AD&D The Abandoned Monastery

I started playing Dungeons & Dragons as a DM.  But after a few months of gaming I got the chance to play at school in an AD&D 1st edition game. I found a copy of the map recently (below).  People who played AD&D 1st edition will recall the origin of this map.

Our Game Master let us roll up 1st level characters and had us arrive in a village that needed us to investigate a long abandoned monastery in a swamp. The group was quite large so he had us employ a “caller”.  This is one person who calls out what everyone is doing.  For the first few encounters the Game Master clung to this method even though it was not working.  One player called out everyone’s actions and did not listen to what the players wanted to do. Basically the players only rolled dice.  This was quickly abandoned as the caller repeatedly led our characters into trouble.  I have had a negative opinion of the caller idea ever since and never used it at the gaming table when I was the Game Master.

As you can see from the map the dungeon was a blending of the keyed portions of the sample map in the DMG and the level 1 map from "B1: In Search of the Unknown".  I think they were the only gamebooks the Game Master had.

The Abandoned Monastery Player's Map 1982

I mentioned we were all first level.  Well when all of the characters were down around 1 hit point remaining we had a random encounter with Four Mummies.  Definitely out of our league and we beat a hasty retreat back to the village.