When I first decided that I was going to be doing a review on Advanced Dungeons and Dragons (the first edition, not to be confused with the second edition of the game also called AD&D; it's a whole can of worms), it was December. There wasn't even an identifiably Canadian amount of snow on the ground yet, and now here I finally am in April here with no snow on the ground at all. Life and time, you know?
Some of you may have read, and remember, my little article on the various versions (five or six or seven, depending on how you're counting) of this historic and genre-defining first edition of Dungeons and Dragons; behold! You don't need to have read that purely trivia fulfilling article to read this one of course, as this is all about the actual system itself; but, it can give some added context and all that if you're willing to read an anonymous cephalopod ranting about the three different versions of the Basic Set. I don't know you, maybe that's something you're into. You clicked on this article, didn't you?
I think in the future for these TTRPG reviews I'm going to follow that same idea of posting the history article first, then a separate one after for the actual system. This way if someone just wants to read about the overall history of a game without diving into the actual nerd stuff they can just read the history article, and the opposite as well. Ideally, there won't be months in-between a game system’s history and review articles in the future like for this first one, but, you know…
I'm aiming to make these system reviews as easy to parse for someone uninitiated in these silly games as I can, while still keeping all the information in there for people who are in the cult already. I'm going to assume some level of baseline knowledge at least, so I'm not going to bother explaining what ‘2d6’ means every time it comes up; it's easy enough to figure it out in context, and I think TTRPGs have become popular enough in the mainstream that even innocent bystanders know that terminology at least.
System Overview
AD&D is a d20 system, and will still be instantly recognizable by anyone who's played any edition of D&D. You roll your die, sometimes add situational modifiers or bonuses from having very high stats and determine if you succeed if you hit or exceed your target number. The game doesn't use THAC0 (‘to hit armour class 0’) to determine if you hit something in combat, the dreaded destroyer of sanity (that's a 2nd edition thing) but uses a descending matrix table based on what class you are; thieves and clerics share a table, fighters have the best one, so and so forth. Once you understand the table, it's really not that hard to grasp and is honestly simpler than THAC0. It still does have AC (‘armour class’, being how hard an opponent is to hit in combat) being the inverse of modern systems, where lower is better; everyone starts with 10AC unarmored, and it's lowered when you equip armour, meaning someone with 2AC is actually the equivalent of 18AC in a modern system.Any of the ‘thieving’ associated skills, like stealth, pick pocketing, finding and disarming traps, etc. can only be done by thieves by rolling percentile dice.
You have your basic four character classes; fighters, clerics, thieves, and magic users. There are then some ‘subclasses’ from these that change them up a little bit; assassins and monks are subclasses of thieves, paladins and ranger are subclasses of fighters, druids are a subclass of cleric, and illusionists are a subclass of magic users. Most of the subclasses have steep stat limitations, meaning you can only be a paladin if you have a 17 charisma which is pretty hard to roll. There’s also multiclassing, but only in specific combinations of classes as dictated by your race. It greatly slows down your XP progression (essentially doubles the amount of XP you need to level up, as you have to get enough XP to level both classes), and I honestly would not really recommend it often other than for fun.
Races are the usual D&D ones, aka mostly Tolkien races; elves, humans, dwarves, half-elves, half-orcs, gnomes, and halflings. They have some unique bonus to them and the ‘demi-humans’ have stat bonuses and negatives, and each race only has certain classes they can be and has certain limits on what level they can achieve in the classes. Every race can be a thief, but only humans and half-elves can be clerics and an elf can only ever hit 7th level as a fighter.
Not pictured; gnomes. Sorry, very little guys.
The game can be deadly combat wise. Our first party of a human monk, a human fighter and an elven assassin was very martial combat focused and fairly beefy, and we party wiped on six kobolds the first encounter. We did trigger a rockfall trap right beforehand so we were softened up, but at 1st level a single kobold can still stand a decent chance mano a mano with a player character. Our second party went in after, this time being an elven magic user, a half-orc fighter/assassin and a human fighter; they ended up dying to some bug bears and a few kobolds. This can be avoided by smart play, such as bringing flaming oil to use on the kobold groups, so it's not so much a negative as much as a ‘get good’ and a general overview of the low levels being pretty deadly for the uninitiated.
