OD&D in the Playground?

[2D8HP]

I (just barely played) D&D in the 1970's with a DM who used "white box" (and Greyhawk, and Blackmoor, etc.), but by the time I played, the AD&D Monster Manual was already out and in use by my DM (I was jealous that his copy had the Lizards logo, but mine had the Wizard logo), so unfortunately I didn't get to play OD&D "undiluted".

I also didn't get a copy of Chainmail until the 1980's, and I only ever held Outdoor Survival in my hands once in the 1990's, and never played with them.

I know of a few at this Forum who played undiluted "Original" D&D, with two playing pre-Greyhawk!

I'm curious if there's some others at this Forum.

Also, I really didn't get to play D&D much after the mid 1980's, and I didn't game at all from the early 1990's until recently, but many at this Forum have gotten to play for decades, and I'm curious about those stories (any edition, and game).

[LibraryOgre]

I got to play a few sessions in the late 80s... maybe as late as '90, since we were in Korea... which might have been 1st or 2nd edition. 90-94, we played intermittently and weirdly, mostly using a friend's brother's books (ever run Dark Sun with a 1e PH, a 2e DMG, and Legends and Lore to fill in the higher attributes?
I have.) Starting in '95 and '96, I really ramped up, playing at least a couple times a month, solidly 2nd edition.

[Jay R]

I have played:

original D&D
original D&D with Greyhawk and the Bard from The Strategic Review
original D&D with Greyhawk and Blackmoor and the Bard from The Strategic Review and Dwarves and birth tables from The Dragon #3
original D&D with Greyhawk, Blackmoor, and Eldritch Wizardry and ideas from The Strategic Review and its successor The Dragon.

and

various other combinations along the way.

The game changed every time a new supplement or magazine came out.

[Digitalelf]

Sadly I started playing to late to experience OD&D. I started with Basic D&D in 1981/1982, then quickly moved on to 1st edition AD&D. Played that until 1989 when 2nd edition AD&D came out.

I played 2nd edition AD&D until 2000 with the release of 3.0, then converted to 3.5 in 2003 when it was released.

When 4th edition came out, I decided to stick with 3.5... I played a little Pathfinder starting with it's release in 2009, but mostly stuck with 3.5.

In 2013, I got tired of the rules for practically everything in 3.5 and Pathfinder, so I went back to playing 2nd edition AD&D (the edition I enjoyed the most).

During these 30+ years, I have pretty much been the DM the entire time. But I enjoy it.

[YossarianLives]

I'm a huge fan of OD&D, and probably one of the few people to get into it this decade. My friend inherited a copy of the original rulebooks from his grandfather and introduced it to our roleplaying group - everyone but me hated it with a burning passion. (Even the guy who brought it.)

It's a real shame that so few people are interested in going back to the deepest roots of D&D. I think most roleplayers these days favour systems with pages of rules and adjudication for every possible situation - I like those too, sometimes, but there's something special about rolling 3d6 in order and venturing forth to seek treasure. It reminds me of my early days with RPGs, when everything seemed so scary and exciting.

[Mordar]

I (just barely played) D&D in the 1970's with a DM who used "white box" (and Greyhawk, and Blackmoor, etc.), but by the time I played, the AD&D Monster Manual was already out and in use by my DM (I was jealous that his copy had the Lizards logo, but mine had the Wizard logo), so unfortunately I didn't get to play OD&D "undiluted".

I also didn't get a copy of Chainmail until the 1980's, and I only ever held Outdoor Survival in my hands once in the 1990's, and never played with them.

I know of a few at this Forum who played undiluted "Original" D&D, with two playing pre-Greyhawk!

I'm curious if there's some others at this Forum.

Also, I really didn't get to play D&D much after the mid 1980's, and I didn't game at all from the early 1990's until recently, but many at this Forum have gotten to play for decades, and I'm curious about those stories (any edition, and game).

