D&D General Younger Players Telling Us how Old School Gamers Played

[Arilyn]

I really hated this one. You decide to end your weekly session in the middle of a combat with Goblins and come back a week later to a TPK because they got 20000 rounds of combat while you were out.

The "real time" rule only kicks in between adventures. Player characters do not stop in a dungeon corrider for a week because the session ends, or come back to a TPK cause they weren't there to declare actions for their characters. If the characters settle in a village and the players don't play again for a month, then it's been a month game time.

It was just a thing some DMs did and many did not, that fell almost completely out of favour and got forgotten. I really really don't understand why the guy bringing this up in the video is creating a backlash. He stumbled over this old rule and is curious about giving it a try. My sense is that it was used by really early gamers in the 70s, though not all, by any stretch, and pretty much abandoned in the 80s? Pretty sure Gygax did it for a while but maybe not in every campaign.

 

[Lanefan]

The "real time" rule only kicks in between adventures. Player characters do not stop in a dungeon corrider for a week because the session ends, or come back to a TPK cause they weren't there to declare actions for their characters. If the characters settle in a village and the players don't play again for a month, then it's been a month game time.

That's the theory; although even there if the DM says the PCs have sat in a village for a month the players IMO are well within their rights to object, and instead declare what their PCs were doing during that month.

Further, based on the 1e DMG wording, this rule very much expects - even demands - that the PCs get back to base by the end of each session; which falls apart pretty quick once exposed to the vagaries of actual play.

It was just a thing some DMs did and many did not, that fell almost completely out of favour and got forgotten.

Yep, and for good reason.

I really really don't understand why the guy bringing this up in the video is creating a backlash. He stumbled over this old rule and is curious about giving it a try. My sense is that it was used by really early gamers in the 70s, though not all, by any stretch, and pretty much abandoned in the 80s? Pretty sure Gygax did it for a while but maybe not in every campaign.

In a "weekend warrior" type of game where a) each session is its own discrete adventure and said adventure is done by session's end and b) it was never certain which players might show up for any given session, which it seems might have been what EGG ran in the early days, the rule makes some sense.

But that's a very niche type of game/campaign; and IMO Gygax would have been far better off noting this idea as an option in a sidebar rather than trying to push it as a coded rule in the main text.

 

[Charlaquin]

That's the theory; although even there if the DM says the PCs have sat in a village for a month the players IMO are well within their rights to object, and instead declare what their PCs were doing during that month.

Further, based on the 1e DMG wording, this rule very much expects - even demands - that the PCs get back to base by the end of each session; which falls apart pretty quick once exposed to the vagaries of actual play.

Yep, and for good reason.

In a "weekend warrior" type of game where a) each session is its own discrete adventure and said adventure is done by session's end and b) it was never certain which players might show up for any given session, which it seems might have been what EGG ran in the early days, the rule makes some sense.

But that's a very niche type of game/campaign; and IMO Gygax would have been far better off noting this idea as an option in a sidebar rather than trying to push it as a coded rule in the main text.

A sidebar? That would have required him to actually consider style and formatting instead of just vomiting a stream of consciousness onto the page.

 

[pemerton]

Gygax would have been far better off noting this idea as an option in a sidebar rather than trying to push it as a coded rule in the main text.

There are no sidebars in the AD&D DMG.

 

[Arilyn]

That's the theory; although even there if the DM says the PCs have sat in a village for a month the players IMO are well within their rights to object, and instead declare what their PCs were doing during that month.

I don't think that would have been a problem. Training time, spell research, etc.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I don't think that would have been a problem. Training time, spell research, etc.

Well, the almost never-used and not used by Gygax, training rule doesn't have a provision for 'stocking up on training', you have to acquire the XP for the next level FIRST, and then you can train. It also requires instructors, though other PCs can presumably fill that role. So, maybe you can and maybe you cannot train. In practice however, nobody used that rule. Or if they tried it, then it got ditched pretty early in the campaign. It really wasn't a workable concept.

And I think @Lanefan is hitting on a point, in the real 'old days' play there is no 'The DM tells you what your character does for a week'. NO NO NO. As much as the game gives the DM complete authority over the world and the rules, it equally gives players complete authority over the PCs, and generally even some over friendly NPCs, though that is negotiable (and yes, someone is going to leap in and say 'Charm Person', this is such an edge case, lets ignore it).

So, IME, when playing in games where there was a need to produce a 'hiatus' because some different characters needed to cross paths or deconflict, the DM might say "OK, such-and-such amount of time needs to pass, what do you do?" I agree training or at least research and such might be an answer, or a small adventure, or just "we go on a bender for a week." Whatever. I never understood a need or desire for a rule, nor would I have thought that DMs would say things like "Oh, you all left the dungeon" if the adventure stopped in the middle. I mean, MAYBE, if it was helpful and not a big deal, OK. Its all just 'whatever works', that's the original D&D 'rules', whatever the heck works, right now, and with the dice I have in my hand. Pure and simple.

