WizarDru
Adventurer
So, folks, tell us about your old TSR D&D games! What D&D did you use? Homebrew or campaign setting? Fantasy ing Vietnam or High Adventure (or somewhere in between?) What literature and media were your influences? High lethality? Low lethality? Over the top outrageous adversarial relationship with DM? More dramatic/narrative type stories? Sandbox? Modules? Just like the "Old School Primer" or something different? Whatever you want to share, please do. I only ask that the thread be kept positive, with no jibes or backhanded compliments towards WotC D&D or other playstyles. If you want to take issue with someone's statement, please start a new thread. I'd rather this thread be about contribution and inquiry rather than debate.
Well, there were several, to be sure. The first games we played were Basic D&D, Red box and they were pretty fast and loose. There wasn't a concept of story, per se. The whole idea of the RPG was still taking shape and while it was clearly a game of the imagination, the 'game' part loomed larger than the 'role-playing' part, as I recall. This would change fairly quickly.
The goal was to move on up to AD&D (which we foolishly thought of as 'real' D&D, at the time). This is where we would create campaigns, story-arcs and linked adventures that had some staying power.
Rules were in plenty. I find it funny to hear how later editions are supposed to be so rules-heavy, when one thing we did was ignore chunks of the rules that seems clunky or unnecessary to us in AD&D. Every campaign of which I was aware had house-rules, some small and some extensive (like, "here's a booklet of MY changes" extensive). Gary gave us plenty to work with and the mandate to use what you wanted. And so we did.
My game has always been what we would call cinematic. Free-wheeling and dependent more on what was fun or interesting than specific adherence to the rules. In one game I had elemental dragons destroy the temple the players had been raised in, forcing them on a quest to stop the dragons from rising and destroying the world. They traveled to a pyramid of traps that was full of anachronistic details. It was WONDERFUL.
In a game we played in college, my character was turned into a half-demon, wielding a sword called "Sanguinarius Predator", which was a demon bound in sword form. I remember fighting side-by-side with a bunch of Samurai Orcs in a pitched battle against a Frost Worm, hanging on to it's maw for my life and swinging my sword as it smashed my nigh-indestructible body into a glacier while the wizard summoned up an imperial fire demon to slow it down.
Good Times. Good Times.