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

[James Gasik]

One thing that amused me at the time, as I went to conventions and pick-up games (1e AD&D), I'd ask the DM "do you use any variants?" and they'd be like "nah, by the book" (or, "yeah, we use a mana system...") ...
... then, like d10 initiative, critical hits, possibly even fumbles....

Everyone used house rules. The funny part was how few people seemed to realize that the rules they were using were, in fact, house rules!

The Forever DM in my AD&D circle had a rule where a 20 was a crit and a 19 gave you +2 damage. It was a fun conversation years later when I was playing D&D with one of my old friends from those days and he was griping about how "they got rid of the +2 damage on a 19 in 5e".

"My man, that was, and never has been, a rule in any book."

"What? No it was, I used it for years."

(Gets out the books and we go over them)

"Man, I could have sworn...maybe it was in a Dragon magazine..."

 

[Thomas Shey]

One thing that amused me at the time, as I went to conventions and pick-up games (1e AD&D), I'd ask the DM "do you use any variants?" and they'd be like "nah, by the book" (or, "yeah, we use a mana system...") ...
... then, like d10 initiative, critical hits, possibly even fumbles....

I've noted before that if you dig into the people even now who say they play AD&D1 by the book, its often quickly clear they either never knew or have long forgotten what "the book" actually said....

 

[GuyBoy]

It depends on how old the gamers were in a group.

My first group were teens, I was oldest at 14, and they only wanted to go to the dungeon. As the one who got bullied into being the DM I lasted maybe a year doing that. I had to abandon that group and find slightly older gamers who wanted to do more complex adventures.

Yet, as DM for the Mega Dungeon group, I got down to 9 levels of dungeon in my first one. The concept of creating situations that were more complex than simply 'kill the thing and take the stuff' was always foremost in my mind. Yet, most DMs would use short hand when creating things, so an old dungeon will ony have a note saying: Wizard and his warrior girlfriend, lvl 10 23 hp ac 9 and lvl 9 hp 37 Ac 2. Most of the detals were in the DMs head, as most DMs knew their own dungeon like that back of their hand.

The rules we had were not well written and left a lot of gaps. There was no way to create meaningful adventures without the Game Referee designing them. I actually never used random tables since I intuited that even Zenopus Dungeon was not random.

Even today, it is hard to peel my players away from the big pay-out of dungeon dives. If they are on an adventure and stumble on an underworld they'll get fixated on the exploration of the unknown for many sessions.

I do recall eventually finding Judges Guild and their wilderness and city which was something I really wanted to do. Perhaps, the most influential game out there for doing more than the cookie cutter campaign is Empire of the Petal Throne. My second group went crazy over that world setting and we dumped D&D in favor of home brewed TFT: Melee and Wizard around '78.

I consider E.P.T. to be essential reading for any Game Master rgeardless of what system they use.

Perhaps what was the biggest driving force for early D&D play being focused on dungeons is the rules themselves. Wilderness adventuring was just too brutal if played according to what was in the system for D&D. None of us realized that even the creators of the games didn't use their own rules they published.

It may be hard to understand that without internet or even email, the resources we had for learning from each other were very limited. You had to wait a month for your favorite magazine to come out. Then again, the internet has created what I call tiny pearls of useful knowledge that are buried in a sea of manure.

The brief descriptions of dungeon rooms certainly brought back memories. As a DM, I either negotiated graph paper from a friendly maths teacher or possibly stole it! Similar story with the lined exercise books for writing out the brief notes for each room.
My first campaign was an inn and a nine level dungeon, with a wilderness written out later. That got us through until Judges Guild came to the rescue, and I’m still in awe of Jennell Jacquays all these years later.
Living in UK, I never acquired EPT ( and I’m pretty glad about that now).

 

[Geekrampage]

From 1980 - 1986, 10-16 year old me style of play was "get together with some friends, make a character, and be lucky to fight a few monsters, then the next time you get together, make some new characters, and be lucky to fight a few monsters." Was there a difference between D&D and AD&D? At the time I had no idea!

