OD&D and AD&D without the classic modules

[fanboy2000]

I have a friend who's been playing D&D a very long time. But his fond memories aren't of adventures like Tomb of Horrors and such, it's of a 10 year homebrew campaign his friend ran that took place in Europe.

This makes me wonder, how many people played in in the 70s and 80s, but didn't play any of the classic modules that get talked about today? I didn't start until the late 90s, and didn't really get into D&D until 3e. 3e doesn't really a lot of classics.

 

[vagabundo]

I have a friend who's been playing D&D a very long time. But his fond memories aren't of adventures like Tomb of Horrors and such, it's of a 10 year homebrew campaign his friend ran that took place in Europe.

This makes me wonder, how many people played in in the 70s and 80s, but didn't play any of the classic modules that get talked about today? I didn't start until the late 90s, and didn't really get into D&D until 3e. 3e doesn't really a lot of classics.

Unfortunately I fall into this category. Completely self taught - I didn't see any other games until I was DMing for about ten years - and just used the rule books and my own crazy adventures. I really wasn't sure how to play from the read through of the Rules Cyclopedia.

I'm amazed we managed to stay with it, because my adventures wheren't very good.

 

[jbear]

That would be me too. I started playing with AD&D. All we had was the PHB, DMG and MM. We made up our own games, which usually involved being young kids and gowing into our adventures.

The first classic module I heard of was Pools of Radiance, but I think that was because it was a computer game as well, I may be wrong.

I didn't actually seek out classic modules for my game until I began to play 4e, which is what lead me here to ENWorld, a place where people were talking about that kind of thing. My current campaign has adapted the Ravenloft module 'A House on Gryphon Hill', and Loudwater is becoming a very spooky place indeed! Strahd Von Zarovich for the win.

 

[Bluenose]

I can't strictly claim I never played/ran any of them, as I did GM Tomb of Horrors at a couple of conventions, but I can claim that I never ran them with my home group. All the adventures were my own, and to a large extent the setting was my own. I did own some of the 'classic' modules, and occasionally mined them for ideas, but apart from convention games I didn't play them till later in 2nd edition days.

 

[Shades of Green]

I played AD&D 2E for several years (1997-1999) without much books other than the three core-books. We made up our own worlds, adventures and campaigns. Later, in circa 1999, we came across a few old B/X-era modules in a used book store (Isle of Dread, Kings' Festival and Queen's Harvest) and ran some of them (especially King's Festival) a few times.

I later played 3E for eight years with just the three core-books plus Lords of Madness.

 

[FireLance]

When I started playing (in the early 1980s, with BD&D) I just got hold of the core books. I suppose there were three reasons why I didn't buy any modules: I was just a kid with very little disposable income, I couldn't find many modules, and I didn't think they were very important, anyway. After all, coming up with worlds and adventures myself was part of the fun!

 

[Jhaelen]

This makes me wonder, how many people played in in the 70s and 80s, but didn't play any of the classic modules that get talked about today? I didn't start until the late 90s, and didn't really get into D&D until 3e. 3e doesn't really a lot of classics.

I started playing in the mid-eighties and only discovered the 'classic' adventures much later.

Our prime reason for ignoring them back then was: not enough money! We exclusively played self-written adventures.

When we finally played them in the mid-90s, I really wondered why they were considered 'classics'. I don't have a lot of good things to say about most of them. I vastly prefer 'modern' 'classics', like, say, 'The Red Hand of Doom'.

 

[francisca]

I have a friend who's been playing D&D a very long time. But his fond memories aren't of adventures like Tomb of Horrors and such, it's of a 10 year homebrew campaign his friend ran that took place in Europe.

This makes me wonder, how many people played in in the 70s and 80s, but didn't play any of the classic modules that get talked about today? I didn't start until the late 90s, and didn't really get into D&D until 3e. 3e doesn't really a lot of classics.

I had very little during the formative years, I owned a copy of the G and D series, as well as S1 and A1, but never played them until late in the "back in the day" period. I think the only classic I actually played through back in the 80s, was all of G1, G2, and part of G3, with a sidegroup another guy started up.

So yes, my experience from 81-86 was almost entirely in homebrews, right up until the DM of my group went koo-koo for cocoa puffs over Dragonlance, at which point, I quit gaming rather than continue to DL2 from DL1.

 

[Dausuul]

I have a friend who's been playing D&D a very long time. But his fond memories aren't of adventures like Tomb of Horrors and such, it's of a 10 year homebrew campaign his friend ran that took place in Europe.

This makes me wonder, how many people played in in the 70s and 80s, but didn't play any of the classic modules that get talked about today? I didn't start until the late 90s, and didn't really get into D&D until 3e. 3e doesn't really a lot of classics.

I started playing around 1987, and hardly ever played prefab modules--I think I played White Plume Mountain once and that was it. Everything else was homebrew. Only in the last couple of years have I done any significant module-playing.

Incidentally, I think this thread deserves a poll.

 

[Theo R Cwithin]

This is pretty much my experience, as well. I started with BECMI in the early 80s, and was almost always DM, but had little money to spend on gaming. I never really played AD&D until university, where I played 1e/2e hybrid rules in someone else's long-running homebrew.

As for published adventures, I only ever ran or played in a few modules, and none of the "classics" that I recall. And since I never had a steady gaming group when I was a kid, there wasn't a "campaign" to speak of; pretty much all of my gaming memories of that era are from one-shot adventures of my own making.

I think it would be a blast to play through a classic adventure/series, with a seasoned DM and a few other players who are old-timers to the game, yet unfamiliar with most of the D&D canon.

The adventures of yore await!