Let's Make an Original Dungeons & Dragons Character

Never played these REALLY early RPGs, I started with AD&D, except the DM didn't have the DMG yet so we used a mix of D&D & AD&D for a few weeks...

I approve of this format

Loved the video, I am very much looking forward to more early D&D content.

Your nit-picking is valid, and so many fans squawked that changes were made! The game branched off into the boxed "Basic" D&D which had an independent existence until 1991, and the hardcover books of the Advanced D&D which is now the only thing.

What have we lost over the years? The greater risk of character death lent more excitement, your characters were NOT movie-stars whose cinematic existence was guaranteed. Chargen is getting more complicated, branching into too many non-human races for Special Snowflakes to be one-of-a-kind Furries, and too much emphasis on back-story.

Loved this series. Please do more episodes <3 Good job!

I'm so tempted to make a long "well, actually..." comment about how the context of OD&D in 1974 isn't the same as it is for RPG's in 2020, so it can't be judged on those terms. But I will forbear.

I always tell people when I introduce them to OD&D that most of the numbers on the character sheet is for when something goes wrong. You're not going to be surviving a lot of fights in 0e, especially at level 1, but thankfully the majority of xp comes from the acquisition of treasure with only a comparatively paltry reward for combat. Consequently most players naturally begin to shy away from unnecessary fights after a while. Not a perfect or balanced game by modern standards at all, but it has a way of self-correcting and functioning.

"...start with the first modern RPG" I'm 54 and remember playing the game, but even so I don't "modern" is a term I'd use for this thing. "First" is right on the mark, though. :)

Those ability scores... are not typical. That character is a god in OD&D. lol

Wow you rolled pretty well.

in OD&D you rolled your total hit dice for HP every level and took the higher result. at the second level you roll 2d6 and take the rolled result or 5, whichever was higher. the accumulation of HP by roll one more Hit dice and add it to the total was added in the Greyhawk supplement of OD&D.

Really amazing channel, really good production value on theses videos

Not a big fan of the nit picks.

the classes were racist..... WHY!!!

If you go beyond the White Box and include the Books IV to VI, Greyhawk, Blackmoor and Eldritch Wizardry, first of all you will get much more classes: Thief, Paladin (GH), Assassin, Monk (BM) and Druid (EW). Second, in Book IV: Greyhawk you will find tables very similar to those of AD&D 1e. This makes a big difference from pure White Box because the character gets much more detail like a +1 on To Hit rolls. MUs and Elves get detailed table about how well and how many spells they can learn. High Dex would give you +1AC/Dex over 14, from 15 (+1) to 18 (+4) (we extended this to the other classes to, not just fighting-men); also Dex 12 gives you a +1 on missle Attacks (we homeruled the rule for AC also applied to Missle Combat, so an archer got those extra bonuses too... we almost never ever had a character with Dex higher than 15 )

What version of dnd are you playing

Awesome video, I like your shade of nail polish btw

What an enjoyable vid, somehow.

You really ought to roll up a Traveller and Runequest character for comparison.

A few notes about ability scores in OD&D. While not having any direct result on combat/ specifics mentioned in the rules other than those listed... it is expected that the 'referee' will use them as a gauge to determine success for other things. For example, jumping over pits, the referee might say, "You have a base 50% chance of success +5% for every point above 13. Or whatever else the referee decides to 'make up' to resolve the situation. Early D&D was not codified and this gave Refs a lot of flexibility to resolve in game tasks.

Also note that GOLD PIECES were worth XP on a 1 for 1 basis. This is very important, and progression goes much quicker than you would expect when applying this.

Where is this blank character sheet?

As a DM back in the late 70's and early 80's, the resources that are available today just weren't there. So we had one major rule. Whatever the DM said, was the rule. Period. No arguing. After all, we wrote our own campaigns and an excuse could always be weaved into the scenario which could suddenly and inexplicably change a rule or two in order to keep the story moving forward or to divert complete and utter disaster that would end the evening with everyone dead..... unless everyone being dead was part of the story line ... in which case everyone died despite their saving throws.... The main purpose of the DM (for us at least) was not just a neutral referee to determine what happened based on the role of the dice, but also to ensure the the game play be enjoyable by all by providing a scenario that was immersive and told a story where discovering the ending was half the fun. So, in the words of Miracle Max, characters weren't dead...they were mostly dead. And mostly dead means a slightly alive.

