a 10 sided die for direction with 9 being no breeze and 10 being swirling winds.
Just a thought.
That's a fun use for a D10!
I am betrayed, betrayed!! By your use of ascending armour class!!! THAC0 for life!! (Only 20% serious) 😢 😁
I knew at least one person would want me to turn in my old-timer card! I did use it for two sessions but for the kids especially it made more sense to switch and it also means in my DM Notebook I can just put "AC 12" or whatever, and I know IMMEDIATELY what that means, and because my players aren't good of keeping track of things, I can't count on them to know what their THAC0 is (my daughter often forgets her character sheet) so having a single target number that works for everyone is easier for us.
Thank you so much for watching and commenting!
I have never read the original version so this was very interesting.
I'm so glad you enjoyed it, and I really appreciate your ongoing support of the channel. It means the world to me!
43:40 One thing I found interesting from the 1973 draft recently unearthed is that its finally explicit about HOW these two combat systems interact. If you are doing man to man combat (or man to orc, goblin, or other similar types using normal weapons and armour) you are meant to use Chainmail for its detailed weapon vs armour type combat. But if you are fighting men vs monsters, you use the alternate d20 system because monsters dont have the same kind of weapons and armour and dont have the same differences (dragon hide is the same against swords or maces, etc)
The two systems were meant to be used in tandem, decided by the situation. Not choosing one or the other unilaterally.
Of course, it turns out the d20 system was more than apt to handle ANY battle in D&D, and you could just port over the weapon vs armour tables if you wanted to anyway. Probably by the 1974 version Gary realized this and ditched the tandem use aspect.
Aye. Everyone should have an Appendix N. ❤
I keep my own, which includes not only novels, but also nonfiction works, movies, comics, TV shows, albums/songs, and more.
What's on your list?
Much like you: Books, TTRPGs, Certain Board Games, Movies, Comics and certain Music. ❤
I really doubt there is any crossover here, but the vibes are sooo "Up and In" here. I love it. Any other .9ers?
Careful with those stickies, although I suspect you're using them just for your production. I've left them on less precious tomes to find that they leave a bit of a sticky residue behind. Better long-term use for them: tracking commonly used resources on a character sheet (HP, HD, Spell Slots, Ammunition.) Once the eraser ruins the sticky, just replace it with a new sticky.
Yes, exactly! That's why I mentioned how people were probably freaking out, but I put them on right before I shot the video and you saw me pull them off as we went through, and then I discarded them. I was a little nervous about using them, but in the past I've spent too much time on camera trying to find the thing on the page I was talking about and I'm sure that's not a fun experience for a viewer/listener.
Thanks for watching and commenting!
Good advice!!
I grew up with AD&D. I'm very familiar with the descending armor class, the to-hit matrices, and THAC0, but I much prefer the current ascending armor class and attack bonus. It was never difficult math, but it was unnecessary.
Unnecessarily complicated (or complex) was definitely a Gygax hallmark.
@@russellharrell2747 My man.
Yup! I've mentioned this on the channel before, but even in language. I recall in Module S4: Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth, he mentioned that it would take a "sennight" to travel somewhere, and I was so confused what that means until finally looking it up and realizing that it means "week."
He could've said, "Week" but deliberately chose a word nobody would know because he thought it made him look smart.
That said, I did learn a lot of great vocabulary words from reading Gygax that helped me in school, but "sennight" was *NOT* one of them!
@@daddyrolleda1 That's an usual mistake among amateur/inexpert fantasy writers to try to sound old or elvish, one I also did until it hit me the lack of context.
Words like Hobbit & Ent had become common usage with the gamefantasy crowd already by then.
10:41 While 4, 8 and 12-sided dice were not common, when I bought my boxed set of original D&D rules in mid 1975, the vendor also sold me a set of five dice so they were available at that time. (I have since lost the dice but still have the boxed set of the rules.
by 1977 when I started playing D&D. Polyhedral dice were fairly common and easy to get. I started playing in 1977 and always had polyhedral dice. So, this issue may have only affected people who played really early.
I read somewhere, but have no evidence of it, that descending AC can also be used in a 2d6 system. The attacker rolls 2d6 and needs to roll the AC or below to land an attack. So, plate and shield can only be hit on a 2, etc.
Descending armor class can be used with any dice system -- decending AC was never an issue in the beginning because charts were used. You can do almost anything with charts or lookup tables -- they even let you do things you can't do without them.
