Misc. Recollections of Old Schoolness

[wulfgar]

First off these boards are great. I've been spending most of my time over in Makofans play by post game, but I figured it was time for me to contribute something more to the philosiphical discussion going on here. (I just had a mental image of a bunch of beatniks sitting around a cafe while the guy up on stage recites a poem about redesigning the thief class, the merits of the alternate combat system, and what HP represent).

On with the D&D philosophy!

I've never gotten to actually play with the 3 brown books until recently. I started off with a mixture of Moldvay, Mentzer, AD&D, and whatever we made up. I'm quite sure we weren't playing exactly the same way as anyone else the world over. Our D&D was certainly similar, but there were so many house rules, rules overlooked, and rules misread, that our game was unique. And while it wasn't OD&D, my early forays into D&D definitely had a uniquely "old school" vibe about them that my later gaming in AD&D2 and many other rpgs did not. Here's just a few of my recollections about what made those sessions different.

1. There was no need to know the rules to play. Say you had some friend who wanted to start playing D&D, what would he have to read to get ready? Nothing. Just sit down and roll when the DM tells you to. Other than that, just use your imagination and off we go. The only person that had any need to know rules was the DM, and they only looked stuff up when they had a question and didn't want to just make something up. Really, the books served as catalogs for stuff in our game- spells, equipment, monsters. You grabbed what you wanted and got back to gaming. D&D was rules-lite before rules-lite was in.

2. The game was VERY dungeon-centric. I mean that's why it's called DUNGEONS and Dragons. In the original campaign I played in there was one town and about 15-20 dungeons. All you did in town as buy stuff and put some money in the bank. I distinctly remember seeing the Expert set and thinking what a revolutionary idea it was to have adventures NOT in a dungeon.

3. Level bosses. Pretty much every dungeon level had a boss who blocked access either out of the dungeon or down to the next level. I think this element to our games was heavily influenced by our early forays into computer/video games.

4. Diceless play. We were playing Diceless D&D way back when, but we didn't call it diceless. We called it "just talking" or simply "D&D". You tell the DM what kind of character you are, he nods sagely and says "ok" or "hmmm, no you can't have a +5 sword" and on with the adventure. We did this at times were books and dice weren't feasible (on car trips with my brother or late at night at boy scout camp). I think this ties in with point #1. Even in a normal game with dice, we all realized we were completely at the mercy of the DM. It was his game. He made the rules and he could break them.

5. The was no need for the game to make sense. Ecology? What are you talking about? It's a dungeon- it's full of monsters and traps and treasure- it's not supposed to make sense. I think the percieved need for dungeons to make sense that developed over time really stifles creativity. Instead of just letting his imagination rip, a DM drawing up a dungeon will sit there stumped thinking "nah, I can't do that, it's too silly". In my early days of D&D that didn't happen.

6. PC's died all the time. It was not a traumatic experience for the players. We simply rolled up a new one. We were proud of characters that did make it up in levels, but there was no expectation that it was their right to do so.

7. PC on PC violence. This happened all the time and greatly contributed to the prior point. Sometimes disputes could be resolved by simply having the pc's henchmen battle it out. Other times the gloves would come off and it was on till the death. Blood feuds, where the new pc (son of the slain one) would seek revenge against his killer, happened from time to time but didn't get too out of hand. Bottom line- adventuring was a dog eat dog line of work.

(as an aside, one unusual form of PC/PC violence was the making voodoo dolls and inflicting torment upon them. For some reason this only happened in the "just talking" games. )

8. The taking of trophies from defeated enemies. I'm not talking about treasure. I'm talking about taking the whole creatures head back, so the PC can get it stuffed and mounted on the wall of his gameroom. This happened a lot.

9. D&D was simply D&D. We didn't worry about what edition we were playing- in many cases I'm sure most of the players didn't have a clue there even were different editions. Basic, Expert, AD&D, and anything else we found were dumped into a big pot and stirred all together. I think this openess to imagination, expansion, and tweaking is a key element of Old School D&D. The game was about running around fighting monsters and getting treasure. Rules only existed to help do that, and were used as little as possible.

[coffee]

wulfgar said:

1. There was no need to know the rules to play. Say you had some friend who wanted to start playing D&D, what would he have to read to get ready? Nothing. Just sit down and roll when the DM tells you to. Other than that, just use your imagination and off we go. The only person that had any need to know rules was the DM, and they only looked stuff up when they had a question and didn't want to just make something up. Really, the books served as catalogs for stuff in our game- spells, equipment, monsters. You grabbed what you wanted and got back to gaming. D&D was rules-lite before rules-lite was in.