Well, it looks like I was just a bit after you. My friend (well, more my parents' friends' son, but he was accommodating of little Mordar) had the white box goodies...but my actual play history is:

• 1981 - 1981: First owned box sets (Blue and Red), first DM experiences (Keep on Keeping on the Borderlands!)
• 1982 - 1982: Initial forays into AD&D. Got my first Player's Handbook from Sears catalog! Parents supportive. Heady times. Made lots of random dungeons with the DMG tables!
• 1983 - 1986: Semi-serious-grown-up games (though we were just teens). Lots of AD&D modules, some homemade games. Lots of other TSR games (Star Frontiers!) and others.
• 1987 - 2000: Next to no Dungeons or Dragons. Completely missed AD&D 2nd Ed. Played tons of other systems/companies (Chaosium, ICE and PaceSetter mostly)
• 2000 - 2008: The 3.x era! Bought the core books at release, started a multi-year campaign, lots of great excitement. Social issues broke the group as the 3.5 transition began
• 2008 - 2015: Played some intermittent 3.0/3.5 and perhaps 3 mini-campaigns (10 or fewer sessions) of 4e

Wow, that's 34 years of gaming history crammed into 6 lines.

And a very long way of saying "Nope, I didn't get to play OD&D despite living less than 6 hours from where it was made".

- M

[Nupo]

I played once with a friend of my older brother in 1979. I don't know what rules we used.
• In 1980 my brother and I bought the three core AD&D books and started playing with a group of friends regularly.
• Played off and on through the late 80's and early 90's. Stuck with 1st edition, but it became more and more house rulled.
• Late 90's when my kids got old enough to play, we started playing regularly again. Still heavily house rulled 1st edition.
• I think it was 2004, I was looking at 3.5 and realized our heavily house rulled 1st edition was actually more similar to 3.5 edition than is was 1st edition, so we switched.
• 2007 Our daughter graduated high school and joined the army. I didn't play much for the next few years. My daughter did however with fellow soldiers, especially the year she spent at GITMO.
• 2015 found out a co-worker played 2nd edition in his younger days. Started regular sessions again. Group includes: the co-worker, his 11 year old son, my wife, our son (who lives close by), our daughter (via FaceTime from Ohio) and an old friend of our daughters that lives close by.

Our daughter played mostly Pathfinder rules while in the service, so we switched over to that about a year ago.

In 38 years of gaming I can probably count the times I was not the DM on one hand. One of them was a few weeks ago when my co-worker DM'ed. We did one session, and it was back to me as DM. Back in the early 80's I bought copies of Greyhawk and Blackmoor, mostly out of curiosity (I already owned the 1st edition books). I wish I still had them. Don't know what happened to them. I still have most of my other stuff.

[ZorroGames]

Started "late" for my group with White Box OD&D, and the comment about the game changing every supplement is spot on! Still ran ( and have the folders) my OD&D characters for multiple years. Cleric and female Wizard best of friends who campaigned from beginning now in the mid teens levelwise make great NPCs for campaigning. Learned what DMs to avoid (kept a list of what we now call TPKs in a folder,) and why Monte Haul dungeons create players with inflated opinions of their playing ability.

Played a lot with AD&D when there was no Second Edition with family and friends. Good rules, great times. Two words "Oriental Adventures." Would have been perfect had I the time and knowledge in include India as a developed add-on.

Second Edition came out and while I bought all the core books and race/class supplements it began to seem too overly detailed for a game that could be prepped and played in the time (birth kid thrown out of his Mom's house and adopted daughters from India) I had available.

Bought all the PHBs for successive additions but never played so it was/is a black hole about 3.0, 3.5, 4.0 on my part.

Just now returning as a player to 5th Edition.

Remote possibly, after we move out of Saint Louis area to Springfield, MO, DM'ing though that does not warm the cockles of my heart like OD&D/AD&D did since so many of my old friends and players in Sacramento and Seattle have moved on to other things such as SCA, CCGs, Evil Empire gaming (insert sign of warding off bad games here,) and "Adult Activities" in their maturing years. I have yet to find a canned campaign setting that wows me and homebrew requires so many hours of work to create to my personal standards. Recovering Perfectionist? Yeah, sadly true.

[KorvinStarmast]

start:
Original D&D; 1975; rolled up a Magic User, Int 16. He lasted until level 9 (with a few levels lost due to wights, wraiths, specters) and all of us heading off to college in summer of 1976. During that campaign our DM folded in Greyhawk and Blackmoor (one of our group had a Blackmoor Monk). We fought some Eldritch Wizardry demons before the campaign shut down.

