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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Jaeger" data-source="post: 8365745" data-attributes="member: 27996">I'm curious what you mean by 'Authorial Intent'.By design and intent there is no default thing the PC's are 'supposed' to do in these modules.  It is entirely up to the PC's to figure it out, and the DM to impartially adjudicate their actions.The play paradigm for D&D was very different from the 3e era. The PC's were more fragile, avoiding combat was the default mode in which you approached any encounter.Remember; PC's also got XP for gold, not just fighting monsters. Pc's had a lot of incentive to avoid needless combats. Having a character survive to the higher levels was to be considered an achievement.The default group size was a bit larger too. PC's were expected to have hirelings and retainers. (That's why the rules were there). Troupe play was a far more common mode of play as well. You also had NPC reaction tables, and Morale rules for combat. Not every encounter broke out into a fight right away, and running away was always an option.Same with the Reaction tables. It was not an uncommon practice that the PC's would form temporary alliances with some monsters in a dungeon to attack a different group of monsters in the same dungeon. Then it was a contest to see who backstabbed who first...I still don't get why they got rid of morale rules in 3e. It was a big paradigm shift in how the game is run. As to: "...why not just hand out a blank Underdark hex map and wing it?"With D1 you don't have to wing it. The encounters are laid out for you - taking a big load of work off of the DM. But it was also assumed that a DM would fill in the gaps as they saw fit.IMHO - A lot of people bounce off some of the older modules because the standard mode of play of early D&D that these modules were written for is different from post 3e D&D.If you know what people did back then you can see how a lot of these things are implied in the way the rules/modules were written and presented. Unfortunately Gygax and co. never bothered to explicitly spell them out. They just considered them obvious.</blockquote>

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