Quote from: RPGPunditElliott: I have to disagree with your assertion.  Those of us who started in our early teens were playing stories with plot and focusing on roleplaying of the personality of our character even concurrently with the dungeon crawling.

See my reply to John Morrow earlier in the thread. The fact that you were a bit precocious (and if I may say so myself, so was I, at least in aspirations) doesn't disprove a trend.

QuoteThe LIE that the Forgers and other Swine have always pushed was the idea that the Dungeon Crawl was like a kind of video-game where no roleplaying went on, only "roll-playing". But it was NEVER like this.

I think this thread and others show that it was like this...for some groups. But I don't think it was like this for groups that were in contact directly or indirectly with Gygax & Arneson, or for many other groups. My hypothesis is that the groups which picked up D&D and only used it for h&s dungeon crawling were disproportionately younger, while the ones that quickly implemented more full-blown campaigns were older on average.

Quote4e is more likely to be closer to this than any other version of D&D ever was.

I think you're probably right here, in that 4e sounds like it's going to be focused more on that style of play. But I wouldn't rule out the possibility that some selective editing will allow groups to run a wider range of games. That's not to say there won't be problems when people go from group to group, or when a DM decides to take the bit in his teeth only to find that the group has been conditioned to expect rote by the book play.

Quote from: cmagounStill, am I misremembering the various articles about introducing your group to bits other than dungeoneering and hack-and-slash? As much as there can be a norm of how various groups run their games, I think there was a lot of ink given to transforming that norm from an episodic, kill & loot style to a more campaign-centric one.

Again, these memories could be in the brain cells I lost to Guiness...

I didn't read the Dragon much. I've found a couple indexes on the web, though:

http://www.aeolia.net/dragondex/
http://home.earthlink.net/~dmindex/index.html
Also the Acaeum http://www.acaeum.com/ddindexes/periodicals/dragon.html

Generally, I wouldn't deny that the dungeon was the "basic" scenario. The first dungeon that Arneson ran is remembered as a landmark, and Gygax equally playtested his draft of the rules using a dungeon--most likely Castle Greyhawk.

Quote from: Wired"There is a ruined castle that you have heard is filled with strange monsters and treasures, and you want to get them," he explained. "Your object is to slay the monsters and take their treasures and become more powerful. Go!" The players would make choices — go east, open a door — and Gygax would riff on what happened. When things got slow, he would roll a die and say, "Why are you standing in this dead-end corridor trying to look for a secret door? The Orcs have you cornered! Now you must fight them!"

(Source).

But it was understood from an early date, really before and concurrently with the publication of the game, that outdoor adventures were also an important element. Check this out. See how Robert the Bald goes on a series of wild overland and sea adventures. Also

QuotePlayers were constantly wandering off to other places in the map, and David usually had something waitng for us wherever we went. Identifying Blackmoor as the game with the dungeon does not do it justice. A great deal of adventuring happened outside of blackmoor town, let alone the dungeon.

As noted above, the game did have the rules needed for outdoor adventures, but based on my own experience, the dungeon was such an easy, compact scenario that people inevitably started with that. It was then a question not so much of whether you could see outside the dungeon, but when--and how much additional prodding or support you needed. The latter were provided in those Dragon magazines, word of mouth, Judge's Guild publications, etc.

Quote from: Herr ArnulfeI thought ability checks were an AD&D thing

Nope, they're not in AD&D 1e, at least not the core 3 books. I believe the idea first saw print in a D&D rulebook in Moldvay Basic (the second version of basic), though they may have been in Holmes.

I'm not a fan of them unless applied very carefully--as I believe you've noticed, they can overshadow class abilities making the latter meaningless.

Quote from: RPGPunditThe LIE that the Forgers and other Swine have always pushed was the idea that the Dungeon Crawl was like a kind of video-game where no roleplaying went on, only "roll-playing". But it was NEVER like this.

I've been running "dungeon crawls" for twenty years, and between the wizard who hires them, the townsfolk who supply them, the monsters they encounter, and their interactions with each other, there's plenty of role-playing.

I began roleplaying on April 1st, 1983 - I was 11.

We played AD&D, but I didn't really read or understand most of the rules, and went and bought myself Basic D&D with my saved-up pocket money. I was a bit confused about what was Basic and what Advanced.

