bbarsh wrote:I guess my best gaming memories are of just sitting down and playing simple AD&D. How cool was it to first meet the drow in Fire Giant. "Holy Crap! What the hell is that thing?" was the reaction. We didn't need uncountable volumes of books describing every aspect of the drow.

One of the great things about the Good Old Days was the sense of wonder and excitement during the game.  When I first ran the giants series and threw the Drow at the players, you could see their panic AND their excitement: "Who the Eff are these dark skinned elves who have magic resistance???"  After much pleading I finally let the players read the description ofthe Drow in the back of G3 after they had finished it and were heading to D1....I regretted it, should have made them sweat it out not knowing!!!
  But a lot of that is missing right now in the game.  The deluge of media, computers and computer games, internet, etc, has left very little hidden or secret in the game.  A few years ago, one of my original players asked me to run a game for him and his two kids, then 14 and 10 years old.  They had never even heard of D&D before they found his old books.  I ran them through B1, and they were hooked.  But the best part was seeing their reactions to such common creatures as orcs, kobolds and ogres. "You see several small, lizard like creatures in front of you with weapons" "Whoa!!! Dad, what should be do?  What are they?  How tough are they? Maybe we should retreat?"  It was like playing the first time all over again.  For anyone getting jaded by the game, there is nothing better than running kids through a dungeon, all the excitement and wonder and curiousity is still there. They don't know a kobold from an ogre from a drow, and it's all the same to them.

Mike B.

Blackmoor wrote:Funny thing I recall.  Our group bought all the books from the DMG to the wilderness and dungeoneers survival books.  We used them all and were very frustrated at the mish mash of rules spread out amongst These manuals.

Our old group was basically breaking up (university, jobs, women etc) just when 2nd edition was coming out. We formed a newer group of school chums and started over again using 1st ed.

My twin brother raced down to the store to buy the 2nd ed players manual the day it was released; he figured that 2nd ed was just a collaboration of all the 1st ed rules finally into just a few books.  He read it and came to the conclusion nothing really changed (there was this weird THACO thing )  After this we just bought the odd 2nd ed module to play and never really updated for years.

Weird to remember that event, so excited to get the new rules and then we never used them.

I'm probably such an anomaly on this board; we purchased the 2nd edition rules the day they came out, and loved them.  For the love of God the book had an INDEX IN THE BACK!!!!  We immediately switched to 2nd edition and never went back.  When the Forgotten Realms boxed set had come out earlier we had immediately switched to that from Greyhawk.  In both cases, there were definite reasons because of turning over a new leaf since our old group had broken up and we had recruited totally new players, so it made sense to have a symbolic break with the past.

Mike B.

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quote="MShipley88"]Actually, Tim, I wasn't answering you, so please don't take offense.  

I was just pointing out the irony of some of the charges against the 3.5 system.

Instead of a rant, how about......

It is really interesting to note the many different styles of play listed here on this strand.

Some guys played without books and some guys played with a library in every player's geek bag.

I also know of one Portland area campaign...originally based at the University of Portland...where the DM would not allow the players to roll any dice or even take their character sheets home!  (The DM would call up his players mid-week and say, "Guess what!  You made a level!  And...I rolled an 8 for your hit points!")  I re-visited their campaign in the Fall of 2001...it is still going strong, with the same players, plus their teenage kids!  They are still using the 1st Edition AD&D rules.  The DM will not even allow Unearthed Arcana.

Wow, that is persistance.  Even I would have quite that campaign in about, oh, one session.  In those cases I don't even think the players are really playing...they are just acting out in the directors/Dms little set piece he's written in his mind.  I can't think of a single thing more boring and sitting around watching a guy behind a screen rolling dice and telling me what is happening to my character.

I was not rich, but many of my friends were....in fact, they bought and gave books to me so I could DM.  They had everything.  I can imagine that there are groups that never even owned all three core AD&D rule books!  If they had waited for me to buy anything we would have still been extrapolating from the Holmes Basic Set rules when we graduated from high school, three years later!