 

[Lanefan]

Well, the almost never-used and not used by Gygax, training rule doesn't have a provision for 'stocking up on training', you have to acquire the XP for the next level FIRST, and then you can train. It also requires instructors, though other PCs can presumably fill that role. So, maybe you can and maybe you cannot train. In practice however, nobody used that rule. Or if they tried it, then it got ditched pretty early in the campaign. It really wasn't a workable concept.

Training has worked fine for us for a very long time now, though (of course!) not exactly as EGG wrote it. But yes, finding a trainer can sometimes be a problem particularly for the less-common classes (hello there, Illusionist!); and if you don't train your xp-received eventually slows right down (as opposed to stopping dead like EGG had it).

And I think @Lanefan is hitting on a point, in the real 'old days' play there is no 'The DM tells you what your character does for a week'. NO NO NO. As much as the game gives the DM complete authority over the world and the rules, it equally gives players complete authority over the PCs, and generally even some over friendly NPCs, though that is negotiable (and yes, someone is going to leap in and say 'Charm Person', this is such an edge case, lets ignore it).

So, IME, when playing in games where there was a need to produce a 'hiatus' because some different characters needed to cross paths or deconflict, the DM might say "OK, such-and-such amount of time needs to pass, what do you do?" I agree training or at least research and such might be an answer, or a small adventure, or just "we go on a bender for a week."

Yes, this. If for example we know there's some downtime coming because someone has to train, I'll ask what the rest are doing for that time and if any of it needs DM attention I see to it then and there - or by email during the week if it's long.

 

[Lanefan]

There are no sidebars in the AD&D DMG.

Maybe there should have been?

 

[S'mon]

Further, based on the 1e DMG wording, this rule very much expects - even demands - that the PCs get back to base by the end of each session; which falls apart pretty quick once exposed to the vagaries of actual play.

I find it (return to base at end of session) works fine in my 5e Barrowmaze and Arden Vul campaigns. Both megadungeons, both with two different active PC & player groups. Also my 5e Stonehell campaign, another megadungeon. Even when I give the players the option of freezing time for a fortnight & staying in the dungeon at the end of the session, they'd rather go home and take the Long Rest (1 week in those games).

 

[Mannahnin]

It wasn't based on real time. If we end a session with the party going back to keep to resupply (which happens outside of the session), you figure how much time that would take in game. 1 day to get to the keep, 1 day to resupply, and 1 day to get back. So when you start the next session, whether that happens 1 day or two weeks later, 3 days in the game passed, and creatures would react accordingly (doing their own potential reinforcements).

Never did I ever see us match in-game time with real life time between sessions. We knew the rule (contrary to the video's claim) but thought it was un-fun. So we ignored it.

For the groups which did it, it provided a handy tool for simplifying between-session time tracking. But this was really only necessary if you were running a shared world with multiple groups of players having access to some of the same adventuring sites.

The "real time" rule only kicks in between adventures. Player characters do not stop in a dungeon corrider for a week because the session ends, or come back to a TPK cause they weren't there to declare actions for their characters. If the characters settle in a village and the players don't play again for a month, then it's been a month game time.

It was just a thing some DMs did and many did not, that fell almost completely out of favour and got forgotten. I really really don't understand why the guy bringing this up in the video is creating a backlash. He stumbled over this old rule and is curious about giving it a try. My sense is that it was used by really early gamers in the 70s, though not all, by any stretch, and pretty much abandoned in the 80s? Pretty sure Gygax did it for a while but maybe not in every campaign.

I find it (return to base at end of session) works fine in my 5e Barrowmaze and Arden Vul campaigns. Both megadungeons, both with two different active PC & player groups. Also my 5e Stonehell campaign, another megadungeon. Even when I give the players the option of freezing time for a fortnight & staying in the dungeon at the end of the session, they'd rather go home and take the Long Rest (1 week in those games).

Yep. It works great for this kind of game.

I did it in my open world quasi-West Marches game I've been running since April of 2020 for most of the campaign, because I had multiple groups and some variability in player attendance, and the two main groups both hit the same megadungeon pretty frequently.

I did permit the players to "freeze time"/stop a session mid-adventure when they were on side quests to locations the other group wouldn't reasonably be able to get to, and now that I'm down to one steady group, and they're high enough level to have a good amount of adventuring stamina, most of the time we do play that they can pause mid adventure and pick up without time elapsing.