The Gygax Time Machine, Part 5: New Players and AD&D

A player has joined our 1^st Edition game, playing a Half-Orc Fighter and a Human Barbarian (Dragon magazine version). He’d never played any RPGs before, including computer games. He’s played two sessions so far: one session in the Workshop of the Gnome Artificers, which was mostly a combat; and an investigative session in Hommlet, finding the saboteur who was slowing down the building of Burne’s castle.
 
He’s a smart guy, and so at that level it’s not surprising he grasped key concepts quickly. But I was struck at just how quickly and easily he picked things up. Of course, I was front-loading a lot of the work – he had well laid-out character sheets (using Anthony Huso’s macro-enabled custom sheets), he had a simple character, he had a fairly straightforward situation (combat in a fairly simple room vs fairly simple opponents, two Automata of different types).
 
But nonetheless, isn’t AD&D hard? Isn’t it inferior to Basic or 5e when it comes to introducing new players?
 
Well, look, probably. Certainly it’s literally more complicated than Basic, and so when you’re showing a new player their character sheet there’s more to get wrong in Advanced. (As a very easy example, Advanced uses different damage codes vs Small/Medium and Large opponents for each weapon. When you tell a new player “here is what damage your weapon does” in Advanced, you are teaching them twice the information in Basic, or, indeed, 5e.)
 
But it’s a fairly small percentage increase in complexity in practical terms. The basic concept you’re teaching – “you are an adventurer exploring a ruin looking for treasure, or investigating industrial sabotage” – is simple and intuitive. You tell the player they can try to do whatever they think their character could do or try in that situation. You emphasize that player exploration, investigation, and skill are the priority – so it’s an information game where the player has to ask questions about the environment. You perhaps tell them “often you use a d20 to check for success, aiming to roll high; sometimes you roll a d100 for the same purpose; sometimes you use other dice for other reasons”. What else do they need to know before setting off? Well, maybe the sort of character they’re playing. “He’s a tough warrior who can fire his light crossbow from a distance and use a halberd or longsword up close.” The new guy is ready to play.
 
And that basically was enough. Of course there was emergent teaching, too – what weapons are good against what armour, how do you position yourself well in combat (for AD&D I try to use minis and maps), and so forth. When the need for a Saving Throw actually comes up, you explain the general concept (but that’s an easy mechanic to learn). You have to teach the combat round, but again, how hard is that? “Each side rolls a d6 for Initiative. Whoever rolls higher goes first. I’ll assign speeds to what you’re doing. Generally you can move and either use a weapon or cast a spell or do some other complex action in a turn, but you might be able to fit more in if everything is very quick.” Given how much of AD&D – especially 1e – is presumed to go on behind the DM’s screen, the player doesn’t need to know much more.
 
So anyway, my new player got that just fine. The combat was not a bad opportunity to get some rules basics down, though in that session the player didn’t get to see much of the game’s scope. (It’s a short-session game, and they did a very little exploring before and after; that said, the combat, though long for 1e, was still about half the length of the equivalent 5e combat.)
 
The second session was much more varied, didn’t include the up-front rules learning, and really saw the game lifting off. The new player basically took responsibility for leading the investigation. Of course, not all new players are so forward, but given the complete lack of experience this guy has with RPGs, it was remarkable anyway. (Then again, I recently taught my friend’s 9-year-old daughter Basic, and she very quickly got into the swing of things.) Basically, to repeat, the game is conceptually intuitive. The new player understood that someone might be manipulating the work orders, causing material shortage (at this one of my veterans, an accountant, did grin/groan “this is just what I play D&D for, auditing worksites”). He reckoned the best bet was to follow the suspect around. He worked out who might be good at it, and they went and investigated.
 
They IDed the perp, and crept out of the woods to follow him around – but here a wrinkle entered. The perp realized he was being followed by strangers (failed Move Silently for the Thief leading the way), and so he hid in a work hut. Unbeknownst to the players, the perp barricaded himself in a little and prepared to attack anyone who broke in – he judged that he had been made, and wasn’t going quietly. The players, though, decided it was best to wait him out and watch the hut – intuitively understanding the possible dangers involved and avoiding them.
 
