"Found a set of youtube videos about 1eAD&D, very interesting" Topic

YouTube link

Just found this, very interesting, and what he describes, is what I first heard about when a teen age friend told me about D&D ( note it was prior to AD&D being published, but just barely)

Its a wargame! and its why people are confused about the 1e DMG.

I'm remembering Betsy the Gnome going through her copy of Unearthed Arcana, drawing lines through entire sections and marking them NIMU--"Not in my universe."

A few years prior I'd had to explain 3-booklet D&D to She Who Would be My Wife and I described it as a cross between a skirmish wargame and improvisational theater.

Back in Ye Olde Golden Years of Yore, we had a VERY successful DnD campaign at Penn State (Hi, Scott, my Elven sword brother!) with White Box DnD. With of course Chainmail.
We never heard of "Advanced" (🙄), but dabbled in Greyhawk.

Kids today. I realize Stranger Things used the heretical Advanced, but I was okay with that. Cute kids. Cute nerds.
I never forgave Tom Hanks, by the way. 😄 You know why.

So back in about 1976/77 ( I was about 13 a wargaming friend of mine was talking about how he was playing this game called D&D, and the description of how he was playing was like in these videos. it they were building castles and going to war against each other, a year or 2 later, me and my brother bought Keep on the borderlands, ya with the chits instead of dice, and we on our own started playing like everone else did, as a single individuals but not the wargame style, but I always have know it was there, and I always wanted to play chainmail, but never did see a copy of it, and have still never seen a real copy of it even though I have a pdf now via the internet.

I would love to do it the style he described, but living in a small town, not likely, I have a very small group, ie my son and about 3 others ( all one family) and even before seeing these videos, I have been trying to push them in that direction, to no success.

The reality is, AD&D is a wargame, on top of the dungeon crawl, and its also rules for running a table top online world.

Rob, you said it well " a cross between skirmish wargame and improvisational theater, but it also works well as a large rank and flank also ruleset, with hundreds of miniatures on the table. I have actually used it as a combat system for battles with ~700 miniatures on the table, and AD&D handled it real well, lots od d20's and give everything average hitpoints. and apply dmg to the unit and take of the appropriate amount of figures.

Man I wish I could get people to play it this way again!

Tom Hanks is going to the Great Hall!!

-- I wish I still had my 2nd edition copy of Chainmail, published by Guidon Games, in the yellow cardstock cover. Bought via mail order in 1974. It would be worth a tidy sum today, but I let it go at some convention auction decades ago and probably got $20 USD for it, if that. Same for the 3rd edition, in the silver cover with spiral binding, published by TSR.