How to Run Old School DnD 

*Even if 2nd Ed AD&D is your preferred edition, I would still invest in a 1st Ed AD&D **_Dungeon Master's Guide,_** as whatever edition you play, it is a truly invaluable resource, with mountains of useful tables, descriptions, insights, and possibilities, and no DM's Guide from any later edition can match the amount of coolness within Gygax's original masterpiece. And the 1st Ed **_Monster Manual, Fiend Folio, Monster Manual II,_** and the 1st printing of **_Deities & Demigods,_** includes many gods, devils, demons, and other entities that were removed from later editions, as Loretta Williams at TSR with 2nd Ed, and then Independent Wizards of the Coast, and WotC under Hasbro, ALL have tried to distance D&D from the 80's **_Satanic Panic,_** and then later tried to keep it as "family friendly" and inoffensive as possible, so those 1st Ed resource books have grimdark edge that no other edition offers.*

You are promoting 2ed, you can be drooling out of the side of your mouth and you will still get a like on this video from me. I appreciate what you are doing here.

Great to have more old school folks keeping the game alive! If you ever want to collab, drop me a note.

When I think of Old School Revival/Renaissance, 2nd edition is not what immediately comes to mind. But I agree that the split between 2nd and 3rd is a logical marker between Old School and modern D&D. It marks the point where Wizards of the Coast took the reins with a, I guess, different vision for the game and its direction. It also represents the departure from THAC0, a distinct feature of old role playing and perhaps a carry over from war gaming.

Forgot to mention one other thing you missed. Resource management. In 5e, everyone has darkvision, good berry, and someone in the party has mage hand, so no need for torches, food, or a 10' pole. I remember being on one adventure recently, and I thought of an idea that involved a 10' pole, and I asked my party members if anyone had one, and they laughed at my crazy question. Why would anyone have a ten foot pole? Why would you own something like that etc... No need for it to poke at the pile of rags in the corner of the room, that is what your mage hand or familiar is for. You never have that fear of being 1.5 hours deep into a dungeon, and only have two torches left, and hope that you can get out of it without getting lost on the way, and finding yourself lost in the dark. You don't have to worry about rations, or foraging for food, because your druid just gives everyone a good beery for your breakfast etc..

Oh the pain! I threw out my 2nd ed books which were in near mint condition. 😭 I'm a huge fan of Dolmenwood which should pretty soon open to late pledges.

You have said this very well. This is one of the best, if rather short, explanations of the context of old school D&D vs. 5E.

Thac0 is an amazing mechanic that is difficult for most people to totally understand.

our game in Arden Vul uses the Death and Dismemberment rules when you hit 0 hp. Sometimes death is preferable BUT it adds a fun mechanic in combat. Thats only for pcs though.

Great video. I've played video game RPG's all my life, but never tabletop. Now I want to try!

Ascending/descending AC is a matter of taste. It is the same math. Letting things push beyond the scale into AC 25 or AC -8 is the problem. 2e is very wordy. Things that are simple become more complicated with the hunks of text, split-up tables and sometimes strange editing choices. THAC0 is one such, along with "1-8 points damage". 2e started to add class xp rules. Fighters get xp for fighting. Wizards for making scrolls and tossing spells. Thieves for treasure. Bards get xp for everything. I like char sheets that are easy to print in black and white, and not crowded with art.

very good summary of the essence of old school play. Big BECMI fan myself rather than AD&D, but they definitely share common themes. Trying to get a few of my 5e mates to give BECMI a go. Videos like this are great in putting into words the things about the older game that are the 'itch' that I don't find 5e scratches, though the one 5e campaign I'm in, even though his favoured system is 5e, he started out with Basic and 1st ed, and has imported things like morale into his 5e games.

Random encounter means random not "balanced !!" so yep... this is the nature of things. Maybe it's not your day and you should retreat / clear off / run away ... Great content.

Being roughly around your age, I started also with 2nd edition and can remember basic red box set my step brother had too. We always used roll below ability checks in a d20 for stuff like perception (Wisdom ability check or an Intelligence). Or any other checks. It would be , what do you want to do and what ability correlates with that the most. It's in the books to do that. It didn't used to be in very early editions mind you.

