The year: 1987.
The DM: me, 14 at the time.
The player: my younger sister, 12 at the time.
I adapted Sceptre of Power and had my sister play as Carla Delling. However, I had her play Carla as a full-on AD&D character learning magic-user spells by the book.
The beginning of Carla's story was much the same as OUR Carr's, minus the senseless deaths in the village of Delmer. Carla made it to Freeton, decided to buy some food at the bazaar, avoided the press gang, and was eating her smoked fish when accosted by Thayne.
My sister was way too street smart to accept wine from a creepy older man in an alley, so Carla gave Thayne the brush off before he could plot-dump upon her.
Carla found her way to the vicinity of the College Arcane where, even without the warning about the Yellow Musk Creeper vines on the fence, Carla asked this quite reasonable question: "Do I see a gate?"
DM (me): "Not from here."
Carla: "I follow the fence until I see a gate."
So she got into the College Arcane none the worse for wear, although ignorant of the magic money pouch and much of the plot. She was suspicious of Beldon (ya think?) and immediately determined that Arno was a bully who needed his comeuppance.
I gave my sister the entire list of spells from all possible College Arcane paths and let her choose which 4 she wanted to learn en route to becoming a 1st-level magic user. (She got Read Magic for free because that's one of the AD&D PH benefits for starting magic-users and is required for the class to function.)
After my sister read brief descriptions of each spell, she chose to learn the tandem of Spider Climb and Feather Fall because they seemed cool and useful… unlike certain other spells on the list: "Why would I need a spell called Light or one called Burning Hands? I'll just carry a torch which can do both."
Carla figured that if Spider Climb ever got her somewhere too high to climb down from before the spell's duration expired, she could cast Feather Fall and float down. I reminded my sister that a 1st level magic-user can only memorize one spell per day, but she didn't care; she wanted to learn both spells.
At the Spider Climb lesson she was suitably grossed out by the material component (eat a live spider, yum!) and REALLY grossed out by how much Arno enjoyed it.
So the next day at the Feather Fall lesson she asked, "Are we alone on the top of the tower? Just Carla and Arno?"
DM: "Yes. Arno pulls out a bird feather, the material component for this spell, and explains that you have to let go of it just at the moment you say the verbal component, which is--"
Carla: "Is he standing near the edge of the tower?"
DM: "Umm… yes…?"
Carla: "I grab the feather and push him off the tower."
DM: !!!!!
Several dice rolls later, Carla looked down at the crumpled bleeding corpse of Arno on the basalt paving stones below.
And that's the story of how my sister's character murdered her rival in one of her first D&D games.
