You're at your LGS playing 5E when the oldest grognard you've ever seen slaps your rulebook. What do you do...

A brother from another mother. Unofficially adopted family. stuff like that.

That's easy, in both OD&D and AD&D, it's 1 minute a round, ten minutes to a turn. Basic D&D is the odd one out, with 10 second rounds, making 60 rounds in a turn.
Try harder, chump.

Look him in the eye and say, "Gygax lost the right to have an opinion about D&D that I should care about when he lost the rights to D&D."

Observe what happens.

gygax is dead bro

Yeah, but my point is I don't care what Gygax thought Lawful Good or whatever really meant, or how he "intended" the game to be played. I have no respect for Gygax.

I don't intentionally disrespect him, either. Rather, I just view him as one more DM, with his own personal style that his players presumably enjoyed. But I feel no obligation to have my DMing style be informed by his.

None of that is supported by the text of the rules

thealexandrian.net/wordpress/7849/roleplaying-games/reactions-to-odd-turns-rounds-and-segments-oh-my

>slaps your rulebook

Like slaps his hand down on it? SLaps it out of my hand? just walks by and lays a slap on the book im holding?

Either way id clearly tell him to keep his hands to himself.

That's just a case of confusing writing, and folks who played with Gygax and Arneson can tell you that his confused reading is off-base.

>it takes ten minutes to move about two moves
>Two moves constitute a turn
>There are ten rounds of combat per turn.

All clear.

The confusing part is:
>Movement (distances given in Vol. 1) is in segments of approximately ten minutes.

Which just means that movement occurs during ten-minute segments, or turns, in which you get to move twice before it's over. A segment is 10 minutes, and a turn is also 10 minutes, because they're the same damn thing.

What's more, regardless of how you read all that shit, it's still 10 1-minute rounds per 10-minute turn. None of that confusion concerns the duration of a combat round, which is still 10 per 10-minute turn, IE 1 minute, no matter how you decide to read "movement distance is in segments of 10 minutes."
Which is why I said it was easy -- the movement rate is where the confusing phrase is, not the combat round duration. There's plenty of sloppy editing in OD&D, but that wasn't part of it.

do the same thing I did the last time he did that and tell him he is being disrupting to the game, and remind him that this is why no one wants to join his games anymore.

Then I remind him that sure he may have sat at Gygax's table, but M.A.R. Barker told him he was an idiot and to get out.

List out all of the reasons why 1E is a shitty system in the hopes he will have a stroke.

>What's up with the book groping?
>Why should I care if you have memorized any game, let alone a different one than we are playing?
>That's a neat anecdote about Gygax, but entirely irrelevant to the game we're playing.
>Why am I playing an RPG in an LGS?

That's nice.

I take a shit on his character sheets.

kek

How can you not respect the man that created your hobby ?

Wouldn't OD&D be Basic 1st Edition?

Heart brother? What the fuck?

Nah, although the first edition of Basic, Holmes Basic, is essentially an intro to OD&D more than a standalone game in its own right.
OD&D spawned two seperate branches -- AD&D is like OD&D with all its supplements, while Basic is like OD&D with only minimal stuff from the supplements. (Also Basic made some improvements, and cleaned things up and added clarity, while AD&D layered on the High Gygaxian prose and a bunch of new stuff)

Steve Perrin and Greg Stafford?

Actually, Runequest started as a "what if we stripped out all the stupid stuff from D&D, like classes, and levels, and scaling HP" and Greg Stafford was looking for a new game for glorantha, because he wasn't happy with the first attempt.

It was also the ur-text of the 80s/90s fantasy heartbreaker, with all the stuff you'd expect of a shitty attempt to "fix D&D", like "more gritty, realistic combat" (IE fiddly and annoying and likely to cripple you) and a ridiculous degree of caster supremacy. Like in 1e Runequest if you deliberately chose not to become a Runelord the minute you got the chance, you were clearly doing it wrong.
Love the setting, never cared for the rules.

Because he may have made the best parts of my hobby, but he also made the worst parts.

Hey, he had nothing to do with 3e and Pathfinder!

Eh, fair enough.

I haven't played rq1e.

Rq4/5/6 are all excellent, but they're all post-chaosium.

He sounds awesome. Play with him immediately.

49 year old former AD&D 1st Ed. here and was wondering what is the state of Dungeons & Dragons nowadays?

First played in jr.high back in 1980-83 but stopped during high school and then played every week for several years during my early 20s but I haven’t played D&D since then.

