Brian
United States
Oakland
California
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Some of my friends expressed interest in playing D&D and being the biggest gamer in the group, I was recruited as DM. For the sake of simplicity and nostalgia, I have opted for the BECMI rules. Now I am looking for opinions and advice on running said game.
The first thing I noticed after re-reading the Basic Rules, was how weak the first level non-fighter classes seem to be. I can't imagine how much fun it would be for a Magic-User, after casting their one and only spell, to spend the rest of the adventure just trying to not die.
Should I attempt to counteract this by letting the party find scrolls in the dungeon? I don't want to make it too easy for them, but I want to make sure it's fun for all the characters.
What advice do folks have for a first outing? Any pitfalls or common mistakes I need to watch out for?
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SJ Benoist
United States
Saint Charles
Missouri
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The game is written for a different mindset and a different era.
Part of the appeal of the "old-school" approach was managing to survive into the higher levels.
It was expected characters would die along the way. Magic-Users start very weak, but eventually grow into the most powerful Class. Starting with a Fighter, you have much better of odds of living, but a much lower payoff.
"Everyone involved all the time" is something of antithesis to this style of D&D, as the niches are supposed to shine at different points in the adventure. The Thief won't do much half the time, but when you DO need him, he is the only person for the job. Everyone else waits while the Thief disarms the trap ... or dies trying 
The only two Classes that get "double duty" are the Cleric and the Elf.
Note to the above: Thief in this version of D&D is not the same as later versions. They are extremely vulnerable in combat, and trying to frequently participate utilizing Backstab will get them dead in a hurry. It is an option best reserved for when the stakes justify the risk. Also, their THAC0 is going to be terrible, so they won't be contributing a ton with missile weapons either.
So, IOW, the biggest pitfall you could drop into would be group assumptions of play. Let them know what they are in for, and that rolling up a new character is not much of a surprise until the mid-levels.
If they walk into this expecting a 4e-style experience, they are liable to have an awful time.
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Freelance Police
United States
Palo Alto
California
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Depending on the group, you can have a non-combat adventure. Without all those detection spells, you can run a mystery or investigative adventure where the players have to use their brains, rather than character sheets. Interacting with NPCs you can't bully is an excellent chance for roleplaying.
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Eric Jome
United States
Milwaukee
Wisconsin
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shelflife3000 wrote: The first thing I noticed after re-reading the Basic Rules, was how weak the first level non-fighter classes seem to be. I can't imagine how much fun it would be for a Magic-User, after casting their one and only spell, to spend the rest of the adventure just trying to not die.
It was my common practice to give everyone max hit points at first level and play with the "you're only unconscious at 0, dead at -10 (or negative CON) and you lose one per round at 0 or lower until stablized" rule. This is more an AD&D thing, but it's a good practice to help avoid mass death.
For wizards, I quickly gave up on Vancian magic and replaced it with a simplistic magic points system. It would usually go like this; the wizard must have a focus item, like a wand, staff, orb, ring, or some such to cast their spells. They get the bonus from the Intelligence plus the number of spells granted to them at that level - sometimes I'd add a bonus +1, too - that's their magic points. A spell costs its level of magic points to cost. You get all your points back after a rest. Think of it as "Harry Potter" style magic.
So, the wizard can cast any spell they know a few times per day. This is much more pleasant for them. Beyond this, I would often give a sort of "knows something about everything" Lore type ability to wizards - they could often roll versus intelligence to see if they knew a clue about the current situation.
Quote: Should I attempt to counteract this by letting the party find scrolls in the dungeon? I don't want to make it too easy for them, but I want to make sure it's fun for all the characters.
I think scrolls or potions are fine. But so too is it just okay to just have them struggle. Basic is about normal people trying to make it in an extremely dangerous world.
Quote: What advice do folks have for a first outing? Any pitfalls or common mistakes I need to watch out for?
Basic is not as heroic and action oriented as people think when they think of fantasy adventure. People expect Conan - kicking ass with a sword versus 20 orcs. Or at least Fellowship of the Ring, Aragorn, Legolas, Gimli sort of thing. Basic isn't like this. It's more like the real world.
So, in my opinion, throw things at the players that aren't just killer monsters - don't dungeon crawl it. Make them roll ability checks to get things done - and have success award experience points. Be generous with experience at first and promote them a few levels fairly quickly. Encourage an atmosphere of exploring and mystery, with any given monster being a surprise, deadly foe and many chances to think their way around problems instead of only confronting them with weapons and fire.
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Eric Jome
United States
Milwaukee
Wisconsin
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SJBenoist wrote: "Everyone involved all the time" is something of antithesis to this style of D&D, as the niches are supposed to shine at different points in the adventure.
This is true. But at the same time, you don't have to let it be true.
Players won't like a game where they never get to contribute. So, long ago, I settled on an informal rule I'd give myself - the goal of every play session is to give everyone present something cool they can do to take the lead. Back in Basic, this meant being a bit more liberal interpreting the system.
One of the things that we concluded in those early days is that a class represents a profession or embodiment of an area of specialized knowledge. The elf is good in the woods, the dwarf is good underground. The fighter knows about weapons and fighting men and such. The thief knows the back alleys, fences, appraising, and where to get streetwise information. The cleric is respected by people aligned to his faith and knows a great deal about theology.
Then we often took this a step further. Long before secondary skills came into D&D, we would let people write things as background for their character and this would count for them being able to roll against that or roll with a bonus on something. If you said your fighter was a knight, then you could later tell the DM that you should know something about heraldry and you'd be entitled to a bonus on a roll to identify a knight's crest on a shield you just found...