Absolutely! To this day, that's part of what makes it such a great game for conventions.

2. The game was VERY dungeon-centric. I mean that's why it's called DUNGEONS and Dragons. In the original campaign I played in there was one town and about 15-20 dungeons. All you did in town as buy stuff and put some money in the bank. I distinctly remember seeing the Expert set and thinking what a revolutionary idea it was to have adventures NOT in a dungeon.

I totally agree; that's the way it was designed and should be. The way my original group played was that outdoor adventures were either land clearing or getting you to the dungeon.

3. Level bosses. Pretty much every dungeon level had a boss who blocked access either out of the dungeon or down to the next level. I think this element to our games was heavily influenced by our early forays into computer/video games.

This is where we start to diverge; but then, most of the players I learned from started with the three brown books, well before video games...

4. Diceless play. We were playing Diceless D&D way back when, but we didn't call it diceless. We called it "just talking" or simply "D&D". You tell the DM what kind of character you are, he nods sagely and says "ok" or "hmmm, no you can't have a +5 sword" and on with the adventure. We did this at times were books and dice weren't feasible (on car trips with my brother or late at night at boy scout camp). I think this ties in with point #1. Even in a normal game with dice, we all realized we were completely at the mercy of the DM. It was his game. He made the rules and he could break them.

We did something like that but not exactly. At the game, at the table, all the tactical stuff happened and the dice were always rolling. And afterward, we'd go out for coffee for hours, which is where the role-playing happened.

5. The was no need for the game to make sense. Ecology? What are you talking about? It's a dungeon- it's full of monsters and traps and treasure- it's not supposed to make sense. I think the percieved need for dungeons to make sense that developed over time really stifles creativity. Instead of just letting his imagination rip, a DM drawing up a dungeon will sit there stumped thinking "nah, I can't do that, it's too silly". In my early days of D&D that didn't happen.

That's the way it should be, of course, but people just get started saying "hang on a minute..." and suddenly an arms race of "ecology" happens. I say hang the sense of it and get on to the next room!

6. PC's died all the time. It was not a traumatic experience for the players. We simply rolled up a new one. We were proud of characters that did make it up in levels, but there was no expectation that it was their right to do so.

Absolutely. I heard tales of rolling up five characters at the start of a dungeon, hoping that one of them would survive the night.

7. PC on PC violence. This happened all the time and greatly contributed to the prior point. Sometimes disputes could be resolved by simply having the pc's henchmen battle it out. Other times the gloves would come off and it was on till the death. Blood feuds, where the new pc (son of the slain one) would seek revenge against his killer, happened from time to time but didn't get too out of hand. Bottom line- adventuring was a dog eat dog line of work.

We didn't do much of this in my group, but I could easily see it happening.

(as an aside, one unusual form of PC/PC violence was the making voodoo dolls and inflicting torment upon them. For some reason this only happened in the "just talking" games. )

Okay, we never did this, but I'm still chuckling thinking about it!

8. The taking of trophies from defeated enemies. I'm not talking about treasure. I'm talking about taking the whole creatures head back, so the PC can get it stuffed and mounted on the wall of his gameroom. This happened a lot.

We never did this, but there really should be more of it. Adventurers are vain critters, ain't we?

9. D&D was simply D&D. We didn't worry about what edition we were playing- in many cases I'm sure most of the players didn't have a clue there even were different editions. Basic, Expert, AD&D, and anything else we found were dumped into a big pot and stirred all together. I think this openess to imagination, expansion, and tweaking is a key element of Old School D&D. The game was about running around fighting monsters and getting treasure. Rules only existed to help do that, and were used as little as possible.

I would love a world like that.

My old group was playing AD&D, and if it wasn't AD&D you'd likely get lynched. Seriously, religious wars had nothing on us.


Great discussion! I always love to hear about peoples' early experiences with the game.

[wulfgar]

[glow=red,2,300]I would love a world like that.

My old group was playing AD&D, and if it wasn't AD&D you'd likely get lynched. Seriously, religious wars had nothing on us.[/glow]

Yes, sadly our golden age was not to last for very long.

First, the majority of the group decided anything with "Basic" on the cover was little kids stuff and purged it from our games.

