Welcome to Part 2 of Motivations in Roleplaying Game Economies. You can find Part 1 here. In this series we discuss how games can affect the behavior of their players, using Dungeons & Dragons: Basic Set (1981, Ed. Tom Moldvay). Part 2 examines the text of the game and attempts to measure it against player expectations of the game’s systems. Further installments publish weekly on Saturdays. Subscribe to get the updates!
We hope you enjoy the read. It gets pretty gory—both in terms of dissecting games as well as the viscera of many dead D&D characters.
Any game’s economy will motivate its players toward a set of behaviors linked to its concept. But before we delve deeper, we must step back and examine the premise of the game we’re dissecting and assess if its economy is productive or not. Let’s consult the text. From page B4 of the text, What The D&D® Game Is All About:
“Magic is real and heroes venture out on dangerous quests in search of fame and fortune.” This talk of dangerous quests and heroes seems to reinforce our sense that the game seeks to re-enact Beowulf’s adventures. What then does it mean to be a hero in this game? Do its systems create dangerous quests that result in fame and fortune for heroes?
1d6 Is Not Your Friend
Based on a cursory reading of the game text, we detect the first hint that something is amiss when we compare the game’s character health and damage systems to its stated aims. Combat in Dungeons & Dragons: Basic Set is notoriously deadly for level 1 characters. If hit by an attack or spell and reduced to 0 hit points, the character is out of the fight—killed by rule—and most likely out of the game entirely.
Comparing the character classes against the weapon damages, we are inclined to point out that most characters have 6 hit points or less, and most weapons deal 1d6 damage per hit or more. Even the most stalwart cleric, elf or halfling has a 16.666% chance of falling to a blow from a mace, spear, arrow, bolt or short sword. Magic-users and thieves, with their 1d4 hit point range, fare even worse. Only fighters and dwarves have a marginally better chance of survival from such weapons with their 1d8 hit point range. While battles involving a desperate hero against a mother dragon may seem exciting and rewarding to some, the risks are high and even minor failures appear to demand a steep price.
A Heroic Effort
So, if combat has such mortal odds, how likely is it that a newly minted warrior defeats a dragon and claims her hoard?
To quickly explore this idea, let’s use a typical first-level fighter with a robust 8 hit points against a typical white dragon with 24 hit points (the least powerful example in the text). Without getting into the minutiae of the game’s combat system, we can estimate that the most probable outcome is that the white dragon deals at least 10-12 points of damage to the fighter in the first round of combat by using its frost breath, killing the foolish warrior. The end.1
However, maybe the rewards are worth the risk. The system rates the dragon as somewhat valuable for experience point disbursement2—275 + 225 for her breath weapon, according to page B22—but her hoard is worth an astonishing amount. Page B45 states that the average white dragon hoard (treasure type H) is worth 50,000 gold coins which is, in the system currency, 50,000 experience points. A sum that even exceeds the bounds of the basic rulebook, as it only charts progress to 4,000 experience points and 3rd level for fighters.
It seems that Beowulf did quite well for himself after defeating Grendel’s mother, but murder of the owner is not required to gain the experience point value of treasure in Dungeons & Dragons. If a character can steal a sack containing 100 gold pieces, they earn 100 XP without placing their delicate neck in the dragon’s maw. Perhaps Bilbo was running the calculations for how many sacks of gold he would need to extract from Smaug’s hoard to hit second level before the dragon caught wind of what he was up to.
Despite the name on the marquee, wrestling with a dragon is apparently too dangerous a quest for an entry-level character in the game, so let’s look at a more manageable foe for first level characters: goblins. As we noted above, the Dungeons & Dragons: Basic Set system assigns to the typical goblin a value of 5 experience points. For a fighter to earn their requisite 2000 points from fighting goblins they would need to defeat 400 of these poor creatures. Whereas, to earn 2000 experience points from loot requires the character to acquire 2000 gold coins or their equivalent in gems and jewels. 20 sacks containing 100 gold each or 400 goblins, what do you prefer? Some of you, I’m sure, would prefer the glory of battle to sneaking about.
In the next installment we examine what such a glorious undertaking might cost a bold fighter. Subscribe below to follow along and get the next installment.
Not quite. If we squint, there’s an improbable path to victory that looks something like this:
The fighter surprises the dragon, causing it to lose its first action. In the first round of combat, the fighter then scores a hit on the dragon and delivers maximum damage for his sword: 8 points of damage, reducing the dragon from 24 to 16 hit points. As it is surprised, by rule the dragon is not allowed to respond this round. In the second round, the fighter wins the initiative and lands another blow delivering another maximum 8 points of damage, reducing the dragon to 8 hit points. At this point, the dragon employs its frost breath against which the fighter must make a saving throw or suffer 8 points of damage. In this unlikely example, they succeed and suffer only 4 points of damage, leaving them with 4 HP remaining. In the third round the fighter must again win initiative and hit the dragon and deliver at least 2 points of damage, but may also win outright by delivering another maximal damage blow of 8 points. If they achieve the minimum, they then must pass another saving throw against breath weapons, ensuring they suffer only 3 points of damage, leaving them with 1 HP remaining. If combat drags on into the fourth round, the fighter has reached yet another critical juncture: they must again win initiative and must again score a hit and must deliver enough damage to slay the dragon. The likelihood of this scenario playing out is vanishingly small. Winning initiative four times in a row gives perilous odds: 5.88% (1/16) and then the chance of rolling 8 points of damage three times in a row is .2%. Perhaps Beowulf was not a level 1 fighter.
Of course should they succeed at this impossible task, the fighter would only need to defeat three more dragons to earn enough experience points to achieve second level.