2 Questions about playing 1e with the Classic ruleset

So I want to run 1e (or even OD&D) using the 1e extension and the classics/2e ruleset. I doubt I am the only person (or the first person) to try this, so I had a few questions for those that have already. . .

1) Do you use the 2e core books in your games? I wasn't sure if I needed to buy those or if it was too weird.

2) How do you speed up combat so it doesn't get bogged down like 5e combat seems to? I always used to run Theater of the Mind back in the day, but now when I play on FG, the thing that really seems to grind it to a halt is gridded combat. How do I run that so it doesn't take 2 hours for a single combat?

Any help is appreciated.

I would use the 2E books. They are far more similar than they are different.
Combat for me in 5E does not take 2 hours... have your players have their actions ready before their turn. You should use targeting and have it set up before the NPCs next turn.

Good Day Doseyclwn :)
If combat sessions are taking too long, if it is because the players (or DM) are not prepared and deliberating during their turns, try the Combat Timer extension, put a bit of emphasis on how critical it is to be ready when it is your turn :)
https://www.fantasygrounds.com/forum...sion-(v-0-0-1)

EDIT: Sorry, this might not work in 2E, I was thinking 5E

You can still use Fantasy Grounds and theater of the mind it without using a battle map. Just have the players declare whom they are attacking and you can use the targeting in the combat tracker to target the appropriate bad guy. Everything works the same just without the map and grid.

Our combats started off slow but speed up considerably over the years as we got used to the system. Tactical movement and decision making does add some extra overhead but as time goes on players get used to it which makes it go faster.

TBH 1E, 2E 5E doesn't make much difference in combat speed unless your idea is to simplify magic otherwise it goes about the same.

The first 3-5 rounds are slower but after that 90%+ of users will have their PCs figured out. There's always that one person who seems to have trouble performing any task though... that's more of a pebkac issue than an FG or ruleset issue.

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Originally Posted by doseyclwn

So I want to run 1e (or even OD&D) using the 1e extension and the classics/2e ruleset. I doubt I am the only person (or the first person) to try this, so I had a few questions for those that have already. . .

1) Do you use the 2e core books in your games? I wasn't sure if I needed to buy those or if it was too weird.

2) How do you speed up combat so it doesn't get bogged down like 5e combat seems to? I always used to run Theater of the Mind back in the day, but now when I play on FG, the thing that really seems to grind it to a halt is gridded combat. How do I run that so it doesn't take 2 hours for a single combat?

Any help is appreciated.

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Part of the reason to use the core books is to add more ability to automate the game. Drag drop class, race, kits, spells, npcs, items/etc. You can input all those by hand but due to the complexities of managing automation some of it would be difficult for some folks. PHB/DMG and the MM are all going to save you some grey hairs. With those you can run the game easily even if you dont buy anything else IMO.

As someone mentioned previously, Smiteworks has a 30 day return policy. If you find it's not worth it then seek a refund and you're not out anything.

I'm working on a Hackmaster 4e extension for this ruleset, which is kind of a combo of 1e, 2e, and some extra rules, so while I haven't tried running straight up 1e on this ruleset, I've gotten pretty close. If you're going to run 1e, I 100% recommend grabbing the PHB, DMG, and MM. Even if you find you need to make tweaks (as I do), it's going to save you a ton of time, as you can just copy a record and tweak it as you see fit.

For example, I've got one campaign created where all I use it for is to make copies of PHB items (armor, weapons, spells, etc) and tweak them as needed. Then I export that for use in my main campaign, which currently uses a combination of my "corrected" items/race/class/list and the 2e ones. Eventually one day it might get to the point where I can stop loading the 2e version of the module, but since I don't want to do a month worth of data entry before playing, this lets me kind of get the best of both worlds and convert things on kind of an "as-needed" basis while still falling back on 2e stats (which are usually super close) if I haven't gotten to it yet.