oldkat
Level 6 Magician
Posts: 431
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Post by oldkat on Sept 22, 2017 14:59:36 GMT -6
Anyone play dungeons & dragons from 1974 to 1978?
If you did, did you and your group experience the early TSR modules (before 1979)?
If so, what did your GM (or yourself), do to compensate for the differences between, say, M&T and the MM? or M&M and the PHB? Did one book override the other, or did you take the best bits and pieces from each and draw your own guidelines?
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Post by foxroe on Sept 22, 2017 19:31:50 GMT -6
I started in '79 (a bit outside your range, sorry). We played a glorious hodge-podge of Holmes, Cook, and MM/PHB... and we didn't care (because we didn't know any better). We basically used the rules from Holmes/Cook, with all of the crunch from AD&D, and a lot of hand waving. Edit: In retrospect, we were just playing OD&D + Supplements.
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1979
Sept 23, 2017 8:09:46 GMT -6
Post by distortedhumor on Sept 23, 2017 8:09:46 GMT -6
I was born in 1979, so wasn't playing at that time. in 1992 we started to play a hodgepodge of B from BECMI and the 1st edition stuff as that what I had. I didn't discover OD&D actual rulesets till 2014 when I came across a copy of Greyharp and played a S&W white box one off and became hooked.
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Post by Finarvyn on Sept 23, 2017 12:24:04 GMT -6
I started in 1975, but didn't use any modules for the first half-dozen or so years that we played. We just came up with stuff on our own. The exception to this was that I did subscribe to the early Judges Guild stuff so I had access to CSIO and other materials like that, but most of those products were generic setting stuff without a real plotline. More "sandbox" in nature, or at least that's how we used it.
As to the use of AD&D's Monster Manual, we just started using those stats for our OD&D campaigns as soon as the book came out. Back then we never worried about the fact that MM might not exactly "match" M&T. In fact I still run OD&D that way and I have a 2E MM, C&C's M&T and a copy of the RC at my table during play, and I'll just grab a book at random and use whatever stats are in it for the monster in question. So, sometimes orcs might be stronger than other times. Just adds to the mystery, I suppose.
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Post by talysman on Sept 23, 2017 16:44:52 GMT -6
I've told the story before of how I started playing: in 1976, I and one friend were introduced to D&D by another friend. We did not have the books. Our DM learned from a teacher, who ran a house-ruled white box D&D with all the charts on mimeographed hand-outs. Those were all the rules I saw until I bought Holmes Basic about two years later. I wasn't even sure until I saw the Holmes Basic ad whether D&D was something you could actually buy, instead of something some people had made up as amateurs.
We didn't even know about modules then. Our dungeons were pretty unsophisticated, but they were hand-made, and they were ours.
In high school, we played mostly AD&D, but used the OD&D materials indiscriminately to fill in some gaps, especially before the DMG came out. Even so, we still didn't use TSR modules. I think I ran Keep on the Borderlands once, but it was much later. The only store-bought adventure we ran in high school was Frontier Forts of Kelnore, but I wasn't GM for that one, I was a player, so I can't tell you much on how we adapted it across editions... but Kelnore was written for OD&D, and we were primarily doing AD&D.
Still, I don't think we ever really worried about monster stats. We were using the PHB for spells and psionics, but we took monsters from wherever we felt like taking them. I don't think I ever worried about getting it "correct" until Unearthed Arcana came out. That was when I started trying to make classes that resembled classes in UA, with lots of fiddly details. Took me decades to decide I didn't like that approach at all.
