D&D 1E Favorite Obscure Rules from TSR-era D&D

We on these boards have talked about how much of the rules should be available to the players, and opinions are varied.

What I find personally amusing, though, is that back then folks were worried about players reading the DMG when now most of us GMs love it if the players would just read the rules covering their character. Today, you almost have to browbeat the GM into the reading the DMG.

Reynard said:

We on these boards have talked about how much of the rules should be available to the players, and opinions are varied.

What I find personally amusing, though, is that back then folks were worried about players reading the DMG when now most of us GMs love it if the players would just read the rules covering their character. Today, you almost have to browbeat the GM into the reading the DMG.

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Not so many quick-burst dopamine sources so conveniently available back then.

Of course, putting essential character info like the combat and saving throw tables in the DMG and not in the PH also made the DMG more attractive. Back then you needed it to make your character!

Mannahnin said:

No, I don't think so.

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That was a statement made in irony. I don't agree with underhandedly penalizing a player who is even suspected of looking at DM only material behind the DM's back. As I said, there are players who both play and DM, so they're going to have familiarity with the DM-only stuff. Even Gary ran PCs under other DMs. Now players consulting that material during a game is a different matter, and should be penalized, but not through passive aggressive means.

Artifacts were a good way of handling this problem. They didn't have set abilities, and the DM chose them. So artifacts wouldn't have the same effect from game to game, and you couldn't be sure how your DM was using them.

Mannahnin said:

Yes, the 1E DMG is badly edited and a lot of it is written assuming context that later players missed. There are lots of examples. I remember Delta writing about how crappy and awkward the disease rules, the naval rules and the basic overland travel rules in the DMG are, and writing about what a revelation it was when he finally read OD&D. Because the simpler, more playable and gameable original versions of those rules are THERE. And the AD&D versions are much more properly read as EXPANSIONS of and additional detail for those original systems. It was Gary's and TSR's failure to properly organize and write the AD&D 1E books which led to so many lacunae and wonky systems.

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I think part of the problem was that Gary was assuming players were coming up to 1e from 0e, and knew what he was talking about. Though the stream of thought in High Gygaxian really didn't help either. Nor did the conflicts with Dave that led to the split between AD&D and D&D. And there was the early differences between wargamers who were used to tinkering and the SF fans who were new to hobby gaming and made honest mistakes. To be fair, we're critiquing this through the clarity of hindsight though.

And then 2e comes along and assumes new players, especially DMs, are coming up from BECMI, repeating the mistake to some degree.

Reynard said:

We on these boards have talked about how much of the rules should be available to the players, and opinions are varied.

What I find personally amusing, though, is that back then folks were worried about players reading the DMG when now most of us GMs love it if the players would just read the rules covering their character. Today, you almost have to browbeat the GM into the reading the DMG.

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Which is strange to me, because the least essential of the DMGs is 2e's. And again, I think a good part of that is the BECMI assumption I mentioned above.

Orius said:

That was a statement made in irony. I don't agree with underhandedly penalizing a player who is even suspected of looking at DM only material behind the DM's back. As I said, there are players who both play and DM, so they're going to have familiarity with the DM-only stuff. Even Gary ran PCs under other DMs. Now players consulting that material during a game is a different matter, and should be penalized, but not through passive aggressive means.

Artifacts were a good way of handling this problem. They didn't have set abilities, and the DM chose them. So artifacts wouldn't have the same effect from game to game, and you couldn't be sure how your DM was using them.

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Right, I get that you meant it in irony. I was disagreeing with your conclusion that Gary would assume that any Assassin player asking about making poisons was cheating by peeking. The DMG and PH both assume that Assassins will naturally be using poisons whenever the DM gives them the opportunity, and I think Gary assumed that it was natural for the players to be asking about making poisons themselves. That any Skilled Player would think of that and try it.

I read his pronouncements about passive-aggressively punishing players in-game (with invisible mummies, bolts from the blue, or less-than-honorable death by other means) as hyperbolic and tongue in cheek. Though they still set a bad tone and precedent and I think history shows that too many people read that stuff literally.

And yes, his making artifacts variable from campaign to campaign was a much better technique than his silly pronouncements of "Off limits! No peeking OR ELSE!"

