D&D General The Renewing Charm of the Old School Play Experience

[Helldritch]

Lanefan is quite right. I've run the Temple of Elemental evil over 20-25 times over the years with different groups and only four ever found prince Thromel. Not all magic items were meant to be found. Some were so well hidden that if they were ever found, I would get suspicious and start wondering if one of the players might not have the adventure at home (this is one of the problems with published adventures. Your players can buy them too without your knowledge).

Once I had a strong suspicion about a new player so I changed a bit of the adventure and modified the maps just enough to fool the player into thinking the adventure wasn't tweaked. Guess what? He fell in the trap and then I knew that player was cheating. He would search zones that were no longer there and was startled when a new zone was found but not on the original. I had a long talk with him and we agreed that in adventures that he personally owned, his character would take a back seat. I would ask him before any published adventure/campaign if he had it and we would both act accordingly.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Three parties could play through the same module and come out with three quite different treasury lists and total values.

Oh definitely. But even partial hauls tended to be quite significant. Hell just killing most of the bad NPCs could get pretty insane by later edition standards.

I think 3/4 is actually quite high. I'd say it was often more like 50% or less, especially if they weren't willing to haul stuff like bejewelled thrones or really go through the silverware drawers. Portable holes helped a lot with looting though, for sure. Even with the ballista my party used to keep in theirs.

Contrast this with 4e-5e module design and expectations, where items and >>shudder<< "treasure parcels" are (almost always) only placed where they're guaranteed to be found.

That's not how "treasure parcels" actually worked, mate, but okay.

 

[Fenris-77]

Portable holes helped a lot with looting though, for sure. Even with the ballista my party used to keep in theirs.

You win today. That's certainly the OSR experience I remember.

 

[werecorpse]

So, I don't mean to pick on you. But IME, there is a vast gulf between people who played 1e because they picked it up as kids and played it with friends (often in isolation), and those who didn't.

Let's look back on the original post that I comment on-

I played some crazy monty haul 1st edition stuff back in the day. Girdle of storm giant strength & Hammer of Thunderbolts, a ring of multiple (not just 3 how passe) wishes, battling hundreds of ogre magi, a flying throne of the gods, killed Vecna, Kas, I think I even killed Satan who was hiding in the bottom of a storm giants cloud castle One time. We went to hell and back (killed tiamat) I got a ring that allowed me 6 actions a round and a staff that fired white fire (Thomas Covenant rip off). But I never got as crazy as some others I heard of. The ring of +200hp and the stone of taking 1/5th Damage? The gauntlets of annihilation (like a sphere but you could wear them). Wack a doo!

Let's go through this, with each claim noted-

I played some crazy monty haul 1st edition stuff back in the day.
Good! So we agree that you this is "Monty Haul" game.

Girdle of storm giant strength & Hammer of Thunderbolts
The Girdle/Gauntlet/Hammer was well-known to be the single most powerful weapon combination at the time. So while this is within the rules, it is also the most powerful thing allowed by the RAW.

a ring of multiple (not just 3 how passe) wishes
Yes, there was a ring that contained 2-8 wishes, but it stated the following: "If players are greedy and grasping, be sure to 'crock' them. Interpret their wording exactly, twist the wording, or simply rule the request is beyond the power of the magic. In any case, the wish is used up, whether or not (or how) the wish was granted. "

a flying throne of the gods
The most notable feature of the Throne of the Gods was that it was immovable. In addition, the reason artifacts had issues was because of the major malevolent powers; the Throne (which did not move) had two, not to mention the side effects and smaller malevolent powers.

killed Vecna, Kas, I think I even killed Satan
Vecna and Kas never had stats and were only briefly referenced (for the artifacts) in 1e. "Satan," of course, did not exist in 1e.

I got a ring that allowed me 6 actions a round
There was prtty much nothing in AD&D that would allow free actions; 6 free actions was unheard of, and would (when combined with the way AD&D is already built) completely destroy the game, even more than "+200hp". Free actions were so .... anathema that even using haste or a potion of speed caused a year of aging.

This is not to be negative toward your gaming experience; it was not uncommon for some people to twist the gamerules to make it more a power-fantasy than it would be, usually when inexperienced DMs would hand out ridiculous treasure (such as the hammer/girdle/gauntlet combo), ignoring important rules (throne of gods doesn't move, artifacts do really bad things), or just handing out items that they create that break the game. But that's not really playing the game anywhere close to within the rules.

And I very much disagree with your assertion that 1e is not within the OSR; you can play OD&D as a powertrip if you're handing out these items, too.

Responding in order (sorry I’m not great at cutting and pasting)

yes, there is a difference between people who picked up and played the game with their friends and people who didn’t (one group picked up and played the game wth their friends and presumably the others didn’t?) I’m not sure what you’re saying here though. Are you saying because I played in the 70’s with my friends those games aren't old school?

Yes some of the AD&D games I played were Monty Hall imo but plenty of games weren’t. Plenty of games played back in the 70s and early 80s were like this. That was one form of old school gaming. Have you ever read any of Robilars adventures?

yep hammer of thunderbolts + + was V good, So was the holy avenger so was the Vorpal sword so was the nine life stealer so was the luck blade. Lotsa power options in AD&D and I am not even talking about magic staves!!

re wishes that quote was based on how you used the wish not how many you had - so what?

you are right the flying throne of the gods was one of those things that was outside the rules. I remember it now because I knew it was meant to be immovable. So I agree this should t have been allowed RAW. But it was a one shot and I enjoyed playing in it so it achieved its goal.

making up your own monsters was common back in the day, it still is where I play, but i think we fought Kas and Vecna in a TSR module about Vecna? and I think Satan made an appearance in a judges guild module Under the storm giants castle. It was pretty silly.
the ring was called the ring of wend from the judges guild Inferno module, think it turned my character evil so the 6x action was in a big boss fight the last time I played him. So sad to see him go but... rolled up a new one for a new game the next week.

