D&D 1E Seriously contemplating an attempt at a retro AD&D

Whizbang Dustyboots

Gnometown Hero
For the PHB, DMG, MM (though I have the first one, an old copy from the ‘70s that my father-in-law gave me), and UA, should I find TSR-era printings, or are the WotC rereleases superior?
The re-releases are fine, although they don't have the full-cover illustrations fronting them, but more of a modern unified look to them.

If you want to run the Slavers series, definitely get the re-release, as it adds a new introductory adventure.
 
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overgeeked

B/X Known World
For this, what books and editions of them are the best?
From what I remember, there are no variations between printings of the books. Besides the Cthulhu Deities and Demigods. The content is all the same, only the covers are different. So whichever cover looks best to you, get that one. Or, if you have a PDF editor, buy whichever version you can and slap the cover you like on the PDF.

Stick with the core three for the rules and skip the other rules supplements. It will make things drastically easier to deal with. But pick up the other two monster books, MM2 and Fiend Folio.
What do I need to know when reading these?
No one ever actually play using all the rules printed in the books. No one. A lot of people online claim to have played all the RAW by the RAW, but I've never met an actual person in meat-space who's ever made that claim. Most people used the character races, classes, arms and equipment, and spells sections of the PHB but not much else. The absurd tables of weapon speed and weapon mods vs armor types were never used at any table I've ever heard about in meat-space.

People will inevitably bring up ADDICT and point to it as some kind of AD&D bible, it's not. It's a product of later players obsessed with RAW scouring every possible source to find every niche bizarre rule ever printed and smashing them all together. Again, literally no one played that way. When AD&D was new, D&D was still very much a folk tradition rather than an official RAW worshiping scene. It was only later that people began worshiping RAW. Actual AD&D players at the time when it was current used what made sense and ignored the rest.

It's worth noting the release order and dates of the core three books. MM 1977. PHB 1978. DMG 1979.

Year One you only had monsters. People used either OD&D or Holmes Basic for everything else.

Year Two you had monsters and PCs. People still had to use either OD&D or Holmes Basic for everything else.

Year Three you finally had all the rules. People forget that the to-hit charts are in the DMG...which wasn't released until two years after the MM and one year after the PHB.

What this resulted in is a lot...I mean a lot...of tables never really played AD&D RAW. They kept the bits and pieces of OD&D and Holmes Basic they used when the AD&D books were still being released. Early AD&D was a mishmash of game systems at the table. Groups kept using the rules they cobbled together, bringing in new players and teaching them their version of the game, those players went on to run their own games and either kept the cobbled D&D they were taught or modified it to suit their own tastes, and passed that on to their players. When a new book came out they'd look at it and decide what to use and what not to. There was no universal acceptance of whatever official stuff happened to be released. Most groups ignored everything besides the core three and the monster books, for example.

To make it even more confusing, most people didn't make the distinction between B/X, BECMI, and AD&D that we do today. It was all close enough to work together, so people used whatever they liked. For example, the version of AD&D my group still plays is a mishmash of AD&D, B/X, BECMI, 2E, and a bunch of house rules. We built the game we wanted to play based on what was available. What line it belonged to didn't matter. What edition was printed on the cover didn't matter.
Is it true that knowledge of how to play is passed on more as an oral tradition than through the books (a concept with which I’m familiar, given my Orthodox background)?
Absolutely. See above.
Any help from those who have played, are still playing, and/or loved it would be greatly appreciated.
Start with the absolute minimum you need to functionally play the game. Don't try to use all the rules in the book. You don't need most of it.
 

overgeeked

B/X Known World
For the PHB, DMG, MM (though I have the first one, an old copy from the ‘70s that my father-in-law gave me), and UA, should I find TSR-era printings, or are the WotC rereleases superior?
Go with the originals if you can find them in decent condition at a decent price. All three are available as PDF and POD through DriveThru. It looks like some/most of the AD&D hardback line are available as well.
 

