D&D General The Renewing Charm of the Old School Play Experience

Orius said:
We had a very interesting discussion on that here some years back:

www.enworld.org

Treasure and leveling comparisons: AD&D1, B/ED&D, and D&D3 - updated 11-17-08 (Q1)

It started with a curious notion, and it built up from going through one adventure module noting certain things mentally. Then it became actually taking notes on a piece of paper, and comparing between them. Following this opening post, will be lists of the treasure (gp value, xp value, and...
www.enworld.org www.enworld.org

Some people did not enjoy seeing their preconceptions challenged, to say the least!



It can really vary. Last game I ran was 2e's Night Below, and my players were very thorough, cleaning out a good deal of the treasure in there. But I've run homebrew 3e dungeons where players didn't bother searching some areas and bypassed some magical loot. These were different groups of players, and some are just more aggressive about sacking a dungeon than others.

The old days did have more cursed items. 5e I think is pretty light on them and tends to stick to the ones that are useable by players aware of their actual nature, like the bag of devouring or dust of sneezing and choking. Old school had unreliable identification, often trial by error, and magic would never id the cursed items right -- you'd think it was beneficial right up until it actually mattered, and then the curse hit you at the worst possible time. Cursed items were damn dangerous and I enjoy them as a DM.
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That's an amazing thread, thank you for linking it! Ah good XP for gold and wow, I knew there were a lot of magic items in some of those older adventures, I mean I remembered that much (in part because I ran a number of older adventures with Dungeon World, and was shocked at how suddenly all PCs had magic stuff! As an aside can I just say I know it's a total misuse of Dungeon World/PtbA, but bloody hell is it fun to run old adventures with DW!), but I don't know if I really remembered just how very many there could be.
 

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Ruin Explorer said:
That's an amazing thread, thank you for linking it! Ah good XP for gold and wow, I knew there were a lot of magic items in some of those older adventures, I mean I remembered that much (in part because I ran a number of older adventures with Dungeon World, and was shocked at how suddenly all PCs had magic stuff! As an aside can I just say I know it's a total misuse of Dungeon World/PtbA, but bloody hell is it fun to run old adventures with DW!), but I don't know if I really remembered just how very many there could be.
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I remember. They were called Mounty Haul campaigns. At high levels the Party had one magic item for each «problem».
 

atanakar said:
I remember. They were called Mounty Haul campaigns. At high levels the Party had one magic item for each «problem».
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Nope.

"Monty Haul" is when the DM just basically hands out magic items in a ridiculous fashion (sometimes even in character creation). Those campaigns where you end up with the hammer+belt combo on at least one PC and a magic item on every possible part of your body. We all at least heard of campaigns like that. One of the older groups at my school played like that, I knew from talking to them, and I told, in my infinite 12-year-old wisdom (they were 16 or so) that that was "Monty Haul" and they sucked because of it (more politely, I was very polite at that age).

These are official TSR adventures. If you're saying they're "Monty Haul", then officially, and by design, 1E and 2E were intended to be "Monty Haul". Especially as the random treasure rules supported this wild flow of loot.
 

Ruin Explorer said:
Nope.

"Monty Haul" is when the DM just basically hands out magic items in a ridiculous fashion (sometimes even in character creation). Those campaigns where you end up with the hammer+belt combo on at least one PC and a magic item on every possible part of your body. We all at least heard of campaigns like that. One of the older groups at my school played like that, I knew from talking to them, and I told, in my infinite 12-year-old wisdom (they were 16 or so) that that was "Monty Haul" and they sucked because of it (more politely, I was very polite at that age).

These are official TSR adventures. If you're saying they're "Monty Haul", then officially, and by design, 1E and 2E were intended to be "Monty Haul". Especially as the random treasure rules supported this wild flow of loot.
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I'm talking about this :
quote : «Causes
Leveling up in AD&D11589196416169.gif
Ironically, the Dungeon Masters Guide (1e) (1979) itself, on page 86, was the main cause of the problem...»

It's all very well explained in this article : Monty Haul
 

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Wow, 1500gp to reach L2 per PC? That certainly does help explain how Monty Haul stuff was so prevalent in 1E groups but vastly more rare in 2E. I didn't know about that particular rule, thank you for linking that. A great example of what was clearly an ill-conceived rule not intended to be enforced as written, but which made it into official rulebooks, which was very common in late 70s and early '80s RPGs.

This also explains why the "capture the PCs and take/tax their stuff" thing was seen as a good idea by a lot of 1E DMs.

Also hooray for Aurora's Whole Realms Guide, which my group still regularly mentions.
 

Ruin Explorer said:
Wow, 1500gp to reach L2 per PC? That certainly does help explain how Monty Haul stuff was so prevalent in 1E groups but vastly more rare in 2E. I didn't know about that particular rule, thank you for linking that. A great example of what was clearly an ill-conceived rule not intended to be enforced as written, but which made it into official rulebooks, which was very common in late 70s and early '80s RPGs.
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Indeed. Dropping 1 gold = 1 XP was necessary.

In one of my campaigns the PCs (level 5) decided to abuse the system. They figured if they stole all the gems and jewels in a jewelry store I would give them the equivalent XPs and they would gain a level without going down the dungeon. Easily earned XPs. They were upset when they discovered the owner was a level 10 retired fighter and his wife in the back store was also a high level PC. They barely survived and had to run out of town chased by all the jewellers friends.

Explains why almost all shop owner NPCs in 1e are retired high level adventurers. If a gold coin is worth 1 xp it must be hard earn anywhere. Not just underground.
 

We dropped xp-for-gp very very early on and it had one quite positive effect: level advancement slowed to a crawl, which meant the campaign could go on longer before reaching levels that broke the system.

Doing this had absolutely no effect, however, on the greed level of (some of) the players. :)

@atanakar - if the PCs in your steal-the-jewels example were in fact Thieves (or Assassins? not sure if this applies to them) then by RAW they should-would have received xp for anything they stole. If they were any other class you'd have been well within your rights as DM to greatly reduce or even outright deny xp for the heist.
 




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