I gave all my books, dungeons, lead figures, etc. to my nephew a couple of years back when he was in jr.high and now he’s in high school (9th grade) and was going play his first dungeon (as DM) with a couple of buddies he talked into playing last weekend (they apparently never heard of D&D) but it was a bust for some reason or another and they’ll have to reschedule.

...

> what is the state of Dungeons & Dragons nowadays?
The game is on its fifth edition now, lots of people play it online or for shows.

It became garbage for shit eaters coasting only on its famous name

The game has gone through a ton of editions, all of which have become reviled and nostalgic in turn, and cause controversy on Veeky Forums no matter what. There are also spinoffs and remakes and all of that.

The game became less about "tomb robbing and dying in a pit from rat bites" and more about "fellowship of the ring meets the Justice League" heroics at some point.

There's an Old School Revival movement that has done some really fantastic work. You might find things worth reading over here.

What ever happened to the hexcrawl? Why did it die out?

They're still around, but you really only see them among OSR folks. They have a big up-front cost in prep versus a linear story-based adventure. You have to set up a LOT before the first session, but once you've done the base work, it's pretty easy to run. Still, that initial hurdle is enough to put a lot of people off, and the general trend towards "playing a story" (handy for selling modules) in the industry has made the hexcrawl largely a thing of the past.

> > what is the state of Dungeons & Dragons nowadays?
> The game is on its fifth edition now, lots of people play it online or for shows.

How does the on-line version of D&D work?

Could I get into it, not having played since the late 80s?

Does it cost money or can one play for free?

> The game became less about "tomb robbing and dying in a pit from rat bites" and more about "fellowship of the ring meets the Justice League" heroics at some point.

Not sure what that means?

Back in the day, my friends and I played pretty conventionally with nobody playing “in character”.

Is D&D now all about hammy acting and such, or is it still about rolling dice to kill monsters and get treasure?

> What ever happened to the hexcrawl?

What’s a “hexcrawl”?

I’m assuming is uses hexagonal graph paper (I probably still have some around) for playing outdoors adventures?

Community has degenerated into.Mind's Eye Theatre shitters, more interested in discussing politics and social justice at the table than actually playing.

Yeah, we never did any kinda LARP stuff like that but we were pretty casual about playing and would side-track into discussions / arguments about whatever, which usually resulted in me deploying the “Sword of Silence” (a wooden Renaissance Faire sword with a cardboard sign taped to it saying “SHUT UP!”)

>How does the on-line version of D&D work?

Hit up Roll20, find a group there or on the gamefinder thread here, you'll probably want a headset mic and a Discord account since the roll20 voice chat kinda sucks. All free as in beer, though.

>Is D&D now all about hammy acting and such, or is it still about rolling dice to kill monsters and get treasure?

D&D is much more high power, and XP is handed out for acheiving story goals more than grabbing piles of treasure. TPKs are pretty much a thing of the past, in 5e a "deadly" encounter is one that has a chance of killing one PC. It's cool if you like that sort of thing, but may be different from what you're used to.

>What’s a “hexcrawl”?

Your guess is pretty much correct, they were big in the 70s, and have seen a revival in the OSR scene.

This guy is memeing, though. Either that or he's just King Neckbeard.

That sexy-ass map though, who said this was a blue board?

>Is D&D now all about hammy acting and such, or is it still about rolling dice to kill monsters and get treasure?

Not in my experience, but the game has kind of changed focus from raiding dungeons for treasure to trying to stop great evils or some kind of more plot based thing. It's generally still pretty laid back as far as RP stuff goes I think.

There's still plenty of monster killing and treasure taking, but with more of a stop Sauron kind of a thing, and less of a Loot Smaug's huge horde kind of a thing.

>Is D&D now all about hammy acting and such
People will try to convince you it isn't while at the same time referencing critical roll, who play so loose with the rules they could be playing any edition of D&D.

>Not sure what that means?
See:
It's not all about the hammy acting, and the killing monsters part is probably even more important, but the treasure - as a goal - is less important.

If you're in a dungeon, chances are good that you've got a reason other than "get rich or die trying". You're there to stop the Evil Cultists who are going to summon the Big Bad Thing to make Everything Awful.

Characters also hit properly superheroic levels of competence relatively quickly. Character death is rare, and there are tons of ways around it. People have much more invested in their D&D characters.

These things aren't nessesarily negative, but they are true.

