The Mystery Of A Classic

garygygax_2

1st edition AD&D, love it or hate it, is the definitive root from which the entire D&D franchise and quite possibly role-playing itself has sprouted. It sits on a pedestal of nostalgia, immortalized for all time more often by those who have barely played it or opened the dusty tome of secrets that is the core system than those that actually did.

Today we are going to explore the myth that is AD&D, in particular where this myth comes from and how it has affected our nostalgic sense of Gygax’s original work.

Before we get started however let’s speak frankly for a second first. For all its nostalgic qualities and happy memories it has provided over the years, when you actually read the rules of the game and hold them up against the 40 years of design experience AD&D is a really shitty game. Release AD&D today under a different name and it would be unlikely that anyone would ever publish it, let alone buy it or play it. Even for a nostalgic throwback game, there are better options available today. Even Gygax himself played Castles and Crusades over his own invention. AD&D’s claim to fame is based more on the timing of its release rather than the quality of its design. Gygax was a genius, but it wasn’t because he was a great designer or even a particularly good writer, he is a genius because he had a brilliant, original idea and the understanding that D&D’s appeal is its mystery, the great vale of fantasy. In another words he was a visionary and like all visionaries, it wasn’t that they were experts in their particular field but they created or discovered something original.

For years designers have been working on a way to live up to the nostalgic sense that AD&D induces in people but have been met with picket signs at every step by holistic purists who hold their 1st edition AD&D DMG up like the word of god. An odd sentiment given that from a design perspective the game is inferior to modern versions of the game. It’s been a difficult journey and it’s doubtful there is any circle among the D&D hobby where purists aren’t constantly holding back the franchises efforts for modern design, hell I count myself among them. Even in my previous article I set the standard of what to me qualifies as a great version of D&D and holding up tradition was among the short list of requirements. Every edition and sub edition over the years has tried to rise out of AD&D’s shadow in some way, but the truth is that we have made the shadow so big that the franchise is doomed to spend eternity in a time loop. No greater evidence can be presented than the rejection of 4th edition, a modern design and the creation of 5th edition, the latest edition, a clear throwback to old school thinking.

4th edition represents in every way that matters a rebellion against Gygaxian philosophy and design, a look into what the future of D&D could have been while 5th edition represents the apology and admission of a humble defeat postmortem, forever bowing to its master. In the end the purists won, 5th edition is nothing short of a throwback, an attempt to appease its fan base and bring the game back to familiar traditions. It’s an apology for 4th edition and in many ways an apology for not listening to its disgruntled fan base. The question is why? What is this holy fanaticism that is permanently etched into D&D player’s minds that has us constantly looking back? Is it really the design? Am I wrong here, was 1st edition AD&D really an ingenious game not just because it was an original but because THAC0 was in fact a better design?

Understanding why is the key to understanding both the present and the future of D&D and naturally, since it’s my blog, I have a theory.

I believe the secret sauce is that AD&D always has and continues to have a lot of mystery surrounding it. A sort of shadow that looms over the books, the rules themselves and the themes it presents and how it presents them. There is an intangible quality to its imperfections and indeed it’s the imperfections, the messiness of it that make it work. There is a sort of naïveté to the writing and to the design and a handing of the torch of creativity to the DM by an inexperienced creator and predecessor. It’s a game that’s up for interpretation, but that interpretation is assumed to be in the hands of the games Dungeon Master, god for all intense and purposes, which in turn creates mystery for both the narrative of the game, as well as what the rules of the game really are for the players. From a player’s perspective, role-playing under 1st edition AD&D was not just a discovery of the game world and the DM’s imaginative creations, but of the very boundaries and physical nature of how the game works. There is a built in social order to the work too, its presumptuous in its tone, written less as an instruction manual on how the mechanics of the game work and more a philosophy, a bible if you will, about how the mysterious art of role-playing works, which itself is filled with grey areas and omissions to be filled in by its god. Only the most basic outline of the game is provided to the players in the Players Handbook, the Dungeon Master Guide however is where the heart of the system exists, the bible of the game and one intended for DM eyes only.

This looming mystery creates mental pictures for the participants because there is little physical material to look at or hang your hat on. There are grey areas everywhere and without clarity we evolved a sense of imagination, the driving force of mystery and fantasy.

