# Consequence and Reward in RPGs



## Lwaxy (May 21, 2017)

Rewards come from avoiding bad consequences and are thus a consequence of some situations. No risk no fun.


----------



## Ratskinner (May 21, 2017)

I think it just depends on how or what from which people derive rewards. With respect to games, people often derive their sense of reward from overcoming opposition (achievement) or beating perceived odds (gambling). 

However, recent games from D&D to SimCity have focused in another direction, granting reward from a sense of creative accomplishment. This sense is similar to that derived by artists. Wil Wright once called SimCity a "software toy" rather than a game. I think that is not too far off from how some folks see rpgs and storygames.

Sent from my LG-TP450 using EN World mobile app


----------



## The Dude (May 21, 2017)

This post doesn't make sense to me.  First of all, party games games only "reward" people for showing up in the sense that participants have fun regardless of whether they win or lose, whether they master the games' rules or just enjoy interacting with friends.  Secondly, there is a difference between a decreased risk of character death and a complete lack of consequences.  PCs can fail to achieve their objectives while not getting permanently dead.  While some players may enjoy having their characters die because of random die rolls, others may prefer that the risk of permanent death be more closely connected to their decisions and play style; spells like those complained of above give each gaming group tools to do that, if they want them.  Which brings me to the third thing, which is that 5e D&D (like every edition before it) and other game rules are mere suggestions.  Allow or disallow whatever is necessary to meet your groups' game needs.  Don't hate on an entire generation of gamers just because the rules have options (like Revivify) for those game groups that want less random and arbitrary character death.  And finally, this whole post reads like an old person complaining about how the current generation doesn't do things like the old person did when he or she was young.  Yes, that's true; the world changes, but different doesn't mean bad.  Let people enjoy what they like without writing posts complaining about how they are all wrong.


----------



## geomarshal (May 21, 2017)

I am also an old school gamer and not a fan of participation trophies, but I couldn't disagree with this more.  The general purpose of a game is to have fun.  Just like there are sports with die hard players and sports that are just friends having fun, games are the same way.  Just because someone has no appreciable talents or inclinations to be a top athlete doesn't mean that they shouldn't be able to enjoy playing sports with friends.  I may like video games and campaigns where you have to think and struggle to succeed but some times I just want to relax and have fun.  To some people that is the whole point of games and all they really want.  To you, the point of rpgs is to challenge yourself but to me the point is to tell a good story.  TPKing my entire party due to bad die rolls has never helped me tell a good story and most often led to the end of a good campaign because there was no longer any continuity for any of the party members.  People should play the game that they want to play.  5th edition offers options in the DMG to make the game harder and more gritty and ways to make it easier.  DMs should tailor their campaigns to fit their and their players' play styles and not care what everyone else thinks is the "right" way to play.


----------



## billd91 (May 21, 2017)

I have no idea what the hell this article is saying. It would help if the author actually identified games he's referring to as "consequence-based" or "reward-based". It's just a lot of vague musing.


----------



## Kosh (May 21, 2017)

I'm disappointed to see this level of content on this site.  The other articles are informative, well-written, and thought-out.  I read this twice, and I do not see the point or the issue.  Please reconsider publishing this sort of voice.


----------



## Sunseeker (May 21, 2017)

*facepalm* Oh boy, it's one of _those_ articles by some older person complaining about how us young people are doing it wrong.  All you left out was "millennials", "SJW"s and a complaint about common core.  

This isn't news.  It isn't informative.  It's _barely_ blogworthy.  I can grab any person over 50 off the street and hear this same complaint, just replace gaming with "sports", "work ethic" or some other garbage about how back in their time life was hard and we are all spoiled little wimps.  What's worse is that this _could_ have been a totally awesome awesome article about useful ways to ensure players feel the consequences of their actions as meaningful.  It _could_ have been a totally awesome article about balancing rewards to the content you're offering or finding ways to reward players for their actions outside of giving them +1 magic swords that are interesting and *meaningful* towards their character concepts.

But no.  It's a whine about how us young people are ruining the world.  It's an old man on his porch shaking his fist at some youngsters walking in front of his house.

Learn to screen your content better ENWorld.


----------



## Lord Mhoram (May 21, 2017)

Games mean different things to different people. There is a word for that. Playstyle.  The playstyle you like if fading from most modern games. Grab an old game and other people that share your preferences and enjoy it Phrases dripping with disdain like " such as the ridiculous Revivify spell," makes it sounds like you don't really care about games themselves, or the varied styles enjoyed by many,  just the style you like.

Me, I love really detailed numbers heavy games (HERO is still my favorite). Can't really buy games like that these days. I don't whine about the games coming out now - I just enjoy the way I play, in games that support it, with friends who also do.


----------



## RevTurkey (May 21, 2017)

Okay so...this is an opinion piece. It's pretty obvious that it is and it doesn't try to be much else. Just like you can take or leave the rules in D&D one can take or leave this article and it's implied suggestion that the old way of playing was better. A few of the comments mention that they wouldn't want TPK due to bad dice rolling...well, that isn't what the author said. In the earlier days of D&D I remember a greater emphasis being placed on puzzles and figuring things out like traps and such. Much less the idea of a joint storytelling game and more a sense of a player orientated challenge game. Not to say that random rolls couldn't result in tragedy but then without the randomness one could argue that the whole thing becomes too predictable. I too have felt this shift in RPG gaming and I can see why the OSR movement has been so popular with many people (myself included). OSR doesn't mean hack and slash...to me, quite the opposite. I agree with this authour that many modern players have become too reliant on reward and expectant of it. I think many modern games are too easy on players and that they spoon feed them happy, cuddly experiences...to me this encourages hack and slash boring play. If I think back on my times roleplaying I always remember the moments of high risk and triumph the best. That said, I enjoy old and new games. It's easy to be dazzled by the nostalgia of the early editions without seeing the mechanical improvements of more modern systems. I think to a degree it is a matter of balance, style and implementation rather than the actual game system. I recently played through a campaign of Shadow of the Demon Lord. Boy, was that brutal. Too much so for my tastes. Running the published adventures, characters dropped like flies. This is a very modern game system trying (for my eyes) to replicate the old school sense of danger and challenge (like it's videogame cousin Dark Souls did). It's a great and interesting game but I think the published adventures focussed on challenge through combat danger too much. It didn't feel fair. That said, some of the character loses were due to player error and it was interesting to see them blame the game system and published adventures instead of themselves. This is the key thing for me. Players and people in society seem less able to accept or handle the responsibility of their own actions and the consequences of such. This encourages games that by default try not to upset them by scolding them for poor decision making...rather offering a slight nudge or tap on the wrist for their stupidity or naive actions. I'm waffling away now so I'll stop...My preference lies somewhere between the two styles but I see the author's point and would rather play an old school game with high risk and consequence than a game made too easy and predictable by being overly rewarding...etc etc...


----------



## Kramodlog (May 21, 2017)

Christopher Helton said:


> This is a general trend in our society, where schoolkids expect rewards for participation rather than for achieving excellence, and in fact excellence is sometimes not allowed!



Leave the editorials out of game articles next time. People do not need more sources of reactionary thoughts.


----------



## Lanefan (May 21, 2017)

billd91 said:


> I have no idea what the hell this article is saying.



If I read it right, it's saying in brief that games in general and RPGs in particular are steadily becoming easier on their players as time goes on, in that fewer bad things (he calls these consequences) happen and more good things (rewards) happen either during or as a result of play.  And it's correct in saying so.


			
				Kosh said:
			
		

> I'm disappointed to see this level of content on this site. The other articles are informative, well-written, and thought-out. I read this twice, and I do not see the point or the issue. Please reconsider publishing this sort of voice.



Why?  There is a point, and there is (for some) an issue.

Personally, I'm glad this article was posted; and at least from the RPG side I happen to completely agree with it.

Let's look at the trends in negative events (*consequences*) over the years and editions without reference to specific DMs or houserules, just the RAW:

Character death and revival:
- it's harder to die in 4e-5e (though if you do die chances are the whole party's going down with you, as so much in-combat healing allows a group to spread the pain evenly)
- it's become easier to come back from death (lower-level revival spells in 5e, much lower monetary cost in 4e-5e, chance of revival failure gone since 3e)
- death has no lasting consequences (permanent loss of Con point gone since 3e, negative level gone since 4e)

Other bad things that might happen:
- level loss became negative level in 3e (easier to recover from) and went away entirely in 4e-5e
- save-or-die / save-or-removed-of-combat spells and effects have become less common, also their durations have become steadily shorter over the editions
- magic items and possessions have become more and more durable (i.e. are forced to save less often vs. destruction) with each passing edition

The evidence is clear: negative events that may occur during the run of play* have steadily and dramatically decreased over time both in frequency and effect.  For some this might make the game more enjoyable.  For others, like me, it actually makes the game worse; as getting the reward without taking the risk just somehow doesn't feel as much like getting a reward.  Hard to articulate; thus I just hope you can see what I'm getting at.

* - there's a whole other aspect to this regarding character creation and how the race-class-build options available have steadily opened up over the editions and thus become "easier"; here I'm just looking at run-of-play stuff once the characters hit tie field.

Looking at *rewards* gives a less clear picture, as while it's very debateable whether the rewards have increased there's no doubt they have greatly changed as the editions have come and gone.

Early editions saw treasure - be it gold, magic items, whatever - as their primary reward.  Level advancement, however, wasn't really seen as much of a reward - it just happened, now and then.  Another reward, of a sort, was the followers-stronghold goal one could achieve at or after name level.  And 2e - and only 2e - also seemed to see the story itself as a reward, in an odd sort of way.

3e kind of tried to have both frequent level-ups and treasure as primary rewards - of all the editions it probably goes furthest toward a high-risk high-reward model.  But the stronghold business went away, never to return.

4e-5e have really gone for level-ups as the primary reward while sharply cutting back on treasure of all kinds.  In 5e, for example, by RAW you can't even sell your magic items (such as you might ever get) for cash.

Whether this shift in basic reward from treasure to level-ups is a feature or a bug is something we could argue about till the cows come home.  But that the shift has happened is undeniable.

Lan-"this may or may not have been more well-written than the original article, but it was thought out and I hope it's informative"-efan


----------



## JeffB (May 21, 2017)

Based on many of the comments,  I would say this article hit the nail on the head.


----------



## SMHWorlds (May 21, 2017)

I don't agree with the article at all, but what is most telling is the (again) bias towards a D&D paradigm. Of course let me defend myself first, by saying I love D&D and have loved all editions but 4th, which I still managed to play. Liked Pathfinder in its vanilla state. So I am not a hater, but you cannot have a logical and critical discussion of gaming, even old school gaming, where you only talk about D&D or D&D style games. You need to put them all on the table or at least the ones you have played and then take a critical look at how they exist and evolve. Gaming is changing and tabletop games do indeed have an element of risk. What they are getting better at however, is making it possible for everyone to have a better footing and role when they play, to give everyone agency as opposed to just a few. It also brings a different skill set to the table, as some people grok and understand the improv nature of role playing better than others. Since it is a role playing game, that is at least as important a skill as understanding how the dice work.

What this and most articles like it ignore of course is the fact the _consequences are almost entirely in the hands of the GM and to a lesser extent the players_. All the rules do is offer tools that turn the desire for consequence into mechanical means by which we can adjudicate them.


----------



## SMHWorlds (May 21, 2017)

Also, as an aside I am not sure what parties the author goes to, but my friends absolutely do care who wins party games.


----------



## amerigoV (May 21, 2017)

What do I get for reading that article?


----------



## Ratskinner (May 21, 2017)

SMHWorlds said:


> Also, as an aside I am not sure what parties the author goes to, but my friends absolutely do care who wins party games.



You wouldn't expect Apples to Apples to come to blows, but family reunions...

Sent from my LG-TP450 using EN World mobile app


----------



## billd91 (May 21, 2017)

Lanefan said:


> If I read it right, it's saying in brief that games in general and RPGs in particular are steadily becoming easier on their players as time goes on, in that fewer bad things (he calls these consequences) happen and more good things (rewards) happen either during or as a result of play.  And it's correct in saying so.




All you're really pointing out is that the *severity* of the consequence isn't as extreme. If a level loss is changed to a negative level or replaced by necrotic damage, those are still consequences - they're just less severe. And that, as far as I'm concerned, tends to make this sound like he's just an old geezer complaining about the kids playing on his lawn because they aren't "suffering" as much as he had to back in his day.


----------



## Derren (May 21, 2017)

JeffB said:


> Based on many of the comments,  I would say this article hit the nail on the head.




Pretty much.

Two things where this trend is in my opinion very noticeable is the change in D&D that races do not have ability penalties any more, only bonuses and the increasing popularity of "failing forward". Especially the latter one is the epitome of participation rewards as even when you "fail" you get rewarded, just less so than otherwise. One can even argue that it is impossible to fail that way.
Also if there were any consequences for failing they were reduced to a minimum. Lets look at the ultimate consequence in D&D, the character dieing. Not only does it with the progression of edition harder and harder to die, resurrecting a character became more easy with every edition with no permanent or even long term penalties like it used to be. And of course many DMs do not kill characters anyway and rather construct a reason, no matter if it makes sense or not, why PCs do not die and are instead just captured or make a miracle escape.


----------



## Lord Mhoram (May 21, 2017)

Derren said:


> Lets look at the ultimate consequence in D&D, the character dieing. Not only does it with the progression of edition harder and harder to die, resurrecting a character became more easy with every edition with no permanent or even long term penalties like it used to be. And of course many DMs do not kill characters anyway and rather construct a reason, no matter if it makes sense or not, why PCs do not die and are instead just captured or make a miracle escape.




