Introducing Gameplay
This is an experimental work, tentatively identified as 1 of 6 volumes, that attempts to provide an explanation of how the rules of Advanced Dungeons & Dragons is understood and played. It is being provided free through this wiki and no other source at this time. The text of this page should be sufficient for understanding the rules; links that appear lead to alternatives of AD&D rules that occur elsewhere in this wiki. This work is meant to take advantage of the still-existing Online Game License, though if the OGL is or becomes defunct, I'm not likely to take this down.
I dedicate this to all the would-be players who find themselves unable to understand the game's rules due to the haphazard and poor way that they have been presented these last many decades. Illustrations are included only to clarify, not as performative material.
FORWARD
From the beginning of my gaming experience in September of 1979, the goal of explaining Dungeons & Dragons to someone who might wish to understand the game well enough to play without needing to observe others has long been the bane of D&D. Arguably, much of the problem is related to the cost of printing books, that requires that the whole of the game be explained within a set number of pages, with a limited number of diagrams, a limited size font for printing and the time required to fully produce a completely comprehensible set of rules. An alternate explanation for the failure these past decades comes from the lack of technical game comprehension within the designing community, which has always allowed itself to chase rabbits down holes that failed to provide contribute pathways to game payoffs, agency, feedback, tension, mastery and many other facets of game creation. In short, many "designers" were, in fact, amateurs throwing soup at a wall hoping it would improve the taste.
Another failing has been to retain aspects of game play that did not work for the sake of nostalgia or frank immovability, believing that change would somehow warp or lessen the effectiveness of game aspects that they preferred to leave warped or disfunctional, as one might with dogma. Also, a pervasive resistance to a logical order, or a resistance to explain ideas as they become relevant, preferring to shift such explanations into glossaries, indexes or other removed parts of the work, forcing readers to jump back and forth throughout the text with growing dispair and frustration. The belief remains that D&D cannot be explained linearly, that because multiple factors of the game influence each other simultaneously, that therefore the game can only be learned by looping through multiple experiences that must then be re-interpreted with later iterations of game play.
For the present, it's not desirable to state to what purpose these rules are designed to serve, beyond game play. Attempts to categorise the game's nature, or to state why the game is played, or to outline the game's organisation structure, only introduce terms that are unnecessary for learning the game's rules. So these will not be invoked at this time, so as not to pollute the discourse with terms that cannot, up front, be understood out of context. Nor would it benefit the reader to be told ahead of time under which headings this book is organised, since that too would only introduce ideas and terms that, again, could not be grasped anyway. Further, the existing iterations of Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, of which there are many, would at this time be of no benefit to the reader. Therefore, they can be put aside until later, when their comprehensibility becomes practical to relate.
Participants
All persons who participate in the game, henceforth tagged either AD&D or D&D, the latter of which should be viewed as a shortened form of the former, at technically "players" in the game sense, according to a dictionary definition of the word. However, awkwardly, one of the "players" is not referred to in-game as such, and for our convenience we'll refer to this individual as the role this special participant serves: that of "dungeon master." Othe participants, and there may be any number, depending on how many can be managed by the dungeon master, are yet called "players" within the game's lexicon.
The dungeon master's role is to host the game, adjudicate and explain the rules, provide context for what the players experience, act on behalf of instruments in the game that can function as obstacles, reward the players and ultimately correct elements of the game's rules that prove insufficient over time. To understand how these functions are carried out, it must first be understood that most or potentially all of the game's play occurs without standard physical game pieces, a physical board or physical representations of any kind; the only tools that must be present are first, dice of a particular geometric design, generating random numbers between 1 to 4 (d4), 1 to 6 (d6), 1 to 8 (d8), 1 to 10 (d10), 1 to 12 (d12) and 1 to 20 (d20). The designation "d20," or die-20, indicates a die with 20 sides that is rolled to produce numbers between 1 and 20. The other tools require a means of taking notes, either with pen/pencil and paper or upon an electronic device.
