D&D General A Trip Back In Time: On The Utter Weirdness of Old Spells

[eudyptes]

I would love that essay on Gygax religous background and it's roll in the evolution of DnD.

...

Same! Samesamesame.

What I find really interesting is how extensively developed the devil and deamon lore is, which is also deeply rooted in Christian lore but of a much different sort.

I was already pretty much a nonbeliever by the time I was playing AD&D, but the devils especially were fascinating to me. I used to have a lot of conversations in college/grad school with a friend who identifies as a "recovering Catholic" about demonology and how the AD&D Big Baddies relate to those in Catholic lore.

 

[eudyptes]

I sometimes get irrationally annoyed and want to go geezer mode when my kids want to go back and rewind a few minutes of a show because they missed something. I just sometimes wanna say "too bad, wait six months for the re-runs (uphill, both ways...)"

Similarly, it's still kind of shocking to me that "these kids today" don't have the same sort of shared cultural background (for lack of a better term) that we had. You could count on EVERYONE having seen The Wizard of Oz if you were alive in the 80s; it was a cultural touchstone. But there isn't really TV in that way anymore and I don't think my kids (16 and 18) have even seen it, let alone would get references to it. These touchstones still exist but they're far from as universal as they used to be (for good or ill, I don't really have an opinion on that).

 

[Mannahnin]

This is related only insofar as it's illusionist-adjacent, but when I was playing AD&D in the 80s (so junior high into hs), our DM liked using illusionists as bad guys so much that it became routine whenever something bad appeared for someone in the party to say, "I attempt to disbelieve." It was so common that we started saying it in real life. ("Surprise calculus quiz!" <I turn and look at Dean> "I attempt to disbelieve.")

"I disbelieve" in response to various things was a total gamer meme back in the 80s and 90s.

 

[Lanefan]

Polymorph other- turn your opponent into a goldfish and it becomes save or die. Death spell only worked on level 8 or less - by the time you faced it you were too high level for it to matter. The lich just wasted a level 6 slot taking it (edit to add that truly evil DMs would have the party fight a shadow dragon which halved levels or spectre which drains 2 levels per hit and THEN have the lich cast death spell with your only way back being a wish or reincarnation- possibly coming back as a badger).

Now that's thinkin'!

Identify- pretty much every campaign I knew house ruled that it just worked no dice rolls required.

We don't do it the same as the book but there's still some uncertainty involved, increasing as the number of properties a given item has increases.

Level 1 wizard spells were deadly cast at high level. Your level 14 illusionist was firing 7 magic missiles with every casting of magic missile, and s/he got to do that 4 times!

One of the reasons I always thought Level 1 MU Spells was useless for an Illusionist is that I've always interpreted it as, even though you're a 14th-level Illusionist, you're casting them as if you're a 1st-level MU. When you get to Ill-15 you cast as a MU-2, and so on. In other words, at 14th you'd burn a 7th-level spell to get one missile for d4+1 damage.

Still situationally useful - rarely - for some spells that don't scale with level e.g. Sleep, Charm Person, and the like; but that's it.