The world outside the dungeon

[Raven Crowking]

I don't think that this was a passing thought.

Certainly, the classes in 1e have social obligations and/or are tied into a larger world picture more than in any other edition. Characters are intended to forge relationships with more powerful members of their class for training, for gaining new spells (in the case of magic-user types), etc. Characters are designed for putting down roots, be it founding a keep, a temple, a guild, or whatever. Followers, which allow the PC to operate on a wider canvas, are integral to classes. Henchmen and better followers become potential PCs, so that a player has lower-level characters ready to act as his agents for problems too easy for the higher-level PCs to tackle.

IMHO, Conan's "nobody to king" road is very much the model that 1e is built upon.

If you want to see Gygax in action, showing a very integral "wider world" view, I recommend re-reading T1 now that you have noted the above advice. I think you will find that the description of the village dovetails nicely with Gygax's advice in this regard.


RC

 

[The Shaman]

I don't think that this was a passing thought.

No, indeed.

Certainly, the classes in 1e have social obligations and/or are tied into a larger world picture more than in any other edition. Characters are intended to forge relationships with more powerful members of their class for training, for gaining new spells (in the case of magic-user types), etc. Characters are designed for putting down roots, be it founding a keep, a temple, a guild, or whatever. Followers, which allow the PC to operate on a wider canvas, are integral to classes. Henchmen and better followers become potential PCs, so that a player has lower-level characters ready to act as his agents for problems too easy for the higher-level PCs to tackle.

Yup, much of the implied setting in the rules points to exactly this model of the archetypal campaign.

IMHO, Conan's "nobody to king" road is very much the model that 1e is built upon.

Fafhrd and the Mouser also 'establish strongholds' and 'attract followers' on Rime Island.

I like games of this sort, from both sides of the screen. Boot Hill's campaign rules suggest that players' characters take on the roles of sheriff, outlaw leader, rancher, and so on. Pendragon treats the adventurer as part of a dynasty, and over the course of a campaign it's possible to play several generations of characters representing the same family and its interests. Flashing Blades includes career rules which allow a character to seize the levers of power in ancien regime France, as a royal minster, a cardinal, a marshal of the army, a grandmaster of an order of knighthood, a wealthy financier, or a high-ranking noble.

 

[grodog]

One of the most striking aspects of the quotation that Merric pulled out is the short timeframe where players begin to grow bored and drop out:

after the flush of excitement wears off - perhaps a few months or a year, depending on the intensity of play - some participants will become bored and move to other gaming forms, returning to your campaign only occasionally. Shortly thereafter even your most dedicated players will occasionally find that dungeon levels and wilderness castles grow stale, regardless of subtle differences and unusual challenges.

Clearly Gary has already seen this occur in his and other campaigns, when the DMG was being written (c. 1978-79, a mere 4-5 years after OD&D was published and ~6-7 years after the founding of the Blackmoor, Greyhawk, and Kalibruhn campaigns). This suggests to me that D&D was not necessarily geared toward extended multi-decade campaigning---even within the scope of a more-regimented and structured AD&D rules set---and that the introduction of genre-hopping systems loosely-based on D&D as well as the plane of existence are tools specifically provided to the DM to challenge such jaded players.

 

[Cyronax]

I don't think that this was a passing thought.

Certainly, the classes in 1e have social obligations and/or are tied into a larger world picture more than in any other edition. Characters are intended to forge relationships with more powerful members of their class for training, for gaining new spells (in the case of magic-user types), etc. Characters are designed for putting down roots, be it founding a keep, a temple, a guild, or whatever. Followers, which allow the PC to operate on a wider canvas, are integral to classes. Henchmen and better followers become potential PCs, so that a player has lower-level characters ready to act as his agents for problems too easy for the higher-level PCs to tackle.

IMHO, Conan's "nobody to king" road is very much the model that 1e is built upon.

RC

Totally agree with Merric and RC. Moreover, look to the codification of dungeon-wilderness-dominion-immortality rules in BECMI and the Rules Cyclopedia. Its hard-coded into the early editions and took more and more of a backseat in the core edition rules of 2e and 3.Xe.

