Let's read AD&D DMG

When Gygax writes rules, he seems to assume that all players are power gamers that will try to break them immediately.

The time records thing makes more sense when you realize that Gygax was running his own campaign several times a week for a rotating roster of 50 or so players.

I like how Gygax talks about "we can't mutilate or kill players every session because players love their characters." Also Gygax: "here's 360 ways to kill players with magic items and traps they can't possibly foresee unless they sneak a look at the manual."

this made me remember hearing about a dnd campaign where the dm made EVERY item they find cursed, and with near deadly curses that made things way worse than if they didn't take the items. But then the dm got mad because the group just stopped taking things because they already knew it'd be cursed.

The most important thing to understand when reading the 1e DMG is just how many players that Gygax had and how much of the notes in the DMG are about Gygax trying to handle the player load. Gygax is running 3 games a week for 10-12 players at a time. And when you've tried to run tables at that scale, Gygax's advice in the 1e DMG starts making a lot more sense. Like for example, his advice on keeping time has to do with having 36 players with 80 different PC's doing down time is chaos unless you have good time keeping records. And keeping track of 1 real day = 1 game day makes running different groups on different days where you don't know who is going to show up simplifies things a lot, and also pay attention to how PC's spend time and how he can keep control of a group using in game time incentives.

It's not surprising that Gygax did the DMG the way he did. He was literally inventing an open world game, and nobody knew any tricks, standards, mores, or exploits yet. Having some guidelines and protips for the people trying something completely new and novel who have no anecdotes or stories to inspire, instruct, or guide them was probably a godsend.

I've always felt that D&D's wargaming origins are really apparent compared to some other systems that were built for storytelling from the ground up. But it's interesting to see how much more of an influence wargaming had the further you go back through the editions.

I love how 83% of Gary's notes seem to either be about how to adversarial DM or how not to adversarially DM TOO much.

...Honestly, Gygax was pretty on point on how some players would treat the NPC Hirelings, I'd say. I mean, we've all heard of that one guy that treats a corpse as a Rod of Detect Traps, but instead of charges, it's chunks left for the Barbarian to throw, right? Same energy, basically.

Gary Gygax ran multiple groups in the same world at the same time. So it was possible for one group to find a treasure vault only to discover another group had already been there and looted it. That's why tracking time was so critical for his campaigns.

My favorite "kind of sensible but also wtf" rule from AD&D is Potion Miscibility. Say your character is shot by a poisoned dart. Poisons in AD&D were insanely deadly because reasons, so it's common for an AD&D character to pack an emergency potion of healing and a potion that cures poison while also helping you resist poison for a while. But if you didn't read the DMG and unknowingly gambled your life by daring to drink the potion of healing while the anti-poison is still in effect, you can: Suddenly gain one of the two potion's effects permanently! Now you are permanently resistant to poison. This has a 1% chance of happening. Suddenly heal more or become more resistant to poison during the anti-poison's duration! 9% chance. Have nothing special happen. 55% chance. Discover one potion just fails to take effect entirely! The other one stopped it somehow. 10% chance. Discover both potions weaken in your gut, making them have half their normal effect! 10% chance. Discover both potions FIZZLE OUT COMPLETELY, wasting both of them! 7% chance. One potion weakens and the other turns into a new minor poison! Lose a point of STR and DEX for a while. 5% chance. Die! The potions combined to become a potent poison. No saves. To quote the book, "The imbiber is dead." 2% chance. DETONATE! Terrifyingly, this does not instantly kill the imbiber. You take anywhere from 6 to 60 HP in damage and everything nearby takes 1-10 HP in damage. 1% chance. And every new potion you drink while a potion is effecting you means another roll on the table. So you can encounter a lucky NPC that is now permanently invisible or immune to some element thanks to careless drinking, or a player can randomly detonate and seriously wound the party. Also note that the odds of just wasting one or both potions is significantly higher than the odds that something good happens, and the odds that the potions work normally is only slightly better than a coin flip.

