How did D&D survive its early years?

[Celebrim]

Dr.S.: Unfortunately, that same basic encounter could still occur in 3rd. edition.

A party of 1st levels probably has no chance against a platoon of squirels, much less *shudder* house cats.

Part of the problem is the 'There is no such thing as 0 damage' rule of D&D.

At least squirels provoke AoO when charging PC's now.

 

[paqman]

1st-level magic-users (the term of the time)....

You make it sound as if it was centuries ago

All characters had to roll their 1st-level hit points. Fighters could have 3 or 4 hit points. And death came at 0 hit points, not -10!

Note that BDnD, ADnD and ADnD2nd were ripe for House rules of all kind. Lots of people had binders full of house rules for things like that. So, we usually accepted only dice role above 3 third of the possible maximum for the first 3 levels. After that, above half possible.

In ADnD2nd, there was an optional rule in the DMG that explained the -10 HP survival. In fact you survived longer in those days in the minus because in second edition, you lost 1 hp each round while in the negatives and a round was 1 minute.

Thieves (the term of the time) had like a 25% chance to find and remove traps.
Poison killed, flat out dead, with a failed save.

Yesssir, these were the days....... You probably noticed that I was, and still am, a Dm

I read an example of handling experience points. .... sniped

Well, I have to say that when we switched to 3rd edition, we were a bit take aback by the fact that character progression was suddenly WAY too fast. It was the same feeling as not having a big job and working hard to possibly buy something and that when you finaly buy it, it is so satisfying, but now, being older and having a not so bad salary, you can buy pretty much what you want and it removes the preciousness and satisfaction of finaly having the newly bought item.

It was relatively the same for us with level progression. BUUUT we adjusted.

This all makes me ask the same question for two different subjects:

1) How did our 1st-level characters survive?
2) How did the D&D game survive?

1) By having a DM create balanced events, possibly having the first couple of levels have less combats and more role playing opportunities/awards. When the character fought monster, have good conditions to let them have a relateivelly good chance at survival but with some challenge. It's all the work of the DM, I mean in 3rd edition or 2nd edition, a Troll would kill anyone of first level with a single claw hit. You have to think ahead for your encounters and think well to have a good rotation of action sequences and role playing sequences that are fun and satisfying without generating the frustration of 1st level death.
2) It was too fun, we were geeks (probably still are, we all work in computers after all), we had no girl friends... A good combination of situations to stick with a bunch of similarilly devoid of social live individuals and have fun.

1- I don’t really remember seeing a BD&D/AD&D character EVER raise from 1st level without major DM intervention. After playing/DMing with 1st-level characters constantly for a while, I (when DMing) started PCs out at 3rd level.

We too started from level 3 from time to times, but when we played 1st level, we did as I explained for my answer to your question 1).

Did anyone *really* survive 1st (and 2nd) level by "legal" play? Most PCs could be killed with a single arrow shot. MUs were useless after casting their one and only sleep spell. Theives died at their first treasure chest. And in BD&D, clerics didn’t even get spells at 1st level! No healing for beginning characters, at all!

See answer to question 1). But in all simplicity: Good DMing! It is sure that if you stick to the rules and send a bunch of orcs at a bunch of 1st level characters that are unprepared and caught off guard (Like sleeping) there will be death without an ounce of doubt, that is where you have to make sure to give good situations for your players to survive, with difficulties, and have a great time.

My friends and I played through the Caves of Chaos with about 20 characters before we got tired of running in and dying. And even when you tried tactics, PCs fell dead in droves at 1st level. What other game could be this much fun, yet so damn hard to succeed at?

Hard to say. mmmmm. Surely not Monopoly...... Maybe Chess?... nope. No, I know, when I was younger it was Starwars or Dukes of hazzard make beleive..... but it is Roleplaying after all. No, Can't think of any!

Although there are plenty of things that can kill 1st-level D&D3 characters (even orcs), at least now beginning PCs start with max hit points, mages get 4 or 5 spells, and it is generally easier to survive the game with intelligent play. (No more open the treasure chest and die.) And the powerful and "fun" (from a young/new player’s perspective) levels are closer and more attainable (rules legally).

Note that even in second edition, the MU had more spells due to intelligence.

All this to say, it was fun, we played it for 15 years ( Damn it pains me to say that ) and I wouldn't change anything of that if I had to do it again.

 

[NewJeffCT]

Everybody wanted to be a ranger to get that 2d8 hit points at first level!

Just kidding... but, we normally went for MAX hp at first level back then.

We had a lot of teamwork, and a good DM would design an adventure to challenge the PCs, be it 1E, 2E or 3E.

Maybe 8 goblins would challenge a party in 3E, but a similar group in 1E might fight 3 goblins. But, in 3E, we don't even think of facing off against dragons until well beyond 10th level. In 2E, I remember one lone elf wiping out an old white dragon by himself. And, in 1E, dragons had a max of 88 hit points.