Next, AD&D2 came out and AD&D was dismissed as old and lame.

So for the bulk of my time spent playing D&D I played pure AD&D2. And for the record I enjoyed those games a lot, but I can see the differences between those games and our early D&D mishmash kitchen sink games, and when I look back now I prefer the early style.

[Finarvyn]

wulfgar said:

2. The game was VERY dungeon-centric. I mean that's why it's called DUNGEONS and Dragons. In the original campaign I played in there was one town and about 15-20 dungeons. All you did in town as buy stuff and put some money in the bank.

Yes! This reminds me so much of a Wild West sort of campaign where you have a town of 100 people, but a dozen saloons and a dozen banks for the bad guys to rob. You never asked "how is this possible?" but instead just played and had fun.

My own early dungeon campaigns were like this. One little town five miles away from a 12-level dungeon complex and nobody ever wondered about it....

[doc]

My early dungeons were also populated with creatures that had absolutely no business hanging around the same vicinity; but I had an excuse!

BitD, I would go down to the town's only local game store/comic shop (this was back in 1982-1983, where the idea of a store that just dealt in RPGs was unheard of) to pick stuff up for the weekend's dungeon crawl. Nowadays there are literally thousands of miniatures in both plastic and metal from countless companies to peruse. Back then, though, there were only a very tiny handful on the shelf at any given time. I would go in with my budget of $5 to $10 or so and just pick up any minis that I didn't already have at around a dollar per fig. Whatever I got, that's what ended up in that week's dungeon.

I'll never forget the look on my party's face when the White Hand orcs that they were in battle with were aided by a wandering pair of elf archers and a unicorn. Yeah, I had a backstory, but it would have sounded lame to anybody over the age of 13

Doc

[coffee]

admin said:

Yes! This reminds me so much of a Wild West sort of campaign where you have a town of 100 people, but a dozen saloons and a dozen banks for the bad guys to rob. You never asked "how is this possible?" but instead just played and had fun.

My own early dungeon campaigns were like this. One little town five miles away from a 12-level dungeon complex and nobody ever wondered about it....

Actually, for a boom town, the old west town could be exactly like that (depending on the type of boom).

A lot of the old "cow towns" were towns along the railroad where cattle drives would end up. Once the cattle were loaded aboard the railcars and the cowboys got paid, the population of the town could easily triple temporarily -- and those cowboys were thirsty.

It worked in a similar way with silver or gold mining boom towns, but in these the prospectors and speculators would need the additional banks.

So I could easily rationalize having a (growing) town near a bunch of dungeons, as long as there were several groups of adventurers plundering said dungeons. That could even give rise to ideas for town adventures, what with rival adventuring groups and such. You could easily derive an entire "campaign" (as opposed to just a dungeon) just by attempting to come up with reasons for things being the way they are.

[casey777]

I tend to run organic campaigns. Start with a basic premise and location, start tossing out possible plot hooks and NPCs to interact with. See what the players bite on and what they think might be happening. Build from there. Like a very loose spiderweb that's constantly being built with no pre-conceived design in mind.

Meshes very nicely with some of the above thoughts IMO.

[coffee]

casey777 said:

I tend to run organic campaigns. Start with a basic premise and location, start tossing out possible plot hooks and NPCs to interact with. See what the players bite on and what they think might be happening. Build from there. Like a very loose spiderweb that's constantly being built with no pre-conceived design in mind.

Meshes very nicely with some of the above thoughts IMO.

From what I understand, that was the old school way to create a campaign.

[James Maliszewski]

coffee said:

From what I understand, that was the old school way to create a campaign.

That was certainly the way I learned to create a campaign back in the day. I was tutored in the fine art of DMing by one of my friends' older brother and his father, who would regularly run us younger kids through dungeons and it was much fun. They were scrupulously fair DMs but very unforgiving ones -- you make a mistake or try something stupid and they didn't hesitate to make you suffer for it. ;D

(It's interesting to recall that my friend's brother, who was probably 15 or 16 at the time, was a serious "metal head." Way back when, D&D was a rare point of commonality between bookish types such as myself and guys into heavy metal music.)

[wulfgar]

Ah yes, there definitely was a D&D-heavy metal connection back at the time. The same neighbor introduced me to both. Thinking about it just brought back a long dormant memory of a ACDC poster with an exploding skull with goo coming out of it that watched over us as we played.