So as I say, for the most part we played by the rules. We homebrewed monsters and magic items but the actual RAW had gear that was over the top as well. That was actual old school play, not a modern re imagining of it.

when people today say OSR they appear to mean a return to simple rules and low level low magic gaming. Thats perfectly fine and fun. It’s no more “old school” than monty haul - when was that term coined? 1976?
But anyone who thinks that “back in the day“ gaming (and I mean not just kids who didn’t know better but Gygax etc) was all goblins, copper pieces, torches and sudden death and didnt have crazy loot and power pcs is kidding themselves.

 

[Helldritch]

1ed and OD&D low level magic?????? It was quite the other way around. Magic was abundant, more so than in 5ed. Casters could dozens of spells. Characters were not limited (saved the monk and paladins) in the number of magic items they could wield (no attunement). A wizard could double his spells slots with a ring of wizardry and if lucky (or knew how to craft one) could even double his 1st through 5th level spell slots per day! (needed two rings for that but eh!). In fact, only 3.xed had more magic than 1st edition.

It was a different time where making a character could be fast and said character could die as fast as they were made. The deadliness of the edition was everywhere and it took quite a lot of work and experience for a DM to adjust fights so that it would not either be too easy or too deadly. DMing was a fine art where balance was required but not explained. It came only with experience. I do have a nostalgia of those days. But it is a thing of the past now.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

You win today. That's certainly the OSR experience I remember.

I still remember my surprise (I was DM) when on some adventure, the Thief (he of the invisibility ring and boots of elvenkind, and also "manager" of the portable hole, which was actually his most-prized possession - probably because it meant he actually could steal everything that wasn't nailed down), decided to steal the ballista from some castle armoury on the grounds that it "would be useful". The only thing I remember them ever actually using it for was firing grappling hooks really, really, really far.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

when people today say OSR they appear to mean a return to simple rules and low level low magic gaming. Thats perfectly fine and fun. It’s no more “old school” than monty haul - when was that term coined? 1976?
But anyone who thinks that “back in the day“ gaming (and I mean not just kids who didn’t know better but Gygax etc) was all goblins, copper pieces, torches and sudden death and didnt have crazy loot and power pcs is kidding themselves.

To be clear, I was responding to make sure that I disagreed with the following two assertions, which I bolded so that you would not misunderstand what I was saying.

1. We rarely ignored the rules

2. But as I say I think there is a difference between actual 1e and what is classed as an OSR style game.

I think that both of these statements are incorrect, and orthogonal to what you are saying now. I think I went through, in detail, the ways in which that game ignored the rules (you didn't even address the ring of six actions, for example). You yourself characterized it as a "Monty Haul" game. As you are aware, Monty Haul was rubbished in the very beginning of the game by the recurring column in Dragon Magazine (h/t Jim Ward).

Simply put, if you ignore a lot of rules, sure, you end up with the most powerful weapon/magic item combo in the game, and six actions a round (which gives, what, 12 attacks for a fighter?), and DM fudging, and flying around on artifacts with no drawbacks, and killing gods. This happened a lot, especially with younger gamers (the power-trip model), and there's nothing wrong with that, if that's your fun. But it's the same as someone saying, "Yeah, I play 5e, and it I go through a character almost every session, and I rarely even get to 3rd level .... it's just a real meatgrinder." It's easily possible to change and tweak the rules to make that happen, but that's not really 5e as it is presented.

Which leads to the two comments. Yes, you must have been ignoring a lot of the rule. Which is fine- I'm not saying you're a bad person, just disagreeing with your own assessment.

But that leads to the second massive disagreement. 1e is OSR-style. In fact, OD&D, 1e, and B/X are largely interchangeable, and using B1 or B2 (written for Holmes) in a B/X or 1e setting presents no real issues, and were often used in those settings.

All of which leads to this- yes, OD&D and 1e were not "low magic" in terms of items. That's why the Paladin stricture of ten items matters! But it's also because the old rules were "low magic" in terms of character abilities- no "always on" cantrips. Fewer spells per day (recollecting all the MU spells, for example, took significant time). Fewer abilities in general for your class. Your magic items were your abilities and feats.

The other factor that I don't disagree with is that it was very, very weird. It had not yet stultified into what we think of as standard D&D tropes. You could adventure in Wonderland. You could hop to Gamma World. You would take a character from one campaign to another. You had sanctioned adventures in space ships. You had Cthulhu.

It was weird, and it was awesome.

 

[Nebulous]

Introduce your son to Dungeon Crawl Classics: he'd have fun with it, methinks.

Oh, I only played DCC a few times but I loved it. It's harder to find people to play that one, but I bet I could wrangle some online with this whole pandemic. Also, I'm running Dungeon World right now and it's kind of got some of the old school feel of D&D.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

Oh, I only played DCC a few times but I loved it. It's harder to find people to play that one, but I bet I could wrangle some online with this whole pandemic. Also, I'm running Dungeon World right now and it's kind of got some of the old school feel of D&D.

I've found a lot of the clones (OSRIC, etc.) are great.

But nothing beats the original materials, if you can get them. To be honest, I have a real appreciation for B/X that I lacked before ... I used to be all about AD&D, but really love B/X now.

 

[Nebulous]

I've found a lot of the clones (OSRIC, etc.) are great.

But nothing beats the original materials, if you can get them. To be honest, I have a real appreciation for B/X that I lacked before ... I used to be all about AD&D, but really love B/X now.

Sadly, I never played B/X, I was around at the time, but didn't get into the game until 1e (aside from all the Endless Quest books)