Happy Halloween

Edit: You may prefer...

Nightwick Abbey ConstantCon (Session 1?)

Last I ran Nightwick Abbey on G+ for two ConstantCon players and my wife.  I thought I would have three players plus an old friend of mine, but one of the players said he hadn't used G+ before so I told my wife to make a character just in case.*  As it happened, both that player and my old friend couldn't make the game.  To make up for it I gave the players two free men-at-arms.

It lasted only about half an hour longer than my face to face sessions with the Knoxville group, but we got much more playing done because we didn't spend as much time bullshitting.  I don't mind bullshitting. It's part of the game, but it is nice when you can keep on task sometimes.

The characters were Rando the Halfling (from Wessex) and Sigmar the Viking (who I believe was made especially for this game), Zebina the Cleric, and Dominic the Chartreuse.

Here are some random bullet-pointed notes to summarize the game...

• The party went on three separate expeditions.  Two ended rather badly.
• Most of the monsters they encountered were of the undead variety, but there were some human-skin clad berserk devil-worshipers.
• Zebina died on the second excursion and so my wife played a character I had made for my friend (Dominic).
• We jokingly decided that this version of Nightwick Abbey was somewhere in 12th Century Transylvania because one of the characters was a Viking and the other was from Jeff's Wessex game.
• Apparently cultists in medieval Transylvania spoke pig Latin.  Who knew?
• The session was light on monetary treasure, but they found two magic swords:  Man-Killer, a +1 lifedrinker, and Stabber, a +1 short sword.  

I may post a more full write up later, but my memory is a bit hazy at the moment.  I think it was a good session, though I was a bit mush mouthed at times and at one point I forgot what a fresco is. 

I put the "(Session 1?)" up there not because I'm thinking of running it again with the same people, but because I enjoyed it enough to possibly run it in a manner similar to what Jeff does with Wessex (a rotating pool of players).  More on that later.

Still Looking for Players

There are still two slots open for Saturday's G+ game.  Shoot me an email if you're interested.

Constantcon Nightwick Abbey Session

In honor of Halloween, I've decided to run a one shot consisting of the first level of Nightwick Abbey on October 29th, 7:00-11:00pm EST.  If you're interested, email me at evanDOTvanDOTelkinsATgmailDOTcom, though I can only take four players.

You can find the the FLAILSNAILS conversions for the Dark Country here.

Edit: the first level of Nightwick Abbey is designed for first level characters, but anything through third level should be fine.

Lazy Post: Music of the Dark Country

And the silly one:

Nightwick Abbey in Hindsight Part 4

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Now comes the fourth and final part of my retrospective on the Nightwick Campaign.  While it was rather short, only about 25 sessions, It was the culmination of ideas that extended back at least to 2008.  The name Nightwick originally belonged to a castle on a map I made for a campaign I never ran.

When all of this OSR stuff was still starting up, my players were divided between die hard 3.x fans and die hard 4e fans.  All of us began gaming early in my highschool career, which was the heyday of 3.5.  I mentioned in my first post that some rather peculiar circumstances led me to be interested in OSD&D despite the fact that I did not spend my formative years playing it.  The OSR added some fuel to this fire, and I had already tried to get them into OSD&D with a failed Castles & Crusades Wilderlands campaign, but the rest of my group found my fascination with it rather alien.

I would, as I still do, make hex maps for games I would ultimately never run since I mostly ran 4e in a heavily modified version of the Wilderlands at that point.  While making one I used a random generator to determine some settlement names.  One of the results was Nightwick Castle.  I thought the name was cool, so I kept it in my mind for future use.

Then one day I was wasting time between college classes, listening to Sabbath and looking at OSD&D blogs.    The particular song was "Black Sabbath" from their first album, and I happened to be in the middle of it when I saw this picture:

Now, I  had seen that cover 1,000 times before, but something about the juxtaposition of the spooky castle, the devil music, and my boredom inspired me.  I began to think about what kind of setting that castle would exist in, and I remembered an intro to a computer game I enjoyed.