Once you accept that a class is a body of knowledge and skills, then it's easy to make an adventure around that. Put in encounters with people or situations where a class provides benefits; the thief can gamble with the bandits in the woods for passage instead of a fight, the warrior can repair armor for a few extra coins to buy a potion, the cleric can officiate at a burial to gain the respect of the town mayor, and so on.
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SJ Benoist
United States
Saint Charles
Missouri
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I think the question here is becoming "Why play BECMI at all"?
If you have to change significant parts of the rules and play-style, you are probably better off with a different game. Certainly nothing is left that could not be replaced easier, or better (or both!) by another system. It only excels at one thing, and these changes would alter that one thing.
IOW, if you are going to play it very differently from how it was played, why bother to put the work in to change it, when you could just pick something closer to what you wanted in the first place?
Why use a wrench to hammer nails when there are plenty of hammers lying around?
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Eric Jome
United States
Milwaukee
Wisconsin
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SJBenoist wrote: If you have to change significant parts of the rules and play-style, you are probably better off with a different game.
Probably. It was very natural for us back in the day to shift into AD&D - we were already doing a lot of stuff like that on our own anyway, just from asking logical questions about the simulated world our characters lived in. Don't elves have clerics? Why can't that human learn to find secret doors too?
So, I think, it's entirely valid to just play Basic as printed. When you do that, you can still spin the game to be less about fighting monsters and more about other kinds of situations. And with the massive amount of GM fiat that goes with the system, you can have players rolling dice and interpret results in all sorts of clever ways - failing to jump the pit means hanging from ledge, not falling to your death.
Basic, I think, was still a pretty primitive game. If you're looking for a more well considered, robust game, you could move to something else. But don't think that Basic isn't playable - it just takes more DM horsepower to make it work, I think.
And I don't think Basic is at all sacred - you can certainly tailor and edit it to your taste. It encourages you to do that right in the book.
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SJ Benoist
United States
Saint Charles
Missouri
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Sure, I don't think it is sacred. I was just opining most of the customization in "ye games of yore" was due to our lack of options in the 80's. Back then, you had to make the game you owned contort into being the game you wanted.
Today, there is so much out there it renders the old approach inefficient. There is probably something very close to, if not exactly, what you want already available. And possibly free to boot!
I'm consistently surprised by how much free stuff is available, and how complete some of it is.
I would say dungeon crawling and high mortality are pretty ingrained into the old D&D game as written, though.
What level does the MU have to reach before you get a 50/50 chance on the dreaded "Save Vs. DEATH!"?
All the HP in the world won't save you now!!!
Muhahahaha
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The Harnish
Germany
Duisburg
NRW
Cult of The Harnish Leader
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shelflife3000 wrote: The first thing I noticed after re-reading the Basic Rules, was how weak the first level non-fighter classes seem to be. I can't imagine how much fun it would be for a Magic-User, after casting their one and only spell, to spend the rest of the adventure just trying to not die.
Since about 1989 we've been using a very simple house rule to make the game a little less lethal at low levels - first level characters start with HPs equal to their CON score (the 3-18 score, not the modifier) plus the result of their hit die roll. The results are PCs who average about 10-11 hps more at first level. It makes a big difference early on (though they are still quite fragile) but by the time they reach mid to high levels it makes a negligible difference.
For MUs, keep in mind that their low level spells are potentially very powerful - sleep, in particular, is god-like at lower levels and a complete game changer when cast. So giving them access to more spells tends to unbalance things fast. I typically have solved the "my MU doesn't feel much like a MU" problem by giving them access to spells like read magic and detect magic for free a few times per day (usually equal to their 1+INT mod per day) so that they can do MU like stuff outside of combat. Otherwise, you don't really need to do too much with them since they're actually still fairly effective in combat. Ironically enough, although Gygax always claimed that he wasn't really influenced by LotR, MUs function very much like Gandalf - they cast just a couple spells and then start wacking foes with a weapon.
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Brian
United States
Oakland
California
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Thanks for your comments, folks. There's some great food for thought here.
cosine wrote: Put in encounters with people or situations where a class provides benefits; the thief can gamble with the bandits in the woods for passage instead of a fight, the warrior can repair armor for a few extra coins to buy a potion, the cleric can officiate at a burial to gain the respect of the town mayor, and so on.
I think this is a great point and I think really nails the fact that a good DM will make or break the game.
I was planning doing a bit of hand-holding for the newer players at the start. ("Do you want to check for traps before you enter the room?" or "That Kobold could kill your Magic-User with one swipe if it gets too close.")
But, yeah, I think creating situations to make sure no one gets left out is great advice.
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Brian
United States
Oakland
California
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SJBenoist wrote: I think the question here is becoming "Why play BECMI at all"?
If you have to change significant parts of the rules and play-style, you are probably better off with a different game. Certainly nothing is left that could not be replaced easier, or better (or both!) by another system. It only excels at one thing, and these changes would alter that one thing.
IOW, if you are going to play it very differently from how it was played, why bother to put the work in to change it, when you could just pick something closer to what you wanted in the first place?
Why use a wrench to hammer nails when there are plenty of hammers lying around?
These are excellent points and I totally agree with you. One of the reasons I picked BECMI, was that I figured by then, they would have worked out a lot of the balance issues. So, I was a little surprised that the first level MU seems so weak, but I guess that's the point. The weakest classes eventually can become the most powerful.
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