A return to yesteryear

[ursangnome]

So, aside from a couple of birthday parties, and finding more water in our basement (okay, house, I get the hint - if there's an inch of rain outside, I'm going to need to get out the shop-vac), this weekend we had our Gygax Memorial Dungeon Crawl.

I was rather apprehensive about getting bodies at the table on short notice, but we had plenty. I got out the rulebooks my eldest brother gave me back when I was in 7th grade, and a copy of a classic tournament module (S2 - White Plume Mountain), and we quickly slapped together characters and dove in. Fun was had, jokes were made, orange munchies were eaten, and it seems a good time was had by all.

The players managed to come up with crafty ways to avoid a couple of major combats - while tactically clever, that was a strategic bad move. If we had not been cut short on time, the monsters they had dodged earlier were going to come back and bite them on the butt in a grand melee that might well have wiped them out. However, evening came on, and folks had to go, so this ugly scenario never came into play.

In reviewing and running through this old favorite, the differences in design philosophy between the 70s and today became painfully clear. Today, when A GM picks up a module, and there's some trap or terrain that's physically difficult to deal with, the obvious solutions are typically spelled out for the GM. If the character wants to leap out over the lake of boiling mud and grab the chain hanging from the ceiling 10 feet away, you'd be told how hard it is, and what skills would apply. Not so in the old classic. The situations were described, but rarely was any mechanics guidance given for how the characters might deal with them.

This works well for a fast and adventurous one-shot, but it does brign into focus some of the reasons I moved away from AD&D for campaign play.

Comments

[multigeek.livejournal.com]

I bet you could do this again anytime you have a free weekend day, and you wouldn't have trouble getting a group together.

[umbran.livejournal.com]

Personal experience suggests otherwise. My friends tend to schedule their weekend time long in advance - one of my players even mentioned he, "made his saving throw vs. scheduling".

[mindways]

...you'd be told how hard it is, and what skills would apply. Not so in the old classic.

Heck, if I'm recalling correctly, in the old classic, you didn't have skills at all? I seem to recall Non-Weapon Proficiencies (as they were called) showing up around the time of 2nd edition.

Glad the Memorial Dungeon Crawl went well!

[umbran.livejournal.com]

To clarify - the old classic presented no mechanic at all to deal with the situation, skill or otherwise. Not so much as a suggestion that characters should make one of the dexterity checks that were common practice at the time, or the like.

[new-man.livejournal.com]

I am truly sorry I missed it. I'd much rather deal with purely intellectual monsters I have a chance to vanquish than ones that look like they're going to vanquish me...