I finally get to play OD&D again today! :-D

[Finarvyn]

So happy! OD&D around my gaming group consists of me running and the group playing. They mostly want to play 5E nowadays anyway, so much of my OD&D "gaming" consists of coming to places like this one and talking about rules, and I'm the only person in the group who runs OD&D so I'm always a DM and never a player. (Been like that since high school, actually. Back then we all traded off, since I moved away I've been the go-to DM.)

Today I go to a local library to play OD&D. No pressure or expectations, just looking forward to rolling some old school dice again.

I had a lot of fun tracking down a backpack full of rulebooks, pens & pencils, old school dice, and so forth. My usual gaming backpack is all 5E stuff, but I had another empty one and I stocked it for adventure.

If I think about it, I'll post a recap of the game later.

[Vile Traveller]

Looking forward to your report! Is this organised by the library or a private game at the library?

[Finarvyn]

Public, so anyone could show up.

Five players and the DM. Four of the players are 3E and/or 5E guys, plus the 5th was me. I tried not to be bossy but be helpful in character creation, while the DM moved around and made his rulings. I don't always recall which book I got certain rules from (or even which edition) so sometimes I was less than helpful, but I like to think it was a positive experience overall.

I did give a short "pep talk" to the crew about how they had to rethink things a little and conserve resources more. They all wanted to blow their wad way too fast.

One character death early on as the player was pretty reckless, then he got a pregen and we kept playing. When we finally ran out of time we were surrounded by kobolds and trying to strategically withdraw. We lost another character (same player as before, only this time he died in an altruistic manner) and the other four were still in a maze of hallways with kobolds in pursuit....

[Finarvyn]

I played OD&D yesterday, for the first time in years. Usually I am the DM, or we play 5E.

I spent the morning trying to decide what to put in my gamer backpack. Out went all of the 5E stuff, in went rulebooks, notecards, dice, yellow pad, pens and pencils, peanut M&Ms, box of Finieous Fingers minis, and so forth. (Spoiler: turns out that most of that was wasted. I ate some M&Ms and used some dice, but most of the stuff never left the backpack. I did loan out some pencils and dice. When I run something at Fair Game we’ll have the advantage of allowing players to buy dice right there. I think they have some poly dice sets under $10, but all we used the whole day is 1d20 and 3d6 so they could buy four dice for around $4. Heck, after character generation all we used is 1d20 and 1d6, so they could pick out some dice they like for two bucks. Not too shabby.)

I got to the library (it turned out to be an easy drive) and met Scott face-to-face. We were in this gigantic room for big meetings. A dozen or so tables, lecture podium with Scott’s computer on it, screen with graph paper on the wall, lots of empty space. Huh. We moved a couple of tables around to make a U shape facing the screen. I introduced myself to a nice guy named Tai, who was the only player there at the moment. He said he has been playing in the regular 5E table at the library, but knows nothing of OD&D. Aiden showed up and found a spot. Another player trickled in, Robert, who is a big 3E guy. Finally Ben joined us at the table. Before we got underway some of the guys were talking about what they wanted to play. Three of the guys had played some 5E, one was a 3E player, then there was me. Aiden was talking about maybe a tiefling bard. I suggested that we wait for DM instruction, as some of those options (well, all of those, actually) might not be available. Robert said, fine maybe he’s play a ranger then. I said we probably should wait to see what Scott had in mind for options. Turns out it was 3LBB only.

Rolling for characters, 3d6 in order of Str, Int, Wis, Con, Dex, Cha. My dice started out hot (Int 16, Wis 17) then cooled at the end (Cha of 6). I came into the session planning on running a fighter but the high Wis tempted me into being a cleric, but another player chose cleric so I decided that my Cha would be perfect for a dwarf and took the fighter route. We got to swap stat points so I chiseled away both Int and Wis to build a decent Str for my dwarf. Tai, playing Rex the elven MU, started out sitting across the table, but moved near me when he realized I had a clue what was going on. I decided that my dwarf would be the defender of his MU, who also had the top Charisma of the party (17, I think). Scott told us that we would get 5,000 XP for our characters, so the elves had to decide how to divide that up. The one elf player chose to divide among fighter and magic-user but then chose to be a fighter for this session so never got any spells. I suggested to Tai than if he wanted a 2nd level spell he should be all magic-user. Scott told me that I was already teaching the players how to power game. Ouch.

