Old Times hardships and obstacles

[Storminator]

Players nowadays are way too easy on their DMs!!!

We had a letter opener we called the DM Dagger. If the DM got out of line, the current possessor would huck the DM Dagger at him. Then we passed the DM Dagger to the "most aggrieved player." Sometimes the next player would be contested, and the players would begin to recite the Litany of Pain that their PCs had endured. Usually to the mad cackles of the DM...

PS

 

[dougmander]

In my experience with 1e, maybe 1 out of 3 characters would make it to 2nd level, maybe half of those who made it to 2nd level would make it to 3rd level. But around 3rd level it stabilized. You had enough hp to survive the odd hit, and the party could probably scrape together the cash to resurrect you -- if they liked you.

The big difference is the "you're not really dead until you hit -10" thing. That saves 1st level PCs in my campaigns over and over again. That, and starting out with max hp for a 1st-level PC of your class.

As for reaching name level, I had a 5th-level magic user named Paracelsus in my friend Tom's game and I thought I was hot stuff. One night we sat in on a game with some college students and their PCs were all, like, 20th level. That must have taken a lot of gaming.

 

[Voadam]

There's currently a lot of claims that old time D&D was harder and more deadly. Recovering from death was unlikely, and everyone started over at 1st level.

If games were so hard, raising the dead so unlikely, and everyone started back at 1st level, how did anyone reach name level in such games? Did anyone reach name level?

Quasqueton

New characters in my campaign started out at the lowest party member's level -1 (and later at the average party level to keep things relatively even), with 1 randomly rolled magic item per 3 levels.

As a DM I was pretty good at evaluating what would be a tough but survivable fight for my PCs and often had opportunities for characters to run away when they were overmatched.

The stingy xp rates of 1e led to characters not getting to name level until a long time, not character death IME.

I also played in a long time campaign where party levels and power were wildly disparate (1st level character in the same party as a 33rd level one) but the game was more story and less combat/mechanics oriented. The powerful characters would protect the weaker ones in combat or the weaker ones would hang back from the front lines.

 

[Quasqueton]

The stingy xp rates of 1e led to characters not getting to name level until a long time, not character death IME.

This was more a function of stingy DMs than the AD&D1 rules.

http://www.enworld.org/showthread.php?t=167628&page=1&pp=40

Quasqueton

 

[Ed_Laprade]

During one of the early years of my playing D&D I had a half dozen or more characters die from poison bites of various sorts. Most were 1st level, but one or two might have gotten to 2nd. Our group instituted various house rules to try and keep characters from dropping like flies at 1st level, as many groups did. (Arrange attributes at will, max Hit Points at 1st, not dieing until -10, etc.) But it was still pretty easy to lose low level characters. Names were often simple, with a mightier sounding nickname after 3rd or so.

 

[Jhaelen]

As for reaching name level, I had a 5th-level magic user named Paracelsus in my friend Tom's game and I thought I was hot stuff. One night we sat in on a game with some college students and their PCs were all, like, 20th level. That must have taken a lot of gaming.

I remember having some odd encounter with another AD&D player in my FLGS who started babbling at me and told me about his level 20 barbarian / level 10 vampire slayer (or something like that) who wielded two vorpal daggers (!) and walked around slaying gods.

That's when I realized that even if two people play the same rpg they (or the games they play) don't necessarily have anything in common

 

[Hussar]

I remember having some odd encounter with another AD&D player in my FLGS who started babbling at me and told me about his level 20 barbarian / level 10 vampire slayer (or something like that) who wielded two vorpal daggers (!) and walked around slaying gods.

That's when I realized that even if two people play the same rpg they (or the games they play) don't necessarily have anything in common

Now isn't that the truth.

 

[Cinderfall]

My friends used to do the "start over at 1st level" thing way back in the day. Interestingly, all you had to concentrate on was staying mostly out of the way (which was a challenge in itself). If you could you would catch up pretty quickly as the exp being thrown around for 10th level characters goes a long way for a 1st level character. I think there was one battle where a 1st level character came out of it 9th level (naturally they were ignoring certain leveling restrictions).

 

[TerraDave]

If raise dead, resurection, reincarnate, restoration, limited wish, wish, and clone are in the rules, you can bet people used them. And I don't remember any official policy saying otherwise. I remember from running Ravenloft, there was a good amount of high powered magic in there (including wishes), clearly placed to help restore lost levels, lives, maybe bring back someone from death.

And the idea in AD&D was that the DM is in charge. I think 3ed actually pust more emphasis on playing by the book, which makes a certain amount of death unavoidable. Most 1st and 2ed campaigns I know about worked under the assumption that the DM would probably fudged to avoid player death (though not player hurt) unless the PC had made some very obvious error.

But as we know, different people played the past editions in very different ways.

 

[WayneLigon]

There's currently a lot of claims that old time D&D was harder and more deadly. Recovering from death was unlikely, and everyone started over at 1st level.

If games were so hard, raising the dead so unlikely, and everyone started back at 1st level, how did anyone reach name level in such games? Did anyone reach name level?

It was very rare to ever have a campaign that lasted that long. The main reason was not that the challenges were harder (they were not; giants, trolls, even orcs are significantly harder opponents in 3E than their counterparts were in 1e/2e), or that recovering from death was unlikely (far from it after a certain level; if you had the gold, you got Raised or Ressurected), or that everyone started over from 1st level (never saw this happen; usually a new person came in one level below the loweest party member). The main reason for it was the exponentially increasing XP you needed to raise in level. 2nd level was something like 2000 XP away and you were getting a 1/5 or 1/6 cut of that 15xp Orc. Never once did I ever know anyone to give out XP=GP value of treasure found.

In all the years I played 1E and 2E, I think we got to 'name' level two or three times before the campaign folded.