I hope to be able to start a new AD&D campaign soon. This would be the first time playing AD&D, for me as the referee and probably for the campaign participants as well.
To get us started as quickly as possible, I put together another character creation cheatsheet. You can find it at this link.
We start by rolling ability scores with a seemingly strange percentile dice method. Actually, this is just simulating Method III from the DMG, i.e. roll 3d6 six times, pick the highest roll, repeat for each of the six stats. The percentile method accomplishes this with only one roll for each stat, to a 0.5% accuracy.
For those who are interested in the methodology, I used the excellent AnyDice tool to calculate probabilities for each result, rounded to the nearest 1%, and mapped the final result to percentile dice. I let the results 3–9 "give" their percentage share to the result 10 since their probabilities are all below 0.5%. Thus, the possible attribute spread is 10–18. This creates almost only above-average characters!
I picked Method III because there's no choice involved and the method creates very viable characters right away. It also encourages players to try out different classes depending on what the dice gave them.
Returning to the cheat sheet, we pick our class next. As in the OD&D cheat sheet from my previous post, we're only handling Human characters. The idea is that the other playable races will become available as players "discover" them in the world. This is again a great reduction in complexity, even more so than in OD&D, but still allows us to experience the whole spectrum of classes, and nopefully will even free up enouogh mental RAM in order to try out the psionics mechanic.
Next, alignment. I think rolling for it is best: if you don't want it to matter much, then there's no harm in rolling. If you want it to matter, then this will prevent players from coordinating on which alignment they choose, making sure that no one alignment will dominate the campaign.
As for my approach, I would like to experiment with a "Werewolf-style" social deduction dynamic, where PCs don't know each other's alignment from the start, and thus don't know which "team" they belong to. In my mind, alignment won't actually matter much at first level, but will become more and more important as the characters level up. I'll let you know how this idea goes.
Anyway, we roll for alignment and adjust based on class. Then checks are made for exceptional strength and psionics as needed. We roll Hit Dice the standard way and then roll for height, weight, and secondary skill.
I only included height and weight tables for Humans. The DMG requires up to two percentile rolls per stat (if you roll average, you roll again to allow a small variation), but I reduced it to one percentile roll. The result will be the same, for example, rolling 60% followed by 30% is the same as rolling 18% with a single roll.
The rest of the cheat sheet is standard by-the-book, with weapons and armor restrictions listed for convenience. I didn't get around to making equipment packs and I don't know if I will. For one, the AD&D equipment list is much larger, and also buying equipment seems to be part of the game according to Gary – you're supposed to shop around and find suppliers, stock can run out, etc.
In practice, I think I'll prepare some pre-generated characters including equipment for the very first session, and if that goes well, handle shopping asyncronously between sessions (if the players are up to it).
A couple of bonus cheatsheets round out the pdf. The first is a very minimal character sheet! I'll use it for pre-gens and let you know how that fares in practice.
The second is a conversion guide from OD&D characters to AD&D characters assuming standard 1974 OD&D rules.
That's it! I'm quite satisfied with this material, and hope it will allow us to quickly get to playing. RPGs have to compete with videogames and other entertainment forms, and I sincerely hope that my quick character creation tool will help give everyone a great AD&D experience.
Now I'll go and study the DMG. Cheers!
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