The line at the end "must face the demons it unleashed" really got my brain going.  I imagined the milieu being essentially a stand in for the Baltic, with the Sword Brothers replacing their earthly namesake.  At various periods I thought of them as either being a crazed death cult (for a BRP game) or an army of vampires (for an abortive 4e version of Castlevania).  As my regular readers will already know, I eventually decided that the Sword Brothers no longer existed, having been quashed long ago by those who realized how evil they truly were.

I decided to revive the name Nightwick Castle, but I also combined it with some old notes I had for another dungeon.  That other dungeon was also centered around a group of warrior monks who were corrupted by some evil power.  That dungeon was my write up of Gardmoore Abbey (sp?).  It's a small dot in the 4e DMG's map, and I can't check the information contained therein since I recently sold off most of my 4e books.  I decided to smoosh the names together giving me Nightwick Abbey.

Over time I was able to wear my group down and convince them to let me run the setting using Swords & Wizardry.  Those early sessions didn't use Nightwick Village, Lichegate, and the Abbey.  Rather, I set it in an area that was somewhere near the abbey.  It consisted of Hommlet sans the moat house which I replaced with Dyson Logos's The Necromancer's Garden, which I stocked with heavily reflavored monsters and demons.  

Eventually the group changed to WFRP 2e, which most of us were happy with and the Nightwick campaign area (which had no name besides Nightwick at that point) went into hibernation.  It only exited its cave when I moved to Knoxville and started this blog.  The rest of its history can more or less be seen by reading my old entries.  I'm not really sure at what point I dropped my Baltic setting and replaced it with this, but the switch to a Transylvania inspired landscape allowed me to keep the themes of the setting and gave me more mountains.  I like mountains.

One final note: the name The Dark Country is actually a quote from the really shitty movie Howling 2: Your Sister is a Werewolf.  When the protagonists are leaving to head to Transylvania, Christopher Lee referred to it as the Dark Country.  I thought that sounded pretty cool.

Edit:  I should also note that the Halloween season has caused me to miss the Dark Country something fierce.

Greyhawk Farms Redux

click to embiggen

The above map only shows the settlements the PCs would be vaguely aware of.  This time, I stocked the map using a combination of methods.  First, I used my old standby the Welsh Piper's Hex Based Campaign Design system.  I decided that the major settlements would all be cities while minor settlements will all be towns instead of villages.  I got one major settlement (which was obviously going to be Greyhawk) and two minor ones.  I determined their populations using the system in the Greyhawk folio.

Now I wanted to determine where the farmland was.  It seemed like it would be difficult to wed the Hex Based Campaign Design system with the Welsh Piper's equally excellent Medieval Demographics tool.  Instead, I decided to use Rob Conley's figures for use with the Wilderlands.  Since his numbers were largely based on Judges Guild material, I figured they'd be a better fit for a more fantastic setting like Greyhawk.  I figured out the number of 5 mile hexes needed to feed the populations of each of the above settlements.  Then I just placed that many hexes of farmland around each settlement.  

Now, the overly meticulous regular readers may think to themselves "but Evan, wouldn't the hexes on this map be 6 miles, not 5?"  Right you are!  However, I'm lazy and I figured it was better to skew high and assume that the people of Greyhawk, Wizard's Bridge, and Blackleg sold the excess or used it to feed the men stationed at Portsmouth Castle.  

This method is not precise by any means, but it makes slightly more sense than just having an isolated settlement with no farmland whatsoever.  It also allows me to maintain a certain amount of wildness to the setting, which I enjoy.

Greyhawk Districts: The Thieves' Quarter

The Gem of the Flanaess has few rivals in terms of size, prosperity, or majesty.  To assume that a city possessing such wealth and diversity is homogeneous would be folly.  Its streets are, to a new comer, a incomprehensible maze of taverns, tenements, and temples.  However, to the learned observer there is some order to this chaos.  Natives and citizens of Greyhawk broadly recognize ten districts.  Two of these create what is known as the "Old City."  This is the first in a series of posts that will detail each of these as they develop through play.

