Listening to old-timers describe RP in the 70s and 80s

[Thomas Shey]

That‘s almost my cue. I started playing in 1977, aged 12, taught by classmates in school. I grew up in Pasadena, CA. Dad worked for Jet Propulsion Labs. (If you saw the ‘90s movie Arrival, with Charlie Sheen? Sheen had to have been working in Dad’s office or at least on the same floor, dealing with ranging systems for the Deep Space Network.) My high school had 700 students, the smallest of Pasadena’s four public high schools, and we had speakers of 48 first languages other than English. I had classmates and friends who lived in the Northwest Pasadena ghetto (2nd largest in Los Angeles after Watts), and others who lived in South Pasadena, with a median household income just behind Beverly Hills.

What I mean is, if you look up “cosmopolitan”, there’s one of my class photos.

The center of gravity for gaming there was the Caltech Gaming Club and the nearby bookstore Book Village. The guy who ran it was active in SoCal sf fandom, and carried Lee Gold’s RPG fanzine Alarums & Excursions. I got the blue box and a couple issues of A&E (31 and 32, I think) at the same time. I therefore played face to face in groups that were pretty Gygaxian, with up to 10-12 players with PCs (often two PCs each if fewer than six or so players) plus NPC followers, a designated caller, the whole nine yards. Meanwhile, I was reading each month about wildly different styles of play, from the hellhole of New York City hyper competition (Paranoia is a not very exaggerated satire of it) to Dave Hargrave’s glorious excess in Arduin to Lee’s and others‘ roleplaying- and storytelling-oriented campaigns.

Gradually I realized some things.

* Since I wasn’t available to play as often as others, I was always going to have some of the lowest-level characters. I was never going to get high-level play at all. The Caltech club reset its campaigns each year, and the local high school DMs did the same. So building up over multiple years wasn’t an option. Starting at a level higher than 1st was regarded as a form of cheating, getting power I hadn‘t “earned“.

* None of this was what I actually wanted in the first place. I’d been lured in with the promise of participating in fantasy adventures like I loved reading, but dungeon-oriented quasi-militaristic campaigning wasn’t that. There were only small scraps of wilderness to get through to find the dungeons, not marvelous worlds to explore. There was no social engagement at all, precious little opportunity to develop any sort of PC personality.

* Few of the people I was playing with actually liked or cared about me very much. I was desperate enough for community that I’d put up with a lot of grunt work.

in my last couple years of high school, I sort of blossomed socially, becoming part of the music, theater, and journalism scene. Gaming withered as I started spending time with people who did like me and helped to grow further. I didn’t play again until college, and then it was Call of Cthulhu (with Jason Carl, now a prominent social media person for the World of Darkness), RuneQuest, and other games, played in ways very unlike what I’d started with.

I'm really shocked you hit that; by that time the CalTech guys were mostly using Warlock (their offshoot of D&D) and while they had, as you say, pretty militaristic heavily gamist approach, it didn't look much like Gygaxian D&D (to the degree he made a pretty snarky comment about it in print at one point). I'm not sure I ever saw anyone use a caller out here, even among the Warlock guys (though the degree of "don't let roleplaying get in the way of the game" you could hit with some of them was pretty offputting.).

The level thing was probably kind of true, but the reality was with people who bounced from group to group regularly (and that wasn't all that uncommon) nobody the hell knew whether someone had built up the character normally or started it that morning. They might be able to be picky about that within closed-system groups (i.e. game clubs and the like) but among the ones wandering about in SF fandom you just looked at the character when it came in, decided if it looked okay, and moved on.

It shows how localized things could be, though; I never encountered that "restart every year" business at all. I don't even remember the CalTech guys ever making any mention of it (an offshoot group from one I play with still has a couple of guys who were somewhat heavily involved in that back in the day--guess I could ask.)

