I really like this description. Heck, it sounds like a fun dungeon right now!Stainless wrote:When I was 12 years old, in 1978, a rumour went through the school about some wonderful new game called Dungeons and Dragons. We had heard of it, but being only 12, couldn't afford any proper books for it (AD&D hadn't yet been published if I'm not mistaken, plus Australia was always slightly behind the times due to the shipping distance). The only things we had were a set of dice, a copy of the Judge's Guild Ready Ref Sheets and some second hand info from someone's older brother about what to do.
Boy it was fun!
Our first adventure, of which I remember the most, was set in a dungeon located in the middle of a desert. There was nothing but sand as far as the eye could see and a single plain stone slab that somehow escaped being covered by the shifting dunes. Under the slab were stone steps leading down into....darkness.....
And tough, too: no way to re-supply, a hostile desert... Conan wouldn't have made it out of Xuthal if it hadn't been for a reasonably close oasis! Did you make it out alive?
My first dungeon was Temple of Elemental Evil's Moathouse. I still remember being the last PC to survive the ghouls, and finally smiting that last one a single hit point before I went down, thus saving the entire party. Everything was fairly new, which was fun.
I suppose that's the hope: discovering that new-gamer feel.
I like throwing curve balls that don't have hit points. Mummy rot was a lot of fun for my low level party. ditto other diseases that needed a cure, rather than just throwing more hit points at the party. Sure, they beat the mummy, but the lack of Cure Disease meant running around desperately to find a fountain of healing.