You don't have any magical hobbits, but when the dwarves find the troll hoard in The Hobbit, they place spells on the treasure they can't carry with them so that it is protected and they can find it later. I don't think Gary was very interested in Middle-Earth, and so had this idea of magic-resistant dwarves who can't use magic, but in M-E the dwarves could use limited magic, and they were resistant to coercion, not necessarily magic.
Tolkien wizards are archangels, forbidden to use their full "thirty fireballs at army" power.. Tolkien elves are something-magic users.
"For this is what your folk would call magic, I believe, though I do not understand clearly what they mean; and they seem to use the same word of the deceits of the Enemy. But this, if you will, is the magic of Galadriel. Did you not say that you wished to see Elf-magic?"
I love weird things.
That is why we're friends! Thank you so much for your support!
I know you pointed out that Gary wrote what was there in the final draft agreed.
but Arneson, knowing his own failings had elicited the help of Gale Gaylord, David Megarry, and Rockford in order to print up the manuscripts that were submitted
I can easily see Gary wanting to rewrite it into his own words so he could put the stamp of editor on.
One thing that your research has made me think about is actually the term class
technically, Arnesson already had classes in his game the nomenclature for that term may not have been defined yet. but since Ernest was into the role-play and he wanted simplistic rules, it was easy for him to use one structure for our class or player options and just modify their goals and skills were for that character
The whole thing about no weapons I think probably derive from a conversation Ernest and had with Gugax at one point
but there is a famous bishop in England, the name escapes me at the moment, which wanted to go into battle and he is justification right or wrong was he was not gonna use edge weapons. Somehow the use of the mace just is much nastier considering at the time everyone is wearing plate mail and if you concaved is there armor, it was much worse because now the armor was working against the person in it pushing and doing more damage because you had to push the metal back out. And bludgeoning damage is nasty in general.
That’s a debate for another day
Ernest and never specifically stated that was the reasoning, but we did talk about that historical character at one point and it leads me to believe it was on his mind.
you are absolutely correct about how Dave Arneson did his campaign in terms of being science/fantasy
but it wasn’t just a mishmash. They took each element that they put in relatively seriously kinda. lol
I have a direct quote from (Dave Arneson’s) rules. He was using later as chain mail which was from the Domesday book issue number five, he mistakenly thought that was called chain mail, but due to time and memory he forgot he didn’t have that name yet, but it was a body of rules that became chainmail.
I have a video interview with quite a few people directly stating that as well
and yes, our class existed before, and was used in many naval games from my understanding. And yes, it definitely came from his set of rules that he was playing with others for his Napoleonic that he was playing with everyone in Minnesota and the group in Wisconsin that he was running. What I referred to is the fictional Napoleonics.
Gary was in the Americas and Dave’s group was in Europe
At a certain point of naval combat occurred and Gary needed to set a rules for naval and he had heard they definitely had a set
It did not get polished off until Mike Carr assisted and they gave it a different name because they were aware of other side of rules with the same name
another interesting thing and I’m glad you brought it up with the one dice equals the damage to the weapon to the opponent. The different dice use for different weapon types was I believe a Gary Gygax change. again to add a use for the other dice a.k.a. the excuse.
Ernest was still not so keen on making people change out the dice for different weapon types I remember having a few discussions with him on that.
THAC0 = worse enemy armor is a bonus to your attack roll thus a higher AC number for worse armor.
Exactly! Thank you so much for watching and commenting!
Totally. A lot of my early groups over complicated it by trying to turn AC into the target number instead of using it as a modifier as intended.
I do think the new system is better, but thac0 was never as difficult as people make it out to be. Really you're just swapping the placement of two variables in the to-hit formula. AC and thac0/modifiers change places.
36:38 that magic-user’s name is Xylarthen. It looks like it was generated from a random table.
Although it also tracks with Gary’s known naming conventions for characters.
36:38 that magic-user’s name is Xylarthen. It looks like it was generated from a random table.
Although it also tracks with Gary’s known naming conventions for characters.
Also It was Str Int Wis CON Dex Cha. Dex and Con traded places in later editions, probably due to Dex being the prime requisite for Thieves.
Yeah, I actually did correct that later in that segment once I read the table I was referring to. I started with B/X so that's the order that's always in my head, but thanks for catching it, too!
52:37 -- I didn't know you could be a level 6 🦙 in D&D...
