Keith the Thief wrote:
Page 105 of PHB directs you to the DMG for "To Hit" tables.
Is there a hidden combat matrix somewhere else in the PHB?

The magic items in the old modules are often described in the DMG so I think you'd be missing something without it, but I see your point.

Well, certainly the THAC0 tables are in the DMG. But if you think about it, you don't really need them, do you?

I mean, they're just game mechanics, albeit game mechanics that sit at the core of AD&D. But they're just a way to handle fights.

But in the PHB, you find the true essence of AD&D. If you use the DMG alone, you have to come up with the classes, the alignments, the spells, the items, that whole system of concepts that make up AD&D yourself. The DMG (albeit marketed as "essential" to AD&D really is just secondary. Except for the magic items (and maybe the XP tables for the MM's creatures).

And all of those, you can make up yourself, with a little imagination. Just use the items, weapons and spells from the PHB.

Example: Gandalf's Staff would be an +2 Staff of the Istari, being able to cast Light (like the spell) 3 times a day, and if you hit the ground with it, it would explode like a 10 D6 Fireball (like the spell), shatter any ground yet leave the wizard and his allies unhurt (except that the wizard would likely fall into whatever hole he created, unless his spells would keep him aloft).

As for the XP/monster tables, I think everybody has used custom-made XP tables at least once.

To make it short: If you play with the PHB, you play a recognizable AD&D game.

But if you take the DMG in isolation, you have only a generic book of gamemastering for any fantasy RPG. But all the important things (classes, atributes, alignment, spells, planes, even Psionics) are described in the PHB.

Keith the Thief wrote:We've "gotten the band back together", BTW, and my old college group is starting an AD&D campaign using Google+ video chat.
It's pretty damn cool.
I've been collecting for years.  
Now I might actually get to use my D&D stuff!

Now there's a thought...

Any idea if there's something like a "virtual game table" where you can sit and play with peoples from around the world? You know, with an igrained dice roll engine so the players can't cheat?

A few dice, pencil and paper, the Player's Handbook, and a DM Screen (Any printing from 1st through 10th) (EDIT) and ANY fantasy Adventure Module is all you need to play AD&D.
And you really only need the inside panels of the earlier prints (1st - 6th) of the DM Screen since the outside panels are just artwork and Psionics tables.

Yes, post above edited to include module.
And with a Monster Manual, you can create your own adventures.

DMG. It has everything.

Ankles wrote:
Well, certainly the THAC0 tables are in the DMG. But if you think about it, you don't really need them, do you?

I mean, they're just game mechanics, albeit game mechanics that sit at the core of AD&D. But they're just a way to handle fights.

But in the PHB, you find the true essence of AD&D. If you use the DMG alone, you have to come up with the classes, the alignments, the spells, the items, that whole system of concepts that make up AD&D yourself. The DMG (albeit marketed as "essential" to AD&D really is just secondary. Except for the magic items (and maybe the XP tables for the MM's creatures).

And all of those, you can make up yourself, with a little imagination. Just use the items, weapons and spells from the PHB.

Example: Gandalf's Staff would be an +2 Staff of the Istari, being able to cast Light (like the spell) 3 times a day, and if you hit the ground with it, it would explode like a 10 D6 Fireball (like the spell), shatter any ground yet leave the wizard and his allies unhurt (except that the wizard would likely fall into whatever hole he created, unless his spells would keep him aloft).

As for the XP/monster tables, I think everybody has used custom-made XP tables at least once.

To make it short: If you play with the PHB, you play a recognizable AD&D game.

But if you take the DMG in isolation, you have only a generic book of gamemastering for any fantasy RPG. But all the important things (classes, atributes, alignment, spells, planes, even Psionics) are described in the PHB.

I could not do this, but I am a closet dumbass.

Seriously, it's taking all my brain cells just to find the damn tables these days, so I really do need all 3 books.

But you are correct, although I can't remember how the hell you do THAC0.  Doesn't matter.

Tough call but had to vote for the PHB over DMG. Though the DMG is a wonderful thing and I find something new or newly-understood every time I dig into it, the PHB is the core of the game for me.

Part of it has to be that for the first six months or so of my AD&D career, a PHB was all we had. I was voluntold to be the DM after our first session with an experienced AD&Der and basically made up my own monsters and combat system based on the things mentioned in the PHB. It was a wild ride and I constantly try to get back to that.

The Players Handbook is my "desert island" gaming item, so it has to get my vote in a poll of favorites.

Toric wrote:DMG for me.  In my opinion, this is the best RPG rulebook ever published.

Toric wrote:DMG for me.  In my opinion, this is the best RPG rulebook ever published.

Is it your favorite, also?

The MM is still my favorite by a long shot.
But now that I've staggered back into playing the game, I think the PHB may be the *best*.
That wasn't the case a few years ago.

gyg wrote:DMG for me all the way, I can still pick it up and seem to get something new out of it (perhaps suggests my attention span isn't that great though!)

2 questions about hard backs that have always been a low-grade niggle to me-

1 - why did TSR "present" the DDG
2 - why did the MM2 have stats for the squirrel?

answers on a postcard please........

Because they needed a rival for the housecat...which could easily kill a 0-level standard human.

For me, the greatest RPG rulebook ever written is the 1st Edition AD&D DMG. There is a warmth to the writing therein that has never been replicated -- full of personal anecdotes from Gygax. As an aside, I reread all of the core 1st Edition AD&D rulebooks -- DMG, PHB, MM -- every five years simply for pleasure.

--Alphonso Warden