Old Times hardships and obstacles

[PapersAndPaychecks]

I imagine that to get the 10 or so PCs in my binder we lost probably 200 PCs.

This encapsulates the situation nicely.

Usual practice was to name characters with numbers (I remember one friend of mine whose character was called Tom Thirty-Four) or other sequences (Erac, Erac's Brother, Erac's Cousin) until you got to about fourth or fifth level, by which point the character had usually established a nickname through some dungeoneering exploit anyway.

 

[Jhaelen]

There's currently a lot of claims that old time D&D was harder and more deadly. Recovering from death was unlikely, and everyone started over at 1st level.

If games were so hard, raising the dead so unlikely, and everyone started back at 1st level, how did anyone reach name level in such games? Did anyone reach name level?

I certainly know that _I_ never did. My highest character ever was an 8th level illusionist. And I've been playing that edition a long time.
When I was a DM my players reached a higher level, but I think noone managed more than level 10 or 11.

Our houserule was, btw., that the follow-up char started with half of the xp of the old one (which basically meant the loss of about one level back then).

 

[RFisher]

Honestly, I'd say my 1980s high school AD&D games would be considered in many ways "new school" by many grognards. There weren't a lot of rezs, but there weren't a lot of PC deaths either. I remember vanishingly few save-or-die situations or even level-draining undead. We played it as uncon. at zero to -9 & dead at -10 no matter what the DMG may actually have said.

& probably most of my PCs that did die were taken out by critical hit house rules. Odd that we thought save-or-die should be avoided but instant-kill on a 20-20 was a good idea.

My games these days--whether runing 3e or an OOP system--tend to be much deadlier.

& we seldom got PCs to name level. We'd usually retire a campaign & start a new one with all new 1st level PCs before that.

So, the demihuman levels limits tended to be meaningless. I don't think I ever saw them come into play.

3e actually includes a lot of the house rules from my AD&D days. Which may be part of why I tend to be more interested in playing older editions closer to the book than 3e these days. I played with those rules; I want something different.

 

[mmadsen]

There's currently a lot of claims that old time D&D was harder and more deadly. Recovering from death was unlikely, and everyone started over at 1st level.

If games were so hard, raising the dead so unlikely, and everyone started back at 1st level, how did anyone reach name level in such games? Did anyone reach name level?

In my mispent youth, we definitely played with different expectations. Each character was like a lottery ticket -- most had no payout, but every once in a while you'd hit the jackpot. We'd lose countless characters trying to make it to 2nd or 3rd level, but we didn't follow the Red Queen paradigm of having all encounters scale up with the characters.

Then we'd play a high-level module someone's older brother had bought, everyone would die, and there would be much wailing and gnashing of teeth.

 

[Hussar]

Man, my experience was pretty much totally opposite.

We had easy raise deads - heck, by 5th level we were carting around small mountains of cash from the modules we played in, might as well spend it on something. Sure, we died, but, coming back was a quick trip to the city. By double digit levels, we realized that we were pretty much unkillable. A paladin using the Unearthed Arcana rules was just a beast.

Granted, I think the big difference is that I played almost all modules and we used xp=gp rules. Hitting 10th level didn't take all that long.

 

[Shadeydm]

I suspect that there was a lot of, "lets just redo that last battle and pretend it didn't happen."

Yes, and don't forget "You wake up and it was only a bad dream."

 

[kaomera]

Honestly, I'd say my 1980s high school AD&D games would be considered in many ways "new school" by many grognards. There weren't a lot of rezs, but there weren't a lot of PC deaths either. I remember vanishingly few save-or-die situations or even level-draining undead.

Both save-or-die and level-draining undead where rare in 1e (in my experience). For one thing, those kinds of effects are very powerful in a system that mostly tops out shortly after 9th level. Petrification, however, did seem pretty common (more so than 3e).

We played it as uncon. at zero to -9 & dead at -10 no matter what the DMG may actually have said.

Actually, that's right on p.82 of the DMG. And according to a liberal reading of the passage it is not possible to be dropped below -3 hit points (before you start losing 1/round, that is)!

 

[kaomera]

Yes, and don't forget "You wake up and it was only a bad dream."

You know, I think that for most of the groups I played AD&D with the players would honestly have revolted against such a call by the DM. If he was going to run an encounter that might kill off all of the PCs (and therefore end the game), he's better have the backbone to be prepared to deal with the consequences! Players nowadays are way too easy on their DMs!!!

Also we where like 8 or 10 or 12 and we took the game way too seriously.

 

[robberbaron]

Hmm.

We never had a 'let's pretend that fight never happened' and we didn't do do-overs (except after Psionic Precognition, but that's another matter entirely).

We didn't start over at 1st. Upon death the new character came in at half the olds one's XPs.

And, yes, to get the dozen or so characters sitting in the binder on my shelf I probably had several hundred die. Some gloriously, some pathetically.
Death was part of the game. I really have difficulty understanding the 'I don't have death in my game' mentality of some posters on ENWorld. I can't imagine playing a game where there is no risk of death. Why get big rewards if there isn't a big risk?

I guess we just play differently to the rest of you.

 

[RFisher]

Actually, that's right on p.82 of the DMG. And according to a liberal reading of the passage it is not possible to be dropped below -3 hit points (before you start losing 1/round, that is)!

I don't have my DMG handy, but what I'm saying is that we completely ignored the additional complications there. Especially the bit about dying if you go from positive to less than -3.