The Thieves' Quarter (Old City)

One of the two Old City districts, the other being the Slums, the Thieves' Quarter is only slightly more affluent than its neighbor.  The structures here are constructed with a surprising amount of stone, as is the case with the rest of the Old City.  This was done long ago to prevent the cramped buildings from succumbing to fire.  This construction also has the unfortunate effect of being difficult to rebuild and repair, and as such much of the district is in shambles.  The crowded streets make the treatment of sewage difficult, and the small streets make it almost impossible to work in greats that would allow rainwater to take the waste with it.  This problem has lead the Dung Gatherer's Guild to set up their guild house in the Thieves' Quarter.  That way they can more easily get access to the stagnant crap they can sell as fertilizer.

The Thieves' Guild is, rather obviously, rumored to keep its guildhouse somewhere in this district, though only members know its exact location.

The Green Griffin Inn used to be the primary meeting place for the various skullduggers and ne'er-do-wells seeking employment within Greyhawk's walls; however, the management recently made a deal with a group of adventurers that precludes their renting rooms to others.  The bar is still open, but most self respecting leg-breakers wouldn't be caught dead in the place.  "Those assholes have killed the atmosphere."  Boris the bloated bartender serves drinks and provides bread, meat, and "ain't meat" to patrons.  He is known for occasionally belching mysterious substances onto the already unappealing food on occasion.  Boris also runs the establishment, though no one is sure whether or not he is the actual owner.

The Temple of Kos as lies within the Thieves' Quarter.  While not the only temple here, it is certainly the largest.  Built by the Suloise founders of the city long before the settlement obtained the name Greyhawk, the temple resembles nothing so much as a large, stone mead hall.  Despite its size, the number of worshipers it attracts today is relatively small. Only about seventy attend the sacrifices, though in tough times -- such as war or famine -- many more pay him so that he might be placated and delay whatever doom he has in store for them.  These rituals are done twice a day, once at noon and once at midnight.  Usually only a dove or game bird is sacrificed.  It has been centuries since their sacrificial knife has know the taste of human blood.

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That is it for now.  I'm currently using a modified version of Zak's Urbancrawl system.  I tend to alter the results in order to make each district of the city possess a unique character.  The above is only what has been detailed through the party's travels in the city, and there are many more locations that have yet to be detailed.  Technically, the Temple of Kos has not been seen at the table, but my wife's character is a shieldmaiden of Kos and so I thought it would be necessary to have some idea what the temple is like.

Nightwick Village Map

I did a stupid thing and made it a tad too big for blogger.  Here is the key.

It doesn't quite match up with some of the events of the campaign, since I used a different map, but its good enough for my future purposes and it certainly looks nicer.

Greyhawk Session 5

At first I thought I'd lost my co-DM, but apparently he's made arrangements to be able to stay in the group.  As such we had a full group of players so the party consisted of...

Synecdoche -- an unlucky dwarf with a strange accent
Leerc -- a stoic fighting-elf
Nilrem -- a sinister wizard
Slimey -- a mischievous thief
Akzey -- a shieldmaiden of Kos, God of Dooms
as well as their small force of hirelings and henchmen

They began by meeting on an overcast Patchwall day in the Green Griffin Inn.  This was Starday, which was the day they had agreed to go into the dungeon, and so they left the Griffin's smoke-filled chambers and went out into the Thieves' Quarter of the Old City.  Before passing into the Warrens -- the local name for the East Side -- they ran into a group of well dressed men who seemed to be protesting.  They asked what was going on, leading to a few "Occupy Greyhawk" jokes,  and found out that the Dung Gatherers' Guild wanted a place on the ruling council.

