In Defense of the Save or Die Trap

 

The argument here is simple really. As the sinister, evil-genius baddie who has gone to all the trouble to hide my secrets, and my loot, six or more levels below the earth and guarded them with all sorts of fell beasties, foul magics and traps the reason should be crystal clear. I don't want ANYONE coming near my stuff. Especially a band of those pesky, meddling, and potentially quite dangerous, adventurers!

Now sure, there are other purposes to set traps. Maybe I want to maim someone, or slow them up so they'll be easier for my minions to take care of. But why main or cripple or slow someone down when I can just kill them with the trap itself? Maybe it's to keep my somewhat rock-brained minions away from places they shouldn't be meddling, but a key and lock does that job cheaper and costs me less minions. Or perhaps mark them with permanent die, so I know who opened my spellbook when they shouldn't have. There could be lots of reasons, sure.

But the most straightforward reason to set lethal traps is to kill people I think are a pain in the asp. Death traps make all the sense in the world. Of course, these traps need an off mechanism of some sort, and maybe even a reminder or sign to help me and my minions remember where they are. Which makes the whole process for adventurers a lot more fun and manageable. 

Now, I'm not saying every trap should be lethal. As outlined above, there are other reasons to have traps. But don't shy away from the good old save or die trap just because players think they suck. Provide a different avoidance mechanism the players can figure out, and go for it. It only makes sense.

Oh, just as one other possibility why the arch nemesis of the adventurers may choose to prefer less than lethal traps--the ToH principle. Quite often our baddie is a twisted sadist and he finds it funny to prolong the adventurers agony. He wants to slowly whittle them down and torture them. A finger here, a head of hair there, a gender change in one room, a blinding one in another. In such cases the baddie almost always wants some way to watch this happen, or at least know when it happened. This too can be a clue to the party. Instead of the slightly off colored brick at every trap, that creepy floating eye appears. You get the idea. 

The Spirit of AD&D

 

AD&D is magic items. I don't think it's possible to overestimate the importance of magic items in AD&D. They were the premium of treasure taken in adventures. And they grew to define what your character could do and accomplish. As opposed to all of your abilities being defined by abilities you gain as you advance, AD&D often defined a character's power level by the items they had managed to win on their adventures. Some feel like this is a bad thing. For such items can be lost, broken, stolen or otherwise stripped from your character. That is exactly the point. Certainly a 10th level fighter was far superior to a first level fighter. But a 10th level fighter with a Vorpal Blade was much more powerful than a 10th level fighter without a magical blade. This may seem unfair, but it was a matter of drive and motivation for characters to adventure to gain such items. Items such as a Holy Avenger were precious beyond belief. A paladin who lost such an item was presented with a powerful challenge that cased them to play much harder and more strategically than one who could simply take a short or long rest and rise again just as powerful as they were yesterday. 

The purpose or intent of some of the changes in 5e's magic items was said to make them more strange, usual or rare. This is not at all what they have achieved. In fact magic items are almost irrelevant in most of today's 5e games. They are not near as wondrous or useful as they were in AD&D making them less impressive and "magical". And moreover they are often superfluous to a character that already possesses a great number of super abilities. 

In AD&D magic items played a major role in most games and were far more magical than people are used to today.

The Spirit of AD&D

AD&D is working hard for levels, very hard. As you can see above, the amount of experience required for each level were much higher than people are used to today. And the above chart was for Thieves, the easiest level within which to advance. And though experience awards varied vastly between awards it generally took at least six to ten sessions of play to gain one level. However it wasn't abnormal to wait over twenty in some cases. Levels mean something in AD&D. Which is of course why level drainers were so utterly terrifying. 
 

The Spirit of AD&D

 

AD&D is a black skinned, spike haired, gravely odiferous beast called a wight. Every hit does 1d4 damage and drains one level of experience. Every time it hits. Every time. That's one level complete with HP, spells, class abilities and all other features of that level. Sucks your beloved character right down, smack dab into the middle of the previous level's experience table. Next to save or die, nothing struck fear into characters, especially high level characters like the level draining monstrosities of the Wight and the Vampire. 

And for those of you who don't know, levels in AD&D ... well, maybe we'll cover that next time. 

TTRPG Nostalgia

I don't know what it is, but I'm here again. This place I get to time and again when I feel overwhelmingly like my D&D is lost. Why do I feel this way? Is it just nostalgia? Or is it something more?

I have been doing some reading along with my soul searching lately and have come to find quite a bit online about gaming related nostalgia. Almost all of it is about video game nostalgia, but I think alot of it applies equally well to TTRPGs. One thing in particular stuck out. Nostalgia for video games tend to be so powerful because we invested so much emotional energy in them. We might be nostalgic for music, for a style of dress or even a movie. But we could spend hours and hours on a game. Sound familiar? Clearly I am very nostalgic for TSR era D&D because I spent almost every available moment, thinking about it, drawing, writing, mapping, reading, talking and certainly playing the game and every thing associated with it. 

I have teased before that D&D is my religion more than my hobby. I suppose, inasmuch as religion defines us from before to after birth and throughout our life, D&D does that as much for me as my religion does. Of course that's hyperbole. I just saw this old ad, and it brought back a wave of nostalgia for something that I wish could be recaptured ...