Converting 5e players to OSR and AD&D

AD&D is a much better system to convert 5e players to OS D&D than Basic is. B/X is a very minimalist system in which player options are few and advancement is limited, while AD&D shares the same conceits as 5e, 3.5, and Pathfinder, such as the separation of races and classes, unique class features, and a profusion of modifiers to the die rolls of every action. The "power curve" of AD&D characters is also greater than B/X/BECMI, and characters are expected to start out strong and remain strong in order to survive, which is a more natural fit to modern players.

To play AD&D effectively you must create a powerful character at the outset. Race and class are separate so players can create unique character combinations. Races give statistical bonuses to ability scores, so players can choose to optimize for a certain style, and classes grant special abilities and gain extra features as they rise in level (in fact I think every class gains new features upon level advancement except the humble fighter). Multiclassing is an option for nonhuman races, so players can combine them to create their own unique builds.  In AD&D 2e there are no racial class limits, so players can choose to play whatever they want. And if you play AD&D 2e, you get even more customization options in the form of Class Kits and Non-weapon proficiencies, which are the same as skills.

AD&D is a more lethal game than 5e and there is a greater emphasis on the management of resources such as time, money, weight and inventory, more detailed mathematical calculations for performing and resolving actions, and more pressing consequences for player choices. Because almost every action has some dice mechanic and a series of modifiers attached, AD&D rewards system mastery.

If, as a DM, you are attracted to OS D&D because of the lure of heavier consequences and lethality, but want to maintain the number crunchiness and wide array of options from modern RPGs, then AD&D is a better fit for your table. If however, you want a more minimal game where those options don't exist, and players are all better off playing standard Fighting Men and scrapping through a dungeon by the skin of their teeth and their wits alone, then OD&D or B/X/BECMI is a better option.

Frank Mentzer quote from facebook, again

His original post:

Jayson tagged me for the "10 RPGs that most influenced me over the years." I'll just list them here. Hard to trim down to 10, but here's the results, in chronological order.
OD&D (1974, & Holmes expansion 1977, & my BECMI 1983-86)
Tunnels & Trolls (1975, and Monsters! Monsters!, part of the family)
Traveller (1977)
Advanced D&D (1e only, 1977-79)
Runequest (1978)
Morrow Project (1980)
Champions (1981, & Hero system)
Call of Cthulhu (1981)
Paranoia (1984)
World of Darkness system (1991, Vampire etc.)

Frank Mentzer: Original D&D is a serious wargame with miniatures, roleplaying entirely optional. Played it that way for a year or so. (Edit: Memory glitch; reflecting, I realize we only played that for a few months, until Holmes D&D showed up.)

Me: "Hi Frank, I hope you don't mind if I bug you for more details about this? Does that mean that you played OD&D as if it were just Chainmail Fantasy set in an underground dungeon?"

" exactly. That's what it was (the front of the box says so). I learned years later that Dave had at least SOME awareness of the potential for group interaction via close-knit group, but I saw none of that from Gary's wargame version; his 'roles' were rules governing the interaction of the individuals. Wargames were Gary's roots, where his head was at. It was kinda cool, instead of outdoor army units, you played individuals (personal 'units') and ran individual battles in a very tight environment. Really different from my usual miniatures games, very personal and dynamic. But roleplaying was an 'add-on', entirely unnecessary."

The Three Pillars of Adventure solo

The gameplay elements of 5th edition D&D are broken down into the "Three Pillars of Adventure". These are:
1. Combat
2. Exploration
3. Social Interaction

To have an enjoyable solitaire gaming experience, it is important to adapt these elements into a solitaire framework

Combat

Combat is the easiest pillar to perform solo. 

 D&D combat contains little to no hidden surprises and the dice system introduces a high degree of randomness, making this a perfect system to perform solo. The player only has to play both sides intelligently, and let the dice fall where they may (or not, you're playing solo, nobody cares if you fudge results). Any "surprise" variables such as monster special attacks or reinforcements can just be introduced through dice mechanics. 

 But D&D is more than just a skirmish level wargame, and if the game was only combat then it would get boring very quickly. To contextualize the combat there is dungeons and exploration.

Exploration

Exploration is possible to play solo with random generation of layouts and terrain and random encounter creation. A simple table of encounters and any number of procedural generators can be used to accomplish this task. But there are hidden elements in dungeon and wilderness exploration that need special consideration to not ruin the fun of surprise.

 Trap placements, secret doors and hidden treasures all exist as knowledge meant only for the DM, to be revealed to the players only through clever play and after taking the proper precautions. It is possible to emulate these elements through solo play, and with a little work it can feel almost as natural as learning about them from a DM.

The AD&D DMG has a great list of traps in Appendix A Table VII that are eminently usable solo, and OD&D Supplement I: Greyhawk devotes an entire chapter to them. The D&D board games use face-down trap tokens as hazards to PCs. Their placement is known but the effect is not, and generally they are placed at the edge of a tile, halting player progress. The player is then faced with a single chance to disarm them, or otherwise pass over them and suffer the damage.  Random event and encounter cards can also simulate the unpredictability of a dungeon crawl. Similar random events and hidden hazards can be adapted for wilderness play, making overland exploration a fun part of solo play as well.

