Although it’s not a secret, it’s not oftentimes explicit: many of the primary writers and commentators on Critical Hits have known each other for quite a long time. In fact, most of us can trace back our D&D gaming lineage to a single Dungeon Master. That’s not to say we hadn’t played before or more often with others, but our friend Abe made an indelible mark on all of our gaming consciousnesses. This article examines our early gaming experiences with Abe and considers how they affected my current notions on role-playing and D&D.
To set the scene, the early years of my gaming group was essentially made of two tiers. First, there were “Youngsters” like myself, The Game, Original Sultan, and The O. Secondly, there were “Elders” that ranged from three to six years older and had been friends and gaming buddies for a significant amount of time prior to knowing us. Amongst them, more often than not, it was Abe who was our Dungeon Master. This led to some interesting issues. The relative difference in ages and less access to D&D books made us more likely to simply accept unusual rules and unexpected story developments as unarguable truth, at least initially. Whereas “Elder” players could sometimes persuade Abe to change his mind, we stood no chance. Oftentimes, when things would turn rather grim, our issues would be taken up by someone older, but otherwise, our complaints had no recourse.
That being said, there were some definite things that were awesome about our “Golden Age” of D&D. There was genuine excitement and wonder. We bought into the general system and the rules, and the DMs authority over them. What’s more, Abe managed to tell one hell of a story and keep things interesting. Our gaming group was enormous, and so no single character was ever particularly crucial to success. As such, our first games were highly fatal and chocked full of exceedingly difficult combats. Moreover, Abe was adamant about keeping that fantastic element alive. In one legendary combat (that I missed), some players were a bit too quick to instruct ignorant characters about how to finish off trolls. With a fiendish gleam in his eyes, as the players doused bodies in oil and flame, Abe had the trolls hacked off limbs begin to attack with minds of their own. What was supposed to be a relatively normal combat quickly became a bloodbath with the legendary “Abe Trolls.”
Then there were the idiosyncratic elements of Abe gaming. Abe would inject elements of whatever fiction he was reading at the time into his games. We’d have mages with Venom Symbiotes, PC armies going up against Robotech Battle pods, characters shamelessly based on Paul Maud’Dib of Dune (me) or Rand al’Thor from Wheel of Time (me again), and Abe would never bat an eye when tying together the insanity. Critical hits and failures were particularly brutal in his games. +5 Scimitars would shatter on critically failed backstabs, magical Frostbrands would fly out of skilled warriors hands into pits of lava, and 30th level Liches would get turned on a critical success and end up as Henchmen to 8th Level PCs (seriously). As time passed, all his players would joke about the monumental swings of luck and fortune in his gaming sessions, but it did always manage to produce a kind of mixed excitement and paranoia about the ease of losing everything you worked so hard for.
Fast forward to today. A lot of what I do parallels my Abe D&D experience. In 3E, I was famous for my extremely challenging “single fight” adventures. Rather than run through dungeons, most times my players would face something totally insane for their relative levels. And the thing of it was, the players always responded. I would eyeball a situation, decide it would probably kill them, then make it harder, and they’d figure out a way to win. Oftentimes, like in the days of my youth, PCs would bite the dust, but the group would emerge victorious. I always implement the “it gets bigger” rule in regards to monsters, which is a derivative of Abe’s notion on trolls: PCs that give away game text of monsters inevitably find their opponent growing in size and power, to better deter rules-mongering know-it-alls from spoiling it for everyone.
That being said, I certainly don’t emulate everything. Having never been the best “rules person” in the group, I always let players point out the actual rules during a session and adhere to them based on good faith assurances as such. Whereas I used to suffer through rather impromptu adjudications that were only loosely based on actual rules, I make an attempt to follow them (even if I don’t always know them). That being said, a lot of times rather than trying to figure out something more obscure, I’ll just blow through the issue instead of letting the game drag. Moreover, the zany crossovers from other genres and the game-changing criticals never really clicked with me and I don’t use them. Moreso than any particular aspect from Abe’s legacy, I think the most interesting aspect of my first DM is how Abe was held as the barometer to be compared to. When The Game and I began to DM more, it was inevitable that our games would have more or less combat than Abe, or more play balance than Abe, or what have you. In my opinion, our concept of D&D was shaped by what Abe did or did not include and what we wanted more or less of.
My question to my readers is, how much did your first DM influence you?
“First, there were “Youngsters” like myself, The Game, Original Sultan, and The O.”
What about me?!
You post here so infrequently I thought it safe not to include you… did you have anything else to include? After all, you ‘sired’ me and have even more Abe XP!
My first DM was a guy I still game with and keep in touch with, by the online handle “Master Epyon.” We played 3e over instant messaging software. The medium colored my perceptions of the game more than Epyon himself. After the very prose-heavy style of gaming we did over IM, I just couldn’t get into playing on a physical table much. It sort of bored me and I became an online-exclusive (for the most part) player. Epyon’s weird (yet awesome) stories and ability to add weird, incongruent, verisimilitude-breaking elements into his games that players would just have to deal with, rubbed off on me impart. Except I cranked it up hardcore. His games were actually serious, whereas most of mine are satirical to extremes.
