D&D 1E Old Timers: How was D1 supposed to be run/go down?

[pming]

Hiya!

This seems to answer my question pretty well.

I think I alluded to that idea -- the idea that TPK was more acceptable back then. What seemed unreasonable with that first D1 encounter was that was the first and explicitly unavoidable and seemed to me to be a TPK if combat was chosen. I have been disabused of that last idea (not 100% a TPK), so, yeah, all good. So duplicity, stealth, and combat were all written-in as viable strategies.

I'd just nit pic a bit here and say that it wasn't "written-in as a viable strategy". From my experience, the vast majority of encounters/areas in a 1e module had virtually zero "consideration" for what the PC's might do. Not always, sometimes a blurb out "the PC's will probably try to..." notations when dealing with some particular crafty/experienced baddie. But usually all of that was up to the DM. Case in point...

It never occurred to me at the time, but looking back I wonder why an evil wizard would go through all the rigmarole of attaining lichdom just to lay down in his pyjamas in a random tunnel in the middle of the Underdark, surrounded by only a few magic mouths:
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This. "Why". This is one of the things that the DM asks himself and comes up with a reason for his own campaign. IMNSHO, this is a far superior method of writing an 'adventure module'; it gives only an interesting and/or believable "thing" and lets the DM and players fill in the blanks. In this case, it's only giving an interesting "thing" (a lich in a cave in the 'middle of nowhere'), and leaving the "Why?" up to the DM.

Why? Easy, because the lich is hiding from a high level paladin who is tracking him down. .. .. No, wait. I mean that he's here because he recently escaped utter destruction by a group of high-level adventurers who destroyed his lair...the lich barely escaped with his phylactery and his here for some peace and quiet after re-hiding his guts and is now planning his revenge. .. .. Actually, scratch that. He's here because he is planning to meet with a Vampire Drow and his Succubus lover for an evil pow-wow about possibly joining forces to take out a mutual enemy. ... ..etc, etc, etc. And those were just off the top of my head. It's all up to the DM.

^_^

Paul L. Ming

 

[Yora]

I always assumed this was where he hid his body while roaming around with astral projection.

 

[Rob Kuntz]

The Known of the "Game" vs. the Unknown of "Fantasy" quandary. They meet somewhere in the middle when and where individual DMs state, "This is what it is". OD&D/1E play is an art form in progress whereas 3E onward is that art form pared down to a strict set of circumstances only. Therein lies a riddle only unraveled and understood (and then only in part, for the art form continues to unwrap itself the more that you inquire about its limits) through participating in the former.

 

[Blue Orange]

The Known of the "Game" vs. the Unknown of "Fantasy" quandary. They meet somewhere in the middle when and where individual DMs state, "This is what it is". OD&D/1E play is an art form in progress whereas 3E onward is that art form pared down to a strict set of circumstances only. Therein lies a riddle only unraveled and understood (and then only in part, for the art form continues to unwrap itself the more that you inquire about its limits) through participating in the former.

I guess your point was a lot of the possibilities that were still open in OD&D/1E play were closed off in 3E? Certainly with fewer characteristics it's easier to build a new class or monster from the ground up...I'm reading through old Dragon magazines and it's interesting the plethora of weird and often silly classes and monsters people came up with

 

[Rob Kuntz]

I guess your point was a lot of the possibilities that were still open in OD&D/1E play were closed off in 3E? Certainly with fewer characteristics it's easier to build a new class or monster from the ground up...I'm reading through old Dragon magazines and it's interesting the plethora of weird and often silly classes and monsters people came up with

Possibilities can only be closed off in infinite applied imaginative play if one shuts down the inquiries possible for such expansion, predominantly through strict and unrelenting adherence to more and more rules and the formats attaching to them.

 

[Blue Orange]

Possibilities can only be closed off in infinite applied imaginative play if one shuts down the inquiries possible for such expansion, predominantly through strict and unrelenting adherence to more and more rules and the formats attaching to them.

Thus the OSR, I imagine.

But nobody can stop you from house-ruling your game the way you want...

Did you ever play D1 with Gygax and the rest, BTW? It would be interesting to have some insight on how it was done before actually being published...

 

[Rob Kuntz]

Thus the OSR, I imagine.

But nobody can stop you from house-ruling your game the way you want...

Did you ever play D1 with Gygax and the rest, BTW? It would be interesting to have some insight on how it was done before actually being published...

The OSR is but a simple codification of an unstated and still ill-defined philosophy which is more intuitive and far ranging in application than can be put to paper. This is what we discovered during the play-tests, even though there could have been some samples put in OD&D that illustrated such ranges of use rather than stating, "Why have us do all of your imagining for you?" OD&D was a base that was to be expanded upon in different ways and degrees by each individual user, and was never meant to reach an accord which one might call a standardized or consensus view.

Whereas it is true, theoretically, that one can change what they do not like or add what they like to the rules/game/play, that is not the majority view as expressed through the play of formatted adventures that predominate play sessions, it is the minority view. In reality, market to table, most D&D players of standardized rules since 3E (especially with 3E) know that one would break the system if you tinkered with it too much.

I played one session (as an elf) in D1 but had to bow out due to deadlines on a project. The playtest took place at the old Dungeon Hobby Shop and I am not sure how far they got as a team.

 

[Quartz]

It never occurred to me at the time, but looking back I wonder why an evil wizard would go through all the rigmarole of attaining lichdom just to lay down in his pyjamas in a random tunnel in the middle of the Underdark, surrounded by only a few magic mouths:

This is what's known as a plot hook.

 

[Jaeger]

This is an ideal in DMing.

It is not an ideal in module writing, which is a very different thing. A writer must decide how hard the challenge is and how many possibilities for resolution they are going to accommodate in explicit writing. ...

As the others who replied before I did have pointed out, this was not the design or play paradigm pre 3e D&D.

One needs to divest oneself of the idea of the "balanced encounter" with much of pre 3e D&D. There was simply no such notion!

Because this:

I think 'modern' play has moved so far away from the game being meant to challenge the Players, to the game being meant to challenge the Player Characters. That's a whole other thread though!

However you think modules should be written now, this certainly wasn't part of module design back when D1 was written. Back then it was considered perfectly reasonable for the PCs to blunder into an overwhelming challenge and all die.

IMHO a lot of the change in paradigm shift in play revolves around the 3e redesign and the way they changed what character creation defined, and more importantly what rules from b/x 2e that were dropped from the expected mode of play. I think that the influence of the time of the idea of playing RPG's explicitly as 'storytelling' systems coughwhitewolfcough was a factor as well.

I think that this lead to the character being identified as a more personal extension of the player, thus making character death and TPK less palatable to to many coming into the hobby at that time that largely make up its ranks today.

But that is the subject of a whole 'nother thread!

 

[the Jester]

I always assumed this was where he hid his body while roaming around with astral projection.

I seem to recall running him as having been recently reformed from his phylactery, which was well-hidden underground, and having only his reserve gear.