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

[ThorinTeague]

Even back in the early days, I don't think I ever played a real game (a couple of goofy one-shots, but nothing real) that used a randomly generated dungeon. We liked our dungeons, but they were always the product of intentional design, and (in our stupid adolescent ways) tried to have some logic to them.

I can't tell if you're agreeing with me or disagreeing. What you're saying is part of the point I was trying to make.

 

[ThorinTeague]

High level characters were almost unheard of...

Now THIS actually WAS universal--assuming you weren't cheating!

 

[MWLewis]

I agree with the original poster...and disagree. Many of the TSR modules literally start at the doorstep of some ruin or dungeon or a keep just a hop skip and jump away from a cave complex. Many people literally started their games that way. But, as characters started to survive and level up, the campaign began...then the world building. I bet this is the order of operation for 75%, if not more, AD&D/ODD/B-E games ran back in the 1970's through 1985. Now, all these years later, I like to worldbuild first (and not in great detail) or use Greyhawk, get some players, plop them down somewhere and run a mix of homebrew hijinks and classic TSR. I'm amazed at the number of oldsters who never played some of the classics and love to run them. And also, I agree with all the posters saying high level characters were unheard of. That's why TSR didn't publish many high-level modules. Just my take.

 

[Saracenus]

Now THIS actually WAS universal--assuming you weren't cheating!

I remember getting a cursed item and being happy I didn’t have to fight other members of the party to keep it. It was my fist magic item as a player.

 

[Thomas Shey]

My experience is back when I started (86), was styles and groups were all over the map. There was no internet in the sense we have today (watching someone use the internet was like watching alchemy to me when I first encountered it) so the only things that unified style were rulebooks, magazines, and experiences people had at conventions or game stores. There was also word of mouth. But you could go from group to group in the same town and find wildly different styles (I think in closed communities like high schools and colleges you often found more shared styles in clusters of groups, but those still varied a lot by individual GM). I will say, there seemed to be way more dungeons in the 80s to me, and way less in the 90s. But D&D was also far from the only game in town. I recall other gaming options being more viable and widespread than today (though I would say there also do seem to be a greater volume of different RPGs now due to things like POD and desktop publishing). I will say: very different gaming landscape than today.

This is all true, but there were areas that had much more far reaching extended communities connected by conventions, game clubs, and sometimes apas and the like. That was why you saw a lot of stylistic influence across much of California, though obviously there were going to be isolated groups that were going to be radically different.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Witch World was also one of those Fantasy novels from that era where the fantasy had sci fi in it. I forget exactly but there was one 'we have space ships and laser guns' power somewhere in that world.

The "only women can use magic" thing was really only a thing with the area of Estacarp. As soon as you got any distance away from there (and past the rabidly anti-magic culture they were often fighting with), men could use magic as well as women (in fact, even the trilogy that was the spinoff involving the main characters from Witch World's children had more than one male magic user, including one of their sons).

(Witch World and its various adjacent novels were what actually made me decide fantasy was worth reading).

 

[Thomas Shey]

Now THIS actually WAS universal--assuming you weren't cheating!

Depended on how long and regularly you played. It was absolutely a slog, but when you were playing all the time, often two characters at a time, it was entirely possible to at least hit the low two digits. You might have gone through more than a couple characters getting there though...

 

[bloodtide]

And we had to carry our miniatures round in fishing tackle boxes, with torn-off sheets of kitchen roll or toilet roll to protect them from scratching. And used dungeon geomorphs. And stole graph paper from the Maths Department at school.

The few miniatures I had.....were kept in the old standby: the round metal Royal Dansk cokkie holder. Dice were kept in metal salt and pepper shakers. Dice bags were rare and expensive. Graph paper was very rare, but one dad worked at Everready Battery. I'm not sure why, but their office was full of Everready graph paper. We helped ourselfs to plenty.

 

[MNblockhead]

The few miniatures I had.....were kept in the old standby: the round metal Royal Dansk cokkie holder. Dice were kept in metal salt and pepper shakers. Dice bags were rare and expensive. Graph paper was very rare, but one dad worked at Everready Battery. I'm not sure why, but their office was full of Everready graph paper. We helped ourselfs to plenty.

My dad was an industrial engineer for a large publisher. Not only did I have copious stocks of graph paper in various sizes and format, he would print stuff out for me on large-format plotter printers. Once for a high-school project I designed a board game based on Greek tragedies and he printed out the board and box art and had some guys at work professionally create a (for the time) professional board and make the boxes. I bought and painted fantasy minis for the game pieces. Also cool is that on some occasions he would use Auto CAD to create scale models (e.g. I did the Ziggurat of Ur for a school project and used it in some D&D games as well--smaller scale than 5' battlemap scale, but still large and cool). He would print out template stencils on large plotter papper that I would cut out and use to trace onto balsa wood, cut to shape, and glue together.

I was quite spoiled as a hobbyist geek. Now Silhouette/Cricket paper cutters, 3D printers, and the ability to print large format prints of maps are readily available and affordable to most hobby enthusiasts, but in the early-mid 80s, you had to be lucky to have parents who worked in certain fields with employers who were lenient with personal use of company equipment and supplies.

 

[Voadam]

Now THIS actually WAS universal--assuming you weren't cheating!

D&D contains multitudes.

Some groups played from level 1 for all characters through a campaign, starting back from there for new ones if a character died.

Some groups would say "Hey this weekend I am running Descent Into the Depths of the Earth, take your pick of the pregens" (examples including a level 10 paladin, a 7/11 fighter/magic-user, or a 12th level thief).

I played in a number of AD&D and B/X one shots of various levels and I ran a campaign with a house rule of coming back as the same xp, but then down a level for a new character. So my house rule brought in new PCs closer to APL, but was still a disincentive to suiciding for a new PC.