Adventurous players may find themselves curious to play the first CRPGs from the 70s. Upon playing these games they may question the obsession with breaking down doors.
The Dungeon on the PLATO system from 1975 is thought to be the first CRPG. Shocking no-one this game is all about exploring a dungeon. You can move your character around the dungeon with the keyboard and as you explore the corridors you’ll eventually encounter a door. Can you use the movement keys to walk through a door? No.
Doors must be “broken through” with the B key.
You might think you could walk through the door after you’d broken it. Wrong. You have to break through it again. The only way to pass through a door is by breaking it. Even worse breaking down a door is an action that can fail. This really slows down play.
Ok, that’s weird, but a lot of things were weird in the early days of CRPGs, things needed trying out. But this weirdness is pervasive, it’s in many, many early computer games. Only Avatar in 1979 manages to buck this trend. But overall door kicking persists far later than in should, including such games as the seminal Wizardry: Proving Ground of the Mad Overlord in 1981 and many of it’s successors.
But why?
Why
Is your adventurer door dyslexic? Is the door handle an arcane mystery to him; it’s invocation a lost lore? No, it’s D&D’s fault. The original D&D released in 1974, it’s the first role-playing game and therefore it has some odd content.
The original D&D came with three books, the third is named “The Underworld and Wilderness Adventures” and here is what it has to say about doors:
Generally, doors will not open by turning the handle or by a push. Doors must be forced open by strength, a roll of a 1 or 2 indicating the door opens, although smaller and lighter characters may be required to roll a 1 to open doors. There can be up to three characters attempting to force open a door, but this will disallow them rapid reaction to anything awaiting them on the other side.
- The Underworld and Wilderness Adventures booklet
Early D&D was more combat and loot focused than later iterations. Much of the ruleset was inherited from war gaming. Players got together around a table to go from place to place killing monsters. In this monster death-squad focused framing, doors have a significance above that of daily life. If the players bursts through a door they may take any monsters in the room behind by surprise and gain the upper-hand in combat. On the other-hand if they take an hour bashing the door down this may draw the attention of monsters and also give them time to set up an ambush.
In addition to surprise mechanics, time was also important in early D&D. Generally a games master would make use of two monsters types:
- Fixed or Keyed Monsters - a dragon guarding treasure in a specific room for instance
- Wandering monsters - random monsters. As game time passed the games master would occasionally roll dice to see if a random monster had discovered the party.
Generally the party wanted to defeat keyed monster because there was a great chance of good quality loot. The price of loot in early D&D could be translated directly into experience points, so it was highly valued by players. Whereas a wandering monster has little to no loot and therefore presented a high-risk, low payoff event that the party would prefer to avoid. By making the player eat up time messing with doors the game increased the chances of these random encounters.
Also note how the rules around doors applied differently to monsters, compared to players.
Doors will automatically open for monsters, unless they are held shut against them by characters. Doors can be wedged open by means of spikes, but there is a one-third chance (die 5-6) that the spike will slip and the door will shut
- The Underworld and Wilderness Adventures booklet
One way to interpret these weird door rules is that D&D is a tabletop game and theses rules were a contrivance by the designer for some debatable design reason. However there is another interpretation presented by Jason Cone in an booklet he published about playing original D&D called Philotomy’s OD&D Musings.
The Dungeon as an Entity
A close reading of the original ruleset gives the impression that the dungeon itself works against the player.
Most doors will automatically close, despite the difficulty in opening them.
What door works this way? The party have physically broken the door down but the moment they step through - it’s back, restored and closed again. There’s a certain amount of magical realism here. It’s led some commentators to suggest that the dungeons in the game represent some alternate mythic underworld reality aka a Mythic Underworld.
a place where the normal laws of reality may not apply, and may be bent, warped, or broken. Not merely an underground site or a lair, not sane, the underworld gnaws on the physical world like some chaotic cancer. It is inimical to men; the dungeon, itself, opposes and obstructs the adventurers brave enough to explore it. For example, consider the OD&D approach to doors and to vision in the underworld.
- PHILOTOMY’S MUSINGS. Jason Cone, 2007.
Regardless of the truth or interpretation, doors are one of many odd rulesets lurking in the original edition of the game.
CRPGS and Doors
Ok, so now we know. The computer games of old mindlessly copied the table top game. Does this rule add anything to 99% of computer games? No. Occasionally locked, jammed or trapped doors could be interesting, but endlessly breaking down every door you encounter - not so much.
As a specific game mechanics lesson “don’t make the player break through every door” is an excellent one to take to heart. But the larger lesson here is “just because D&D does something doesn’t mean you should too”, there’s so much jank in so many games (hello THAC0) because they copy game rules for a tabletop roleplaying game. These two modes of play are not equivalent.
These days you see this less, though there are still places that insist on aping D&D like it’s a holy work. It’s a lesson as developers we’ve just about learned, even if it did take a couple of decades.