Complexity; Medium
AD&D is a fairly complicated game. There are multiple rules often involved for what could be really simple things, and there's some I'm still not even 100% on us having done them as intended. I think the best example of the complexity factor of AD&D is in something that's a very important part of a fantasy combat system, and is often very simple; initiative. It is not simple in AD&D.
Okay, Gygax, sure; but the initiative system you gave here barely makes sense.
Both sides (the players and the DM controlled monsters/NPCs) roll a d6, winning side goes first; simple. It's everything else that's off the rails. Things called ‘segments’ get involved, which I'm still not entirely sure we had correctly figured out. I think I've figured out that there's 10 segments in an initiative round by process of reverse calculations. They’re also only directly mentioned with spellcasting, with spells saying how many segments they take to cast. I’m still not sure what a turn segment is, for reasons we’ll get into in the next two ‘segments’ of this review.
This isn't factoring in multiple attacks (called routines in this game), which is a whole other thing. Just take a look of this explanation of how attack routines work in relation to initiative;
No, it can't be that you just make two attacks. Don't be silly; it needs to be pointlessly complicated, involving splitting attacks up across the round. You’re rolling within the initiative you already rolled for to determine when characters act if they have attack routines sometimes. What the **** is this.
There's also a lot of crunchy bits in the combat system itself. There's weapon speed to factor in when engaging in melee against things, figuring out how many people are hit when firing bows/crossbows into a melee, adjusting enemy AC’s by what weapon you're using (that's a weird one); it's a lot of stuff to be putting together and trying to remember.
Overall, I feel it deserves a ‘Medium’ rating. There's more complicated systems out there for sure, but there's also simpler ones as well.
Rules Clarity; 5/10
AD&D is a mess. It is filled with vagaries and half explained rules. This book is often maddening. It makes what is only a medium complexity feel like an indescribable other language sometimes.We’ve already talked about the whole combat initiative ‘segments’ thing. There is no section that describes what these are, how long they are, etc and you need to read multiple areas of the book to get some context information. It’s mentioned in the ‘surprise’ rules that if one side of combat is surprised, then they get one segment of a turn without needing to roll initiative; it’s mentioned here that this is 6 seconds, so I suppose that applies to all segments. A turn is 6 seconds, and a round is one minute; therefore, there’s 10 segments in a turn. Why isn’t there just a section clearly stating this? It’s infuriating, honestly.
There's sometimes contradictory information; there’s two different rules presented for how magic users learn spells with one in the Players Handbook (PHB from now on) and another in the Dungeon Masters Guide (DMG), and how much they start with. It's unclear what weapons require two hands, other than the obvious ones like the named two-handed sword or the various polearms, but what about a spear? Traditionally they can be held either way but there's nothing presented here.
Another good example I can think of is how some weapons adjust the AC of opponents when you attempt to hit them, as presented here on the weapons table; note that it’s just called ‘Armour Class Adjustment’ here;
There’s no rules given here in the PHB, so you assume this adjusts the opponents AC. It’s a little silly of a system, honestly, as it’s a nightmare to keep track of. Here’s the real nonsense though; that’s not what the system does. As explained in the DMG, it’s actually only applied “versus specific types of armour”.
What?
So, this just makes it more vague. It’s applied only to ‘specific types of armour’ but not ‘actual armour class.’ But armour is what gives you a specific armour class? What?
Rules that don't need to really be explained much are given overly detailed entries, while the ones that do need to be explained are written with a few sentences. The optional rule on how to hit someone in the head is given more clear rules than the entire initiative system which to me is almost inexcusable.
