between the times when the oceans drank Atlantis

Thither came Conan, a hipster, a player of tenor sax, destined to find work at a promising start-up, most recent issue of The Stranger in hand, finally getting his gigantic melancholies and gigantic mirths under control with medication and regular therapy, to tread the jeweled coffeeshops of the northwest beneath his Teva'd feet.

It is I, his cronicular chronometer biographer who tells you of his saga. Let me tell thee of the tales of high adventure!

THUMP THUMP BA DUMP BA DUMP THUMP THUMP BA DUMP BA DUMP

DUM! DUM! DUM DEEDLEDEE DA, DA DUM! DUM! DUM! DUM DEEDLEDEE DA, DA DUM?

Retro gaming blather

Here's an AD&D rule which I didn't know about until yesterday;

Zombies always strike last in every round.

It's tucked in the description along with the way they're immune to sleep, charm, hold and all cold-based spells. Who thinks sleep or charm might work on a shambling corpse anyway?

Turning the way-back machine to 1985, a magic-user who has only a very limited number of spells in their spellbook and might not be lucky enough to have more offensive stuff to fling than those. Not a 10-12 level powerhouse, but those guys aren't going to be fighting zombies anyway. The PHB doesn't give me a limit on clerics Turning Undead, but even a 4th level cleric can automatically turn a zombie - which suggests zombies are designed as opponents for 1-3 level characters anyway. At 2nd level, an AD&D party's total hit points wind up being somewhere around 48(using a vaguely-guessed average of 19 Fighter + 9 Thief + 14 Cleric + 6 Magic-User); Cleric and Magic-User have three spells each they can toss out and the Cleric's chance of turning zombies is 50-50 (10); while they're tossing spells/attempting to turn the melee guys are tossing out 2d8 worth of damage each round if they're lucky; a rough average zombie encounter (3d6 appearing) is 9 zombies with 8 hp each, each also doing 1d8 worth of damage if they hit.

A low level TPK from zombies is actually possible.

By the way, it took me a ridiculous amount of time to dig through the books looking this stuff up. I mostly have 1e books as kind of a totemic/fetish item, a reminder of my origins as a dweeb. I'd practically forgotten how obscure they actually are to use. I'm now tempted to create a bumper sticker which says If you can read the Player's Handbook, thank a teacher. If you can actually figure out the rules in the Player's Handbook on your own, thank a graphic designer. Something like that.

Another thing I was thinking about; back in the day I don't remember facing zombies (skeletons, yes). Together with the mimic illustration that got me thinking about Dungeons and Dragons Monsters I've Never Encountered. These include some pretty big names. Beholders, rust monsters, mimics, githyanki. I have encountered a few big names (otyugh) and some of the big iconic monsters I've faced were in relatively recent games run or designer by older GMs (roper, crypt thing, bullette). I didn't have that much access to 1e games, I have no real 2nd ed experience because this was about the time everyone was playing White Wolf, so most of my D&D time has actually been logged on 3/3.5/Pathfinder as a nominal adult. Wow. That's a revelation. I'm going to assume that there are a lot of people who faced this stuff during an AD&D-heavy period in Wisconsin, Berkeley, USAF bases in Europe, etc.

But now I'm wondering whether there's a fair chunk of classic D&D big name monsters which most players have encountered once if at all.