Dungeons & Dragons is well-known for its class advancement system, which over time has iterated from focusing on collecting treasure to defeating foes. And yet there was a time in the First Edition of Advanced Dungeons & Dragons where players were encouraged to play their characters as novices below 1st level, before they became heroes. These were 0-level player characters, and their story illuminates how D&D models a particular kind of fantasy fiction.
[h=3]Oh What a Knight?[/h]0-level characters first debuted as part of the cavalier class in Unearthed Arcana. Cavaliers had a lot of special rules that tied them to honor and social standing, and one of them affected the character's starting level:
In essence, a character with a lower social class started out at 0-level, with less hit points. Co-author of D&D Gary Gygax was attempting to introduce a class system that mattered in a way it hadn't before, and was reflected in the mechanical elements of the cavalier. Noble standing directly affected the character's heroic development; a child that was not nobly born had to overcome adversity (through adventuring of course) to achieve knighthood. This is a traditional chivalric romance character arc, and it's surprisingly not as compatible with D&D as one might assume for a game with levels.
In fact, knights weren't really a part of D&D to begin with. Although there were always Fighting-Men, knights and the concept of honor were not nearly as prominent as the thieves, rogues, and magicians Gygax cited as inspiration in Appendix N. Even when knights did appear, like in Poul Anderson's Three Hearts and Three Lions -- the inspiration for D&D's paladin class -- the protagonist, Holger Carlsen, enters the story in a fully capable knight's body from the start.
There was precedent in tabletop role-playing for knights ascending social ranks in a D&D rival, Chivalry & Sorcery, according to Wilf K. Backhaus:
We may never know if the cavalier class was in fact meant to capitalize on the success of Chivalry & Sorcery, but the class' debut made it clear that D&D didn't have rules for starting out as a nobody. In fact, D&D's tradition of thrusting players into the roles of fully capable goes back to a previous discussion of visitation fiction. Why struggle through being a weakling with few powers when you can start as a hero that's better than your average commoner?
For a time, D&D capitalized on this sort of power trip, in which heroes emerged fully-formed and players joined them after they knew how to fight, pick locks, create miracles, and cast spells. The debut of the cavalier class made it clear that D&D had to literally go backwards to accommodate a hero's origins.
[h=3]Zero to Hero[/h]The cavalier class didn't just tie social standing to level and hit points, it also set the framework for advancing in power by slowly gaining the attributes a 1st-level character took for granted. It took two additional "0-levels" for a lower class character to move from Horseman (-1,500 XP) to Lancer (-500 XP) to Armiger (0 XP), gaining one third of the same hit points an Armiger started with. The cavalier paved the way for other classes to do the same. The ideas actually went as far back as the AD&D adventure N4, Treasure Hunt:
Author Aaron Allston did something revolutionary with Treasure Hunt, in that the players didn't actually pick their classes and alignment, but rather grew into it -- determined by their actions and the Dungeon Master. It was meant to be an introductory adventure to D&D and role-playing in general:
When Jim Ward asked players in Dragon Magazine #129 what they wanted included for an upcoming Greyhawk Adventures hardcover, they picked 0-level character rules.
[h=3]Whither Harry?[/h]Discussions around why there never was a Harry Potter role-playing game pointed to a larger challenge with D&D -- it doesn't model novices well. Although 1st-level characters aren't as fully capable as those of higher levels, they're still more capable than a common person. D&D models the power structure of heroic fantasy (emphasis on "heroic"), not on chivalric romance, in which a character must scrabble his way through the lower ranks (of both society and power) until ultimately achieving his true potential. D&D's inspiration is more closely aligned with sword-and-sorcery, where fully-capable heroes faced even stronger adversaries.
It's possible that the differences in fantasy are cultural. American authors like Gygax and Robert E. Howard preferred to start with heroes who were adults capable of making their own way through the world, while European authors like J.K. Rowling drew on the legacy of chivalric romance that starts with protagonists as children who eventually fulfill their destinies. To accommodate a boy's long path to king, D&D had to take a literally step backwards on the XP chart.
Mike "Talien" Tresca is a freelance game columnist, author, communicator, and a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to http://amazon.com. You can follow him at Patreon.
[h=3]Oh What a Knight?[/h]0-level characters first debuted as part of the cavalier class in Unearthed Arcana. Cavaliers had a lot of special rules that tied them to honor and social standing, and one of them affected the character's starting level:
Usually, the character is of noble origin. Any cavalier rolling a social class below Lower Middle Class will be lower middle class, as peasants below that status need not apply. Characters of at least Lower Upper Class begin the game as first level Armigers; others must begin as 0 level Horsemen (0H), and work through Lancer (0L) to reach this point. Such lower class characters always serve the house of another; Upper Class cavaliers may serve their own house. A cavalier receives d12 hit points per level, plus fighter constitution bonuses, except at level one. A 0 level horseman begins with d4+1 hit points, plus constitution bonus, and gains an additional d4 hit points at 0L and at first level (for a total of 3d4+1+con bonus). A character starting at level one receives d10+3 hit points to begin, plus con bonus.
