Last Saturday, I ran a group of players through a dungeon I’d designed, the Keep of Lost Treasures. The name of the adventure pretty much describes the purpose of the game: go into the dungeon, find as much wealth as you could get, then leave.

What was unusual about the game is the system: the original Dungeons & Dragons, as described in the three booklets Men and Magic, Monsters and Treasure, and The Underworld and Wilderness Adventures published in 1974. I tend to run these sessions when we’ve finished one D&D campaign (Tomb of Annihilation in this case) and are waiting for the next to start (Waterdeep: Dragon Heist). Quite a few new players, who haven’t experienced any form of D&D except for the current edition, were at my table.

I printed out some classic-form character sheets – these were designed several years after 1974, but they made it easier for the players. We spent the first 30 minutes of the session creating characters.

Each player rolled 3d6, in order, for their ability scores: Strength, Intelligence, Wisdom, Dexterity, Constitution, Charisma.

Each player rolled 3d6 and multiplied it by ten for their starting gold.

Each player rolled 1d6 for their hit points. If they were a fighter, they got to add one to the roll!

Ability modifiers? Nothing for Strength, Intelligence or Wisdom except for bonus to earned XP (rare for these characters). A high Dexterity gave a +1 to missile attacks. A high Constitution affected hit points. Charisma affected how many hirelings they could hire, and their loyalty. For the most part, players had stats between 8 and 12… and had no modifiers at all!

Into the dungeon!

A couple of the characters had a single hit point, and tried to stay back from melee. The clerics in the group looked at their limited weapon selections and realised that, as the sling didn’t yet exist, they had no missile weapons to use. They also puzzled at their complete lack of spells. The magic-users had one spell. There were eight spells they could choose from, only two of which were in any way offensive – charm person and sleep. Both magic-users chose the sleep spell. Why not? It could put up to sixteen orcs to sleep! What marching order would they use? With six players, it was two in each rank, with the magic-users in the last rank.

The first chamber of the dungeon was free of monsters, but had a few items of interest: eight-foot-high statues of dwarven generals in the first chamber. “They’re taller than normal dwarves!”, noticed one player. The second chamber contained various humanoid bones. I’d designed a special surprise for players who investigated the bones more thoroughly, but they didn’t. Instead, they looked around at the four doors leading out of the room, and chose one.

This led to their first encounter, against a group of giant rats, a staple of D&D adventures. The rats were chewing on the body of an ill-fated adventurer. The characters stayed in the doorway as the rats attacked, so they couldn’t be surrounded. Good move! However, we had the first character death. A single hit point means a bite from a giant rat will kill you. Poor short-lived PC!

The player grabbed an extra character sheet and began rolling up a new character as the adventure continued. This would become a theme in the session – the players would lose their PCs, and then rejoin the group when the rest returned from the dungeon. Individual expeditions were short – we had three in the 90 minutes we played.

The party, discovering nothing valuable on the corpse the rats gnawed upon, continued through another door. There they discovered a long room with a single door leading out, the remnants of a lot of furniture, and some giant centipedes. Each of the centipedes had but a single hit point, but their bite was poisonous!

A second PC died in the encounter, and then, upon opening a door, the group were confronted by an arrow trap that slew yet another PC! This was the point at which the survivors decided to leave.

There was one problem: they didn’t have a map of where they’d explored! Most of the return journey was fine, but there was that room with four doors. Guess how many doors they tried before finding the way out? Yes, it was the last one they tried!

One of those doors led to a room of six goblins, and that was the fastest “we turn and run!” I’ve ever seen in a game of Dungeons & Dragons!

Once the group returned to town and met up with the newly created characters, I let them know about the availability of men-at-arms for hire, and the players quickly availed themselves of that. Three men-at-arms (Bert, Ernie and Big Bert) joined the party for the next expedition.

The players learnt a few things from this expedition about the original D&D experience, in particular:

• First level characters are very vulnerable. With death occurring immediately that a character reached 0 hit points, a single hit could kill most of the characters.
• There’s a lack of healing. Once characters reach second level, healing becomes available, but it isn’t there at first level. I noted that healing isn’t as necessary for first-level characters – as the characters don’t have much difference between alive and dead! There isn’t a “dying” state, where restoring a hit point is so important, as in the current edition.
• Mapping is important. The old style of D&D adventures primarily takes place in mega dungeons; that is, dungeons that are huge! This style has fallen out of favour as games have moved to smaller (three or four room) dungeons, or the DM draws the map themselves.
• Having additional bodies increases survival chances of the important characters.
• Character creation is quick. Early characters are disposable; it’s the one that survive you cherish. You can see a version of this form of play in the Dungeon Crawl Classics RPG by Goodman Games, which uses a first session that eliminates weaker characters so only the best you’ve created remain.
• Character ability scores are rarely exceptional!

The players saw the original presentation of many elements of Dungeons & Dragons, several of which were changed or dropped in later editions: ability scores, mapping, hirelings & henchmen, hit points, healing and death. The interesting thing is that the players still enjoyed the experience greatly. D&D has always been a fun game, but the way it works differs from edition to edition.

There are more aspects of the game I noted, but that’s enough for one post!