Next two years I was in a group that played an interesting mix of games;
Standard fare was OD&D + Greyhawk + Blackmoor + Illusionist from Strat Review and a few other odd ideas that were in the Dragon Mag. One player was a djinn; the DM and the player went to some lengths to get it to have a rational progression. Groups from 5-10 players were at the table on a given night. That was when I played my first Druid, as the DM finally folded in Eldritch Wizardry. (His demons always tried to gate in more demons!) When I got to 5th level and got call lightning, I could not wait for us to have a battle in the outdoors. Most of our adventuring was indoors/caves/temples/dungeons. That change shape and recover HP was very handy. We tried some table top fights with Swords and Spells, with mixed success.

As this was going on, AD&D MM and then PHB came out, and various other groups ran hybrids. Also played a bit of Chivalry and Sorcery, and some Traveller. We also played Gama World and Metamorphisis Alpha a bit, but as above, most tables ran a hybrid. Each DM had a unique mix of in how things worked and what books they had read to inform their campaign. Arduin Grimoire was a popular "third party" addition to any number of tables.

I was DM for Empire of the Petal Throne campaigns for about two years.

First fiew years after Graduation, I played in and ran a bunch of Advanced Dungeons and Dragons campaigns, 1e, and ran EPT now and again. Mostly 1e with various Dragon ideas tossed in, or not. Also was in a Oe campaign run by a friend who seems to have a similar back ground to JayR.

In the mid 80's our group played less D&D (Runequest arrived. I tried so hard to get a Traveller group to play but they always broke up) and more play by mail games. Blah. We were in a space game where our groups leader was a bit of a min max thinker, and our major opponents were a group in Dallas known as the Kiddie Corps. We also had a medieval campaign going, play by mail, one turn per week. As that group moved on I got another 1e group together with folks (couples) from work. We had a ball. It was part social part game, plenty of beer, and a hell of a lot of laughs.

Late 80's I was working and trying for a masters degree, so D&D was sparse.

Taught my kids, nephews, and nieces how to play from 1e and B/X. 90's, early 00's. I'd say my strongest 'system mastery' is either EPT or 1e, given that's where the bulk of my DMing experience is. As a player I may have played more OD&D + Geryhawk +Blackmoor (+ whatever) than anything else. As time went on I DM'd a lot more than I played.

Only about a quarter of my ~ 2000 lead/pewter figs got completely painted. I never stopped collecting them until the mid 90's. As I have gotten older, sight and hand fatigue make my painting problematic, sadly.

------------------------

My chainmail experience predated that, as some adults who were miniatures players invited a few of us high schoolers over to play Napoleonics, Revolutionary War, and Medieval war games on a table top or on a floor. Chainmail was what we used for medieval. This was pre D&D, and I went back to board games for a year or so before I joined in with a few friend who had discovered D&D in late 1974.

[FreddyNoNose]

Playing dnd since 74 and played chainmail before that from a copy of the rules from someone's older brother who was in college. Still have a pre-tsr copy of chainmail in somewhere storage. Had EGG as a DM in a couple of games. My name in the playtest credits of some TSR products. Was a judge in the official ad&d tournaments at GENCON both at Parkside and Mecca. DMed lots of game and played many as well.

My favorite edition is ad&d first edition.

Was in the SCA Shire of Genevieve's Lake when it formed. Jean Wells invited me to join. She also invited me to be a founder of the RPGA but I declined it (also didn't want to shell out $$ to be a founder...).

[KorvinStarmast]

Playing dnd since 74 and played chainmail before that from a copy of the rules from someone's older brother who was in college. Still have a pre-tsr copy of chainmail in somewhere storage. Had EGG as a DM in a couple of games. My name in the playtest credits of some TSR products. Was a judge in the official ad&d tournaments at GENCON both at Parkside and Mecca. DMed lots of game and played many as well.

Did you ever meet JD Webster? (Author of Fineous Fingers). IIRC, he was in SCA, but he was a few years older than I and I never met him, though a couple of my gamer friends went to flight school with him in either Beeville or Kingsville.

[FreddyNoNose]

Did you ever meet JD Webster? (Author of Fineous Fingers). IIRC, he was in SCA, but he was a few years older than I and I never met him, though a couple of my gamer friends went to flight school with him in either Beeville or Kingsville.

