TSR Why would anyone want to play 1e?

[Emerikol]

I think it's also (and I might have already mentioned this earlier in the thread) that there's a missing context for most of us who learned elsewhere than at Gary's or other original tables, that levels weren't that hard to earn in the first place. If magic items grant XP, and if a Wish-granting fountain or something enabling you to gain a level all at once is a not-uncommon dungeon feature, than the occasional energy drain isn't the heinous kick in the crotch that it is if you expect it to take months of work to recover from.

Easy come, easy go makes the losses easier to roll with.

Perhaps they were common in many games but most of us old school DMs didn't put them in every adventure. In fact I'd venture some campaigns never say them even once. So most of the time it was a long process to earn the levels back prior to being able to get a restoration.

 

[Emerikol]

By the time I started playing AD&D, Gary and TSR had gone their own separate, and amicable I'm sure, ways a few years previous. Other than a name in the credits, he was never an official part of AD&D since I've been playing. I honestly suspect it's more about nostalgia and the good feelings they associate with that edition. I have the warm & fuzzies from 1st edition AD&D, but I'd rather shave with a cheese grater than play it again. The same goes for 2nd edition as well. I appreciate both games for what they were, but I'm not the same fisherman I was in 1988 and the river isn't the same either. Casting my line in the hopes I'll catch that nostalgia fish is sheer folly.

I think it is playstyle more than rules. Gary's game was brutal and required player skill to survive. You actually got "good" at the game. D&D has been moving away from that idea ever since.

This is why I said I like the 3e rules framework but I want the Gary 1e playstyle.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

I think it is playstyle more than rules. Gary's game was brutal and required player skill to survive. You actually got "good" at the game. D&D has been moving away from that idea ever since.

This is why I said I like the 3e rules framework but I want the Gary 1e playstyle.

I'm not sure if I'd call it "player skill" so much as "anticipating Gary's gotcha ideas." I think most groups for most RPGs figure out what their DM/GM/referee/Ponymaster's quirks are and can anticipate many of them, whether it's "capitalism is the real enemy" or "the sexy barmaid is 100% going to try to rob and/or kill the bard."

 

[Lanefan]

Perhaps they were common in many games but most of us old school DMs didn't put them in every adventure. In fact I'd venture some campaigns never say them even once. So most of the time it was a long process to earn the levels back prior to being able to get a restoration.

I'll have level-drainers show up now and then, but certainly not in every adventure.

 

[Maxperson]

Agreed. Other than a preference for 'Gygaxian prose,' exactly what 1e has that is positive (especially if the point of comparison is 2e, the basic/classic line, or retroclones/OSR games) is a pretty wide and wild topic without consistent agreement.

Energy drain. Everyone loved energy drain. Taxes, hydrogen and energy drain are universal.

 

[haakon1]

Level drain is useful for moving characters between campaigns.

E.g., my sister-in-law had a 7th level paladin in a campaign we ended, and wanted to keep playing the character. We agreed the character could join a new mostly 1st level campaign I was starting, after level draining by an off-camera vampire attack. Not all the way, but enough to not be super far ahead.

This is 3.5e, but I think of that as the final version of AD&D. I still run it.

 

[Flying Toaster]

When I played 1E in the late 80’s, level-draining undead were already so unpopular with the players in our groups that DMs effectively never used them. We discussed meaningful alternatives to level drain but I do not remember anyone actually implementing anything. I don’t remember demons or devils being used much either, although there was no particular reason for that, other than the fact that only a few of our characters got played enough to reach very high levels. And the only people who knew that daemons or demodands even existed were DMs like me who obsessively read the monster books (yes, even FF and MM2 ).

I could not articulate it at the time, but I think I now know why level drain angers some people so much. Level drain does not just damage your character in the game, it feels like it breaks the fourth wall by wasting precious game play time in real life too. One possible objection to that objection would involve asking why we play in the first place. Is it about the journey or the destination? Is it about the adventures we had and the friends we made along the way, or is it about the vicarious thrill of your character leveling up, collecting magic items, and getting rich? I would argue that for most people it is about some of each, and probably lots of other things too.

I do think that the character leveling system found in all editions of D&D creates and reinforces a dopamine rush response in players as they level up. It feels like “winning” in a game that does not really have any explicit win conditions. My parents never had any concerns with the chainmail bikini art or the occult references in D&D, but the one aspect of the game that my parents would always question (in a joking way) was phrased like this: “How do you know when you are done with the game if nobody wins or loses?”. And I would always argue a bit and then just shrug, because you know when you know. Level drain felt like it was threatening the whole endeavor and turning the game into a Sisyphean treadmill.

Besides the “Doylist” feeling of unfairness to players in the real world, level drain never made sense to us in an in-universe “Watsonian” way either. My Thief got level drained so now he has forgotten how to use magic scrolls - how does that work exactly? (Of course I do not recall anyone ever getting a chance to use that ability anyway...)

Level drain seems to be one of those sacred cows of early editions that people either love or loathe, depending upon their perspective on what RPGs are all about. We don’t really need any more labels in the already fairly tribal RPG hobby, but it is funny to me how certain game mechanics spark so much argument, perhaps because they illuminate what people want in gaming. It cannot be purely nostalgic either, as some OSR games have gone out of their way to implement “tough” features for players who were not even born when the early editions were published.