The Dungeon Master
This participant, who we may abbreviate as the DM, hosts the game by providing a space, a table, chairs, vittles and whatever else a host would normally provide, while taking a place at the head of the table where access to all players is convenient and beneficial to personal communication. Adjudicating involves not only stipulating which rules are going to apply to the game, but also making a determination on play similar to that of a referee, who must be ready to resolve unexpected situations as they occur, within the expectations the rules provide. Because the rules are complex and multi-varied, the DM is expected to have an excellent, working grasp of their existence and function, if not their exact wording; the DM must be able, on demand, to seek out and express for the players the exact wording of the rules when these apply.
Providing context for game play requires the DM to verbally describe what the players "see" within the constraints of a fictional world, often called the "setting." The players are expected to imagine themselves at a specific place, the details and constraints of which are explained effectively and thoroughly enough by the DM that the players can feel, not individually, but as a group, that they are "there," just the same way a reader can picture a described scene in a text. That all the members of the group are able to see themselves in the same place, in the same way, is a testament to the explanatory skill of the DM. The importance and relative game value of the DM's depiction is of enormous consequence to gameplay, and shall be explained progressively as we move forward.
This setting is not populated by the players alone, but by an unknown number of other existing beings, with whom the players interact, that the DM must likewise provide context for. Some of these beings shall speak to the players, some shall act against the players or on their behalf, some will give the players additional exposition about the setting that describes places where the players are not at presently, all with the intention of adding to the players store of knowledge about the setting, while creating instances of tension and conflict which the players must, through their own stated actions, manage. Some of these other beings will impose their will upon the player, presenting themselves as the aforementioned obstacles which the players must overcome.
When the players succeed in overcoming obstacles, they are rewarded. The amount of the reward, and the manner of it, is determined by the DM also. The purpose of the reward is not only to enrich the players, but to expand the options they can draw upon a game play continues. In effect, to add to the store of choices a player individually has when attempting to resolve conflicts, and the store of overall options the collective players, or "party," has when resolving difficulties as a team.
Finally, because the games rules are perpetually insufficient for the complexity of situations and possibilities that the game setting allows, a good DM is one that takes the time to rewrite rules, with the confirmation and consent of the players, to provide logical and practical options and constraints for the players to experience and enjoy, while expanding the framework of the game they play. Often, this last choice of action is not pursued. The choice not to pursue it is not, in and of itself, evidence of a lacking DM, but failing to press the game further is limiting to the player's overall enjoyment in the long term.
Players
As stated, players are those participants who form a concept of what's been explained about the setting through the DM's description. The role of the player is to judge and interpret what's heard and then decide upon a course of action. Yet they cannot by the game take any action that pleases them — they are limited in their choice by two factors: first, the limitations of physical reality, in the manner by which any human being is naturally constrained — according to the familiar restrictions of time, ability to move and plausibly know things, as well as the need for air, water, food, shelter, sleep and clothing, within the natural threats to their health, resources, property and so on.
The other factor derives from the game itself as a list of boundaries and special benefits that accrue to players individually, dictated by a fabrication called the "character." The character is, essentially, the player's game piece. The details of the character, which are comprised of randomly rolled details complemented by personal choices made by the player within the game's rules, dictate which choices the player can undertake when playing the game. At this point, examples would be counter-beneficial — it is more important to understand how the player makes decisions about play based on what the "character" is, than it would be to introduce game terms that would have to be explained now, toward no good purpose. Rest assured that characters are not only initially complicated and requiring of player intuition, but that characters necessarily become more so as the game continues. This can be taken on faith until it is practical to explain it.
During play, the player listens to what the DM says before choosing an action. The player may wish to converses with other players before doing so. All the players are free to take their own actions within the limitations defined, either individually or conjointly. Often, especially in complex situations, players make a plan before any player takes an action. When an action is taken, the DM interprets the action, explains the effects of the action... and then players are free to take another action and so on.
This process goes on indefinitely. At any point the game can be suspended, the DM and players remembering or making notes about what they did last, so that the game can be set aside for any period of time that is convenient for the participants. When the game is reconvened, the last actions and the general situation are reviewed, then the process of the DM explaining the setting and the players reacting to that setting can continue. In this manner, over the course of week after week, a single game can literally continue for years at a time. This continuing game is commonly called a "campaign," but this is only a simplification of this concept in game terms, and we can revisit the word and its deeper definition later.
