I've been thinking about how we played the game under REALLY Old School Rules:
The DM kept track of your hit points
It mattered if dungeon doors were push or pull.
You could spend 5 minutes of game time trying to open a dungeon door
(badly).
Adventuring groups with 12 or more people.
Classroom dungeons.
Caller. Mapper. Party Leader. Three different people at the table.
There was no saving throw for Level Drain.
You paid attention to encumbrance.
You paid attention to weapon length.
You paid attention to weapon speed.
You tried to work with segments. Briefly.
If you had a 2-handed broadsword in a corridor, you were
fighting alone.
Fumbles hit an available ally.
You never fired a missile weapon into melee.
You had group initiative.
You told the DM what you were doing, THEN rolled initiative.
You went through multiple characters in a single night.
3d6, no rerolls.
You traded strength for intelligence.
You got an XP bonus for a high primary stat.
Cleric, Fighting Man, and Magic-User.
Thief was a new thing.
No new classes – only subclasses.
Every new subclass is now a kit.
New subclasses just happened to be the characters on the
cartoon show.
Someone really was willing to play a Cavalier.
Someone wanted to play a new class from DRAGON.
Someone wanted to play a new class from The Strategic Review
(TSR).
Witch was a character class.
Alchemist was a character class.
Anti-paladins.
Reincarnation was pretty much a career-ender.
Players kept a bank account with the local temple to cover
resurrections.
The dungeon was within walking distance. Sometimes it was in
town.
Dungeons sorted their monsters by level beneath the surface.
Overland encounters were not.
It was safer to adventure in a dungeon than overland.
Level meant the character level. Also the spell level. Also the level of the dungeon floor.
You ran a Magic-User with one hit point.
You ran a Fighter with one hit point.
Someone started identifying a characters with a number. Same name, different number.
You could leave your equipment to your next character in your will.
The Paladin was obligated to kill a Thief.
Someone played an Assassin. Once.
Your Ranger got followers. And got them all killed.
Lightning bolts bounced.
Fireballs filled the available space.
Rot grubs as anti-thief door protection.
Pits killed player characters.
You ran, the monster got a free attack on you.
Only Thieves could open locks. Or climb walls.
Thieves could climb walls like Spider-Man.
Demons had types.
Negative armor class.
There was a beautiful witch, but no stats.
Someone at the table had read John Carter of Mars and
understood references to Thoats and Green Martians.
There were no stats for Thoats or Green Martians.
You could definitely NOT swim in full plate.
You could DEFINITELY swim in full plate.
You got ONE AD&D hardback rulebook a year. And you LIKED it!
You'd go to GenCon just to get the latest AD&D hardback rulebook.
You had to wait for the DMG to come out to know the official XP for a monster.
You used original books from the little brown box with your new AD&D Monster
Manual.
Taking one hit point of damage was a “shaving wound.”
Zero hit points was DEAD. Dead, Dead, DEAD.
You only got XP from killing monsters.
You only got XP from killing monsters and getting gold.
You divided gold by level for XP.
Gold from selling magic items didn’t count to XP.
You discovered what potions did by tasting them.
You would go down the list of potion types, trying each in
turn.
You played with a Deck of Many Things.
You discovered that sword was cursed by going into battle
with it.
Percent in Liar.
You would find no treasure for a monster with Treasure Type
H.
A random bunch of stirges would have massive treasure.
High-roll gets it!
Whether dwarven women had beards was definitely a thing.
Exploding oil.
Kamikaze mules.
The engineering student built a remote chest-opening device.
You had lightsabers. Briefly.
You used critical hit locations. Briefly.
You could see an ogre from a mile away. Then realized it was Steve Jackson's Ogre.
It wasn’t a greatsword. It was a 2-handed broadsword.
Bastard swords were called Hand-and-a-half swords. Also, called
Bec De Corbins.
Pole arms.
It wasn’t two-weapon fighting. It was fighting Florentine.
Doors always opened for monsters unless spiked shut.
You brought dungeon rations to drop when fleeing
You brought iron spikes to drop when fleeing rust monsters.
Fighters were afraid of rust monsters.
No one knew was a rust monster looked like.
Bugbears had pumpkin heads
Orcs looked like pigs. Until Jabba the Hutt starting using
them.
Leather, Chain, Plate. That’s it.
Oh yeah, and shields.
If you ran a gnome, it would have been a gnome Illusionist/Thief (or GIT)
If you could make the required minimum stats, you would be
an elf.
If you ran an elf, it would a Fighter/Thief/Magic-User.
If someone wore leather armor and had a shield, they were an Assassin.
Standing order - shoot the guys without armor first. They're usually magic-users.
Level limitations on non-humans didn’t matter if you weren’t
going to live to 3rd level anyway.
Hirelings with torches.
Horses that disappeared when your group went into combat.
The dungeon was safer than the wilderness.
Clerics only were useful once they reached 2nd
level.
High-Level Fighters wearing motorcycle jackets. Mithril studs on the back spell out "10th Level Lords".
Pronouncing "paladin" as "pah-LAY-din".
Pronouncing "chimera" as "Shimmer-rah"
Arguing about the pronunciation of "drow".
Random teleporters inside the dungeon.
Random-rolled dungeon occupants.
Random-rolled spellbooks.
Alignment languages.
You used alignment languages as a de facto Know Alignment spell.
Thieves could spoof magic items.
Skeletons that were animated objects.
Skeletons with electric shocks.
Gas spores.
Neutral Beholders.
Giant Weasels/Hogs.
The Extension spell.
It mattered if the spell was clerical or magical.
Spell descriptions that read "Same as the Clerical spell of the same name, except where noted".
To Hit Armor Class 0 (THAC0) was a new thing.
Different combat tables for different classes.
No one knew what a holy water sprinkler looked like.
Not only were elves immune to ghoul paralysis, they could
“unfreeze” fellow party members.
Carrion crawlers were the worst opponent for their hit dice
Psionic player characters meant encountering psionic monsters.
Psionic monsters were horrible for non-psionic players.
Needed a 17+ Charisma to be a paladin.
Percentile strength scores.
No one knew what a kobold looked like. Other than they were
short.
Attack Matrixes.
Named Character Levels.
No good 2nd level Magic-User spells.
Paladins with holy swords were immune to magic.
Cloudkill could specifically be used to clean out ant
colonies.
Thor had 275 hit points.
Wergild/Weregild.
Sneak attack for double damage!
A random encounter with 300 bandits. Or 400 gnomes.
Mars mounted upon Talos’ shoulders.
The good old days - they were terrible.
More later,
