The thing about character generation with AD&D First Edition is that you rolled those dice and you were stuck with your roll. And that randomness of generation in First Edition — not what the player wanted, but what the dice wanted — meant you could potentially have a really shitty character. In First Edition you had to just live with it. Good, bad or ugly, your attributes were what you were stuck with, and they had a disproportionate impact on how effective your character would be in the game. Now to be fair, you could argue it’s up to the DM to decide how strict to be, which is true, but this is where I remember it being explicit in the rules and examples of the rulebooks. When Winters said you get one roll, because that’s how Gygax would do it, we all blanched and gritted our teeth because players always want what’s best for players and in this case it was high rolls, man! Everyone wants a good character. One roll. If you don’t qualify for the class? You don’t play it. That’s what I remember, anyway. Built into the system was this ethos we recognize from modern roguelikes. Not everyone played this way, in fact most people didn’t, in the same way that most people never played for ante in Magic: the Gathering. But if you did, it changed everything about your experience, because suddenly, things were at stake. It was a lesson — is a lesson — that stuck with me. It’s not a lesson you always want to employ, either — there’s no quicker way to kill player enthusiasm than to wipe them out. But back then, the finality of it all seemed dramatic, and with someone who was willing to not just end the game there but play out the result of a death or failure in the continuing context of an adventure? It was exciting and new.
Posted on: Tue, 06 Jan 2015 22:55:27 +0000
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