Dude, I'm just listing a reasoning.

If you don't like something, rework it.  Personally, I've never liked the monk, so I don't care about them, they don't fit a medieval European setting at all.  They might as well have dropped Indian Brave as a character class.

The 1E ruleset was partially a cash grab by putting out more expensive books and to get rid of Arneson as a rights holder.  A fair bit of 1E was rushed.  And lets not forget, this was some of the first RPG's being written.  Its not as if these guys had a roadmap to use.  They were breaking new ground in game design.  Do you think they'd use the negative armor class after looking at increasing armor class, no they would not.

I dispute the premise, I think?  How do we know that AD&D 1e is more popular than AD&D 2e?

I'll grant that if someone wants to build an OSR game off of an AD&D (instead of off of B/X or whatever), then they are more likely to tune it into AD&D 1e as their reference.  But does that speak to the popularity of people playing AD&D?  Remember that 1e and 2e were also the same game in a way that other editions haven't really managed.  3.0 and 3.5 were the same game, but 3.0 is very small and everything got reprinted except a couple wacky things.  By contrast both 1e and 2e are very large games, with a good amount of splat material, and both have classes only available in their respective systems.  I suspect I'd find a similar number of games that run AD&D as a cohesive entity that they have selected sections of 1e and 2e from, versus games that strictly are running AD&D 1e.

Minor aside, but I freaking love the monk.  Of course we bump up the hit dice (to d8) and house rule that they do get Dex bonuses to AC, etc.  I also loved Oriental Adventures for the most part and wish somebody would do an OSR version of it.  And make it as politically incorrect as freaking possible.  In other words, make it like a real Asian would make it, with all the crazy shit from folklore turned up to 11, not some sanitized white guilt game.

Incidentally, according to Matt Finch, the assassin class was initially supposed to be neutral in alignment, not evil.  Not having the LBB or supplements, I'll defer on others regarding that.  But, combining these things, I've allowed players to make ninja assassins for our Swords & Wizardry game.  It works because my homebrew setting has Asian-derived cultures and because ninja, like monks, are just badass.

Quote from: Persimmon on April 10, 2023, 02:03:28 PM
I also loved Oriental Adventures for the most part and wish somebody would do an OSR version of it.  And make it as politically incorrect as freaking possible.  In other words, make it like a real Asian would make it, with all the crazy shit from folklore turned up to 11, not some sanitized white guilt game.

Psssh, the bestest Oriental Adventures would be done by a fat white guy with a katana who taught himself Japanese so he could watch anime.  That's the one I want, that one will have some goddamned badass ninjas, I tell you whut.

Quote from: Venka on April 10, 2023, 01:38:16 PM
I dispute the premise, I think?  How do we know that AD&D 1e is more popular than AD&D 2e?

It's obviously a guess because we can't quantify it for sure, but the online community certainly shows a huge bias for 1e games over 2e games. Granted, maybe the 2e players just aren't talking about it online, but the margin seems pretty big for those that are. It does seem like 2e is picking up a little more steam than I've seen in the past, though.

That said, to your later point, it's entirely possible that people are playing 1e with a bunch of house rules that make it far closer to 2e, and it's not like they're that far apart rules-wise to begin with.

Well I personally revel in 1e. Monks, Assassins, Bards, Psionics, 1/2 Orcs, Multi- and Dual- Classes, Nine Alignments, Weapon vs AC, look-up tables, and Gygax. Especially Gygax. Yes, TSR fired Gygax pre-2e, then appointed Cook to write it. They stopped publishing Greyhawk for years and put F Realms in its place. Even if for some reason I wasn't upset about Gygax being fired, I still had no incentive to buy 2e precisely because it wasn't written by Gygax.

It may be a threadjack, but to me the sweet spot on all this is Hackmaster 4e—the first Hackmaster—which is essentially an AD&D 3e if Gygax had retaken control of TSR in the early 1990's and doubled down on the vibe of 1e plus a plethora of houserules floating around the TSR offices and home games.

Yeah, Hackmaster 4e is silly in parts and over the top with some of its charts and such, but I think it is still at its core a next iteration of AD&D that captures what 1e meant to all of us.

I really want to join a group that plays Hackmaster 4e. Over the top or not, it appears to have what 2e AD&D didn't.

When I see people talking about Gygax's "poor game design" I have to laugh.  This motherfucker was out there on the forefront of gaming for years.  It's like criticizing the guy who invented the wheel because it didn't have spokes in it so it was a poor design. 

Let me tell you something about AD&D 1e.  Back in 1981 when I started playing, D&D (basic and advanced) were the most available games.  It was a niche hobby and if you told someone you played D&D they didn't know what the fuck you were talking about, and they thought that you either were a computer nerd, or in a Satanic cult.  Usually the latter.  And I'm not talking about some Podunk town, I'm talking about New York City.  So D&D was the gateway. 