You should do a followup video using the "ZED" (Zero Editing Dungeoneering) rules found in The Lost Dungeons of Tonisborg
From what I've read, Gary assumed that most grognards that bought D&D would already be war gamers, familiar with and quite likely owners of Chainmail. Gary and Dave actually at first saw D&D as a supplement to and a logical continuation of Chainmail's Fantasy Section, and not really a completely separate game on its own, in spite of its innovations.
I've really come to appreciate the weapons all doing d6 damage rule. A dagger can kill you just as dead as a greatsword. I use an alternate system where each weapon has a special effect, so like if you roll a 1 on damage with a battleaxe you roll the damage again and add it. I see a lot of folks use hit dice in later editions as damage, but I don't like that, because it punishes the poor thief even more.
Awesome, I love this
Glad to hear it! Thank you so much for letting me know, and for watching. Cheers!
@@daddyrolleda1 always love your work!
It's disappointing how many players of this game have no idea what Appendix N is, nor are they familiar with most of the works that comprise it. My 5th ed players (all of whom started playing in 2022) were having a conversation about how D&D is 'Lord of the Rings with dice', and that there was nothing before Tolkien. The authors I mentioned to them drew nothing but blank stares. One of them had heard of Moorcock, and while knowing who Conan was they had never heard the name of Robert E Howard. Fritz Lieber and Jack Vance were entirely alien to them. I've tried to get them interested in older fantasy, but they are convinced that they won't like it. So sad
It's so strange to be convinced you won't like something before you try it, but it's common with younger folks from every generation, I think. They may come around some day. Or they may like the stories if presented in a different medium - know a few of the Fritz Leiber stories have been done as graphic novels with art by Mike Mignola (of Hellboy fame), so maybe that would help?
Thank you so much for watching and commenting!
@@daddyrolleda1 that might help. I haven't read those comics, but I've seen them. Time to hit up Amazon.
And I love your content, keep up the good work.
@@daddyrolleda1 Ugh. My nephew drives me nuts. When growing up, my dad and I (along with various siblings) would roam all over 1980s Bay Area looking for mom & pop restaurants of every type of cuisine we could find. Absolutely loved exploring and finding new tastes and foods to try. And then there's my nephew. The guy is convinced he won't like anything and everything that isn't a hamburger, pizza, or basic macaroni and cheese. He's 14 now, and remains stubborn in his ways. My brother (his dad) has desperately tried to get him to try new things over the years, but the kid just won't budge.
My nephew will be visiting the Netherlands and Germany next year, and I'm practically crying at all the amazing food he's going to refuse to eat. 😭
@@WarhavenSCOld people as well! I can't tell you how many people from older generations I've dealt with who scoff at anything out of their comfort zone.
@@arheru You are not wrong. A good friend of mine is in his 50s, and if it isn't Pizza Hut, Subway, or something his mom would have cooked, he won't even try it.
He'll eat fried chicken. He'll eat ham, olive, and mushroom pizza. But we can't get him to try jägerschnitzel with mushroom sauce at our favorite German restaurant. We're like, "There's nothing in it that you don't already like! Just TRY IT!" Nope. Won't do it.
Would you please do a video on the more bizarre or monster races for the earlier editions of dnd like the hobgoblin I heard that they had two different charisma score your score and a human score
I can add it to the list, although I have to confess I'm not familiar with the concept you're talking about with the hobgoblin. I checked Original Dungeons & Dragons "Monsters & Treasure" and also the 1st Edition AD&D "Monster Manual" and there's no mention of a Charisma score in there for the Hobgoblin entry. Typically in older editions, Monsters did not have stats listed, and if they did, it was usually (not always) a physical stat (STR, DEX, or CON). Charisma in the older editions mainly controlled how many hirelings you could have and what their loyalty score would be, so it wouldn't have made sense to list that score for a Monster.
Perhaps someone else will see your comment and be familiar with the concept!
Thanks for watching and commenting!
>Dwarves, the stout brickhouses whose entire mythology centers around working mines and killing stuff with big axes... can't be a max level fighter
>Elves, whose entire mythology is being highly attuned to nature and being magically gifted... can't be max level magic users
>Halflings can't use magic because ???
This was always legitimately terrible design.