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Post by rsdean on Sept 24, 2017 4:49:31 GMT -6
Anyone play dungeons & dragons from 1974 to 1978? If you did, did you and your group experience the early TSR modules (before 1979)? If so, what did your GM (or yourself), do to compensate for the differences between, say, M&T and the MM? or M&M and the PHB? Did one book override the other, or did you take the best bits and pieces from each and draw your own guidelines? I started in 1976. As far as early TSR modules go, my brother was at Origins in 1978 where the Giants modules were first run. I had thought (someone feel free to correct my recall) that they were the first published by TSR (leaving out, say, Palace of the Vampire Queen), and they were for levels beyond where our campaign was that year. So I made no attempt to run them. I used tne Monster Manual as a resource in the game from the time I got it, replacing a box of 3x5 cards with one monster per card, and all of the stats for ones mentioned but not specified in the OD&D material extrapolated as best I could. Looking back 40 years, I don't really think I needed pre-decided numbers for a wooly rhino, or a banth, or whatever.... As best I recall, we didn't add any of the PHB material into the campaign until the DMG key rules teaser came out in the Dragon, after which we officially "converted", by rerolling hit points and adding the new spells and abilities.
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1979
Sept 24, 2017 9:14:11 GMT -6
Post by jeffb on Sept 24, 2017 9:14:11 GMT -6
Started holiday season of 77/78. Not sure if it was December or January, but Xmas stuff was all over (back when people did not start the Holiday season in October,like they do now).
We used a the 3 lbbs, GH, EW, a Holmes Basic book. I think someone got the MM shortly after. We played "homebrew" adventures and I know the DM used some things from JG as I remember the maps in particular.
I'm 99% positive someone picked up G1 not long after.
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1979
Sept 24, 2017 11:39:34 GMT -6
Post by scottenkainen on Sept 24, 2017 11:39:34 GMT -6
All these anecdotes are light years away from where those of us who started circa 1981-1982 were, where *all* we played were published modules. I think it was 1985 before anyone I knew had even tried creating a campaign that wasn't linked modules.
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muddy
Level 4 Theurgist
Posts: 158
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Post by muddy on Sept 24, 2017 13:50:58 GMT -6
1st post here -
To the best of my memory, I started playing in the summer of 75. A friend invited us over, he was DM and excited about a new game he was playing. We played with the Greyhawk rules, and only he had books, dice etc. At the end of the summer he went his own way and I started DM-ing. Bought the three books, and couldn't make much sense of them. They recommended buying chainmail. Bought that, read it and saw it made no sense relative to the game we were playing, ignored it. Bought Greyhawk and things started clicking. I bought pretty much everything that came out after that up to and including ADD.
No one ever cared about the particulars of the rules. Sometimes we bothered with surprise or initiative, sometimes we didn't depending on the circumstances. So long as we had fun and what I said as DM made sense everyone was good with it. If a player found a rule that they wanted to use, I usually allowed it (for example, weapon damage for various size creature was a complication I didn't care for, but if they wanted to keep track of it, I allowed it. Or if they asked about surprise or initiative in a situation where it seemed appropriate we would use it. We transitioned between rule sets without any problem. "Now fighters get d10 for HP? OK cool". No one ever said anything like "but that should have hit because...." because they know I would say "all that you know is it didn't hit that time, and you are kind of surprised because you were expecting to do some damage". Common sense and a feel for the situation/campaign world supported a more coherent game experience than faithfulness to the rules ever could. A friend tried Dm-ing by the book and the result was humorous. "Critical hit!" series of rolls "you've caused a minor flesh wound to the heart!"
We played all the modules, but usually for a change of pace, when the usual group couldn't get together, we wanted to play some higher level characters (I think 7th was about the highest anyone ever got) or whatever. Never incorporated them into my campaign though.
We had a lot of fun, I wish I still had all of those books etc.
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Post by jeffb on Sept 24, 2017 15:06:36 GMT -6
All these anecdotes are light years away from where those of us who started circa 1981-1982 were, where *all* we played were published modules. I think it was 1985 before anyone I knew had even tried creating a campaign that wasn't linked modules. FWIW- Once the stream of modules started that is what we did too. Most of those early adventures we had were the "megadungeon" type which I did not like very much then, or now. I have always run short episodic adventures. Like Conan stories or Fafhrd and the GM. I never ran gdq as a big epic. I preferred things like Moldvays adventures, and the shorter tournament adventures- s1, s2, c1, c2, etc. Things like GDQ and A series were used i pieces.
