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

[nevin]

The problem is that isn't true. I knew in 1976 that there were a wide variety of ways that OD&D was being played, and its not like that hasn't been reinforced over the years since.

So basically, I don't think its too much to ask that if someone can't be bothered to find out how true that was, that they take the time to qualify a phrase like "This is how it was done" with either "where I was" or "in my experience". If they won't bother, then I think its legitimate to bust their chops about it a bit.



I am an older gamer (I'll be turning 66 in a couple months, and started gaming in late 1975), and if these other folks are getting eyerolls from the younger ones, I think they asked for it. Especially since a fairly large number of them try to weaponize their claims to criticism of anything that has changed in the D&D sphere since. I'm not even a particular fan of D&D (haven't been for, really, about 40 years now) and the reaction it evokes in me is "Oh, give me a break."

This. I remember in the 80's moving and the first group i ran with did nothing but dungeon Crawls. When I asked why they didn't role play or do stuff back in town with all thier loot they thought I'd lost my mind. It was pretty much played back then just like it is now. Some people role played some people did dungeon crawls and there were all kinds of things in between. But one person telling you how something was back in the day is like one person trying to explain to you that random isn't random because it doesn't seem random to them.

 

[ilgatto]

This question was answered in my OP. Since you didn't read my post, allow me to return the favor.

Permission gladly granted.

 

[Celebrim]

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

Define cheating.

I encountered some munchkins (in the literal sense of much younger gamers) with like 30th level characters. But the way that had happened was they had never played an adventure per se. Rather, they had a group of 2 players and the DM would select a monster from the MM's and then the player would fight it, get treasure and full XP for the combat, and they'd rinse and repeat. For hours. For days. For whole summers. As the PC's leveled up, they got overgeared and OP compared to the sort of things the DM was throwing at him. They'd moved on to creatures in the Dieties and Demigods by that point.

But they had no dungeon crawling skills, had never encountered movement or, terrain, or traps, or reinforcements, or attrition, or really anything we'd associate with the experience. It was probably something like playing 5e with a long rest between each fight with each fight being slightly under leveled. They'd had a lot of fun playing, but also at the same time it was obvious they didn't know how to play.

 

[Celebrim]

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 at multiple tables in the 80's. Imagine my culture shock of going from "everyone starts at level 1" to "make a 7th level character... your ability scores seem low...did your roll these scores using Unearthed Arcana method?" Imagine the culture shock of players moving in the reverse direction.

 

[Saracenus]

That's a bummer.

Nah, I used that cursed item with pride. Much to the chagrin of my fellow players. I took a negative and turned it into a positive. They were positive that I was going to have the curse removed (because I leaned into it and caused a lot of problems for the group) and we had less fights about magic after that. My first adventuring group was a bunch of murder hobos with the unsaid alignment of Chaotic Greedy.

 

[bloodtide]

Once again, I have to disagree, but you are reinforcing the point I was making. Not everyone lived where you lived or shared your experiences. I know I didn't. I lived in a small town and was exposed to very few gamers and had no reason to think others were playing the game any differently than I was. Honestly, most I knew weren't playing differently because either myself or my friend were running virtually every game we were involved in.

I think this is really two problems, the world and the game.

The world was so different, and really near unimaginable. When I type out a story from the 80s, I even will amaze myself(and I was there). I had to walk to school, a little less then a mile(just under the bus limit). And often....I'd hitchhike, with my sister..from random people to get to school. Just hop in the back of a pick up and tell the driver the school was that way. And and that does not even cover no cell phones, internet, social media, and many other things (I was in high school when my town got this new 911 number). For a younger person, to understand that is hard.

And that world had a HUGE impact on the game. In say 1990 it was hard to find a RPG to play in or to find players for a game. Hard. you had the "people grapevine" or the old "hang an add at the Stop and Shop and hope someone would call". Nothing like 2023. I can put an add online in minutes, and have players show up Saturday morning no problem.

It could be near impossible to find RPG stuff in 1990 in a store. Not just games, but dice and everything else. Even mail order places were often 'sold out' of popular things. But in 2023 you can get near anything delivered right to your door.

Have a game rule question. There were few people to ask. Maybe you could find another gamer, but they might not know. You had the long shot of sending the question to Dragon or maybe have them answer it other ways. In 2023, you can ask or find an answer online in seconds.

 

[Willie the Duck]

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...

Define cheating.

I encountered some munchkins (in the literal sense of much younger gamers) with like 30th level characters. But the way that had happened was they had never played an adventure per se. Rather, they had a group of 2 players and the DM would select a monster from the MM's and then the player would fight it, get treasure and full XP for the combat, and they'd rinse and repeat. For hours. For days. For whole summers. As the PC's leveled up, they got overgeared and OP compared to the sort of things the DM was throwing at him. They'd moved on to creatures in the Dieties and Demigods by that point.

But they had no dungeon crawling skills, had never encountered movement or, terrain, or traps, or reinforcements, or attrition, or really anything we'd associate with the experience. It was probably something like playing 5e with a long rest between each fight with each fight being slightly under leveled. They'd had a lot of fun playing, but also at the same time it was obvious they didn't know how to play.