PS: Some RPGs do not have levels at all, but use skills or powers of some sort to distinguish and develop characters, so those games would need some completely different way to model the horror trope of powerful undead draining people’s life force.

 

[Bill Zebub]

Level drain is useful for moving characters between campaigns.

E.g., my sister-in-law had a 7th level paladin in a campaign we ended, and wanted to keep playing the character. We agreed the character could join a new mostly 1st level campaign I was starting, after level draining by an off-camera vampire attack. Not all the way, but enough to not be super far ahead.

This is 3.5e, but I think of that as the final version of AD&D. I still run it.

In a game like Dragonbane or The One Ring, the equivalent of a 7th level character (in terms of playtime invested) is definitely much cooler than brand new characters, but not so far advanced that you can't all happily adventure together.

 

[billd91]

Besides the “Doylist” feeling of unfairness to players in the real world, level drain never made sense to us in an in-universe “Watsonian” way either. My Thief got level drained so now he has forgotten how to use magic scrolls - how does that work exactly? (Of course I do not recall anyone ever getting a chance to use that ability anyway...)

Yeah, that issue was the one that always annoyed me the most. Whether it was a lost proficiency or known spell or literally any other thing that seemed to be about being knowledgeable or well-practiced, losing it didn't make any in-game sense.

Level drain seems to be one of those sacred cows of early editions that people either love or loathe, depending upon their perspective on what RPGs are all about. We don’t really need any more labels in the already fairly tribal RPG hobby, but it is funny to me how certain game mechanics spark so much argument, perhaps because they illuminate what people want in gaming. It cannot be purely nostalgic either, as some OSR games have gone out of their way to implement “tough” features for players who were not even born when the early editions were published.

It's definitely loathe for me.

 

[Mannahnin]

I think it's also (and I might have already mentioned this earlier in the thread) that there's a missing context for most of us who learned elsewhere than at Gary's or other original tables, that levels weren't that hard to earn in the first place. If magic items grant XP, and if a Wish-granting fountain or something enabling you to gain a level all at once is a not-uncommon dungeon feature, than the occasional energy drain isn't the heinous kick in the crotch that it is if you expect it to take months of work to recover from.

Easy come, easy go makes the losses easier to roll with.

Perhaps they were common in many games but most of us old school DMs didn't put them in every adventure. In fact I'd venture some campaigns never say them even once. So most of the time it was a long process to earn the levels back prior to being able to get a restoration.

Right. I'm saying quite a lot of us back then were missing the context which made level drain more palatable and less onerous. Just as Gary's 1E rules for Wishes increasing ability scores look completely absurd unless you infer that Wishes must have been incredibly common in the games he was running and playing in.

I'll have level-drainers show up now and then, but certainly not in every adventure.

When I played 1E in the late 80’s, level-draining undead were already so unpopular with the players in our groups that DMs effectively never used them. We discussed meaningful alternatives to level drain but I do not remember anyone actually implementing anything.

Yup. Folks made adjustments. And with Gary's very influential advice in the 1E DMG and elsewhere to be stingy and keep the players hungry, that this was the way to keep the game exciting and interesting, the more common adjustment was to use level draining undead less often.

Or perhaps to house rule level drain to make it less nasty. I remember one group I played with implemented Life Energy Levels equal to the character's Hit Dice, which were drained but didn't actually reduce the level of the character.

I could not articulate it at the time, but I think I now know why level drain angers some people so much. Level drain does not just damage your character in the game, it feels like it breaks the fourth wall by wasting precious game play time in real life too. One possible objection to that objection would involve asking why we play in the first place. Is it about the journey or the destination? Is it about the adventures we had and the friends we made along the way, or is it about the vicarious thrill of your character leveling up, collecting magic items, and getting rich? I would argue that for most people it is about some of each, and probably lots of other things too.

I do think that the character leveling system found in all editions of D&D creates and reinforces a dopamine rush response in players as they level up. It feels like “winning” in a game that does not really have any explicit win conditions. My parents never had any concerns with the chainmail bikini art or the occult references in D&D, but the one aspect of the game that my parents would always question (in a joking way) was phrased like this: “How do you know when you are done with the game if nobody wins or loses?”. And I would always argue a bit and then just shrug, because you know when you know. Level drain felt like it was threatening the whole endeavor and turning the game into a Sisyphean treadmill.

Yup. I think there's a lot of truth here.

Level drain seems to be one of those sacred cows of early editions that people either love or loathe, depending upon their perspective on what RPGs are all about. We don’t really need any more labels in the already fairly tribal RPG hobby, but it is funny to me how certain game mechanics spark so much argument, perhaps because they illuminate what people want in gaming. It cannot be purely nostalgic either, as some OSR games have gone out of their way to implement “tough” features for players who were not even born when the early editions were published.

A lot of older players have also house ruled. The OSR has talked about alternative rules for level drain for at least a couple of decades now. Here's an article from Dyson's site from 2011 where he offers a bunch of alternatives to level drain. Dyson has mentioned that he started playing in 1979, before the DMG came out.

[Labyrinth Lord] Uniquely Undead

In a recent discussion about level draining undead in Labyrinth Lord, several DMs and players indicated that they would rather kill a character than have him level drained. And in SOME cases I unde…

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