✡✡✡✡✡✡✡Samuel M. Wright ✡✡✡✡✡✡✡

In my original D&D campaign (1974-77), one of the dungeonmasters decided he wanted an all-evil campaign. We figured out XP and advancement for kobolds, goblins, orcs, hobgoblins, and gnolls. Everyone's first character was a gnoll. But if you got killed, your next character was only a hobgoblin, which was objectively inferior (getting only 1+1 hit dice per level, instead of 2 like a gnoll). Then if you died again, you had to be an orc. And so forth till you bottomed out at kobold. This meant that players who'd survived longer not only had higher level characters, but a big hit dice advantage. A 6th level hobgoblin had 6+6 hit dice. A 6th level goblin had 6 MINUS-6 hit dice. Ugh. Since everyone was evil, we mercilessly bullied each other. When it got too bad, the weaker characters banded together against the strong ones. Despite the fact we were all fighters (the only character class available to goblinoids, or "giant class" humanoids as the original book categorized them), we got to a decently high level. It helped that we all had darkvision and could open every dungeon door automatically (says so in the rules), and we could talk to most of the monsters in the dungeon. The campaign ended when after a heated fight, we found a suit of +5 magic plate armor. Naturally, the highest-ranking player, a 13th level Hobgoblin, claimed it for himself. The entire rest of the party immediately joined together against this, because if the hobgoblin had +5 plate, he would be unstoppable and our existence would be intolerable. Basically, he'd take ALL the treasure from now on. So began the final battle. The 13th level hobgoblin vs. everyone else. I think the next-highest level was a 9th level orc (not me). The weakest was a 4th level kobold. Anyway the hobgoblin rationally focussed on killing the lower-level enemies first, because all of us did the same damage when we hit, so killing us reduced his incoming damage. Pretty soon, everyone was dead except for the hobgoblin and the orc. The orc was almost unscathed, because the hobgoblin had been finishing off the rabble. The fight seemed pretty even. The hobgoblin had fewer hit points by then, but he had a better THAC0. Well, the fight had been going on for 30 combat rounds when the gamemaster rolled for a random encounter (once every 10 rounds, like it says in the book) and got one. A gigantic hydra walked into the room. Our then house-rules for hydras made them specially deadly, and only if both surviving fighters teamed up would they have a chance against it. They looked at each other. Then they looked at the hydra. Then back at each other. All in real time you understand. Then they literally shrugged, and went back to bashing each other. The hydra was in its glory, randomly striking at both opponents while being mainly ignored. Both characters died. It was glorious, and we did not start up the "evil" campaign again, because it had ended perfectly. True story from the dark ages of D&D.