The Sublimity of OD&D: Organization and Layout

The original games, particularly OD&D and AD&D have a bad reputation of being "a disorganized mess". In fact that's the selling point for a lot of Retroclones: "nice, new, clean organization!", "much better layout", etc. The more I play D&D though, the more I start to realize OD&D has the best organization.

In the Little Brown Books the player section, on creating characters, has about a paragraph or two of description for each choice (race, class, etc...), with a note on restrictions and function. Only later does it go into the statistics and rules of the classes themselves. Almost all rolls, except saving throw and attack rolls, are kept in the Referee's section. This allows the Referee to make rulings, instead of players requesting rolls and making use of "skills".

It also keeps the rules for rolls by the activities themselves, and the activities are under relevant sections, instead of pre-loaded in character generation (like in 3E). Rules for searching for secret doors are in the underworld adventures section, and affects of being an elf are described therein, instead of under the elf section. This allows for two great things. First it encourages players to make decisions based off of what's fun or what they want: instead of analyzing the skills and abilities of options. For example if the player wants to play an Elf, they just play an Elf, instead of looking for the best option. Then they through play they get to see what being Elf is all about.

Second, it allows for constant change and updates. Instead of the Races or Classes being tied down to their initial description and abilities, anytime a new situation comes up, the character options can be factored in then. For example, if we run a Sword & Planet campaign, where ray guns are a weapon, and cyborgs are a common "monster". Normally there isn't a save vs "ray gun" (though we could just use Death Ray). Just for the example's sake, we want the Fighter to fill the Flash Gordon/Buck Rodgers, bad ass role and we give him a +2 vs Ray Gan saving throw. There's no need to change the Fighter, or add rules into the player's section. Simple under the Ray Gun description we note that Fighters get a +2 bonus.

A rather short post. I'm sure there's more to be said on the topic, and there's already a lot that has been said.