4e harkens back to these concepts in their fluff for the paragon paths and epic destinies. Its not featured in the 'crunch' as much.

C.I.D.

 

[ggroy]

Gary Gygax, Advanced D&D Dungeon Master's Guide (page 119)

In my copy of the 1E AD&D DMG, it is on page 112.

 

[MerricB]

Allan: indeed.

That part of the quote becomes even more interesting when combined with the Wizards survey that discovered that most campaigns lasted about a year. The correlation is eerily similar.

RC: The "passing thought" comment comes from the context in which Gary gives this insight - less than one paragraph, in a section where far more space is given to the "odd" settings you can use with D&D.

Cheers!

 

[Lanefan]

As a DM, taking the time to build one's own world - or take a pre-fab setting and butcher it to your tastes - is essential in this regard.

Included in the world-building process should be a history, both on large and small scale, which you can then use as a story mine.

Then, have various backstories in play in the knowledge some will fall by the wayside and some will become relevant, depending on what the players and their characters do once the game starts. Storyboard it out on a piece of paper, how the various adventures you plan to run might fit together in the larger backstories; then run the adventures. And if the players take a left turn partway through and do something you don't expect, roll with it and see if you can make it fit later; and if not, no big deal.

This way, players who are looking for a larger backstory will eventually find it, while players who just want to go from one adventure to the next are happy as well.

Also, keep in mind that player turnover happens in a long campaign; it's a fact of life. It's not the end of the world provided you've got people available to replace those who leave.

@merricb: the difference between then and now was that Mr. Gygax had seen the short-campaign problem and was trying to fix it; to suggest ways in which a campaign could be made to last longer and-or keep its players more engaged. WotC instead just designed to the short campaign and had done with it.

Lanefan

 

[MerricB]

@merricb: the difference between then and now was that Mr. Gygax had seen the short-campaign problem and was trying to fix it; to suggest ways in which a campaign could be made to last longer and-or keep its players more engaged. WotC instead just designed to the short campaign and had done with it.

By which (because this survey was done before 3e) we can take it that Gygax failed. You can very clearly see Gygax's advice given form in the adventures (partly) and campaign settings (especially) of 2e, but still we have 1 year campaigns!

Of course, what this ignores is how much the system has to do with the length of the campaign, and how much the content of the campaign has to do with it; that is, if you get from 1st-9th level in the year, and don't find the high level game worth it, then the system contributes to the shortness of the campaign.

Or how Life interferes.

Or maybe - despite whatever you might do - most people find the "year" campaign to be the best way of playing D&D.

Cheers!

 

[Raven Crowking]

By which (because this survey was done before 3e) we can take it that Gygax failed. You can very clearly see Gygax's advice given form in the adventures (partly) and campaign settings (especially) of 2e, but still we have 1 year campaigns!

Harsh statement, considering that you did not see the advice clearly. Perhaps the failure was more in how much page space was given to the topic, than in the value of the advice itself?

And, in 2e, the guidance was far different from what Mr. Gygax gave.

Also, there are still quite a few long-term 1e campaigns out there....or so I hear tell.


RC

 

[MerricB]

Harsh statement, considering that you did not see the advice clearly. Perhaps the failure was more in how much page space was given to the topic, than in the value of the advice itself?

Actually, it's quite interesting to see how 2E did "follow" the advice: certainly you have a variety of different settings, several of which can be reached by characters in a standard Greyhawk campaign. Some of those settings - esp. Ravenloft and Spelljammer - are specifically designed to be used as an adjunct to the main campaign (although, alas, Ravenloft became a bit too much of its own thing), and then you have the greater development of the planes in the Blood War and Planescape.

Meanwhile, one could rarely describe 1e & 2e adventures as being lacking in context - slavers, giants, great plagues, barbarian invasions... all of these are more than just "go into the dungeon and get gold."

Where 2e adventures (in particular) get tripped up is in letting its players have the freedom to choose sides; this is not true of all, but certainly of many... but, let's face it, it's somewhat true of most adventures since G1!

Given all of this... why still 1 year campaigns?

And then, what of the exceptions - what makes them special? (And could they be possibly called a sequence of shorter campaigns in the same world?)

Cheers!