Menu
News
All News
Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
Pathfinder
Starfinder
Warhammer
2d20 System
Year Zero Engine
Industry News
Reviews
Dragon Reflections
Columns
Weekly Digests
Weekly News Digest
Freebies, Sales & Bundles
RPG Print News
RPG Crowdfunding News
Game Content
ENterplanetary DimENsions
Mythological Figures
Opinion
Worlds of Design
Peregrine's Next
RPG Evolution
Other Columns
From the Freelancing Frontline
Monster ENcyclopedia
WotC/TSR Alumni Look Back
4 Hours w/RSD (Ryan Dancey)
The Road to 3E (Jonathan Tweet)
Greenwood's Realms (Ed Greenwood)
Drawmij's TSR (Jim Ward)
Community
Forums & Topics
Forum List
Latest Posts
Forum list
*Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
D&D Older Editions
*TTRPGs General
*Pathfinder & Starfinder
EN Publishing
*Geek Talk & Media
Search forums
Chat/Discord
Resources
Wiki
Pages
Latest activity
Media
New media
New comments
Search media
Downloads
Latest reviews
Search resources
EN Publishing
Store
EN5ider
Adventures in ZEITGEIST
Awfully Cheerful Engine
What's OLD is NEW
Judge Dredd & The Worlds Of 2000AD
War of the Burning Sky
Level Up: Advanced 5E
Events & Releases
Upcoming Events
Private Events
Featured Events
Socials!
Twitch
YouTube
Facebook (EN Publishing)
Facebook (EN World)
Twitter
Instagram
TikTok
Podcast
Features
Top 5 RPGs Compiled Charts 2004-Present
Adventure Game Industry Market Research Summary (RPGs) V1.0
Ryan Dancey: Acquiring TSR
Q&A With Gary Gygax
D&D Rules FAQs
TSR, WotC, & Paizo: A Comparative History
D&D Pronunciation Guide
Million Dollar TTRPG Kickstarters
Tabletop RPG Podcast Hall of Fame
Eric Noah's Unofficial D&D 3rd Edition News
D&D in the Mainstream
D&D & RPG History
About Morrus
Log in
Register
What's new
Search
Search
Search titles only
By:
Forums & Topics
Forum List
Latest Posts
Forum list
*Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
D&D Older Editions
*TTRPGs General
*Pathfinder & Starfinder
EN Publishing
*Geek Talk & Media
Search forums
Chat/Discord
Menu
Log in
Register
Install the app
Install
The
VOIDRUNNER'S CODEX
is coming! Explore new worlds, fight oppressive empires, fend off fearsome aliens, and wield deadly psionics with this comprehensive boxed set expansion for 5E and A5E!
Community
General Tabletop Discussion
*Dungeons & Dragons
Younger Players Telling Us how Old School Gamers Played
JavaScript is disabled. For a better experience, please enable JavaScript in your browser before proceeding.
You are using an out of date browser. It may not display this or other websites correctly.
You should upgrade or use an
alternative browser
.
Reply to thread
Message
<blockquote data-quote="AbdulAlhazred" data-source="post: 8831680" data-attributes="member: 82106"><p>Well, its pretty dream-like in another sense too. That is, how much do we remember? I mean, I'm 59 years old, there's only so much I can recall about 12 yr old me's early D&D sessions. Like, I THINK the first character I played was a cleric, but I am not even 100% sure. lol. I sure as heck do not have any real recollection of how stuff was handled in play, had no idea how a campaign worked, and could not tell you even one single event from that entire game. I couldn't even tell you exactly how many times we played or how it ended. I just do not know! I remember the books we had at the table, the minis, dice rolling, and more-or-less who the players were. </p><p></p><p>I mean, I could say MORE about the stuff I was running a year or so later when I finally had enough of the rules to really run a game. It was Holmes Basic, and I had photocopies, or actual hand-drawn copies, of parts of the rules from the LBBs that dealt with higher levels (Holmes goes up to level 3). It came with dice, a 'monster and treasure assortment' booklet, and some sheets of geomorphs (I guess some copies came with B1). We did pretty much follow the dungeon exploration rules as-written, give or take. I cannot recall too much about what happened outside of that. I know the campaign went on for a few years, my brother and sister played (a dwarf and a fighter). I'm pretty sure my Dad played too, so he'd have been an Elf fighter/M.U. (though we pretty soon grafted in the PHB1 character rules, so it was probably built with those and not the weird D&D elf rules). I can recall various incidents from play: my sister's dwarf (3 WIS, 4 INT) stuck his hand in a chest and got it chopped off by a trap. After that he had a hook, and then at some point the hook got replaced by the Soul Sword, a magical sword grafted to his arm that glowed with his life force. The other fighter, Grog, just did various dumb things as he was pretty stupid too. The party mule was smarter than those two PCs, and was named 'Mule Go Bang', which was the command to get the mule to kick in a door. That campaign pretty much wound down around 1980. I recall that the end part involved the PCs fighting a red dragon. I think they reached a stalemate with the dragon and got some treasure out of it.</p><p></p><p>So, there's not actually a ton to tell! I don't recall every really caring about time. There were not too many instances of multiple groups operating at once, though the players often had several PCs, and there was some rough calculation of "well, that guy is off doing X" or whatnot, but nothing like Gygax's insistence on exact time keeping or whatever. Now and then we agreed that certain characters 'hung out' for a while doing nothing. That was just basically lamp shading some obvious discrepancy in when one PC might be able to join a party vs another (often because some of the wizards needed to spend weeks penning scrolls or whatever).