Again, it comes to playstyle and what you are after.
If you want to play Fantasy Vietnam, then death is easy, and permanent. If you want to play a game that feels like old serials, when you get a cliffhanger where the hero dies, but come back the next episode to see how he escapes, then death is hard, and ways to come back easy and plentiful. Neither one is superior to the others, it what the group wants to play at the time.

Not unlike movies - there is dark horror, feel good sports movies, gut wrenching drama, popcorn flicks. Each appeal to different people at different times. The specific kind of movie it is (as opposed to skill of writers, actors etc) doesn't make it better or worse, it's just a different experience. No reason games can't appeal to different people in different ways.


----------



## TwoSix (May 21, 2017)

Christopher Helton said:


> This is a general trend in our society, where schoolkids expect rewards for participation rather than for achieving excellence, and in fact excellence is sometimes not allowed!



I'm always amused by boomers raising the specter of the "participation trophy" generation, as if it wasn't their collective parenting that would be responsible for that exact change in society at large.


----------



## Over the Hill Gamer (May 21, 2017)

I largely agree with this article.  The trophy for every kid generation has grown up and their expectations are reflected in many RPGs, especially 5e.


----------



## S'mon (May 21, 2017)

Pretty sure I kill off about as many PCs in my 5e games as in my Classic and 1e AD&D games. You can choose not to have monsters finish off fallen PCs if you're a commie pinko liberal GM like CapnZapp , but the rules don't mandate it. Revivify has a costly material component and doesn't much help avoid TPK, it's little different in practice from 5th level Mentzer BECM PCs ca 1983 hauling their dead back to town for Raise Dead from the local high priest.


----------



## S'mon (May 21, 2017)

I remember reading Lewis' articles in White Dwarf ca 1984 and he was pretty obstreperous back then too, so I don't think y'all special snowflake Millennials should get too het up about it, he was slagging off the kind of people who liked gonzo _Arduin Grimoire_ style play long before you were born...


----------



## Hussar (May 21, 2017)

Lanefan said:


> If I read it right, it's saying in brief that games in general and RPGs in particular are steadily becoming easier on their players as time goes on, in that fewer bad things (he calls these consequences) happen and more good things (rewards) happen either during or as a result of play.  And it's correct in saying so.




I'm sorry, but, no.  That's only true if you ignore all sorts of stuff that was in the game from pretty close to day 1.  The funny thing is, this article in my feed sits side by side with an article mentioning Dragonlance.  Hey, look at that.  A series of modules, possibly the most popular series of modules in D&D, where you cannot die.

This is hardly a new idea.



> /snip
> 
> The evidence is clear: negative events that may occur during the run of play* have steadily and dramatically decreased over time both in frequency and effect.  For some this might make the game more enjoyable.  For others, like me, it actually makes the game worse; as getting the reward without taking the risk just somehow doesn't feel as much like getting a reward.  Hard to articulate; thus I just hope you can see what I'm getting at.
> 
> * - there's a whole other aspect to this regarding character creation and how the race-class-build options available have steadily opened up over the editions and thus become "easier"; here I'm just looking at run-of-play stuff once the characters hit tie field.




Again, this is just not true.  Yup, Raise Dead was more expensive in earlier D&D.  So what?  Your characters were expected to be so swimming in gold by early levels that raise dead was easily affordable, not by the group, but by the individual, by about 4th or 5th level.  In 3e, a raise dead was barely affordable by the entire group by those levels, and, even at higher levels, was a major chunk of change.  

What's changed is the stupidly arbitrary ways in which you died.  Which is simply confusing difficulty for random chance.



> Looking at *rewards* gives a less clear picture, as while it's very debateable whether the rewards have increased there's no doubt they have greatly changed as the editions have come and gone.
> 
> Early editions saw treasure - be it gold, magic items, whatever - as their primary reward.  Level advancement, however, wasn't really seen as much of a reward - it just happened, now and then.  Another reward, of a sort, was the followers-stronghold goal one could achieve at or after name level.  And 2e - and only 2e - also seemed to see the story itself as a reward, in an odd sort of way.
> 
> ...




The trick is, for some of us, the rate of level ups hasn't dramatically changed.  Gygax in the 1e DMG talks about 50 sessions to hit name level.  Which, funnily enough, is EXACTLY the same pace I've played D&D in every edition.  The more things change...


----------



## R_Chance (May 21, 2017)

Uh, Hussar I don't no what D&D game you played, but swimming in gold at 4th or 5th level wasn't part of my experience as a player or DM. Neither was getting resurrected at low to mid level. I started in 1974 with the original game. I played / DM'd 1E and 2E with similar outcomes. Getting killed became more difficult with 3E and resurrection easier. That's my experience of course, ymmv. Now 4E I don't know because outside of buying the books, reading them, and giving them to a friend who was interested I don't know much about it. None of this makes any game better or worse of course.


----------



## Hussar (May 21, 2017)

R_Chance said:


> Uh, Hussar I don't no what D&D game you played, but swimming in gold at 4th or 5th level wasn't part of my experience as a player or DM. Neither was getting resurrected at low to mid level. I started in 1974 with the original game. I played / DM'd 1E and 2E with similar outcomes. Getting killed became more difficult with 3E and resurrection easier. That's my experience of course, ymmv. Now 4E I don't know because outside of buying the books, reading them, and giving them to a friend who was interested I don't know much about it. None of this makes any game better or worse of course.




I started playing in about 1980, so, I'm a bit younger than you.  And, to be fair, I never played OD&D, so, I cannot comment on that.

But, all you have to do is look at the modules for AD&D.  If you completed the GDQ series, as we did, you could potentially walk out with over a MILLION gp.  Even modules like Keep on the Borderlands and whatnot were awash in gold.  Good grief, the random treasure tables in AD&D gave treasure in THOUSANDS of gp.  For a single monster (or group of monsters).  Never minding that most treasure types included multiple magic items.  That could be either kept or sold for more thousands of gp.

And, I killed far, far more PC's in 3e than in 2e.  Mostly due to changing DMing styles, but, also the mechanics.  AD&D monsters, after about 3rd or 4th level simply didn't do enough damage to kill PC's very often.  Although, to be fair, the plethora of save or die effects did tend to keep lethality high.  3e monsters of an equivalent CR to the PC level can kill most PC's in a single round.  I've never understood how 3e DM's weren't killing PC's left and right.  I certainly was.  Last 3e campaign I ran went 80 sessions with 30 PC deaths.  And that was pretty par for the course.

Again, I don't understand how you couldn't be swimming in gold in AD&D.  Not if you were actually using the rules.


----------



## Lanefan (May 22, 2017)

Hussar said:


> I started playing in about 1980, so, I'm a bit younger than you.  And, to be fair, I never played OD&D, so, I cannot comment on that.
> 
> But, all you have to do is look at the modules for AD&D.  If you completed the GDQ series, as we did, you could potentially walk out with over a MILLION gp.  Even modules like Keep on the Borderlands and whatnot were awash in gold.  Good grief, the random treasure tables in AD&D gave treasure in THOUSANDS of gp.  For a single monster (or group of monsters).  Never minding that most treasure types included multiple magic items.  That could be either kept or sold for more thousands of gp.
> 
> ...



Depends if your DM is/was also properly using and applying the rules that drained said wealth:

- training for level-up
- magic - and mundane, for that matter - items having to save every time their bearer got hit with anything big e.g. fireball (save vs. magic fire) or a giant's boulder (save vs. crushing blow) etc.
- living costs during downtime, including mundane gear replacement (small amounts but they can sure add up)
- for clerics and paladins, sacrifice (direct to deity) or donation (to one's temple) of a portion of wealth acquired (I think something similar may have also applied to Monks but I might be conflating with a houserule here)
- costs for services e.g. spellcasting (for example: to get an NPC to cast Raise Dead for you is, by RAW, mighty costly)
- for arcane casters, spell research and acquirement costs
- for thieves and assassins, guild dues and contributions
- payment of henches, followers, and similar

Further, as I mentioned a few posts back treasure of all kinds was the primary reward mechanism in 1e.  Given that, seeing a lot of it only made sense...though (and this is another difference between 1e and the recent ones) there was much more of an easy-come-easy-go mentality kind of built in - lots of wealth and lots of things you had to spend it on.

Lan-"gimme some money"-efan

EDIT: p.s. something else to consider with 1e published modules is that while there's often boatloads of treasure in them to be found it was a rare party indeed that found all of it, or even a large portion of it.


----------



## Lanefan (May 22, 2017)

Hussar said:


> I'm sorry, but, no.  That's only true if you ignore all sorts of stuff that was in the game from pretty close to day 1.  The funny thing is, this article in my feed sits side by side with an article mentioning Dragonlance.  Hey, look at that.  A series of modules, possibly the most popular series of modules in D&D, where you cannot die.



In fairness, I do tend to ignore Dragonlance modules as written - and have done so pretty much since they came out - largely because of both this can't-die aspect and the lead-'em-by-the-nose railroad they insist upon.  That said, a few of those modules can make fine stand-alone adventures if one reskins the backstory.



> The trick is, for some of us, the rate of level ups hasn't dramatically changed.  Gygax in the 1e DMG talks about 50 sessions to hit name level.



Now I've got to look to see if I can find this...I'm reasonably familiar with the 1e DMG but don't recall seeing this bit.



> Which, funnily enough, is EXACTLY the same pace I've played D&D in every edition.  The more things change...



Not sure how you could have managed this in 2e without some rule-bending; though I can easily see it in 3-4-5e.

Lan-"the Dragonlance novels were very popular, but the modules?"-efan


----------



## R_Chance (May 22, 2017)

I rarely played modules, and never DM'd them. We did our own stuff for the most part then (and I still do).  Also, part of being a DM back then was the art of fleecing PCs out of their ill gotten gains. Lanefan pointed out some of the game mechanic methods and then there are taxes and thieves. Hmm, was I repeating myself there?   Mostly people were busy saving to build their own stronghold / temple / wizards tower / thieves guild at higher levels. By then death was rarer and more epic and resurrection was possible. As long as you hadn't ticked off the gods or the priesthood...


----------



## J.L. Duncan (May 22, 2017)

S'mon said:


> I remember reading Lewis' articles in White Dwarf ca 1984 and he was pretty obstreperous back then too, so I don't think y'all special snowflake Millennials should get too het up about it, he was slagging off the kind of people who liked gonzo _Arduin Grimoire_ style play long before you were born...



 [MENTION=463]S'mon[/MENTION]; I prefer... "before you were an itch in your Daddy's pants."

Just remember kids, I will be passing out participation trophies and the end of this comments section (too combative?) Seriously though, good article. Unlike some here, I think it is appropriate to evaluate the trend in specific RPG (and see how that has changed) rather then blanket them all together. I'm going on 40-ish and the changing trend of what a RPG does or what is supposed to do _can_ cause a gap based on player generation...

And get off my lawn, while you're at it.


----------



## S'mon (May 22, 2017)

Hussar said:


> And, I killed far, far more PC's in 3e than in 2e.




Yeah, aside from intra-party killings in 1e, 3e was definitely my most lethal edition. Monsters can kill Fighters so very easily. 4e & 5e row it back, but I get similar death rates in my Classic BECM, 4e & 5e games (I'm running all three currently so easy to compare). BECM it's usually from a failed save, whereas in 4e & 5e it's from massive damage.


----------



## The Crimson Binome (May 22, 2017)

billd91 said:


> All you're really pointing out is that the *severity* of the consequence isn't as extreme. If a level loss is changed to a negative level or replaced by necrotic damage, those are still consequences - they're just less severe. And that, as far as I'm concerned, tends to make this sound like he's just an old geezer complaining about the kids playing on his lawn because they aren't "suffering" as much as he had to back in his day.



Is it even a consequence, if there are zero ramifications and nobody cares at all? If you're playing 5E, and you take damage that reduces you down to 1hp, but then you rest and you're good as new, _was_ there any consequence of getting hit? Certainly, from the perspective of the next morning, there is no difference in the current situation based on how well the previous fight went; there's no way to even tell that _whether or not_ you got hit, let alone how hard. If the outcome of an event isn't even _observable_ after the fact, then that's a pretty solid argument for saying that the event has no consequences.

So while it may be a matter of degree, if one of those degrees is _zero_, then that radically changes the entire experience. If the penalty for committing a foul starts out at 10 minutes in the penalty box, and that penalty is steadily reduced over editions down to 3 minutes and then 1 minute, then you're still going to get a radical divergence in gameplay if you reduce it down to _zero_.


----------



## pemerton (May 22, 2017)

A lot of discussion of consequences seems to focus on consequences _to the PCs_, which take place _in the fiction_. But those consequences are purely imaginary. From the point of view of gameplay, surely the relevant consequences are those that happen _in the real world_, to the players.

In classic D&D there are more ways for the numbers on a PC sheet to get smaller (level drain, magic items failing saving throws, permanent PC death requiring generation of a new PC, etc). But what is the significance of this for the player? If s/he is still allowed to roll up a new PC and join in the dungeon-delving, what has s/he lost?

The context for most contemporary D&D play is so different from classic dungeon-crawling - and, therefore, the consequences of changing those numbers on the PC sheet - that serious comparisons are very hard to make.



Derren said:


> the increasing popularity of "failing forward". Especially the latter one is the epitome of participation rewards as even when you "fail" you get rewarded, just less so than otherwise.



This just suggests that you have little or no familiarity with "fail forward" as a technique. It is not "rewarded, but less so". It is "failure as consequence that drives the game forward rather than stalls the action." The technique was pioneered in indie games like Sorcerer and Burning Wheel.

