Let's Talk About OD&D

Let's talk about the single most brutal game I've ever played. The original version of Dungeons & Dragons.

I've only ever played this game solo, and it's likely that is the reason for my impression of it. In the original games, anyone crawling Greyhawk castle alone was considered suicidal. I ran the game for myself to find out what it was actually like as part of my research on D&D's development through the editions when I was designing the SD&D system.

I used the little books, plus the greyhawk and blackmoor supplements as guidelines for designing a dungeons and dragons game, and I used the chainmail combat rules with the wilderness survival map, as per suggestions.

In addition, I read interviews with Gygax, Arneson, their players, and their coworkers. I read blogs about old school gaming and RPG history. I read the earliest modules written by the greats. I read the primer to old school gaming.

I discovered that D&D, in it's original form, was even more variable and diverse than any later incarnation. Dave and Gary ran unimaginably different games using essentially the same system- though the system was only similar by cosmetics. Even the actual rules of the game were in a constant state of flux for both authors. To create an authentic D&D experience, I couldn't try to run Gary's or Dave's D&D, I had to build and run MY D&D!

While I do feel my research lead to a fairly accurate approximation of the style of the game... nothing could have prepared me for my first actual delve into the ruinous towers of The Devil's Fork.

Begin playing the music now.

 

My character was a cleric of not especially great talent, but he made up for it by being quite wealthy. With the vision of starting a temple to one of the gods of law, he decides to deck himself out and kick down the devil's front door.

He was met by an ogre with a spear standing directly in the entryway. A wanderer who was on his way out for the errands, perhaps? It decided I was lunch.

12 terrifying minutes later, it was dead, and I was close to death. But on its body was a hoard of very lucky treasure! I cut my losses and scurried back to town to my niece. She was a beginning magic user, (and secretly chaotic) and a disappointment to my character's values. I got myself in order and hired a fighting man, a neutral mercenary, to join me in my endeavors. He didn't care about the church. He just wanted my money and would abandon if he got the chance.

We broke into the dungeon and cautiously made our way through it's dangerous, crumbling structure. Some passages would collapse on you, others out from under you. The ruin was once magically powered and ancient conveniences became modern hazards. The outer walls had long since fallen away, leaving sections of the towers open to the elements. You could climb the outside of the towers, but it was risky and less rewarding. Inside were countless monsters all drawn by some unknown force, feeding on one another in cruel barbarism.

We struggled for months. I kept hiring more mercenaries, paying my dues to the local lords, building my influence. I became ambitious. Sure, lots of fighting men had died, but I was too good for that!

Then the floor gave out on the 3rd story of the second tower. I landed on a square which was also weak and I fell another 10ft down to the first floor. There, a wall collapsed and finished me off.

The few mercenaries who made it back alive told of my pathetic death for nothing.

Now my niece inherited all of my wealth- and the small church I had built. She rededicated the church to her God, Orcus, chased off the faithful, and set to work capitalizing on her uncle's progress.

She hired servants to aid her in her goal:
Make the Devil's Fork her palace.

She was an enchantress who put enemies to sleep, robbing them, capturing them, and dragging them out. Those she could press into service became her loyal soldiers. Those she could not were butchered and fed to the loyal.

Where her uncle relied on luck, she relied on savagery.

She gained levels slowly, because she always worked with a large entourage of minions. But she made much more progress. Eventually though, her luck would too come to an end, but not in the Fork.

She had built a tower from the foundation of the church and was slowly building a small army of monsters. She would have made faster progress, but her efforts were constantly frustrated by an entity to the West known as the Ivorine Monolith. A 60ft tall solid pillar of ivory, the monolith was some sort of ancient being who somehow remained after the fall of the last great empires. It drew wildlife to itself from the wilderness, and subtly influenced their minds until they became its dedicated, brainwashed agents.

The Ivorine Monolith saw itself as the center of the world, and (correctly) identified the witch as a threat to its power. It also coveted a mysterious ancient artifact supposedly held at the top floor of the center tine of the Devil's Fork, guarded by a monster named Cinderglint.