From what I remember, there are no variations between printings of the books. Besides the Cthulhu Deities and Demigods. The content is all the same, only the covers are different. So whichever cover looks best to you, get that one. Or, if you have a PDF editor, buy whichever version you can and slap the cover you like on the PDF.
There was extensive errata to all three core books, published in Dragon Magazine. Whole appendices were added to the later printings of the DMG. So if the OP wants to go after originals, it's a good idea to check the printing. The Acaeum website has a list of errata. Note that some of it wasn't applied throughout any of the printings (and not even the WotC reprints, which actually added MORE errors in the form of typos; a very sloppy job, overall.)
 

Reynard

Legend
Supporter
This raises an interesting question that is broadly applicable to anyone considering going back to "first principles" with a game that has had many iterations: do you take that first edition as it is, with all its quirks and flaws, and experience that way, or do you embrace the collected wisdom of its players and utilize errata, common house rules, etc? In other words, do you play B/X, or do you play OSE?
 

This raises an interesting question that is broadly applicable to anyone considering going back to "first principles" with a game that has had many iterations: do you take that first edition as it is, with all its quirks and flaws, and experience that way, or do you embrace the collected wisdom of its players and utilize errata, common house rules, etc? In other words, do you play B/X, or do you play OSE?
My approach is to take it as it is at first read-through. Try to see if I can get into the creator’s mindset. Then, I go from there.
 

Whizbang Dustyboots

Gnometown Hero
My approach is to take it as it is at first read-through. Try to see if I can get into the creator’s mindset. Then, I go from there.
The Sorcerer's Scroll columns in Dragon magazine are useful for this as well, not to give you more homework.

Gygax is often extremely fired up in those, responding to things that, at this point, we can only guess at.

Month to month, he swings wildly from "this is your game; make it what you want" to "you are not playing AD&D unless you use 100% of the rules and never even crack the spine of a book published by those RoleAids bastards."

I'm not sure there is a consistent mindset throughout. Someone smarter than me suggested a few months ago that the 1E DMG be viewed as a collection of Dragon magazine articles -- neat ideas, typically published as standalones, without the expectation that one table would use all of them. Using every single subsystem published in the initial run of 1E books (through Oriental Adventures or Manual of the Planes), gives you a lot to do, much of it slowing down play at the table (no computers were in use to help speed things up in 1982).

And the Survival Guides, which I think were all published after EGG was pushed out of the TSR nest, really double down on extra subsystems.

So don't be afraid to pick and choose what you're using at the table. EGG, when he posted here, suggested that's what he did with most of these subsystems.
 
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Lanefan

Victoria Rules
The Sorcerer's Scroll columns in Dragon magazine are useful for this as well, not to give you more homework.

Gygax is often extremely fired up in those, responding to things that, at this point, we can only guess at.

Month to month, he swings wildly from "this is your game; make it what you want" to "you are not playing AD&D unless you use 100% of the rules and never even crack the spine of a book published by those RoleAids bastards."
For the very reason you note above - the ongoing self-contradiction - I'd recommend that someone new to 1e largely ignore those columns (and Sage Advice as well!) until becoming a bit more familiar with the system.
 

Early issues of Polyhedron were an official source of errata and clarifications by Gygax himself (through Frank Mentzer.) For example, the spellcasting levels of Rangers and Paladins is nowhere stated in the manuals.
 

Jahydin

Hero
@deganawida
I think it's cool you're giving AD&D a shot, good luck!

I find the original AD&D books to be the heart and soul of D&D and reread them at least once a year. I hope once you do the same you'll come back here and let us know what you think!

That said, because Gygax approached his game from the perspective of a "world creator" rather than just a "game designer" there are quite a few mechanics that I can't stand. For instance, Fighters needed to be "buffed" to be on par with Magic-Users, but instead of building bonuses into the class, he decided to have Percentile Strength to set an elite few up for greatness. From the perspective of world builder, this balanced things out; from a gaming perspective though, this wasn't exactly useful for any Fighter players unless they happened to roll really lucky. Another example is level limits for demi-humans. From a world building perspective, makes sense to nerf them to make it a human-centric world; from a gaming perspective though, kind of sucks your Dwarf stops leveling at 8.

But that's where the OSR comes in. Once you've played enough AD&D to get an idea of things you like and things you don't, it's fun to pick up another ruleset that "fixes" the issues you have. For me, this has been Castles and Crusades and Hyperborea. Maybe Dragonslayer too, but I just read through that one, so we'll see if it holds up to the test of time like the other two...
 

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