The perp snuck out at nightfall, with the PCs well hidden. The PCs had reported back to the rest of the party and set up a cordon around the village already. Long story short, the PCs watched the perp go back to his contacts (the Traders in town), and then head out to the north to leave the village, avoiding the intentionally visible group on the northern road. This actually just pushed him towards a group hidden in woods near the mill (in the centre-north of Hommlet), who sought to follow him further, but upon being spotted in the moonlight switched to nonlethal weapon attack and knocked the guy out. We used the Hommlet map with minis for this, gaining approximate distances and so forth from that. The party took their prisoner to Burne and got him to detain the perp, with an interrogation the next day revealing a little more of the evil plan. The new player came up with a way to turn the perp into a double agent.
 
D&D is always, if played thoughtfully, an open game – it’s also not a hard game to learn, generally. In fact, AD&D, for all its reputation, isn’t really much harder than other editions. Further, I wonder how far the open and creative play in the investigative session was enabled precisely by the way AD&D provides rules for some things but not others – by giving fairly tight and intelligent rules for combat, all the way down to Weapon Type vs AC, it manages the most complex and contentious variable, but by limiting investigation rules to specific Class or Race abilities, it encourages players to just do stuff. And my new player got that straight away.
 
There’s life in the old girl yet.

The Gygax Time Machine, Part 4: Pummelling Rules(!)

Zeb Cook makes things make sense in the 2^nd Edition books. Things are listed in some kind of comprehensible order. All the encumbrance information is in one place! Erratic subsystems are purged or integrated or simplified. Great!
 
Well...
 
My 1e table (Greyhawk) returned for the first time since last summer. We’ve had a few sessions, and they’ve been a blast. I’ve also been running 2e (Planescape), and enjoying that, too. And at both tables, there have been some unarmed/nonlethal combat efforts on the part of the players. I really enjoyed both (closely-related) systems, and think they say something about the games involved, including Gary’s own rules style.
 
Undeniably, the 2e version (PHB pp97-98) is much simpler. Punching and Wrestling involves an Attack Roll, potentially modified by the attacker’s Armor type if Wrestling. The die result of this attack, if it succeeds, then (in a quite Gygaxian efficiency) is crossreferenced to a table which details the result. Punching involves damage and a KO% - ¼ of the damage is “real”, ¾ is temporary Punching damage. Wrestling involves flat damage and defining whether or not the result is a Hold which can be maintained. Overbearing is also an attack roll, with three possible modifiers. Weapons used for subdual (in the same section and worth comparing) take a -4 To Hit penalty, and produce ½ real and ½ temporary damage.
 
This is more complicated than later editions, of course, but it is still integrated with the main rules system. Each attack type relies on a normal To Hit roll with a limited set of modifiers: Punching takes none; Wrestling may take a penalty based on opponent Armor; Overbearing considers comparative Size, number of legs (!), and number of Overbearers; and Nonlethal Weapon use takes a straight penalty.
 
The 1e version (DMG pp72-73) uses more words, is not integrated with the main systems, and uses far more modifiers. Each uses a percentile roll rather than a d20 roll. Pummelling (that is, Punching) has a base chance of “success” based on opponent’s ACx10. This then takes 8 modifiers – attacker’s Dexterity and Strength improve their chances, as does the AC value of any real armour; opponent conditions (e.g. Slowed)  also boost chances; opponent high speed and Haste reduce chance. IF the Pummelling hits, a second roll is made to determine damage (which is rendered ¼ to ¾ as in 2e), modified in various ways by armour, condition, and even what is being used to pummel (e.g. mailed fist, metal pommel); this roll may allow a second attack by the attacker, may stun the opponent, or may even allow the opponent to counter, all depending on the quality of the damage roll. Either way, there is usually a second chance to Pummel per round anyway.
 
Grappling (Wrestling) also uses a percentile die system, with similar modifiers (though only Dexterity, not Strength, matters for the attack roll itself), but the Defender’s Armor type acts as an additional modifier, because bulkiness makes wrestling easier. Then there is a “Hold gained” table, Similar to the Pummelling damage table this takes several modifiers, including whether the opponent is wearing a helmet or carrying a shield or is taller or shorter than the attacker. Wrestling then permits a counter-grapple by the defender.
 
Overbearing is comparatively simple; there is a base percentile score to hit determined by both attacker and defender Strength, contextual modifiers, height and weight difference, etc. This becomes the damage result as well, which is a step shorter than the other two categories.
 
So two of the Nonlethal attack forms are two-step in 1e, rather than one-step; none uses the normal To Hit system; they each have many more modifiers; and the actual “attack routines” are completely different to normal combat (Pummelling produces two attacks per round, Grappling involves a Counter stage).
 