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Deleted
Deleted Member
Posts: 0
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Post by Deleted on Sept 24, 2017 15:47:54 GMT -6
I started in 1972.
I played for five years before modules were even available. I've never played in one to my knowledge, and I've never run one all the way through. I tried a couple but couldn't stand the process of running a module.
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Post by talysman on Sept 24, 2017 19:40:06 GMT -6
All these anecdotes are light years away from where those of us who started circa 1981-1982 were, where *all* we played were published modules. I think it was 1985 before anyone I knew had even tried creating a campaign that wasn't linked modules. FWIW- Once the stream of modules started that is what we did too. Most of those early adventures we had were the "megadungeon" type which I did not like very much then, or now. I have always run short episodic adventures. Like Conan stories or Fafhrd and the GM. I never ran gdq as a big epic. I preferred things like Moldvays adventures, and the shorter tournament adventures- s1, s2, c1, c2, etc. Things like GDQ and A series were used i pieces. I never really got into modules. In those earliest days, I had never even seen one. By the time I did... well, I was a kid, with no substantial income, and modules cost more than a paperback book. Even when I had enough money to buy a module, I couldn't bring myself to waste money on one, for a long time. It didn't help that, when I actually saw what was in a typical module, it fell far short of the cross-sections of multi-level dungeons in Holmes, the DMG, or U&WA.
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1979
Sept 24, 2017 19:42:11 GMT -6
Post by Scott Anderson on Sept 24, 2017 19:42:11 GMT -6
I started in 1983. I don't think I ever considered the differences between the several rule sets until about 1987 or 1988. We just used everything. And we did use modules, but we also made up our own stories. I would say 60/40. There were a lot of modules available by the second half of the 80s.
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Post by scottenkainen on Sept 25, 2017 13:10:39 GMT -6
I never really got into modules. In those earliest days, I had never even seen one. By the time I did... well, I was a kid, with no substantial income, and modules cost more than a paperback book. Even when I had enough money to buy a module, I couldn't bring myself to waste money on one, for a long time. I'd keep a list and ask for a lot for Christmas and my birthday!
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1979
Sept 26, 2017 15:42:32 GMT -6
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Post by ffilz on Sept 26, 2017 15:42:32 GMT -6
I started in fall of 1977 with Holmes Basic using the Dungeon Geomorphs and Monsters & Treasure Assortment. My early play is fuzzy, but when the Steading of the Hill Giant came out, I ran that. I also ran B1 when it came out. I'm not truly sure exactly what our rules mix was before end of summer of 1979 when I got the DMG. Somewhere in there we started using the PH to roll PCs, and the MM for monsters, and then the combat tables were published in Dragon and White Dwarf. Certainly by the time I was using modules, I was using the PH and MM. To the extent the monsters in the modules had stats (usually just hit points at that time), we just used them, not taking into consideration they may have been d6 hit dice or d8 hit dice.
I remember one of my friends making some use of Temple of the Frog, but I didn't play in or run it. We must have had some JG modules before 1979, but I don't remember what we got when. Certainly at least some Dragon and White Dwarf modules. Again, whatever I used, even after 1979, I just used the hit points as presented. Some were probably d6 hit dice even though by then we were playing AD&D.
Note that Greyhawk DID upgrade monsters to d8 hit dice.
Frank
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oldkat
Level 6 Magician
Posts: 431
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1979
Sept 26, 2017 18:11:46 GMT -6
Post by oldkat on Sept 26, 2017 18:11:46 GMT -6
I started in 1972. I played for five years before modules were even available. I've never played in one to my knowledge, and I've never run one all the way through. I tried a couple but couldn't stand the process of running a module. Regarding your last comment--do you recall which 2 they were? and why/how things unraveled? But wasn't that only if the alternative Hit Dice per class/per level was optioned in?
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Deleted
Deleted Member
Posts: 0
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1979
Sept 26, 2017 18:32:09 GMT -6
Post by Deleted on Sept 26, 2017 18:32:09 GMT -6
Sunless Citadel and Rob Kuntz' Dark Chateau.
