As a prelude, let me start by saying I am no Dungeons & Dragons lore or history expert. I started playing in the early 1980s as a kid and play it today. I am a big fan of the older work but only know the newer editions by reputation and discussion with players. The following is not intended to be presented as dogma, but rather a brief, experienced point of view for those individuals inexperienced at AD&D. Commentors should feel free to add to or even correct this summary where appropriate.
What is Dungeons & Dragons
Dungeons & Dragons(D&D) at its heart is cooperative, medieval storytelling. It is a table-top game in which participants create a dynamic narrative together by way of their adventures. There is magic, hack-and-slash, puzzle-solving, verbal roleplay, and of course, dragons! A Dungeon Master, or DM, is central to gameplay. He/she writes the high-level story and assumes the role(s) of tour guide/referee/god, facilitating game-play for the player-controlled characters. The other participants are Players. Each Player creates a character to represent them in the context of the game.
What is AD&D?
AD&D refers to two(or 3) of the earlier editions of Dungeons & Dragons. Namely, First Edition(1e), Second Edition(2e), or the latter’s offspring, 2.5e. AD&D gameplay is more inline with earlier edition gameplay rather than later. It is the “advanced” ruleset of those previous editions.
AD&D Characters have a variety of variables representing their competency and values in the world. They start with Abilities, namely Strength, Intelligence, Wisdom, Dexterity, Constitution, and Charisma. One or more of these abilities will impact most everything a character does within the game. Additionally, players make choices of race, class, alignment(value system), and many other factors. They then roleplay those characters within the confines of the choices they made.
It is these characters that take on adventures, combat monsters, solve puzzles, and explore the creations in the world designed by the DM. It is not played out in a single afternoon as are most games. Rather, it is a series of adventures carried out over the course of weeks, months, years, or even decades.
Game play is largely conducted within the imaginations of the participants, though there are many written rules and guidelines that structure play. As time goes on, more and more multimedia assets have been brought into play, particularly so with the advent of the internet. Yet it is still highly orchestrated with paper-and-pencil maps, dice, and imagination.
Little History on Editions
AD&D stands for Advanced Dungeons & Dragons. It represents the First and Second editions of Dungeons & Dragons. Funny enough, they are not the original editions of Dungeons & Dragons. That moniker belongs to OD&D, or more formally, the Dungeons & Dragons (original edition). In the early 1970s, Original D&D was introduced to the world by a small group of avid gamers such as Gary Gygax, Dave Arneson, and Don Kaye. It was rudimentary and immature, developed on a very limited budget by this group of friends with a love of gaming in common.
Advanced Dungeons & Dragons
TSR, the owners at the time, went to work developing what I consider the penultimate of “old-school” D&D, Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, First Edition. It is this edition that I play and love today. Around the same time TSR was pushing out AD&D 1e, they were approached by a third party writer, John Holmes, to do a revision and rewrite of OD&D. While it was clear there was a thirst for more of this style of gaming, it proved difficult to recruit new fans or even to explain to interested parties what “this” was.
Thus began the development of Basic Edition D&D. It only accounted for character levels 1-3 and diverged from other editions in significant ways such as alignments, the merging of character classes and races, and more. It was intended to lower the barrier to entry for fledgling players that were enamored with the concepts of magic and monsters but had a hard time grasping OD&D. And they succeeded.
Basic D&D was later followed up by Expert D&D which would ostensibly take characters through to level 14 and then beyond with The Companion Rules. Basic and Expert D&D, or B/X D&D, still have a small, but loyal group of fans to this day that enjoy the simplified, dungeon crawling-centric style of play.
In the late 1980s AD&D Second Edition was published. It was largely aligned with First Edition but the manuals were better organized, some contradictory content was corrected, not-so-great elements were dropped, and some new content was added. Second Edition was later improved upon with 2.5e. There is a lot of overlap between the two pillars of AD&D and so they are highly compatible.
Later Editions
Since that time, Gary Gygax, widely regarded as the face and name behind all of Dungeons & Dragons, was pushed out and TSR eventually relinquished ownership to corporate america. Some say gameplay transitioned to a style more familiar to online gamers. More strictly archetypical classes were abandoned for build-your-own classes. Characters went from ordinary people evolving into competent and experienced hero adventurers, to manifesting hero advancement into the superhero realm. Gameplay transitioned from a loosely organized set of guidelines that demanded much from the imagination, to a better defined set of hard rules. Since the days of AD&D we have seen the release of D&D 3e, 3.5e, 4e, 5e, and 5.5e.
Homebrew
No discussion of the various iterations of Dungeons & Dragons would be complete without acknowledging the concept of Homebrew. This term refers to all of the rules and content created by D&D participants beyond or even contrary to the official manuals. In my opinion, it is the ultimate representation of what D&D is. A collective adventure and expression of imagination. I like to think Gary Gygax would approve of that statement. He often expressed similar sentiments, even in his own printed manuals.
“It is the spirit of the game, not the letter of the rules, which is important. Never hold to the letter written, nor allow some barracks room lawyer to force quotations from the rule book upon you…,” – Gary Gygax, 1e DMG p230
Gameplay
Dungeons & Dragons typically requires 4-9 participants, including the DM. I do not think I would be remiss in saying that 6 or 7 is the sweet spot. It can be played in-person as it was originally intended or online. I feel no need to enumerate the benefits of doing anything in-person as these ought to be obvious on their face. That being said, online tools such as video/audio streaming, Virtual Tabletops, and of course, AD&D Toolkit, have greatly broadened the player pool. Accessibility to a group has always been a tremendous hurdle to enjoying D&D and bringing it online has largely solved it.
The Dice
The physical dice used in gameplay are quintessentially D&D. There are six(or sometimes 7) of them that have mesmerized players for decades. In fact, they have become a huge commodity market unto themselves. Almost every action during gameplay, sometimes even passively, dice need to be rolled and a table consulted to determine what happens next.
Maps
Every D&D session requires maps. And lots of them. They are often drawn out either physically or digitally on graph paper and are hidden from the players. DMs reveal portions of these maps to players as they adventure through them. Unvisited portions of maps are hidden from players behind the Fog of War. Lots of hours are invested by DMs in preparing these maps prior to gameplay. They are populated with keys and then related narrative that describes the area in question, including monsters, Non Player Characters(NPCs), and treasure!
The Books
AD&D 1e has no shortage of written material. The triad of requisite manuals includes the Player’s Handbook, the Dungeon Master’s Guide, and the Monster Manual. I would rate the PHB as the go-to book for anyone new to the game that wishes to get a better understanding of what it’s about and how to play.
Ask Questions
You can play Advanced Dungeons & Dragons for a lifetime and never know it all. Fortunately there are some really good discussion communities online that have their own stable of “experts” happy and willing to mentor newer players on platforms like Facebook, Reddit, and Discord. Personally I of course am going to recommend our own: Discord – Reddit
Conclusion
I have no doubt that enjoying D&D requires a vivid imagination. Patience and a cooperative disposition are likewise essential. I personally play a game with family and friends across three different states for over a year now. Some of us in-person and the others wrangled in via technology. I cannot stress enough what a boon a game experience like this can be for a family. If you possess these traits and enjoy the wonder of magic and monsters and medieval-style adventuring, this just may be the experience of a lifetime for you and yours.