AD&D is a game that takes work to learn and play. It takes study and practice to become skillful at playing and refereeing. In more than four decades of play I haven't mastered it. I'm probably not even playing it entirely correctly. I am, however, working, practicing, and studying to get better. I don't expect that to ever end. I have found it to be a game worth that effort.
It's also true that one can jump in, knowing nothing of how the game works, and have an interesting and enjoyable few hours of playing it. Some people decide never to go past that point, but I think they're missing out.
If you will, take it as a given that one's enjoyment of a game is greater when one is more skilled at playing it than if one is unskilled at playing it. Let's assume that this is true to at least some degree along most of the spectrum of skill level in playing a game. The obvious truth then, is that if one is interested in playing a game, one should improve his or her skill at playing that game in order to gain greater enjoyment from playing it. Anyone who has played a sport, or chess, or a video game, or any number of other games more than once, will have experienced this improvement of enjoyment with improvement of skill.
When one plays AD&D, just like any other game, one will enjoy it more as one's skill improves. What constitutes skill at AD&D and how can one improve?
Skill at this game can be developed in two broad ways. First is following the rules of the game at all times. That means knowing the rules and practicing the self-discipline to follow the rules honestly. Second is efficiency of play. Many referees will attempt to improve their efficiency of play by not strictly following the rules of the game. This "bad habit" will destroy their players' and their own enjoyment of the game eventually.
PLAY BY THE RULES
The most straight-forward opportunity for improvement is to learn the rules of the game. Read the rules. The manner in which the AD&D rules were written, and the complexity of game they describe, make the path toward complete mastery long. Furthermore, because this game supports open-ended play, the need for rules interpretations, rules extensions, and new rules, creates an ever-growing body of "game law" for the participant. Worse, it's a body of law that is unique to each referee or game club. Despite this challenge, reading the rules (carefully and repeatedly) will certainly improve one's play.
Following the rules of the game requires both referee and player to be honestly interested in playing the game according to the rules rather than achieving a particular outcome in the game. The referee can have no interest at all in the specific outcome of the game. The players must recognize that ignoring rules is cheating, and that cheating ruins enjoyment of the game. In fact, when one cheats, even just by ignorance of the rules, one is no longer playing the game. Imagine playing chess and allowing the king to move as if it was the queen. That's not the game of chess. Imagine deciding that black will win this game, and when white has an opportunity to checkmate, does not because the players agreed that black was going to win. That's not the game of chess either. If it's already decided that black will win, why bother pretending to play at all? If it's already decided the player characters will make it out of the dungeon with enough XP to level up, why bother pretending to play? If the point is only to hang out with your friends, just do that and leave the "game" out of it.
PLAY EFFICIENTLY
Efficiency matters for a couple of reasons. First, many of the things which make the game less efficient make the game less fun. Things such as looking up rules, doing character sheet accounting, and so on are largely individual activities, not group activities. Those in the group who are not participating in them are simply waiting for those that are. Secondly, more progress toward the objects of the game, accumulating experience points and wealth and manipulating the circumstances within the setting, can be accomplished the more of the game session's time is spent on those activities. The less that game session time is spent on the administration of the game, the more that can be spent on making progress within the game.
There are many, many ways by which one may improve his or her efficiency of play. In order of perhaps easiest to most difficult to master some of these are: clear and accurate character sheets, clear and complete notes and maps, game play mise en place, having contingency plans, knowing the rules relevant to your character as a player, knowing the rules relevant to in-session play as a referee.
Character sheets can be hand-written on notebook paper, digital or printed forms, or elaborately automated spreadsheets. What is important is that the player knows where all of the information is and can easily access what is needed, account for resource usage, update encumbrance load and movement rate, and so on. Skillful players adjust their sheets to what works best for them. Such players keep finding was to improve clarity and speed up character sheet operations at the table.
Keeping clear notes and maps of dungeons and wilderness explored is essential to finding one's way home at the end of the session, or back in by the most efficient route down to the next level of the dungeon to exploit. Skillful players will keep these well-organized, and improve their completeness or legibility between sessions. Examining these between sessions can sometimes provide ideas for more efficient play in the next session and for productive use of the characters' time between sessions.
Stealing a culinary term for preparation and setup, mise en place is the staging of everything needed in the session ahead of session time. This includes the equipment that a player or referee would use: books, dice, character sheets, reference sheets, notes, and maps. It includes decisions and plans made between the players in advance of the session. Marching order configurations, combat formations, door entry procedure, room search hygiene, watch schedules, and the like can all be decided before the session in order to make the most efficient use of session time. Preparation includes any in-game actions that can be done outside of the session such as shopping, hiring, and travel in civilized areas. Anything that can be done with little or no interaction with the referee should be done before the session convenes.