I hated level limits as a kid and while I don't really go out of my way to implement them now in my old-school games, I do understand the intent behind them, mechanically and thematically:
1) Mechanically: Dwarves, Elves, and Hobbits/Halflings all get a suite of abilities that Humans don't get, and they are all front-loaded, getting them at 1st level. So, they get a leg-up on humans from the get-go, and a way to balance this (in Gary's mind at the time) was to limit how far they could advance, so that a player wouldn't automatically pick to play a non-human just because of their extra abilities (infravision, detecting secret doors, etc.). It's not as elegant, perhaps, as simply applying an experience point penalty to them (e.g., making them have to earn more XP to advance in level as a way to pay for their racial abilities, the way Moldvay Basic did) but it definitely was an attempt at game balance.
2) Thematically: The inspirational resources Gary drew upon, primarily stories by Fritz Leiber, Robert E. Howard, and other pulp stories always features humans as the main (and most often, *only*) protagonists and he wanted D&D to emulate these kinds of source materials, so he implemented racial restrictions specifically as a way to make the game more human-centric. It was a deliberate thematic choice based on his own personal preferences for the kind of fantasy he enjoyed.
Over the years, people have tried to retcon reasons for why a Hobbit was limited to being a maximum 4th level Fighter (it was Gary's way of saying, sure, you can play one but they aren't really suited as heroic adventurers - none of the Hobbits in LOTR are thought to be truly capable warriors on the level of Aragorn or Boromir, despite there being occasional instances of tactical genius and bravery on part of the little folk). Some will say that Elves are much more attune to nature, so the higher-level magics cast by higher-level magic-users go against that natural order of things and the elves *choose* not to explore them. These are, to me, weak excuses made to try to explain something that ultimately just comes down to, "This is how Gary wanted it."
You should do a video on the Lord's of the rings spread about the books. How to go from Hobbiton to Mount Doom.
I actually think there's some elegance in every weapon doing d6 damage (although I think for example a two-handed weapon should do +1 or something). It makes choice of weapon a character aesthetic, not a game choice. If I want my Fighting-Man to be a rugged barbarian, I might pick a battle axe. if I want him to be a sellsword, I might pick a sword instead. It's a choice of taste, not "This does more damage".
Aw... thank you so much! I truly appreciate your generous support, and also that you went back and re-watched one of my older videos. Cheers!
Yes, that's the pro of having every weapon do the same damage.
Regarding the "Fighting-Man" class, I once did a word lookup for Men & Magic and "Fighting-Man/Men" is stated 14 times while the more gender neutral "Fighter" is used *15* times. So the current day controversy really is much ado about nothing IMO, especially since as you mentioned in the video "fighting-man" was a common term to denote men of fighting age at the time (since there had been almost zero fighting women in the military in all of human history at that point) and both John Carter and Conan were given that label at various times in their own original published stories.
Thanks! If memory serves, I think I even credited your tweet about the John Carter one in the video!
@@daddyrolleda1 Oh you totally did, I just went back and watched that section and saw the little note in the corner! 👍
Yes, well said. Totally agree nothing unusual about the term Fighting-Man and was just a term used before. Conan is where I remember it being used.
I think the other thing that made weapons different is that most of the good magic weapons were swords.
Yes, absolutely! If you caught the part where I mentioned in this video about how I talked about clerics only using blunt weapons and how I elaborated on that in, of all places, my video on Thieves, that was part of the mechanical design to match the flavor chosen for clerics only using blunt weapons. It meant that Clerics were much less likely to end up with a magical weapon since something like 80% of the magic weapons table was Swords or Daggers. That was the balance factor since Clerics could wear armor and cast spells.
How was tsr able to get away with halfling as well? The term is used in lotr as well.
For whatever reason, it was decided that "halfling" was a more generic term and not something that could be copyrighted/trademarked by Tolkien Enterprises, whereas Hobbit, Balrog, and Ent could be. Tolkien definitely created the term "hobbit" but I don't think anybody could definitively prove that he hadn't borrowed the term "halfling" from other sources, in the same way that he used terms like "dwarves" and "elves."
Thanks for watching and commenting!
@@daddyrolleda1 Ty
Dr1 said it well. Halfling is a term that has been around for ages not specific to LotR, i.e. Halfling is a word used in Scotland, Northern Ireland, and Northern England for a boy or girl who is not yet fully grown. So yeah -- not a copyrightable term. Hobbit is a LotR specific term.
It looks like Sleep sometimes also uses a d8.
You are correct! I missed another use: from 2-16 1st level types are affected. Great catch!
@@daddyrolleda1 Totally doesn't invalidate your point haha. It makes you wonder if they were already working on Greyhawk's variable hit dice and weapon damage.
Ascending or descending AC work equally well. Maybe the 'controversy' comes down to psychology. A higher number should 'logically' mean better?
