“It’s your job to create events outside the standard sequence of ‘I roll to hit. They roll to hit. I roll to hit.'” — Matt Finch

“Playing the game as written removes an astounding number of the problems people had with AD&D.” — -C

It’s funny how things like this get started. A Dungeon Master doesn’t always get to pick what’s actually getting to going to get played. Someone might mention in passing how this or that ruleset or module is kind of cool. Then it starts coming up in conversation off and on until somebody else declares that they would totally do something like that. Before you know it you’ve got the required critical mass to trigger the sort of planning and coordination it takes to get a game off the ground.

That’s how is with the Eastern style campaign idea that’s currently getting kicked around. Certainly, first edition AD&D was never really at the top of my “want to run” list. I’ve always assumed it’s just too much game for what I’d normally want to do. In spite of how the old Oriental Adventures book as fallen out of fashion over the years, it nevertheless retains a surprising amount of cachet. And as long as I’ve had this volume in my collection, it does gall me that I couldn’t really tell you how its contents would work in actual play.

The biggest strike against it for me has always been the bewildering, incomprehensible, and fantastically Byzantine combat rules. I could never really make myself slog through them all, to tell you the truth. Taking a hard look at the Oriental Adventures rule book the past few days, I was surprised to see that it seems to tacitly repudiate the combat rules of its parent game while assuming that players will be doing something much closer to B/X in practice. It dawned on my that I could actually run the thing. Or large swaths of it, anyway.

At the very least, the summary of the combat sequence there in the Oriental Adventures rules is easy to understand. Using it as a starting point, it’s possible to flesh it out by dropping in portions of the Dungeon Masters Guide that make sense. Anything that seems missing or that is overly confusing can be patched up by interpolating rules of thumb from other, better edited variants of the game that I’ve played incorrectly for decades.

Here’s a summary of what I get doing just that:

• SURPRISE: Take each side’s best DEX mod. The side with the higher value gets the difference as a bonus to surprise and as a bonus to avoid surprise. (Note that in some situations, the Iaijutsu proficiency can provide a -1 to the die rolls.) The players are rolling to see if they are surprising their opponents– low is good. If both sides are surprised, the lower result wins. If they are tied, neither side is surprised. Surprised groups may not act during the first combat round.
• INITIATIVE: All actions are declared before the dice are rolled. Initiative is by side. Kensai get a +1 bonus. Wu Jen may take a +3 bonus once per day due to their ki ability. There are no other modifiers for this roll.
• SEQUENCE: The sequence of play is not explicit. I presume that Moldvay’s “5 M’s” are adequate: Morale, Movement, Missiles, Magic, and Melee. I also presume that spell-casters may not move. If initiative is tied, this sequence is followed for everyone with each sequence step taken as having occurred simultaneously.
• MORALE: The AD&D Morale rules are astonishing. The nuance of when to check combined with the many modifiers and the range of results– this is some serious stuff here. The most surprising thing about it? It’s checked on an individual basis by all hirelings and on a group basis by monster types!! The number of modifiers for henchmen are incredible, but a base of %50 combined with subtraction of the PC’s Charisma-based loyalty bonus should be sufficient for people that want to keep things moving. (Any penalties for extraordinary PC behaviour can be calculated between sessions.)
• REACTIONS: Note that all other things being equal, a character with Charisma 18 will not ever receive a hostile or violently hostile reaction. A party with initiative thus has a strong incentive to parley. Of course, a DM will apply these rules with common sense. But the modifiers for bribes, racial preferences, and alignment factors from the henchmen section are in force here, so the DM is not completely on his own for this. Also note that the situation modifiers indicate that the party can parley after battle has been enjoined and gain significant reaction bonuses by a sufficient show of force.

You know, James Maliszewski said that most people “ignored weapon proficiencies, segment-based combat rounds, grappling/pummeling/overbearing, helmet rules, and a host of other distinctive elements of AD&D” back in the day. At this point, I have to wonder how much of of even the core combat sequence got used.

Or course, it’s kind of a running gag in the game blog scene that if you consult Gygax’s AD&D books for something, you always always ALWAYS end up stumbling across something that you’ve never seen before, so I expect this sort of thing, really. But it still kind of blows my mind!! I mean… when you think of all the complaints that have ever been levelled at old school D&D combat over the years, it’s just plain gobsmacking to think that there was plenty in the books that directly addressed so many of the commonly perceived issues with the game.

From Forum, Dragon #151.

But there it is. The morale and reaction rules not only shorten the time it takes to resolve combat by having the monsters run away when it’s clear they’re outmatched… but they actually include a means to get the two sides talking and negotiating even after the trading of blows has ensued! And in a clash between two rival gangs, a combination of casualties and desertions can trigger a death spiral that rapidly causes an entire line of fighting men to disintegrate!

Given that role-playing originally grew out of miniatures wargames, it shouldn’t be that surprising to come across this sort of thing in one of Gygax’s books. Still, it’s hard to believe that this was right there all this time. (Granted, I was forbidden from looking inside the DM’s guide back when it ruled the roost. I’m naturally going to be somewhat late to the party….) While I tend to prefer the leaner, meaner rules of the Moldvay Basic set to the imposing tomes of AD&D, I have to admit that this is something I could stand to have in my game. Certainly, this sort of accurate modelling of a fighting force’s cohesiveness is not something I would think incorporate into a game where I am simply being as “imaginative” as possible!