The Culture: Now You See Why It's A Wargame

All of the things that so many naysayers complained about with the rules of Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 1st Edition are the things that makes the game deliver on the promise of fantastic adventure that the manuals promise to the user. This has to be done as a wargame. Comparing the rules used as-written with the Cargo Cult misunderstanding of the game, which has degraded with each successful edition, proves that everything those claiming that they want from the play experience was there all along- all you needed was to play the game exactly as-written and use the game as-provided.

You do not need supplementary products. AD&D1e can do everything you want with just the three core rulebooks; you don't need anything else, even if some of us like Oriental Adventures, Deities & Demigods, Unearthed Arcana or the Fiend Folio.

But, because of the effects that the rules have, players are compelled to change their behavior. They adapt to the conditions that the rules create; they do not adapt the rules to conform to their whims.

The result is that players are forced to begin thinking like leaders. They have to learn how to assess Profit and Loss, so that they can deduce which leads promise the best return on the investment of time, gold, men, and other resources required to succeed at it. They have to learn how to handle adversity because things don't go their way, or what seemed like the best deal at the time turns out to be a dud and they instead miss out on a massive score. They have to learn how to choose the right man for the job, and how to make do with the men they have available- all consequences of timekeeping.

In short, learning how to win at AD&D1e directly leads to learning the habits and mentality that leads to winning in real life- a direct inheritance from Kriegspiel and Braunstein (and their use to this day in real life military and civilian leadership training).

Theater Kids and others who think this is about Narrative and Storytelling fail to comprehend this. RPGs are not about Narrative; they are about Sport- and Sport in training for War. If you can win at war, you can win at anything short of war.

The Preference Cascade kicked off this past week. Now's the time to leave the Failboat behind. You can start with Jeffro's book and the #BROSR links above.