</p><p></p><p>Really, honestly, even with games that happened in the 80's I just don't recall a lot of the specific action. I can recall bunches of things that happened, but I could not tell you the detailed sequence of events that happened in any given game/campaign, just maybe an overall outline, certain specific memorable moments, and roughly who played and some of their characters, maybe. The last 2e campaign I ran I have a good bit clearer recollection of most of what took place, but that's about it. Even with that game I am not sure I have enough of the notes left from actual sessions to put together a 100% picture of exactly where the PCs went and every single thing they did. I do have the character sheets from that game, as well as bunches of earlier ones.</p><p></p><p>Maybe other people have more solid memories of their games than I do, dunno. I have a pretty good grasp on how we played, but I'd be hard pressed to explain in detail what most of the characters actually did, aside from a war story or two.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="AbdulAlhazred, post: 8831680, member: 82106"] Well, its pretty dream-like in another sense too. That is, how much do we remember? I mean, I'm 59 years old, there's only so much I can recall about 12 yr old me's early D&D sessions. Like, I THINK the first character I played was a cleric, but I am not even 100% sure. lol. I sure as heck do not have any real recollection of how stuff was handled in play, had no idea how a campaign worked, and could not tell you even one single event from that entire game. I couldn't even tell you exactly how many times we played or how it ended. I just do not know! I remember the books we had at the table, the minis, dice rolling, and more-or-less who the players were. I mean, I could say MORE about the stuff I was running a year or so later when I finally had enough of the rules to really run a game. It was Holmes Basic, and I had photocopies, or actual hand-drawn copies, of parts of the rules from the LBBs that dealt with higher levels (Holmes goes up to level 3). It came with dice, a 'monster and treasure assortment' booklet, and some sheets of geomorphs (I guess some copies came with B1). We did pretty much follow the dungeon exploration rules as-written, give or take. I cannot recall too much about what happened outside of that. I know the campaign went on for a few years, my brother and sister played (a dwarf and a fighter). I'm pretty sure my Dad played too, so he'd have been an Elf fighter/M.U. (though we pretty soon grafted in the PHB1 character rules, so it was probably built with those and not the weird D&D elf rules). I can recall various incidents from play: my sister's dwarf (3 WIS, 4 INT) stuck his hand in a chest and got it chopped off by a trap. After that he had a hook, and then at some point the hook got replaced by the Soul Sword, a magical sword grafted to his arm that glowed with his life force. The other fighter, Grog, just did various dumb things as he was pretty stupid too. The party mule was smarter than those two PCs, and was named 'Mule Go Bang', which was the command to get the mule to kick in a door. That campaign pretty much wound down around 1980. I recall that the end part involved the PCs fighting a red dragon. I think they reached a stalemate with the dragon and got some treasure out of it. So, there's not actually a ton to tell! I don't recall every really caring about time. There were not too many instances of multiple groups operating at once, though the players often had several PCs, and there was some rough calculation of "well, that guy is off doing X" or whatnot, but nothing like Gygax's insistence on exact time keeping or whatever. Now and then we agreed that certain characters 'hung out' for a while doing nothing. That was just basically lamp shading some obvious discrepancy in when one PC might be able to join a party vs another (often because some of the wizards needed to spend weeks penning scrolls or whatever). Really, honestly, even with games that happened in the 80's I just don't recall a lot of the specific action. I can recall bunches of things that happened, but I could not tell you the detailed sequence of events that happened in any given game/campaign, just maybe an overall outline, certain specific memorable moments, and roughly who played and some of their characters, maybe. The last 2e campaign I ran I have a good bit clearer recollection of most of what took place, but that's about it. Even with that game I am not sure I have enough of the notes left from actual sessions to put together a 100% picture of exactly where the PCs went and every single thing they did. I do have the character sheets from that game, as well as bunches of earlier ones. Maybe other people have more solid memories of their games than I do, dunno. I have a pretty good grasp on how we played, but I'd be hard pressed to explain in detail what most of the characters actually did, aside from a war story or two. [/QUOTE]
Insert quotes…
Verification
Post reply
Community
General Tabletop Discussion
*Dungeons & Dragons
Younger Players Telling Us how Old School Gamers Played
Top