FWIW, the way I run initiative in original D&D is found here: Philotomy Combat Sequence. It's a combat sequence based off of Chainmail and Swords & Spells. There's a full version of the sequence, and also a "simple" variant. I usually run things like the "simple" variant, but with rulings based on the details of the full sequence.

Quote from: yancy;1107169The thing that makes me most curious about this thread is how someone would end up playing *original* dungeons and dragons...

Around the time 3.5 came out, I had grown dissatisfied with WotC D&D and started trying a lot of different systems, including older ones. I had a lot of fun with a fan-published "Holmes Companion" that was floating around, and since the Holmes Basic rules were an edit of the original D&D rules, that led me back to the little brown books. I saw the little brown books as a sort of "foundation D&D" that a DM can use to build on and "make the game your own." That worked out well, for me, and it stuck.

These days, I run two D&D rules sets: original D&D (plus my own house rules that tweak things exactly to my preferences/tastes) and 1e AD&D (when I want a classic, traditional D&D -- I consider 1e AD&D to be a kind of "de facto standard" for "this is D&D"). My AD&D game is usually Greyhawk, with the typical Greyhawk races and classes and such. My original D&D game is mostly based off the little brown books without much from the supplements, and with customization for my home "Cromlech Tor" campaign. It uses a base d6 for hit dice, weapons damage, etc.

Quote from: yancy;1107169I guess what I'm asking is, the impetus for first playing with the original rules, happening to be even older than me? Or was there some specific revival of interest in the original rule-set? Or was it something like 'well, Wizards of the Coast offers this dubious new edition of D&D but they also got yet another reprint of original, and that's pretty much that, and I have no reason to cherry pick for particular used stuff, so let's go with option B' ?

I played OD&D because I play my stuff before I publish. I published for OD&D because it over a broad audience for my material compared to rolling my own. It was during the advent of 4e and before Pathfinder when I started work on the Majestic Wilderlands.

I had re-written Thieves of Badabaskor for D&D 3.5 and hated all the nit picking format rules especially the stat blocks. So I wasn't going to use 3.5e. I had released 2 Points of Lights books through Goodman Games that were effectively systemless.  So the retro-clones were at the right time at the right level of complexity for me to use to share what I been doing for 20 years at that point.

And because I stuck to the tropes of D&D even when using GURPS and Fantasy Hero the material I wrote for those system was transferrable over to Swords & Wizardry Core the clone I opted to use.

However because of Matt Finch Old School Primer and discussing the origins of the hobby, I finally figured out how make classic D&D (OD&D to AD&D 2e) work the way I wanted to it to work without having to re-write everything into a new RPG. I always had players describe what they were doing as their character first and roll second. I gravitated to systems that were well designed frameworks and toolkits to handle a variety to situation. System like GURPS and Hero System.

Discussing and reading about the origins of the hobby informed me what Arneson and Gygax were thinking things like the d20 to hit roll  and armor class. Matt Finch's Old School Primer provided a context in which I could apply that to an arbitrary setting element or something what the players wanted to do.

As a consequence I started to have fun with OD&D/Swords & Wizardry in a way I didn't have the first go around with AD&D 1st back in the early 80s. Because it rules light, I got a lot more done with my hobby time while still running the same thing I enjoyed and that my players enjoy.

With the added bonus there being a large enough audience that going the extra mile to make the material usable by others felt worthwhile. Not just in terms of commercial sales but throwing things up and getting feedback.

The GURPS and Hero System community are very hidebound in their preferences. And because of the limitations of what I can share I can't show most of the work I done nor is it worth the time to do the extra to make it usable by others.

The insight
Simply the rules don't define the campaign. What defines the campaign is the description of the setting which includes the type of characters the players can play. The rules are the procedures by which this description is translated into odds and dice rolls.

You can see this process the clearest in the earliest days of the hobby. There was little to none published games for the gamers to use. So to fight say a skrimish in the Battle of the Bulge, one had to dive into various primary sources to come up with procedures to handle the battle. And the entire structure of that game and scenario was based on the real life descriptions of the battle and the weapons used.

As it happens I found that OD&D is more than sufficient to as a framework to adjudicate players pretending to be characters in the fantasy medieval world of the Majestic Wilderlands. However it is a toolkit in the same way as the raw power system of the HERO System. To do adjudicate specific you use the available mechanics of attributes, AC, Hit points, to hit roll, saving throw and class abilities to construct a ruling. The ultimate reference source is not the rulebook but rather the description of the setting.

