The New AD&D Campaign: Where Have We Been?

Greetings!

Well, I am beginning a new AD&D campaign. I was rolling up some characters the other night, and I was struck by how damned easy and fast it was. Sorry, 3X, etc, don't hold a candle! It took me 5 minutes per character. I was amused that for example, the weapons and equipment--that so often alters all kinds of things in other systems--has very little affect upon the AD&D character sheet. I can remember well spending large blocks of time figuring out the effects of various gear, whole sections of skills, stat blocks for followers and animals--all of this takes literally but minutes with AD&D. It was quite an eye-opener! I was sitting there, smoking one of my fine cigars, and I just laughed out loud in joy at how easy and fast it all was! It was like I had found the Holy Grail or something! I was just blown away that I had been spending years working on stuff--and dealing with the ever-growing problems of everything taking up more and more time, it seemed...when all along I had a solution right there on my bookshelf!

I recall how my players would insist on making up their characters with the computer, typically using Word and some kind of character-generator, or at least a pre-made character template. Paper and Pencil? Forgettaboutitt!!!

I laughed as I remembered how much time working up just one character could take, and as I gazed at my notebook sheet with the AD&D character jotted down, in moments--I thought to myself, "Damn, dude...where have we been all these years? We've been wanting this stuff to go like this forever!"

Where have we been, indeed.

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK