bbarsh wrote:I do not think TSR ever truly knew what they had in Greyhawk. The adventures are not cohesive and just "placed" where convenient. It always seemed odd to me that there was never an honest attempt make a real "campaign" out of the thing.
In our case, we often had parties of 9-12 players (usually add 2-4 to that for the # of PC's in the games), with levels widely separated from 1st up to 12th or thereabouts, so treasures were somewhat larger than normal.
red_bus wrote:I've seen the balance go too far the other way though - people boasting "oh, I've played for six years and we never got past fifth level" etc etc... Which is kind of sad that some people never got the experience of playing characters up to higher levels. I have played in some very long running campaigns, where characters have managed (eventually) to rise to 14th- 17th levels, or even on occasions higher. Good play at this levels tends to be much more on a diplomatic level with less 'dungeoneering' and more negotiating between sovereigns. It is exciting to be running around at first level where even a single goblin can kill, and - run right - it can be fun at higher levels too.
Kaskoid wrote:Gee, I must have missed something. Since when did the size of the party of adventurers have anything at all to do with the loot found?Loot was an element of the setting or scene. If half a dozen PCs are slumming around some dinky little pissant/local bandit's hideout, and all he had managed to amass was a couple of rusty daggers, a rent hauberk and dented shield, and a handful of low quality stones worth a paltry 67 SP, that would be an object lesson to them that they should seek fame and fortune elsewhere.It should be inherent logic that large hoards or payoffs present dire chances of disease, injury, death or dismemberment. It should not be the equivalent of six punks getting into the vault of Tiffany's through dumb luck and stumbling onto a stash of riches that would fix them up for life... As a DM, where's the fun in that?As to the phenomenal luck with the Deck of Many Things, that was an aberration that the DM should have handled differently. No matter how your group visualized promotions, that was way too fast and sudden. For the longest time, it seemed that some players saw going up in levels as some sort of process that saw Peewee Herman morph into Arnold Schwarzenegger, thereby having more blood to shed and gobbets of flesh to be carved off before succumbing to the cumulative effects of all those wounds. In reality, HP were supposed to represent the amount of time/fighting a PC could engage in/endure before falling victim to that fatal blow, acquired through experience.
Deadlord39 wrote:Been a while since I played 1E, but wouldn't any extra XP be lost? I would think 3rd level would be the best you would get.
The question of the Deck of Many Things above shouldn't have been how the DM should have handled it...it should have been what in Sam Hill was a DM putting a Deck of Many things in an adventure with 1st level characters?
It's too bad it wasn't until recently (the last decade or so) that there has actually been published material on how to run a game, how to create a dungeon properly, how to roleplay monsters and bad guys, essentially how to be a good DM.
If higher level play wasn't intended by the games creators, then why does the 1st edition AD&D PHB I have show spell selection for mages and clerics going up to 29th level?
As to the phenomenal luck with the Deck of Many Things, that was an aberration that the DM should have handled differently. No matter how your group visualized promotions, that was way too fast and sudden.