Surviving Low Level Old School D&D
Categories: Dungeons & DragonsOver the years I’ve read several references and stories about people’s first experiences with early editions of D&D – OD&D, AD&D1, B/XD&D. The thing that surprises me with these tales is that the PCs don’t die.
My first experiences with BD&D and AD&D had PCs dying all over the place. My very first experience with the game, delving into the module In Search of the Unknown, had a character die in the very first area and encounter of the dungeon. My first DMing experiences had several PC deaths in the module Keep on the Borderland. The ogre alone easily killed half a dozen 1st-level, beginning PCs. Two PCs died in the pit trap at the beginning of the kobold cave.
It was not uncommon at all (could even be said to be very common) to have PCs with 1-4 hit points (even fighters could roll that with their 1d8 hit points) die from the first goblin or kobold hitting for 1d6 damage. In the first couple years of my playing this game, I don’t think any group completed any dungeon without no deaths at all. Hell, it might have taken 20 PCs to enter (in several 3-6-man forays) for 4 to complete a dungeon.
A couple years after we started playing D&D, my group agreed to always start new PCs at around 3rd level (5,001 xp), because lower-levels were a crap shoot to survive.
Just recently I read a tale of the adventures of a group playing their very first D&D characters in an old-school adventure with the old-school rules, and the PCs ended up gaining a couple levels without a single death in the party. These Players were new to the game, with 1st-level PCs, in an environment where they had no base town of any kind. Yet they made their way through encounters that were often of equal number and levels.
This kind of thing blows my mind. In my experience, old-school, 1st-level D&D was brutally random. A group of six 1st-level PCs against a group of six goblins could easily end with a couple of PC deaths, possibly even a TPK. In fact, my experiences with the game at that stage makes me think these stories I read where the novice, low-level party succeeds with their first try makes me think either the DM is going *very* easy on them, or the stories are not “accurate.”
Bullgrit
Hmmm, you should read Lamentations of the Flame Princess. There’s a blog that can teach you how to play Old School D&D. The idea is that, with combat being such a “crapshoot”, most players never resorted to it. They found ways to escape or bargain with things that could easily kill them (like that ogre) and made use of ingenious traps and tools when fighting regular monsters like those kobolds. Keep on the Borderlands is widely regarded as a module that is about turning humanoid tribes against each other. Everyone knows that the tribes are impossible to kill by yourself.In the Hobbit, how does Gandalf defeat the Trolls? As a wizard, he could have probably blasted them to smithereens. But he chooses not to use his spells. Instead, he tricks the Trolls into arguing till sunrise, when the sun turns them all to stone. *That’s* how you kill things in Old School D&D.
“There’s a blog that can teach you how to play Old School D&D.”– Well, I’m not looking to “learn” how to play old-school D&D, since, well, I learned it through about 15 years of play.”The idea is that, with combat being such a ‘crapshoot’, most players never resorted to it.”– Most players never resorted to it? Where did you find such players? In my experience, the whole experience of D&D was to fight monsters (and take its stuff). That’s what we, and everyone I’ve ever talked with, did: fight monsters (and take its stuff).”Keep on the Borderlands is widely regarded as a module that is about turning humanoid tribes against each other. Everyone knows that the tribes are impossible to kill by yourself.”– Wow, your D&D world and the people in it are very different than any I have known. There is arguably some potential to turn some of the humanoid tribes against each other, but the text states that many of the tribes are allies with each other and will aid one another against invaders (the PCs). This “everyone” you mention is strangely no one that I’ve ever met.”In the Hobbit, how does Gandalf defeat the Trolls”– The Hobbit was a story, with an author who could make the characters and monsters do and succeed at anything he wanted. A D&D adventure has no such guarantee. No monster (especially trolls) in D&D turns to stone in the sun, so *that* is not an option for killing things in old-school D&D.In D&D, especially in old school D&D, defeating monsters came 99% of the time through straight up combat force, not through trickery. And old school D&D combat was often so brutal and random that even the PCs of old school veterans could and did/do die in battle.Reviving a dead PC was much easier in old school D&D probably mostly because old school D&D combat was so brutal and random.