I can't recall that I met him. What I do remember is the group who came to down from Madison SCA group at the (IIRC pig or steer roast at Jim Roslof's house) bombarding everyone with questions about DND. As I was the only member of the shire who wasn't a TSR employee or related to one, I got really bored and annoyed by it. Brian Blume and I were sitting next to each other while one guy fired off question after question to Brian. Afterwards I asked Brian about it and it was just like it was business to him.

[JoeJ]

I started with the blue box in 1978 or 79, but within a year we have switched to AD&D (it was advanced, so it had to be better, right?). Around that same period I also played a fair amount of Traveller, and a little bit of Gamma World and Boot Hill. So I've actually played only a little bit of OD&D. In those early years, however, none of us were entirely clear on the differences between D&D and AD&D, and we frequently mixed elements of both into our game. I still have Greyhawk and Gods, Demigods & Heroes on my bookshelf. And somewhere, probably in storage, I think I still have Arms Law and an old Arduin dungeon.

In the USAF during the early '80s I played mostly AD&D and V&V. After I got out I went to college and found that most of the fencing team played AD&D. During the next 15 or so years we played both regular AD&D and Oriental Adventures, transitioned to 2e when it came out, joined the RPGA, and even played through a few Masque of the Red Death adventures. We finally drifted apart shortly after transitioning to 3e.

[FreddyNoNose]

I started with the blue box in 1978 or 79, but within a year we have switched to AD&D (it was advanced, so it had to be better, right?). Around that same period I also played a fair amount of Traveller, and a little bit of Gamma World and Boot Hill. So I've actually played only a little bit of OD&D. In those early years, however, none of us were entirely clear on the differences between D&D and AD&D, and we frequently mixed elements of both into our game. I still have Greyhawk and Gods, Demigods & Heroes on my bookshelf. And somewhere, probably in storage, I think I still have Arms Law and an old Arduin dungeon.

In the USAF during the early '80s I played mostly AD&D and V&V. After I got out I went to college and found that most of the fencing team played AD&D. During the next 15 or so years we played both regular AD&D and Oriental Adventures, transitioned to 2e when it came out, joined the RPGA, and even played through a few Masque of the Red Death adventures. We finally drifted apart shortly after transitioning to 3e.

Traveller was great fun especially rolling up characters (Died again!). Gamma World was a fun although I preferred it's predecessor Metamorphosis Alpha. Chivalry and Sorcery were a pain to roll up characters unless you had a GM who knew everything. Empire of the Petal Throne was odd and IIRC where we go the first critical hits.

Tyr Publishing's Bushido RPG was amazing as well. Every class except Ninja, had two requirements to level. For a Bushi (warrior) you needed kill XP (called budo) and honor to level up. Budo is basically 1 point per level of opponent you killed. Only the killing blow character gets the budo. It added a nice dynamic to the game. You needed budo and honor of 10, 50, 100, 500, 1000 to level to 2 through 6.

Bushido only had six levels. Plus if you died with honor and your next character would get karma points which were spent to increase your starting attributes. Attributes determined your starting skills level.

I found a nice link for those interested: https://microphonesofmadness.wordpre...on-in-bushido/

[Mordar]

Traveller was great fun especially rolling up characters (Died again!).

Once in a while when we had 30-60 minutes to kill we did just make Traveller characters, never intending to play them. It really was just to see mortality rates and what kind of characters you'd end up with. Ah, for the days of simple joys.

- M

[FreddyNoNose]

Once in a while when we had 30-60 minutes to kill we did just make Traveller characters, never intending to play them. It really was just to see mortality rates and what kind of characters you'd end up with. Ah, for the days of simple joys.

- M

we did that too! And waiting for people to return from a break we would pick monsters out of the monster manual to fight in an arena!

[KorvinStarmast]

we did that too! And waiting for people to return from a break we would pick monsters out of the monster manual to fight in an arena!

Some of the tensest fights I ever DM'd were Hirilákte arena fights by our PC's in EPT. One of the first adventure prompts we did was fights there, and it was all or nothing in a lot of ways. A few levels later, the PC's were into gambling on one of the Warriors in the group ... and it was tense as the dice were being a bit strange that night.

[FreddyNoNose]

Some of the tensest fights I ever DM'd were Hirilákte arena fights by our PC's in EPT. One of the first adventure prompts we did was fights there, and it was all or nothing in a lot of ways. A few levels later, the PC's were into gambling on one of the Warriors in the group ... and it was tense as the dice were being a bit strange that night.

So, what happened that night?