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

[Storm Raven]

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.

Here's a question, since you assume it was to be the norm of play that there would be a superdungeon as the centerpiece of a campaign: why did TSR never publish any supplement of this nature in the 1e era?

Because the underworld was not the ONLY element of the campaign! Is this really so difficult to understand?

And the problem with the megadungeon assumption you seem to think is in the books is that the material focusing on that is limited at best, and for the most part confined to appendixes. Whereas the material suggesting otherwise is much more extensive and part of the main body of text.

 

[Raven Crowking]

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.

Yeah, that's extremely weird.

I can easily understand folks not playing that way (I often did not), but to not realize that it was intended to be normative is strange indeed. Of course, it might be related to which early rulesets one had available (with varying DM advice), as well as what contact one had through Dragon and other sources with these ideas.

Certainly, I would imagine that most folks knew Gary's campaign focused on Castle Greyhawk. Ed Greenwood's campaign included both Undermountain and the Ruins of Myth Drannor as mega-complexes (and this was a 1e campaign setting before being purchased by TSR and, eventually, becoming the 2e flagship). World's Largest Dungeon was certainly an attempt to harken back to those days.

(I find a multi-mega-complex campaign to be optimal these days, myself.)


RC

 

[billd91]

As for the tusks and so on, I suppose you've never heard of Tenser's floating disk or bags of holding?

I'm not about to assume that everybody's got one or the other or even a portable hole - or that they have enough capacity with the ones they have. That seems to me to be a very strong assumption to make about any random campaign using these modules. It also underlines my point - there are two separate ways to earn XPs in 1e compared to one in 3e tracked in this survey and that injects more potential error to the 1e results because you must make more assumptions to reach the XP total.

 

[Ariosto]

Why did TSR never publish any supplement of this nature in the 1e era?

It does not lend itself to the medium, and Gygax doubted that there would be much interest among DMs in buying someone else's campaign. (It took Judges Guild's sales to prove him wrong about the potential even of work of such nature as did in fact get published.) The Temple of Elemental Evil is darned close, but even that was handed off to Frank Mentzer for finishing.

 

[Eridanis]

Please tone down the attacks on one another and stay on topic..

 

[Storm Raven]

I'm not about to assume that everybody's got one or the other or even a portable hole - or that they have enough capacity with the ones they have.

The problem with the assumption that Pcs wouldn't be able to move treasure is that characters have so many options for transporting it. Tenser's floating disk is a 1st level spell. Leomund's chest is another option. Teleporting it from the dungeon to a place of safety is another, and so on. And I haven't even begun to go through magic items, or simply hiring henchmen and hirelings to help schlep the loot. Any reasonably prepared 1e party will have ways to move stuff out of the dungeon. To me, the odd position is the one that assumes they will not.

 

[Ariosto]

Yeah, that's extremely weird.

I don't know about that. By "suggestive", I meant that it suggests -- if common -- a reason why 1E play might commonly be modeled on (or even primarily via) modules. Quasqueton's sample is not necessarily representative of such play, but his survey seems provisionally to indicate that it might not be very different, in terms of XP accrual, from play of 3E modules.

As I observed (in agreement with those who noted it earlier), that would suggest that the perception of rapid early advancement in 3E might well be in comparison with skimpy awards "house ruled" into 1E, or with "standard, by-the-book" 2E practice.

 

[Storm Raven]

It does not lend itself to the medium, and Gygax doubted that there would be much interest among DMs in buying someone else's campaign. (It took Judges Guild's sales to prove him wrong about the potential even of work of such nature as did in fact get published.) The Temple of Elemental Evil is darned close, but even that was fobbed off onto Frank Mentzer.

That still doesn't answer the question. Once TSR did begin publishing adventures, why not publish one or more of the big mega adventures that you claim they assumed everyone wanted to play in?

I just find the whole idea that megadungeons were the rule and the assumed play style to fly in the face of known facts. Yes, Gygax used one in his campaign. But he apparently didn't think it would be popular enough to publish, while the "small" G series was? I think that says they thought the market was rather different than what you claim it was.

 

[billd91]

The problem with the assumption that Pcs wouldn't be able to move treasure is that characters have so many options for transporting it. Tenser's floating disk is a 1st level spell. Leomund's chest is another option. Teleporting it from the dungeon to a place of safety is another, and so on. And I haven't even begun to go through magic items, or simply hiring henchmen and hirelings to help schlep the loot. Any reasonably prepared 1e party will have ways to move stuff out of the dungeon. To me, the odd position is the one that assumes they will not.

The assumption isn't that they don't have any of these items or methods, but that they may not, and that whatever they have they probably don't have enough to shlep out all of it without spending a lot of time and energy that they might not want to spend.
I do find it an odd assumption that a reasonably prepared 1e party will have the ways to find and move all treasure of value out of the dungeon.

 

[Ariosto]

Why not publish one or more of the big mega adventures that you claim they assumed everyone wanted to play in?

It's not really "an adventure" that can be published (although an account of an expedition could be that).

A campaign dungeon typically consists of a great mass of notes that for the most part would be terribly laconic, if not positively cryptic, to anyone but the DM, and an even greater volume of information located nowhere but in the DM's head! Moreover, it is not a static but an ever-changing situation, so that at best one can provide to others only a "snapshot" of its state at some arbitrary moment.

To make even a portion of that into such a polished product as would meet Gary's standards would require a staggering amount of work.

And, contemplating that, Arneson and Gygax, Kuntz and others among the early Dungeon Masters would wonder ... "Why have us do any more of your imagining for you?"

Making up one's own stuff was a big, big PART OF THE FUN!

Modules were for convenience, as starting points or one-offs, for tournaments and other convention play. They're sort of like one-day cricket, a comic-book "limited series", or a movie spun off from a TV show.