The cursed item and artifact rules become SO much more villainous when you realize exactly how much of a pain it was to cast Identify in 1st edition AD&D. I guaran-damn-tee you that most DMs house-ruled the hell out of that spell because Rules As Written, it's the most dangerous, complex, and infuriating spell in the game. Read onwards if you need some ranting insight into how wizards did it in 'the old days.' All right, so let's say you found a big shiny sword after killing a bunch of spiders in a dungeon. It must be pretty awesome magically, right? So you gotta ask the wizard to identify it. Hold on right there, mister fighting man, we gotta take some steps first. Before anything, we gotta make sure your wizard even knows the spell, which doesn't happen automatically. If they didn't receive it from their mentor as one of their randomly determined first level spells, they gotta find either a wizard who knows it or a scroll of identify, and then pass a percentile roll based on their intelligence, which is far from guaranteed. But let's say your wizard's lucky, has the spell, and has it prepared. We can cast it now, right? Sure, as long as you have the material components on hand, which are: a pearl (of at least 100g.p. value) and an owl feather steeped in wine, with the infusion drunk and a live miniature carp swallowed whole prior to spell casting. What, you didn't have a 100g worth pearl or carry a live miniature carp with you while adventuring? How can you call yourself a wizard? Okay, let's say you have the material components on hand and you're all set to cast it. Well, naturally, you can't just tell what it is by looking, you gotta hold the item to examine it. Or, if it's armor or clothing, you have to wear it. I guess you better hope it's not cursed, cuz that's exactly what triggers most curses. But of course, with all this preparation, cost and risk involved for a first level spell, you've got to be absolutely certain what the magic item does now, right? I mean...yeah, you're pretty sure: "For each segment the spell is in force, it is 15% + 5% per level of the magic-user probable that 1 property of the object touched can become known - possibly that the item has no properties and is merely a ruse." 20%'s not bad, right? I mean, as long as you pass the DM's secret magic saving throw roll, which if you fail it by just one point, you get a false positive. And even if you know it gets plusses to hit, "The item will never reveal its exact plusses to hit or its damage bonuses, although the fact that it has few or many such plusses can be discovered. If it has charges, the object will never reveal the exact number, but it will give information which is +/-25% of actual." Now I know what you're thinking, "That kinda sucks, but if we don't get it right the first time, we can try again later, right?" That's where you're wrong, kiddo: "The item to be identified must be examined by the magic-user within 1 hour per level of experience of the examiner after it has been discovered, or all readable impressions will have been blended into those of the characters who have possessed it since." Better hope your wizard had that spell memorized, had all the material components on hand, fed their miniature carp and kept it watered for its very short lifespan, and didn't get their face chewed off by the potentially cursed helmet, or that the nearest court wizard is less than an hour away from you, or you're shit out of luck. At this point, your fighter friend is probably willing to grab the sword and just run off into combat, trying to figure out what the sword does with some field research. He's welcome to, but if the wizard cast that spell, he's in no condition to be fighting anytime that month: "After casting the spell and determining what can be learned from it, the magic-user loses 8 points of constitution. He or she must rest for 6 turns per 1 point in order to regain them. If the 8 point loss drops the spell caster below a constitution of 3, he or she will fall unconscious, and consciousness will not be regained until full constitution is restored 24 hours later." Oh what, your wizard didn't invest at least 11 points into constitution? Get good, you whiny scrub! And there, ladies and gentlemen, is the reason why fireball and magic missile are such popular spells, because it wasn't the first level spell that actively tried to murder your wizard for trying to learn like some nerd.

From what I understand, GG ran an open table where there wasn't a set group, but a pool of players that would schedule games. And so he ran his world more like a simulation, and so timekeeping was very important so that player X couldn't "skip ahead".

"Why would an aristocrat go on an adventure?" looks at real historical monarchs pissing off to the middle of nowhere for a decade, getting captured multiple times and costing their country tons of money in bribes looks at wandering knights

The "Spells Resolve After Melee", in my interpretation, was to give Melee characters a chance to prevent a big spell from going off. To allow players that option. Doesn't mean that the DM will always give you that chance, nor will the monsters always get a chance to take a swing at the mage... But its more or less an opportunity for a melee/martial character to stop a cast. Example: The party is settled around 10 HP after a hard battle, and here comes the last wave. There are two mages in it, plus seven melee. The enemy mages are going to cast Call Lightning and Finger of Death. Your Rogue and Ranger hit the mages, and it prevents them from killing anyone. This also means that, due to AD&D's magic system, they've wasted the components for those spells, making it that much harder and punishing for Spellcasters. This is due to AD&D's Spellcasters being LEAGUES stronger than 5e Spellcasters. AD&D Spellcasters are only weak from Levels 1-5. After that, they start snowballing, and snowballing HARD. So, this is a balancing decision to allow for Martials and Melee-focused classes to interrupt spellcasting that would otherwise turn them into colored rain.

We miss our puff daddy. Please grace our eye balls with stories aplenty!

If there is one thing that should be included in all DMGs in the future is math literacy, dice stats, and probabilities. Not just cause it's important to the game, but it also gives the DM the knowledge to more appropriately balance challenges, and checks; which tends to be a problem new DMs have if they don't already have that knowledge.

its really interesting because it shows how D&D NOW is just a different beast however I do think that some of those sections like the one explaining why we use certain dice would actually be kind of beneficial in modern books.

16:00 I like that Gygax writes it's "easily handled", and the explanation is 265 words long.

Okay let me explain segments turns and rounds: A turn is 10 minutes A round is 1 minute A segment is a 1/10 of a round (you'll see why I didn't say 6 seconds in a moment) Combat is abstracted to where the roll of the dice represents an opening where you can make a decisive blow. The purpose of segments was to factor in WHEN stuff happened in combat. For example, if I'm casting a spell that has a cast time of 2 segments, but the enemy is acting on the first segment, they have the ability to stop my spell from casting. The same is true for my go, if the gnoll shaman is chanting and grabbing a component bag, I know I need to stab him or I'm toast. Your weapons also Have a speed factor that determine WHEN in the round you swing. Daggers are very fast while battle axes are very slow, meaning the dagger can get potentially multiple stabs in before I can swing my axe. So if the party rolls a 4 during initiative, and your weapon has a speed of 1, your attack will land in segment 5, which means so long as an enemy spellcaster's spell is resolving AFTER segment 5, you can cancel the spell. The cool thing is that reach is also a factor, so like if you have a dagger and you're going to be hitting me on segment 4 but I have a Halberd and won't be swinging until segment 7, I will get a free jab at you as you try to close in on me during segment 4. If I had a pike for some reason, I could try to jab you twice before my stab resolves. It's actually a very clever way of breaking down combat because you're always counting up for effects. These time measurements are important because it gives you an easy way to understand when certain effects wear off, when torches burn out, how much oil has burned up etc. It is completely possible to have your torch burn out mid combat and then you have to use the segment of the DMG for blind fighting or attacking invisible enemies. I personally think it's really cool and clever