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I've been reading Tom Moldvay's Basic/Expert D&D from 1981 and it's been bizarrely illuminating. I've always wondered what the deal was with why gold, rations, light, and spikes were so poorly integrated into the game and lo and behold, Moldvay provides the answer.
For example, take doors:
NORMAL DOORS: Doors in a dungeon are usually closed, and are often stuck or locked. A lock must usually be picked by a thief. An unlocked door must be forced open to pass through it. To force open a door, roll Id6; a result of 1 or 2 (on Id6) means that the door is forced open. The roll should be adjusted by a character's Strength score adjustment. The number needed to open a door can never be less than 1 nor greater than 1-5. Once a door is opened, it will usually swing shut when released unless it is spiked or wedged open. Doors will usually open automatically for monsters, unless the door is held, spiked, or closed with magical spells.
SECRET DOORS: A secret door is any door that is hidden or concealed. A secret door usually does not look like a door; it may be a sliding panel or hidden under a rug. Any character has a 1 in 6 chance of finding a secret door; any elf has a 2 in 6 chance. The DM should only check for finding a secret door if a player says that the character is searching for one and searching for one in the correct area. The search takes one turn. Each character has only one chance to find each secret door.
LISTENING: A character may try to listen at a door to hear what is on the other side. For each character listening, the DM should roll Id6. A result of 1 (1 or 2 for demi-humans) means that the character hears any noises being made by the creatures on the other side of the door (if any). Each character may only try once per door. Thieves have special chances to "hear noise" (see page B8). The undead do not make any noise.
This actually makes sense!
Pretty much everything else follows the same pattern of a-ha moments where Moldvay explains a mechanic, provides trivial implementation details, and I wonder why no roguelike ever finished implementing the game as it was in 1981.
It also explains *so many* other aspects of why Moria/Angband (and roguelikes more generally) are so mechanistically incoherent. The system itself was never meant to feature a solitary PC! Sure, there's supposed to be permadeath, but if a single member of the party survives, *you should be able to return to town and recruit new ones* (AKA, the Wizardry stream of trying to make computerized D&D).
Similarly, the ultimate pointlessness of gold. Experience points were awarded primarily for treasure recovered (1 GP = 1 XP), not for ploughing through mobs. This incentivized exploration, risk-taking for wealth, and finding ways around combat, not just charging through. It makes mining actually useful! It creates loud noises, but doesn't cause attrition to a bunch of squishy meatbags.
Anyway, I want to make an Angband variant that follows Moldvay's B/X ruleset as closely as possible and strips out the MERP Moria backbone and tries to finish implementing D&D in Angband. So I'm wondering about a few things: which version was the last that hewed closely to D&D/AD&D mechanics? takkaria ripped spikes out entirely back in 2013, so I'm guessing the version era that I'm hypothetically looking for is well before even that.
But I don't know whether it makes more sense to work with the last version that had maximalist D&D intentions (which is likely a dumpster fire to compile or understand, but has hooks to finish implementations of mechanics) or to try to re-implement the gutted parts (and more) in the modern codebase. Or should I just start a greenfield project from scratch?
For example, take doors:
NORMAL DOORS: Doors in a dungeon are usually closed, and are often stuck or locked. A lock must usually be picked by a thief. An unlocked door must be forced open to pass through it. To force open a door, roll Id6; a result of 1 or 2 (on Id6) means that the door is forced open. The roll should be adjusted by a character's Strength score adjustment. The number needed to open a door can never be less than 1 nor greater than 1-5. Once a door is opened, it will usually swing shut when released unless it is spiked or wedged open. Doors will usually open automatically for monsters, unless the door is held, spiked, or closed with magical spells.
SECRET DOORS: A secret door is any door that is hidden or concealed. A secret door usually does not look like a door; it may be a sliding panel or hidden under a rug. Any character has a 1 in 6 chance of finding a secret door; any elf has a 2 in 6 chance. The DM should only check for finding a secret door if a player says that the character is searching for one and searching for one in the correct area. The search takes one turn. Each character has only one chance to find each secret door.
LISTENING: A character may try to listen at a door to hear what is on the other side. For each character listening, the DM should roll Id6. A result of 1 (1 or 2 for demi-humans) means that the character hears any noises being made by the creatures on the other side of the door (if any). Each character may only try once per door. Thieves have special chances to "hear noise" (see page B8). The undead do not make any noise.
Pretty much everything else follows the same pattern of a-ha moments where Moldvay explains a mechanic, provides trivial implementation details, and I wonder why no roguelike ever finished implementing the game as it was in 1981.
It also explains *so many* other aspects of why Moria/Angband (and roguelikes more generally) are so mechanistically incoherent. The system itself was never meant to feature a solitary PC! Sure, there's supposed to be permadeath, but if a single member of the party survives, *you should be able to return to town and recruit new ones* (AKA, the Wizardry stream of trying to make computerized D&D).
Similarly, the ultimate pointlessness of gold. Experience points were awarded primarily for treasure recovered (1 GP = 1 XP), not for ploughing through mobs. This incentivized exploration, risk-taking for wealth, and finding ways around combat, not just charging through. It makes mining actually useful! It creates loud noises, but doesn't cause attrition to a bunch of squishy meatbags.
Anyway, I want to make an Angband variant that follows Moldvay's B/X ruleset as closely as possible and strips out the MERP Moria backbone and tries to finish implementing D&D in Angband. So I'm wondering about a few things: which version was the last that hewed closely to D&D/AD&D mechanics? takkaria ripped spikes out entirely back in 2013, so I'm guessing the version era that I'm hypothetically looking for is well before even that.
But I don't know whether it makes more sense to work with the last version that had maximalist D&D intentions (which is likely a dumpster fire to compile or understand, but has hooks to finish implementations of mechanics) or to try to re-implement the gutted parts (and more) in the modern codebase. Or should I just start a greenfield project from scratch?
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