I used the rules of Risk to position units on the overworld between delves, the count representing total hit dice, and the hexes acting as countries. When battles occurred, I'd play it out with Chainmail. (I deliberately avoided large battles; Chainmail is not the greatest wargame ever made.)

I was on my way to the Fork for one more crack at the top floor, only to find Ivorine forces gathered around its base. They were trying to stop me! This was the biggest battle yet, and it would prove to be my last. I positioned myself as artillery and became surrounded without support. Even powerful magic users only get so many spells.

I rolled up a new character. A fighting man of law under the rule of the Ivorine Monolith.

The Monolith was deathless, ageless, timeless immortal. It had no need for material wealth beyond its influence on mortals. As such, the brainwashed minions it gathered would pool their treasure, which it would then pay out to individuals based on service. I and others from that initial assault squad were paid to assault the town where the witch had come from.

We plundered her tower and returned to the Monolith with vast treasures, scattering her servants to the wilds.

Now it was time to deal with the Devil's Fork.

Weeks went by, but without the constant expenses of an enduring war or local lords, I was able to progress almost unimpeded, except for the treacherous nature of the ruin itself.

Everything about the Devil's Fork is designed to hamper progress. It is constantly pushing you down, driving you back, flushing you out. A stark contrast to the attractive meat grinder of Greyhawk, the Devil's Fork was like walking uphill into the spray of a fire hose.

Eventually my character was able to conduct a combination of actions that revealed the true nature of the towers: the whole dungeon is a giant combination lock! Actions in one tower alter the layout in the other two. To get to the top of any one, you have to climb to a level, activate the machinery, leave, go to a different tower, climb to a particular level, activate the machinery there, etc.

I managed to fight my way to the 10th floor of the shortest tower, the top floor, where I gained access to a custom artifact: a single rifle.

My character did not have the intelligence necessary to divine how to load, aim, and fire it. (To prevent myself from metagaming too much, I incorporated passive check DCs from 5e into this game- it was up to my characters to find secrets and avoid traps, not me. I also generated the presence of hazards and secret treasure at random within my character's passive effectiveness. Even I didn't know where all the stuff was in my dungeons.)

With the rifle in hand, I sought out a mage tower to learn its secrets. In the meantime, a new enemy had appeared on the global stage. Squads of monsters were pouring out from the east, emanating from a distant forest on the edge of the world, called the Dread Garden.

My fighting man died in the ensuing battles while searching for a tower inhabited by a lawful magic user.

There was no inheritance for his wealth. He was a brainwashed minion to a questionable entity. My next project was a team of 3. A dwarven fighting man, a human thief, and an elven magic user. (Picture surprisingly close to accurate.) These 3 adventurers had heard the legends of the mysterious treasure of the Devil's Tongue and had come to take it.

They hunted wandering monsters in the wilderness to amass wealth, earning both the respect and enmity of the Monolith. (It was grateful that we were reducing its enemies. Annoyed we were killing its primary power supply.)

With a great deal of wealth, we gathered our men and challenged all 3 towers at once, a separate party in each. It was easy to identify the mechanism of the towers now.

Still, these things take time. You can't just walk around on the fifth floor like you own the place when you're a level 2 thief!

I never did finish the campaign. I got to the 23rd floor of the center tine before I got tired of it.

And so came to a close the story of the roughest game of D&D I've ever played or ran.

I learned a lot from this game, but it reminded me of something deeply important:

It is possible, and far more rewarding, to earn your fun the hard way, rather than to have it served easy on a silver platter.

OD&D is the Dwarf Fortress philosophy of gaming brought to the roleplaying table.

Losing is Fun!

(In the time since I wrote this, someone made a video that gets to the point about hard fun. They're talking about videogames, but really, it applies to all games. Here's the video.)

(Oh, for anyone who's curious about that top floor, Cinderglint is a custom dragon, called a Mercury Dragon. It generates a permanent poisonous cloud, survivors of which are stricken with permanent insanity. The artifact was the last flying car in existence.)