So..... (1 Viewer)

[Old Geezer]

Rust Monster: I know it's based on a little plastic figure, because I used to own one (like the Bulette). Was it a grudge monster?

I know I answered this, but I just realized I'm not sure what a "grudge monster" is.

 

[komradebob]

I know I answered this, but I just realized I'm not sure what a "grudge monster" is.

My guess is a monster specifically designed to get back at players for being annoying to a DM, not simply a challenge that the DM came up with more neutrally.

Y'know, like if a given player always always uses invisibility to get past evetry challenge, so you make up the monster that only sees and stalks invisible creatures...

 

[Old Geezer]

What percentage of the rooms in the dungeon were empty?

About 80% to 90%

Was Gary (or were other early DMs) very descriptive, and did every room have a purpose?

Not every room, no. Some did.

Would an entire adventure be a single foray into the dungeon, or would you go back and forth to the city during a single expedition? How long would such an expedition take (one day, one week or just the 15 minutes before the Magic-User's spells ran dry)?

1) It varied. Usually one trip to the dungeon, but sometimes we'd do more. It was one way to help level up a starting player. GO to the dungeon, go to the first level, break open a door, the 1st level character makes an attack, kill the monster, go back to town, give all the gold to the first level character so they get all the XP and level up.

2) About half a day. The game was about resource management, magic users didn't do the "blow all your spells in the first fight" thing I've seen described. We would have thought that to be exceedingly poor play.

Also, did M-U's cast a lot of utility spells back then? What would happen if the only M-U frontloaded on combat spells (as they tend to do these days)? Would the referee punish this by throwing a lot of obstacles in the way that would have required utility spells?

Remember... the world was created first, THEN the characters were created to explore it. The way Gary, Dave, and the rest of us did it, we would set up our dungeons such that you would need a selection of both combat and utility spells. Choosing how to allocate your limited spell slots was part of the fun, as was dealing with not having a certain spell where it would be useful.

The world came first, so changing the world based on player spell selection would have been cheating. It's about the only way for the referee to cheat, in fact. Any ref who changed things on the fly to punish players based on that day's spell selection would have found themselves without any players.

What was there, was there. There was a nest of six trolls on Level 1 of Greyhawk. If you went there with three first level characters, you found six trolls. If you went there with nine 11th level characters, you found six trolls. Changing the world as you seem to be describing above would have been anathema. It is really the only way to cheat as the referee.

 

[Old Geezer]

...it never occurred to me to use Dwarf troops that way before.

One of my chapters in WMUSSWTWBF is going to be about assumptions we made, and assuming everybody else made the same assumptions. This is one.
So is having fighters in the second rank with spears or polearms.
So is a bunch of high level characters giving all the gold to the new Level 1 character so they get all the XP and level up faster.

 

[Old Geezer]

Except for that damn level draining. Was there any point at which D&D vampires drank blood instead of draining levels?

We considered a "hit" meant the vampire 'put the fangs to you.' With one minute combat rounds, OD&D combat is EXTREMELY abstract. Don't think of it as representing one blow, think of it as "What has happened at the end of a minute."

 

[Old Geezer]

Wasn't the monk directly influenced by TV's Kung Fu?

Eduardo Penna

Gary said that there were "numerous influences." He specifically mentioned the Destroyer books.

Remember, though, that this was not "famous game designer in an executive office," this was "a bunch of guys yammering about this shit almost constantly whenever they got together." The TV show was in first reruns at about this time. Plus Jim Ward loved the song "Kung Fu Fighting" and had "chaotic Kung Fu fighters" in his dungeon.

 

[Old Geezer]

On the subject of questions for Old Geezer...

1. Did Gygax actually run with ability scores a la Greyhawk (percentile strength, % chance to learn spells etc) or was that one of the things that was cooked up for publication?

Yes, we used the Greyhawk stuff.

2. Did you ever straight up fight a Balrog? If so, how did it go? Looking back at published stuff from the period it seems like Balrogs were an early iconic monster that sort of got disappeared because the Tolkien estate didn't like D&D using its intellectual property.

Yeah, Balrogs were second only to Dragons as badass monsters. Yes, I fought them, but never single handedly, those fuckers were nasty.

3. Was magic "Vancian" in Greyhawk from the word go, or did Gary tinker with other stuff (like the Chainmail rules for keeping spells)? When did spell levels come into being?

It was always Vancian. What rules for keeping spells in CHAINMAIL? (my copy isn't handy)
Spell levels were there the first time I played.

Also, I really LIKE the OD&D magic system.

4. How early do you remember Good/Neutral/Evil being added to alignment?

The 9 alignments first appeared in AD&D first edition. However, even in the days of CHAINMAIL we used to talk about what was the difference between Law/Neutral/Chaos and Good/neutral/Evil, so the discussion is older than D&D.

 

[vivsavage]

How descriptive did combat tend to be? In other words, did the fighter...

1) hit the orc for 4 points of damage, or
2) did he "swing his longsword in a broad arc, crying 'Death to the Goblin King!' , slicing the blade deep into the creature's shoulder for 4 points of damage."

 

[Old Geezer]

My guess is a monster specifically designed to get back at players for being annoying to a DM, not simply a challenge that the DM came up with more neutrally.

Y'know, like if a given player always always uses invisibility to get past evetry challenge, so you make up the monster that only sees and stalks invisible creatures...

Hmm. We thought we were developing a set of rules for all of us to use, so this would never have occured to us.

Now, we were all students of Gary's school of game design, which included the tenet of "For every ability, there must be a counter," so ways to counteract invisibility, etc, were all on the table. We didn't want a "perfect answer." Back around 2005 I had a long discussion with Gary on his design philosophy. Sadly when the "Pied Piper Publishing" forum crashed I lost it. But I will be including a chapter on what I can remember.

 

[Old Geezer]

How descriptive did combat tend to be? In other words, did the fighter...

1) hit the orc for 4 points of damage, or
2) did he "swing his longsword in a broad arc, crying 'Death to the Goblin King!' , slicing the blade deep into the creature's shoulder for 4 points of damage."

The former. In fact, the latter STILL annoys the shit out of me. It would be like somebody moving a knight in chess to take a pawn and saying "My knights gallop forward in a cloud of dust and ride down your hapless peasants." And then the EARS, I get the IDEA, get ON with it.

I have my own methods for making combat exciting. One is to be expedient; I can run a one minute combat round in a minute or less. More in my book.

EDIT: We would "quip" once in a while, though. If we rolled a one we might say "The sword drops from my nerveless fingers." If we rolled a twenty and did a lot of damage we might say "I hit him on top of the head so hard his balls explode." But it was a piss take, not serious description.