How did D&D survive its early years?

[Kriskrafts]

This is a great thread. Characters survived by teamwork....The game survived cause it was fun....Just play and let the DM run the game.

Absolutely! I've been re-reading the exploits of our first campaign, as during the past two weeks I've been posting the "Campaign Journal" of our original module (Search for the Rod of the Seven Parts) over on www.dragonsfoot.org (Note: You have to be registerred to access the Campaign Journals message board).

Rereading the details reminds me of how much fun the storyline was. There were alot of casualties, but several of the original characters are still active in our campaign 21 years and 850 games later!

 

[pogre]

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.

Bingo - check out the original Basic D&D by Dave Arneson and the scenario in the back. There is a room with 4 Goblins that yields 400 GP. The original Blackmoor supplement had huge treasures with minor encounters.

 

[Jenale]

And my experience (started with Basic D&D, stayed with D&D until I moved, and the group in the new area played AD&D, but by then it was 2nd ed + Unearthed Arcana), D&D was a lot more fun than playing chess.

And also from my D&D experience--seemed like expectations weren't nearly as high as far as having superman characters. I mean, a 13 in a stat was good, a 15 was great. Nowadays, I know a lot of players who wouldn't consider a character who has a 15 in the prime requisite stat.

 

[RabidBob]

I think it's testimony to the brilliance of the idea of the game that it became so popular and people played it despite the massive flaws in the rules system. We played BD&D for a very short period before moving to another game (namely Runequest - just as deadly in some was!).

 

[MerakSpielman]

I remember my first D&D game...
Details aside (though I would gladly bore you with them) we had two players. My brother played a fighter, and I played a cleric. I rolled ONE hp. We were slain by 4 kobolds. Ah, the good times.

People have been talking about mentality and player-character relationships. Back then, for me and the people I saw playing, there was no "relationship." It was a game.
Just a game.
Like Trivial Pursuit.
Or Risk.
You and your friends got together: "What should we play tonight?" and you pulled out your games - one of which was D&D. People might go for it. Rolling up characters and explaining the rules could take half the time you had, but it was still fun. After it finally got started, some characters would die and nobody cared. The players just sat and watched and BSed with the other players and then went home. Most of the time the adventure was never finished, and nobody thought twice and plans were rarely made to get together and finish it.

No longer. It is not a game anymore - it is a hobby. An obsession. A way of life.

And I live it and love it.

 

[jasper]

We ran the same modules and megagame our beep off.
It a troll flask of oil torch and run away!
Two characters each at the same time who were best buds and the good players ran 3 characters at the same time. The great players used different voices or catch phrase.
I knew people would sucide their character if they didn't have a 16 in their favor stat.
Run Away and the monster not follow was normal.
Or spiking the door shut so the monster can not get to use.
Role play what was that! I am a 2nd level fighter with enought money to buy plate mail FEAR ME ORCS! Plus dex add all the time regardless of armour.
Lots and lots of ac 4 or better bracers for magic users.
Dungeons could have 3 orcs in room 1 a and 2 elves in room 1 b and they were across from each other.
It was game to win or die and roll up another character fast instead of sitting out the game.

 

[ced1106]

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.

'Cuz characters were made out of the same cookie-cutter stats, taking something like five minutes to create: If you didn't roll something like 16 in a stat, then it didn't matter! Also, some players just liked to dice. A dead character just meant another opportunity to keep rolling until you had a character with all natural 18's.

It was also manditory for the party to have six characters, with at **least** one clerics -- no prize for what spells they memorized! Individualized characters? We couldn't even have individualized parties!

Still, given the paucity of 1st-level modules, it **was** clear that you couldn't do much at 1st level. That just meant the character generation rules were simple enough to start everyone at 2nd or 3rd level...


Cedric.
aka. Washu! ^O^

 

[Celebrim]

ced1106: I personally feel that the paucity of 1st level modules is two fold.

First, I think there has been a significant failing of imagination with regard to introductory modules. Only a few stand out as fairly well crafted and interesting (U1, Sunless Citatel for example).

Second, even in 1st edition a relatively short ammount of time was spent at 1st level. From a marketing perspective, only a very small percentage of parties are going to be playing at 1st level at any given time, so why bother publishing alot of 1st level modules?

 

[Saeviomagy]

Our group played by the rules (od&d).

We died a lot.

When someone died, since there wasn't really a backstory, and everyone had to go back to town after pretty much each encounter to recuperate (1hp restored per day from rest!), we just made a new character, which was usually rolled by the time the encounter finished.

Even when we got to be high level, we still died a lot.

Characters weren't really characters. They were you with a different set of abilities.

Metagaming was rampant. It was more like you were playing a single soul which could possess a different body each time the last one died than you were actually a string of characters. Each character pretty much talked and thought like you as a person did.

Every character started at first. Even if his buddies had made it to 3rd.

I don't think we ever got past 4th.

Quite frankly, it was a blast. Playing that way is STILL a blast, given the right sort of people, and some way of quick-generating characters.

In fact, the worst part of it was when the gm decided to invent a world OUTSIDE the dungeon. He made quite a few mistakes (like a magic-item shop - after all, WE sold off some of our stuff, why shouldn't we be able to buy things we want?). It really destroyed the game, because it stopped being about running into the dungeon and risking life and limb...

 

[WSmith]

One thing I would like to add on the survivability of the game.

AD&D slightly, but moreso the D&D Basic and Expert Boxed sets were available from places like Toys'R'Us and Kay Bee, and also discount stores. My blue box edition came from K-Mart in 1980. My pink rimmed, Erol Otus cover Basic D&D boxed set came from a store called Woolco, similar to K-mart. I bought (actually Mommy did ) my OAD&D, (1st ed) PHB, DMG, MM, FF, and DDg, and subsequently the next year MM2, from a Sears Surplus store for half off the cover price as a Christmas special. Marketing wise, the game was a little more visable and had better mainstream exposure than just hobby shops and book stores. I venture to say that making it more available helped with the growth. The parents of the youth of my gaming generation didn't have to go to a gaming store to find D&D. It was at the same place they bought our summer toys, lawn chairs, and socks.