You hit them in the head, why does it matter? Nothing changes if you hit them in the head. Why’s it based on if the enemy is intelligent? Why does this imply that you’re supposed to be rolling a d6 every attack to see if you’re aiming at their head? What's a combat turn segment, Gary Gygax? Why isn't there a section on segments?
Another particularly glaring omission is in the rules for traps that you'd encounter in dungeons, mainly being that there aren't any rules for traps you'd encounter in dungeons. Keeping in mind that the game is very much made to be a dungeon crawler generally, and this is a strange one. Traps are referenced a few times, but no definitive ‘pitfall traps are triggered by x, they do y damage and are resisted with z’ section can be found.
There is an appendix of them, presumably for rolling a random one for a dungeon, but I was unable to find concrete rules of ‘spear trap does blank damage, resist with save against petrification’.
Some of these issues are more or less fixed if you have the DMG, which is when some of the classic TSR ‘buy more books, please’ became apparent. In the PHB, any talk of initiative and how combat works is purely described and not actually given rules; that’s the DM’s responsibility, after all. This creates plenty of scenarios where you just will not have rules for key things if you don’t have the DMG, which ****ing sucks.
Book Organization; 6.5/10
This is an incredibly important category to review a game system on in my opinion, and easily one of my biggest pet peeves when reading game books due to my idiosyncrasies. I have written entire systems off for bad book organization. When you’re playing a game, you want to be able to look up rules as quickly and effortlessly as possible, and there’s nothing that irritates me more than when said rules are not in a sensible section of the book. Combat rules go in the combat section, equipment rules go in the equipment section; so why are one of the rules for magic users starting spells in the stat section at the start of the book? Put that **** in the magic user class description, or the magic section, or ideally both.AD&D isn’t egregiously bad in this aspect, but it definitely has some offenses. It’s very much a book designed to be read front to back, rather than being able to jump around from section to section when you need to. I personally do not like this, if you can’t tell. The complete rules for encumbrance are described in three separate places; in the beginning under the strength stat description, some of it is in the equipment description, then the last third of it is in the adventuring section near the end. Nowhere in the PHB is just how much armour weighs encumbrance wise listed, as it’s said to be the weight of the item in gold coins but then the stats presented for armour in the equipment section doesn’t mesh with that. The actual rules for that are in the DMG, silly. Why? Why’s it not just in one section in the PHB?
Why, Gary Gygax? Why wasn’t this just in the PHB, and in one section? Also, I have no idea what ‘Bulk’ does mechanically, and the mechanical description of something as ‘fairly bulky’ is comical to me.
The core rules are thankfully included in sensical locations, if not oddly written out as we discussed in the last section, so it’s not getting a truly terrible score in this category.
Ease of Running; 7.5/10
AD&D is a good example of a game that can mostly be run just off of tables and generated dungeons, and I think is one of the greatest strengths of the game. There's luckily concrete and clear rules for when you roll wandering monster encounters in dungeons, when to roll monster encounters when the party is travelling across wilderness, and even different prebuilt random monster tables to roll on depending on the terrain involved. You can easily make a session or even a campaign by giving players some basic directions then setting them loose and letting these random generation tables do their magic.
I’ve slowly discovered that the rules of AD&D are much more focused towards being clear for DMs. Sorry, players; you have to suffer not knowing how encumbrance works.
There are some guidelines for generating dungeons, and some once again thankfully clear rules on how to stock them with treasure, random treasure tables to roll on to generate loot, and when dungeons will refill with monsters after being cleared. Dungeons still take some time to make, and this is really the only thing out of the book the DM has to worry about prep wise which isn't unreasonable. There is a table to randomly roll to generate a dungeon, but in my experience I think it’s best to actually plan it out even if it’s just something simple. My recommendation; generate your complete overworld before you start playing, along with maybe four or five dungeons of varying levels within the general starting area of the players on your map. This should be able to keep you going for a good amount of time, as it can easily take starting level players two, maybe even three sessions to clear a dungeon if at all.
