January 10, 2026 Session

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 start playing there are a ton of situations that they don't cover.  AD&D works the exact same way.  For example, while the combat chapter of the Dungeon Master's Guide looks really solid, there's a lot of gray areas in it that each DM has to decide and communicate how they are going to handle.

Major differences that you have to cover with players:

• You can't be whatever you want and there are limits.  There are limited nonhuman races, that are limited in what character classes they can be, and there are level limits for them.
• There is no long rest.  You get one hit point back a week if you are essentially immobile.
• A 20 and a 1 aren't necessarily special.
• You are unconscious at 0 hit points, dead at -10.
• You have to train and spend money to advance in level, it's not automatic just because you have enough experience points.
• Your 1d6 short sword is never going to do 48 points of damage.
• Armor class works in reverse compared to 5E (lower is better).
• Combat is messy with party initiative, surprise, flank/rear attacks impacting armor class, multiple attacks/round impacting initiative, casting a spell eliminating dexterity from a spell caster's armor class, and getting "hit" meaning the spell doesn't get cast and disappears , and determining what you can do during each segment of combat just for a few things.

There are also my rules to factor in.  To keep things simpler there are a few things I don't worry about:

• Spell components
• Psionics
• Modifiers for different weapons with different base armor classes

I also incorporate a lot from the first 200 issues of Dragon magazine.  These include: races, modules, non player classes, the barbarian class, the barbarian cleric class, barding, and the critical hit/critical miss article.

Background Behind the Campaign

The campaign begins on the Sea of Grass (think the Great Plains).  The characters are all members of the Eagle Clan, which is a nomad clan that lives on their horses and lives in yurts.  The clan hunts buffalo, deer, other herd animals, as well as the Bubalis - an eight foot tall, fifteen feet long version of the buffalo.  They are nomads, expert horse archers, and live a life involving hunting, raiding, and plundering.  Our characters are all starting out at 15 years old and are the children of the chief, whose name is He Who Bathes in Blood.  I understand this is impractical, but maybe they were adopted?

This is a barbarian-themed campaign.  Characters are barbarians, barbarian clerics, some centaurs (all from Dragon Magazine), and a few cavaliers and paladins that ended up with the Clan.

There are many clans on the Sea of Grass (Raven, Leopard, Wolf, Fox, Bubalis, etc.).  The Eagle Clan is the only one where women are also warriors.  No other clan uses horse archers.

Because they are 15, the characters do not speak other languages yet.  They are getting ready to go on their first quest to become "blooded."  

Characters

Barbarians do not like magic.  They are okay with barbarian clerics because they are tied to the clan's gods, but other magic is bad and should be destroyed.  This means that we won't have magic users, clerics, or illusionists in the campaign as player characters - they will be the bad guys!  Since we're barbarian heavy, we can't have a lot of nonhumans, they won't fit into this mix well.

So the characters need to be focused around barbarians, the barbarian cleric class, and the handful of cavaliers or paladins that I have evil plans for later on.  We also ended up with a centaur who is a ranger/druid.

The First Quest

For the first quest our characters need to become blooded.  They will travel to where the sun sets and hunt a bubalis and bring it back.  Before they do so, they gather in He Who Walks in the Grass' yurt.  He Who Walks is the shaman for the tribe.  He is so old that there is nobody living who remembers him as a young man.

Before the quest begins, the characters must have a vision.  They drink a concoction and have a vision.  The vision runs like this:

They are members of the Fox Clan.  They cross the giant river to the south of the Sea of Grass.  On the other side, after several days, they encounter farms and merchants that they plunder and kill.  This is great fun and they do this for several days.  As they turn north they encounter a patrol of heavily armed/armored soldiers on horseback - one of whom is decked out in ornate armor and wearing lots of purple.  This warrior is in charge of the patrol.  It's a serious battle and several Fox Clan members are killed.  Finally all of the soldiers are killed, with the one in purple being killed last.  To show honor to him, the Fox Clan scalps him and cuts off his face to bring back to their tribe.

The vision changes, not the vision leads into an enormous stone and marble city.  It stretches to the horizon and extends to the sky.  In the larges, most ornate vision a man in purple sits on a throne.  The soldier that was scalped/defaced is brought before him and he flies into a rage.  The characters notice there are similarities between the two.

The final part of the vision shows thousands of heavily armed/armored soldiers streaming north across the river into the Sea of Grass.

He Who Walks in the Grass tells the party that this was a vision of what will be.