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Haha, what a great topic. I think you’re first game master and the players you played with influence you a lot. I, unfortunately, do not game with hardly any of the people (except for one) that I used to game with. It seems to me that gamers come and go and real life gets in the way.
I definitely will say this though, the people I game with now vastly influence what I write about on my blog, the types of games that I play and game master, and in general my roleplaying interests.
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Considering my first DM was Dave, and I was inundated with story after story of the Abe days (and now I know Abe and can understand the stories THAT much more), I think there is definitely a lasting impression that gets passed down.
What you touched on in your last paragraph is actually just as important to me, I believe we develop as a DM to emphasize certain differences from our first DM as well. I don’t remember if Dave used to do strange NPC voices when I first started playing, but that was a big deal for me and my players when I first started DMing. The thing that sticks with me the most from Dave’s games is how the overall story elements came together in interesting ways involving the PCs, and if I can emulate any part of that I’ll be quite happy.
I think it’s really entertaining to consider that my first D&D experiences mirror the story you told, except I was in the “newer” (not younger because we were the same age) and less experienced group while you guys had been playing with Abe for at least a year or two.
OMG an article about Abe!
Seriously though, Abe was great and really did influence the way we all viewed what the D&D experience was supposed to be about. Long after Abe had gone, we continued to accept many of his ‘rules’ adaptions as fact (e.g. critical hits and critical failures). Although by the time 3rd edition had rolled around, many of the zanier Abe-isms had gone by the wayside, his legacy still lived on in more subtle ways – for instance in the insane difficulty of some encounters in your game.
I think you are right that everyone’s game, at least for a while, was compared to Abe’s game(s). But after a while, as you and The Game DM’d more, games that other people ran were compared to your games.
I still have the most individual memories from that first game with Abe though. I was there for the infamous “Abe troll” encounter, and it is but one of many memories from my early days of D&D.
Looking back, I think my first DM was secretly working for TSR. One summer while visiting my cousin (who lived in a different city) he asked me if I’d be interested in playing D&D with his friends. I gladly accepted. He then ran us through The Keep on the Broderlands. I was hooked. I was like an addict who had just tasted his first fix. My cousin then “gave” me a set of dice that he no longer used. Now all you need are the books, he said. And it was then I realized that if I planed on playing D&D with my friends when I got home, I’d need the core books. I saved my allowance and picked up second hand copies of the PHB, DMG, and MM. I haven’t looked back since. And I’ve paid it forward by introducing my favourite hobby to at least 20-30 people over the years. If it wasn’t for my cousin I don’t know if I’d ever gotten into RPGs.
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Hahaha, my first DM was this jack*** named Serge. I hate to sound arrogant, but I’d like to believe I learned what NOT to do from just about all of his DMing. I think at one point we were playing Temple of Elemental Evil, and we went to sleep one night, suddenly waking up in his strange homebrew. We were caught in a fortress on some astral plane, imprisoned by the Gith or something, and then we got attacked by vampires and all died. I think I stopped playing for 2 or so years.
The other early experience I had was this one kid at a summer camp who spent 3 weeks of camp preparing us for a D&D game. We learned the rules, made characters, and we excited for almost nothing else for the entire stretch of time.
After one in-game day, we realize no one had bought rations, so the DM just let us all starve. The End.
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My first DM, Jaron, taught me that the rules are the rules until they get in the way. I still remember how he would sigh, and slowly close the book…thats when we knew things were going to get REALLY interesting.
I also learned from him to never let your girlfriend into the game 4 levels higher than the rest of the party 🙂
I learned that people love it when you do voices, even when they are terrible 🙂
I learned that you might win this argument, but the DM will light your arse on fire if you rub it in.
Donny_the_DM´s last post: A short question, but by no means easy…
“The relative difference in ages and less access to D&D books made us more likely to simply accept unusual rules and unexpected story developments as unarguable truth.”
Your mention of this makes me recall when the “elders” made our D&D lives hell as Freshman in high school by introducing that purple dragon thing that would exclusively attack PCs who were being played by Freshman….
I can’t say much about my first GM, the mere inclusion of me into the group disrupted everything because of how unpopular I was in the class and how lucky I was with the dice… so my next session was me running a game and that’s how it is nearly half a lifetime later…
my first DM on the other hand… I played DnD for the first time on Thursday (26th Feb 09) ^_^
Can’t say much either since I spent the session killing people with my warhammer, looking through the Player’s Guide while not engaged in combat and nodding to what I should roll and add…
I wasn’t really influenced by my first DM. Mostly because I only played one game session with him, because a friend of mine had tagged along, and he couldn’t stand her… the next week I showed up and found out that instead of just saying “Dude, don’t come anymore” he had changed the location of the game!
Also, Abe sounds like someone I would LOVE to game with. I almost broke a rib laughing so hard over the shattering scimitar! That would suck so much if it was you, but be so damn funny if it wasn’t!