WIL: The Learning Curve

What I Learned... today, in our AD&D game, I learned that the learning curve is steeper some days than others. Today we all learned that it's possible to be over-cautious, that the risk is worth taking (we hope,) and that sometimes it's tough to get into gear.

The Situation:
- We made our second (and third) foray into the ruins near the keep
- Set a standard operation for checking doors, for crawling down the corridors, etc
- Chose a direction to go, and headed out

The Problems:
- We took way too much time at doors
- We took too much time discussing which direction to go
- We took too much time debating spiking doors open
- We took too much time debating strategy for fights (between rounds)
- We took too much time for other stuff

Since all of us are new to AD&D, after the game the DM shared some advice. He informed us that this level of the dungeon is only 3-4 sheets of paper mapped out--we have just barely mapped over one page of that in two sessions, a total of about 8 hours of play.
Our total treasure hall? A dozen silver spoons, less than 1gp in miscellaneous coins, and (finally) an emerald worth ~1,000gp.

Yeah, we are hardcore... hardcore broke.

So, what's the solution? We have to move quicker. Personally, I think we're moving too slowly (as is evidenced by "The Problems" above, hah!)

Perhaps we're all struck with fear of the "old school challenge level" and the constant risk of death. I don't know. Personally, I almost died at the end of the day. As a player, though, I don't care if my characters die. I've taken comfort in the fact that I'll be able to play another character, so the fun will continue no matter what. Yes, I am attached to the class I'm playing, but hey, death comes to us all.

Now, as I reflect, I truly believe that we will make much faster progress, as we are all starting to truly understand how things work.
We've decided to make much more of an effort to avoid melee combat, and to twist the environment to our advantage against our foes. It's been tough for us coming from modern game backgrounds to see that we have SO MANY OPTIONS. Time to shift gears.

In the end, we all had fun. A lot. The beauty of gaming is in the fact that, no matter what, if you're with good people, learning to play better, you're probably going to have fun.