Original D&D (Single Volume Edition) by Greyharp Review

The DM of a group I was playing in wanted to switch over to Original Dungeons and Dragons, and shared this PDF of the 3LBBs compiled into one volume. This volume is mostly just a reorganization and mild editing of the original 3 volumes, but the results are astounding. Presented in this manner, the OD&D rules are clear, concise, and as simple and complete as E. Gary Gygax always claimed they were. In fact I'd go so far as to say that this version of the rules is flatly superior to AD&D.

The opening foreward of the book is written by the compiler, and he addresses the criticisms that I have had about OD&D: That they are incomplete, poorly presented, and more of a toolkit for the referee to flesh out than a full game in themselves. He disagrees strongly, and to prove his point presents the rules in a manner that does make them a complete game. I've read the original 3 LBBs deeply and can find no great inconsistencies with this volume, so I would have to say that he has succeeded by far.

Here's the thing, though. To understand OD&D you need a strong foundation in some other edition of TSR D&D - whether its AD&D, B/X, BECMI, or the Holmes Basic book. This PDF is written with such an audience in mind, one that is very familiar with classic D&D and has been playing it for some time.  OD&D is not a game for beginners or newbies to tabletop role playing games.

While actually playing the game, however, I found it mechanically indistinguishable from the BECMI games I'm fond of. In fact, while playing, I was missing some of the options from a fully featured BECMI game. It felt like I was playing the same exact game, just with less stuff.

In fact I had done an experiment myself a while back, where I considered just throwing out all later rulesets and running a game of OD&D by itself. To that end I printed out the reference tables, and was in the process of putting together a game session. What I noticed was that all the material on the OD&D tables was identical to BECMI, there was just less content - less monsters, less magic items, and an entire class was missing.

However, this compilation of OD&D has also changed how I view the B/X and BECMI rules. Instead of a separate game, I now see the BECMI boxes as intro sets to OD&D, the first literally being the beginner's set from levels 1-3. 

Hirelings

AD&D combat works best as a tactical skirmish game. This is hard to execute when every player only controls one character, so for this reason I think the early editions of D&D implemented retainers or henchmen and hirelings. However, I never understood henchmen as written. It seemed needlessly complicated to acquire and employ them, ordering them around added extra steps to every action, and in the strictest case the DM is supposed to run them, making it extra work on top of everything else. In the sense of using them as replacement characters for the players, I never understood why you couldn't just reroll a new character when your main one died, and a level 1 PC who would ostensibly need henchmen as backup is not allowed to recruit them as written, as they do not have enough fame to attract any followers. So its safe to say that I never used henchmen as written in AD&D.

Instead I use the hirelings list and allow players to employ mercenary soldiers as level 0 or level 1 fighters. They come with their own arms and equipment, and require the monthly cost as well as a split of treasure, and generally I let the players run the hirelings unless they wanted to do something exceptionally dangerous, which is when I call for a morale roll. The OD&D rules for retainers is much more usable, and much less complicated for handling their loyalty, morale, and general use.  I still cap the number of hirelings in the dungeon to the PC's charisma score - otherwise players will march whole armies down into the dungeon for a clean sweep.

Using this method transforms AD&D into a more tactical game, and away from the traditional RPG. Its advantage is that it makes combat more interesting and less instantly lethal, and it forces players to care about characters beyond their own, but the downside is that it takes away from the pure roleplaying experience and many players do not want to run multiple characters at once in this fashion.

One thing I had noticed, though, is that players love subjugating and turning enemy NPCs into their service. Goblins, especially, are prey to players who like to threaten them within an inch of their life and then force them to become minions. Honestly, I love it. I'd prefer it if players kept turning enemy NPCs into their henchmen. The caveat, of course, is that when the PC dies, the monster henchmen all desert.

Random dungeon generation for solo play

Is almost exactly like homework. In fact, using dice for all content generation and action resolution requires you to write notes in a log to keep track of it all, an exercise that’s mechanically indistinguishable from doing actual paperwork. Playing D&D solo leans heavily on the “theater of the mind” play style, which necessitates the need to record everything. As a solo RPG player, you take on the role of the DM, player, and as many PCs and NPCs as exist in the game, and managing all that with pen and paper is tedious.  The bookkeeping killed solo RPG for me.

So I looked to board games, miniatures, map tiles, and any other tactile player aids I could use to eliminate the massive overhead of solo play, and more accurately emulate a live session of D&D, where nobody records anything but everyone is following along.

I accomplished this by limiting the scope of the game. Instead of the freewheeling open nature of a full RPG, I restricted it down to just dungeon crawling and hex crawling. The AD&D 1e rules are very comprehensive on the topic of dungeon crawling, and while its wilderness travel rules aren’t the best, they are extensively detailed. These rules can be supplemented and in cases replaced by the more elegant, streamlined rules from the BECMI sets.

Randomly generating an endless dungeon or wilderness becomes boring in short order, but the BECMI books have a crucial bit of advice that’s completely absent from the AD&D text, which is to first create a goal for players entering the dungeon. This is also an idea lifted from the D&D adventure system games - create a goal room, and add it to the random generator table. The point of the game then becomes to adventure until the goal room is reached.

The Basic rule book admonishes to choose a scenario first when creating a dungeon, but the 5e DMG has the most comprehensive list of options, and even tables for story content and plot twists that can occur during the game. These story game charts can add an extra dimension to the otherwise staid dungeon crawling.

And the easiest way to replace dice rolling on a table is to transfer the entries onto cards, then after drawing a card, replace it into the deck and reshuffle it.