Old School Treasure Troves: 1st edition PHB

 It has been a while since I did one of these. I'm trying to get back into a rhythm of regular posts and I figured this would be a good series to continue.

Original printing cover 

 

    So lets talk about the book in question, The 1st edition players handbook. Okay I know that technically this isn't the first edition, and that this is AD&D, and it is not exactly the actual first edition, but for the sake of this post, I'm just going to use 1st edition as short hand.

    The book itself is kinda hard to get these day but there was a re-print that might be easier to get. As with the last book I discussed there are free versions out there, stripped of formatting and pure text that you can find. This books is full of tables and other useful things to pull out on the fly or have as a reference no matter what edition or system you're playing. I wanted to highlight some useful things I really like about this book. I want to mention that this book was written a while ago, it has some dated takes and it is worth remembering how old this book is and the time it was written in. I just wanted to mention that because even something written a long time ago will have something you can take away and use at your table. I say this all the time here and to anyone who talks to me about games, it is always worth reading or playing other games because even if you hate it, you'll find something to take away. So lets hop into it!

 

Reprint cover

 The monk: starting on page 30 of the original printing, The monk from this edition has heavily influenced how I think of monks. They have such an interesting spread of abilities that includes some healing, thief skills, and are pretty good in combat. What I have always deeply loved about this monk is that their late level progression is tied to their ability to overcome other monks of higher level in honorable duels in order to claim their title and gain new mystic powers. I've always loved that and the version of the DCC monk I love the most has all these elements.

 

 Equipment section: Starting on page 35 of the original printing we have a smallish equipment section that covers kind of a lot of things that the DCC book doesn't. Things like cost of clothing, provisions, transport, and livestock. I still find myself referencing this often as I need costs for odds and ends that are not part of the usual equipment list I keep on hand.

 

The Adventure: a small section on page 101 of the original print, it talks about adventure in towns, underground, and in the wilderness. It is a short section with a short article on each of these. Talking about things that help with running in those environments, things to prep for, and how to run those types of adventures.

 

Psionics: this section starts on 110 of the original print. It lays out how you get psionic powers, the odds of having them, what powers you get. It is a little clunky, and these powers are rare, as they should be. It takes an act of god to end up with them and even then, you might not have much going on. I love psionics, one of my favorite supplements for DCC that I've never gotten to use is Mind Games. This section could, with some small effort, get rolled into the DCC rules at your table. I've thought about it many times but never really gotten to it, maybe in a future blog post.

 

Planes: This section starts on page 120 of the original print. I'll admit, I don't think this is immediately gameable but I've always loved this map of the planes.  It is simple but easy to take in. I just really wanted to talk about how much I like this section which gives a quick explanation of the planes.

 

Division of treasure: Starting on page 120, right after the planes, we have division of treasure. I really appreciate this section as a way of covering something that isn't often talked about at the table. Realistically, this is a non-issue, most people don't really need this. Most tables just talk to each other and distribute treasure however makes the most sense. However, this section does cover hirelings and henchmen who might want a cut of the treasure too.

 

This book, overall has some things I've always really liked. It has always been a reference tool I used in other games I ran, certainly through my 3.5 era and my time running 5e. I still use it as I run DCC these days and really do think that this book is a great example of an older book that still has useful in some way. As always, every book and system out there has something you can use, I hope that future posts in this series can share more books I've pulled things from over the years. I think in the future I will take the "Old School" title off this and open it up to other things I've found to be super useful like the Index Card RPG. Maybe that will be our next treasure trove we cover.

 

As always, thank you for reading I really appreciate that people want to read my stuff and see what I'm cooking up. I'm always eager to hear from you guys and know what you guys wanna see more of.