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🎲🐉 Was Early D&D Really as Dark as We Remember?

Daddy Rolled a 1

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Early Dungeons & Dragons had deadly monsters, fragile characters, dangerous wilderness, demons, devils, and dungeons where one bad decision could end an adventure. From Original D&D and B/X to AD&D and the TSR campaign settings that followed, danger was built into the experience. But does that mean early D&D was actually designed to be dark, grim, or hopeless?

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This video takes a closer look at what made TSR-era D&D feel dangerous, beginning with the fantasy fiction that helped inspire the game, including Gary Gygax's Appendix N, Robert E. Howard's Conan, Fritz Leiber's Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser, Jack Vance, and Poul Anderson. From there, I look at how early D&D rules reinforced that world through fragile characters, deadly encounters, exploration, wilderness travel, reaction and morale rules, hirelings and retainers, and strongholds, followers, and domain play.

I also look at how TSR campaign settings such as Greyhawk, Dragonlance, Forgotten Realms, Spelljammer, and Ravenloft emphasized different parts of that fantasy experience before Dark Sun pushed D&D in a much harsher direction. With Dark Sun returning and Greyhawk once again being described as gritty and “grim dark,” it’s worth looking back at what those words actually mean. Was old-school D&D really about darkness and despair, or have danger, horror, lethality, and hopelessness become mixed together in the way we remember early D&D?

Early D&D's mix of danger, exploration, and player choice shows up in many parts of the game's history. If you'd like to keep exploring some of the ideas from this documentary, here are three videos you might enjoy:

➡️ 🎲🐉Why Dark Sun Was D&D's Most Brutal Setting: 🎲🐉Why Dark Sun Was D&D's Most Brutal Setting
➡️🎲🐉Why Early D&D Didn’t Try to Be Fair:
🎲🐉Why Early D&D Didn’t Try to Be Fair
➡️ 🎲🐉How Dungeons Actually Worked in Early D&D:
🎲🐉How Dungeons Actually Worked in Early D&D

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TIMESTAMPS
0:00 Introduction
0:51 Was Old D&D Really Dark?
4:56 What Does "Dark" Mean?
7:04 The Fiction That Inspired D&D
11:37 Conan and Fafhrd & the Gray Mouser
21:43 How the Rules Shaped the Game
29:46 Civilizations & the Wilderness
34:50 Strongholds, Followers, and Domains
40:07 How D&D's Worlds Changed
48:48 Ravenloft and D&D Horror
53:25 Dark Sun Changes the Formula
1:06:08 What Made Athas Different
1:18:14 So Was Early D&D Dark?
1:35:41 Bonus Content

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20 Comments

@daddyrolleda1 Creator 1 month ago Pinned

I'm especially curious to hear from those of you who played D&D during the TSR years: 𝗱𝗶𝗱 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗴𝗮𝗺𝗲 𝗮𝗰𝘁𝘂𝗮𝗹𝗹𝘆 𝗳𝗲𝗲𝗹 "𝗱𝗮𝗿𝗸" 𝘁𝗼 𝘆𝗼𝘂 𝗮𝘁 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝘁𝗶𝗺𝗲?

And regardless of when you started playing, where do you draw the line between a game being dangerous, deadly, frightening, or genuinely dark? I'd love to hear how you think about the distinction, especially if your experience at the table was different from mine.

Early D&D's mix of danger, exploration, and player choice shows up in a lot of other parts of the game's history. If you'd like to keep exploring some of the ideas from this documentary, here are three videos you might enjoy:

➡ 🎲🐉Why Dark Sun Was D&D's Most Brutal Setting: https://youtu.be/AVUgJ4icQfo

➡🎲🐉Why Early D&D Didn’t Try to Be Fair: https://youtu.be/k3xCKeei-iA

➡ 🎲🐉How Dungeons Actually Worked in Early D&D: https://youtu.be/lVcPLnZBg3s

@atomicbarbarian7372 1 month ago

No two tables played the same way. The tone depended entirely on the DM and their interpretation of the setting- usually informed by what fiction they were reading.

@mooch-56 1 month ago

I played in my friend’s basement so dungeon delving felt even more dark and gritty.

@NogardCodesmith 1 month ago

What made early D&D feel so dark?
Maybe it was because the room was only being lit by blacklight and a lava lamp.