It worked out so well for us because I was the guy who had to have everything published....and I was the DM. No need for anyone else to buy anything except for their own set of books...I even had extras for the players to borrow if they didn't bring/have their own.

One of my own house rules was that no one was allowed to look at a Monster Manual at the game table.  I saw games where the players were allowed to look up the monster they were fighting.  

Ditto.  Probably the only thing that caused tension at the table was when players reached for the Monster Manual when facing an unfamiliar monster, insisting that even though THEY didn't know the mosters stats, their 18 int/18 wisdom character WOULD and they should be allowed to see if the monster in question was immune to fire or not....

Probably the most epic series of adventures we did was all three D series modules back to back.  We had a circle of 20+ gamers in our group, but not all of them could be present at any one time.  During that series, we placed absent PC's on "the ethereal bench," where they watched from the ether sidelines as the others battled on.  At any given game session there would be about 12 PC's in the action and another 12 or so on the bench.

I had the same group of four guys go through G1-3, D1-3 and Q1 over a period of a few years.  Three were hard core and one would attend every few sessions (he mostly played the henchmen and hirelings).  Towards the end we were only playing the party maybe 2-3 times a year as one guy was in the Navy and only home on leave a few times a year.  It was probably the best gaming experience/party I ever ran or was involved with, and when we finally finished, knowing just what the characters had been through and how long it had taken us (from 1979 to 1985), it was probably the most accomplishment I had ever felt except for graduating from college!!!

I organized all of the Kuo Toans in the shrine into "divisions" and flung them at the players.  Naturally, the PC's never even considered the possibility of simply making an offering to Blibdoolpoolp and just crossing the shrine in safety!  I believe there were about a dozen PC deaths in the shrine mayhem!

 Funny you mention it, D2 has about the widest variance of possible outcomes of any of the GDQ series.  You can take on the entire shrine, trick/sneak your way through, or bypass it entirely.  My party split into two groups, one engaged some ofthe Kuo Toans in battle while the other sneak group found the enormous treasure room, were teleported to Blibdillpoolp, and quested to destroy 100 levels of Drow or be cursed.  They never did really "finish" the module per se, as after several sorties they decided to leave the shrine behind and forge ahead...

My group relied a lot on the true sight spell to find things.  Consequently, when the one guy in the campaign who was not using true sight looked briefly down a tertiary passage...shrugged...and turned back around....the party missed the major treasure horde in that module.  It is still lying there, these 25 years later.

Reminds me of the plot twist I let sit for 25+ years....the guys have still never caught an assassin that stalked their party for awhile after they finished T1-4, and who actually killed a couple of characters (including my best friend's fighter, Ayelbourne, who he'd run from 1st level).  Several years ago I asked my friend if he still ever wondered about the assassin that killed Aylebourne, and he said "Aylebourne?  Who was he?" Sigh.

One of the PC's later became a god...it was either force him into the ranks of the deified or have him continue to plunder entire nation states across the Greyhawk world map.  Tolindor, Elven God of Magic and Power-Mad Megalomania.

Tolindor had to be retired after he led a party of PC's to raid the Abyss.  Demogorgon died in my campain in 1981...and he is still dead.

Lloth is dead in every campaign I've ever run since 1985....I owed the guys who finally finished Q1 and destroyed her that much at least, seeing as that was the first campaign I ever ran and it ended with a deadly battle aboard the spider ship.  Bringing her back in any way would have cheapened the entire six years we played that campaign....

A rival gaming group formed at our high school...slightly too young or  much too nerdy to join our campaigns.  They gamed in the "computer room," which (in 1979) was a converted janitor's closet!  We were too ashamed to be seen with them!  Irony.  

We had a rival group that played at the other local high school. We hated them and they hated us, we used to have verbal wars (not face to face of course but to mutual aquaintances) because our playing styles were so different.  They tended to be of the Knights of the Dinner Table variety of constantly trying to break the game , plus they played an EVIL party (gasp!!!).  We felt morally superior to their shenanigans.  Looking back on it I'm sure they felt the same way about us...

