Surviving low-level old school D&D

[hewligan]

I have to confess that our main experiences with BD&D (Rules Cyclopedia / Labyrinth Lord) were indeed post-3e. In fact, They've been after several 3.x TPKs in Age of Worms. So it's understandable for us to be paranoid

We also used some houserules:
* "Broken shield": If a character had a shield, he could discard it instead of suffering damage from an attack. This could be done after rolling for damage.
* Max. hps at 1st level.
* PCs are unconscious at 0 hp, dead at -10.

The second and third of these houserules I have been using for years, but the first one is an interesting concept. It certainly addresses part of the problem with the shield just not being powerful enough (why take a shield in 3e or later when you can do double weapon fighting), and also seems to have quite a strong in-game reason for working.

I think I would adjust it a little, just to avoid it becoming unbalanced at higher levels when single foes dealing large amounts of damage with single attacks are more common than the multi-foe lower levels. Perhaps:

* "Broken shield": A character using a shield may elect to discard it in order to reduce the damage from an attack. The first 6 hp of damage are avoided completely, with any damage above this level being halved. This option can be elected after rolling for damage.

And to add my experiences to the thread: I was only lucky enough to play D&D for a few months before our GM, a teacher at high school, died. I then took over GMing, started a gaming group at lunch times (that grew to about 20 people playing all sorts of games), and just winged it. I was always in the school that preferred the story to develop and characters to build, and thus character death was a bit less common than the rules alone would suggest.

 

[Man in the Funny Hat]

It is not the game you play - it is how you play it. Always has been that way. Always will be.

 

[Jefe Bergenstein]

More like:
PC Thief: Check the door for traps, looking at the hinges, the floor below, and the ceiling above. Anything unusual? Is there a lock?
DM rolls: You don't see anything unusual. There doesn't appear to be a lock.
PC Thief: Any light coming in around the door?
DM: Yes, a little bit.
PC Thief: I take off my helmet, press my ear to the door, and listen. What do I hear?

You hear ear seekers. Because any DM that wants you to use a boring SOP to do something as simple as opening a friggin door will quickly grow tired of it working.

10 foot poles? Good for setting off 11 foot radius traps.

I really prefer a style where everyone agrees to dispense with the poking things with sticks and adventuring with 2 dozen red shirts in exchange for not putting screw job traps in the adventure. It feels more heroic both ways.

 

[Remathilis]

You hear ear seekers. Because any DM that wants you to use a boring SOP to do something as simple as opening a friggin door will quickly grow tired of it working.

10 foot poles? Good for setting off 11 foot radius traps.

I really prefer a style where everyone agrees to dispense with the poking things with sticks and adventuring with 2 dozen red shirts in exchange for not putting screw job traps in the adventure. It feels more heroic both ways.

Bravo!

In our games, we've used some "screw the PC" traps (in fact, every time we know we're playing a Goodman module, we double-check the traps for traps!) but we rarely used a lot of random traps, extremely powerful wandering monsters, ear-seekers, green slime, and cursed magical items for no other reason that the first few times, its scary and makes you cautious, the 35th time, your hacking apart chests with axes and spending 20 minutes (real time) at every door, hallway, and interpass.

To quote Monty Python: "GET ON WITH IT!"

 

[Reynard]

It is not the game you play - it is how you play it. Always has been that way. Always will be.

I think this is an over simplification and undermines the importance of the system in a given game. While I think it is possible to play an "old school" style game in any edition of D&D, the farther you remove yourself from those "old school" rules the more difficult it becomes. 3E, for example, allowed for "old school" play primarily at low levels because of its lethality (and retained it for the same reason throughout, though to a lesser degree). However, the increased power of the PCs made maintaining the "old school" feel more difficult, even at mid levels, and the focus on skills and feats (that is, mechanical character attributes rather than player interaction with the scenario) makes some aspects of old school play more difficult -- particularly with respect to traps and the like (though I recall a few arguments related to "caster levels" and such for enemies, as well).

In my relatively limited experience with 4E, these problems are mostly exacerbated. Characters, even at low levels, are less fragile, "powers" and skills/skill challenges undermine player-based engagement (at least as it relates to "old school" play; opbviously, using the system is still engagement by the players) and the ubiquity of "level appropriateness' all make old school much more difficult to do with 4E. While this doesn't in any way diminish 4E as a well designed game, it does make it difficult to continue to play the game as one might have played it in the new edition.