There are simple playing techniques that can speed up the motions required of play. Players might designate a roller or specific rotation of rolling duties for surprise and initiative. Rolling "to hit" and damage simultaneously saves seconds dozens of times over. The attention required to know what to roll and when to roll it saves time dozens of times every session, too, while simultaneously ensuring that the player is focusing on details that could be exploited either in the moment or in the next session.
As Graf Helmuth Karl Bernhard von Moltke famously said, "No operational plan extends with high certainty beyond the first encounter with the main enemy force." Condensed versions of this statement abound and it is as true in AD&D as in warfare. Winston Churchill stated the idea in a way maybe closer to how it applies in our game, "the best generals are those who arrive at the results of planning without being tied to plans." Skillful players make plans before the session, then they modify their plans when things inevitably take a different path from the one foreseen. Making a good plan is not one player saying, "let's do this," and the others agreeing. Even if the plan ultimately decided upon is exactly that, the value is in talking through the plan, why it can and can't work, what may go wrong and in what ways. The skillful players have built a framework for thinking about the problem beyond running the plan, even though that's where they start. Low level dungeon delving requires very little of this, as the choices are few and mostly obvious. Lair smashing, heists, sieges, and other more advanced actions cannot succeed without this kind of planning. The rewards in AD&D reflect this: the dungeon delvers can expect to average 145 gold per level per room cleared. If they're skilled, lucky, and well-prepared, they might get through two dozen rooms in a session, which is about 1,100 gold per PC in a 3-player, first level party. That's worth about half a level. At 5th level, that party would haul perhaps 5,800 each, not much more than a quarter of a level. Lair raiders, on the other hand, successfully taking a bandit lord's hoard are likely to gain 10,000 or more a piece. Incidentally, NPC leaders like those in a bandit camp are the best source of magic items in the game.
Knowing the rules relevant to your character is especially important for spell casters. Fighters have troop command capabilities the others do not. Paladins, rangers, thieves, and assassins have their own special rules to exploit. Every player should know and understand these inside and out for their character. The text is short and there's no reasonable excuse for not knowing how these work if your character has them. Spells, however, offer the greatest opportunity to be gained or lost. Skillful players of course read, understand, and memorize how all of their characters' spells work. These players also look for unconventional applications and to address their requirements. Even the most direct spells can benefit from novel use, but most are next to worthless without such innovation. Some spells like find familiar and animal friendship are only useful when used well before the session. Others such as enlarge and bless work when used shortly before combat begins. Planning these as part of a tactical sequence of operations with the other players before the session allows them to be used without eating so much session time as to diminish their value, or to clumsy effect from poor planning and coordination.
Knowing the rules that the referee follows provides an enormous benefit to players that some players simply don't think of. Others might think it unsporting or even cheating to exploit those rules. Those in the latter camp should consider that we are playing a game, not acting out the referee's story. A player cannot play a game well if he or she doesn't understand the rules. A player who willingly ignores the referee-facing rules self-imposes an unnecessary handicap. Players should pay attention to the odds of random encounters in various types of terrain and the encounters likely to be found there. Whether this knowledge is gained through hard experience or study of the rules is the player's choice. Gygax expected the former and admonishes the referee to follow suit. I'm almost 20 years older now than Gygax was when he wrote that admonishment. I don't want to wait for my players to learn every rule the hard way. I may not have that much time. Please, read the rules for both referee and player.
There are referee-facing rules that the players encounter quite quickly and clearly such as their monthly upkeep costs, and chances for contracting disease or being infested with parasites. Other rules such as the random encounter periods in the outdoors, the die used in densely populated lands, in patrolled lands, in wilderness, requires attention to acquire and players might not even be aware it is there for them to learn. In the game I organize, the referees share their "quick reference sheets" with the players on day one. Reference sheets which include several of those sorts of rules. Although it seems most players are still looking cross-eyed at their own character sheets a couple of sessions in, and completely ignoring those referee rules, they all do come to notice the referee rules and exploit them. Some sooner than others, but I love them all.
CONCLUSION
This is a competition, not an exhibition. Skillful play improves one's enjoyment of the game, and like sports, chess, and other such game-playing endeavors, enjoyment is the goal. Also like those other endeavors, this game is ultimately a competitive one as Gygax's words in the the introduction of the Players Handbook points out, "perhaps a war between players will be going on (with battles actually fought out on the tabletop with minature [sic] figures) one night, while on the next, characters of these two contending players are helping each other to survive somewhere in a wilderness."
Sportsmanship, Scholarship, Fraternity & Sorority