After deciding I wanted to go OSR I was left with a few tempting options. As you probably know there are more than a few retro-clones and OSR style games and then there are just old TSR games. Others have said it before and I tend to agree, OSR style games try to capture what gaming was like in the 70s and 80s but those games are still available to play.

There are certainly some very cool games that are not D&D that have been published since 2000 that I’d like to run; MÖRK BORG, Shadow of the Demon Lord, Mausritter and several more. But when I’m honest with myself I know that the system that I’d run a years-spanning game in is D&D. But which flavor?

From my current vantage point (read “age”) I found myself divided. BECMI D&D has simple rules, it’s own setting and a large amount of published adventures. AD&D also has a large amount of published adventures and supports the classic Greyhawk and Dragonlance settings. 2E was released the same year I turned 16 making it the game I played most and have the most nostalgia for. Like the others it has a lot of published adventures and supports many settings.

I began my research by looking back over each system and reviewing the published content. Greyhawk and Mystara (known world) have an almost magnetic pull on my imagination. For 2E my impression has been that the Forgotten Realms is the assumed setting and I quite like Faerûn as described in the old gray box.

At this point I have to admit that I’m intimidated by the weight that comes with running games in one of these well known settings. It was easy for me to rule out Dragonlance since I have no great nostalgia for it and Faerûn since I dislike what it has become. But the wealth of wonderful content for Greyhawk and Mystara make both more difficult to reject.

Perhaps I’ll roll my own setting but that is a complex idea too off topic to explore here.

Settings aside I reviewed modules to see if any spoke to me. Quite expectedly I found I have nearly equal affection for the adventures published for all three systems. Since most can be run with little alteration the modules did not overly influence over my decision. To be sure there’s something that just feels right about playing The Lost City with the Basic Rules but this is more an artifact of my current situation than how a younger me, less steeped in TSR history, would have approached the game.

From here all that was left to consider was the rules which provided no more clarity than any of my previous criteria. It’s like asking me to pick my favorite ice cream. There is no favorite. All ice cream is awesome except cookie dough, cookie dough is terrible. So I picked some arbitrary criteria.

I ruled out BECMI first since I knew there would be some effort to divorce race from class. Sure I could do it. And yes it was done for me in OSE Advanced (which I own) but ultimately I had to pick some criteria. Between that and limited VTT options I decided to rule it out.

Next I ruled out 2E. I very much wanted to like it and there are features I’d certainly use in my own game but ultimately I just don’t want to deal with the bloat. I’m looking at you splat books.

With the BECMI and 2E ruled out AD&D remained. There are things I don’t like here as well; Gygaxian prose, class and level limits. Then again I do like the brevity of the PHB.

Honestly, I passed on AD&D too and the cycle began again and again.

It’s worth pausing here to consider some factors in my loop. First is availabililty. It would be a simpler matter to play OSE or OSRIC due to availability. Second is my attachment to the idea of running the adventures in the system they were designed for. Third and perhaps most important is bloated player options. I’m likely to roll my own setting which will necessarily exclude some amount of things from each game’s PHB. In my experience players are pretty stubborn on this point.

Advanced Dungeons & Dragons

From what I’ve read of Gary Gygax he liked to keep the rules away from the players in a way that seems to me at least, heavy handed. But the more I looked at AD&D the more I recalled dumb arguments I’ve had with 5E players and the more I started to see the wisdom in Gary’s decisions.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not looking for totalitarian authority over my games but I did come of age when the mantra was still, “THE REFEREE IS THE FINAL ARBITER OF ALL AFFAIRS OF HIS OR HER CAMPAIGN.”¹ 2E, 5E and others have most of the rules in the PHB and various people I’ve played with since 2014 have made their point of view clear; these are my rules and you can’t change them.

This new system provides the Dungeon Master with more and better material from which to devise the campaign milieu, and that in turn means a more interesting and imaginative game for the players.²

But this is a deeply flawed philosophy. The DM is the player that invests the most in the game world. The system the DM chooses should provide a framework for creating exciting adventures to entertain their friends with. The system should not be a tyrranical set of absolute rules for players to cudgel their DM with.

So that’s a long way of saying that AD&D starts by setting the right tone which makes it a base upon which I want to build my role-playing future. While this philosophy certainly underpins BECMI and 2E nowhere is it as explicitly state. It’s not the only factor in my choice it is by far the most important.

There are of course mechanical factors as well. AD&D is somewhat closer to modern games than BECMI without suffering from the content bloat of 2E and later games. I think it will be broadly easy to use material from any of the three systems. Adding house rules should also be a simple enough matter. Since the PHB is so light house rules are much more likely to be seen as enhancement rather than unfair limits.

It could be argued rather successfully I think that the same could be said of both BECMI and 2E. I don’t disagree. Ultimately AD&D seems to be the system in which I’ll feel the least need to peel away and have the most inclination to build upon. Your mileage my vary.

AD&D will also present some challenges. I play online, many of my players don’t own AD&D books and some are too young to have played a game published before 2000.

To that end I can only assure my players that this will not present a problem. As always I will ensure the materials needed to play are provided.

Foot Notes

1. Gary Gygax, The Game: Players Handbook (Lake Geneva: TSR Games, 1978), 8.
2. Gary Gygax, Introduction: Players Handbook (Lake Geneva: TSR Games, 1978), 7.