Hay, is there a pdf for this character sheet

Nothing says old school gaming like "I can choose one additional language and I choose mermaid".

Early rpgs really are fascinating.

Hey what sheet or program did your use for your character sheet. I’m thinking of running an OG Dnd session next year for my group(like a 50th anniversary thing) and that looks amazing as a sheet

Didnt see you roll. Invalid

cool

indeed man if i had those i would also decide to play a none human! Ver,y cool!

No holy symbol in that equipment loadout? =0[.]o=

Me…being me…despite these ability scores, would have made a fighter….because (and modern gamers may often lose sight of such) this is exactly how you may have a party of all or mostly fighters….
Yes…they all have the same hit dice and ‘to hit’ but they’re not all the same!
One is strong, one is charismatic, one is extremely dexterous, one is wise….. that leads to a lot of fun stuff, just that alone.
Heck…you’re already in the realm of the Three (four) Musketeers! Heheh! 😁

I never played the first edition, but I see a lot of similarities with the red box set (my first)

What character sheet did you use? I like the way that It looks and would like to use it myself

This is where the legendary game & hero begin. 🙌 😊🎉❤

Not stealing the character

1. I'm fairly sure a morning star is an edged weapon and thus cannot be welded by a cleric. A mace is the traditional choice, not sure if there are any others in OD&D they can weild
2. In OD&D pre-supplements, each time you level up, you roll all your hit dice. You only rolled one and got a 3, but you should have re-rolled the 5 as well. You get the max of the old value and the new value. So had you rolled a 1 or 2, you'd have stayed at 5 hit points, but any higher would have raised your hit points to 6-9. This isn't stated explicitly in the rules, but it's implied.

neat

So looking back at it; the core attributes of DnD have become kinda standardised over the many decades the game has been around.

This is to be expected; popular games stay and unpopular ones die out. However I never really thought of it, but the core attributes here are really well thought out.

Intelligence and Wisdom being separate things, even if to distinguish Magic-User and Cleric, is fascinating and gives an idea right then and there how to imagine things.

Aoso I love how, disregarding everyrhing else; Dwarves and Halflings can make better Magic-Users than Elves. I just find that funny considering the stereotypes.

I learned my beginnings by playing the og baldurs gate on pc. It was add2 i think.... It used thac0. But for actual table top i learned on 3.5 and switched pathfinder when 4e came out. Dude that ran our early games had been playing since odnd and had adapted things from older editions. Thats made me a very adaptive DM. I will notice mechanics in videogames and use them in my games now. I have always heard how grinding and unforgiving og DnD was thats what brought me here.

How did you determine gold there?

The elf thing is actually very easy to explain
How it works is at the start of the adventuring day, ie when tou sit down at the table and are about to have your characters head out, you decide whether you will act as a fighter or magic user.

That’s basically it. It’s less poorly explained than dual classing in 1e and even that’s more or less comprehendible

Also you did get the constitution right. It assumes that it’s implied to be
9 - 60%
10 - 70%
11 - 80%
12 - 90%

The slower progression in my opinion has advantages over what many games are now. A critique I have of 5e is it gives the player TOO MUCH, Too fast. The point of old school games isn’t amassing power, the point was having an adventure with your friends. And the more you played, you saw a slow, natural progression. And it was hard to get that power, only to make it all the more brag worthy when you got something big

It also means in practice the difficulty scales a little better. Not perfect but better than some modern games.

Your character sheet here isn’t who your character is. That will be seen in play. This sheet is only trying to be a way to adjudicate rules. Nothing more, nothing less. And in some respects, that is very freeing as a player. At any rate this character is way better than you realize. There’s alot of growth in those 5 levels.

An 11-foot pole? Ridiculous! Not even funny!