It's way harder to remember what's what in something I haven't created myself. Also, Sunless Citadel is just awful. An hour in the players had dubbed the kobold "dragon trainer" Jar Jar Binks, and half an hour into the second session we just all said "Screw it."
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1979
Sept 26, 2017 18:46:46 GMT -6
via mobile
Post by Scott Anderson on Sept 26, 2017 18:46:46 GMT -6
Sunless citadel was terrible! Speaker in Dreams was better but they already had to house rule at least one encounter because the summon rules they allegedly playtested sucked.
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darien
Level 4 Theurgist
Posts: 135
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Post by darien on Sept 27, 2017 4:26:31 GMT -6
I started in early 2007, when I was thirteen years old. At the time I played D&D 3.5, but from there got into AD&D and other systems as well (Big Eyes Small Mouth, World of Darkness, etc.) and ultimately discovered the awesomeness of OD&D in January of 2015.
My dad was born in 1973 and I was born in 1993, and my dad mostly played AD&D in his day, starting with First Edition in the 80's. Second Edition was his all-time favorite though. I've been introducing concepts from OD&D to him, and he does find it interesting.
When I get some projects of mine finished, I will run an OD&D game for him. My dad was my first DM, and I figured I'd pay back the favor.
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Post by grodog on Sept 27, 2017 9:54:37 GMT -6
I started in fall of 1977 with Holmes Basic using the Dungeon Geomorphs and Monsters & Treasure Assortment. My early play is fuzzy, but when the Steading of the Hill Giant came out, I ran that. I also ran B1 when it came out. I'm not truly sure exactly what our rules mix was before end of summer of 1979 when I got the DMG. Like Frank I started playing in 1977 (the summer in my case), and began with Holmes. This is some text from an early draft of my introduction to _Tales of Peril_, which I ended up rewriting because it was too much about me and not enough about JEH: I didn't own any D&D rules myself until a few years later---at some point between the summer of 1979 and the summer of 1980 before the release of D&DG (which was the first AD&D hardcover I remember waiting for its release to buy)---when I bought the MM, PHB, and DMG all at once, and eagerly devoured them. Since my original PHB was a 6th printing (Jan 1980), my DMG was revised (Dec 1979), and my MM was a 5th printing (probably 1980), I assume that I bought the books in the spring/summer of 1980. And it was only then that I really began to learn the actual rules of how to play D&D myself Anyone play dungeons & dragons from 1974 to 1978? If you did, did you and your group experience the early TSR modules (before 1979)? I remember playing B2 and perhaps B1 after they came out, but I don't recall playing the earlier G, D, S, or T modules until after they were republished in the early '80s with the color covers. We didn't play modules when I was first learning to play, but I don't remember geomorphs or mappinng much either---I mostly remember using those minis to play out battles and scenarios, more like small-scale skirmishes. We probably played some of the Heritage D&D-lite games like Crypt of the Sorcerer and Caverns of Doom, too, since I remember those distinctly (but we also had copies of those, so I may recall using them after we'd bought them vs. earlier with Jon). All these anecdotes are light years away from where those of us who started circa 1981-1982 were, where *all* we played were published modules. I think it was 1985 before anyone I knew had even tried creating a campaign that wasn't linked modules. By the time D&D grew popular enough that we were having D&D sleepover weekends as kids, we were mostly playing modules, but we still made up our own stuff for the game too, BITD. In general, though, we preferred modules since they were better quality than what we were coming up with as 10-13 year olds Allan.
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Post by peterlind on Sept 27, 2017 10:14:29 GMT -6
I started playing D&D in late 1977, but actually my first experience in roleplaying was in Metamorphosis Alpha before I started playing D&D. Starting in 1978, I regularly played drop-in games at a local game store, where the house rules would vary from GM to GM. These games were almost all OD&D in the beginning, and the house rules mostly involved initiative and spell point systems. I remember one initiative system where the order of actions were phased like this: Movement, Missile, Melee, Magic. In '78, I remember a couple of GMs that specifically would not go to AD&D.
