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Message: <blockquote data-quote="AbdulAlhazred" data-source="post: 7352037" data-attributes="member: 82106">I'm not entirely sure this is so. I think that there's a great qualitative difference between the typical mid-80's TSR module and a Gygaxian dungeon in the style popular 10 years earlier. As an example: In 1976 I purchased a copy of Holme's Basic. My copy didn't come with a module (there were various permutations of 'extras' in the boxes at different times). Instead it came with a 'Monster and Treasure Assortment' (a series of 3-hole-punched pages filled with tables of pregenerated monster and treasure pulled from the tables in the MM (IE number appearing and such, plus the results of rolling on the treasure type tables). I assume these were generated from material in OD&D as they went on up to higher levels than Holme's covered. Anyway, there was also a product called 'Dungeon Geomorphs' in the package, which was just sheets of endless corridors, rooms, doors, etc filling 8.5x11 sheets of (also punched) light cardstock. They were printed in such a way that they could be cut up and rearranged so that they would (mostly) connect together in various permutations, allowing a budding DM to almost instantly produce a vast maze. Combining these two products together almost literally created a sort of random generated dungeon maze. You would almost certainly provide a lot of additional creative input, maybe custom map sections, secret doors, special encounter areas, etc. The result would be a workable dungeon in the tradition of (presumably) things like Blackmoor Castle and Castle Greyhawk dungeons (I don't believe that either Gary nor Dave every ACTUALLY published the exact maps they used in their early games, so its hard to say they looked a certain way, but I suspect they were similar dense mazes of rooms and corridors and whatnot based on the evidence I have from their writings). This was early D&D. A completely drawn up Maze, stocked with hazards, patrolled by wandering monsters, and ready for the DM to, relatively objectively, adjudicate the player's exploration thereof by way of their PCs. This is how my first D&D campaign was structured. There was a 'castle' beneath which was a vast maze of dungeon into which the PCs plunged in search of treasure and magic. When they were sufficiently depleted they would return to the 'town' and buy whatever they needed from the equipment list in Holme's Basic, or other materials we had (The Dragon, hand copied bits and hand-me-downs of OD&D stuff, Judges Guild another 3PP stuff, and our own 'rules' we wrote to fill in the blanks). There was no story, no progression of an arc of any kind. At that point there was no world into which this locale was set, no logic to why it existed, nothing. The game was purely encapsulated in dungeon exploration and now and then some sort of ancillary to that like some sort of 'town adventure' (IE trying to hire henchmen, getting characters resurrected and paying for it with quests, etc). So there really IS a pure Gygaxian dungeon crawl (or maybe we should really call it Arnesonian since he made the first dungeon). I won't say that it is always 100% pregenerated, but it is, as [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] alluded to, a very specific and set format of game. In a sense it is almost transitional between tabletop wargames and RPGs. Imagine what was happening in Dave Arneson's basement (or whatever). He was making up this thing, cobbled together from his experiences with 'Kriegspiel' and Chainmail, with some other wargames mixed in. Each foray into the dungeon was a game, each player picked a character, perhaps an ongoing one from previous games, and they followed a set of tactical rules to explore a region of dungeon map prepared by the referee. There were two unique features, having one PC as your 'game piece', and an explicitly open-ended set of exploration options that would be mediated against the environment by the referee, soon to be called DM.The sorts of extended adventures, specific quests, elaborate NPCs, and linear storylines, which are features of later modules didn't really exist in these things. If you look at B2 it is PRETTY CLOSE to what they were doing in 1974. There's a castle, there's a dungeon (Caves of Chaos), and the PCs are expected to clean out the dungeon and refresh themselves in the town, the Keep. Maybe now and then they can have some bit of adventure in the Keep, but its inhabitants are largely mundane. There are a few who can offer a service or two, you can hire a few hirelings, buy a healing potion or three, get a remove curse thrown on you for a steep price, etc. Otherwise it just serves as a place to rest while you heal, store spare loot, and plausibly pick up the replacement PCs that will be required to finish the adventure.</blockquote>

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