The Hoard Potato had to roll his dice uphill. BOTH WAYS.

[athelind]

Old leezard is old.

I talk about RPGs with a lot of people, most notably, normanrafferty.

The Rat has been gaming almost as long as I have, but that "almost" is significant -- never more so than when he'll contradict me about "how things were in the early days".¹ I notice similar disconnects when reading LiveJournals, blogs... even the Designer Notes inside published RPGs.

What Rafferty and most other gamers don't realize is those few short years between 1978, when Your Obedient Serpent started gaming, and 1983-84, when The Rat started gaming, are a lot like the first three minutes after the Big Bang.²

Science Fiction Fans refer to "First Fandom" as those who were actively involved in fannish activity before 1 January 1938. The role-playing equivalent, IMNSHO, would be those already playing D&D when Dallas Egbert went missing on 16 August 1979 (yep, exactly 30 years ago this Sunday).³



Five years doesn't sound like a lot of difference from this far-distant perspective (and certainly not to non-gamers, I know⁴), but... when I started playing, Dungeons & Dragons had only been around for four years or so. There wasn't a lot of published material. Most of us had come in from the Avalon Hill/SPI "hex and counters" style of historical simulation, or from the lead-soldier-based miniatures games not much different than those "Little Wars" about which Mr. Wells wrote.

We were making up nine-tenths of everything as we went along... and we had no idea what we were doing, because, you see, nobody had ever done this before. There was nobody to tell us we were "doing it wrong". Nobody had defined "wrong" yet!

Bizarre, off the wall races? Heck yeah! Players running multiple PCs in a single adventure? Why not? Characters hopping from campaign to campaign? Of course! Breaking up a serious, intense adventure with an encounter based on a bad pun, a Burma Shave sign, or a Monty Python routine? Well, sure; this is supposed to be fun, right?

And on the flip side: Ridiculously lethal traps? Unsolvable puzzles? Judging the quality of a DM by the "Body Count" of his convention adventures? Way too much of that.

Of course the DM drew up his own dungeon and created his own world. That's how Dave and Gary did it, right? Oh, there were fringe products like Empire of the Petal Throne and the licensed D&D material from Judges Guild⁵, but for the most part, the professionally-published adventure and the prepackaged world setting were barely an idea yet.

Five years later, on the other claw, the hobby as a whole had exploded: when I started, there wasn't a lot beyond D&D (fantasy) and Traveller (space opera); by 1983, there were games covering superheroes, post-apocalypse fiction (hard and soft), westerns, espionage, and any number of other milieus.

Those five years also saw the advent of the first official dungeon adventure "module", the first official campaign setting, Advanced Dungeons & Dragons -- and a small army of new players. There was, at first, something unsavory about "modules"; they were a "crutch" for the "lazy". By 1983, though, they were an accepted part of RPG culture.

And that culture had changed.

The wild, improvisational nature of the game had faded. D&D was becoming less and less a toolbox for world creation and for trying to recreate your favorite works, and more and more a Thing In Itself. Things were settling and solidifying. Role-Playing had been around long enough to develop its own tropes and cliches. People who wanted to play exotic races or more than one PC at a time were on the outs, derided as "munchkins" or "power gamers".

And so many of those accepted, established assumptions about How Things Must Work had grown out of our arbitrary, off-the-cuff improvisations. If we knew we were establishing Common-Law Precedent, we might have done things differently.

The published material pushed more and more of Tolikien's style of High Fantasy onto a system originally shaped by the assumptions of Vance and Lieber's brand of Sword & Sorcery, and Dungeon Fantasy was gestating into a genre in its own right. The emerging consensus had little room bizarre amalgam of Moorcock, Lovecraft and Jack Kirby that I'd played in my high school years -- or for someone who signed his name "Your Obedient Serpent" and had a penchant for playing the Exotic Outsider.

By the time normanrafferty was introduced to D&D, I'd already moved onto less established, more flexible systems and genres.

So what's my point?

It's not to try to claim that my gaming experiences are somehow more valid than yours.

It's just to make it clear that when I bring up "The Old Days of Gaming", they're probably not the same "Old Days" that you think about.

Old leezard is old.

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¹ Raff, I'm not picking on you. I just talk about this kind of thing with you far more often than anyone else out there.

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² Since the FurryMUCK character I reserve for general conversation is based on one of my oldest D&D characters, this lets me wave my cane around and wheeze, "back in my day..." as the old, retired adventurer waxes nostalgic. It's very Scrooge McDuck, really. The fact that said character is an intelligent dinosaur only enhances the effect.

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³That incident made "D&D" a household word -- like "dry rot" or "cockroach". Now you know one reason why I just chuckle and shake my head when Furries gripe about their media image; this, too, shall pass.

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⁴ If you're not a gamer, why did you follow the cut? You have only yourself to blame if you're bored.

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⁵ In fact, when I think "Old Skool", I think JG.

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Comments

[paka.livejournal.com]

Actually, now that I've been collecting older vintage Dragon magazines, I'm able to see better some of what gaming must've been like before I got into AD&D. So yeah... I think that was an eventful five years from what I've seen. And around 1984ish really is about when the magazine's direction seems to change, and become simultaneously more polished and less energetic.

