The New Blood of AD&D

[Mythmere]

Can't say I ever started playing a game after it had been discontinued, although I restarted playing 1e in 2005 after a hiatus.

[Ancalagon]

Nope. I started with B/X in 1982 and moved to AD&D later that year. I've been playing AD&D ever since but have also played 2e and tried 3e just long enough to discover what a travesty it was.

I'm still running AD&D. My next campaign session is next Saturday.

[Lord Cias]

I started playing AD&D somethime around 2000 with 2e. I'm one of those people who like to understand the origins of things, where they come from and how they changed over time. The more I looked at older D&D stuff (I had the 1e DMG and MM, and eventually the PHB) the more I realized that 1e had a "flavor" that was absent in 2e. After a couple of years playing 2e I decided that I wanted to play 1e instead and haven't looked back since.

[Algolei]

I started with AD&D in '78/'79, sometime around there, although there were some "Basic" rulebooks thrown in (Christmas gifts). In fact, I remember having to wait for the MM to come out--when was that again?

While I never got to play the older edition, I often thought it looked better than AD&D in many ways. Simplicity has great value. But nobody I played with wanted to go the "simple" route. In fact, when 2E came out, then expanded in so many weird ways, we looked upon it as a chance to pick and choose how to play the game in our own way. (Eventually it got to be too much, and I was the only one of my friends left at the end who still thought more rules to pick from was a good thing. I still think the Player's Options books are great reading...if I'm ever thinking of creating my own game. )

[order99]

I started with the Homes set, the AD&D Player's Handbook(got the others years later) segued into the Moldvay Mentzer sets, bought 2E(didn't like most of the rules changes but I LOVED the boxed sets like Al-Quadim or Planescape-the rules were close enough to chop back to 1E or even Basic). Tried 3E, threw the books away, appreciated D20 stuff for the decent but NON D&D system it was, found this website...usual drill, i'm probably pretty typical for this group.

As far as non-AD&D stuff...95% of everything on my shelves is effin OOP! Who cares...I read often and play when Fate allows.

[Stonegiant]

I started in Xmas of '81 IIRC with the Moldvay set. Played regularly until '82 or '84. Then a book store got more D&D stuff in (AD&D 1st edition actually) and the summer of '82 I worked my ass off to earn enough money to buy the books (about 1 every three weeks). Played it with the same group from '84 all the way to '93. We did switch to 2nd edition when it came out but when our group disbanded I drifted back to 1st edition and Moldvay/Cook B/X. We also played alot of CoC, RQ, Stormbringer, Chill, DC Heroes, RECON, and Twighlight 2000. Also in '82 was when I was introduced to table top minature wargames (primarily what if...WWIII/Modern Micro-Armor).

[geneweigel]

The weird thing about back then was there was always a push for the "update" in regards to everything but in D&D the updates just kept getting incoherent. The farther you were away from the Dungeon Master Guide of 1978 it seemed the "intellgencia" bled away. You could feel it. And once all the post-DMG stuff played out I was force marched right back to it in the 90's. I went Gygax berserk and started trying to reignite that old feel while playing 2e. Even injecting direct 1e rules into play(everyone "skilled out" there characters and were reluctant or reticent to change back.). Didn't happen. It just got harder and harder to play but I didn't realize it was the system. When 3e came around someone clipped out an article from a newspaper all about Gygax's return to D&D. I was elated, then the first few books came out and the absence of Gygax and piss poor culture that surrounded the products had me erupt like a volcano with fury. I was so mad about having spent all this dough and time getting into a "Gygax returns" publicity stunt. I'm still mad. Anyway, no more "updates" for me!

[TRP]

Started with Holmes in '80, and within a few weeks moved to AD&D. I never switched to 2e, because it was about that time that I'd dropped gaming completely. The reasons for dropping had nothing to do with D&D itself, and it wasn't all about gaming itself, but some of it did have to do with gaming. Mostly, everyone was wanting to play MtG and some flavor or another of Warhammer (not the RPG, I have no exposure to that whatsoever), and I had little to no interest in either. That was what, about '95-ish?

