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<blockquote data-quote="R_Chance" data-source="post: 8065243" data-attributes="member: 55149">Glad to know you knew how we played... except you don't. On the first level of a dungeon (the easiest of course) you could run into enemies from the 3rd level encounter table (this is in 1E, it could be the 4th level table in the original game, but it was pretty similar). If a rather squishy group of low level characters weren't ready to run away from an Ogre or three, well tpk. If you descended into the second level you could encounter monsters up to the 5th level table. Including young adult or adult dragons. Why the he** wouldn't you run? When DMing I would leave clues about encounters (charred corpses, bodies with their heads / helmets crushed flat, etc.), but players had to be bright enough to pick up on the clues. Most were. And, if it was a random encounter, good luck. You had to size up the situation and react appropriately.The modules gave a level range, but it was pretty lose. I never DM'd any (I did my own then and now), but I played in a number of them. The encounters in those required the same type of calculations; fight, sneak, parley, or flight.&nbsp; Yes, the morale rules only applied to NPCs. Including any you had with you. PCs were assumed to be bright enough to know when to run. If the NPCs were played well their running away could come back to bite you in the rear too. It wasn't that it was &quot;rosy&quot;, just that it was different. It could be brutally &quot;unfair&quot;, and often really exciting. As for modules, as I said, I didn't run the modules, but given how often we got our rear handed to us I doubt they were as &quot;balanced&quot; as you think.Nope, we read everything omnivorously. Just look over the random encounter tables for dungeons in the DMG and get back to me on how balanced they were by modern standards. They were &quot;balanced&quot; for players then because they knew they could die pretty easily and had to be ready to act tactically. We had all seen Monty Python and the Holy Grail. &quot;Run away!&quot; was a thing. So was stealth, parley, and combat. It depended on the situation. By the way, in a lot of ways the scariest monsters were NPC parties, you had to try and figure out their level... <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f600.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":D" title="Big grin&nbsp; &nbsp; :D"&nbsp; data-smilie="8"data-shortname=":D" /></blockquote>

[QUOTE="R_Chance, post: 8065243, member: 55149"] Glad to know you knew how we played... except you don't. On the first level of a dungeon (the easiest of course) you could run into enemies from the 3rd level encounter table (this is in 1E, it could be the 4th level table in the original game, but it was pretty similar). If a rather squishy group of low level characters weren't ready to run away from an Ogre or three, well tpk. If you descended into the second level you could encounter monsters up to the 5th level table. Including young adult or adult dragons. Why the he** wouldn't you run? When DMing I would leave clues about encounters (charred corpses, bodies with their heads / helmets crushed flat, etc.), but players had to be bright enough to pick up on the clues. Most were. And, if it was a random encounter, good luck. You had to size up the situation and react appropriately. The modules gave a level range, but it was pretty lose. I never DM'd any (I did my own then and now), but I played in a number of them. The encounters in those required the same type of calculations; fight, sneak, parley, or flight. Yes, the morale rules only applied to NPCs. Including any you had with you. PCs were assumed to be bright enough to know when to run. If the NPCs were played well their running away could come back to bite you in the rear too. It wasn't that it was "rosy", just that it was different. It could be brutally "unfair", and often really exciting. As for modules, as I said, I didn't run the modules, but given how often we got our rear handed to us I doubt they were as "balanced" as you think. Nope, we read everything omnivorously. Just look over the random encounter tables for dungeons in the DMG and get back to me on how balanced they were by modern standards. They were "balanced" for players then because they knew they could die pretty easily and had to be ready to act tactically. We had all seen Monty Python and the Holy Grail. "Run away!" was a thing. So was stealth, parley, and combat. It depended on the situation. By the way, in a lot of ways the scariest monsters were NPC parties, you had to try and figure out their level... :D [/QUOTE]

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