[athelind.livejournal.com]

I have some issues of The Dragon from their second year of publication, back when I first started gaming (and they still had the definite article as part of the title and logo). They're currently buried in boxes, but if you want to take a look, I'll let you know when I dig them up.

[thoughtsdriftby.livejournal.com]

Don't seem so old to me, though I didn't pick up the D&D habit until... Let's see, October 29, 1981. The roomies at college were already rather heavy into it.

[cpxbrex.livejournal.com]

I think you've got a couple years on me, but I started in '77 and I remember that cargo cult stuff. The first game book I ever had was the Monster Manual and me and my friends tried to figure out what all this crap meant via reverse engineering, combined with some Judges Guild thing about an asteroid . . . where one guy was an elf with wings and another was a little robot with four arms that got reincarnated into a demon . . . it was all over the place, hehe.

[the-gneech.livejournal.com]

My "old days of gaming" starts in 1983 because that's when I actually managed to get a group together, although there were some "proto-days of gaming" in the years leading up to that where I punched out all the chits that made the "d20" and looked wistfully at the maps in the blue book. That cross-section of the mountain with the skull on it still looks like an awesome dungeon...

-The Gneech

[athelind.livejournal.com]

Oooooh, the dice shortage of '79.

I actually squeaked in BEFORE that -- my copy of Blue-Book Basic had a full set of polyhedrals, though the 12-sided die was a malformed blob of blue plastic and nobody had invented a d10 yet -- the twenty-sider served double duty (triple, if you count percentile dice).

Y'know, it took a long time to lay hands on a proper d12 -- I may not have had one until I got my Gamma World boxed set -- but once I got one, I realized how seldom I USED it. I don't think I ever really had cause to roll one regularly until I started playing Ironclaw.

[cpxbrex.livejournal.com]

I haven't played Ironclaw but I really liked rolling D12s in Jadeclaw, hehe. I think the d12 is an under used die. ;)

[halfelf.livejournal.com]

As I am roughly 10 years younger than you, I got into gaming about 10 years *after* you, which is after this age of gaming. However, that said...

There was another glacial change to gaming during D&D 2nd edition. There were still plenty of people who were doing weird races, DM body counts, and all the rest in 1986, before D&D 2e was published in 1989. First edition AD&D still has a lot of the old feel of the game you remember, and there was still room for improvisation and all the like. That said, I do agree that the perception probably changed, just like it changed with 2e.

You know, that makes me realise... with each edition, D&D becomes more polished, more corporate, and less player oriented. Maybe that's what we're lamenting, more than anything - that loss of the feeling that it's not *ours*, but it's something we just buy. A prepackaged experience, instead of something that's uniquely *us*.

I still have some of the Judges Guild stuff. The oldest parts of my library are generally the most cherished.

[athelind.livejournal.com]

You know, that makes me realise... with each edition, D&D becomes more polished, more corporate, and less player oriented. Maybe that's what we're lamenting, more than anything - that loss of the feeling that it's not *ours*, but it's something we just buy. A prepackaged experience, instead of something that's uniquely *us*.

You hit the nail on the head. That's EXACTLY the point I wanted to make; thank you!

[scarfman]

I only was a gamer before 1983. Including before August 1979: Playing multiple characters? Check. Playing the same characters for multiple DMs? Check; we all played the same characters in each other's dungeons. Bizarre, off the wall races? I had an elf named Christopher who had a familiar who was a bear who I'm sure I played as if he were sapient...

[tombfyre.livejournal.com]

Ahh, the good old days. Of which I missed. I wasn't introduced to D&D until the late 80's. And yeah, by then nobody wanted to play the exotic races or anything. I always got looked at funny for wanting to play a Dragon, or Lizardman, or something NEAT. Meanwhile everyone else was generic human #7.

The D&D group I used to play with here went through many half-assed games that always fell apart. I went from playing a Gnoll thief to a Minotaur who used doors and other people as improvised melee weapons. Then it was on to a half-dragon, a lizardman, a knight of Bahamut, and another lizardman. Each and every time, the most "exotic" other player might be playing a dwarf instead of a human. :p And they'd always complain at me each and every time for playing some horrible monster race.

I hope to one day get a proper group together again. Ones with imaginations and whom actually like to play, not just sit around for 5 hours talking about work and what they did on WoW today.

[athelind.livejournal.com]

The Standard Fantasy Races, as I defined them Back In My Day:

• Human.
  
• Willowy Human.
  
• Short, Wide Human.
  
• Short, Cute Human.
  
• Ugly Human.

[tombfyre.livejournal.com]

Yep, that's pretty much how I defined them too. I had a laugh one day when my all-human party heard me using that definition, and they told me I needed more imagination. >.

[athelind.livejournal.com]

That description was based on how I saw people PLAYING them.

I liked playing exotics because it not only got me into a different headspace, it encouraged other people AROUND me to react appropriately.

[tombfyre.livejournal.com]

Yeppers, same here. People just played them all as different flavors of human. And yeah, playing something exotic definitely gets you into a different mental state.