Guys from our group went on to adult careers as (off the top of my head):

Our groups claim to fame was the guy who was Salutatorian at our school (we had almost 1000 graduating seniors so it was a nice accomplishment0.  He went on to become a Captain in the Navy and a successful doctor, I still talk to him regularly and his son played with us for awhile and was also Salutatorian at his high school (and is now at A&M going to med school).  Others became insurance agents, musicians, teachers, doctors, lawyers, career Air Force, and of course me who is probably the least successful of any of our regular game members!!!

Mike B .

gyg wrote:
Though of course it should be said that the respect of your peers is priceless - and Mark and Badmike (in the respective quotes above) are certainly held in high esteem here.

Indeed, you guys are the storytellers, one of the most revered occupations in human history.

I have one player in my current group who routinely uses a cheater dice.

She has a d6 that is all 5's.

The thing is, she doesn't know that everyone else at the game knows she is using the cheater dice.

The lady in question usually runs some version of a sorcerer and uses the d6 to roll spell damage...sometimes rolling it twice when she doesn't have "enough dice" to make up an entire 10d6 explosion.

It has become an inside joke to the rest of us...and we chuckle to each other when she does it.

We all figure...this is a game and it is supposed to be fun.  If it isn't wrecking anyone else's fun and she's having fun, then why make an issue of it?

A couple of new players recently reported the infraction to the rest of us while the lady was away from the table.  They were surprised when we all just laughed.

I have always told my players that if they want to bend the rules...cheat on dice rolls, "forget" character creation rules, etc...then they are only cheating themselves.  I only (very mildly) correct players when what they are doing is getting in the way of other people enjoying themselves.

When interpreting and making house rules, my players have come to agree with my three basic precepts:

1)  Is it fun?  (If it is not, then why do it?)
2)  Does it make real-world sense?
3)  Does it work?  (Is it easy, convenient and fair?)

If it meets these three criteria, then I go with it.

I also have what I call the LAWS OF ROLE-PLAYING, especially, THE FIRST LAW OF ROLE-PLAYING, which is:

1)  The real world always takes precendence over the game world.
2)  The goal of the game is to have fun.
3)  Always give a monster an even break...but remember that they do not go out for pizza with us after the game and they never bring chips.
4)  Never take away the PC's abilities just because they are annoying.
5)  Never make major game rulings on the night that a question comes up...since no one is objective during the moment.

   Thanks for the nice words of encouragement, guys.  

Mark

I don't think it is a matter of trusting players. On the occasions I've done it, the players loved it for the most part. I DMed sessions where I only kept the HP's from the players. The major requirement is to convey to each player how his character feels regularly. If he/she is down 1/2 their HP's, you need to make sure the player is informed that his character feels "pretty worn". What this does is make players rethink critical decisions. If you feel "exhausted and hurt", you can't look at your hit point sheet and say "Well, I have 10 HP left, and the orc can only do 8 max, so I'll fight a bit longer" or "I have 15 HP, I think I can survive a Magic Missile attack. I'll charge out of cover and attack the MU".

MShipley88 wrote:I kinda wonder how Monte Cook could create an uber-campaign as his Malhavoc  magnum opus...and then name it "Ptolus."

Yes, he Ptolus it would be his final gaming product.

JohnGaunt wrote:Yes, he Ptolus it would be his final gaming product.

bbddrm tssh!

He'll be here all week folks! Try the pork! Don't forget to tip your waitress!

Howdy All,


Speaking of the good 'ol days, I just had one last Monday

We are playing AD&D (1e) with 8 players and are currently in the Depths (D1 monocolor) in the Warrens and Caverns of the Troglodytes. The party just ran into the lich and things got ugly fast.

I have written up the whole battle here (3rd post down):

http://www.dragonsfoot.org/forums/viewt ... 1&start=30


Futures Bright,

Paul