Surviving low-level old school D&D

[AllisterH]

I'm curious....

You raised these dogs from pups, yet have no emotional connection to them so that you are quite willing to send them off to die?

Er.....that's cold guys...just plain cold..

 

[Remathilis]

Right... it's totally realistic to be a wizard or an elf who can shoot magical bolts at people, but not realistic to have a badazz dog.

It's fantasy. Badazz dogs are part of it, along with elfs and wizards.

And cat's that kill commoners?

 

[S'mon]

I'm curious....

You raised these dogs from pups, yet have no emotional connection to them so that you are quite willing to send them off to die?

Er.....that's cold guys...just plain cold..

No, why would they die? They have 11 hp, around 3 times the hp of a starting PC. They can take a lot of punishment and come out with tail wagging.

When I played recently, my Cleric PC wardog-handler stood behind his dogs while they attacked the troglodytes. When one got wounded he cast his cure light wounds spell on it, and we all came out ok.

Of course the other PCs got slaughtered, but there y'go...

 

[FriarRosing]

I've only started playing older edition D&D lately, and despite the magic user having only one hit point, so far all of the deaths have been poor travelers duped into adventuring with the party. Also, we're not so focused on combat--it's mainly tricks that the players use to get around obstacles of monstrous sort.

A good example came from our first Rules Cyclopedia game we played a few months back. The party decided to raid the lair of the Orc King in some nearby woods. They hid among the trees, just within range of the outdoor guards of the Orcs' cave lair, and after taking down a good handful of orcs with their bows, they invented the ingenious plan of arranging the orc bodies so that they led into the forest, in hopes that they would lead any other orcs away to investigate. Also they set the bodies on fire for some reason. The plan was so ridiculous that I essentially let it work, for the most part. They made some noise and hid as a few more orcs came out. One stayed to guard the cave while the others went off into the forest to see where the bodies led. The PCs ambushed the remaining Orc before heading into the cave.

In reality, it's the ridiculous plans that I enjoy more than combat. For me, rolling dice at one another isn't what D&D is about. It's about imagining crazy things that couldn't exist or happen in the real world. It's about imagination and the fantastic.

 

[Hussar]

'Bout the same.

The magic shops are markedly less amusing, however, because they don't involve heartlessly commoditizing the underemployed into disposable, multipurpose tools.

Well, not to stray into politics, but, how many real world governments have exploited this historically for populating their armed forces?

 

[Grimstaff]

if I'd tried to raise an army of hundreds of hounds I expect he'd have given me short thrift.

I seem to remember a KotDT stroyline where the PCs dogs, left behind through some time travelling escape or something, evolved into a vicious horde that terrorized the countriside for miles around...

 

[MichaelK]

Back when I used to run 2nd Edition AD&D I would generally start a game focused on roleplaying challenges, mystery adventures and city based sites at first and work the combat/dungeoneering aspects later on once they'd gained a few levels.

Plus one of my main campaigns was in Dark Sun where starting at 3rd level is canon.

I'd tend to throw in a ridiculously good magic item (like a ring of wishes with one wish left) that could save them if things went horribly wrong, but they'd only get to use once.

Between those aspects I had very few PC deaths.

 

[haakon1]

You hear ear seekers. Because any DM that wants you to use a boring SOP to do something as simple as opening a friggin door will quickly grow tired of it working.

10 foot poles? Good for setting off 11 foot radius traps.

I really prefer a style where everyone agrees to dispense with the poking things with sticks and adventuring with 2 dozen red shirts in exchange for not putting screw job traps in the adventure. It feels more heroic both ways.

So your way of preventing "old school" paranoid gaming is to put in additional "screw jobs" (ear seekers) to stop PC's from trying to prevent "screw job" traps?

Anyhow, the topic of this thread is "surviving low-level old school D&D" as a player. Not "how I currently like to play or DM" or "why I prefer non-old school games".

 

[haakon1]

your hacking apart chests with axes and spending 20 minutes (real time) at every door, hallway, and interpass.

To quote Monty Python: "GET ON WITH IT!"

I recall the actual words of how we did this after a while:

DM: There's a door on the left.
Player: SOP and pop.
DM (roll, roll, roll): You don't detect any traps, you don't hear anything, the paladin doesn't sense evil, and there doesn't seem to be a lock.
Player: We go in.
DM (assuming the players have weapons draw as appropriate for their usual actions): You see X. Roll for initiative.

It doesn't take 20 minutes (in AD&D or 3e old school) once you know SOP is thief check for traps, have the paladin detect evil, etc. Or you can play it slow cooked if you want to do it old school OD&D style and spell out the details, rather than rolling.

 

[DM_Fiery_Fist]

I agree that beginning players were probably dead meat in some of those earlier modules. It was just too easy to blunder into a trap or a monster without realizing the danger. I have a feeling that most of these novice players were spared by their DMs (or misread the rules).

While I've always felt like the risk of character death added another element of depth to the game, I've never been a big fan of running slaughterhouse dungeons. I don't really believe that there's any wrong way to have fun, so I can understand the people who are into that, but I think that's one of the potential pitfalls of classic D&D people should be aware of. I doubt that most people would enjoy crawling through a dungeon with a 10 foot pole and a pack of war dogs. Then again, perhaps there's a reason it's called Advanced Dungeons & Dragons. (I don't have any experience with Basic, so I'm not sure that it was any better)

I remember when I first started playing DnD as a kid, I had this idea that my thief character should always stay hidden. He would always run straight to cover as soon as he got the first hint of a battle. It ended up being really silly in the game but it kept him alive until high levels. The other players were a lot better at roleplaying but unfortunately lost their characters a lot more often. Probably would have been better if it had worked the other way around!