The Stairs!

[Oryan77]

I look around, look at the PCs, and say, "Uh, this sucks, let's get drunk." Then I guide everyone back to town and we all get plastered on cheap ale and watch the Bard fail at his flirtatious attempts with the barmaids.

......then my real adventuring party meets us outside at night as we are leaving the tavern. We kill the buffoons, loot the bodies, then get a good nights sleep. Tomorrow I will hire myself out to another unsuspecting low-level adventuring group and we'll repeat the process.

 

[kaomera]

Do you go down, or do you continue exploring the first dungeon level?

As a player: Seven Hecks no we don't go down until we have thoroughly explored the first level including locating and carefully checking likely locations for secret doors, with only one possible exception: snarky, self-important paladins may end up exploring down the stairs, headfirst...

As a DM, it's been my experience that any given group will note the location of the stairs (or secret door - those work just as well) and then, when passing the location on the way out of the dungeon, low on resources and encumbered with copper coins and pewter candlesticks, will decide to check the bottom / other side "real quick" before they exit... exactly once.

This is why you always start at 1st level - the players in any new group just need to get the dumb out of their collective systems, and 1st level characters just tend to speed the process up. Well, that or giant centipedes...

 

[Crazy Jerome]

If we are playing an edition where we randomly determine a lot of our stats, and got fairly crummy rolls, easy: This soon in, and we've got an outside shot at making a killing? Down the stairs we go, on the grounds that surviving one encounter down there is probably easier than surviving several upstairs. Assuming we survive, we then make our way back up and play cautiously from then on.

The fighter rolled an 18 on his Str? No way are we going down those stairs until pushed.

 

[Haltherrion]

Based on the limited information available, I stay on the main floor. Either it doesn't matter at all or the ref is following the old convention of "deeper is harder". So overall the main floor is most likely safer.

In my own games as a ref or in any game my friends run, either there would be clues indicating one path was more or less dangerous or there would be time to assess the danger. There wouldn't be a situation where you choose the wrong path you die without any clues so in the absence of such clues, we'd pick the path on a whim and move on.

 

[Dice4Hire]

Clear the first level of course. Things must be orderly.

If you have a kender in the party, of course, just kiss your character good-bye.

 

[Lanefan]

Look for tracks or any other clue as to whether the stairs have been used recently, and if so by what. Then, repeat for any exits to the room we're currently in; also search the room we're in for more clues as to what's going on here. Assess the clues and proceed from there.

If the upper deck we're on can be determined from the outside to be a limited area e.g. the inside of a building, then explore that first: always clear the limited areas before starting on the limitless.

Otherwise, if there's no information to be had at all - what the hell, you only live once. Go down the stairs.

Lan-"for even better results, do both: half the party goes one way..."-efan

 

[PapersAndPaychecks]

Leeeeeeeeroooooooy Jennnnnnnnkins!

 

[Olgar Shiverstone]

Down, down to goblin town ...

The idea is to cut to the chase and head by the most direct route to the biggest treasure, which as we know is always on the lowest level. All that "clear the first level before you go down" is for pansies, not Heroes and Real Adventurers (tm).

 

[jaerdaph]

I kill the staircase and take its stuff.

 

[jonesy]

Usually we'll stay on one floor until it's been cleared, but sometimes we might end up chasing something or being chased by something and then all reason goes out the stairs.

That having been said:
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