Pregenerated dungeons can be used to play solo effectively, with a bit of work. For this method its ideal to have a Player's version of the dungeon map that only shows the basic layout, and a DM version that has all the traps and secret doors and treasures listed. It really depends on how well the dungeon keys are written, the kind that are best for solo play keep the player information in the top two paragraphs and the DM only or secret information below them. Modules that use a lot of boxed text are great for this method. To play through this method, first move through a dungeon room and make a note of everything you would do as a player - where you check for traps or treasure, what you decide to look for, how you decide to exit the room or listen for monsters. After making all your player decisions, then read the DM information in the room key and flip over to the DM map and note if any characters triggered a trap or found secret objects, and adjudicate victory or loss appropriately. 

Social Interaction

Social interaction is the pillar least adaptable to solitaire play. NPCs generally only do a few player-facing tasks: provide an opportunity for shopping, combat, help or hinder PCs, become followers, and provide rumors or push the story forward.

You can approximate NPC interactions by using reaction rolls and morale checks, but an important part of social interaction is learning rumors, finding out new information and hearing the story of the characters and the game world. All this information is meant to be the sole purview of the DM and can't easily be randomly generated.

  The Mythic Game Master Emulator uses event focus and event meaning tables to generate story content, and a worksheet of scenes and NPCs to determine the outcome of a story. Rory's Story Cubes or other methods of creative writing also fulfill this experience. The 5e DMG devotes an entire chapter to creating story quests and progressing through NPC motivations and plot twists, and fills it with tables for the explicit purpose of random generation. 

 Personally, I don't write out huge dialogue exchanges between PCs and NPCs. I generally determine the disposition of the NPCs, any applicable persuasion attempts by the PCs, and the results. If the PCs fail, then no new rumors are gained or resolved. But if you want to flex your creative writing muscles, this is the place to fill in the dialogue.

Using a premade adventure module can help fill out the story aspect of the game, but adventure modules are written entirely for a DM and generally don't separate the player facing information from DM-only information. Going across the wilderness travel or dungeon exploration part of an adventure module is definitely doable using the above mentioned procedures, but when it comes to the actual story you basically have to read it beforehand and are "on rails" throughout the entire experience. Personally, I find reading an adventure module to be catatonically dull, and I use solitaire procedures to work my way through a module in order to prep it for a live game.

Ironically, the more experience you have playing D&D with a live group, the better your solo play experience will be. D&D, the nerdiest game ever made, requires you to socialize.

more hex BS

>There shouldn't be even one feature per hex, not only because it's an insurmountable amount of work but because nobody will ever get anywhere. Most hexes should be movement fodder; spacing. Their content is the potential for random encounters.

Alright fine, I'll add your blog because your discussion of hex crawls is the only one that I can use directly: https://osrsimulacrum.blogspot.com/2020/05/making-wilderness-play-meaningful-system.html

Delta really shits on AD&D's overland movement chart here: https://deltasdnd.blogspot.com/2012/02/damn-you-gygax-part-3.html
He's right about OD&D, the OD&D system is so immediately playable that the AD&D abstraction seems pretty worthless. But I did some calculations of my own and AD&D is not unplayable. The movement rate charts actually assume 5 mile hexes, with heavy burden over rough terrain actually taking 3 turns to pass. With a scale of 1 hex = 5 miles, the AD&D chart is pretty useful for overland travel. Just don't use the given maps of Greyhawk, Karameikos or Faerun, as they don't use a compatible scale at all. But it does snag when traveling over multiple types of terrain, as you have to do out of game calculations and prorate your travel budget based on the type of hex you enter, so Delta is spot on, on that point. B/X and BECMI's wilderness exploration system actually has the same issue. It seems the only really useful, workable system for traveling over a hex map only exists in OD&D.

"The Wargamer's Favorite"

This post from Frank Mentzer on his facebook page:
"PLAYERS need rules, sure. At my table, pick from Arnesonian (OD&D thru BECMI) or Gygaxian (1e/2e, the wargamer's fav)... or use method A or G, or fine-tune it further."

This post fucked me up. I asked him what he meant by it, and he said something to the effect of OD&D/'Arnesonian' games being more about imagination and invention and AD&D/'Gygaxian' being about rules dedication and the technical, tactical aspects of the game.

And so I put it to the test - which one did I like? The freewheeling nature of OD&D (a sentiment echoed by other old school members of TSR like Tim Kask) or the more concrete, brass tacks nature of AD&D. In particular, I started using AD&D rules that most people ignore, such as flanking and facing attacks, and the weapon vs armor class charts. And though I didn't like those rules in particular, I much preferred the style of play they encouraged, and it drew me into regular historical wargaming as a result. I think there is a fairness to it that's missing in most "OSR" type games, in which your experience is otherwise at the total mercy of the GM and whether he feels like killing your character or not.