The party found it odd that the Dung Gatherers were dressed so nicely, but not missing an opportunity to cause havoc Nilrem and Slimey attempted to coax the protesters to riot.  As they were doing so, a noble and his retinue of toadies and armed thugs appeared on the scene.  His chief sycophant announced that he was the most gracious of all men, and so Synecdoche asked for a small donation.  Taking the patchy-bearded dwarf for a beggar the noble Lord Thirston, gave him a few pieces of silver.

Slimey decided to sling some filth from the street onto the noble lord, prompting the Dung Gatherers to join in.  Soon rocks, shells, and other hard objects were being chucked at the noble and his retinue.  Lord Thirston was knocked on the head, and immediately his own toadies began removing his valuables from his person.  Afterwards they began to battle the Dung Gathers as the party attempted to leave the scene.

They passed by a number of guardsmen heading out of the Warrens and towards the skirmish.  Slimey looked for their guardhouse, and was extremely disappointed to find that 14 guards had stayed to hold down the fort.  With that, they made their way through the Warrens, out of Castlegate, and to Castle Greyhawk.

Very little exploration occurred.  They decided to peak down a tunnel they had not ventured down yet.  They were confronted by a long hallway with several doors.  Slimey kicked one open to find that it was a small, bare alcove.  The party searched this for secret exits but found nothing.  Nilrem, growing impatient with his meandering partners, opened the next door.  Unfortunately for him the room beyond possessed several poisonous centipedes.  These crawled up his cloak and injected him with their terrible poison.  He made all of his saves except the last one, and with his dying breath uttered "Pazuzu... Pazuzu... Pazuzu..."

I rolled to see if the demon prince appeared and got a 10 on a %.  Technically this was too high, but due to it being his dying words I ruled that if I got a 1 on a 1d6 he would appear.  I did.  Soon the 7' demon was staring them in the face and demanding to know who had summoned him.  Akzey and the hirelings and henchmen fled to the exit as quickly as possible.  Synecdoche meekly motioned towards the body of Nilrem, which the demon lord took and disappeared in a puff of smoke.

I then checked to see if any monsters came to investigate the noise.  Strangely, four skeletons did so.  The three remaining party members engaged them in a fierce battle, but Synecdoche was hindered by his lack of a blunt weapon.  Leerc was knocked unconscious by one of them, but Slimey and Synecdoche were able to defeat the remaining ones in time to stabilize him and return to town.

I wasn't feeling very well, so we agreed to end it a bit early.  Before we left, I managed to get the players to divide up our Greyhawk map among themselves.  My wife took the North East corner because she wanted to detail a dungeon in Rift Canyon.  My co-DM took Dyvers.  Nilrem's player took the area around Verbobonc, since he wished to run the Temple of Elemental Evil or a homebrewed version thereof.  Finally, Chris of the Polyhedral Dicebag took a section of the Bright Desert.  Slimey's player said that he would only take a section if it could be the Pathfinder or 3.5 section.

This wasn't really my best session, and I think my co-DM was a bit miffed that I allowed the extra chance for Pazuzu to rear his misshapen head.  Slimey's player has also expressed dissatisfaction with the "dungeon" as a concept, preferring a "story;"  however, Chris seems always to want to skip to the dungeon parts each session.  Still, it wasn't a terrible session, and I did have fun.

Greyhawk Session 4

Sadly, it looks like Xel’s player will have to indefinitely leave the group due to his work schedule, but we had a full complement of our other players so this delves roster included:

Akzey, a shieldmaiden of Kos

Leerc, a stoic fighting-elf

Synecdoche, an unlucky fighting-dwarf

Slimey, a thief from a dark and foreign country

Nilrem, magic user of sinister countenance

as well as their bevy of hirelings and Baldric, Nilrem’s bodyguard and stooge

Leerc himself attracted a hench(wo)man.  She was a female fighting elf who looked something like a member of the East German swim team.  They all met at the Green Griffin and planned their expedition into the underworld just as a terrible storm poured torrential rain down the filth-filled streets.  Slimey suggested that the group wait out the storm, with some concordance from Aczey.  Nilrem, on the other hand, suggested that a rainy day is as good a day as any, and convinced the party to set out for Greyhawk Castle.