Our first adventures were just the AD&D modules. We'd play them through, then when it was completed the GM would hand us the module to look over and see what we'd missed!

By about 14 I had all my own rulebooks and my own fantasy game world of "Eron", centered around an inland sea, but I didn't GM it until 16. I was with my girlfriend and I was sitting there rolling dice taking my character through a random dungeon - no, I don't know why I was reading a book and rolling dice with my girlfriend sitting by me - and she said, "can I play?" and she was the first player through Eron.

I couldn't afford to buy a lot of modules so I made up my own adventures. These involved a lot of wilderness travel and survival stuff.

Along the way we played bits and pieces of other games, but AD&D was the major one through those years.

Then I got to university and played in the club there, someone GMed Rolemaster, I liked that they had skill lists, and so my regular campaign converted from AD&D to Rolemaster.

After that I really branched out into lots of different games.

Did my early experiences shape my perspective of roleplaying games? I dunno - I was a crap roleplayer and decent GM then, and am a crap roleplayer and decent GM now :cool:

I started in 1979 when I was nine. Bought the Holmes D&D set (the one with B1) myself, and was somewhat baffled. My best friends bought it a few months later, and we were still puzzled. (Frankly, the Holmes book is a terrible introductory ruleset to D&D. The artwork is pure awesome, though). Finally, we played a few sessions with another friend's older brother (11 years old) and his group. We realized they were being assholes, so we started our own group. That group is still together.

The first dungeon I read was B1: In Search of the Unknown. It's basically a huge labyrinth filled with abandoned halls and weird effects and locations. A very different adventure altogether than B2: Keep in the Borderlands. With the dense maps and wondrous features to inspire us, we started creating our own dungeons right away. My buddy's dad was a draftsman, so we had plent of graph paper, rulers, compasses, etc. We were both also quite good artists, so we illustrated our own dungeons.

At the same time, we were buying up the classic pastel D&D modules - White Plume Mountain, the Giant Series, the Drow series, Hidden Shrine of Tamoachan. These gave us further inspiration for dungeon design.

We did use city and wilderness material as well. I got City State of the World Emperor for my 11th birthday. My buddy bought Invincible Overlord shortly after. But the outdoor and city material wasn't much more than a change of pace or backdrop for the meat of dungeon delving.

Eventually I got into world design in a big way - this was when I was maybe 15 or 16. But by then the halcyon days of D&D were already giving way to partying, smoking dope, and girls.

Huh, odd. My roleplaying experiences are very similar to Kyle's, other than a slight age difference and sans girlfriend. Possibly an Aussie thing

I began roleplaying around 1984 at age 9, with the D&D basic stuff. It was a birthday present from my folks. I am told it was to encourage me to read more (it worked). In all honesty, my interest in the hobby was brief and died out shortly later.

Late high school started roleplaying again (after being told I shouldn't play contact sports for at least a year after a rather bad concussion from playing schoolboy Rugby League and prolonged hospital stay due to eye surgery). Loved the hobby, dungeon-crawled with the guys at high school and wasn't aware there was anything else (it wasn't like we had computers or had a gaming store anywhere nearby). Got the school to officially name it as Sports alternative. Bought my first AD&D books via the newspaper trading-post.

Went to University and started playing Rolemaster with the local Uni gaming club.

I know what transformed my game/gaming style from dungeon-crawling to something different however, having given it some thought in the past. Firstly, it was a change in my taste of fiction. Up until late high school I was reading and watching pulpy high fiction. Then I started getting more interested into Hard SF and world building style fantasy. I started writing short stories in those same styles and that directly influenced my gaming, since I was shit at dialogue and used to use my story worlds in my games as a dodgy way to get more natural dialogue (I have embarrassing mag-tape recordings of our early game sessions .. we were drunk a lot in them :haw: ).

Secondly, I started to get more socially and politically involved at University, mainly because the people who were gamers and my friends were involved. For us, our games modified to become more heavy on political plots at the same time.

Basically, for me at least, my gaming and gaming requirements matured as I did. Did my experiences early on shape what I do now? A little; I have a dice addiction and I still roleplay, but I think my gaming has changed as I have.

Quote from: flyingmiceCould people please state how old they were when they started RPG gaming and when that was in their posts?