So, let's see … most of this is from memory (but I cheated and looked up the names) and here are the characters, all level 3 with one random magic item.
1. Marv = Thorin, dwarf fighter (me, with +1 axe)
2. Tai = Rex, elf magic-user (with ring of water walking; “little bloodthirsty”)
3. Aiden = Korrin, elf fighter-MU (fighter this adventure)
4. Ben = Card, hobbit fighter (with ring of invisibility)
5. Robert = Jack, human cleric (with scroll of fire resistance)
* Scott = DM

The adventure began near the dungeons of Greyhawk (I think only Scott and I had a clue what that meant) and we were all indentured servants to a wizard who started us off with a pep talk that if we would go into the dungeons and bring him back loot then we could earn our freedom at the price of 1,000 GP per person freed. We looked at each other and did some simple math – our goal was to get in, find 5,000 GP, and get out. (NOTE TO SELF: I am totally stealing this intro when I run OD&D at Fair Game. It’s simple, gives a purpose, and lets us get to play quickly without baggage. Nice!)

We picked marching order if we were in single-file, also in double-file. Then when we got underway the elf F/MU (fighter today) broke all of that and charged ahead with the notion of busting down doors and attacking anything in sight. (NOTE TO SELF: I totally forgot the numbers for breaking down doors and detecting secret passages using 1d6 rolls. We did a bunch of this and I need to look up the numbers and put it on my DM screen or something like that.) We found prisoners in a cell and he wanted to kill them. He saw a rat scurry under some hay and he threw daggers at it. We nicknamed him "little bloodthirsty" which annoyed him a little, but also caused him to back off a little from his bloodthirsty ways. In his defense, he was pretty young and a 5E player so his understanding of the scale of OD&D was off. The elven MU wanted to test out his ESP spell on the first prisoner we found, but I convinced him to hold off a bit. Another thing of interest to me was the notion that if it’s not nailed down, someone wanted to take it. We found a bunch of chains and one of the players suggested that we might need them. I pointed out that (1) we already had two 50’ ropes in the party, (2) chains are heavy and will slow someone down and maybe they couldn’t fight, and (3) the chains weren’t going anywhere so if we needed them we could always come back and get them. I realized that none of the 5E games I’ve played ever bothered to count encumbrance and maybe the notion of NOT taking the chains was an old school one. It was certainly new to them.

Our DM was drawing a map on his computer and projecting it on a screen, but he didn’t have a mouse so he paused the action to go get one. I seized the opportunity to talk to the team about resource management and said that we shouldn’t run from everything but that we needed to be aware that spells and hit points were a VERY valuable resource and blowing them all early would result in us all going home early. In spite of the fact that my dwarf had the lowest charisma in the room, my message got through somehow.

So, with renewed restraint and focus we proceeded to spend the next few hours exploring the dungeon. We were cautious but not scared. We found a room of 8 orcs and “little bloodthirsty” decided it was finally time to get into some action so he charged into the room and was promptly hacked down. We withdrew and spiked the door shut (the others laughed when I picked spikes and mallet early on but were happy at the moment) so they couldn’t pursue. My dwarf took two big hits (6 damage plus 6 damage) and I was down to 1 HP so the cleric healed me while the “little bloodthirsty” player looked at the replacement PC sheet he was given – hobbit fighter with magic sword.

“Hey, I can detect gold!” he blurted out. “That might not have been something you would have told a party of guys you just met,” the DM commented.

Anyway, back into action and we continued to explore. Lots of corridors all over the place. The DM was drawing a general map on his screen for us while I made my own map. At the start I had asked about scale (5’ per square or 10’?) and he had said that his map was 5’ per square so I decided to follow his lead. Then his map on the screen was drawn at 10’ per square, so there are some parts of my map which somehow are totally the wrong length. Not entirely my fault, as he would give verbal info and describe hallways and rooms and then every so often go back to update several things at once, and my interpretation of his map and what he drew didn’t always match up right. Old timers who have mapped a dungeon all know this frustration, and I love it! (“Oh, so this hallway connects to that one … um … okay I’ll just make it 15’ longer I guess. Let’s keep going.”) Tai thought mapping would be fun for the first 10 minutes or so, then he gave up. When my map went off the page he was nice enough to give me his graph paper so that I could flip it over and keep my map alive. Near the end of the 4 hour timeslot we had an option of a corridor east and one south and were debating which way to go. The DM suggested that if we wanted to go south it would run off of his screen but he could clear the present map and start over, so I suggested we go east just so we could keep the current map on the screen. Those are the decisions that OD&D encourages.

