D&D General Younger Players Telling Us how Old School Gamers Played

[jasper]

um…

start here.
Post in thread 'Younger Players Telling Us how Old School Gamers Played'
D&D General - Younger Players Telling Us how Old School Gamers Played

follow the links. That will get you started.

Thanks. I missed post 98 or glassey eye over it.

 

[MichaelSomething]

Look at them, they come to this game when they know they are not pure. Youtubers use the books, but they are mere trespassers. Only us, Enworlders, know the true power of D&D. I was gameless, destroyed, but through it's DMG, the game called to me. It brought me here and here I was reborn. We cannot blame these Youtubers, they are being led by an algorithm, a mere program who knows not the secrets of the game.

Behold the Youtubers, come to scavenge and desecrate this sacred game. My brothers, did I not tell of this day? Did I not prophesize this moment? Now, I will stop them. Now I am changed, reborn through the energy of the OD&D. Forever bound to the game. Let it be known, if the Youtubers want true salvation, they will lay down their arms, and wait for the baptism of my Tomb of Horrors. It is time. I will teach these trespassers the redemptive power of D&D. They will learn it's simple truth. The Youtubers are lost, and they will resist. But I, MichaelSomething, will cleanse this place of their impurity.

 

[pogre]

I'm old. I have played a long time - almost since the beginning. I was amused by the video.

When I was watching I thought some of the same things mentioned above - "Yeah, we were aware of that rule." I also thought he made a lot of assumptions about how the game was played. Even, is we confine it to the Wisconsin group Gygax ran. I guess I wasn't that offended, but I understand the sentiment. We disregarded rules on a regular basis - most folks did.

Still, I appreciate newer views of the game, all editions, even if they get some of it wrong from my experience.

 

[Clint_L]

I mean, the dude in the video is adorable. He's so sincerely telling us how we used to play the game. He's millennial-splaining it! I appreciate his confidence in asserting that we weren't building game worlds, just dungeons, etc. and so on. He doesn't know what the hell he is talking about, but he thinks he does. It's cute.

 

[pemerton]

@AbdulAlhazred

Thanks for posting that. My first thought on "newed" is that is is "nested". And I interpreted the bit about "underworld adventures" to be a gloss on the dungeon expedition rule - note that the 1 week is for prep plus a 1-day expedition; if you're doing a more-than-one-day expedition then you're in the throes of an expedition into the underworld and are subjected to the 1-imaginary-day-per-real-day rule: which I think favours players over the GM/monsters, as it allows them to rest up without being subject to wandering monster checks. I can imagine in practice that a session like that would end with the GM getting the players to explain what they do to remain safe in the dungeon/underworld, given that they've not left it as per the more typical 1-day-in-and-out mode of dungeon expedition.

At the heart of the "rule", it seems to me, is a way of allotting downtime without having to actually play it out; while recognising that wilderness exploration needs its own distinct approach to tracking time. It fits well with abstracted upkeep rules (like the 100 gp per level per month suggested in Gygax's DMG). Personally I think that the Torchbearer 2e approach to this - adventure phase, camp phase and town phase - is superior, although TB does drop one of Gygax's options: Gygax has in mind that different PCs can easily end up at different places on the imaginary calendar, resulting in restrictions on who can adventure with whom. Whereas TB simply stipulates that all PCs must all be in the same phase together.

 

[Lanefan]

I get that how from the perspective a player that started with 5e, you could look at the old 1e DMG and think that everything in there was used. Which ignores how anarchic different groups were back then in the face of such a shambolic tome.

Different groups were anarchic, sure, but I'm not sure the disorganization of the DMG was that big a factor.

Far bigger, I think, was Gygax telling DMs to "make the game their own" and DMs running with that idea; and thus was born the Kitbashers' Guild. (that Gygax went back on this almost as soon as he wrote it is irrelevant)

1e was the Age of Houserules.

5e is much more of a closed system, and for someone used to that and a world where you can just go online and ask other players, or even the writers themselves, how mechanics are supposed to work, it's easy to take some of those assumptions with you when you look at the past.

WotC editions in general have been far more closed-system than anything TSR did, and also harder (though not impossible) to kitbash.

 

[Lanefan]

I don’t think he’s making the claims you think he’s making. Yeah, obviously there were people who were aware of the rule. Obviously there were also people who weren’t aware of it. Obviously there were groups who followed it, and groups who ignored it. People always have played and always will play the game in all sorts of different ways. But without a doubt, the rule in question got dropped in later editions,

Yet another example of TSR following rather than leading.

I paid attention to the rule for just long enough to decide it was bunk, and have remained aware of it since as one of those dumb ideas in practice that somehow must have osunded good in theory...

and new players today are mostly unaware of it. There’s a lot about old-school play that can be revelatory to new players, because a lot of them assume the game has always been fundamentally the same, with the rules being gradually refined over time. Discovering rules like this changes the way newer players conceive of the game’s history, making them realize that the way (some) people used to play is very different than the way they do now.

impractical idea

Someone (and I'm not volunteering!) needs to run a D&D bootcamp, mandatory for all players who have only played 5e, where they spend six weekends playing old-school D&D in some form or other. Could be 0e, could be BX, could be 1e, whatever; the point being to expose them to the game's roots and make them aware of how it has since changed for both better and worse.

/impractical idea

 

[Lanefan]

it was really late in 2e before we even tried drawing combat maps... it was into 3.5 before we started useing minis

When I started playing in 1982, minis (better known as character pieces) on a gridded chalkboard were already the norm. Still do it that way today.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Except ... he's not actually explaining how they played!!!!! Sorry for the exclamation points, but we are in a golden age of primary material and scholarly research on this period. There's a lot detailing how people actually played back then that's readily available.

So what he is doing is reading something he hasn't played and doesn't understand, and then using that to misinform his audience (who mostly doesn't know any better).

Yeah, certainly if you are going to talk about how Gary ran games I'd assume you'd want to talk to people like Old Geezer (Mike Mornard). Heck, just read his book. I'd assume there are other people who are still around who were there as well. I am not sure EXACTLY how faithful the LBBs are to how Gary and Dave ran things, but we KNOW for certain that a lot of stuff in 1e was NOT used as-is in any games Gary himself ran. So, 'rules' are an iffy tool to use, at best.

 

[Charlaquin]

impractical idea

Someone (and I'm not volunteering!) needs to run a D&D bootcamp, mandatory for all players who have only played 5e, where they spend six weekends playing old-school D&D in some form or other. Could be 0e, could be BX, could be 1e, whatever; the point being to expose them to the game's roots and make them aware of how it has since changed for both better and worse.

/impractical idea

The problem (aside from the impracticality, of course) is that there really isn’t one universal old-school D&D experience. Certainly I think there’s value in being exposed to different ways of playing - be that different editions, different game systems, or even just different DMs with very different approaches than they’re used to. But I don’t think an “old-school D&D boot camp” would really teach new players much about “how people really played back then” because again people have always played and will always play in all sorts of ways.