So you’re interested in the way things began? You find yourself wondering with nostalgia and curiosity, “What was Advanced Dungeons & Dragons like when it was first released? What did those first players think, feel, and experience?”
These are the thoughts that make you a first-time AD&D Dungeon Master in 2017. These are the thoughts that brought me to that place. And so here I am, preparing for my second campaign as DM.
Even though I had GMed many other RPGs–at least fifty games of D&D 4e, maybe more of FFG’s Star Wars RPG, with a smattering of others–I felt like it was best to start by going through some published AD&D modules. If you’re a first-time AD&D DM, I’d encourage you to do the same: pick a good published module for beginning characters and start from there.
But if you are indeed going to take that route, let me give you a few words of advice that will put you light years ahead of where I was when I first started this journey: