To Those Who Have Played in non-Solo Games, What are the Advantages of OD&D?

[Morose]

To those of you who have played in non-solo games, what are the advantages of OD&D? Talking just the original 3LBBs, no supplements used.

[Morose]

Although I have only played solo, I think the following are positives.

On the player side:
1. no minimum ability scores for most things.
2. Ability scores are just guidelines for roleplaying, not some kind of straightjacket.
3. Using 1d6 for all weapon damage, there's a wider choice of weapons and no clear "best weapon." This gives you much more flexibility with your equipment.

[Morose]

On the referee side:
1. Descriptions for everything are minimalist, especially spells and monsters.
2. This gives the referee a nearly blank check to decide how things work in his game.
3. Barebones descriptions are a check against the rise of rules lawyers.

[Morose]

OD&D is ideal for games where the players don't have to learn a single rule, if they don't want to. Learning the rules provides little benefit other than speeding up some aspects of play and those are picked up by osmosis.

[El Borak]

For both players and monsters, OD&D is more unbalanced and overpowered in places. Players get Charm Monster and Raise dead, which are very powerful and yet they are always only a hop and skip away from death. All later versions try to make things fair by taking the power out of spells and defanging the monsters to some extent. Later versions just watered the game down.

[El Borak]

Also in OD&D things play out more like you would imagine from mythology or swords and sorcery novels.

[muddywater]

Simplicity and support for originality.

[hengest]

Simplicity and the (almost) need for making the game your own while maintaining its flexibility. As muddywater said above, I guess, in different words.

I agree with El Borak that later versions watered down the excitement of the game while also making it overstimulating.