"Does anybody still play AD&D?" Topic

I had a lot of fun in my younger days playing and now that I have a little more free time, I am thinking about running a campaign. Does anybody else still play AD&D or am I a dinosaur?

Mike

Nope. Playing Castles & Crusades now…

There are several whom still play the granddaddy game. ;)

There was a large number of people who reacted the same way to 3rd edition D&D as many are now reacting to 4th: "Blech". So yes, there are a lot of folks playing 2nd edition AD&D, and some smaller number still playing 1st (or claiming to, since 1st edition AD&D was subject to a vast body of house rules).

How about Basic Labyrinth Lord. Its free
link

You'll find lots of people who still play AD&D over at the Dragonsfoot website. Thankfully, there are gamers out there who realize that rules don't "go bad" when they go out of print.

I've been playing with a regular group for 6 years. We've gone through 3.5 and we're playing 4th right now (quite enjoyable), we've also done Star Wars, Solomon Kane, Mutants and Masterminds and Iron Kingdoms as well. D&D is, by far, the most enjoyable.

Wyatt

my group tries to meet once/yr around the holidays for an AD&D game.
We didnt make it this year though.

Does anybody else still play AD&D or am I a dinosaur?

A mastodon, maybe, but not a dinosaur. A real dinosaur would be playing white box or brown box D&D, with no letters before or numbers after.

There are still large numbers of people discussing all of the older versions of D&D (Original, Basic, and AD&D) on the internet, and I'm sure there are larger numbers still playing and not inter-webbing. The home of AD&D (and also other older versions) is probably the Dragonsfoot.org resource and forum page, but there are constant discussions of old school gaming even on forums aimed at newer games, like rpg.net and enworld.org for instance. There are also a number of other forums for specific Basic or even Original D&D, and for the old Basic D&D world of Mystara, and so on.

There is also a movement to use the OGL (the open gaming license for 3e) to rewrite (minimally) and republish the older systems so that the rules can be purchased (although the originals can usually be found) and new material can be published. The first of these was OSRIC for AD&D, but Labyrinth Lord for Basic D&D is very popular, and Swords & Wizardry does the same for Original D&D (and Spellcraft & Swordplay for Chainmail as an rpg in the Basic tradition). These rules are sometimes called "retro-clones". The real beauty of these clones is that you can download the pdf's for free and get them to players to look at, print them out cheaply, or in some cases get cheap print copies from Lulu.

Then, there are rules like Castles & Crusades (from Troll Lord Games) that takes AD&D and imports some of the organizational methods and streamlined mechanics of 3e to make a somewhat new game in the old style – these type of games are sometimes called "nostalgia" games. C&C in particular is very well supported by new print material, and during the last years of his life Gary Gygax was working closely with them.

So – no! You are not a dinosaur! You will find plenty of on-line and written support today for AD&D and even Basic D&D (which of course can be mixed).

As a recent anecdote, my son had a friend over yesterday, and when I mentioned D&D to them (as a option from Playstation) his friend just rolled his eyes and said that he gave up after purchasing the 3e and 4e books, because it was just too complicated and (in his words) "too much like school". I showed him my old Holmes Blue Book D&D just to show him that D&D wasn't always like that, and as of today he and my son and another friend are busy planning the looting of Mystara. They are also playing "Barbarians of Lemuria" (a great indie S&S game, even simpler than Basic D&D) but that's another story.

Cheers,

Christopher

I used to play Hackmaster, and I thought that it was pretty much AD&D, with a few more fun rules. I didn't find it to be particularly focused on miniatures (in the way 3e and later were).

Hackmaster was the ultimate AD&D 1st edition game, though some of the tweaks were for laughs and others were serious game mechanics. Not sure what the upcoming 2d "5th" edition of Hackmaster will be like.

Count me in! I still have the little white box, along with shelves full of books up to 3.5……. I refuse to play 4th, you have to draw a line somewhere.

-W

Still playing 2nd Ed. Have bought a 3.5 and 4th Ed book, but didn't see anything to make me or my group switch.

Yep, doing 3.5 (won't do 4E). We only get about 6 games a year.

Just about to start a 4E game in a week or so (someone else DMing). Last time I played AD&D was 1.5 decades and versions ago and it does seem quite different – especially noticed the minitures emphasis. Movement described by squares – new to me.

My DM has described it as an RPG of 2 sections – part RPG part tactical miniature battles. I'm sure it'll be good fun anyway.

knights-n-knaves.com/phpbb

Forum for those that like all sorts of old moldy AD&D stuff, plus previous versions.

I still DM the occasional AD&D game, but I do V4 as well.

LLC aka Ron

There is a resurgence in ADnD right now as people are using OGL to emulate the "old school" feel. I recently picked up some ADnD 2nd ed books from a used book store. I know the next DnD game I run will be 2nd ed or earlier.