 

[Autumnal]

<snip>

Yeah, it was all Warlock play at Caltech for me, a mix of Warlock and TSR versions in high-school groups. I was at Caltech for Friday and Saturday evening sessions, which were probably bigger and more innately disorderly than others. For groups that large, something caller-like genuinely makes sense.

As someone who wrote professionally for Daedalus, White Wolf, and Evil Hat, I’m zoomed out that Warlock looks exactly like D&D to me - percentile skills and mana points that produce the same results as spell slots are not significant differences to me. Dungeon crawling with Feng Shui, Wraith, or Fate Accelerated, THAT would be different. (Okay, yes, 5e vs either Warlock, BD&D, AD&D, or Shadowdark feels different, too. I’m not completely oblivious. Just mostly,)

I’m sure that many differences in our experiences come from me being a painfully shy and awkward mid-teenager attending occasionally and you being a few years older, among more peers. Like, claiming a higher leveled character at a different table genuinely never occurred to me, bring awed/intimidated by the DMs.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Yeah, it was all Warlock play at Caltech for me, a mix of Warlock and TSR versions in high-school groups. I was at Caltech for Friday and Saturday evening sessions, which were probably bigger and more innately disorderly than others. For groups that large, something caller-like genuinely makes sense.

I can see it if it was really large maybe. I just didn't remember anything like it when I played with them, but those games might have been earlier in the day.

As someone who wrote professionally for Daedalus, White Wolf, and Evil Hat, I’m zoomed out that Warlock looks exactly like D&D to me - percentile skills and mana points that produce the same results as spell slots are not significant differences to me. Dungeon crawling with Feng Shui, Wraith, or Fate Accelerated, THAT would be different. (Okay, yes, 5e vs either Warlock, BD&D, AD&D, or Shadowdark feels different, too. I’m not completely oblivious. Just mostly,)

Over and above the mana points and such, what struck me at the time was that the game was intrinsically written with an assumption of getting to higher levels.

But I do get you; I bailed out of D&D probably around--78? 79? for games like Champions and Runequest and never really came back until the 3e era (and then only hung around for a couple years until I figured out what a nightmare it was to run at low-teen levels, and the fact my old D&D habits were doing me wrong).

I’m sure that many differences in our experiences come from me being a painfully shy and awkward mid-teenager attending occasionally and you being a few years older, among more peers. Like, claiming a higher leveled character at a different table genuinely never occurred to me, bring awed/intimidated by the DMs.

My third game involved in the hobby was one I GMed, and I did that at least as much as played for, honestly, most of my gaming career. I was also, while introverted, too arrogant at the time to let people disliking me put me off much.

 

[Celebrim]

Likes all around for the fascinating historical background. You are about a half generation older than me, and thus in a gap between myself and my much older cousin, plus you are in much less of a backwater of the gaming scene compared to the tables of kids basically making up their own game from what they could understand of the rules and typically odd preferences that I came from. (One DM I was aware of refused to allow players to see their own character sheets, for example, since it ruined the RP in his opinion if they could see the game.)

 

[rgard]

-Starting at a level higher than 1st was regarded as a form of cheating, getting power I hadn‘t “earned“.

I hear that. Our group played the same characters in several campaigns from 1979 through 1983. Some time in 1980 we found out that one of the players started his cleric at 7th level. His best friend played a magic-user and fighter of 8th level or so when the cleric was created and I suspect, as the friend had been involved in a couple of PC wars, they decided the fighter and m-u needed some cleric/healing support. We were outraged of course. All of the PCs we played worked their way up from 1st level with numerous PC deaths along the way. Imagine your magic-user getting blown up and dead while writing a spell into his spell book. That happened to one of mine.

Anyway, I think I maintained that "starting at a level higher than 1st level is cheating" mindset until about the time 3E came out. I haven't been bothered about that since as the goal is to have fun and sometimes the party can't be successful if they are missing a needed character class at the level they are.

 

[rgard]

(One DM I was aware of refused to allow players to see their own character sheets, for example, since it ruined the RP in his opinion if they could see the game.)