The soon arrived, but found that Xel had taken their map with him when he left on Gnomish business.   As such, the party decided to map a bit more methodically this time.  Synecdoche suggested that they head south, since his Dwarven nose could determine directions in the dungeons confines, and that they continue south until they could go no further.   This brought them to the magic mouth chamber.  Slimey elected to scout ahead into it, and the party – fearing another encounter like the one from their previous excursion into that room – agreed with his decision.

Slimey, it turns out, was ultimately after mischief.  He waited for the Magic Mouth to begin its message, then seeing that it was on the ceiling he lay on his back and attempted to urinate into its mouth.  Though the odds were against him, Slimey succeeded (I gave him a 1 in six chance).  The magic mouth seemed indifferent to it and continued its welcome, dribbling urine back down onto Slimey in the process.

After this, the party continued on their way.  They ignored several doors and side passages instead seeking to determine how far the one passage led.  It turns out this was quite far, but they eventually found a dead end.  Suddenly, they one of their porters was struck with an arrow.  He fell dead as more of the wicked things shot through the parties ranks.  Turning, they were confronted with a number of orcs blocking the exit. 

The party elected to duck into a nearby door.  This they spiked shut and after doing so the party split their time studying the room’s contents and negotiating with the orcs.  The orcs pounded heavily on the door with their leader belching “Milk man!”  Synecdoche , as the only one who could speak to them, informed them they didn’t need any milk and insulted the speaker’s intelligence.  Another orc laughed at this jest, infuriating the orc who had spoken.  Soon the orcs were stabbing and beating each other.

The room itself contained a fountain decorated with images of frogs “playing leap frog.”  Its water was cool and clear, and Slimey through caution to the wind and decided to drink from it.  He found that the hangover he possessed, or that he claimed to possess when he defecated at the entrance of the dungeon – a separate incident from the magic mouth – disappeared.  The fountain immediately emptied like a flushing toilet.

At this point, the battle outside quieted down.  Synecdoche and Slimey removed the spike from the door and peered out into the hall.  They saw what seemed to be the only three survivors.  Two were carrying a third, wounded one down the hall while snorting and squealing with glee.  The party gave chase, killing two with ranged weapons, but decided to let the other one escape when it became clear they would wander off track.

Since there was no obvious exit further south, they decided to search through the nearby rooms.  They found most of these served some sort of storage purpose, but several of them had already been looted by someone in the recent past.  At first they thought this must have been themselves, but they soon realized that none of them remembered the particulars of these rooms and so began to expect some other power. Exploring down a side passage, they found some similar rooms.  

This caused them to become a bit reckless, and one of the rooms they opened without checking contained six gnolls.  Unfortunately for the gnolls, the party won initiative and soon were tossing bottles of flaming oil into their ranks.  After one round, only two survived.  They, being of a cowardly and opportunistic race, decided to surrender rather than fight.  The gnolls showed the party the location of a hidden treasure before asking to be released.  Nilrem and baldric set upon the surrendering creatures, killing both of them before Synecdoche and Aczey could stop them.

With these creatures slain and their new treasure gained, the party returned to the surface and the session ended.  They were rather surprised when I gave them full experience for the orcs, but they were (indirectly) responsible for those creatures’ deaths.  All in all it was a good session.

Another Map Experiment

I think it's fairly clear that the rather famous Greyhawk map doesn't show but a small portion of the total settlements in Greyhawk.  Otherwise, Furyondy is a barren wasteland, as is most of the rest of the World of Greyhawk.  As such, I felt I should develop the settlements around my campaign area.  For the most part, the players have yet to go outside the two hexes containing Greyhawk and the infamous castle.

Assuming we go with my plan, here is what the countryside around Greyhawk might look like:

click to embiggen

I somewhat followed the Welsh Piper's automated system, but I halved the amount of farmland in accordance with a post by Rob Conley I can't seem to find.  I also fudged a bit so that I'd have to detail slightly fewer towns.  The area on the Greyhawk side of the Nyr Dyv relies on farming feeholders rather than a manorial system.  As such, It would have significantly fewer villages than the Furyondy side.