Yeah, I would say it would be near-universal unless if and only if you played 'by the book' --both RAW and without deviation from designer intended play loop. Also, if everyone gets the rules wrong (say, because you started playing at age 8-10 with other kids that age and no adults steering you to the correct reading of the rules*), is it cheating or some other term? *pretending for the moment that adults would always get the rules right with some of those rulebooks.
I know when we started, we interpreted monsters with 'no. appearing' of 40-400 to mean that you got one iteration of the treasure table roll per 40 appearing ("no way ten times as many goblins would have the same treasure!"). So if you broke a dam (with dynamite, which they totally had in medieval times, since 8-10 year olds don't know otherwise) and flooded an advancing goblin army, you got massively multiple rolls on the treasure tables (and gp=xp, we figured that out quick).
Likewise, if you find a dragon egg and hatch it and raise it to be an adult dragon, it can lay eggs for you and you can start a dragon egg business and the DM has to come up with the monthly income of that (and that income counts as xp too, right?).
So, yeah, we played wildly outside the rules as written (we also did some that would have benefited us, like completely missing the -3-+3 bonuses from high attributes in B/X), but I don't think I'd say we 'cheated.' We just got things wrong, and did things for which the game system didn't expect or account.

And while there will always be a previous generation that disdains the tastes of the current generation, that doesn't make them right. Even when D&D was first created in 1974, there were older wargamers that derided this new-fangled heresy.

And when Chainmail was released, it was derided by some/many historical wargamers for having the fantasy supplement. The hobby has never had a lack of gatekeepers trying to declare a new angle on the thing lessor than the way that came before.

 

[Celebrim]

I know when we started, we interpreted monsters with 'no. appearing' of 40-400 to mean that you got one iteration of the treasure table roll per 40 appearing ("no way ten times as many goblins would have the same treasure!"). So if you broke a dam (with dynamite, which they totally had in medieval times, since 8-10 year olds don't know otherwise) and flooded an advancing goblin army, you got massively multiple rolls on the treasure tables (and gp=xp, we figured that out quick).

You aren't entirely wrong here. According to the DMG, the treasure listed for a monster assumes an average number of individuals are present, and treasure should be adjusted (upwards or downwards) proportional to the number actually appearing. So your logic was correct according to Gygax in that 10 times as many goblins would not have the same amount of treasure and would in fact have on average 10 times as much, but your formula was wrong. No really big harm down there, it's almost impossible to level up using the treasure tables strictly as written.

Likewise, if you find a dragon egg and hatch it and raise it to be an adult dragon, it can lay eggs for you and you can start a dragon egg business and the DM has to come up with the monthly income of that (and that income counts as xp too, right?).

Arguably, if you have a stupid enough dragon and enough skill at dragon rearing/imprisoning and you wait the century or so for a dragon to mature and you get some sort of mate for the dragon, then sure. Of course, I suspect you also assumed that this was easier than it probably should have been. I'd even argue that in this case, dragon farming is such an adventurous and dangerous career that it's not unreasonable to give some adventurer XP for it. I'd even happily write adventures around the life of dragon farmers. The thing for me is really whether this was made trivially easy, in the same way that the "munchkins" I ran into thought it would be trivially easy to kill Morgan Le Fay.

So, yeah, we played wildly outside the rules as written (we also did some that would have benefited us, like completely missing the -3-+3 bonuses from high attributes in B/X), but I don't think I'd say we 'cheated.' We just got things wrong and did things for which the game system didn't expect or account.

And that's the thing though. There was no one "right" way to do things and every table was playing widely differently during this period. I knew of a table where the DM allowed the players to invent gunpowder and ironclad steamships and so you have early ironclads roaming around his campaign world belching cannon fire at sea monsters. I knew of a table where the DM was allowing wishes to raise the level cap on demihumans and the PC was like an 18th level elven Fighter/MU with a personal army of lizard men (Venger style). So what's 'cheating' in this context? By the way I played the table starting people out at the same level of existing PC's and using something other than 4d6 take the best three to generate stats and giving maximum hit points per level rather than rolling felt like cheating. But, you know, everyone was having fun.

Virtually everyone I talked to between 1980 and 1989 was playing a different game and calling it "D&D".

 

[Willie the Duck]

No really big harm down there, it's almost impossible to level up using the treasure tables strictly as written.

True, although I think that was in-part by design. Gary didn't want to have to figure out new content for levels 1-100 or the like, so he made it progressively harder to level up as you did so (changes in the XP charts in the first several printings/sources certainly seem to indicate he wanted to reinforce not a lot of levelling past name level).

Arguably, if you have a stupid enough dragon and enough skill at dragon rearing/imprisoning and you wait the century or so for a dragon to mature and you get some sort of mate for the dragon, then sure. Of course, I suspect you also assumed that this was easier than it probably should have been. I'd even argue that in this case, dragon farming is such an adventurous and dangerous career that it's not unreasonable to give some adventurer XP for it. I'd even happily write adventures around the life of dragon farmers. The thing for me is really whether this was made trivially easy, in the same way that the "munchkins" I ran into thought it would be trivially easy to kill Morgan Le Fay.

I mean, it was made easy. The dragon was our pet and did what we wanted it to do. Likewise, the business was all-profit, since what do 8-10 year olds know about overhead and gross vs. net, etc.

And that's the thing though. ... So what's 'cheating' in this context?

That's pretty much the point I was going for. 'Cheating' is attempting to break the rules. What we did was either change the rules (or the context of play), or misinterpret the rules. Neither of which I consider cheating.

Virtually everyone I talked to between 1980 and 1989 was playing a different game and calling it "D&D".

And I think that, if anything at all, was standard back in the day -- everyone called it D&D, everyone played it differently, and pretty much everyone realized that the proverbial next table over was going to be playing under wildly different assumptions and playstyles.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Yeah, I would say it would be near-universal unless if and only if you played 'by the book'

I still don't see that being true if you played frequently enough. Even with typical low-level losses, you could rack of a lot of experience playing 8 times a month, let alone 12.