Typical examples would be things like: a failed casting roll means that, instead of the desired spell effect, you've summoned a demon; a failed lock-pick check means that, before you can pick the lock, the guards arrive; a failed searching or perception check means that, instead of finding what you were looking for, you find something that you would rather not have (eg because it is evidence of stuff you were hoping wasn't true).

You seem to be conflating "fail forward" with "success at a cost". The latter is what "fail forward" can mutate into in games that are more-or-less driven by a pre-conceived story (eg the GUMSHOE system uses this to make sure the players get the clues). But that is not an artefact of "fail forward", that is an artefact of games driven by pre-conceived stories. Which goes back to the point about the very great differences between contemporary and classic D&D play.


----------



## billd91 (May 22, 2017)

Saelorn said:


> Is it even a consequence, if there are zero ramifications and nobody cares at all? If you're playing 5E, and you take damage that reduces you down to 1hp, but then you rest and you're good as new, _was_ there any consequence of getting hit? Certainly, from the perspective of the next morning, there is no difference in the current situation based on how well the previous fight went; there's no way to even tell that _whether or not_ you got hit, let alone how hard. If the outcome of an event isn't even _observable_ after the fact, then that's a pretty solid argument for saying that the event has no consequences.
> 
> So while it may be a matter of degree, if one of those degrees is _zero_, then that radically changes the entire experience. If the penalty for committing a foul starts out at 10 minutes in the penalty box, and that penalty is steadily reduced over editions down to 3 minutes and then 1 minute, then you're still going to get a radical divergence in gameplay if you reduce it down to _zero_.




Considering there were plenty of remedies in earlier editions, this argument is really just a matter of degree. Death and damage were entirely undoable in 1e - just a bit more expensive as far as resources and/or time went. So that makes the game mostly a question of pacing. So again the article mainly comes down to a matter of things not being done as the cantankerous old geezer remembers them being done. And why should I care about that?


----------



## The Crimson Binome (May 22, 2017)

billd91 said:


> Considering there were plenty of remedies in earlier editions, this argument is really just a matter of degree. Death and damage were entirely undoable in 1e - just a bit more expensive as far as resources and/or time went.



A remedy that you can't afford isn't _actually_ a remedy. You might as well argue that nothing mattered in AD&D because you could always Wish yourself out of any problems.

If your level 5 character is reduced to 0hp in 1E, then the consequence is that the character is dead forever because nobody can afford to resurrect them, and you (the player) are set back three months of character progress as you bring in a new character at level 1. There is a strong incentive to avoid being reduced to zero. That's a real consequence. Everyone can look at it, and see what happened.

If your level 5 character is reduced to 0hp in 5E, then chances are high that they won't actually die, and you're back up to full after you take a nap. The actual, literal in-game difference between the character getting reduced to zero and the character not getting reduced to zero is _nothing_. There is _no_ incentive to avoid being reduced to zero. There is _no_ consequence.

If you compare the consequences of being reduced to zero in 1E to the consequences of being reduced to zero in 5E, you _don't_ get that it was much worse in 1E; you get a _divide by zero_ error. Dropping down to 0hp in 5E is _entirely_ meaningless.


----------



## Hussar (May 22, 2017)

Lanefan said:


> Depends if your DM is/was also properly using and applying the rules that drained said wealth:
> 
> - training for level-up
> - magic - and mundane, for that matter - items having to save every time their bearer got hit with anything big e.g. fireball (save vs. magic fire) or a giant's boulder (save vs. crushing blow) etc.
> ...




Funny thing is, Raise Dead in the 1e DMG is EXACTLY the same price as it is in 3e - 5000 gp.  

Note that clerics didn't have to tithe, although paladins were giving up 10%.

But, the thing is, I'm kinda confused.  I'm told that the point of play in 1e was to get the treasure, more than kill the monster.  So, if you're getting the treasure, where is it going?  Doesn't that mean that most of your XP is coming from treasure?  So, a 5th level character with about 30000 xp, has likely amassed about 20000 gp.  Sure, it cost him 15k in training, fair enough, but, that still leaves 5k left over.  And, let's not forget, he'll amass ANOTHER 20k gp before 6th level as well.  

The idea that a group couldn't afford a raise dead?  Seriously?  Individual PC's could afford it.  And, the notion that parties didn't find the treasure in modules is simply not true.  Go back and read those modules.  The majority of treasure isn't hidden.  It's right there to be found.  The overwhelming majority of the treasure in modules is not hidden at all.



Lanefan said:


> In fairness, I do tend to ignore Dragonlance modules as written - and have done so pretty much since they came out - largely because of both this can't-die aspect and the lead-'em-by-the-nose railroad they insist upon.  That said, a few of those modules can make fine stand-alone adventures if one reskins the backstory.
> 
> Now I've got to look to see if I can find this...I'm reasonably familiar with the 1e DMG but don't recall seeing this bit.
> 
> ...




I have to admit, in 2e, I tended to throw in a lot of demons.  Buckets and buckets of XP in 2e even for fairly minor demons.  IIRC, even something as small as a Mane was worth 1000 xp.  So, it did tend to accelerate my xp rewards.


----------



## Rygar (May 22, 2017)

Lanefan said:


> If I read it right, it's saying in brief that games in general and RPGs in particular are steadily becoming easier on their players as time goes on, in that fewer bad things (he calls these consequences) happen and more good things (rewards) happen either during or as a result of play.  And it's correct in saying so.
> Why?  There is a point, and there is (for some) an issue.
> 
> Personally, I'm glad this article was posted; and at least from the RPG side I happen to completely agree with it.
> ...




I think this is an excellent post.

The other thing I would say needs to be kept in mind is: 1st edition D&D was designed around creating a world where the Players were challenged to survive, 3rd edition was where it shifted to trying to create a game, thought 3e was still pretty world oriented.  4th and 5th edition are about a game where Players are given a carrot on a stick to keep them playing and aren't expected to face a serious challenge.

There's a lot of signals that the goal today is creating a game, not a world.  Without even getting into the mechanics (Some of which have been discussed endlessly), look at the changes to the flavor of the game.  The "Legendary Heroes" aspect has been slowly removed (Tensor, Bigby, Mordenkainen), Dinosaurs went from being named Dinosaurs to being anime-style names, you don't have to worry about laws of physics (Underwater fireballs, Lightning bolts hitting Platemail, or Monks knocking over the Tarrasque).  

Advanced Dungeons and Dragons described a world where Players were placed to survive, Dungeons and Dragons describes a game where Players are placed to enjoy a non-stop series of rewards with little risk.  IMO it's a hugely negative change and why I ultimately went back to Pathfinder.


----------



## Saracenus (May 22, 2017)

Dude. I am happy that our hobby has left you in the dust. This is exactly the attitude that keeps our hobby segmented in to little tribal groups. 

I have been playing just as long as you (maybe even longer) and what you are advocating is the exact opposite of my personal organizing philosophy, "More places to play, more people to play with."

I don't know what games you are playing today, but we live in a world of choice right now. There are amazing games coming out every month. It is hard to keep up. Even in the segment you call out, RPGs, you can find what you want. Hell, in the current published version of D&D by WotC you can turn some dials and make the game as grim and consequence driven as you could possibly want or you can go the opposite way. You just are lamenting that your personal preference isn't the default setting of the game.

Here is my recommended RPG system for you, Harnmaster (not the game world Harn, which is amazing, but the rules system created to support it). It has all the possible simulationist detail you could want. Combat is a horror show! Complicated, check. Brutal, check. If the combat itself doesn't kill you, the infection rules probably will. It does have an amazing character background generation system that really ties you into the world. I am just not sure you need to use it because if you try to do anything "heroic" you will be busy building a new Player Character. It sounds right in your sweet spot.

Meanwhile I am going to go have some fun (as I define it) and go play some of the following:
*Arkham Horror: The Card Game* - (a co-operative deck building RPG that is near perfect in execution).
*Dead of Winter* - Semi-cooperative boardgame with a betrayal mechanic. The zombies are just trying to kill you, the other survivors will put a knife in your back if you are not careful. 
*D&D 5th Edition* - Rebooting a Greyhawk campaign set in the town of Hardby.
*Dread *- Quite possibly the most genius RPG system to run survival horror in. It uses a Jenga tower for task resolution, trust me, it is awe inspiring and will have you on the edge of your seat (just don't bump the damn table).
*Fiasco *- Ever wanted to role-play the movie Fargo, A Simple Plan, Treasure of Sierra Madre? This is your jam. Everyone has a hook, a link, and plan. Let the dice fall where they may and in the aftermath be a glorious (or inglorious) as you may.
*Pandemic Legacy* - A boardgame you play 12-24 times. But each time you play the board changes, cards get ripped up, and bad things happen. You want consequences, this game has it in spades. Season 1 has been a blast and Season 2 is almost upon us.
*Time Stories *- Genre bending boardgame each scenario you play. But you will remember what you did and how many times it took you to get it right. Time travel/multi-worlds meets groundhog day. Not a true legacy format game but once you have played a scenario you will not be able to play it again.
*Dungeon *- My 10 year old nephew loves this classic boardgame. Sometimes you just need to kick down the door, kill the monster, and steal its treasure.
*Tsuro of the Seas *- Gorgeous tile laying game where your choices bring you that much closer to doom. If you need some randomness/variance add in the Tsunami, Magical Vortex, and/or a host of Sea Monsters to make the game even more chaotic fun.
*Karmaka *- A game of multiple lives and reincarnation. Just remember that awesome screw your buddy play from a previous life can come back to haunt you in the next.

No how about you get off my lawn because me and the kids are going have a great time playing some games and not a single participation trophy to be found.


----------



## The Crimson Binome (May 22, 2017)

Saracenus said:


> [...]in the current published version of D&D by WotC you can turn some dials and make the game as grim and consequence driven as you could possibly want [...]



For all its talk of inclusivity, the most severe of dials and options available will still allow a character to recover from 0hp back to full after sleeping for eight hours. It doesn't bother me that the default options are more lenient than I'm used to; it bothers me that the default options are _so_ far toward inconsequential that the system is literally incapable of describing anything reasonable. If I want it to take a week to recover from near-death, then I need to make up something out of thin air about how Hit Dice don't exist. And good luck getting any group to accept un-tested house rules of that magnitude! The whole point of including those dials in the DMG is so that we _wouldn't_ need to invent new house rules for that sort of thing, because they _knew_ that people would need them.

I don't know whether you're malicious or just uninformed, but this is a very real issue, and nothing will be solved by your pretending otherwise.


----------



## pemerton (May 22, 2017)

Rygar said:


> 1st edition D&D was designed around creating a world where the Players were challenged to survive, 3rd edition was where it shifted to trying to create a game, thought 3e was still pretty world oriented.  4th and 5th edition are about a game where Players are given a carrot on a stick to keep them playing and aren't expected to face a serious challenge.



1st AD&D is populated with such creatures as ear seekers, rot grubs, mimics, lurkers above, trappers and rust monsters - none of which make any sense as part of a world, and all of which are purely game devices, for disrupting player expectations (about chests, floors, ceilings, listening at doors, searching bodies, etc).

Modules like White Plume Mountain, Ghost Tower of Inverness or Tomb of Horrors are 100% game. They have no in-world logic to them.

Not to mention, the Dragonlance modules that [MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION] has already referred to belong to the 1st ed AD&D era.

Instead of spurious claims about who was "serious" and who is not, let's talk about how the goals and expectations of mainstream RPGs have changed over the past 40-odd years. That might actually be a worthwhile conversation, although it requires acknowledging that there's not one single thing that counts as RPGing - which some posters seem to find hard to do.


----------



## S'mon (May 22, 2017)

pemerton said:


> A lot of discussion of consequences seems to focus on consequences _to the PCs_, which take place _in the fiction_. But those consequences are purely imaginary. From the point of view of gameplay, surely the relevant consequences are those that happen _in the real world_, to the players.
> 
> In classic D&D there are more ways for the numbers on a PC sheet to get smaller (level drain, magic items failing saving throws, permanent PC death requiring generation of a new PC, etc). But what is the significance of this for the player? If s/he is still allowed to roll up a new PC and join in the dungeon-delving, what has s/he lost?




If it's hardcore Old School (which Lew Pulsipher certainly is, judging by his old WD columns) and she's rolling up a new 1st level PC to play alongside 6th levellers then she's lost a fair bit.


----------



## pemerton (May 22, 2017)

S'mon said:


> If it's hardcore Old School (which Lew Pulsipher certainly is, judging by his old WD columns) and she's rolling up a new 1st level PC to play alongside 6th levellers then she's lost a fair bit.



Sure, and I noticed the smiley - but even then, the loss mightn't be that harsh. Depending on the XP and treasure distribution approach taken, that 1st level PC might gain levels fairly quickly. And for a good chunk of the game (eg a lot of exploration activities, and the social part of the game) level is not really a factor in resolution. (Magic items can be more important - so the campaign's practices around "inheritance" from PC to PC might be quite important.)

To pick a stark contrast, bringing a 1st level PC into the final segment of a contemporary 3E/PF-type dungeon crawl (or even a more combat-oriented classic adventure like the Giants, or WPM) will be basically hopeless: no chance of making the DCs, no chance of contributing meaningfully to combat.

As an aside: an interesting bit of Gygax's DMG (or, actually, two interesting bits - because he splits the discussion over the introductory section, and then "conducting the game" 100-odd pages in) is the discussion of what level of PC an experienced player is allowed to introduce into the game. He seems to have realised that the replay value of those very low levels (especially 1st level) can be limited.