In the end, I think rules (or the lack of them) are important enough that people should choose games based on how theyw ant to play them, rather than attempt to shoe-horn a game into a style of play it wasn't really designed for. This isn't always plausible, of course (I am currently running a 3.5 game I had originally envisioned and desired to run as either AD&D or BECMI D&D, but the vote pushed it to 3.5 for familiarity) but in a perfect world, the right tool for the job may not always be the only tool, but it is the best tool.

 

[Korgoth]

Bravo!

In our games, we've used some "screw the PC" traps (in fact, every time we know we're playing a Goodman module, we double-check the traps for traps!) but we rarely used a lot of random traps, extremely powerful wandering monsters, ear-seekers, green slime, and cursed magical items for no other reason that the first few times, its scary and makes you cautious, the 35th time, your hacking apart chests with axes and spending 20 minutes (real time) at every door, hallway, and interpass.

To quote Monty Python: "GET ON WITH IT!"

In my OD&D/EPT campaign, I put in traps where the PCs ought to reasonably expect one. I don't like "random pit in the middle of the hallway" type stuff. Instead, think of the statue room from the temple at the start of Raiders of the Lost Ark. You see the faces on the wall, and the tiles, and you might expect that, given the room's importance, there could be a trap. Likewise, there's every reason to expect that the statue itself is trapped.

To me, randomly guessing whether there's a trap on an otherwise nondescript block of stone doesn't prove anything. The *game* is whether you can figure out where the traps are in an area that it is reasonable to suspect is trapped, and furthermore, whether you can figure out how to find them and how to get past them.

 

[ExploderWizard]

In my OD&D/EPT campaign, I put in traps where the PCs ought to reasonably expect one. I don't like "random pit in the middle of the hallway" type stuff. Instead, think of the statue room from the temple at the start of Raiders of the Lost Ark. You see the faces on the wall, and the tiles, and you might expect that, given the room's importance, there could be a trap. Likewise, there's every reason to expect that the statue itself is trapped.

To me, randomly guessing whether there's a trap on an otherwise nondescript block of stone doesn't prove anything. The *game* is whether you can figure out where the traps are in an area that it is reasonable to suspect is trapped, and furthermore, whether you can figure out how to find them and how to get past them.

This is right on target. For a totally random dungeon there can literally be traps everywhere because the entire layout (including occupants) don't make a lot of sense. In a more thoughfully designed environment traps won't be nearly as common as they are in some published dungeons.

Consider the typical low to mid level evil genius. This guy might have the brains to design and build some terrible traps all through his lair. A 10' wide corridor with a random pit trap in the right 5' section seems simple enough. He is smart enough to know where it is and it's easily avoided. What about the 7 INT kobolds that work for him? Chances are he would be fishing dead kobolds out of his trap more often than it would catch an intruder. The trap that lies beyond the bad guy's secret door on the way to his treasure stash makes more sense. Nobody but him should be there anyhow so it's a good place for a trap.

 

[Rel]

Consider the typical low to mid level evil genius. This guy might have the brains to design and build some terrible traps all through his lair. A 10' wide corridor with a random pit trap in the right 5' section seems simple enough. He is smart enough to know where it is and it's easily avoided. What about the 7 INT kobolds that work for him? Chances are he would be fishing dead kobolds out of his trap more often than it would catch an intruder.

What the PC's (and Kobolds) believe to be a misplaced trap is primarily a Kobold-Population-Control mechanism. It also has a hidden extra benefit: The average Kobold Int used to be 6...

 

[Piratecat]

What the PC's (and Kobolds) believe to be a misplaced trap is primarily a Kobold-Population-Control mechanism. It also has a hidden extra benefit: The average Kobold Int used to be 6...

Plus, he has a food source for feeding the other dungeon monsters.

 

[Storminator]

It is not the game you play - it is how you play it. Always has been that way. Always will be.

If you really believe that, try running an old school dungeon crawl with Monopoly rules. Or Cribbage.

Rules matter.

PS