Orius said:

I think part of the problem was that Gary was assuming players were coming up to 1e from 0e, and knew what he was talking about. Though the stream of thought in High Gygaxian really didn't help either. Nor did the conflicts with Dave that led to the split between AD&D and D&D. And there was the early differences between wargamers who were used to tinkering and the SF fans who were new to hobby gaming and made honest mistakes. To be fair, we're critiquing this through the clarity of hindsight though.

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100% on all of that.

Orius said:

And then 2e comes along and assumes new players, especially DMs, are coming up from BECMI, repeating the mistake to some degree.

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Yep!

James Gasik said:

Basically, if your DM decides they don't want to deal with it, they can simply not use it, and you'd never know otherwise. What we'd call an "optional rule" now, like how Oathbreaker Paladins were in the 2014 DMG, except with an extra layer of Gygaxian opaqueness so not only would a player not feel entitled to the feature, but they'd never even know to complain about it.

Is it a good way to go about it? Not in my opinion!

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To me it's quite a good way to go about it - make a rule or subsystem optional for the DM and hide it from the players. If the DM decides not to use it the players are none the wiser, meanwhile the game remains just as playable as it was before.

It's the same with magic items - keeping their list and write-ups (and thus, existence) DM-side only means a DM can curate the items that'll appear in the campaign and-or tweak how they work without fear of player pushback.

Lanefan said:

To me it's quite a good way to go about it - make a rule or subsystem optional for the DM and hide it from the players. If the DM decides not to use it the players are none the wiser, meanwhile the game remains just as playable as it was before.

It's the same with magic items - keeping their list and write-ups (and thus, existence) DM-side only means a DM can curate the items that'll appear in the campaign and-or tweak how they work without fear of player pushback.

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In theory it makes some sense. In practice it turned out to be dumb, because it relied on...

A) Un-maintainable secrecy, when the books were freely available and edited such that they'd be desirable for players to obtain.
B) The premise that players would not be DMs, or that such would be exceptional. When in reality basically all the best and most committed players wind up DMing as well.

Reynard said:

We on these boards have talked about how much of the rules should be available to the players, and opinions are varied.

What I find personally amusing, though, is that back then folks were worried about players reading the DMG when now most of us GMs love it if the players would just read the rules covering their character. Today, you almost have to browbeat the GM into the reading the DMG.

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I think Gygax assumed that players would tend to be more hard core rather than casual, likely based on his own experiences, and would always be "looking for an angle". As for DMs, a DM back then who didn't at least try to read the DMG all the way through was truly unworthy.

Also, DMGs over the passing editions have become generally less interesting to read. Say what you like about the actual rules Gygax wrote, but there's no denying he made them an interesting read.

Mannahnin said:

Not so many quick-burst dopamine sources so conveniently available back then.

Of course, putting essential character info like the combat and saving throw tables in the DMG and not in the PH also made the DMG more attractive. Back then you needed it to make your character!

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Essential character info? Players initially weren't supposed to know these mechanical details - that's why they were left DM-side - and that's how I still view it today.

Mannahnin said:

In theory it makes some sense. In practice it turned out to be dumb, because it relied on...

A) Un-maintainable secrecy, when the books were freely available and edited such that they'd be desirable for players to obtain.
B) The premise that players would not be DMs, or that such would be exceptional. When in reality basically all the best and most committed players wind up DMing as well.

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Part of being a "best and most committed" player would, I think, be the ability to compartmentalize DM knowledge from players knowledge, depending on which role you were filling at the moment.

That, and sometimes I suspect that while Gygax himself ran a big sprawling West Marches-style game the editorial assumption in the books was a smaller group with one forever DM running for x-number of forever players.

Lanefan said:

Part of being a "best and most committed" player would, I think, be the ability to compartmentalize DM knowledge from players knowledge, depending on which role you were filling at the moment.

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Of course. But the cat's still out of the bag. And the premise Gary was operating on shown to be false.

Lanefan said:

That, and sometimes I suspect that while Gygax himself ran a big sprawling West Marches-style game the editorial assumption in the books was a smaller group with one forever DM running for x-number of forever players.

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Not really. The 1E DMG talks more about the former than the latter. It's really a grab bag, and a goodly amount of it not really thought through. But the whole thing was new, and Gary's attention was already being divided between playing bigshot executive and territorial feuding with Dave, Origins, other publishers, the Blumes...