In essence, a character with a lower social class started out at 0-level, with less hit points. Co-author of D&D Gary Gygax was attempting to introduce a class system that mattered in a way it hadn't before, and was reflected in the mechanical elements of the cavalier. Noble standing directly affected the character's heroic development; a child that was not nobly born had to overcome adversity (through adventuring of course) to achieve knighthood. This is a traditional chivalric romance character arc, and it's surprisingly not as compatible with D&D as one might assume for a game with levels.
In fact, knights weren't really a part of D&D to begin with. Although there were always Fighting-Men, knights and the concept of honor were not nearly as prominent as the thieves, rogues, and magicians Gygax cited as inspiration in Appendix N. Even when knights did appear, like in Poul Anderson's Three Hearts and Three Lions -- the inspiration for D&D's paladin class -- the protagonist, Holger Carlsen, enters the story in a fully capable knight's body from the start.
There was precedent in tabletop role-playing for knights ascending social ranks in a D&D rival, Chivalry & Sorcery, according to Wilf K. Backhaus:
We wrote an MSS in 6 week which was about 360 pages long. We self-published 40 copies of it under the title of Chevalier. It was our intent and our hope to sell our material to TSR as a sort of "Advanced" D&D. We traveled to GENCON for that purpose in August ''76. We never did show it to TSR because we took an instant dislike to Gygax and so sought out another publisher. It required us about 4 months to completely de-D&D our manuscript - it was during part of that process that we decided on the term "Game Master". The C&S 1st was published in the summer of 1977.
We may never know if the cavalier class was in fact meant to capitalize on the success of Chivalry & Sorcery, but the class' debut made it clear that D&D didn't have rules for starting out as a nobody. In fact, D&D's tradition of thrusting players into the roles of fully capable goes back to a previous discussion of visitation fiction. Why struggle through being a weakling with few powers when you can start as a hero that's better than your average commoner?
For a time, D&D capitalized on this sort of power trip, in which heroes emerged fully-formed and players joined them after they knew how to fight, pick locks, create miracles, and cast spells. The debut of the cavalier class made it clear that D&D had to literally go backwards to accommodate a hero's origins.
[h=3]Zero to Hero[/h]The cavalier class didn't just tie social standing to level and hit points, it also set the framework for advancing in power by slowly gaining the attributes a 1st-level character took for granted. It took two additional "0-levels" for a lower class character to move from Horseman (-1,500 XP) to Lancer (-500 XP) to Armiger (0 XP), gaining one third of the same hit points an Armiger started with. The cavalier paved the way for other classes to do the same. The ideas actually went as far back as the AD&D adventure N4, Treasure Hunt:
In this adventure, you don’t even have the slight edge that training gave you, the edge over the common man. In Treasure Hunt, your character is the common man. To survive the adventure, he’ll have to become an uncommon man — you’ll have to use your wits, survive the odds, and stay alive long enough to earn some experience and begin developing the abilities of the true adventurer.
Author Aaron Allston did something revolutionary with Treasure Hunt, in that the players didn't actually pick their classes and alignment, but rather grew into it -- determined by their actions and the Dungeon Master. It was meant to be an introductory adventure to D&D and role-playing in general:
To start with, both the players and the GMs can read some introductory notes on D&D, which matches what TSR did in the early B-series adventures. However, Allston goes far beyond that, advising GMs on how to run their game throughout the adventure text; he talks about everything from addressing questions from the players to timing the game and staging different combats. There's even a two-page appendix on what to do if the adventure starts going wrong.
When Jim Ward asked players in Dragon Magazine #129 what they wanted included for an upcoming Greyhawk Adventures hardcover, they picked 0-level character rules.
[h=3]Whither Harry?[/h]Discussions around why there never was a Harry Potter role-playing game pointed to a larger challenge with D&D -- it doesn't model novices well. Although 1st-level characters aren't as fully capable as those of higher levels, they're still more capable than a common person. D&D models the power structure of heroic fantasy (emphasis on "heroic"), not on chivalric romance, in which a character must scrabble his way through the lower ranks (of both society and power) until ultimately achieving his true potential. D&D's inspiration is more closely aligned with sword-and-sorcery, where fully-capable heroes faced even stronger adversaries.
It's possible that the differences in fantasy are cultural. American authors like Gygax and Robert E. Howard preferred to start with heroes who were adults capable of making their own way through the world, while European authors like J.K. Rowling drew on the legacy of chivalric romance that starts with protagonists as children who eventually fulfill their destinies. To accommodate a boy's long path to king, D&D had to take a literally step backwards on the XP chart.
Mike "Talien" Tresca is a freelance game columnist, author, communicator, and a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to http://amazon.com. You can follow him at Patreon.
