How did you play back in the day? - forked from Q's Leveling Comparisons

[Plane Sailing]

Well, I'm off to bed. It's late. As I type this, it's 3% played in Castle Greyhawk style mega dungeons and 97% didn't. Unless there is a radical reversal, I'm gonna say that I've made my point.

Only because you've set such a broad base, IMO.

When I started there were NO modules. None at all. Back in 1975/76 DMs tended to make big sprawling dungeons with lots of levels and wide expanses of corridors and rooms. D&D was about going into Dungeons and exploring them; very much status quo adventures (go deeper and you'll find tougher critters, whether or not you are good enough to face them).

G1 was introduced in 1978. Those tournament modules which were turned into saleable items arguably introduced a different (linked adventures in different locations) adventure style, and everything that came after that contributed towards different ways of playing.

I'd argue that you would get a much more interesting poll if you separated your concerns into

* playing up to 1977 in mega dungeons
* playing up to 1977 in home-brew linked serial adventures

* playing 1978 onwards in mega dungeons (homebrew)
* playing 1978 onwards in mega dungeons (modules)
* playing 1978 onwards in linked serial adventures (homebrew)
* playing 1978 onwards in linked serial adventures (modules)

Could even be multiple choice too.

 

[The Hound]

I started back in 1979 or 80. I think the first hardbound books were just coming out then, but when we first started our GM was too cheap to buy them, so we used the old copy paper rules with hobbits in them.

Ours were strictly homebrew dungeon adventures. I wouldn't call them mega dungeons, because each level occupied at most one sheet of graph paper at 10' per square, and we never got through very many levels. They were dangerous, and we were very meticulous about cleaning out each one. It was assumed that there was some sort of town outside the dungeon where characters could buy equipment with the treasure they found, but the beginning of the weekly session always started at either the entrance of the dungeon or the last place in the dungeon where we left off last time. Things like bottle caps and Risk pieces were used to denote positions of characters - I don't know if there even were any such things as fantasy miniatures sets back then (but there must have been).

Another distinguishing feature was that every player ran four or five characters - the full party compliment of a fighter or two, a magic user, a thief, and a cleric. Since we usually had three or four players, combat could get lengthy and complicated. Role playing, if you want to call it that, was not very complicated, consisting as it was of banter during combat and arguments about whether or not to go through this or that door. The GM was also stingy with experience points. We were lucky to get a few dozen per character per session. I don't know if that was just the GM or that was what the rulebooks recommended back then.

A few others who decided to try DMing soon started adding plot elements and outdoor adventures. By the time I moved out of town and found a new group a few years later things had evolved into the types of complex fantasy plots and campaigns that we know today. Published modules were seldom used, and I don't recall miniatures being used by anyone until much later.

 

[Lanefan]

Things like bottle caps and Risk pieces were used to denote positions of characters - I don't know if there even were any such things as fantasy miniatures sets back then (but there must have been).

There were. Many older metal minis had the year of manufacture stamped into their base (a tradition now sadly lost, it seems), and 1979 is a common one.

Lanefan

 

[Plane Sailing]

Minatures? Absolutely!

When I started, the main source of minatures was a company called MiniFigs (who did figures for tabletop wargames, but did have a 'middle earth' range and a 'sword and sorcery' range). At the higher end, there were occasional figures available from Ral Partha, which were beautifully sculpted but much more expensive! Heritage had a small range, and there were a few others about too.

MiniFigs did get rights to do a "D&D" range, and produced a whole bunch of pig-faced orcs to match the 1e look for orcs.

The Citadel minatures burst on the scenes with finely sculpted figures which matched traditional D&D classes. That was the start of the golden age of early figure-dom.

Cheers

 

[S'mon]

Not a mega-dungeon, nor a linked series of modules. More an open world, what they call a sand-box these days, but with lots of plots, politics, pro-active NPCs as well as dungeon sites. We started with "Darkrise on Irillian" from White Dwarf magazine, and went from there. There was a general invasion theme that culminated in an epic Pelennor Fields type battle. But it wasn't scripted, it was emergent-in-play.

 

[Hussar]

Only because you've set such a broad base, IMO.

When I started there were NO modules. None at all. Back in 1975/76 DMs tended to make big sprawling dungeons with lots of levels and wide expanses of corridors and rooms. D&D was about going into Dungeons and exploring them; very much status quo adventures (go deeper and you'll find tougher critters, whether or not you are good enough to face them).

G1 was introduced in 1978. Those tournament modules which were turned into saleable items arguably introduced a different (linked adventures in different locations) adventure style, and everything that came after that contributed towards different ways of playing.

I'd argue that you would get a much more interesting poll if you separated your concerns into

* playing up to 1977 in mega dungeons
* playing up to 1977 in home-brew linked serial adventures

* playing 1978 onwards in mega dungeons (homebrew)
* playing 1978 onwards in mega dungeons (modules)
* playing 1978 onwards in linked serial adventures (homebrew)
* playing 1978 onwards in linked serial adventures (modules)

Could even be multiple choice too.