The problem is people either don’t like looking up numbers on charts or subtracting when it comes to THAC0
@@russellharrell2747 Yes -- it's basically that -- I always have to laugh though -- because I agree -- so easy to handle either way. Some people make such a big deal out of it -- like ascending AS is some kind of revolutionary thing -- yeah whatever.
we used a monster sized book
giving us a 1-100 that we would use percentages of 8, 12, 100 for the result
I've always kind of thought that AC comes from steel gauges and that lower steel gauges are thicker 🤔
Top ten lists are cool...when used sparingly. In my opinion.
Yes! There's a reason that I've not really done one before. But I did hope this might reach a wider audience than some of my more niche videos as of late. I was quite surprised more folks weren't interested in my video on Witches. I thought it was a great one!
Thank you for watching and commenting!
@@daddyrolleda1 Trust me, I fully understand what your saying. Long or not, niche of not, your product is good and it shows that your putting a lot of effort into making the best videos you can. Eventually I'll get it into my head to do one video a week and make them great. Until then, I suspect I'll comment on many future videos of yours .
@@daddyrolleda1 I have found it interesting that videos made with deeper meaning in relation to our hobby, tend to do less well than what are mainly fluffy pieces? I do a half-baked review of some game supplement collecting dust on my shelf (giving me an excuse to re-read it after long ignoring it).
I haven't viewed the Witches vid yet, but I will. I work a lot of long and weird hours, alone, so I listen to a lot of videos. Now, having not seen your video yet:
Thinking back, I can honestly say that very few people actually read these game books cover to cover even once. Not very many in the hobby talks about how the Witches show up in an obscure section of the AD&D Guides. without grabbing the book, I'm wanting to say that the Warlock is also covered, as is something else. Merchants?
I know that there is another section covering Level 0 characters/NPCs.
Want a challenging and possibly humorous session or two? Start the group out at level 0 and have them earn the right to claim a 'class'. "Fighter, eh? Well lad, who was yer master o' arms, eh?" (Okay, that was a bit lame. I plead age and hunger).
Still have my 2e Ravenloft red box.
No need to mark 1/2 the numbers on a d20, we often rolled a d6 at the same time, and odd or even on the d6 indicated high or low on the d20.
Fire Emblem games use a system similar to chainmail.
Fewer options? I can say that we had more options in 0e. all you had to do was use your mind and make it so!
Exactly 👍
Oh, I 100% believe this! I've even mentioned it on the channel before. "More options" (meaning, splat books, mechanical stuff, etc.) to me means "fewer options." It's exactly what you said - once you start over-defining what can and can't be done based on what skill/feat/power/etc. your character has, the fewer times your character is going to do anything that *ISN'T* defined on their character sheet.
I'm probably not explaining that well, but I do agree with you. I used that wording in the video because in the modern days of playing TTRPGs, for whatever reason, most players seems to enjoy the idea of "building" their character through a series of more and more minutely niche "options" so that they are super good at a single thing, and then that's the only thing they want to do during the game.
Bro i actually had a 5e baby "explain" to me that it's "impossible" to play certain character types without a mechanical rule specifically for it.
@@graveyardshift2100 yeah. Where does the 5e kid think that the mechanics originate? One can pay for mechanics, or create them for free.
Why are you even paying for a system then if you're just gonna make most of it up? Might as well just free form RP at that point. The grognard cope is real.
#THACO4EVER
You said multiple times that the d4, d8 and d12 were only used in one place each, but did you say where they are used and I missed it, or did you not say?
@@willydstyle Yes, I pointed out where they are used in the video showing the page I was referring to (e.g., using D4 to determine the Elf Fighting-Man level for NPCs). I also added on-screen text blocks to indicate a few instances I'd forgotten.
@@daddyrolleda1 ah, thanks for the reply, that explains my confusion because I mostly just *listen* to your videos and like tab over if it sounds like you're talking about something interesting to look at.
Never understood the prime requisite xp boost methodology. Seemed to nudge players to only playing character classes that match their highest ability score. And why would a high dex score make a thief advance levels faster when xp was earned based on either gold recovered or monsters killed back on 1E and 2E.
The NPC part of the game I think kind of died off. It seems like the original game had a lot more hirling NPCs that were more active in adventures.
Does this guy not know 2nd edition was a thing?
?
Sorry... which guy are you referring to? Me? I've made several videos about 2nd Edition and have been playing since 1981. I'm not sure what your comment is in relation to.