I got in through Moldvay/Cook B/X which made learning the rules a lot easier since all the concepts were in a 32-page rulebook and not spread out over 500 pages of the Player's Handbook and DMG.  And oh man, the rules were a mess.  But it forced us to THINK, to adapt.  We were a breed of our own.  We house ruled the fuck out of that game.  Every DM had a binder full of Dragon articles and self made rules that they put into their own games.  We took the weighty tomes that Gygax made for us and we made whole universes. 

Those were the days of high adventure!

Then came 2nd edition.  And at the time I thought it was a good thing because they codified the rules better and gave player's more options.  There were a lot of rules in 1st ed. but we mostly ignored them.  These rules were in your face. I was buying the splatbooks like crazy so players could have more options.  At first there was one for every class and then even the subclasses got them (Complete book of Ninjas, Necromancers, Paladins), then every race got one. Then Skills And Powers was released and as I sat there trying to decide whether I wanted my fighter to be more agile, or coordinated I just put the pencil down and didn't play D&D again for years. 

For me 2e KILLED D&D, by tying it down and placing one book after another on top of it until it expired.  Why the fuck would I want to go back to that?

Snagged this doc off the net, for those who would be interested in a four-page item-by-item list of differences between 1e and 2e:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Z3QfPF9TbCoWL7YqWNjjQcdwDpNd6jix/view?usp=sharing

Does anyone play AD&D 1e with some of the splatbooks for 2e?

Quote from: Svenhelgrim on April 10, 2023, 02:36:03 PM
Then Skills And Powers was released and as I sat there trying to decide whether I wanted my fighter to be more agile, or coordinated I just put the pencil down and didn't play D&D again for years.

For me 2e KILLED D&D, by tying it down and placing one book after another on top of it until it expired.  Why the fuck would I want to go back to that?

You know it sounds like 2.5e (the "Players Option") series killed it for you.  I bought all of those books, ran one game with them, and then just banned them because they were bullshit.  Well, the two ones that were splatty were bullshit, as they were the ones letting you subdivide STR  into "stuff that helps you" and "stuff that doesn't" and allowing you to maximize the former for the cost of minimizing of the latter, and the ones allowing you to do form really strange high level spells.  I never allowed those books into the long running campaign I had during that whole time, and after that one experiment with them, I just dropped them.  The third book had rules for miniatures and stuff, that eventually got gutted and turned into third. 

2.5 was a bad edition I'd have a hard time defending.  2.0- or a synergy of 2e and 1e- I think is defensible to this day, though I totally understand if the weight of the splats eventually became annoying.

Quote from: GamerforHire on April 10, 2023, 02:47:36 PM
Does anyone play AD&D 1e with some of the splatbooks for 2e?

I know someone who does. I also know someone who says he playes 3e with the 2e races. I know a lot of weird people.

Quote from: Baron on April 10, 2023, 02:35:31 PM
I really want to join a group that plays Hackmaster 4e. Over the top or not, it appears to have what 2e AD&D didn't.

We just bolted a bunch of Hackmaster stuff onto our 1e.  Hell, I still use some of that material for my Swords & Wizardry game.  Also lots of good monsters in the various Hacklopedias that never appeared in other versions of D&D so they're certainly worth getting if you can find them at a reasonable cost.

Quote from: Venka on April 10, 2023, 02:50:21 PM

Quote from: Svenhelgrim on April 10, 2023, 02:36:03 PM
Then Skills And Powers was released and as I sat there trying to decide whether I wanted my fighter to be more agile, or coordinated I just put the pencil down and didn't play D&D again for years.

For me 2e KILLED D&D, by tying it down and placing one book after another on top of it until it expired.  Why the fuck would I want to go back to that?

You know it sounds like 2.5e (the "Players Option") series killed it for you.  I bought all of those books, ran one game with them, and then just banned them because they were bullshit.  Well, the two ones that were splatty were bullshit, as they were the ones letting you subdivide STR  into "stuff that helps you" and "stuff that doesn't" and allowing you to maximize the former for the cost of minimizing of the latter, and the ones allowing you to do form really strange high level spells.  I never allowed those books into the long running campaign I had during that whole time, and after that one experiment with them, I just dropped them.  The third book had rules for miniatures and stuff, that eventually got gutted and turned into third. 

2.5 was a bad edition I'd have a hard time defending.  2.0- or a synergy of 2e and 1e- I think is defensible to this day, though I totally understand if the weight of the splats eventually became annoying.

I would play 2e again if someone else ran it.  A good DM can make any system work.