----------



## Lanefan (May 22, 2017)

Hussar said:


> Funny thing is, Raise Dead in the 1e DMG is EXACTLY the same price as it is in 3e - 5000 gp.



True, but have you checked Restoration? 



> Note that clerics didn't have to tithe, although paladins were giving up 10%.
> 
> But, the thing is, I'm kinda confused.  I'm told that the point of play in 1e was to get the treasure, more than kill the monster.  So, if you're getting the treasure, where is it going?  Doesn't that mean that most of your XP is coming from treasure?  So, a 5th level character with about 30000 xp, has likely amassed about 20000 gp.  Sure, it cost him 15k in training, fair enough, but, that still leaves 5k left over.



To get from 1st to 5th (thus training into 2-3-4-5) is going to cost a lot more than 15K if one follows the 1e DMG to the letter.  Even assuming perfect roleplay (thus no penalties) the training will be 1500 per level being trained into each time (so here it's 3K + 4.5K + 6K + 7.5K = 21K) and if there's any penalties for poor roleplay etc. then a multiplier hits the training costs for that level on a x2 to x4 scale based on the DM's judgement.

Now, in all fairness I'm not sure how many groups ever used the roleplay-penalty rules as written, but the 1500 x level was likely common enough.

And while our intrepid hero might well earn another 20-30K by 6th level 9K of that's going straight into training; and by then maybe she's looking to start saving up for her stronghold a few levels hence.



> The idea that a group couldn't afford a raise dead?  Seriously?  Individual PC's could afford it.  And, the notion that parties didn't find the treasure in modules is simply not true.  Go back and read those modules.  The majority of treasure isn't hidden.  It's right there to be found.  The overwhelming majority of the treasure in modules is not hidden at all.



Not only have I read nearly all of those modules*, I've both DMed and played in quite a few of them...and I'd take a rough guess that the average scoop rate based on what's available overall is 75% at best.  Sure, in some adventures the party cleans up, but in others they miss more than they find.

* - some years ago I decided to try and collect them all (the real versions, not pdf); I've now got about 90% of them - along with a bunch of Judges' Guild and other stuff - and with one or two exceptions what's left are pretty hard targets that I'll either never see or never be able to afford.

Also, I looked through my DMG this evening and couldn't find where Gygax suggests it'll take about 50 sessions to get to name level - have you got a page reference for that?

Lan-"and in the session I just finished running an hour ago the party lost through failed item saves wa-ay more treasure than they found"-efan


----------



## Lanefan (May 22, 2017)

pemerton said:


> 1st AD&D is populated with such creatures as ear seekers, rot grubs, mimics, lurkers above, trappers and rust monsters - none of which make any sense as part of a world, and all of which are purely game devices, for disrupting player expectations (about chests, floors, ceilings, listening at doors, searching bodies, etc).



Ear seekers and rot grubs could easily just be a couple of particularly dangerous fantasy-world insect types.  Trappers aren't that much of a stretch from some creatures found in our own real world e.g. venus flytrap.  But I'll concede on lurkers, mimics and rust monsters...and piercers, for all that...as being more gamist than anything else.



> Modules like White Plume Mountain, Ghost Tower of Inverness or Tomb of Horrors are 100% game. They have no in-world logic to them.



I'll give you Tomb of Horrors, as it was really never intended to be anything more than a pure gamist challenge in the first place for some of Gygax's players.  White Plume...it's bizarre, but in a fantasy world it's not out of line and I don't see it as being nearly as game-y as ToH.  Ghost Tower is also bizarre - it has some very game-first elements within it and some other elements that could really work well in any dungeon.  It was written as a tournament module and though it wasn't really converted that well for open play I sure had a blast (and so did the players) when I ran it a few years back.  Good times!



> Not to mention, the Dragonlance modules that [MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION] has already referred to belong to the 1st ed AD&D era.



They're of that era in real-world time, but they're more of the 2e era in design and expected play/DM style.



> Instead of spurious claims about who was "serious" and who is not, let's talk about how the goals and expectations of mainstream RPGs have changed over the past 40-odd years. That might actually be a worthwhile conversation, although it requires acknowledging that there's not one single thing that counts as RPGing - which some posters seem to find hard to do.



I've been trying to do that - talk about how the most mainsteam of games (D&D) has changed in its rewards and consequences over the last 40-odd years - in follow-up to the OP which was also trying to do the same.



> To pick a stark contrast, bringing a 1st level PC into the final segment of a contemporary 3E/PF-type dungeon crawl (or even a more combat-oriented classic adventure like the Giants, or WPM) will be basically hopeless: no chance of making the DCs, no chance of contributing meaningfully to combat.
> 
> As an aside: an interesting bit of Gygax's DMG (or, actually, two interesting bits - because he splits the discussion over the introductory section, and then "conducting the game" 100-odd pages in) is the discussion of what level of PC an experienced player is allowed to introduce into the game. He seems to have realised that the replay value of those very low levels (especially 1st level) can be limited.



1e and 5e (and to some extent 2e) share one important thing: the game remains playable with a much greater level range within the party than 3e* or 4e will tolerate.

* - I'm lumping PF in with 3e as for these purposes they're close enough to the same.

That said, I don't start everyone over at 1st level once things get rolling.  I usually set a "floor" that slowly rises as the party's overall level goes up.  In the two parties I've got going in my game right now the floor is 6th in one (party levels are 6-10) and 4th in the other (range currently is 4-8).  1e can handle a 4-level range within a party quite well.  3e or 4e?  Not so much...

Lan-"if you want modules with highly variable amounts of (il)logic attached, check out 1978-1981 era Judges' Guild offerings"-efan


----------



## S'mon (May 22, 2017)

Lanefan said:


> Also, I looked through my DMG this evening and couldn't find where Gygax suggests it'll take about 50 sessions to get to name level - have you got a page reference for that?




Gygax gave no official progression rate recommendation, AIR it's anecdotal from an interview with him.

Moldvay Basic suggests at least one PC should hit 2nd level after 3 sessions "or give more treasure". Mentzer suggests a guideline 5 sessions to level at least after the low levels, which would be 10 level ups in a year of weekly play, slightly faster but close to Gygax's anecdotal AIR "Name Level (8 levels) in a year, then a couple each year thereafter".


----------



## S'mon (May 22, 2017)

Lanefan said:


> 1e and 5e (and to some extent 2e) share one important thing: the game remains playable with a much greater level range within the party than 3e* or 4e will tolerate.




Very true. For 3e/PF & 4e I keep PCs within 2 levels, or even just use a Party Level. Classic, 1e and even moreso 5e work great with a range of levels, which has major advantages for continuity of play. One of my 5e Wilderlands players has an 18th level Barbarian, played up from 1st level over the past 2.5 years. If I had to bring in 2-3 more 18th level world-shaking superheroes to accompany him every time he adventured the game would collapse (& in fact I had to put it on hiatus for awhile before I realised this). As it is he is accompanied by a Barb-15 Dragonborn PC, and has just met a new PC - a Level 8 Wizard.


----------



## pemerton (May 22, 2017)

Lanefan said:


> To get from 1st to 5th (thus training into 2-3-4-5) is going to cost a lot more than 15K if one follows the 1e DMG to the letter.  Even assuming perfect roleplay (thus no penalties) the training will be 1500 per level being trained into each time (so here it's 3K + 4.5K + 6K + 7.5K = 21K) and if there's any penalties for poor roleplay etc. then a multiplier hits the training costs for that level on a x2 to x4 scale based on the DM's judgement.



You are using the wrong levels: as per DMG p 86, "The level of the aspiring character should be computed at current (not to be gained) level." Hence [MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION]'s figure of 15,000 is correct, assuming a "roleplay" factor of 1: 1+2+3+4 = 10, x 1500 = 15,000 gp.



Lanefan said:


> Ghost Tower is also bizarre - it has some very game-first elements within it and some other elements that could really work well in any dungeon.  It was written as a tournament module and though it wasn't really converted that well for open play I sure had a blast (and so did the players) when I ran it a few years back.  Good times!



I didn't say it was a bad module. My point was only that it is a counterexample (one of several) to the "game"/"world" dichotomy drawn by [MENTION=6756765]Rygar[/MENTION].



Lanefan said:


> pemerton said:
> 
> 
> 
> ...



This seems like the worst sort of projection of the present onto the past!

At the time the DL modules were written there was no 2nd ed or "2nd ed era". They were written, and published, and played, under the 1st ed rules, years before 2nd ed was written and published. They are an important part of the evidence for what constituted 1st ed AD&D play, and they show that dungeon crawling in the classic mode was only one component of the full range of play.

 [MENTION=30518]lewpuls[/MENTION] himself recognised the breadth of playstyles right back in his White Dwarf columns from the late 70s and early 80s. He had (and still seems to have) strong views about his preferred way to play, but he never made the mistake of thinking that it was the only way to play D&D/RPGs.


----------



## Hussar (May 22, 2017)

Lanefan said:


> True, but have you checked Restoration?
> 
> To get from 1st to 5th (thus training into 2-3-4-5) is going to cost a lot more than 15K if one follows the 1e DMG to the letter.  Even assuming perfect roleplay (thus no penalties) the training will be 1500 per level being trained into each time (so here it's 3K + 4.5K + 6K + 7.5K = 21K) and if there's any penalties for poor roleplay etc. then a multiplier hits the training costs for that level on a x2 to x4 scale based on the DM's judgement.[
> 
> Now, in all fairness I'm not sure how many groups ever used the roleplay-penalty rules as written, but the 1500 x level was likely common enough.




IIRC, it's 1500 gpxthe level you were, not your new level.  So, it's 1500 gp to go from 1st to 2nd, not 3000.


> /snip
> Not only have I read nearly all of those modules*, I've both DMed and played in quite a few of them...and I'd take a rough guess that the average scoop rate based on what's available overall is 75% at best.  Sure, in some adventures the party cleans up, but in others they miss more than they find.
> 
> * - some years ago I decided to try and collect them all (the real versions, not pdf); I've now got about 90% of them - along with a bunch of Judges' Guild and other stuff - and with one or two exceptions what's left are pretty hard targets that I'll either never see or never be able to afford.
> ...




IIRC, he talks about hitting name level in about a year of play.  I am not sure about the page level.  A quick google search turned up an article on Dragonsfoot which quoted Gygax in '75 saying that there was an 8th level magic user after 8 months of play.  Take that for what you wish.

But, again, I really disagree with the idea that the PC's lose out on much of the treasure in adventures.  Those published adventures didn't exactly hide the treasure that well and considering the point of play is to amass the treasure, then if the party is missing 40% of the treasure in an adventure, they aren't playing very well.


----------



## Hussar (May 22, 2017)

Rygar said:


> I think this is an excellent post.
> 
> The other thing I would say needs to be kept in mind is: 1st edition D&D was designed around creating a world where the Players were challenged to survive, 3rd edition was where it shifted to trying to create a game, thought 3e was still pretty world oriented.  4th and 5th edition are about a game where Players are given a carrot on a stick to keep them playing and aren't expected to face a serious challenge.
> 
> ...




LOL.  Funny how people want to claim things for AD&D, but, ignore what's actually in the books:



			
				1e DMG page 9 said:
			
		

> As a realistic simulation of things from the realm of make-believe, or even as a reflection of medieval or ancient warfare or culture or society, it can be deemed only a dismal failure. Readers who seek the latter must search elsewhere. Those who desire to create and populate imaginary worlds with larger-thon-life heroes and villains, who seek relaxation with a fascinating game, and who generally believe games should be fun, not work, will hopefully find this system to their taste.


----------



## pemerton (May 22, 2017)

Hussar said:


> IIRC, he talks about hitting name level in about a year of play.



The nearest I could find was this, on pp 58, 112:

If your players wish to spend most of their time visiting other planes (and this could come to pass after a year or more of play) then you will be hard pressed unless you rely upon other game systems to fill the gaps. . . .

While it might seem highly unlikely to those who have not been involved in fantasy adventure gaming for an extended period of time, after the flush of excitement wears off - perhaps a few months or a year, depending on the intensity of play - some participants will become bored and move to other gaming forms, returning to your campaign only occasionally. Shortly thereafter even your most dedicated players will ococcasionally find that dungeon levels and wilderness castles grow stale, regardless of subtle differences and unusual challenges. It is possible, however, for you to devise a campaign which will have a very minimal amount of participant attrition and enthusiast ennui, and it is not particularly difficult to do so.​
(The latter passage then leads into a discussion of Boot Hill and Gamma World as D&D variants - ie the "other systems" referred to in the earlier passage.)

To me, _spending most of their time visiting other planes_ implies name level or pretty close thereto. He certainly doesn't seem to be envisaging the same characters being played in a continuous campaign for years on end!


----------



## AriochQ (May 22, 2017)

My first thought after reading this post was "Get off my lawn you pesky kids!"

But seriously...I have been playing since 1978 and the current version of D&D is much more forgiving.  As already discussed, zero HP death and 'save or die' spells have gone away.  I don't necessarily view this as a bad thing.  IMHO, they were poor game design.  Let's look at the 'save or die' mechanic.  When combined with the 'auto fail on a 1', it means that you have a 5% chance of dying any time you roll.  Anyone who played to higher levels 1st or 2nd ed. will remember that 'save or die' effects became increasingly common.  Basically, you were going to roll a '1' (5% chance each time you roll) and die at some point.  Is that a good mechanic?  I would say no.