Is the 2e version simply an improvement? Undoubtedly it is quicker to remember everything and run; undoubtedly it has some elegant features; it has one element which really is more Gygaxian than Gary’s system, with the quality of the To Hit roll determining the actual Punching or Wrestling result. But we run the risk of misunderstanding the purpose of the 1e subsystem.
 
It’s what the kids now call a “minigame”. Cook retains some of the flavour of this, with the separate damage table for Punching and Wrestling, but the fact that nonlethal combat uses different dice and takes many different modifiers points us to the simulationist, wargame background involved. Gary is offering a different way of engaging with the game and with the problems the PCs face, here – the specificity is the point.
 
My 2e players go to Overbear a little Spinagon guard; they roll a To Hit roll – I check for the three possible modifiers. It feels a little different. It’s just another mechanical moment, though, to serve the wider game.
 
My 1e players throw a blanket over a Spelleater worm, and then start pounding it to capture it. We turn to a different system; a different mechanical challenge presents itself, with a different rhythm. The game palpably shifts in feel for the Nonlethal attackers. A different type of mastery is available, and a different diversion is experienced.
 
I think it’s quite natural to prefer Cook’s version, and I liked it. But it’s hard for me not to appreciate the angular Gygaxian form – it has a certain kind of artistry and focus which is lost by simplification.
 
There is, actually, at least two other obvious comparisons here. In 2e, THAC0 becomes a single line by class, with a natural 20 always hitting and a natural 1 always missing; Weapon Specialisation (from Unearthed Arcana aka 1.5e) becomes an important secondary modifier making it easier for monoclass Fighters to hit and do big damage. These more or less directly replace the assumptions of the 1e PHB&DMG, which use full two-axis tables for THAC0 and which assume use of Weapon Type vs AC (which in 2e becomes a rather perfunctory and unattractive optional rule about Armor Type which is fairly little like the original, but much simpler to use).  The full table, of course, still heavily favours the natural 20 (a 1^st Level Fighter hits AC-5 with a 20), though there is no automatic fail and a To Hit required can be negative. Weapon Type vs AC is quite complicated and is massively eased by modern macros on Excel! (See Anthony Huso’s 1e sheet for that.) You see the reason for both of Cook’s changes there – but there’s some loss, too, particularly in terms of the skill of choosing weapon type to combat different armour types.
 
The second comparison is Psionics (which, whatever he said, Gary liked enough to rejig and reformulate in his own later rulesets). 1e Psionics (PHB pp110-117) has a bunch of clarity issues, and got a whole issue of Dragon dedicated to fixing it – but the mechanically distinct way of generating Psionic ability, the separate “magic” system of Psionic Strength Points, and the full attack matrices (DMG pp76-79) all repeat the same pattern of mechanical distinction and elaboration that Nonlethal Combat and To Hit do in 1e.
 
In 2e, Psionics is reserved for PHBR5, where it comes with a new Psionicist class (which arguably draws one or two ideas from the Dragon magazine Psionicist for 1e). There are a lot of similarities – PSPs are used, for example – but the default for Psionics is a specialised class who automatically has the ability, with Wild Talents generated separately. The Psionic powers themselves – very easy and very powerful to use in 1e if you had the PSPs – receive balance using a version of Nonweapon Proficiency rules (a Cook innovation, though PHBR5 is a Steve Winter book). Mental combat is simplified, though not by as much – though there aren’t multiple attack matrices and effects tables, there is a new system to learn that isn’t identical to normal procedures. (This would be “rectified” in 2.5, in Player’s Option: Powers, which introduced MTHAC0 and MAC.)
 
AD&D is always mechanically baroque and dense, but for Gary this is at least in part out of an irrepressible instinct to offer mechanically varied ways to engage with the problems the players face – yes normally fighting uses THAC0, but here’s a whole new system for Nonlethal; yes normally magic looks like this, but actually different classes use that system differently, and Psionics is a whole different system; yes the basic THAC0 roll is this, but have you considered your weapon and their AC? Mechanically the game is varied and demanding, pushing players to enjoy and master different methods.
 
2e takes inspiration from this in one direction (a direction I mostly like, too): multiplication of splats, options, specialisations. That can be taken to the absurd, and can be abused, but it is a legitimate extrapolation. But 2e “modernizes” and moves away from the Gygaxian legacy in its general preference for mechanical unification, and that has been undeniably the prevailing direction of travel since.