 

[Enceladus]

I have a friend who remembers learning DnD with another friend, each of them equally ignorant and thus without house rules.

This friend rolls up a first level druid and gets something like 2 hit points.

He walks out into the woods and proceeds to encounter a squirrel. Somehow he and the squirel end up in a fight.

Three or four rounds later his character lies dead under the bloody teeth of his vicious squirrel adversary.

As my friend says, the part of this conflict that struck him as most unfair was that the squirrels obscenely high dexterity score and armor bonus for being so small made it simply impossible for him to try to hit the squirrel.

In the third round he had tried to run...

ROFLLMFAO!!!! I damn near passed out I was laughing so hard.

 

[Berk]

As a side note, most things that you did gave an experience award in 1st edition. Like for fighters it was defeating a monster based on it's hit dice or something and for magic users it was for casting a spell and thieves it was for using their thieving abilities correctly. Atleast I think I am remembering that from 1st edition. Been ages since I played and even looked through the books.

Also the 1gp=1exp rule helped a ton. Also the gp value of magick items was also the exp you got. All of those factors helped out. Not to mention how most dm's would give rp bonuses to exp also.

 

[Henry]

It seems some are taking my above post as a swipe or comparison at the older editions. It is not at all. Please do not read this as a flame/troll.

Not at all.

How is that we players didn't get frustrated and fed up when character after character after character were killed in the first battle by goblins and orcs. I remember playing two dozen characters in my first year, all never made it to 2nd level.

As earlier posted, both by me and MThibault, players had a different relationship with their characters. Very few people in the early days spent lots of time creating multi-page backgrounds, and developed the character on the run. Also with fewer options, it was admittedly a little quicker than it is in 2E or 3E to create a character, just by virtue of fewer stats to write out.

Imagine a computer game that didn't have a save function; that took 100 hours of play, and two dozen character attempst, to make 2nd level; etc. It couldn't become a great hit as D&D did.

However, I do want to point out a phenomenon; "Iron Man" play is returning as a popular form of play, in card games, in RPG's, and in computer games. "Iron Man" games are those with no mulligans or protective nets. I've heard over the past few years of "Iron Man Magic" the card game; If a card is killed or destroyed, it is REALLY destroyed.

Anyone remember the computer game Wasteland? HUGE game, very popular. You could SAVE, but you couldn't RESTORE once you left and area. Once you left an area, all the changes to it were saved to disk, so if you killed a merchant or important NPC, they STAYED DEAD.

 

[Celebrim]

As far as DMing 1st level players goes, you have always had to be extraordinarily careful when creating challenges. I _still_ don't send orcs after 1st level players, not because I don't think the players will win, but because I think it is too easy for an orc to get lucky and flat out kill a PC even though the PC did nothing 'wrong'.

When creating an adventure for 1st level characters, you have to be very careful. You mostly choose monsters that do very low damage per attack (1d3 or 1d4-1 tends to be the max I'm happy with). You go ahead and stack the deck in the PC's favor by giving them the advantage of terrein (if they are smart enough to use it). You give the foe a disadvantage (it is drunk, it is sleeping, it is suprised), and you give the thugs inferior equipment (wooden spears, -1 to hit and damage, or clubs instead of swords and axes, or weaker armor). You give opponents below average h.p.

All of this presents a challenge to the 3rd edition CR system (does the orc CR reduce if it has only 1 hit point, or has a club rather than a great axe?), but wasn't a bit of a problem for 1st edition since h.p., max damage, and so forth, were figured into XP calculations directly.

You make the skill checks really easy (15 DC or lower). In 1st edition terms this meant that the traps or obstacles had a bonuses to notice them or disarm them. 'Traps' often inflicted subdual damage on the PC's (it was in 1st edition too, only the references were more obscure), or else stunned or deafened them for a period.

You frequently separate the encounters in time and space, so that the players have a chance to rest up and reequip between them - and so you can worry less worry about players stacking opponents on themselves with poor play.

Alot of what I throw at 1st level characters is really below CR 1, and in 3rd edition I reward them accordingly. In 1st edition, that wasn't a problem and didn't require a house rule. It was perfectly fine to award only 6 or 12 XP for winning through an encounter.

 

[kenjib]

Anyone remember the computer game Wasteland? HUGE game, very popular. You could SAVE, but you couldn't RESTORE once you left and area. Once you left an area, all the changes to it were saved to disk, so if you killed a merchant or important NPC, they STAYED DEAD.

Well, not if you were h4xx0r5...

 

[Mark]

Originally at http://inventors.about.com/library/inventors/blcomputer_videogames.htm
In 1975, Atari re-released Pong as a home video game.

heh Looks like it was about a year after D&D came out. Not much sense saving a game of Pong when you're only playing up to 15 points...

 

[ElMorte]

Well, not if you were h4xx0r5...

Or used multiple discs.....