On the other hand, I agree that the pendulum has veered too far toward 'no risk'.  This is especially apparent in Adventurer's League play.  Outside AL, individual DM's can tailor their own games to the lethality they desire, so I don't see it as a issue of concern.

In short, the OP is probably right regarding lethality/challenge but I don't think it is ever appropriate to tell anyone they are playing D&D wrong.


----------



## Over the Hill Gamer (May 22, 2017)

AriochQ said:


> ...I have been playing since 1978 and the current version of D&D is much more forgiving.  As already discussed, zero HP death and 'save or die' spells have gone away.  I don't necessarily view this as a bad thing.  IMHO, they were poor game design.  Let's look at the 'save or die' mechanic.  When combined with the 'auto fail on a 1', it means that you have a 5% chance of dying any time you roll.  Anyone who played to higher levels 1st or 2nd ed. will remember that 'save or die' effects became increasingly common.  Basically, you were going to roll a '1' (5% chance each time you roll) and die at some point.  Is that a good mechanic?  I would say no.
> 
> On the other hand, I agree that the pendulum has veered too far toward 'no risk'.  This is especially apparent in Adventurer's League play.  Outside AL, individual DM's can tailor their own games to the lethality they desire, so I don't see it as a issue of concern.
> 
> In short, the OP is probably right regarding lethality/challenge but I don't think it is ever appropriate to tell anyone they are playing D&D wrong.




Let's not forget that 1e also required a resurrection survival roll, based on constitution, that offered a pretty good chance of dying permanently even as you were being brought back from the dead.  I recall losing several characters to such a die roll.


----------



## AriochQ (May 22, 2017)

Over the Hill Gamer said:


> Let's not forget that 1e also required a resurrection survival roll, based on constitution, that offered a pretty good chance of dying permanently even as you were being brought back from the dead.  I recall losing several characters to such a die roll.




I could live without that, but I did sort of like the level loss upon death that some groups used.  Given the slow rate of leveling in 1e, it made a death (even with a successful resurrection) very painful and thus more meaningful.


----------



## Lanefan (May 22, 2017)

pemerton said:


> The nearest I could find was this, on pp 58, 112:
> 
> If your players wish to spend most of their time visiting other planes (and this could come to pass after a year or more of play) then you will be hard pressed unless you rely upon other game systems to fill the gaps. . . .
> 
> ...



I've always taken those few pages to be little more than an advertisement for TSR's other game systems at the time, and thus largely ignored them.   Looked at more closely, the whole section seems to be about keeping players interested if the base campaign is losing them; be it by jumping to a different system, interjecting some offbeat adventuring (he mentions his Alice in Wonderland levels in Castle Greyhawk as an example), visiting other planes, etc.

And - and this is very relevant to the discussion we've been having elsewhere - on p. 112 under "The Ongoing Campaign" the second paragraph is all about having an ongoing backstory as a means of maintaining player interest and giving the PCs a greater purpose in the game world.



> To me, _spending most of their time visiting other planes_ implies name level or pretty close thereto. He certainly doesn't seem to be envisaging the same characters being played in a continuous campaign for years on end!



While he may not have envisioned that when he wrote the DMG, it's exactly what ended up happening in a great many instances.  I think that's in part due to the tone taken in the introduction to the PH, which a) seems to point much more strongly to longer ongoing (and interweaving) campaigns and parties, and b) would have been read by many more people, at least to begin with.

As for the "visiting other planes" bit, I'm starting to wonder if that's based more on his experiences DMing his own game...which from what I can tell mostly took place in one great big dungeon: Castle Greyhawk.  If he or his players wanted something different, pretty much the only option was to jump to another plane to find it.



> You are using the wrong levels: as per DMG p 86, "The level of the aspiring character should be computed at current (not to be gained) level." Hence [MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION]'s figure of 15,000 is correct, assuming a "roleplay" factor of 1: 1+2+3+4 = 10, x 1500 = 15,000 gp.



Huh.  I never noticed that.  Apologies to [MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION] .

Lan-"probably a good thing I never used the RAW to set my games' training costs; I'd have been doing it wrong for 30+ years"-efan


----------



## Lanefan (May 22, 2017)

Over the Hill Gamer said:


> Let's not forget that 1e also required a resurrection survival roll, based on constitution, that offered a pretty good chance of dying permanently even as you were being brought back from the dead.  I recall losing several characters to such a die roll.



IME a failed resurrection roll can in fact open up some adventuring opportunities, in part because on a failed roll the casting Cleric often gets a vague notion as to what caused the failure (or can cast _Commune_ and ask).

In two cases (each in a different campaign, and about 18 years apart) I've seen characters decide, after a PC failed a raise because some deity said 'no', to take it on themselves to adventure their way into the land of the dead (without dying!), find the soul of their dearly departed, and then attempt to either buy/bribe it out or get it out by force/stealth.

They're one-for-two.  The force/stealth group did manage to get their target soul out - just - while the buy/bribe group ended up losing a contest of champions that had their souls vs. their target's soul as the stakes.

Lan-"it's not the gettin' there that's the problem - it's the gettin' back"-efan


----------



## The Crimson Binome (May 22, 2017)

Over the Hill Gamer said:


> Let's not forget that 1e also required a resurrection survival roll, based on constitution, that offered a pretty good chance of dying permanently even as you were being brought back from the dead.  I recall losing several characters to such a die roll.



My favorite random death roll was for the _haste_ spell, which let you make twice as many attacks in a round at the cost of magically aging a year (where any sort of magical aging triggers a system shock roll). It's certainly one way of balancing a spell.


----------



## Libramarian (May 22, 2017)

You're speaking my language @_*lewpuls*_! I largely share your preferences and hope you keep writing articles here.

It's interesting that old editions of D&D literally called XP an award while newer editions call it a reward.

However I think D&D evolved in this direction not so much to appeal to a broader pool of players, but DMs. Most new DMs do not have the restraint and conscientiousness needed to run Gamist D&D. They gravitate to a storytelling style where they script everything of consequence in advance, and therefore find the greater predictability of modern D&D play a boon.

E.g. the reduced risk of PC death is often advocated in terms of reducing player discouragement but I think more important is the fact that newb DMs don't deal well with random PC deaths or extemporaneous resurrection quests interrupting their plot.

The players are there for hardcore gamist play. I recently picked up Battlefield 1 and was shocked to see how unforgiving it is for a modern AAA videogame to new players. I must have died 30 or 40 times before getting my first kill. The Dark Souls  games of course are also huge sellers while being notoriously frustrating to play.

IIRC in the run-up to 5e Mearls/Crawford mentioned that most DMs don't read the DMG so their options for DM training are limited. At one point they said they wanted to make instructional videos. Seems like they expect streamed games to provide that instead but the problem with that is scripted, participatory D&D (with attractive, charismatic players) will win the battle for views every time over procedurally hygienic, gamist D&D.


----------



## Libramarian (May 22, 2017)

The Dude said:


> this whole post reads like an old person





billd91 said:


> And that, as far as I'm concerned, tends to make this sound like he's just an old geezer





shidaku said:


> *facepalm* Oh boy, it's one of _those_  articles by some older person...I can grab any person over 50 off the street and hear this same complaint




I hope I'm not the only one discomfited by this ageism. It's not right to dismiss someone's opinion just because they're old or sounds like they're old.


----------



## Hussar (May 22, 2017)

Libramarian said:


> I hope I'm not the only one discomfited by this ageism. It's not right to dismiss someone's opinion just because they're old or sounds like they're old.




No, but it is right to dismiss someone's opinion when it carries no weight, isn't supported by the actual facts, and has been repeated ad nauseam over the past thirty years.

Sorry, but, none of the things in 5e are new.  Again, we had Dragonlance back in 1984.  My James Bond 007 game is dated 1983 (which included ALL SORTS of rules for keeping the PC's alive).  My Star Frontiers game was published in 1982 and, complete with the three Volturnus modules, ran a pretty sweet story based campaign.  On and on and on.

Could you play RPG's the way you are talking about?  Sure, of course.  No one is denying that.  What's being denied is that somehow this was the only way RPG's were ever played and it is this big change in gaming that we have now.  It's nostalgia glasses of the worst kind.


----------



## pemerton (May 23, 2017)

Hussar said:


> Could you play RPG's the way you are talking about?  Sure, of course.  No one is denying that.  What's being denied is that somehow this was the only way RPG's were ever played



I think this is really the key point. If classic, "gamist" dungeon-crawling was _ever_ the main way of playing D&D, it seems to have lost that status some time in the early 1980s.

The idea that a cultural development that is over 30 years old, in a hobby barely more than 40 years old, is somehow a "new" thing is not tenable.

There is also a lot of projection going on in the characterisations of "true" or "original" D&D. Eg [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION] excludes DL from being "truly" 1st ed AD&D, and likewise treats elements of Gygax's approach as purely idiosyncratic and not essential to "true" 1st ed AD&D either. Is "true" 1st ed AD&D, then, just whatever it is that Lanefan plays? Or played, back in the day? That's obviously not tenable.

A final comment: in some domains of activity, relative "toughness" or "hardcoreness" is fairly easy to identify. Running a half-marathon is, in some objective sense, more gruelling than jogging 500 m. Climbing a mountain is, in some objective sense, more gruelling that climbing over the fence at the local park.

But in what way is playing classic dungeon-crawling D&D supposed to be more gruelling than, say, playing DL back in the day, or playing the final encounter of some WotC AP, or (to turn to a non-D&D game) playing a session of DitV? There is a tone in some of the posts in this thread - with references to lethality, difficulty, etc - that clearly imply this is the case. But they don't explain what the nature of the gruelling-ness is supposed to be.


----------



## Sunseeker (May 23, 2017)

Libramarian said:


> I hope I'm not the only one discomfited by this ageism. It's not right to dismiss someone's opinion just because they're old or sounds like they're old.




I hope I'm not the only one who can recognize the hypocrisy in berating "young folks" for playing the game wrong and then berating them _again_ for not being willing to be berated.


----------



## billd91 (May 23, 2017)

Libramarian said:


> I hope I'm not the only one discomfited by this ageism. It's not right to dismiss someone's opinion just because they're old or sounds like they're old.




No, I'll dismiss them when they mostly amount to a "back in MY day story, we had it tough, not soft like the kids today" rehash. Which this was.


----------



## Coreyartus (May 23, 2017)

Ya know, I started playing D&D in 1980, and I stopped playing it for years in part because of the attitude espoused in this article. "You're not playing it right!!  You're ruining my fun because you don't play it the way I like to play it!  Everyone should want what I want!  I don't care if you're having fun, you're not having fun in the right way!"

Get over yourself.

Perhaps the type of player who plays RPGs has changed in 40 years.  Perhaps games don't need to be the same.  Perhaps our definition of a good time has changed, too.  The nature of a quality gaming experience has shifted.  

Any article that nostalgically laments how RPG players aren't "earning" their fun in the right way just comes across as pretentious privileged elitism and slips into the blather of File 13 way too quickly to be taken seriously.  I can understand romanticizing the past, but blaming contemporary players for not playing their own games correctly suggests more about the writer of the piece than the audience of readers.  Get off my lawn indeed. I can have fun lighting a fire with flint and steel, but I'd rather have fun with the developments that have come along since the invention of fire...  Older is not always better.  I'll take the new version over the old version any day, especially if it means not having to play with judgemental participants like this writer...

And frankly, ENWorld should know better than to publish this...


----------



## Hussar (May 23, 2017)

Coreyartus said:


> And frankly, ENWorld should know better than to publish this...




Now, that I don't agree with.  It's an opinion and it's one that should be dragged out into the light and examined.  I've see far too many discussions with gamers over the years espouse something pretty close to this to think that it's something that will go away if we just ignore it.

Look, if you feel that hardcore gamism is a better way to play, then prove it to me.  Show me how I can have a better time doing it that way than I can the way I prefer to play.  But, like this article, if the only way you can make your play style look attractive is to denigrate how others play, then, well, like you say, that says more about the poster than anything.


----------



## pogre (May 23, 2017)

I've played and enjoyed every edition of D&D during their respective times. (Yeah, I'm old). Our experience was that lower level D&D "back in the day" was far more dangerous and higher level play was actually less dangerous than the current edition. YMMV. It was just that for us, the pain of losing a high level character stung more because it took so long to get there.

I still enjoy some dungeon delving using some of the retro-clones from time-to-time. I also enjoy the story-driven 5th edition campaign I'm currently playing.

It's OK to play D&D more than one way.


----------



## prosfilaes (May 23, 2017)

> The most striking trends in hobby games is the movement from games of consequence to games of reward. Players in hobby games in the past have been expected to earn what they received, but more and more in hobby games we’re seeing games that reward players for participation.




I have no idea what you're talking about. Looking at top rated games on the biggest board game site, I see a lot of vicious games, where there will be one winner and many losers. Are you complaining about the fact that these games are more "realistic", in the sense that you have to build something yourself instead of simply attacking your enemy, which is rarely a solution in real life? Or that some of these games are cooperative, and the consequence for losing is that you failed the world and let civilization fall to epidemics, instead of simply losing to another player? 



> Mass-market games are much more reward-based then consequence-based. Hobby gamers might call them “not serious”.




Checkers, chess, backgammon, Monopoly, Clue, Uno, Scrabble etc., are all mass-market games that have clear winners and losers that are kept track of.



> Home video “save games” have always tended to make video games a “you can’t lose” proposition.




Save games were created because without a method to save the game, a game was limited to how long you could play in one stretch. Super Mario Brothers is completable in 5 minutes, 20 minutes if you don't use the warps. That was all they could pack on the cartridge, so it wasn't a big deal. Super Mario Galaxy 2 takes over 3 hours for a quick run, and over nine hours to grab all 242 stars. With enough patience most people can get through either of them, but I suspect that SMB1, without the save game, will be quicker.