Despite all the glossy productions that have emerged since the mid 1980s, I still find the flavour of OD&D and B/X to be my favourite for D&D. Not so much the mechanics, but the old school flavour is what speaks to me.

RQ2 appeals for some of the same reason - the characters start inexperienced in a gritty/hostile setting and the players need to use their wits if they want the characters to survive and prosper as they struggle on the path to becoming veteran adventurers.

There was no quarter drawn, and it was not assumed your character would become veterans.

This was more likely to occur in D&D with level-appropriate modules (although I don't know if that was big for OD&D).

I really enjoyed the novice character games for the old school rpgs like OD&D, and I think DCC currently captures that aspect well.

These new rpgs often tend to have veteran characters as beginning default, making it easier and quicker to progress to heroic play, but for me there is something lost there  

Give me an old school game any day

Quote from: S'mon;1107173I was also wondering how many people actually sought out actual OD&D to play, as opposed to say Swords & Wizardry. OD&D has some great material in The Underworld & Wilderness Adventures that isn't replicated in clones, but I was wondering how many people actually rely on real-OD&D for the mechanics of play.

I've run OD&D RAW(-ish) and its good stuff, but S&W:WB makes it stupid easy for introducing new players to OD&D.

Also, many of us who talk about 0e or Oe mix in the Holmes Blue or one of the Red books, and others weave in stuff from Judges Guild's house system. Yeah, many people don't know that JG had its own "OD&D" rules scattered about various products, much of it house rules, but also their own takes on various things. But there isn't any pre-Greyhawk JG stuff as JG was founded in 1976 and the Greyhawk supplement was early 1975.

In fact, I'm unsure if there's any pre-Greyhawk published anything from any 3PP from back in the day. There's definitely lots of White Box only OSR material out there now.  

Anybody know of any early game magazines that published any D&D articles before mid-1975?

Every time I've run OD&D at an event, I've had a big crowd, and the refrain is always the same: "This game is so much better than !  You can just...do anything!"  Because you can.  I mean, shit, the magic-user in a group slew an ogre and saved the entire party, by beating it to death with his staff!  Same damage as the (unconscious) fighter-with-longsword: 1d6!  He hit it 3 times in 3 rounds for max damage.

But back to the point, when the players would say "Can I gather moss and make a poultice to heal up some wounds" I'd just roll a die (1-3 yes cave moss, 4-6, no cave moss) and say "Sure/sorry no" and so on.  Player wants to leap across a table (the butcher block the ogre was going to slice up characters on to make sandwiches with), all heroically?  Yeah, sure, it's just you moving across the room.  For good measure I had the player in question roll a save v. death or otherwise trip and fall right in front of the ogre, who had a huge cleaver...well, he made it!  

Players love all of this. As soon as they get over "I can't do so-and-so, my character sheet doesn't say I can" and realize "I can do anything the character sheet says I can't" (like if they only have a 10 strength and want to try to single-handedly move a 10 ton boulder, obviously they can't), they realize how open and awesome the game is.

That's what it's all about, man.

Now for home, long-term campaigns, I kind of prefer AD&D because everything's "right there", but I love OD&D too.

Quote from: yancy;1107169The thing that makes me most curious about this thread is how someone would end up playing *original* dungeons and dragons (as opposed to AD&D, or basic/expert/companion, or whatever random edition was crapped out just previous to the time you started playing).

I guess what I'm asking is, the impetus for first playing with the original rules, happening to be even older than me? Or was there some specific revival of interest in the original rule-set? Or was it something like 'well, Wizards of the Coast offers this dubious new edition of D&D but they also got yet another reprint of original, and that's pretty much that, and I have no reason to cherry pick for particular used stuff, so let's go with option B' ?

For me it was picking up Warriors of the Red Planet, which is an OD&D clone tuned for playing Barsoom-style sword and planet (aka planetary romance) games. Before that I'd only been exposed to 3.5+ and I found myself wondering at the simplicity and elegance of the game. From there, like many others, I found myself looking Sword and Wizardry and many other "retroclones" and just kind of decided these games were much more my speed than WotC era games were.

I started with OD&D in the mid-70's myself (I'm one of the folks "even older" than you, I suspect . I rope in a new TTRPG player to my old-school homebrew about twice a year, so that's how they get involved. Often I hear that they enjoy the old-school game more than their subsequent forays into 5e. "More exciting" and "easier to focus on the action" are two comments I've heard more than once.