Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.
Enchanted Trinkets Complete--a hardcover book containing over 500 magic items for your D&D games!

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Sir Whiskers" data-source="post: 752004" data-attributes="member: 6941">How did characters survive? Most didn't. My first character, a magic user, died when he fell in a pit while running from a ghoul. The law of averages did help at times: I still remember two fighter characters I had who were the only survivors of a large party that faced a sea hag - they gained enough xp's to reach fourth level from that one fight (they added the rule about only one level gain at a time later). Those two characters survived until they were retired, so getting lucky early helped. In another fight, some giant frogs killed 19 of 20 mercenaries we brought along - tons of xp from those frogs for the surviving party members (and who ever cared what happened to hirelings?)Also, I can't speak for anyone else, but when I started (1976), DnD was more strategy and less roleplaying. We always had six party members, so oftentimes a player ran more than one character. Sure we hated losing characters, but really, most of the time (especially if I'd just rolled him up) losing a character was like losing a unit in a wargame - just plug in another one. I only became upset if I disagreed with WHY he died, which happened all too frequently, given the poorly written rules. Deaths were just expected. Somewhere along the way, that changed, but I don't think it did so until after ADnD came out.Why keep playing? It was fun!!! Think of it as pen-and-paper Diablo. How many times did you reload a save game when you started playing Diablo and got yourself into trouble. Same thing with DnD, except we had no save games - dead was usually dead. But we did learn (flaming oil was a great weapon at low levels). There was always something new to fight, new treasure to gain, new dungeons to pillage. I can't stress enough how similar the early DnD experience was to Diablo (or Civilization-type games), where you keep saying "just one more room..."Sometimes I really miss the (seeming) simplicity of the original game...[puts on rose-colored glasses].</blockquote>

Verification