> Classic games involve conflict. Many so-called games nowadays do not involve conflict, and there are role-playing "games" that are storytelling exercises without much opposition.




To quote the esteemed Arlo Guthrie back in 1972, "Dealing card games with the old man in the Club Car / Penny a point - ain't no one keeping score". I've played a thousand hands of spades with nobody really caring about who won and who lost. If you're talking about direct conflict, Snakes and Ladders, and Life, and Operation, to name a few, are older games that don't involve direct conflict. If you're not talking about direct conflict, I have no idea what you mean by "Many so-called games nowadays do not involve conflict". Are we talking about the likes of the Ungame... which came out in 1973, a year before D&D?

There _are_ roleplaying games that are storytelling exercises without much opposition. I understand the theatrical tradition and ad libbing played a big part in their ancestry. They're sort of marginal, and while I might agree that they aren't games, I don't see the relevance of that to anything; that some people enjoy engaging in group storytelling is nothing new, and is a pleasurable intellectual exercise.

Around to D&D, ever heard of "stand behind the pile of dead bards!"? That's a fairly modern rendition of an old joke in some form or other about the endless string of indistinguishable characters some players play, where the instant a DM kills off one, another one pops up. Doesn't seem like your consequences had much an effect there, beyond negating any attempt at playing a role. My one time playing the DCC RPG and having my character die because he looked through something and got attacked by a grub and died is not high on my RPG memories. It's interesting you don't mention that one actual pattern in modern boardgames is the mitigation of randomness; it's not fun, or a particular indication of skill, or a real challenge, to win or lose based on a die roll. So randomness may choose how the board is laid out, or what resources are coming out this turn, but not "this person wins because he rolled 6s all game and the other person rolled 1s". Which is a style choice, but it seems weird to praise a certain style of RPG as "games of consequence" when what the consequences are of is the fact that you rolled poorly.


----------



## lewpuls (May 23, 2017)

It's a common reaction of younger people to claim that any suggestion that changes in life have occurred in ways that "don't sound good" is simply an old person reacting to/hating on the young. I've even encountered people who believe there are no generational differences, despite all the research and other evidence to the contrary. The possibility that changes in attitudes really have happened - and anyone who knows history knows that attitudes DO change strongly over time - is ignored. This becomes an ad hominem argument: "it came from an old person so it doesn't count and we can just make fun of it". That's a logical fallacy, folks. Something like "Hitler liked it so it must be bad", which is of course nonsense. What matters is whether something is true, not who's identifying or describing it.


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_hominem "Ad hominem (Latin for "to the man" or "to the person"), short for argumentum ad hominem, is now usually understood as a logical fallacy in which an argument is rebutted by attacking the character, motive, or other attribute of the person making the argument, or persons associated with the argument, rather than attacking the substance of the argument itself."


In other words, when you try to interpret/divine what "I want" (usually incorrectly), when you blame me or "old geezers" for what I've described,  you've *LOST ALL CREDIBILITY.*




Once again, I am editorially constrained to 500 words, which doesn't leave room for many examples.  If I had had a thousand words, I'd have provided more examples. Btw, SMHWorlds, Coreyartus, I'm talking about ALL games, not just RPGs and certainly not just D&D. Nor do I see where I've failed to recognize that much of it comes from the GM, not the rules, in RPGs.


Than you, RevTurkey, Lanefan (yes, you explain very well in your initial post, but also ran well over my word limit!), JeffB, Derren, J.L.Duncan, Over-the-Hill, Pemerton, Libramarian, and others.  Nice shot, AmerigoV! Yes, S'mon, that's true, I was around 30 then, not an "old geezer". Then as now I tried to say what I meant without worrying about whether others would agree, and I despise political correctness and rampant egalitarianism as much now as then.






My point in the OP is about what people expect to do and achieve when playing the game, not about what kind of thing they're looking to get from the game. Two people can expect the same "reward" (better, award), in the latter sense, yet want the game to play very differently.  Diablo III gives lots of loot, just as many other games, but it's fully a reward-based game in the sense that you are going to easily get loads of loot, you don't have to earn it in any significant way, while in some other loot games (tabletop RPGs as run by a minority of GMs) you have to earn what you get.


In a way we could say reward-based games are like Monty Haul adventures, but that still focuses on the amount of the reward more than on what you have to do to get it.


You could take a party game such as Apples to Apples or any of its reward-based progeny (such as Cards Against Humanity), add big-money stakes (money from the players) to it, and it would become (as much as is possible within the hardly-competitive rules) a game of consequence rather than one of reward.




Yes, D&D grew out of wargaming. Out of Dave Arneson's miniatures battle campaign, while Gary Gygax was an officer in the International Federation of Wargamers (national game clubs were a thing in the late 60s). Naturally, with players initially coming from wargaming, there was a greater emphasis on challenge.  But the attitude change is not unique to RPGs. The consequence-reward change is often discussed and glaringly obvious in video games. One of the topics discussed is how much easier it is to play video games successfully these days.


People are now taught that they should never be uncomfortable, and that notion extends into games, at times. Video players of adventure/action/RP games have come to expect a "loot drop" from every monster, no matter how innocuous. Quite apart from how you can use your save games to keep doing the same thing (such as open a chest) again and again until you get a result you really like. (The guys I know personally who do this are over 60; it's not  generational in and of itself.)


One of the advantages of single-player video games is that game developers can let players who are only interested in story go through the story without having to work at it. I've advocated an "autopilot" mode in video games for many years, and a few games have contained some form of same, so that when it gets too much like work or too tough, the player can let the computer play through the difficult part while the player watches, then continues with the story thereafter. However, many hard-core video gamers still react pretty negatively to the notion, even though it wouldn't affect how they play in any way. I guess they're worried that they'll succumb to temptation and use the autopilot, or they're worried about polluting the pseudo-competition of comparing times taken to "beat a game."




I did not use the old training cost rules of AD&D, because it turned PCs into money-grubbers rather than adventurers. On the other hand, players never swam in gold because I drastically reduced monetary rewards. I used my own experience method based on how well the players accomplished their mission; gold didn't come into it.  Again, as someone said, it's the GM, not the rules, that most strongly determines the balance and style of cost/reward.




Saelorn, the consequence of going down to 1 HP is felt during the adventure, even though it's all healed up later. During the adventure it changes tactics and even strategy. Still, the point I tried to make is about how choices of the players make a significant difference to the *outcome*, or do not.




Saracenus, you have failed just as much as most people to figure out what I want. I abhor horror of any kind. I  do NOT want complicated combat. I don't want complicated anything, because you can make a game with lots of gameplay depth without being complicated (in fact, that's superior to complicated games).  I despise legacy games, which stink to me of planned obsolescence. And so forth. Trying to figure out what an author wants based on a 500 word piece is a fool's errand.




Hussar seems to be particularly out of touch with logic:
"No, but it is right to dismiss someone's opinion when it carries no weight, isn't supported by the actual facts, and has been repeated ad nauseam over the past thirty years."


The comments above have suggested many "actual facts" that I could not possibly include in 500 words. That something has been repeated a lot for a long time neither makes it true nor untrue, logically. And if you want an opinion to carry "weight," what are your criteria? By any reasonable criteria I've ever seen, mine carries far more weight than any random commenter's does. But that weight is not and should not be a criteria for establishing whether something is true or untrue.  Your notion that it should is a subtle form of the ad hominem fallacy. More bad logic.




I have no idea how what I've said can come to be interpreted as "a certain style of RPG as 'games of consequence' when what the consequences are of is the fact that you rolled poorly." A player who wants to stay alive in most RPGs wants to limit the number of times he must make a good roll to avoid dying. And GMs who like rot grubs and other methods of killing someone out of nowhere, are turning the game into a button-pushing exercise, push some buttons and hope you don't get unlucky. (Of course, you've probably seen this explicitly, though more often it's levers than buttons.)


ENWorld can always be relied on for a very wide spectrum of comments. Heaven help me if I ever deliberately try to stir up comments.


----------



## CydKnight (May 23, 2017)

Society has come to expect rewards in general.  The trend is that those expectations will demand more for less over time.  What is not realized is that we are _looking for fulfillment.  _The more we look for it in things (concepts are things too), the less fulfilled we become.  So what do we do?  We keep doing the same thing for that quick fix because it's all we know.  It's a vicious cycle where our own egos tell us what we need to be fulfilled but it will only serve to satisfy the ego and egos are never satisfied for long.


----------



## billd91 (May 23, 2017)

lewpuls said:


> It's a common reaction of younger people to claim that any suggestion that changes in life have occurred in ways that "don't sound good" is simply an old person reacting to/hating on the young. I've even encountered people who believe there are no generational differences, despite all the research and other evidence to the contrary. The possibility that changes in attitudes really have happened - and anyone who knows history knows that attitudes DO change strongly over time - is ignored. This becomes an ad hominem argument: "it came from an old person so it doesn't count and we can just make fun of it". That's a logical fallacy, folks. Something like "Hitler liked it so it must be bad", which is of course nonsense. What matters is whether something is true, not who's identifying or describing it.




Some attitudes do change over time, but you know what else is true? An older generation will look down at younger generations and complain that things were more difficult, more challenging, or their achievements were more worthy in their day and they way they did things. Your elders did it to your Baby Boom generation and you're doing it to the GenXers, Millennials, and what-have-you afterwards. Same old story - same old song and dance.

As far as I'm concerned, the important point is that people are enjoying the games they play. If you prefer a particular style of play, go ahead. But if you throw shade at someone else's style (and let's face it, you did), you're going to get pushback at the attitude.


----------



## Mishihari Lord (May 23, 2017)

Before commenting on the articles, I want to comment on the comments.  A lot of them could be summarized as "please stop publishing articles that I don't agree with."  Seriously?  How do you ever expect to learn something new if you only talk to people that think the same things as you do?  

The article clearly highlights an element of playstyle:  do I always want my character to get the candy, or do I want receiving candy to depend on my choices?  The smart thing to do with this content is to use it to consider your personal playstyle:  where do I fall on this continuum, and how can I adjust how I'm playing to better fit my preference?  The foolish thing to do with the content is to use it to cast aspersions at those with different playstyles.

Articles like this can also be useful as a check on one's personal consistency.  People get mad when it's pointed out that their actions aren't consistent with their espoused beliefs of positions.  For example if one thinks intellectually that always getting the candy is lame, but it turns out that that's how he prefers to play.  Or vice versa.  Better understanding your own play preferences can be a lot of help in making your games better.

So my thoughts on the actual article.  I pretty much agree with the idea that there's been a general shift in society to make what people receive less dependent on their own actions.  Folks' thoughts on whether or not this is a good thing are pretty dependent on their political leanings, so I won't pursue this element further.  Games have followed along with this shift.  As a result, I tend to enjoy the older games more.  2E is still my favorite D&D.  One of the big things I don't care for in later games is 100% recovery each day.  I have more fun when the challenges I face today depend on what happened yesterday, frex, with regard to spells and health expended.  With 100% recovery some strategy and resource allocation elements of the game that I enjoy go away.


----------



## Lord Mhoram (May 23, 2017)

lewpuls said:


> My point in the OP is about what people expect to do and achieve when playing the game, not about what kind of thing they're looking to get from the game. Two people can expect the same "reward" (better, award), in the latter sense, yet want the game to play very differently.




If that was your intent, and it may well have been, but it was muddied by the judgmental tone of the article. If you want to discus that, but you use words and phrases like "such as the ridiculous Revivify spell, usable by a mere fifth level cleric" as a big example. Reading that sets the tone of the rest of the article as "the way I play is better and this other way is worse" - therein lies the judgement that people are jumping to and the ad hominem - "he's just a whiny old geezer". It's right there in the word choice, tone and prose of the article. 

I would love to see an article with the same intent, but discussing the changes in expectations, approach and such, but done from a more neutral standpoint on what is good and what is bad.



For the record - Geezer here, just turned 50, started playing in '77.


----------



## Over the Hill Gamer (May 23, 2017)

Mishihari Lord said:


> Before commenting on the articles, I want to comment on the comments.  A lot of them could be summarized as "please stop publishing articles that I don't agree with."




Totally agree.  I think lewpuls has a valid and reasonable perspective and has been mugged for it. It is a sign of the times that people want news they can agree with.  They often react poorly to opinions that differ from their own.   I think this site can afford different opinions without the personal attacks.  Debate is fine but I think some of the comments above go beyond that.  

People like different kinds of games.  Some like a more forgiving game that allows them to live out heroic fantasies with a lesser chance of failure.  Others prefer a less forgiving, grittier game with death stalking them at every turn. 

Why don't we all try to find common ground before trashing essayists.  After all, we're talking about games here people, games.


----------



## AriochQ (May 23, 2017)

I think the issue at hand is that this is more 'editorial' than it is 'article'.  It probably is more properly placed as a forum thread, rather than as a front page item.


----------



## Sunseeker (May 23, 2017)

lewpuls said:


> In other words, when you try to interpret/divine what "I want" (usually incorrectly), when you blame me or "old geezers" for what I've described,  you've *LOST ALL CREDIBILITY.*




It's fun to watch my previous posts get substantiated.  

It is not _I_ the commentor who needs to establish credibility.  That is on you.  You must demonstrate that your point is well supported, or that your opinion is rational, even if disagreeable.  What I read was neither well-supported (you can argue you didn't have enough room to provide specific examples all you like, one or two would not have taken many words), nor is it well rationalized, relying heavily on "back in my day"-isms for games somehow having more consequence and less reward.

