AD&D: The Commons at the End of Time

So, like I mentioned yesterday I’ll be running AD&D 1e. It’s the first RPG I ever ran a sustained campaign with. I got into D&D when I stole the red box, owned tan-booklet OD&D and collected BECMI, but AD&D1 was my D&D. I’ve fantasized about running it and applying incremental house rules to see where it leads for years, long before the OSR thing  (and it was why I initially liked the Old School movement before it turned into the dogma it is today).

Things just fell into place after I wrote this short story, read China Mieville and started to think of dungeon fantasy on its own terms — not “dungeonpunk,” the OSR’s homage salad or as an unwanted deviation from high fantasy (2e’s sin). I’m interested in justifying the bizarre AD&Disms of my teen years and wrestling them into something adults can play with. What’s on the menu?

• Working class adventuring
• Dungeon-driven boom towns
• Name level
• Strange dimensions
• Magical alignments
• Anachronistic gods
• Monster generators
• Magical transhumanism
• House rules!
• More . . . .

I don’t have a huge fetish for authentic AD&D and to tell the truth, some rules just aren’t going to pass the first session. Starting house rules include:

• 10+ armour increasing AC.
• Hit bonus instead of to-hit tables, but with a +5 bonus on a natural 20, and a -5 penalty on a natural 1.
• Saving throws use a bonus of (save-20) to roll against a target number of 20 on a d20.
• Reroll all hit dice at each level and after each rest, if the player wants to.

I will be using armour type modifiers, segments and helms (by rolling a d6 with attack rolls). I want to relearn these little-used parts of the game before I fool with them.

The setting? Earth, at least 250,000 years in the future. Vance, Wolfe, Barker and Moorcock. Dungeons are ancient. Magic is a psychic science. Thousands of gods come up with relics of the past: Zeus, Thor, and nameless beings constructed by old books and crazy visions. Demihumans come from other worlds and genetic engineering. The moon is green.