AD+D Game Play Rules

Without a gaming group I have been doing a lot of re-reading of most of my AD&D 2nd edition books I own, a lot of these books gave me plenty of ideas for some of my gaming sessions. While reading The Complete Fighter's Handbook, at the end of the final chapter there is a paragraph that sums up how I feel what game play in D&D should be like.

The paragraph reads "That's the end of The Complete Fighter's Handbook. Now that you've read it, the thing to remember is this: Use whatever appeals to you as the DM, and nothing more. If any rule or recommendation worries you, if you feel that it will unbalance your campaign or skew your players toward bad habits, then don't allow it in your campaign. As for all the other rules, recommendations, and guide-lines: Try them, you may like them."

This simple statement is what makes AD&D a fantastic RPG to me, the game itself tells you the DM, you can adjust the rules as you see fit. Basically making the game your own, you do not have to use every game rule or supplemental rule out there, to run the game though the basic rules do help and give you guidance. One rule I had incorporated into my AD&D game was to use the Heroic Award Point system (I can not remember what game system had this in it). But, based on a Pc's heroic actions he/she would be awarded anywhere from 1 to 5 points that the player could then use to change their fate, maybe on a bad die roll, allowing a reroll, a spell to be cast, or perhaps the Pc would be able to bend bars to escape jail. I'm sure you get the general idea.

Reading many blogs from the RPG Bloggers site and responses to different blogs it is quite evident Dm's have their own style of gaming and gaming rules, especially when it comes to AD&D 2nd edition, which I think has the largest assortment of optional/homebrew rules out there in RPG's.

So there’s my two cents on the subject for what it is worth.