Perhaps I’m wrong, but for me, in a nutshell, 1st edition AD&D’s greatest asset as a game is that the rules of the game were largely unknown to the players. There is flexibility in this approach, in that, as players you aren’t expected to know how things work but rather expected to try things to see how they work. A process of discovery to which there was no conclusion thanks to the nearly infinite possibilities of a fantastically magical setting and the fact that the DMG was frankly very unclear about what the rules actually are.

Mysteries however are only mysteries until they are unveiled and in that is the hidden differentiation between 1st edition AD&D and everything that came afterwards. 1st edition AD&D was empowering because it did not define the rules clearly, it presumed the dungeon master would invent a great deal of it himself, forcing players to discover what those rules are during play. That’s the secret sauce of the mystery.

Once the mystery of D&D was solved, once the rules are known, made clear and once we understand what the rules are, the game is unmasked, its weaknesses exposed. This is the case in modern versions of the game where there are no mysteries to begin with, the rules are hard coded there is nothing left for interpretation, they are very clear. This is what modernization has done to D&D. It has unmasked the game, exposed it to scrutiny, we have handed over the DMG, the bible of the god who runs the game and asked for the player participant’s opinion, than outlined the process in a step by step instructional manual. It’s akin to revealing the odds of a slot machine, you might be better informed by knowing them, but the wonder of pulling the lever and hoping to win millions is broken by the reality of knowing you stand virtually no chance to do so.

You might argue (and you would be right) that AD&D’s mask was a thin veil at best to begin with. Clearly plenty of people read the DMG cover to cover even back then, but the reality was that the book was about empowerment of the DM because it understood that the DM is the storyteller, it understood that D&D wasn’t a game, but an experience. It understood that the game wasn’t about rules.

It must have been a disappointing experience to read the 1st edition AD&D DMG for players only to find out that the book really was nothing more than vague suggestions for the DM on how to run his games. What was really revealed is the fact that the Dungeon Master himself is the Wizard of Oz and his only power was the very thin veil he kept over your eyes, the one you just tore off by reading the book. There really where no secret rules, or unsolved mysteries revealed. The exploration of the rules through play was a fictitious game made up just like the story’s of the alter ego’s the players would go on in the game. The revelation was meaningless except for one thing, there was nothing left to reveal to you about the game afterwards. Simply reading and understanding how the magic trick was done, broke the spell.

Gygax persuaded players to avoid revealing the secrets of the DMG to themselves and those that adhered where treated to the wonders of it. Reading the DMG back than was the equivalent of reading the adventure before you joined it as a player.

This is at the heart of the problem of trying to re-invent the nostalgia of AD&D in modern versions of D&D and why the nostalgia exists in the first place. As a player who experienced that mystery and then became a god and watched others experience it, I know the desire of wishing there was a way to go back. There simply isn’t. For one modern gamers expect the rules to be clear, the game has evolved and a lack of clarity is seen as an obstacle rather than a mystery to be unveiled during play by the DM. Secondly, modern DMG’s have important rules that are clearly for the players, for example in 3rd edition you had prestige classes which clearly are player material infused into the DMG. In a sense, players had to read them.

I believe that modern role-playing hobbyist who did not experience the wonder and mystery of playing a game whose rules they did not know missed the golden age of the hobby. Their understanding of what D&D could be, or perhaps dare I say should be, can never be properly conveyed. I know that Gygax for years tried to break through to modern gamers and designers by example and I often wonder how many people got the message.

There is still mystery to be had in D&D, naturally the story the DM has prepared for you can have plenty of unexpected twists and turns which can result in plenty of fuel for the imagination, but there is a big distinction between the mystery of a story and the mystery of the game. 1st edition AD&D had both and it was thanks to the fact that the game was less defined, less refined and empowering. It gave the powers of creativity to the DM not just over the story, but the rules that governed it. The DMG was truly a guide, it lived up to its name, a place where modern versions of the same book do little more than provide clear and coherent rules with the expectation that both the DM and the players will read them.

I mourn the loss of this mystery, I think a piece of the game was lost when we set our focus on concepts like streamlining, clarity and transparency. The position of the DM in modern versions of D&D is more as an arbitrator of the rules and every DM today knows the feeling of having the rules quoted to them from a book that once was intended for his eyes only. In the end, this was the genius behind Gygax’s work, he understood that the draw, the thing that made his work special was that he empowered DM’s to keep that thin veil over the eyes of his audience and like a good magician, he expected a good DM would never reveal the secrets.