The hardcovers for ADAD came today, and wow.
Wow.
Wow.
I got both the core rulebook and bestiary. They are impressive, chunky, thick books full of first-edition goodness. Each one is an inch-and-a-half thick, totaling more than 1,000 pages of the game. If you want to play the first edition and want "more stuff" within an incredible recreation of the original rules, this game can't be beaten.
Better yet, the rules are balanced, and things remain deadly to the highest levels. If you play by the rules, you won't have invincible characters or those annoying GMNPCs that litter the Forgotten Realms. Characters are meant to gain levels, possibly do great things, grow old, leave first-level heirs, and die.
The most influential shall live on as gods' servants and not hang around in the mortal world to solve other people's problems. Elminster should have retired to become the librarian of Mystra, lived on the planes to pass wisdom, and left that terrestrial "high mage" slot open for a PC to try to take the title. If you earn that place, all the better. When the world needs him, Elminster can appear as a ghost to give the heroes quests. The Realms would have been a better place.
The world, like a garden, should live in cycles and seasons.
As a referee, your game encompasses the garden's stories.
The problem with 5E is that it treats the characters like a TV show that never ends, matures, or allows (or needs) the next generation. They stick around until we are sick of them and their superpowers and watch another show because we get tired of them. You are superheroes who never retire and never let others replace you. The game is very self-centered and inwardly focused on heroes. Gold means nothing. People never die. The planes are overly central to the game and not mysterious places of the afterlife or strange dimensions beyond.
No place in the planes should be "livable" by mortals for long. Staying out there will transform you, consume you, kill you, or drive you insane. The planes are not home to anything other than magical creatures, spirits, strange beasts, or alien life.
Remember how vulnerable you are?
No, the planes are not your home nor a place you want to remain for long.
ADAD is a game I could start a Realms or Greyhawk campaign in and savor how great everything is. Characters would be afraid and careful, but they would need to test fate to save the day. Spells would be a lost art, hard to find, and magic treasures would be unique and special. Gold would be the currency of the realm and the way for characters to quickly advance in power. The world would be filled with danger and the terrors of evil, with walls around civilization needed and armies raised to guard the way of life of a nation. Armies between nations may battle, and they would be necessary to drive back the hordes of demon-worshipping humanoids from the wastelands.
Even better, a Nerrath campaign surrounded by a random hex-crawl world. Let's send off the 4E campaign setting as a proper, first-edition place full of danger and mystery. Welcome home.
The first edition has you thinking about your future, what you will pass along, and whether you will survive to do everything you wish. You settle lands. You raise heirs. You serve the gods or kneel to darker powers. You vanquish evil or succumb to it. You build a kingdom and a future. You defeat demons. You travel to the planes and beyond.
And in the end, you pass along what you can.
You are not the story; you are a part of history.
Maybe.
If that poison dart or pit-trap full of spikes doesn't get you first.
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