I was so far out of gaming, that when I considered returning to D&D in '03, it was only then that I learned not only was there a 3.0, but 3.5. Okay, I bought the books, I mean, this is going to be the new D&D, right? Within a couple of weeks, I was on e-bay restocking my lost 1e books so that I could run my wife-to-be, her daughters and an old friend of mine through a game I could stomach. I remember reading the 3.5 DMG and PH and thinking, "sheesh, there are other skills-based games that do this much better. If I want a skills-based game, then I'll play Runequest." It was just a few months after this small family game was underway that I checked out Meetup.com looking for AD&D players. The rest is, as they say, history. Well, recent history, cause it only goes back 4 years.

[tacojohn4547]

The first few games I played in were probably Basic D&D, in 1979. I don’t think many of the players even had copies of the rules, we just played along. When the AD&D hardcovers came out, I got the core 3 books for my birthday. I played first edition AD&D throughout the 1980’s, in high school and college, and beyond. A lot of the guys stopped playing after high school, but a few of us kept the game alive.

When TSR released second edition, we took a look at it but decided to keep playing first edition for a while. But, the collector mentality kicked in for me and I jumped onto the second edition bandwagon. Not sure why – I guess it seemed like the thing to do at the time. I dropped a lot of money on the second edition material: core rules, rules expansions, complete books, and adventures. Also got sucked into buying the new campaign settings (Planescape, Spelljammer, Forgotten Realms, Mystara for D&D, even Birthright). But I found that I was using very little of it. In fact, I wasn’t even reading much of what I was buying.

My small group of two players and I continued playing first edition through about 1997. We used some published adventures, but mostly relied on home brew stuff. Due to factors both related to gaming and to factors unrelated to gaming, I stopped playing cold turkey around 1997. I didn’t intend for that to happen, but it just sort of happened.

I knew that Wizards had acquired TSR along the way, and when 3.0 came out, I took a look at some of the early material. I was completely unimpressed and resisted the urge to buy into the new rules set. Besides, I wasn’t actively playing and couldn’t justify throwing money at a game I wasn’t going to play, all over again.

I ran across some of the old guys a few years later, in 2004. They were talking about getting a game on, and wondered if I was interested. I reluctantly agreed, because by this time I was married and had two kiddos. Free time was hard to come by. But, we got together and had a great time.

A few game sessions later, they asked me if I’d be interested in DMing again. I said I would, with a few conditions. The main condition was that we had to play using first edition AD&D as that was the game I really knew the best. They were glad that was my preference.

We launched the resurrected campaign in May of 2005, using their old characters from the 1980’s, and ran for about a year. At that point, we kind of put the old campaign on ice for a while, and kicked off a new AD&D campaign last fall. A few players dropped out, and a few new faces joined up. I’m running them through Caverns of Thracia using some newly created characters. We’ve also done a lot of other things since then, of course. We’ve done a lot of one-offs over the last couple of years, and we’ve done several playtests for published material.

Of course, I’ve picked up a lot of 3.x/d20 material in the last couple of years, mostly core rules and really good adventures. But not because I want to play the new D&D. Rather, I’ve taken a liking to many adventures that have been released under the d20 system, so I’ve bought copies of those. I bought the core 3.x rules to help me understand the mechanics of the adventures I bought, and to help me convert them back to AD&D for play with my group. Because in the end, I don’t see our group migrating to any of the later editions of D&D. As a group, we’re really quite happy with the AD&D system, warts and all.

tacojohn4547

[Dwayanu]

As for going "retro," I guess my big deal was snagging a Chaosium RuneQuest rulesbook (in preference to a JG City State) off a used-book dealer's shelf.

Earned +5% to Dodge, Fast Talk and Riposte!

Nostalgia was a big part, but it's been so long since I lost my old RQ stuff that there's an element of seeing again as if for the first time.

On the other hand, I already know I've got to get my hands again on Cults of Prax.