In 1987, I met Russ, Ryder, Woobee, and Dodd (and a few other guys). Ryder had an ongoing AD&D campaign. We played at Ryder's house, or at Russ's house, or at Woobee's house, or at Dodd's house, or at Ryder's mom's office, or in the basement of Smokey's Pizza, whenever three or more of us were together. There were no minis. There was no set weekly game night. Whoever showed up was who was there. There was an ongoing story so Ryder or whoever was at the last session always had to fill us in what was happening and what our goal was. I remember it was mostly not about pre-made dungeons and more just stuff happening as part of an organic story wherever we happened to be.

In 1989, after high school, Woobee and I were roommates so we played at our apartment. Every night, from like midnight to 6am. Also Cyberpunk 2020 and Mekton and Star Wars and Street Fighter and Robotech and Battletech. By this time we stopped hanging out with Ryder so Woobee was running his game world. There was a story about a stolen map of the shortcuts of the universe (Time Bandits style) and demonic figures chasing us, and various plots and adventures around the setting. But it was still "whoever is here tonight" on any given night style of play. I don't recall a lot of actual dungeons in Woobee's campaign. He liked above-ground fights.

It wasn't until 1994 when I started going to college (at age 24, shut up) that we started a weekly game night. By that time we had met Trevor (who worked at Smokey's) and Dave. We played AD&D 2e in Trevor's campaign, the story featured an expansionist Thule empire north of the river and our attempt to unite the various Principalities against them, usually by taking on quests to find stuff in dungeons. Trevor liked to adapt published dungeons to his setting and ongoing story. Oh, there was a whole plot about finding the sun god and returning them to the heavens. I think that was from a published boxed set. We also went to the Red Steel setting and Myth Drannor.

So that takes us up to 1999. I won't bore you with how we played post 3rd edition.

By the way, my current Friday night game group? Me, Woobee, and Dodd, still playing together after 36 years, along with Jeffy and Trevor (who joined us in 1989) and Scott (who joined us in 1996). There hasn't been a year since 1987 that at least three of this group weren't playing together every week. (I moved away from 1991-92, then from 1999-2002, Dodd was in college in the early 2000s, people leave for a while to raise infant children, etc.). And we've been playing online since March 2020.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

The ONLY D&D game I could POSSIBLY have played “by the book” was the very first one. Since I was a newbie player (not the DM), and didn’t even own the DMG at that point, I have no way of knowing how close to RAW it was run. Every D&D game I can think of since then (1977) has in some kind of HR.

 

[Blackmoor_Film]

The brief descriptions of dungeon rooms certainly brought back memories. As a DM, I either negotiated graph paper from a friendly maths teacher or possibly stole it! Similar story with the lined exercise books for writing out the brief notes for each room.
My first campaign was an inn and a nine level dungeon, with a wilderness written out later. That got us through until Judges Guild came to the rescue, and I’m still in awe of Jennell Jacquays all these years later.
Living in UK, I never acquired EPT ( and I’m pretty glad about that now).

Despite all the later non game issues, you should feel regret at not having read Empire of the Petal Throne. I've read nearly everything for it. There is no setting to compare. It is the most compelling world ever created. Both Gygax and Arneson praised it highly.

Yeah, getting graph paper was hard early on. I scrounged a single piece and made my first level. None of my levels were even made on matching sheets of graph paper. It was not very pretty.

 

[Mannahnin]

Living in UK, I never acquired EPT ( and I’m pretty glad about that now).

Despite all the later non game issues, you should feel regret at not having read Empire of the Petal Throne. I've read nearly everything for it. There is no setting to compare. It is the most compelling world ever created. Both Gygax and Arneson praised it highly.

I like a lot of the concepts. It's one reason I'm looking forward to Secrets of Sha-Arthan, which is heavily inspired by Tekumel and by Skyrealms of Jorune, another intriguing older game which I'd like to see get a revamp.

Of course, Ben Laurence of Through Ultan's Door fame also has been tinkering with Jorune for a while and I love the stuff I've seen about it on his blog. But Sha-Arthan looks closer to fruition.