Similar, but not as bad as that...

When I went home for summer break from school I found a group near Pitt (I grew up just east of Pittsbugh) and asked to join. They let me play. I'll never forget my first session when I went to roll a d20 for an attack and the DM said, "Whoa, I roll the dice." Huh? was my reaction. That DM rolled all the dice. He'd roll and after a bit he'd tell you how much damage your PC took before killing the critter or if your character died. There were a couple of times I counted the die rolls and was convinced he didn't roll enough dice to justify the result. I think he was pretty much telling a story where x, y and z had to happen and we were part participants and part observers. That character I played was a 1E bard (created from the back of the PHB as I mentioned elsewhere here). He never died in that campaign so I guess the Fates looked favorably on him...or him dying wasn't part of the story the DM was telling.

 

[Autumnal]

Anyway, I think I maintained that "starting at a level higher than 1st level is cheating" mindset until about the time 3E came out. I haven't been bothered about that since as the goal is to have fun and sometimes the party can't be successful if they are missing a needed character class at the level they are.

Yup. The first few levels can be fun, but so can others, and it’s good to use more of the book.

 

[GuyBoy]

I never played a game with the "rule" of all characters must start at Level 1.
Sure, we started all campaigns at Level 1, but if a character was killed later on, that player brought in a new character at the same level as the rest of the party. Simply so they could contribute against tougher opponents and wouldn't die quickly and horribly.

 

[rgard]

I never played a game with the "rule" of all characters must start at Level 1.

We had several campaigns going at once. Low level types in one campaign where you could start with a 1st level character and a higher level campaign. Everybody had 3-4 characters in the higher level campaign. Once we could raise dead folks we didn't have the problem of filling gaps in the party.

 

[James Gasik]

Honestly, when I started playing D&D, it never occurred to anyone that you could start at higher level. You made a character at first, and that's how it was. Now on occasion, you might be allowed to take a precon in an adventure, if you have no characters available to play, and I do recall once or twice how those characters became full time PC's, so it happened on occasion, but I don't recall anyone getting bent out of shape about it.

But over time, it became apparent that there was nothing sacred about level 1. Dark Sun, for example, even suggested starting at level 3, with grossly inflated ability scores, just because of how ruthless it's setting was!

And for me, I found my games ran much more smoothly when players started at level 2, and I didn't have to place "2 orcs and a chest" in a room, hoping we could get a Fighter to last long enough to level, lol.

There was only one time I remember anyone being upset about a character whose power wasn't earned; over the course of a summer, the DM didn't have a car, and needed rides to and from work. One of the guys in our group basically became his taxi driver, because he lived nearby and his schedule worked well for this purpose. They began to play a lot of D&D outside of our regular sessions, with the player even being allowed to create an entire adventuring party for a solo adventure!

Which came to a head that fall, when the DM said we should all bring multiple characters to fight off a demon invasion of the campaign world. We opened up our character record books, fielding a few high level characters, and several low level characters who really couldn't do much to participate.

Then the one guy shows up with several 10th level characters we'd never even heard of, all equipped with magic items! Eyebrows were raised, but it wasn't like we didn't need the help.

But then, after the battle, the 10th level Fighter decided to get in the face of what had previously been the strongest PC, a 9th level Fighter with the Berserker Kit, who wielded the mighty Blackrazor!

Battle lines were drawn quickly, and when the dust settled, most of the player characters in the game were dead, including all the level 10 bozos, and the Berserker stood supreme, bloated with temporary levels from his kills!

The guy with the level 10 characters stormed out of the room in absolute rage, and some of the players' trust in the DM was forever shattered.

We never had another session where all the players were together in one room, and while the campaign continued (and has until this very day), the idea of us being a band of ne'er-do-wells going on adventures together was pretty much dead. Every PC was now off doing their own thing, for the most part, with their own goals, and team ups became rare.

I can honestly say my most powerful characters in the campaign haven't seen any of the others in at least 15 years.