> > How does the on-line version of D&D work?
> Hit up Roll20

That’s pretty neat;

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roll20

Though I’m too far out of the loop to get into that myself, my nephew would probably did that.

> the game has kind of changed focus from raiding dungeons for treasure to trying to stop great evils or some kind of more plot based thing.

We had a overarching theme of a “Quest for the Amulets” with hints and connected magic items but D&D for us was about hanging out together and rolling dice, painting lead figures, etc.

> who play so loose with the rules they could be playing any edition of D&D.

I told my nephew not to get too hung up on the rules, that D&D is about fundamentally having fun with friends and not about playing “against” the DM / players.

> People have much more invested in their D&D characters.

It was the same in the 1980s.

Got into an argument with a buddy once who was playing as a monk and insisted on attacking a Red Dragon with open-hand attacks and of course, he got eaten and then got mad about it.

Harn is amazing.

>insisted on attacking a Red Dragon with open-hand attacks and of course, he got eaten and then got mad about it.

Heh. Good times.

"Oh hey, look, a delicious snack! This one doesn't have a crust."

>Harn is amazing.

Indeed, beautifully done and tons of cool detail.

I've still got the thick three-ring binder with various kingdom modules from Harn on my bookshelf, it's the only D&D item the nephew didn't get.

> Heh. Good times.

It was even more fun (usually) once got older and started drinking but I ended up just bringing him back to life, as nobody want to listen to him bitch about it anymore...

...

Ugh, people over the age of 19 should NOT post here. Your age alone is a microagression and is triggering me by reminding me of my mortality, shitlord.

OD&D isn't even basic.
Here's a rundown on the editions:

>not to get too hung up on the rules,
>and not about playing “against” the DM / players.
Very out of alignment with the new-school line of thought (3.5, PF, 5e, etc.),
which holds that "rules exist for the player's sake, the keep the DM in check."

I imagined him sliding his hand across it the skee hockey it around a foot down the table.

>SLaps it out of my hand?
Why the hell would your rulebook be in your hand at the gamestore?
If you're there to play you shouldn't be checking the books (bogs down play).
If you're there to window shop it's not *your* book (yet).

All those games have a Rule that overrules all other rules, where the GM can change any rule they want.

>"rules exist for the player's sake, the keep the DM in check."

Yeah, we didn't give a shit about that back in the day, the rules were there so everyone was on the same page but those rules that didn't work for us (alignment, movement rates, etc) we ignored as needed.

If a player said something like; "I run up the stairs and open the door and punch the orc in the face", the DM would allow it or not depending on the situation and how the game was going.

I don't want my nephew getting into arguments about minutia, as that quickly kills the game (and the fun).

>This post
Newfie as fuck.

Gygax himself called players who wing it retards and said people should stick to the rules, he fucking hated people removing the wargame aspect of RPG's.

Doesn't go over too well with most of their playerbases.

Gygax himself made spot rulings all the time. That's where most of his *rules* got created, actually.

Newfies?

Correction: Gygax as the corporate spokesman of TSR during their big "tournament play" period told people to use the official rules. Gygax the man said the rules were just a means to an end.

(That said, B/X or OD&D by the book is pretty tight. Those "silly" movement rules introduce a lot of tension that's lost if you wing it)

I ask him to try and emulate my campaign using his rulebook.

Exactly. He also wrote a open letter in Dragon complaining how so many open groups were running that many needless in-house rules players couldn't transfer their characters from group to group.

That's more of a player-by-player thing than an edition change.

Actually he insisted on codifying and consistent rules before TSR was even a thing, hence why he added Psionics despite hating them with a passion.

Gygax thought psionics were the shit,
>why he added Psionics despite hating them with a passion.
that was him saving face for the psionic rules being so shit.

>That's where most of his *rules* got created, actually.

Correction: The official rules were based of Gygax's own rules, but they aren't 1:1.

Ask him to run a game of OD&D for my group. Give him the chance to put his money where his mouth is, and we get to try out where it all started.

There are 5e hexcrawls, I'm running one right now.They're just less featured on the internet because they tend not to have the big "epic moment" payoff stories that more narrative-based games tend towards.

I was always a fan of the rules, but not the setting. I used a tweaked version for running sword & sorcery game.

video games.

That doesn't make a lick of sense, user.

> in 5e a "deadly" encounter is one that has a chance of killing one PC

I would say that. In 4e, absolutely, but they gave some monsters back their instant death powers back in 5e. I'm hoping that 5e Tomb of Horrors won't disappoint and will be all about pushing PCs through meat grinders.