Anyway, we found kobolds and killed some kobolds but then others wouldn’t leave the room so we did the door-spike thing to stop them from following us. We meandered around for a bit more, with the invisible hobbit sneaking ahead and scouting, and found several doors and a loop-around hallway. I looked at the clock and noted that maybe we should consider a withdraw where we would collect our treasures and cash out for the day. That’s when the next wave of kobolds attacked. Our hobbits were to the north of the kobold-door when they attacked, the rest of us to the south. We were split but not cut off as there was a second passage we could take to reach the hobbits, but we were fighting on two fronts. I thought that was a good thing since we had more characters attacking, but the kobolds were half using spears and half using clubs so they had two ranks attacking each character. And there were a lot of kobolds. We fought for a while and finally the hobbit with the invisibility ring ran low on HP and decided to put the ring on and withdraw. The other hobbit fought for a round or so then pulled back as well. The party regrouped into a hallway where the kobolds were limited in their ability to attack us.

At this point everyone except the MU was running low on hit points. We decided we had to get out of Dodge, so to speak, and find a way to escape the dungeon. The MU was faster than the kobolds but the two hobbits were roughly the same speed. The cleric in platemail was slow and my dwarf in platemail was slowest. We decided that the best thing was probably to have one character volunteer to hold the hallway while the rest escaped as fast and as far as possible, then another would hold the hallway, and so on. I told the group that in my opinion, if ANY of us got out with the loot we could count that as a win. I was going to volunteer to be first to hold the hallway, but to my surprise the former “little bloodthirsty” said that he would do it. Sadly, Scott’s dice were hot and Aiden’s character only lasted one round.

We ended the session on a cliffhanger. We had decided that invisibility ring hobbit (Card) and elven MU (Rex) should sprint for the exit. Cleric (Jack) and dwarf (Thorin) would decide who would hold the hallway. Scott froze time there and said we’d pick up the action next month.

So as the group was packing up their stuff I had to ask, “so, what did you think?” They enjoyed it! It wasn’t the same kind of game that they were used to playing, but they liked exploration and they liked the risk of constant near-death once they got used to it. No miniatures, no battlemat, no handfuls of dice causing massive damage. Just a simple map, a little imagination, and two dice.

Everybody said that they were planning on returning for part 2.

[Deleted]

[EdOWar]

Sounds like great fun! We've been playing Dungeon of the Mad Mage (5E) using Roll20 and an overhead projector displaying the map on the table. It's been a blast, and it's made dungeon exploration much more engaging. I'd like to try it Roll20 and a projector with OD&D or S&W sometime.

[Deleted]

I have to inquire, as this first session was some months ago - did you guys ever continue this? Looks like you'd have had a narrow window before the pandemic broke out. Understandably, you likely wouldn't have done many face to face games after the fact, of course.

I do find the description of the game interesting. It sounds like the DM was plenty old school, though for my personal tastes, in OD&D "power gaming" and "meta gaming" aren't part of my vocabulary at all. I just call that smart play. The inverse is what you've gotta look out for. Like "little bloodthirsty" when he started. We call that "Play stupid games, win stupid prizes" here in Middle TN. Some of my friends and co-workers could tell you about that one time they blundered into Tomb of Horrors at my table. They dropped that 5e mentality reeeeally quickly, let me tell you.

[Finarvyn]

Second session was scheduled for the weekend that everything in the state got shut down. There had been talk of moving it from the library to a person's house, but it was decided just to move to social isolation instead. I'm hoping that it comes back once the pandemic eases off.

[Paladin]

Greatly enjoyed reading your recap of the action. Hope you all get to continue!

[Finarvyn]

I do, too. Turned out to be a really loooooooong cliffhanger.

[stonetoflesh]

Mar 1, 2020 9:06:03 GMT -6 Finarvyn said:

The adventure began near the dungeons of Greyhawk (I think only Scott and I had a clue what that meant) and we were all indentured servants to a wizard who started us off with a pep talk that if we would go into the dungeons and bring him back loot then we could earn our freedom at the price of 1,000 GP per person freed. We looked at each other and did some simple math – our goal was to get in, find 5,000 GP, and get out. (NOTE TO SELF: I am totally stealing this intro when I run OD&D at Fair Game. It’s simple, gives a purpose, and lets us get to play quickly without baggage. Nice!)

Yes, that's a terrific setup for a new party, especially for a pick-up game. I'm definitely stealing it too!

[Finarvyn]

By the way, for anyone who wants to follow the rest of this adventure, you can read about it here:
odd74.proboards.com/thread/14363/back-basics-greyhawk-campaign

The campaign shifted to online since the Covid hit and I have other commitments at the moment, but I hope to rejoin at some point if we go back live.