Treasure and leveling comparisons: AD&D1, B/ED&D, and D&D3 - updated 11-17-08 (Q1)

[Ariosto]

Expert made it pretty clear that a good campaign featured both dungeons and wilderness.

So did the Original boxed set. I really don't know what to make of your harping on this -- especially considering that the wilderness should be only more unpredictable an environment than a campaign dungeon!

That's the salient point in this context: the relative reliability of returns from a more versus a less constrained scenario.

On the other hand, those could well be reliably low if AD&D DMs are stingy with XP for treasure.

 

[Hussar]

So did the Original boxed set. I really don't know what to make of your harping on this -- especially considering that the wilderness should be only more unpredictable an environment than a campaign dungeon!

That's the salient point in this context: the relative reliability of returns from a more versus a less constrained scenario.

On the other hand, those could well be reliably low if AD&D DMs are stingy with XP for treasure.

I'm harping on this because you stated that mega-dungeon play was the baseline assumption of AD&D play. You're the one who stated:

Your personal experience of having never encountered a traditional dungeon, to the extent that you seem even to doubt that Gygax intended it to be normative, is suggestive.

Which started off this whole tangent. If the mega-dungeon is not the standard assumption, or rather even if it was, but wasn't widely played, then questioning Quasqueton's results based on mega-dungeon play isn't valid. The arguement on the table, as far as I know, is that the idea of going from dungeon to dungeon (in this case in module form) is not how people played back in the day. At least, that's the sense I'm getting from you.

Is that mistaken?

 

[Ariosto]

Hussar, you seem with some frequency to construct radically extreme dichotomies -- and to misrepresent the views of others as occupying one or other of the antipodes.

The Cook and Marsh Expert D&D set included expanded monster and treasure stocking tables for dungeons of 8+ levels. It is rather curious (to say the least) to conclude that dungeons so deep were somehow incompatible with the simultaneous existence of a wilderness to explore, complete with castles, caves, ruins, wizards' towers and assorted little labyrinths.

 

[The Shaman]

I think a very large percentage of AD&D players came into AD&D from Basic/Expert.

AD&D was already out for years before the Moldvay edition, so on what do you base this claim?

I think this colored people's approach to the game easily as much as EGG's DMG.

If you were to look at the sales figures for Isle of Dread and the DMG, which do you think would be higher?

 

[Hussar]

AD&D was already out for years before the Moldvay edition, so on what do you base this claim?If you were to look at the sales figures for Isle of Dread and the DMG, which do you think would be higher?

Well, considering the Moldvay edition is the highest selling RPG product of all time, I'd say that the Isle of Dread probably was seen at more tables than a 1e DMG because it came with the boxed set. Same reason for the Keep on the Borderlands.

So, yeah, I do believe that lots and lots of gamers came to AD&D through the boxed sets.

The Cook and Marsh Expert D&D set included expanded monster and treasure stocking tables for dungeons of 8+ levels. It is rather curious (to say the least) to conclude that dungeons so deep were somehow incompatible with the simultaneous existence of a wilderness to explore, complete with castles, caves, ruins, wizards' towers and assorted little labyrinths.

Yup, 1 page out of 64 is devoted to dungeons. How many pages are devoted to designing a wilderness?

Y'know, people accuse me of misrepresenting their arguements, but, only at certain times. I wonder why that is? What am I getting wrong? You said that the standard of play in 1e is the mega-dungeon, true or false? You said that Q's ideas don't reflect how the game was actually played because of this. Again, am I wrong here?

My point is, the mega-dungeon was not the way the game was played back then because most people came from Basic/Expert where the mega-dungeon most certainly WASN'T the baseline expectation of a campaign.

To me, Q's appraisal of how the game was played follows pretty well how a great many people played AD&D. The poll I put up is still in its infancy, but, out of 12 votes, not a single person has voted for mega dungeons. Certainly not conclusive by any stretch, but, do you think that mega-dungeon play is going to top that poll?

 

[Storm Raven]

So did the Original boxed set. I really don't know what to make of your harping on this -- especially considering that the wilderness should be only more unpredictable an environment than a campaign dungeon!

That's the salient point in this context: the relative reliability of returns from a more versus a less constrained scenario.

On the other hand, those could well be reliably low if AD&D DMs are stingy with XP for treasure.

They could be low if an AD&D DM was stingy with treasure. But that's not the question being asked. The question being asked is what did the publisher of the game appear to expect the rate of advancement to be, and the way to figure that out is to look at the materials the publisher provided for the game.

Assuming that the publisher intended that the game would be played in an entirely different manner because of a few throwaway lines and tables in an appendix when everything else points the other way is simply not a coherent argument. Further, assuming that a mere change of venue would radically alter the expectations the designers had for advancement is completely unsupportable.

 

[Storm Raven]

The Cook and Marsh Expert D&D set included expanded monster and treasure stocking tables for dungeons of 8+ levels. It is rather curious (to say the least) to conclude that dungeons so deep were somehow incompatible with the simultaneous existence of a wilderness to explore, complete with castles, caves, ruins, wizards' towers and assorted little labyrinths.

Here's a question for you: you keep making a big deal about the tables showing monsters in a Nth level dungeon (where N is some fairly large number) and citing this as evidence that dungeons were expected to be 10, 15, or 20 levels deep.

Steading of the Hill Giant Chief is a two level complex. It is stocked with monsters and treasure that would appear on the 8th through 10th level monster and treasure tables. Yet it is not deep below the ground. Somehow, it is a high level adventure not below the ground, that appears to be using something akin to the tables you claim are evidence that such dungeons were de rigeur.

How do you explain this dichotomy?

 

[Doug McCrae]

Your personal experience of having never encountered a traditional dungeon, to the extent that you seem even to doubt that Gygax intended it to be normative, is suggestive.

What evidence is there that it was intended to be normative?

 

[Hussar]

Ariosto, sorry to dogpile on you here, but, I would like an answer in light of both Storm Raven's and Doug McCrae's posts. How is my line of discussion different from theirs and why are you claiming that I'm revising the argument and not directing the same criticism at them?

 

[Ariosto]

Moldvay/Cook/Marsh came out in 1981, and from all I have seen was a huge seller. The last printing of the white box D&D set was in 1979, the Basic and Expert sets apparently being considered its replacement.

In my estimation, nothing since the Original so clearly conveyed the principles of dungeon design, although Holmes (with B1) was not too bad. The later B/X sets offer the tools of tables for stocking, but I can understand how on their own they might be inadequate. Module B2 very well demonstrated the complimentary "home base" and wilderness aspects of starting a campaign. The Gygaxian AD&D books took some grounding for granted -- which may no longer have been possessed by people teaching themselves from books in the 1980s. That the DMG in particular suffered from less than stellar editing -- and the author's technical writing was, not unusually among game designers, not as polished as his creative writing -- may have contributed to a tendency among many DMs to skip much that was not immediately clear.

So, some trends for which later editions often take heat may in fact have been set in motion at the turn of the decade. That "dungeon modules" so rarely fit that description literally, and in other ways inadequately met the need for examples of the kind of campaign play for which the rules had been designed (Isle of Dread, packaged with both Expert sets, ranking among the better), hardly helped matters.