ADVANCED Dungeons & Dragons

I started a post a couple days ago titled "Growing Up" that quickly devolved into a maudlin ramble about my children and Little League baseball which...well, it was a train wreck. Let's see if I can be a little more pointed:

I've been thinking a lot about AD&D lately...the system I played through most of my youth and which I eventually gave up completely in favor of B/X. The reasons for kicking it were many, and I won't bother to enumerate them here...this whole blog can be considered a record of the "why's" when you look at the essays I've written extolling the virtues of the B/X system and compare how those virtues contrast with more fiddly AD&D.

[oh, yeah...should probably point out I'm speaking of the original AD&D here, i.e. first edition, not 2E or anything that came afterward]

But the ideas found in AD&D keep breaking into my consciousness. They nag at me. I've come to the conclusion, for example, that of all the various systems, I prefer B/X's scaling of spell acquisition for magic-users to be THE BEST of the bunch (and I've compared every edition extensively) with a single caveat: I'd give a bonus spell or two for high Intelligence scores.

[sorry...this is something I've been meaning to post about, and explain my reasons for, but I just haven't had the time to get to it]

And yet, B/X as written doesn't deal with higher forms of magic, some of which I dig on immensely (spells like cacodemon and gate, for example). And it misses out on some of the more flavorful spells found in AD&D, like burning hands, rope trick, and Leomund's secret chest. Yes, you can import this kind of content into your B/X game, but it destroys some of the symmetry found in the B/X system as written.

Thing is, I LIKE...I really like...asymmetry in Dungeons & Dragons. I've written about this before, too: I enjoy the ways in which D&D fails to balance against itself. I like that thieves use a completely different system mechanic from clerics, who have a completely different system mechanic from wizards, who are completely unbalanced and different from fighters...and how player characters abilities and stat blocks are different from the NPCs and monsters that make up the game. I like this, it makes the game interesting, it makes the systems challenging and working with those systems a puzzle for both the DM and the players. If I wanted to play a perfectly balanced game of design currency, I'd be using something like GURPS or HERO system. All the later edition's attempts to balance character types against each other (giving wizards "at will" spells, giving fighters spell-like "feats," etc.) have just gone towards eliminating that asymmetry...and creating a less interesting game.

B/X as written leaves a LOT of wide open potential for one's game, but it also destroys some of the D&D game's original asymmetry. The pegging of 9th level as "name level" for all classes, the increase in demihuman level limits (to 12, 10, and 8), the reduction of magic-user spells...these things go a long way towards balancing the classes...at least in a game that only goes to level 14 (all "Companion" books aside). And that's FINE for a little fantasy adventure game. Heck it's beautiful and elegant and downright manageable, which is something I'd have a hard time saying about most any other edition of D&D.

But real life isn't that nice and neat. Real life is full of messy inconsistencies. Real life is hardly manageable...I have a hard time managing it, and I'm a fairly smart guy blessed with so many real life advantages that I should have zero cause for complaint or grumpiness. Damn it, I drive a car that has satellite radio and voice activated systems, and I STILL find reasons to bitch-and-moan! How frigging ridiculous is that?!

It's hard to manage real life (even though it should be easy for some of us); it's challenging because it's messy and complicated and full of messy, complicated humans. And while we play D&D, in part, to escape that messy, complex reality, if we leave it simple and elegant and streamlined we are perhaps cheating ourselves of an even deeper form of fantasy play. We are still playing on "easy mode" when we could be playing something that challenges us more strongly, giving us a stronger experience, a more intense fantasy escape.

I say "we," but I mean "me."

Things that I once felt (perhaps) "needlessly" complicate the D&D game...things like time and aging, encumbrance, disease & illness, training requirements, weather (and its effects), or a "living" economy...these things have the potential to make for a richer gaming experience. They also make the game more difficult to play, and much harder to manage. They are not Dungeons & Dragons in its Little League form...they are ADVANCED Dungeons & Dragons.

It's been a long, long time since I played "advanced" D&D.

I don't even think that 3rd edition, for all its extra rule minutia, really counts as an "advanced" version of the game. Most of its extra rules...most of its rules period...pertain directly and solely to combat. 3E simplified most of the game itself down to D20 rolls against target numbers using modifiers...often clunky and unwieldy to use in practice (especially at high level play), but simple enough to grasp. 4E and 5E have dumbed-down the game even further. I've written at length at how 5E DMG is mostly padding, providing pages and pages of tables to generate random "ideas" for a (presumed novice) DM, but very little info on how to manage a messy, asymmetrical challenge of a game. Wizards of the Coast was right to file the "Advanced" term from the title of the game...I see very little in the post-TSR era that I would consider to be an "advanced" concept.

I feel that I want to get back to playing Advanced Dungeons & Dragons. Not AD&D "by the book;" I've done that before...did it for years, using speed factors and casting times and helmet rules and all the various minutia. Much of that part of the AD&D books does little in aid of making for a better game. But other parts...the parts that expand on the concepts found in B/X, the parts that elaborate the  scope and depth of the fantasy campaign...those are parts that I want to incorporate into my game. I think I've grown beyond the game I was first introduced to as a kid.

I want to get messy again.