I’m so glad I kept all my 1st edition books and modules. The settings are all in with them. Greyhawk, Mystara, Forgotten Realms. Judges Guild and various others. Cities of Harn. . Even picked lot of MERP , Middle Earth. Oh yes I did subscribe. Thanks , old school for me all the way.

Nice, sir! 2nd edition was pretty awesome indeed! Thnx 🤓👊

most of this I had no idea what your saying but at the same time i learned alot!!! I love the change of channel plan and hope to see tutorials to help going forward!

I saw a video on Thac0 the other day that opened my eyes. They said the beauty of Thac0 is that I keeps the values within the values of the 20 sided die. I hear in 5e it can go beyond the 20 values where a negative number for armor is rare and magical.

Not playing in the same team (DCC), still very good video doing a great job at describing most fundamental differences between new and old school. Useful and well done!

Great video dude!

@ryannilsson7955 THAC0 was only a distinct feature in 2e. THAC0 was only an option in old-school D&D (1e, B/X, BECMI, Rules Cyclopedia etc.), and was rarely ever used.

Thac0 is so easy once you realize you don't need to subtract at all. Player rolls a d20 and adds any mods and tells the DM the total. The DM then adds the AC of the creature attacked to that total. Is the final total higher than the PC's thac0? They hit. Once that method was shown to me, it changed everything I thought about thac0.

1e and 2e are basically the same game, they are compatible, and they are compatible with BX (my preferred "old school") and BECMI. It wasn't until WOTC got hold of it that it suddenly became not what it was...For me, the most important aspect of "old school" is the fantasy literacy part, that is, having DMs and players that actually read fantasy (and watch fantasy movies) and take inspiration from it. I can immediately spot someone who doesn't read enough fantasy. They simply have no material to improvise NPCs (so they sound like different people, that use different words and expressions, etc.)...I agree that THACO is awful and not necessary, because you can achieve the same effect using ascending armor class with a lot less work, so the game flows better. We HATED the 1e tables for combat because they bogged the game down, but it really doesn't matter....One of the main differences of old school is that it is more procedural (especially the BX stuff). I ran a hex crawl once for a bunch of 5e players, and they had never seen anything like it. It's just a process where the turns have a sequence of steps (account for time, roll for random event, see if you get lost, etc.)...I also designed encounters that they could not possibly win, but I left ways to escape or solve the problem without combat. Nevertheless, they still tried to jump in the middle and just hack, but their 5e superheroes still couldn't win. They just needed to determine the objective and see the monsters as obstacles to get around rather than just punching bags to beat up. It's because they didn't know anything other than the 5e rules and how to manipulate them. (There was no such thing as Rules Lawyers and Min/Maxing and Murder Hobos in the 1980s D&D games. Those are WOTC inventions.)... I think Gavin Norman's "Dolmenwood" (a variant of Old School Essentials, I think it is the best rules and setting I have ever seen, based upon BX structure and fairy tale literature)...Forgotten Realms is sooooooo tired now that it would be better off to be truly forgotten...If you want to see quality old school game play, check out 3D6DTL's channel!!!! There is no better old school play on RU-vid, in my opinion, to include Questing Beast as DM, (although his reviews are fantastic)! Most game play vids really bore me, and there are a lot of non-fantasy readers posing as DMs on these channels. Terrible.

This was my first edition as well!

Great video, Matt! I have talked about the old school vibe of Elden Ring as well!!

Someone looking to run this sort of system I would say go with OSRIC it is pretty much AD&D cleaned up made easier to read and not having the rules that go against each other.

The answer is not on the character sheet is the best way to put the difference between old school and 5e.

❤ 100 percent

Could you recommend some websites to find groups?

Thaco is just AC. It's not complicated

I have zero against 3.x. But it is not old school DnD. Old school DnD is pretty much pre-3.0. I love 2E, and you can run any earlier module with it.

OSRIC is not AD&D 1e. There is a lot of borrowed content from AD&D, but OSRIC is watered down.

felauf

"PromoSM"

RuneQuest 2nd ed. is much better but I'm biased. ;)