Gary Gygax; “too complicated of an initiative system is a detriment to the gameplay experience.” Also Gary Gygax; “here’s intricate musings about trickle down magic item economics.”
I feel the general unwieldiness of the rules can still affect running the game. You will have to wrestle with some rule descriptions still for many of the non-DM only areas, assuming it's your first time tussling with AD&D, and overall deal with some jank. The DM aspects are thankfully written out well as it would be a nightmare if they weren't, so that softens the blow a bit for the DM and gives a think a fair and good score of 7.5/10 in this category.
Fun Factor; 7/10
This is a largely subjective category, but one I think is important when reviewing a game system. I'm of course going to try and make it as objective a score as possible, so bear with me people who scoffed at it only getting a 7/10.How fun a game system is comes from a bunch of different factors, being the sum of all the moving parts. With AD&D, there’s a lot of parts and a lot of them are not the most functional as we’ve discussed. When we figured (we think) how initiative works after about an hour of mulling it over and making notes and started getting into the combat, some fun was had. But then weapon speed came up we had to start crunching numbers for, then we remembered that AC is adjusted by what weapon you're using sometimes which is a nightmare of remembering way too many numbers, then we remembered the vague rules on spellcasting in the initiative order, then our magic user in that second party cast his one spell of the day which ended up doing nothing so he was relegated to just limply throwing darts around, and so on and so forth. Some of these points are just a ‘get good, that's the system’ which is completely fair (sorry, magic users; you have to be balanced somehow), but it still speaks a bit to how often the rules were getting in the way, so to speak.
There’s a difference between a well designed complicated system and a badly designed complicated system, and I think AD&D is somewhere in the middle there. In this sense, I would say that the rules often got in the way of the fun, rather than contributing to or helping the fun.
A caveat to say here is that we only played level one games in our review testing here; unfortunately, I can’t really spend 4 or 5 months playing once a week to naturally climb to higher levels where the game could change, and I wouldn’t want to just arbitrary make a new party of 5th level characters without actually having gotten them there through gameplay. It loses the point of the game that way, you know? The game likely does change once you start getting some levels, and perhaps the fun factor could increase then; the rules would of course be the same, but once you get some wild magic items or class abilities and spells, maybe more fun could be squeezed out from the vice grip of the jank.
All that being said, I am giving AD&D a 7/10 on ‘Fun Factor’. It’s still a good score, never underestimate the janky but charming 7/10 experience. Most of the enjoyment we had came from the basic aspects of any TTRPG game of wandering around and goofing off in gambling dens (there’s clear rules for how to play literal gambling games with your dice, yet the initiative system does not have clear rules) and fighting some monsters, but we could have that in any other fantasy game. I didn’t not like my time playing AD&D, but I also was keenly aware of how much more fun I had with other systems.
The Final Score; 6.5/10
Revoke my TTRPG player license, I know. Averaging out the scores given leaves us with 6.5/10 for AD&D, a historic edition of a historic game. I wanted to enjoy the game more, I really did. I wouldn't say I didn’t enjoy my time playing it, but it was always at odds with something in the book and it’s obvious from playing this that there’s a reason many elements of TTRPGs present in AD&D have changed in the years since this game came out. What is an initiative segment, Gary Gygax? What arcane and esoteric rules did you conjure forth from your chaotic mind?That being said, this 6.5/10 is an objective score from a critical perspective; on a subjective level, I had a lot of fun going into this primordial of a game system. It was fascinating from a historical interest as a lifelong fan of these kinds of things, to see many identifiable elements having first started in it. This is the first game to have variable weapon damage as standard book rules instead of an optional one like in the versions of Basic, and many of the now classic spells were first introduced in this edition. Oh, and the art; it’s fantastic and grossly entertaining, if you haven’t noticed from the pieces I’ve dropped into this article. TSR at this point had a decent amount more money this time around than for OD&D, but they weren’t rolling in the cash like they would be relatively soon yet. This has created the perfect mix of art, both charming doodles done by Dave Arneson and some local artists for like $20 while also having a few really great professional artist pieces that they were able to splurge on. Iconic, dude.