A group I ended up playing with extensively for the next several years played a mix of Holmes and AD&D. We would swap GM'ing, with some of us using Holmes initiative and some of us using 1d6 initiative. The Monster Manual was used and we also used the DMG Tables that came out in The Dragon before the DMG came out.
The modules would be split between us -- we had an unwritten rule that a module would not be bought/read unless you were going to run it. So my friend had the Giants/Drow modules that I ran through and I did not get a copy at that time. The modules I ended up running included Tomb of Horrors and Dark Tower. I would not run strictly according to a module though, and would make improvised changes as play proceeded. This included adding things like secret doors, extra passages/rooms, treasures, changing or adding monsters, etc. so I did not run a module straight.
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1979
Sept 27, 2017 22:03:52 GMT -6
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Post by sixdemonbag on Sept 27, 2017 22:03:52 GMT -6
I wasn't alive in 1979, but I bought the MM PDF reprint and it is as awesome as I imagined it to be. I use it as a reference for every edition. It's a classic.
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1979
Sept 28, 2017 11:33:40 GMT -6
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Post by howandwhy99 on Sept 28, 2017 11:33:40 GMT -6
My first experience with Dungeons & Dragons was not in 1979, but that was the year I first met the kid who would later introduce me to the game. We were in kindergarten and he was a bully. He stole my crayons and giant eraser. I didn't like him.
Several years later in middle school science class this same kid, whom I never talked to, whispered across the lab desks wanting to know if I'd buy a gaming book from him. 5 bucks for a hardcover. And I was a heavy reader. Apparently he had stolen the book from his older brother. I'm guessing he mostly wanted money. That was my first RPG purchase.
That night I pulled the book out from between the box spring and mattress and read it under the covers. I was not dumb as a kid, but it was very hard to make sense of what the game was. "Unearthed Arcana". And it truly was. Some esoteric arcana I tried hard to puzzle out, but was eventually thwarted by my parents taking the book away.
This was just odd because I was already reading plenty of Stephen King, I'm somewhat ashamed to admit, which was full of more sex, terror, and adult words than anything in D&D. I would see the book again, but it wasn't long before it was successfully collected by the garbage man. It wouldn't be the only RPG book of mine to be thrown away. But it was a few more years before 2nd edition was released to much fanfare and my friends entered the hobby too. That was when I really started to play D&D - and still had no idea what we were doing.
Edit Add: To be sure, there were plenty of other activities like Dungeon! boardgame and Fantasy Forest that we played growing up, but I never associated them with D&D. My true entrance to the hobby began with the advent of 2nd Ed. An error in game design I would never go back to at this point.
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1979
Sept 29, 2017 12:31:57 GMT -6
Post by grodog on Sept 29, 2017 12:31:57 GMT -6
The modules would be split between us -- we had an unwritten rule that a module would not be bought/read unless you were going to run it. So my friend had the Giants/Drow modules that I ran through and I did not get a copy at that time. We did this too, and I still have some of my friends' original modules (which they gave me or I bought when they quit gaming), which had name stamps put onto them Allan.
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1979
Sept 29, 2017 14:05:23 GMT -6
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Post by ffilz on Sept 29, 2017 14:05:23 GMT -6
The modules would be split between us -- we had an unwritten rule that a module would not be bought/read unless you were going to run it. So my friend had the Giants/Drow modules that I ran through and I did not get a copy at that time. We did this too, and I still have some of my friends' original modules (which they gave me or I bought when they quit gaming), which had name stamps put onto them Allan. My friend an I split who got what up to some extent also. I don't remember exactly what we did with modules, I know I got the Giants and Drow modules and he got JG's Dark Tower. We also originally split Wilderlands of High Fantasy, with me at least later getting the whole thing (and selling it and buying it again, I'm not sure if I'm on my 2nd or 3rd copy not counting a backup copy). Before getting into D&D my friend and I would also split who got to buy which 1/72nd scale WWII model kits and such (not out of not wanting duplicates but fairness when the store only had one of each kit). Frank
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