So if you find your opinion being readily disregarded, you really should reflect inwardly on that, instead of one again accusing your detractors of lacking credibility.


----------



## prosfilaes (May 23, 2017)

lewpuls said:


> It's a common reaction of younger people to claim that any suggestion that changes in life have occurred in ways that "don't sound good" is simply an old person reacting to/hating on the young. ... What matters is whether something is true, not who's identifying or describing it.




It is up to the author to make their case. You're basically claiming the new generation doesn't want to work for stuff; Adam Conover, in https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-HFwok9SlQQ , points out this has been an accusation against the new generation since at least 1968.

Also, how you phrased that shows part of the problem. Old people get seriously grumpy when a younger person claims that the new generation is better in some fashion. In fact, most groups of people get annoyed when someone from a separate group claim people in their group are better than people in the first group. But you treat it as a problem of the young.

Psychology and sociology are hard disciplines. They involve things that are very hard to accurately study, where it's hard to get a good accurate sample and hard to measure what you want to measure. The fact that people want evidence for claims isn't something you should object to. 



> I despise legacy games, which stink to me of planned obsolescence.




The coexistence of Pandemic and Pandemic Legacy, and the way that many people who owned the first bought the second and enjoyed it, indicate that they bring something to the table to the players that their non-legacy versions don't. The subject is a bit off-topic, but it's a casual dismissal, even "despise", of a style of games.



> Once again, I am editorially constrained to 500 words, which doesn't leave room for many examples. ... Trying to figure out what an author wants based on a 500 word piece is a fool's errand.




So basically you want a participation trophy. For all your claims of wanting a challenge, when pushed to fit in a full thesis in 500 words, you blame your failures on the format. If you cannot communicate what you want in 500 words, then don't write in 500 words, and if that means you don't get published here, so be it. If it's a fool's errand to figure out what an author wants based on their writing, then it's the author's fault, no matter what the length.



> I have no idea how what I've said can come to be interpreted as "a certain style of RPG as 'games of consequence' when what the consequences are of is the fact that you rolled poorly."




Early D&D, where you started with a few hitpoints and died when you hit zero, and save or dies were plentiful, mean that you die when you roll poorly.

Despite having another 1300 words, you don't seem to have made any attempt to back up your claim that there's a change of this manner in games.


----------



## Ratskinner (May 23, 2017)

This whole thing some old-timers have about how back in their day PCs actually had to work for a living and walk in 9 ft deep snow to the dragon's lair and it was uphill both ways and ....

That just doesn't match my experiences with Old-school at all. Mine seem much more in line with [MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION]'s, even when the DM was using all or most of the rules that [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION] mentioned. I don't think I've ever met an old-school dwarf who made it more than a few levels without _somehow _running into the Franklin Mint Dwarven Heritage Artifact Collection. (For that matter, I was recently playing a 1e OSR revival game and we found them as treasure in a published adventure at about level 4, IIRC.) My High School group played mostly published adventures and my first college group played mostly homebrew in the FR. I don't know how you miss all the treasure. Just put your finger on the wall and never let go until you've mapped and murdered the whole place. The whole procedure is often referred to as "cleaning out the dungeon" for cryin' out loud. I've witnessed 20 minute arguments about whether or not the party should make the effort to take the copper pieces. "Sure, individually they're worthless, but we have 35,000 of them."

Were the rules "harder"?  Aside from being terribly-edited and occasionally inconsistent, I don't actually think so. Old-School DMs could easily achieve whip-saws in lethality just by switching monsters. You want to increase death in 1e, just increase the number of "save or die" events and vice-versa. Heck, if you're in the upper single digit levels or higher, that might be your only hope, if you want to whack a fighter type. They've just got waayyy too many hp WRT monster damage output and "to hit" numbers. BUT! So what? You've probably got more than one _Raise Dead_ scroll lying around. Because, as I said about magic in the other thread:



Ratskinner said:


> It is, however, less-codified and generally opaque to the players. Whether that's good or not is in the eye of the beholder. But it does have the (unintended?) side effect of making magic item "drops" one of the key ways a DM can influence the party, plot, or whatever while simultaneously making him seem like a nice guy. Add a dash of fairness and suddenly every old school party I've ever been a part of glows from orbit when somebody casts _Detect Magic_.




Now, could a DM just kill characters through pure arbitrary malice? Sure, but I don't see how that's any different than it is today, other than perhaps culturally being more or less acceptable, and I'll bet that varies a lot between modern groups as well. However, I'm not sure that increasing random/arbitrary lethality makes the game "harder". Its not like we didn't complete the dungeons anyway.  Unless you want to count the paperwork necessary for occasionally making up a new character....

As always YMMV, and its just my $.02


----------



## GrahamWills (May 23, 2017)

lewpuls said:


> It's a common reaction of younger people to claim ...
> 
> ... Hitler liked it so it must be bad ...
> 
> ...




OK. So I really need to know -- given the volume of inflammatory comments you make above, did you choose the last line of your comment with *deliberate* irony, or was it accidental? 



> Heaven help me if I ever deliberately try to stir up comments.


----------



## GrahamWills (May 23, 2017)

Does anyone else who plays video games have the same opinion as the OP? I'm curious as my experience of modern video games seems very different from the OPs:

*Video players of adventure/action/RP games have come to expect a "loot drop" from every monster, no matter how innocuous. *

Good Lord, wouldn't that be nice. You have no idea how long it took me to get the parts I needed for all my bags in HZD. I swear I'd have taken a mission to kill a herd of Thunderlizards if one was guaranteed to drop a friggin fish scale. In virtually every adventure/RP game I play, there are huge sets of posts on how to find worthwhile drops. Yes, everything drops trash, but that's as exciting as saying "every orc in OD&D drops standard rag clothing". In fact, I'd say the exact opposite to the OP's contention is true. Loot Drops are now used as a means to drag out games and make them longer and harder. Old-school video games had fixed drops -- so much easier!  No more donning stupid hard-to-find armor and +2 golden rings to increase the farm rate by 0.000001%

*Quite apart from how you can use your save games to keep doing the same thing (such as open a chest) again and again until you get a result you really like.*

Doesn't work in most games I play; the chest is randomized at creation time and so you can't do this. Save-scumming is totally old-school. Not a thing in modern games. Also, I play a few MMOs and Dark Souls style game (e.g. Nioh) where there is no save. Actually curious -- have there been any major releases in the last year where you can save-scum loot chests?

*I've advocated an "autopilot" mode in video games for many years*

Don't most games now have a variable level of difficulty you can set, and the easy mode is often explicitly called "story mode; for those interested only in experiencing the story" and you can do exactly as suggested -- turn it on for specific areas if you like? The only games I know which don't do this are either pure storytelling or hyper-difficult.

*they're worried about polluting the pseudo-competition of comparing times taken to "beat a game."*

As far as I recall, in games with difficulty switching, they almost invariably have achieves that take that into account. You don't get the achieve for "winning in hard mode" if you switch out of hard mode -- dirt simple, pretty much universal. 

As an aside -- the dig about "pseudo-competition" of speed-running seems a bit odd? Its not something I do, but I can't see why it's not a seriously competitive thing. It requires game skill, puzzle solving and a ton of practice. Seems pretty genuine to me. Is it a generally loathed concept?


----------



## prosfilaes (May 23, 2017)

lewpuls said:


> I despise legacy games, which stink to me of planned obsolescence.




It's still off-topic, but that's quite a leap to judgment. "Planned obsolescence" was a big discussion about the games when they first came out, but people still love them, and before despising them, you should look at why. The Legacy feature adds a cumulative effect, so you continue playing to see what's going to happen, and every single game (or subgame, really) has consequences on the next. Interestingly enough, Pandemic Legacy has few of the awards you're going on about; it's all about containing the damage and knowing at least it was only Montreal that collapsed, and NYC is still around. 

Pandemic Legacy has between 12 and 24 plays in it; say 16 on average. Compare to a Strategy & Tactics game subscription, where you get a wargame a month; every month, are you going to get 16 plays of the new wargame in? Or even 8, since Pandemic Legacy is $70 and an S&T game issue is only $35? I've got a bunch of games still in shrink, and some with only one play in. If you get several dozen plays out of every game you own, then legacy games may not be for you. If you're like me and my friends, you may get more game play out of a legacy game than almost any other game you buy.


----------



## S'mon (May 23, 2017)

lewpuls said:


> ...Something like "Hitler liked it so it must be bad", which is of course
> nonsense...




OMG Lewis Pulsipher is _Literally Hitler!!_


----------



## Mallus (May 24, 2017)

S'mon said:


> OMG Lewis Pulsipher is _Literally Hitler!!_



Don't tell [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION]. He'll be heartbroken!


----------



## Hussar (May 24, 2017)

Well, at least I got called out by name.  

But, yeah, nothing I've seen here has particularly changed my mind.  The notion that somehow back in the day, games were more "challenging" (whatever that's actually supposed to mean) is ridiculous.

What does that even mean?  What does "challenging" in this context mean?  I can look at a game like Blades in the Dark, which is a heavily story driven game, pretty strongly in the Narrative camp, where "getting the treasure" doesn't really mean anything and combat isn't the point of play, and see that challenge in that game means putting in as good of a performance as you can in order to entertain the group.

I used to play The Dying Earth RPG, some years ago.  Fantastic game.  But, the challenge there was to immerse yourself in a Vancian setting, complete with it's own idiom and language.  Tons of fun.  But, apparently, not a "challenge"?  I'm going to tell you right now that if you actually played the game, you'd find it all sorts of challenging.

And, again, all sorts of ignoring actual history going on here.  I mentioned Dragonlance, and [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION] put that as a sort of 2e design thing.  But, let's be honest here, that was being played in the 70's, LONG before 2e was a gleam in anyone's eye.  2e design didn't come out of a vacuum.  2e was a recognition of what was being played.  Maybe not played by everyone, true, but, certainly a recognition of how the game was being played at a number of tables.

Between the original article and Mr. Pulsiver's second post, I get the serious smell of troll coming from this thread.


----------



## Shasarak (May 24, 2017)

S'mon said:


> OMG Lewis Pulsipher is _Literally Hitler!!_




Has anyone ever seen Hitler and Lewis together in the same room?

Seems legit!


----------



## Hussar (May 24, 2017)

It seems to me that there are two issues here, related but separate.

1.  The historical argument that gaming has changed.  That might be true, but, the changes are hardly new.  We saw all sorts of more story driven games coming out almost from day one.  I mean, you have things like Empire of the Petal Throne, which is damn near as old as RPG's, where the point of play wasn't so much about challenge, but about exploration and interaction with the setting.  While EPT was based on the OD&D ruleset, it approached play very differently.

As [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] said, how can these be considered changes to how gaming is done when these changes are as old as the hobby?

It's kinda like the old argument about how D&D used to be all about the mega-dungeon.  Fair enough if all you read was the AD&D DMG.  Obviously the mega dungeon campaign was a pretty standard way to play.  Only thing is, as soon as you widen your scope a bit, mega-dungeon play wasn't the only game in town.  All you have to do is look at the modules.  The mega-dungeon is the exception, not the rule when you look at modules.  Even looking at something like the shift from Basic to Expert D&D, we see that the dungeon is no longer the focus of play - Expert rules and more importantly the Isle of Dread, showcase play that is almost completely divorced from dungeon crawling.  

2.  The argument that challenge necessarily means "earning" rewards.  Thing is, that's so subjective that it's virtually meaningless.  What does that even mean?  It presumes that the only rewards that are involved in play are the in-game rewards for your character, which in D&D means treasure and XP.  Thing is, the issue with "Monte Haul" campaigns isn't so much about not earning the rewards, but that it futzes so badly with game balance.  If everyone is hauling around a +5 sword, it makes adventure design so much more difficult.

I remember an anecdote by Gygax in Dragon talking about how one of the players had a Vorpal Sword.  The issue wasn't one of Monte Haul, but, that the sword was too powerful and it made encounters too easy.  So, he maneuvered a way into the game to get rid of the sword.  Not because the player hadn't "earned" it.
 [MENTION=30518]lewpuls[/MENTION]' notion that "earning it" only means having a high risk of PC death is simply mired in an approach to the game that I don't particularly share.  For me, "earning it" means that you've played the game in such a way that everyone at the table has had a great time.  Whoopee, you rolled a high enough Save Vs Poison on that trapped chest so you "earned" your magic sword for getting lucky and rolling high on a d20?  How is that "earning" anything?  It's like the old rules for bonus Xp for high stats.  Has absolutely nothing with earning anything.  You just got 10% more XP than the guy beside you because you managed to roll higher on your stats?  What did you do to earn that 10% XP?  

Sorry, but, rewards in games should be for smart and entertaining play that makes the table a better place to be.  Rewarding someone simply for getting lucky is just gambling.  And I'd rather gamble if that's what we're going to do.  Rolling this back around to war-games, I MUCH prefer my war-games that minimize randomness.  Sure, Risk or Axis and Allies can be tons of fun, or, like one A&A game I played, Germany falls in the second turn because the player couldn't roll above a 2, no matter how many times he rolled.  Yay, great game everyone.  Sorry, I'll take things with a little less random chance and a lot more thinking thanks.  There's a reason that Euro-games have completely dominated board games for the past twenty years or so.  Far less winning through random blind luck and a lot more actual thinking and planning.

I'll stick to games that reward thinking and planning thanks.


