So its been a while since I last broached the subject of solo play. In that time I've been rereading the AD&D Player's Handbook and Dungeon Master's Guide, I must have read them dozens if not a hundred times already, in order to get a grip on the rules. AD&D is a very complex game and it expects you to have a solid knowledge of the rules before you even begin to set down and play. I don't know how teenagers in the 1980's did it, I assume they took whatever rules they remembered at the moment and decided to wing it for the rest. Nevertheless the goal of this exercise was to play AD&D as close to the book as possible, so it was important to have a very firm understanding of the game's rules before I ever put any characters through a dungeon.
There's a lot of elements in First Edition that I found more useful or better than modern editions. Firstly, that the Dungeon Master's Guide is presented as the 'core' rulebook while the Player's Handbook only really describes a character and the character's options. I found this very useful in actually playing the game as I only needed the DMG as a reference. In modern editions of D&D the core rules are presented in the PHB and the DMG is presented as 'extra' rules for setting up environments, adventures, dungeons and campaign elements. I found this to be more frustrating as I had to go back and forth between both PHB and DMG during the course of play to reference all the rules.
I also liked the First Edition's Character Sheets, though I was initially overwhelmed by the level of detail presented on them. Without them, and coming from a background in modern D&D, I would have otherwise only copied the base statistics of my character, items and equipment, and probably a couple of other optional details. This means that I would have spent a large amount of game time flipping back and forth between various tables to get the data I needed, so having entries for all of them on the character sheet itself was a welcome addition. Although when I started to create a standard Human Fighter, I noticed that a lot of those entries were being left blank, so its when I switched to a Dwarf character and started incorporating more complicated elements such as age, race and equipment adjustments such as shields and helms that I noticed my character sheet becoming more filled out. I figure that to get the most use out of the sheet, you'd have to create an Unearthed Arcana version Paladin-Cavalier.
So the first character I decided to focus on was a Dwarf Fighter. In First Edition it seems that most players avoided playing as demi-human races in order to remain unrestricted by a level cap. I don't plan on my characters making it much farther than level one anyway, and as I mentioned earlier the more complicated character build ended up being the more interesting one as well. Otherwise, it seems like the best way to play a demi-human is to multiclass with them, but that would also slow their level advancement to a crawl by splitting experience gained in half between both classes. Perhaps it doesn't have as much of an effect in practice, but before I playtest it I couldn't really say.
And then there are the issues I have with First Edition AD&D, which I find is common among the internet where fans speak praise of the system and complain about it in equal measure. It's most evident in the writing style. I actually enjoy reading the published sourcebooks, they read more like books on philosophy or long winded erudite discussions of the system itself than a manual for play. Many passages are evocative of the style of play and truly immerse you in this new type of game that Gygax had created, but as actual, technical instruction it is an obscure, confusing mess.
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