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January 10, 2026 Session

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This was the first session for our 1E AD&D campaign.  I used this session to talk about how 1E AD&D is different and how I will run things.  I discussed the background behind the campaign and the whys behind the character types that we're going to need.  We rolled up our characters.  Finally we began our first quest. How is 1E AD&D Different? There has been a lot written about this and many You Tube videos.  I played this game back in the early 1980's and one of the things to understand is that there wasn't an internet or social media to tell us if we were right or wrong with how we played.  We had the rule books, made the interpretations as best we could, and went from there and had a great time. Dungeons and Dragons comes from war games.  I enjoy playing a lot of old school war games.  Something really important to know about these games - even though the rule books are extensive, they aren't exhaustive and you find that once you sta...
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The Paladin

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  When I think of the paladin in 1E AD&D, I think of the Knights Templar.  Paladins are holy warriors.  It is difficult to be a paladin, difficult to play one properly, difficult to DM one in a campaign, but they have some interesting potential! First, it's difficult to become a paladin.  Player characters must be human.  There are also a lot of minimum ability scores; strength of at least 12, intelligence of at least 9, wisdom of at least 13, constitution of at least 9, and a charisma of at least 17.  They also have to be of lawful good alignment.  In fact, if they perform an act that is chaotic they have to find a lawful good priest, confess, and perform penance! So why is the paladin difficult to play?  First, paladin's only have lawful good henchmen and will only associate with players of good alignment.    Paladins will only join a party of non-evil neutrals on a single adventure basis and then only if it furthers the cause of l...
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Cities and Towns

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Cities and towns are important locations for role playing game campaigns.  Characters can get supplies, information, tips, adventures, training, healing, NPCs/henchmen, new spells, sell things, etc.  They are also great locations for sidequests and opportunities to waylay a campaign. These are tough to design from scratch, especially if you are new to this.  Before we get into some thoughts on how to do this remember that you don't have to do it from scratch.  There are a lot of campaign cities and towns online (many are free as pdfs!) so this is something you can use and just tweak to your game system or your campaign. Now, to do this from scratch, a few things that it helps me to remember: Unlike in Roman times, medieval towns and cities didn't have many people in them.  Fourteen thousand was a decent sized city in medieval Europe.  Now, it's a fantasy game so you don't have to be "real" when you design your city.  But if you want a medieval feel the...
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