Surviving Low Level Old School D&D

Over 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