Why I like AD&D

Apart from the nostalgia of it being the version I was brought into D&D with back in the day, I find it has more, shall we say, atmosphere. Decades later, I tried getting into D&D for my boys back about ten years ago or so at the height of Potter/LoTR mania.  I purchased the version 3, then the version 3.5.  While at first the crisp, professional artwork, graphic design and elaborated rules (complete with monster stats) impressed me, I soon lost interest in much of what it contained.

To be brief, I found it was all about expanding the game as broadly as possible in order to sell more products. I found the quality lacking. The books I bought began falling apart with only scant usage, while the old PHB and DMG and MM I had from the early 80s are still in top condition.  Though, to be honest, I could make that complaint about most things today, but we won't go there.

Anyway, another thing I noticed was how 'antiseptic' the game was.  The rules were just that, rules.  They were ABC/123.  They explained everything confined to a game function.  There was little to any 'fluff', or any real attempt to inject the literary inspiration of this or that component into its game concept.

Take a little movie we watched last night, that I try to watch every year: The Exorcist. Still, after all these years, a pretty intense movie.  When my boys first saw it, that's what they said.  Not necessarily scary, but at parts disturbing and certainly intense.  Imagine what it was for audiences way back in the day, when Nixon was still president and 8-Track Tapes were all the rage.

So in AD&D, you have the Exorcism spell, no doubt fresh on the minds of the D&D audience (the PHB being released in 1978, a mere 5 years after the movie The Exorcist).   Though society was beginning to splinter already, there was still a sense of 'common narrative' that everyone understood.  People knew about the movie, even if they didn't see it (and before VCRs, that was pretty much everyone who didn't see it when it first came out).  You knew that the exorcism was no walk in the park.  In the movie, in fact, we're told that the awesomely named Lankester Merrin took part in an exorcism that lasted months!

So in AD&D, the Exorcism spell is one of the longest potential spells, in some cases able to last upwards of 100 Turns!  For a game based on minute rounds and 10 X 10 rooms, that's a lot. But it makes sense.  After all, this is where the game is: evil vs. good.  Try to argue all you want about the game being open for evil PCs, the fact remains the basic assumption of the early years of D&D was that you were the good guys fighting against the baddies.

And Exorcism is one of the most potent spells in that arsenal.  Just as most Cleric spells are longer to cast than MU spells, there must have been something about the Exorcism spell that said 'be prepared to hunker down on this one.' 

But for the 3rd edition versions?  How long does this spell of spells, this ultimate weapon against the powers of Hell take?  That would be a Full Round Action.  Wow.  My thimble runneth over.  That must be some diary of a whimpy ghost that's being cast out with that. No appeal to a source, no attempt to bring color to a bare legalistic schematic.  Just a spell that takes a full round. 

See what I mean?  One of the things I noticed was that the original D&D games (including the AD&D incarnation) were based on literary, mythical, media or any other sources that the creators were inspired by.  Later editions of D&D were based simply on D&D. And nowhere does that show more than in the magical realms, particular spells and items.  This will be one of my ongoing observations, FWIW.