I'm not entirely happy with it, but I can't quite put my finger on why.

Every Man's Dungeon is His Castle

At the end of Tuesday’s session (report coming soon) my co-DM attempted to give out a hook for the nearby village of Hommlet.  When he did so one of the players objected.  It seems that he has been waiting anxiously for the day that he could run the Temple of Elemental Evil, and so we agreed that he could do so if he wished.  Then my wife expressed interest in making a dungeon and running it.

Thinking about it today, I was reminded of a section from EPT wherein Barker states that eventually players should make their own underworlds and cities in the world of Tekumel.  I've always been fascinated by the concept, and now I see the potential to enact it.  

Here is my idea:  any player who wants to DM should either pick a large module or make a big dungeon of their own.  They should place it somewhere on the map below.

click to embiggen

Once placed, the player should detail the wilderness area around the dungeon itself (the area contained in the square).  The DMs should come up with some common assumptions and a skimpy setting bible so that reality doesn't shift too greatly, but within those parameters one has complete control over what goes on in his or her square.

The player should make two rumor tables.  One will be rumors about their dungeon, and the other will relate to the surrounding wilderness.  These will all be combined on one large table that every DM will use when the players go in a tavern.  I may suggest a system that would cause the rumors gained to skew towards those areas which are close by, but that is up for debate.

Whenever the characters are headed to your square, your character stays behind to handle party business in the other areas.

While I think it'd make sense for me to get Greyhawk and its environs, I'm willing to give it up.  Nightwick abbey seems like it would fit in well in the Shield Lands...

(Really Ugly) Map Experiment

I recently mentioned that I've become interested in the Harn setting.  This happens to me from time to time, probably because it tickles some part of my medievalist brain.  Still, whenever the Harn bug bites I find myself wanting to create my own low fantasy world rather than use Harn wholesale.  I think it's largely due to my distaste at the idea of Tolkien's Dwarves and Elves running around my twelfth-century England or France.

Enter The Welsh Piper's Medieval Demographics Online.  Erin had pointed me to it when I asked about farmland in the Dark Country.  At the time, I was working on a much more High/Dark Fantasy setting; however, it seems like the perfect thing to scratch my current itch.

As an experiment, I decided to make a small island based on the island of Sark.  Mine was considerably larger, but it still serves as an acceptable test run.  I guesstimated the area, assumed that it would be a rocky and inhospitable island, and punched in the numbers.  Here is the result:

The Town contains a little more than 3000 people, and the surrounding farmland (the green hexes) contains some 69 villages.  The Keep probably serves to keep some small humanoid tribe that lairs in the heath or the hills from carting off villagers.

I must say that I don't entirely like the look of it yet.  I'm beginning to think the "Mystara Style," as Rob Conley termed it, is a poor match for a setting where one must map farmland.  There just seems to be something off about the farms covering whole hexagons.

I'm also not entirely sure how a DM whose pressed for time, as I am, would detail 69 villages, but maybe that'll be the subject of another post.

Folio Project: Peoples and Pantheons

I want to stress that the Folio Project has little to do with the version I'm currently running. Still, I thought I'd continue developing it in anticipation of the day that I run Greyhawk without a co-DM.

When I first started this project, I decided to tie the various ethnic groups of the Flanaess to pantheons from Deities and Demigods.  This action served two purposes.  First and foremost, it acted as a historical short-hand for the various cultures.  Second, it helped me define the major gods of the setting.  My initial ideas looked something like this:

Oeridians: Greek (possibly mixed with Norse)
Baklunish: Indian
Flanae: Finnish

I imagine that the Baklunish is the weird one on the above list.  I see them as various Turkic peoples, but my decision to associate them with the Indian Mythos was based on the Karaks from the 3.5 version of the Wilderlands.  I put the Flanae with the Finnish Mythos because according to the map on page six of the Folio they exist in tiny, disconnected pockets across the Flanaess.  This made me think of the Finno-Ugric language group in Europe.  I'd probably mix in some Slavic stuff, which I imagine would offend both parties, but I know far more about early Russia than I do about Finland.  The Oeridians I think are fairly easy to figure out.  I thought about making the Great Kingdom be the home of the Greek Pantheon, and the further you get away from there the more Norse the pantheon becomes.

