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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Yora" data-source="post: 8640505" data-attributes="member: 6670763">I've been very curious for a while about how a campaign would actually play if you follow the advice in the Basic and Expert rules just as they are written. It won't reveal how people actually commonly played the game back in 1982, but the longer I keep studying the original rules and try to apply them, the more I discover that a lot of things I first thought to be quirky, unnecessary, or impractical are actually really clever design. Now I don't want to dismiss anything before I've seen how it actually behaves in practice and impacts play.The Basic rules have two pages describing a process to create an adventure (for a low level party). I don't think any of the B-Series modules (or any others from TSR I know about) actually applied these suggested guidelines, except maybe B1 In Search of the Unknow, which predates B/X by several years. But the kind of dungeon you'll get by following the guidelines seems really quite interesting.The suggested content for dungeon rooms is as follows:1/3 of rooms with monsters, 1/2 of which have treasure.1/6 of rooms with traps, 1/3 of which protect treasure.1/6 of rooms with special features (magic devices, machines, ...)1/3 of rooms that are empty, but 1/6 of which have treasureIf you apply these to a dungeon with 36 rooms, you get the following:6 rooms with monsters and treasure6 rooms with monsters2 rooms with traps and treasure4 rooms with traps6 rooms with special features2 rooms with a hidden treasure10 empty roomsWhen you add to this the fact that less than half of the monsters encountered will be hostile to the party (because of reaction rolls), things do get quite interesting.<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">In total, this 36 room dungeon will have 6 encounters with hostile monsters. Presuming this dungeon will take 60 turns to complete, there will roughly 4 to 6 encounters with wandering monsters, of which again only 2 or 3 will be hostile to the party. That is not a lot of combat.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Only a third of rooms is occupied by creatures, many of which won't have need or the ability to put up lights. If you're underground, this is going to be a very dark place.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">There will be 10 treasures in the dungeon, which will hold the bulk of all the valuables that the players can find. That does seem much more exciting to find than picking up 36 small pouches of coins.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Interestingly, about 3 of the 10 treasures will be in the possession of monsters that are not agressive towards the party. Getting their treasure might still seem very appealing to the players, though.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Using the surprise rules, there will be an 8 in 36 chance (22%) that the party catches monsters unaware. This allows them to strike first against the monsters before a reaction roll is made. Not a hard choice when sneaking up on two ogers roasting a halfling on a spit, but what about a group of dirty humans with rusty weapons? (This is also where things like "goblins will always attack dwarves" become meaningful.)</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">In light of all this, clerics getting only a single 1st level spell at level 2, and maybe not even taking cure light wounds every time, is not that outlandish. Similarly, mages being unable to contribute in combat at low levels also isn't quite the end of the world, as only a tenth of turns in a dungeon might inlude combat at all.</li> </ul>The kind of environment described by these parameters really does evoke the image of a nearly abandoned ruin, where something big and nasty might be right behind every corner, but most of the time there's still more silent darkness. Very different from the typical villain strongholds or ant hive caves I see in most adventures.</blockquote>

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