All this being said, if I were to play a version of D&D from this era again, I’d likely play Moldvay Basic. Moldvay Basic is better written, easier to understand, and much more flowing than AD&D.
Bonus Round of Random Nonsense Musings
- This game continues the OD&D trend of thieves being kinda bad at what they do, objectively. Looking at the thief skills, you have your usual stuff like ‘Pick Locks’ and ‘Hide in Shadows’ and ‘Find/Remove Traps’ which are all good and dandy, but then let’s look at their chance of success at this. At 1st level, a human thief has a base chance to succeed on a ‘Find/Remove Trap’ roll of 20%, meaning there is a 1 in 5 chance of you succeeding mathematically at it. Keeping in mind that you need to first spot the trap, requiring one roll (and a lot of in-game time), then you need to make another roll to disarm it. So, 1 in 5 chance of even spotting it, then another 1 in 5 chance of actually disarming it; and by the book, you get one chance at either. Brutal, honestly, and needlessly punishing for something that's the whole point of the class. Your percentage of success does increase fairly quickly with levels, but those first few are going to be harrowing every time you try to disarm a trap. If that 1st level thief finds a wall though? 85% chance to climb that wall. No wall can stop a 1st level thief, 85% of the time.
- The DMG is actually a very good resource. One because it actually fixes a third of the rules of the game (still no real rules on traps though, for some reason) but even just as a tool for DMs I’d recommend it. It’s 90% just Gary Gygax in his own words musing about the abstract concepts involved in running a game, and he lays down some good advice and points that can be used for any system in general.
- There’s a whole optional system on ‘psionics’, with player characters having a very low chance to have mind powers. I never mentioned it once in the review as it’s ****ing insane, and would require pages to even describe and approach. Ever wanted to roll a whole bunch of percentile dice to determine if your character is capable of using Molecular Rearrangement to convert metals from one to another? Then AD&D’s psionics have you covered.
- Stat bonuses in AD&D are rather weird compared to Basic. In Basic, they behave like they do in modern editions, starting with a +1 at 13 in that stat to whatever is associated with it, then going up by +1 every other stat point afterwards; so a total maximum of +3. In AD&D, you often don’t get any bonuses from stats until you have a 17 in it, which is a little insane compared to conventions now. You don’t get a +1 to hit in melee until a 17 strength, for example. It’s kinda weird, as it means there’s very little actual combat impact from having a high strength.
- There’s also the first appearance of both a ‘prestige class’ (you need levels in specific core classes to be one, along with other prerequisites) in this, as well as the first core rulebook appearance of the bard as said prestige class. It’s entirely optional for DM to include them in the first place as it’s an insanely broken class, and even the requirements to be one are insane; you need at least a 15 in strength, dexterity, wisdom and charisma and a 12 in intelligence and a 10 in constitution, and you also need to have 5 levels of fighter, then between 1-4 levels combined of a thief and druid, then at 9th level you can take bard levels and they can only be human or half-elf. They are themed more like ‘skalds’ here, being fighting men with a bunch of random nonsense than the more rogue-ish way the class is usually presented as nowadays. Side note; I absolutely hate the concept of bards. Just make either a wizard, or a rogue, you know? Why does singing make people stronger? Just my own personal neurosis, don’t worry about it.
- XP also follows the way of OD&D with treasure you get from successful looting and dungeoneering counting as XP along with slain monsters. It’s a 1:1 conversion from gold pieces to XP, meaning you level up much faster by looting than generally killing monsters. You find a sack of 1000 gold, that’s 1000 XP (split between the party, of course).
Well, I’ll say this; it’s one I’ve only recently played but greatly enjoyed, and an absolute classic of its little subgenre. It’s definitely a marvel-ous retro game system…
Until next time.
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