Most Greyhawk fans probably noticed the absence of the Suloise from the above list.  They have been the great enigma of the Folio Project.  I had based most of my treatment of them off of their desert origins.  Perhaps the would be similar to the Phoenicians, and possibly use the Babylonian or Sumerian Mythos so that I could still use DDG.  This becomes complicated when one notices that the southern banks of the Nyr Dyv, i.e. Greyhawk, are heavily Suloise.  I want Greyhawk and its neighbors to be pseudo-medieval in character.  Some may find that a bit boring, but I'm a fan.

It was only when I met with my co-DM that I became aware that their supposed to be pseudo-Norse.  This seems to contradict their origins, but it makes sense with their current situation, especially in the case of the Snow Barbarians.  I suppose I'll go with that, though it does rob me of the ability to have the Scarlet Brotherhood be Ziggurat building sorcerers obsessed with human sacrifice.  More is the pity.

Treasure: What Hommlet Tells Us

Yesterday I discussed one possible solution to the problem of slow advancement due to small amounts of treasure in AD&D.  As I mentioned, this was a problem that particular loomed over my Nightwick Campaign.  I found this somewhat odd as I was generating treasure more or less by the book, so I decided to look into it. Yesterday's solution focused on increasing the amount of xp a single gold piece provides.  Today I'll talk about the method I'm actually using in the Greyhawk campaign: increasing the amount of treasure.

This method is not without precedent.  Quasqueton at EN World was kind enough to do some of my work for me.  Since it is a starter module written by Gary Gygax and designed specifically with AD&D in mind I'll be primarily focusing on T1: The Village of Hommlet.  According to Quasqueton's figure, whcih I sadly have not had time to confirm, the total value of the treasure in the module is 30,938gp. 

A large sum, especially when compared to the amounts suggested for a first level dungeon in the DMG.  In total, the moat house consists of 35 rooms, well below the hypothetical 100 I used for yesterday's example.  It somehow manages to provide ten times the amount of treasure that would be allowed using the DMG's method.  How do we square this?

It's likely that Gygax was aware of the slow pace of advancement with the above system and that he inflated the treasure to compensate.  The method I used in my version of Castle Greyhawk provided a similar amount of treasure.  Obviously that's a much bigger structure, but there is quite a bit more empty space in it than there is in the moathouse. 

This method works best if one maintains the other rules as they are.  Upkeep and training are designed to take away this excess coinage so that the players don't screw up the campaign economy -- which is different from the economy of the milieu.  It strikes me that Gygax likely sought to solve the new problem created by training costs rather than changing everything over to a silver standard.  I'm not sure what his motivation would be, but I've more or less replicated his fix so I can't complain too much.

Now to put a fly in the ointment.  Yesterday, -C commented "I thought AD&D changed the rules so that you recieved 1xp per 5gp, so that you would accumulate more money between levels, allowing you to pay for things like training."  This makes some sense; however it wouldn't solve the bigger problem of the pace of advancement.  If you use the rules in the DMG as is, it would take even longer to level up because each PC would still be only getting 600gp on the first level.  Now they only have 120xp from gold.  Even the inflated amounts don't hold up to this metric.  The moat house would only give a total of 1,031xp for treasure, which isn't even enough for a thief to level off of.

Ultimately, I think it's best to use whatever works for your campaign and your group.  If you're looking for a more realistic economy, then increasing the xp from gp is probably the way to go.  If you prefer piles of coins to realism, then it's probably better to just use the rules as is and up the treasure substantially.