Yeah, ok, maybe it’s just me.  But first level for us was all about avoiding the dice.  It was about luring the goblins into slicks of lamp oil, and then lighting them ablaze.  Or even better, trapping them between the blazing oil and the gelatinous cube.  Or bribing the orcs to fight the goblins for us.  If you had to go to dice, it meant someone was likely to die.  So you did everything you could to avoid it.

That’s not what most folks think of as D&D these days, but back before computer games, when our models were Harryhausen movies and Norse myths, lateral-thinking our way past the goblins rather than duking it out with them seemed the obvious way to go.

I only started playing RPGs in 1979 with AD&D so I never saw the original. The game was kinda like a walk back in time. The references to DSOM and pull-tab sodas completed the scene perfectly. I’d be up for playing again.

And it wasn’t quite a TPK…more like a TKO. Two of us died, two of us are stabilized at 0 hp and were captured by the goblins and one escaped. So there’s a chance we can recover – with the help of a rescue team. We got some phat l00t too, if we could escape we stand a good chance of leveling up.

In retrospect, I think we should have done it. Had characters survived, we’d be more inclined to play again.

And adding/suggesting new rules to the Referee isn’t a bad way to go. It’s changing the way the game plays so it fits your group. Customization. But it is nice to keep clear your headspace of all of them while visualizing play.

And you don’t need to sit out when your character dies. Or turns into a frog. It only takes 5 minutes to make a new PC. It’s keeping them alive that is the challenge. High level means something.