Planescape 1e

[Oh my, it seems that it's time to delurk once again. And I haven't posted even once since the change of Planewalker's engine.]

'Lo berks. Frankly, I think it's quite good idea, but why stay with 1e and don't go further? Maybe you could make use of pre-AD&D version of games: 3LBB (i.e. Three Little Brown Booklets or Original Dungeons & Dragons, plus maybe official Supplements III & IV, i.e. Eldritch Wizardry & Gods, Demigods, and Heroes; I suppose that Supplements I & II, Greyhawk & Blackmoor, wouldn't be necessary), the "0e" from 1974? I'm serious with that one.

Personally, I have never played 0e, though I'm recently lively interested in it, and find it quite approbriate for use with PS, although somewhat different from almost anything I'm used to. Nevertheless, no matter how strange it would seem (remember, back then there were no "Great Wheel" or anything - just few suggestion that some kind of planes exists), it actually should work well. Ideas like "guidelines, not rules (and even if so, rather simple ones, except maybe all that messy "how-to-hit" mechanic )", "skills of player, and not his character", and the whole "sandboxes/wilderness" conception (which should be easilly converted to use in some planes-oriented game)...

Oh, and be sure not to miss that it would be "from zero to some-kind-of hero; mortal one, actually" play. Also, remember about the Rule of Threes; i.e.: there were only three classes to choose from (Fighting-Man, Cleric & the Magic-User; no Thief or anything - everyone has to be cautious). The most important drawback that comes to my mind is that without some serious modifications, it has to be a "human-only" (or "mostly-human") game.

Those who speak Polish can read more about 0e, old school, retro-gaming etc. on the Demons & Dragons, a blog by Polish grognard Jarl Frå Oslo, and everyone else have many fabulous websites to choose from, just to mention the Grognardia. For some good retro-propaganda you should check A Quick Primer For Old School Gaming, and maybe also the What Made Original D&D Great article. If you (or anyone else) will go with that idea, I'd love to read some game report, actual play, or whatever.

[PS: Sorry for any errors in my post, now it's 4:25 AM here in Poland.]

'Zebub - you can always buy them, e.g. on the DriveThru RPG. I also found on the Internet incomplete -- inter alia without spells -- OD&D Consolidated Rules (simillar in form to the nowadays SRD), though I'm not sure how accurate they are. Also, it hasn't been modified since 2000, and it seems from the introduction that the autor wasn't too "grognardish" (for example, he blames the original pictures and level-titles, calling them "silly").

The schools of magic existed in 1st edition, but they didn't have specialist mages back then. Instead, illusionist was a completely separate class, and the other specialist mages - necromancer, enchanter, conjurer, and so on - didn't exist at all. Magic-user, which was the main arcane spellcaster class, got most of the non-illusion spells.

Arguably, 1st level illusionists were a more distinctive, more interesting class than 2e illusion specialists (and I've heard it said that 1e druids were more distinctive and interesting than 2e druids became after they were made a kind of specialty priest, with generalist clerics subsequently getting access to spells that were exclusively the province of the druid class before). 

 I only played 1e a few times, so opinions on gameplay are hearsay, mind you, though I know that specialist mages and priests were new to 2nd edition, and I know for a fact that 1st edition spell descriptions included schools of magic even though specialists of those schools didn't yet exist. The 1st edition Manual of the Planes was the first place to note spell alterations by school of magic, I think.