Skip to main content

AD&D Reprints

Recently WotC revealed that they will be republishing the three core rule books for AD&D. This probably serves as a way to keep D&D books on shelves during the period between editions, and possibly to gauge interest in re-releases. This will no doubt result in some players encountering the classic game for the first time, a whole new generation of people experiencing it. It will be interesting to see what those players may come up with based on their experience. They will be coming at the game from a totally different direction. It is impossible to say how many younger players will pick it up. Will they play it in large numbers, or will it be almost totally older players buying it?

I plan on picking up copies, but mostly just for collector purposes. At this point I hardly ever use the original rule books anyway. OSRIC works so much better at the tale, due to its better organization. At this point only a a rerelease that had substantial reorganization would replace OSRIC at my table. I even suggest OSRIC for people trying to start the game for the first time over the originals. While the DMG is great to read through, it is fairly difficult to figure the game out from the original books, especially combat initiative.

Comments

  1. I find myself torn with regard to AD&D and the reprints. I started with 1E AD&D back in my teens. But these days, I feel like C&C is my AD&D. I don't seem to have any interest in going back to the original. It's strange because I never played a minute of 3.X D&D, but I find myself thinking that I couldn't do without an attribute check system of some sort (i.e. the SIEGE Engine mechanic). Then I wonder what happened to my "roleplay, not rollplay" attitude from back in the day! I know there are the old "roll under ability score" rules from D&D, but I feel like they don't take into account experience level like C&C's "add your level to the die roll" system. I know that that can be easily added to AD&D though, but then there's my need to not have to house rule too much. As you can see, I'm thinking a lot about all of this...

    ReplyDelete
  2. Thanks for the kind words for OSRIC, Rich :D

    Allan.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Hex Crawls

Those of you who have been reading this blog know that I have never run a megadungeon before. I have always used more realistic dungeon settings, keeping all underground areas to a minimum and keeping the over all size of castles and the like fairly small. There is another style of gaming I have never indulged in: the hex crawl. I have never seen hexes as discrete chunks of the map. I always just used them as a guide to find distance if they were present and not worrying about themif they were not. I have always taken a more continuous view of overland maps. This is another streak that will be ending with my upcoming OSRIC game. I will be using James M's Outdoor Map as a starting pont in my campaign. I will be heavily modifying it for my purposes but most of the features will stay the same. I will be adding my own versions of Castles Blackmoor and Greyhawk to the map. I have been struggling with how a hex crawl works. How do I know if they find features in the hex and isn't 5 m

Traveller: Session 5

    This is part of an ongoing campaign. You can find the other sessions over on the sidebar. This session was run on October 27, 2022. This session contains secret communications between me and the individual players. This means that these recaps do not cover everything that happened in the session. I will be reporting only the information that all players had access to.   131-1116   After the council meeting ended, Nashu, Archduke Ishuggi’s chief of staff, pulled him aside. Following the revelation that Yuri Lang, the emperor’s would-be assassin, had been a member of Archduke Adair’s intelligence service and had been involved in a combined operation with Gateway Intelligence, she had the staff run overlap checks on all recent contacts. The goal was to determine if there were any more unexpected connections between people that could be a threat to Ishuggi or the emperor.   She learned that, in 1113, Yuri Lang (“Baron Pazi”), Zurzi (Archduke Bzrk’s chief of st

Wilderlands: Session 36

    This session was run on May 1 st , 2023 They continued heading east towards the beach with the rock rolling along beside them. They were not sure where they had washed ashore with respect to the various port cities on the coast, so the best plan was to reach the beach and then decide how to proceed from there. Around noon, the skies darkened and white flakes began to fall from the sky. As it was around 85 degrees, they realized that it could not be snow. It turned out to be ash. The ashfall was quickly mixed with a moderate rain. They discovered that the rain stung when it hit unprotected flesh and raised small red welts. Drex found shelter in a hollow beneath the roots of a large tree and they waited out the acid rain for a couple of hours before resuming their journey. They reached the water as it was getting dark and spent an uneventful night camped just off the beach. In the morning, they could see masts on the horizon to the north, but nothing to the so