Today the roleplaying community is remembering the birthday of Gary Gygax, originator of the Dungeons and Dragons game and the reason so many of us play these games now. Without him, the entire roleplaying industry would not exist, probably including many of the computer games that have been so popular over the years.
Most members of Tabletop Adventures got their start roleplaying in Dungeons and Dragons, from the original three booklets (before they came together in a box) to Advanced Dungeons and Dragons, otherwise known as First Edition.
Old-School Roleplaying
Although we eventually made the transition to Third Edition (and later to Pathfinder), our attitude toward the game still tends to be “Old School,” and many of our products reflect that. This is especially true of Bits of Darkness: Dungeons, our very first product. It was the result of many happy hours spent mapping underground rooms and passages and describing them to players.
45. At an intersection of corridors, your flickering light reveals a charcoal mark upon the wall. It appears to have been made by either a stick plucked from a fire or from the the burned out stub of a torch. The smeared mark is about five feet from the floor and forms an arrow that points back the way that you have come. There is no indication as to who could have made it.
That was also a time when many dungeons had monster after monster, and rooms could be full of amazing or unlikely things with no explanation given or required.
44. As you look into [enter] the room, you are astonished to see the entire floor of the room is done in mosaic tile, depicting the sun, clouds and birds on the wing. When you look up, you see that the ceiling has also been done in mosaic, but with a forest motif. [The party may very well spend some time here, arguing about the safest way to cross the room. This could be nothing, or the room could have a magical effect in it which reverses gravity.]
Those old-school dungeons (and caverns, and the towns we visited in between) are what we try to evoke with all our products of fantasy description.
We hope you have a great day thinking back to the early days of Dungeons and Dragons and invite you to comment with a memory from your own early days of gaming.