[paka.livejournal.com]

This may be off, but I figure the humanish races have their origin in Chainmail as a wargame. So you have the side of generic "Good" - with a generic "Lawful" - and that's humans with other varieties of humans - and you have the side of generic "Evil" with a generic "Chaotic" thrown in. Sort of Three Hearts and Three Lions meets Tolkien, especially the Battle of Five Armies, with races and alignment. Dragons, like player character types, are special characters in the army, not the rank and file.

Dumping that into roleplaying runs the whole thing right up against one of the most important laws that apply to the mess; once a player figures out that they can do something, they're going to try it. I've seen this play out in races before; with enough Werewolf players and no restrictions, someone's invariably going to want to play a non-Garou shape-shifter. It's weird in White Wolf; it's ridiculous in a fantasy setting when there's an even bigger potential zoo coming to town, in the form of your characters, and traditionally I feel D&D/AD&D's designers have tried to smash that one back into place in very crude ways hostile to roleplaying...

1. Say outright no you can't.
2. Say that suspicion, prejudice and pogroms are the natural response of quasi-medieval people used to a wide range of human ethnicities and religions, magic, gods of all sorts, and who have no problems with elves/dwarves/halflings/whatever.
3. Penalize monstrous characters beyond the point where anyone but the most eager fans would ever want to be a [whatever].

[thoughtsdriftby.livejournal.com]

"And yeah, by then nobody wanted to play the exotic races or anything. I always got looked at funny for wanting to play a Dragon, or Lizardman, or something NEAT."
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Odd combinations, back stories, and goals other than kill the monster, get the treasure, and earn points is what adds depth and a fair bit of humor to the game. The GM does have to be fast on the take and willing to toss out the initial premise of the game on a moments notice. The later rules only seemed to force you into playing the published games in a fairly uniform fashion, so many switched to unpublished variants or in tighter groups just seemed to make it up as we went along.

Horrible race? The characters should protest, parade through town with banners, put up posters, shout down the bigoted humans!!!

For the Lizardman... You need the a ration bag of daily meat for regular use, keep-m-fresh body bags, a large bag of holding, and an agreement with the party that for bandits and such you keep the humans you kill. Oh, and trade for recipes and spices with humans that BBQ pork, works for either.

[tombfyre.livejournal.com]

Yep, I was always the one with the odd motives and back stories. Everyone else was "DUR I AM KILL MONSTARR" and such. Usually they'd just try to find a reason to kill me off and try to force me to roll up a "normal" character.

And yay for lots of meat!

[thoughtsdriftby.livejournal.com]

Odd is not having a reason to be there and not working towards a future. My first took an added deal of personal bodyguard for the mage. Took many games to get collars to control a displacer beast, kill one, and have it brought back. Newer players just assume the collars were a control put on us by the mage.
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Most of my charters have good sized places and a steady income from something on one world or another.
----
One actually bought the dangerous forest, the town, and the monster filled mansion from one campaign. Kept most and added to the monsters, restored the mansion, and kept adding to the extensive library, furniture, and art collections. It has jet-black roses from the Queen of Darkness in the garden among the rare plants. Take a lot to keep stray adventurer types off my lawn.

[tombfyre.livejournal.com]

I hear yah there. My first Gholl beasty was a mercenary of sorts working for a lower level wizard in some tower. And the wizard died, so he joined up with the party as it wandered by to loot the place. His end goal was to either stay employed with the party, or eventually get enough cash to go carve out his own piece of the world and hang onto it.

The Minotaur was somewhat dim, but generally just wanted to fight his way out of the dungeon he was thrown in, get his shit back together as it were, and to back to being a sailor. Perhaps with his own ship and crew!

And it all went on like that. ^^ I'd also do crazy things like send monster types out from the eastern kingdoms on pilgrimages to learn more about the world and whatnot, yadda yadda.

[astor-apatosaur.livejournal.com]

Too bad you're like one zillion miles away. In-person RPG is something I only got to try recently (within the last few years) and I'm wishing I'd been doing it since, well, over a decade ago. Oh well. :)

[tombfyre.livejournal.com]

Perhaps we'll all relocate a wee bit closer to one another in the future. ^..^

[silussa.livejournal.com]

If you want to talk OLD....

I remember working off books which actually DID say "Tactical Studies Rules" on the front and were clearly intended for use with figures...but also had some RP aspects.

They can claim TSR didn't stand for anything all they want...I KNOW better. :)

[astor-apatosaur.livejournal.com]

Oh man, Old Man Athelind is waving his cane at us again! Don't lose your DS Lite over his fence or he won't give it back!

I only got to do RPG tabletop starting a few years ago. A brief stint with Jadeclaw, a tiny foray into Big Eyes, Small Mouth, and since then most everything has been run using the Savage Worlds engine because it's complicated enough to work and not so much that I need a friggin' graph and conversion table for everything. Campaigns have started and sputtered, getting replaced with something else when it feels stale. Kinda makes me wish I'd been doing it for LONGER, but hey, better late than never!

Also: tang tang ta-a-a-a-a-aaaaang!