The Most BROKEN Class in AD&D!?!?!?

    One of the central maxims of the OSR is that the answer is not on your character sheet. "Builds" as such aren't really a thing, between games offering random stat generation, extremely frontloaded classes with fairly minor abilities in the grand scheme of things, and so on. Early editions of Dungeons and Dragons were much the same, though by the 80s we're beginning to see options for things like "Nonweapon proficiencies" that would eventually be the skill system we know and love* today. Now I'll confess, as I always do, that I'm an optimizer at heart, and the term player skill makes my hair stand on end. The "most powerful class" tends to be the spellcaster, simply because they're the ones that have the most options to Just Do Things that the rules say they can do, regardless of an individual referee's interpretations of the rules; Magic Missile will always do the same amount of damage, etc. So imagine my surprise when, in the process of reading through Dragon #121, I found a class that fundamentally breaks a core part of the game, the same way that Invisibility and Knock can supplant the role of the rogue (especially with those skill percentages). 

    Early editions of Dungeons and Dragons are, on a mechanical basis, games about exploring spaces and making maps with a side helping of possibly-killing-people-who-don't-look-like-you-and-taking-their-stuff. Dwarves have abilities to detect sloping passages, the "Mapper" is considered core enough to be a part of the recommended jobs a party doles out, and recommended traps all involve messing with people's sense of direction (Like B1's Room That Teleports You To A Different Part of the Dungeon). The first bit of GM advice in OD&D is to make several layers of dungeon map. This all makes sense for a game where-much like the hokey pokey-part of the challenge is getting in and another part is getting out. It's the intended play experience to have to try and figure out where you are, and deal with the consequences of being wrong. 

    Enter the Genin, from Dragon #121. 

    (As a side note, because I have nowhere else to put this: Early Dragon had a really weird relationship to extra classes, insisting they be used For NPCs Only despite having very clear and very real player-facing abilities, requirements, and responsibilities. It was claimed that this was specifically so referees wouldn't be confused when a class they'd never heard of showed up at their table, because I guess people's PCs just hopped from dungeon to dungeon? I've been told that's how things were back then, although it seems odd to me as someone who grew up in the heavily regulated organized play environment of the Pathfinder Society. However, by 1987, they seem to have relaxed this attitude and the classes in the magazine are explicitly for players.)

    The Genin (created by David Howery) is specifically in conversation with Oriental Adventures, which on the mechanical side of things is a really interesting take on an Advanced AD&D, attempting to add more to the noncombat side of the game, but which is buried under a pile of racism. The class is explicitly presented as an alternative to that book's Ninja, which isn't a class proper so much as a mandated dual-class because being a ninja was a secret identity like you were Batman or something. A lot of it is just rogue or monk stuff, but there is one class ability in particular that stood out to me:

They can just do the thing

    There doesn't seem to be any limit to this. No restrictions on being In A Dungeon, no needing to study an area for 2d12x1d6 fortnights, no "If the DM permits," no X-in-6 chance, no player skill. Genin can just accurately read and render maps. They just can. And if you're designing a game about exploring dungeons and mapping them, then this ability, more than invisibility, more than anything else in the game, fundamentally removes the core loop of the game, because you always know where you are.

    That is, of course, if that's still the game you're designing.

    A lot of digital ink has been spilled about when Dungeons and Dragons changed from being a game about exploring tombs and catching scabies to one about heroic fantasy and kissing elves (at least in its marketing). There's a solid case to be made that it was the release of Dragonlance, and the shift in what a module meant (from a location to an adventure with like, plot and stuff). 

    But for me, I think it's here, in January of 1987, where mapping has become so far removed from the core purpose of the game that "You completely ignore this facet of exploration" is just a fun side ability a class can have, right alongside disguises or hearing stuff good. While obviously an optional class in a technically-third-party magazine there's a direct line from the Genin to Rangers' travel abilities in Fifth Edition being "You get to just ignore the travel rules, which no one uses anyways because they're kind of a waste of time."