The modern day OSR community believes in running players through puzzle dungeons in which death is a nigh certainty, where combat is a fail state, traps are almost instantly lethal, and the result of a reaction roll or hidden check can seal your fate. I do not like puzzle dungeons, gonzo funhouses, or the mythic underworld and at some level I think I just don't 'grok' them. I do, however, understand castle seiges and fortified defenses. I learned this lesson from B2 - The Keep on the Borderlands and now I run every dungeon, every one, as a series of defensive fortifications built by the inhabitants that the players are now invading. Such defenses can include civilians and noncombatants, such as the civilian orc and goblin families in the Caves of Chaos, so nothing is lost and there is always the potential for social interaction even during a dungeon invasion.

Similarly, I never quite 'grokked' hex crawls. Why hexes in the first place? Instead I find it far more natural to consider overland travel as foot march movement over natural terrain. Its far easier, and more immersive, to simply ask players for an azimuth and distance they wish to travel, and then to convey to them what they see along the way, rather than to count hexes and roll dice to randomly determine what they find. It also explains hunting and foraging in an understandable way - The player characters are geared for a tactical march, not hunting and camping in the woods, so instead of playing a game of tracking herds and waiting in the bushes, they have to find and encounter the beasts they want to hunt as if they were wandering monsters.

One thing that's bothered me about combat was how to meaningfully differentiate it from video game combat. I think the Final Fantasy games were definitely inspired by AD&D and its very obvious that the actions available in combat mimic the combat rules of D&D, and I didn't want to fall into the trap of presenting my players with Final Fantasy-esque combat on the tabletop. The graphics would be worse and the calculations would take too long to process. Theater of the mind combat should encourage players to use their imagination more in combat, but in practice I found they usually just boil it down to "I move" and "I attack". Instead, by using the tactical options presented in AD&D - flanking, rear attacks, the unarmed combat charts including pummeling, grappling and overbearing, cover and concealment bonuses, etc., really opened up players options AND encouraged roleplaying by giving them incentive to think of how to use those techniques to their advantage in combat.

When it comes to gaming I have a bit of a Kobayashi Maru issue in that I don't believe that situations should be unwinnable. The "wargamer's favorite" branches of D&D allow players the options to turn the tides in their favor, while "OSR" style games assume that it is impossible unless you solve the puzzle. I think modern editions of D&D went the wrong way in focusing on player abilities that gave numerical bonuses in combat rather than physical, tactical options. I think O/AD&D are very compatible with wargaming style gameplay, and I actually prefer to play my games through that perspective.

UPDATE: Frank Mentzer on Facebook
“ Greyhawk was a map with booklets of wargame details, leaving all the personalization to the users. The published Greyhawk adventures were mostly excercises in tactics and combat, and roles were incidental, often optional.

That was the way of D&D in the 1970s. By the 1980s the public demanded less Do-It-Yourself, more detail, and far greater emphasis on roles.

Greyhawk is an anachronism, a glimpse of a time long past.”

“ To those who falsely proclaim Gary Gyax as the Inventor of roleplaying...

Do you realize that in module B2 Keep on the Borderlands, the residents don't even have NAMES, let alone personalities or roles?

Gary was a wargamer and publisher. Dave Wesely and Dave Arneson were the inventors, who first codified methods of playing roles as a form of hobby gaming.”

GARY WAS RIGHT

The problem with stat bonuses

The only thing that happens when player characters level up in O/AD&D is that their THAC0 decreases and their Hit Die total increases. That means that their chance of hitting an enemy gets better, and they can survive more hits. Their damage per hit does not increase, and neither does their Armor Class, which is their chance of not getting hit. This means that a level 10 character is as vulnerable to a hit as a level 1 character as long as they wear the same armor.

Strength, Dexterity, and Constitution modifiers all change these probabilities. Strength bonuses decrease THAC0 (thus increasing chance to hit) and increase damage done by a flat amount. This means that fighters with melee weapons are effectively attacking at a higher character level. Constitution bonuses increase hp per level, effectively allowing player characters to take hits as a higher level character. Dexterity bonuses are the only way to lower a PCs AC outside of equipment, so it is a character's only innate defense against getting hit by monsters of higher level.

The end result of all this is that it becomes impossible to balance combat challenge around a player party level. The only possible way would be to add up all Strength and Dexterity missile to-hit bonuses to find out what effective level the party is attacking as, and tally up all Constitution and Dexterity to-hit modifiers to determine what effective level the party is defending as, and then craft a unique monster or set of monsters within that narrow band to provide the players with a challenge.

This is why, I guess, OSR groups look down on 'encounter balance', no one wants to do the math and if they did, all encounters would end up looking the same. Once PCs get their hands on magic items, not only do simple +bonuses to hit and damage change the math but magic items with special abilities change the whole manner in which combat is played. This asymmetric gameplay is what I think attracts people to OSR style combat, but it is too easy to make encounters either too easy, or too difficult for the players.

Best breakdown of traps I've read yet

https://www.runagame.net/2015/10/d-traps.html

The PDF is worth reading