@MitchellDowns 1 month ago

Come for the darkness, stay for the illumination.

@wellofmanyworlds 1 month ago

Having started playing in 1980... I never felt like D&D was Grimdark. It felt more.like a world.of adventure, where one bad step could lead to your characters death. But playing smart kept characters alive and allowed you to get to high levels. And though many could die in the low levels, I had many who made it to high levels.

@thorshammer8033 1 month ago (edited)

It was unforgiving of mistakes.

Barbarians try's flying tackle off balcony in tavern. Rolls a 1. Smashes table, out of action.

Yet same Barbarian later makes perception check on shape shifted green dragon. Suprises it, rolls double 20s on his attacks, takes out most of its hp before combat starts.

These events are still spoken of by my player group 30 years later.

Later was beheaded by a drow with vorpal blade.
RIP Bongo, bartender, exotic dancer, dragon slayer.

@NecromancyForKids 1 month ago

I mentioned this on someone else's Dark Sun video, but it looks like WotC is going for cartoonish brutality and gore over realistic brutal survival and grey morality.

@MikeCBaker 1 month ago

Our games -- AT THE TABLE circa 1976 - 1982 -- were very regularly all over the emotional spectrum. Absolutely Silly all the way "down" through the horrors of total war into the horrors of existential erasure. It was one of the absolute strengths of the game system, dudes & dudettes ...

@johnhickman8391 1 month ago

0:48 if your DM did it right, it was.

@joshuarichardson6529 1 month ago

Okay, I'm gping to say something strange: D&D was a buffet, not a meal.

By this I mean the ingredients were there for light-hearted romps, high adventure, gritty sword and sorcery, or occult horror of the worst sort. The group that came to the table decided what they'd consume, how dark or deadly the game would be, what the theme of their adventures would be.

People keep forgetting that AD&D had both the Cthulu mythos and the Flumpf. That's as polar opposite as you can get.

@UnmanWeston 1 month ago (edited)

I don't remember ANY darkness, even for Tomb of Horrors. It was just a super exciting and fun. Sometimes dark things happened, but it was nothing like CoC. Vampires or Beholders and Wraiths were cool and kind of creepy, but the game was always just fun. (I'm talking about tone. If I were to pick a term to describe playing in the 80s it would be "adrenaline rush," because no one, not even the DM really knew what was going to happen.)

I probably play B/X with a little more darkness today than I did as an optimistic teenager, but hope still drives the game: hope for survival, hope for mysteries, hope for gold, hope for XP.

@bigbadjimmysweet 1 month ago

For German names like Leiber, when e and i go walking, the last one does the talking.

@TimBrown-e9l 1 month ago (edited)

For me it was all about the graph paper, designing dungeons, rolling octagon dice, and fighting goblins, or trolls and racking up experience points. Oh and the cool illustrations in the dungeon manual and the modules.

@Marcus-p5i5s 1 month ago

Greyhawk didn't have a dark feel. It was a spectrum of different lands. I played from Day 1,

@echolepsy 1 month ago

In the 80s when I played I remember the AD&D world as being quite complex. It could evoke scary, dark, gritty, light, beautiful, mysterious, uncanny, sublime or any number of different feelings. This was why I was so drawn to it.

@kytaem 1 month ago

My group didn't do world building and we didn't have themes. Our sessions were all "you meet at an inn..." and we ran gauntlets of traps and monsters in the search for treasure. The tactical side is what we did the most of

@JohnnyBrewer68 1 month ago

I'm excited to see that Martin's weekly video is up! I'll be listening to it in the car on the way home. Thanks again, Martin!

@TheRealPK77 14 hours ago

Man, I'm so glad I discovered your channel, Martin. Gives me my weekly dose of vintage D&D; I feel like we're about the same age and have a similar frame of reference. Three of my 5 kids play modern 5E D&D, and I love sending them your vids to show them the history of the game they love.

@rattlerd 1 month ago

Maybe taking a chance by commenting before I’ve watched the video, but wanted to contribute an early comment for the algorithm – – I read an observation that Greyhawk was a “evil ascendant” world while forgotten realms was the opposite. That really rang true to me and made me realize why Greyhawk was more interesting as a setting.