 

[Lanefan]

Yeah, getting graph paper was hard early on. I scrounged a single piece and made my first level. None of my levels were even made on matching sheets of graph paper. It was not very pretty.

We were lucky here in that a) the bookstore at the local university always had some and b) a drafting supply place downtown also always had some.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

We were lucky here in that a) the bookstore at the local university always had some and b) a drafting supply place downtown also always had some.

Back in the 70s & 80s, I always used to hit the Engineering school’s section of the college book stores for most of my graph paper needs.

 

[RareBreed]

I started playing right at the beginning of the 80s, so I'm not old-old skool.

Since you talked about RP in general, and not just D&D, our group hardly played fantasy at all. Perhaps that was unusual, but my friend's father owned a hobby store, and back in the 80s, the TSR stuff didn't fly off the shelves more than any other game.

So I'm as much puzzled about OSR roleplaying as everyone else. Of the fantasy that we did play, I recall playing about as much MERP (Middle Earth Role Playing) as AD&D 1st ed. So the style of play was quite a bit different. Though admittedly, when I ran the games, being as young as I was at the time and not being that steeped into Tolkeinology, rather than dungeon romps, they were mostly scenes reminiscent of The Hobbit, or the Barrow Downs.

What we really played back in the day was Champions, Justice Inc, and Twillight 2000. The vast majority of the games we played had mundane real-world settings. We played a lot of Recon (both from Palladium and the original RPG Inc version) and when Phoenix Command came out in 1986, I made a home brew using it for the combat rules. We enjoyed a lot of Roaring 20's/30's era stuff more in the vein of Indiana Jones than Doc Savage or The Phantom.

If there's one thing I've noticed that's very different from the 80s compared to today's roleplaying, it's that many of the popular systems of the time had characters who were just above-average skilled Joes in a mundane world. No super powers, no magic, and even in Sci-Fi settings, often the tech was limited in nature. For example, in Traveller, you often had to visit low-tech worlds, and skill with a blade was still useful so as not to puncture the hull of a star craft. The post-Apocalyptic game Living Steel had fantastic power armor, but with limited endurance and always having to scrounge for parts for repairs.

So here's my cranky old man list about today's games:

• Give me games where you're just a regular schmoe and might progress to something like James Bond, but not some epic god-like being
• Give me rules in 128 pages or less; I don't want to read 300+ pages of fluff to find the 30 or so pages of actual rules
• Bring back simulationism (I care about weapon reach, encumbrance etc) because I have a feeling I'm not the only engineer or tweaker who likes to play games
• Karma points to re-roll is all the meta game influence I need; the GM should be the visionary of the story, because "design by committee" doesn't work (the GM can take cues from the players, but that's as far as it goes)

I miss the days of crunchy gaming. Take a look at the complexity of Phoenix Command Combat System or Powers and Perils. My theory as to why this form of gaming has effectively died out is two-fold. First, roleplaying evolved out of the wargame community who were used to that kind of detail and simulationism. Over time, to appeal to a bigger market, the detail was watered down. This served two purposes, it made it less intimidating to learn and also less time to learn. As technology improved in the 90s, notably home computers and the internet, consumers now have far far more entertainment choices than ever before. As a result, any form of entertainment had to be quick to pick up. I believe the ultimate progression of this has become Tik Tok, where for many people, 3min videos has become about the limit of their attention span.

Before the internet, and you had to wait until 8pm once a week to watch your favorite TV show, I recall many a night after school reading for hours poring over a book. That will only happen with a tiny minority of players nowadays. And honestly, it wouldn't even include myself (my main hobby today isn't gaming). On the flip side, technology makes it much easier to find rules than ever before, with hyperlinks and hovers giving summaries at a glance. We're already seeing the hybridization of TTRPGs with Computers with things like Roll20 and DnDBeyond. But I think the game systems themselves will evolve (or at leas should evolve) so that they can take advantage of the power of computers so that you can have more detailed rules, without sacrificing time to play or time to learn.