As was mentioned on the previous page, the entire point of this poll was based on Ariosto's claim that mega-dungeon play was the "norm" or the "usual" or the "most common" (take your pick of definition) way of playing back in the day.

I don't care when you started, because that wasn't a factor in Ariosto's statements. His statement was that in AD&D play, the mega-dungeon was the standard, and not only that, it was the INTENDED method of play according to the books.

This poll shows that the first part is completely false. The mega-dungeon was not the standard in AD&D play. It doesn't matter if someone played 1 mega dungeon and then 9 years of serials. The "mostly" part of the question covers that.

If, in your opinion, your experience goes with any option other than "mostly mega dungeon play" then Ariosto's point is demonstrably false.

Of course, his second point of intent is a bit trickier. To me, if he's right, then that means the developers of AD&D were completely oblivious to how the game was actually going to be played. I mean, right now, we're still at less than 10% of players using mega-dungeons as a standard of play.

If the intent of 1e D&D was to play mega-dungeons, as Ariosto asserts, then the writers were woefully ignorant of reality.

To me, I'd rather think it was that Ariosto has simply overlaid his experience on history.

Oh, and btw, BryonD, one last time, please tone back the antagonism. I'm asking politely. If you don't like my threads, just put me on ignore and don't worry about them. If you have an actual point to make, please make it. Implying, yet again, that I am guilty of violence against my wife is hardly appropriate behavior.

 

[Plane Sailing]

As was mentioned on the previous page, the entire point of this poll was based on Ariosto's claim that mega-dungeon play was the "norm" or the "usual" or the "most common" (take your pick of definition) way of playing back in the day.

I don't care when you started, because that wasn't a factor in Ariosto's statements. His statement was that in AD&D play, the mega-dungeon was the standard, and not only that, it was the INTENDED method of play according to the books.

The problem is, it all depends upon when "back in the day" was - hence my suggestions. If Ariosto is thinking "OD&D and first couple of years of 1e - the context in which it was written", and you are thinking "everything up to and including the whole lifetime of 1e" then there are very valid reasons why you might have different opinions.

I might add that the best reason for doing polls is to investigate something you might find interesting. Attempting to use them to 'prove' someone else on the internet is 'wrong' is a hiding to nothing, really.

Cheers

 

[diaglo]

i didn't see my option in the poll:


the same way i play now using the same edition

 

[The Hound]

I don't care when you started, because that wasn't a factor in Ariosto's statements. His statement was that in AD&D play, the mega-dungeon was the standard, and not only that, it was the INTENDED method of play according to the books........



......Of course, his second point of intent is a bit trickier. To me, if he's right, then that means the developers of AD&D were completely oblivious to how the game was actually going to be played. I mean, right now, we're still at less than 10% of players using mega-dungeons as a standard of play......

I think that by the time AD&D came out, exclusively dungeon adventures, mega or otherwise, were passe. This is just based on my experience - one person in one town - but by that time people were getting into larger campaigns involving cities, towns, caravans, etc. with the occasional dungeon thrown in, in the form of castles, ruins, etc.

As for AD&D being geared toward mega dungeons, I don't remember what if anything the books said about the topic. I suppose that you could just as easily say that 3.5 was geared toward mega dungeons, because almost all of the combat examples showed tokens placed inside caves and dungeons and most of the artwork showed characters in caves and dungeons.

It may have been true that in the VERY beginning, when Gygax published his first rules sets, dungeon delves and PCs vs. monsters were pretty much all that he had in mind. After all D&D evolved from a homebrew fantasy rules set intended for miniatures combat. It's best to let the really old old timers wiegh in on that.

 

[Hussar]

The problem is, it all depends upon when "back in the day" was - hence my suggestions. If Ariosto is thinking "OD&D and first couple of years of 1e - the context in which it was written", and you are thinking "everything up to and including the whole lifetime of 1e" then there are very valid reasons why you might have different opinions.

I might add that the best reason for doing polls is to investigate something you might find interesting. Attempting to use them to 'prove' someone else on the internet is 'wrong' is a hiding to nothing, really.

Cheers

Well, you'd have to ask Ariosto to clarify further. When we did, we got "AD&D=mega dungeons". His statements the forked thread are pretty clear. He was shocked to learn that for some, the mega-dungeon wasn't the "norm".

That's my whole point, nothing more. That the mega-dungeon in AD&D was not the norm. I suppose if we narrow down the time to OD&D, it might make a difference, but, in context from the forked thread, it certainly wasn't what he was saying.

In the original thread, Ariosto questioned Q's assumptions by saying that in AD&D, few tables actually played the way that Q had set things up. His claim was that mega-dungeons were the norm for AD&D play, thus, Q's evaluation was invalid.

I think this proves that the mega-dungeon was far from common, let alone the "norm" in AD&D play.