I was 13.  Bought my first RPG with no idea what the fuck it even was on 31 Dec 1987 -- WEG's 1st-edition Star Wars game, because it said "Star Wars" on it.  Oh, and I started gaming as a GM, not a player.  

Set the tone for the rest of my gaming life, as it turns out...

Quote from: Elliot WilenI think what largely influences your impression of a game, and of older editions of D&D in particular, in fact, of "traditional" roleplaying in general, is the age at which you were introduced to it.

My personal experience leads me to disagree with this assertion.

I started playing around 10-11 years old and for several years typically played with hack-n-slash dungeon crawls, using D&D and later Rolemaster.

Later on, around age 18, I played in my first Rolemaster campaign where there was more to the story than just killing monsters and taking their stuff. A few years later I played in a D&D campaign of a similar nature.

My impressions of games now aren't necessarily related to these past experiences as much. I have stronger impressions of game masters than I do of games.

Lately though, my impressions of some games has been tainted by the people posting on forums. The rash of D&D character optimization talk, where people go into great detail discussing various "builds" for characters and providing a mathematical analysis of how much damage they can deal per turn has really stuck in my head as being indicative of D&D in general. I realize that I can play any way I wish, and that these people have no influence over my game, but for some reason this irrational notion sticks with me.

I was finishing up a blog posting when I ran across this thread... interesting coincidence. My thoughts here.

Quote from: Elliot WilenNope, they're not in AD&D 1e, at least not the core 3 books. I believe the idea first saw print in a D&D rulebook in Moldvay Basic (the second version of basic), though they may have been in Holmes.

I'm not a fan of them unless applied very carefully--as I believe you've noticed, they can overshadow class abilities making the latter meaningless.

You're right, I checked and Saves vs Attributes are mentioned in the back of the Moldvay Expert book (in the Handling Player Characters section). I seem to recall some DMs adapting regular saving throws to other applications (e.g. Save vs. Spells could be used to resist extreme weather conditions, Save vs. Dragon Breath could be used to dodge falling boulders, etc.). However, I found it rather messy trying to draw meaningful connections (e.g. what the heck does a save vs. Wand represent?) so I fell back on attribute saves more often than not.

Quote from: JimLotFP I was finishing up a blog posting when I ran across this thread... interesting coincidence. My thoughts here.

Excellent blog post!

JimLotFP - I just read your blog post. I've done a bit of work on the upcoming version of OSRIC. I don't necessarily agree with everything you've said, but it's a very valid point of view. You might want to drop by the Knights & Knaves Alehouse - this is exactly the kind of discussion we love.

Quote from: JimLotFPI was finishing up a blog posting when I ran across this thread... interesting coincidence. My thoughts here.

I think it helped that I switched to Traveller before ever really playing D&D or AD&D.  Look at the Traveller Supplements (that include things like Library Data books about the setting and 76 Patrons) or the adventures and the were very much more open than the D&D module.

Quote from: JimLotFPMy thoughts here.

Jim I just have to say that your blog post was a damn interesting read.

I started with RQ but I remember having trouble with the system. I can't really remember with what exactly I was having trouble with, but it most probably had something to do with how "culture" was so entwined with the rules. It was kind of limiting esp when I had so many other ideas that I wanted to incoporate which did not necesarrily have to be mechanic based. I was also having trouble structuring the campaign and character progression.

Discussing this with the other GM who was a couple of years older, he suggested the D&D boxed sets (BECMI). I remember reading them or at least the first two and thinking how great they were (still are IMO) I really dug the way how these sets were structured. Beginning at low level and progressing further up the food chain.

And I was free to handle all the "cultural" elements any way I thought best served my setting. I didn't use any of the modules for it really was not the groups thing. The campaign did start of in a dungeon - the PCs were prisoners - but moved on into city and wilderness adventures almost immediately. Of course combined with the others sets the campaign took off into many different exciting ways.

I always found it a bit funny that most gamers begin with D&D and "graduate" to something like RQ. It was the other way for me. I've always run pretty thespy games and D&D esp the boxed sets were never a barrier to the kind of adventures I wanted to run.

Regards,
David R

D&D is my late adolescence: 16-18. Make of that what you will. I started house-ruling it, but realised that RQ was already there from first principles.