----------



## TwoSix (May 24, 2017)

<shrug>  I'm perfectly okay if gamers of this generation are less competitive and challenge-driven, as a whole (obviously counterexamples abound) than gamers of a previous generation.  So what?  We're a little wimpier than our forebears?  Oh well, we're nicer and better people because of it.


----------



## Hussar (May 24, 2017)

Whoops, nothing to see here.


----------



## Lanefan (May 24, 2017)

Ratskinner said:


> That just doesn't match my experiences with Old-school at all. Mine seem much more in line with [MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION]'s, even when the DM was using all or most of the rules that [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION] mentioned. I don't think I've ever met an old-school dwarf who made it more than a few levels without _somehow _running into the Franklin Mint Dwarven Heritage Artifact Collection.



Where in 35 years I've yet to meet a Dwarf in any game with any more than one of the set...and even then, it doesn't always work quite right.

in my current game there's a Dwarf with a "Dwarven Thrower" hammer - when thrown it turns into a (usually screaming) Dwarf, splats against the target, returns to hammer form and flies back to its owner.


> My High School group played mostly published adventures and my first college group played mostly homebrew in the FR. I don't know how you miss all the treasure. Just put your finger on the wall and never let go until you've mapped and murdered the whole place.



You must have had amazing luck finding secret doors.  

Also, can someone please define what  [MENTION=30518]lewpuls[/MENTION] means by "legacy games"?

Lan-"when used as a handheld melee weapon the Dwarven Thrower is - and behaves as - a very nice enchanted war hammer"-efan


----------



## Lanefan (May 24, 2017)

Hussar said:


> 2.  The argument that challenge necessarily means "earning" rewards.  Thing is, that's so subjective that it's virtually meaningless.  What does that even mean?  It presumes that the only rewards that are involved in play are the in-game rewards for your character, which in D&D means treasure and XP.



In-game, those are the most commonly-seen rewards, yes...but with one caveat.

Experience points in and of themselves aren't much of a reward.  The real reward is the level-ups they eventually represent, and the associated increase in powers, abilities, (usually) survivability, and so on.

This is relevant when looking at, say, 2e advancement rates vs. 3-4-5e.

As for randomness: I kinda like it in reasonable amounts as something of an equalizer.  Besides, winning at anything usually involves a fair amount of luck no matter how much skill you bring (just ask the Anaheim Ducks about that).

Lan-"and any game that's based on dice is going to come down to luck, no matter what you do"-efan


----------



## Libramarian (May 24, 2017)

pemerton said:


> A final comment: in some domains of activity, relative "toughness" or "hardcoreness" is fairly easy to identify. Running a half-marathon is, in some objective sense, more gruelling than jogging 500 m. Climbing a mountain is, in some objective sense, more gruelling that climbing over the fence at the local park.
> 
> But in what way is playing classic dungeon-crawling D&D supposed to be more gruelling than, say, playing DL back in the day, or playing the final encounter of some WotC AP, or (to turn to a non-D&D game) playing a session of DitV? There is a tone in some of the posts in this thread - with references to lethality, difficulty, etc - that clearly imply this is the case. But they don't explain what the nature of the gruelling-ness is supposed to be.




It's just the pain and embarrassment when your character dies. It's gruelling to roll up a new one and start over. It's especially gruelling to not have anyone else to blame. Can't blame the DM (assuming "hygienic" practices), can't blame the adventure (assuming a sandbox rather than AP). You just have to eat it.

Although I wouldn't say the gruelling-ness itself is what I like about this way of playing. I think Luke Crane describes the pleasure of old school dungeoncrawling very well in this post (which I know you're a fan of):

"I realized at that moment that this group had done something all too  rare in my experiences with roleplaying games. Rather than bending the  game to our predilections, we bent our collective will to the game. We  learned it, and it taught us. It taught us how to play it, but it also  taught us lessons."

It's refreshing to play an RPG that doesn't care what you're trying to do with it, where the PCs are basically avatars and the focus is on the players' learning curve rather than the DM's story or the PCs' dramatic development. It's almost more like work than play, but stimulating work, not drudgery. Compared to most RPG play I find it to be, as the poet Thom Gunn said after reading too much "very poetic poetry", like drinking water after too much birthday cake.


Hussar said:


> Sorry, I'll take things with a little less random  chance and a lot more thinking thanks.  There's a reason that Euro-games  have completely dominated board games for the past twenty years or so.   Far less winning through random blind luck and a lot more actual  thinking and planning.
> 
> I'll stick to games that reward thinking and planning thanks.




I always like old style gamist D&D to poker in terms of the balance  of luck and skill. If you just look at an individual hand, you'd think  luck dominates, but after several hours of play, the skilled players  probably have the big stacks.


----------



## Libramarian (May 24, 2017)

TwoSix said:


> <shrug>  I'm perfectly okay if gamers of this generation are less competitive and challenge-driven, as a whole (obviously counterexamples abound) than gamers of a previous generation.  So what?  We're a little wimpier than our forebears?  Oh well, we're nicer and better people because of it.



This is a pretty odd comment. Firstly, there's no connection between liking competitive games and being a jerk. If anything, jerks tend to dislike and react poorly to (fair) competition. Secondly, competition is a separate issue from the topic of this thread.

Thirdly, [MENTION=30518]lewpuls[/MENTION] doesn't actually say any of those things about gamers today. He's criticising a trend in game design, not gamer preference.


----------



## pemerton (May 24, 2017)

Mallus said:


> Don't tell [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION]. He'll be heartbroken!



I just went back and did a quick review of my old Lewis Pulsipher thread and didn't see any posts from you in it . . . judge not until ye have at least dipped your toe into the water!

Like I said in that thread, the stuff about how to run dungeon crawls is good advice (I think) but not apposite to me, because I suck at that and don't do it. But what I would call the "anti-railroading" stuff is (in my view) first rate, and still influences how I think about RPGing and GMing.



Over the Hill Gamer said:


> People like different kinds of games.  Some like a more forgiving game that allows them to live out heroic fantasies with a lesser chance of failure.  Others prefer a less forgiving, grittier game with death stalking them at every turn.





Ratskinner said:


> Were the rules "harder"?  Aside from being terribly-edited and occasionally inconsistent, I don't actually think so. Old-School DMs could easily achieve whip-saws in lethality just by switching monsters. You want to increase death in 1e, just increase the number of "save or die" events and vice-versa. Heck, if you're in the upper single digit levels or higher, that might be your only hope, if you want to whack a fighter type. They've just got waayyy too many hp WRT monster damage output and "to hit" numbers. BUT! So what? You've probably got more than one _Raise Dead_ scroll lying around.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> Now, could a DM just kill characters through pure arbitrary malice? Sure, but I don't see how that's any different than it is today, other than perhaps culturally being more or less acceptable, and I'll bet that varies a lot between modern groups as well. However, I'm not sure that increasing random/arbitrary lethality makes the game "harder". Its not like we didn't complete the dungeons anyway.  Unless you want to count the paperwork necessary for occasionally making up a new character....



Here, I'm with Ratskinner. If we still get to finish the dungeon, albeit with a new PC, then how was it "harder"? In effect we're talking about tournament play with unlimited retries. That might test certain skills, but - without being told more - I'm not seeing how it makes things _more difficult_ or _less forgiving_.

And if the "death stalking them at every turn" is meant to be _emotionally_ draining for the players, then - in the right circumstances - so might any other form of story loss.

If the "easier" games are meant to be ones where the PCs (and thus their players) just go on a tour of the GM's world/story idea - which might be one way of understanding the original DL modules, or at least some of them - then that doesn't create a challenge, but clearly it's not _meant_ to, and so it's hardly a criticism of "gameworld tourism" RPGing that it doesn't give rise to the same sorts of game-play challenges that dungeon crawling does.



Hussar said:


> What does "challenging" in this context mean?  I can look at a game like Blades in the Dark, which is a heavily story driven game, pretty strongly in the Narrative camp, where "getting the treasure" doesn't really mean anything and combat isn't the point of play, and see that challenge in that game means putting in as good of a performance as you can in order to entertain the group.
> 
> I used to play The Dying Earth RPG, some years ago.  Fantastic game.  But, the challenge there was to immerse yourself in a Vancian setting, complete with it's own idiom and language.  Tons of fun.  But, apparently, not a "challenge"?  I'm going to tell you right now that if you actually played the game, you'd find it all sorts of challenging.



I agree with this, and think it is consistent with what I've just typed. Those aren't "setting tourism" RPGs, but they're not wargame-y dungeon-crawling type RPGs either. The challenge of playing well is framed and located in a completely different element of play.

I mean, the consequence for playing The Dying Earth badly is that everyone thinks your would-be Vancian dialogue sucks. That seems to have as big a potential to be a major consequence as making a mistake in the mapping of a room that gets a party member killed. (I mean, there are whole hosts of ENworld posters who object to "speak my PC's words" social resolution because it requires others at the table to judge the dialogue of the player. I think some of those posters would find The Dying Earth very demanding!)



Libramarian said:


> It's just the pain and embarrassment when your character dies. It's gruelling to roll up a new one and start over. It's especially gruelling to not have anyone else to blame.



I wrote all the above before getting to this post. It answers the question - where is the challenge? And the response it prompted in me was - there are other RPGs that are pretty different from a classic dungeoncrawl that can also generate a challenge that is something like this.

Reading you (Libramarian's) post, rereading my old thread, and thinking about these comments is making me feel more that - at least as far as RPGs go (I know nothing about video games and very little about board games) - the main contrast I would want to draw would be between "setting/story tourism" RPGing (which can come in different forms) and "player decisions really matter to outcomes" RPGing (which also can come in different forms).

Naturally that framing reflects my own interests. And in a recent thread my way of thinking about this contrast proved controversial with some posters!


----------



## pemerton (May 24, 2017)

Hussar said:


> you have things like Empire of the Petal Throne, which is damn near as old as RPG's, where the point of play wasn't so much about challenge, but about exploration and interaction with the setting.  While EPT was based on the OD&D ruleset, it approached play very differently.



I don't know anything about how it was actually played at Barker's table, but the rulebook is kind-of confusing: it sets up all this intricate setting stuff, but then strongly implies (through a combination of mechanics, GM advice and examples of play) that the actual gameplay will be pretty standard dungeoncrawl stuff but with weirder names on everything.

Maybe it was unrealistic to expect a published RPG at that time to depart so strongly from the then default D&D approach.


----------



## Ratskinner (May 24, 2017)

Lanefan said:


> in my current game there's a Dwarf with a "Dwarven Thrower" hammer - when thrown it turns into a (usually screaming) Dwarf, splats against the target, returns to hammer form and flies back to its owner.
> 
> You must have had amazing luck finding secret doors.




First off, best version of Dwarven Thrower I've encountered. Props to whoever came up with it.

RE: secret doors
Travel with multiple elves.

Turning back to the topic at hand...at the very least, our differing experiences seem to indicate that any perceived "difficulty" or "toughness" back in the day is an artifact of DMing choices and not the rules. A thing in which, I suspect, there is still a great deal of variety.

Sent from my Nexus 7 using EN World mobile app


----------



## Ratskinner (May 24, 2017)

pemerton said:


> I don't know anything about how it was actually played at Barker's table, but the rulebook is kind-of confusing: it sets up all this intricate setting stuff, but then strongly implies (through a combination of mechanics, GM advice and examples of play) that the actual gameplay will be pretty standard dungeoncrawl stuff but with weirder names on everything.
> 
> Maybe it was unrealistic to expect a published RPG at that time to depart so strongly from the then default D&D approach.




I have often (over the decades) picked up a new game hoping for a promise of new gaming turf only to be greeted by a reskinned or reworked D&D. I give a great deal of credence to the idea that it "poisoned the well" for rpg/story games. (Not that I consider it toxic.) In particular, Star Trek and Supers stood out to me as two areas that aren't well-served by traditional rpg mechanics and yet suffered many quixotic attempts at it. 


Sent from my LG-TP450 using EN World mobile app


----------



## MNblockhead (May 24, 2017)

That Adam Conover video is excellent. I'm so tired of hearing about GENERATION X, Generation Y, millennials, etc. generally, any statement with one of those terms is going to be a vapid overgeneralization. 



prosfilaes said:


> It is up to the author to make their case. You're basically claiming the new generation doesn't want to work for stuff; Adam Conover, in https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-HFwok9SlQQ , points out this has been an accusation against the new generation since at least 1968.
> 
> Also, how you phrased that shows part of the problem. Old people get seriously grumpy when a younger person claims that the new generation is better in some fashion. In fact, most groups of people get annoyed when someone from a separate group claim people in their group are better than people in the first group. But you treat it as a problem of the young.
> 
> ...







Sent from my iPhone using EN World mobile app


----------



## prosfilaes (May 24, 2017)

Lanefan said:


> Also, can someone please define what  [MENTION=30518]lewpuls[/MENTION] means by "legacy games"?




Legacy games are a new type of board game named after their first two major examples: Risk Legacy and Pandemic Legacy. To explain by example: Pandemic is a board game that runs in 90 minutes where you try and save the world from epidemics. Pandemic Legacy takes that and makes each full game of the original into a subgame covering one month of a (really, really bad) year. During and after each turn, things change; cities that had outbreaks start rioting (marked as stickers on the board), characters in those cities get scars (disadvantages) (marked as stickers on the character card), and winning teams get to add positives (again, marked by stickers) to the board or cards. And the game tells you to open up certain sealed boxes or read certain previously unrevealed cards that make major changes to the way the game plays or tear up previous cards that won't be used any more. So after you're done with the entire year, maybe 16-20 hours of game time, the game's done, it's not resettable to the start and it's not designed to be played as is. One group of my friends framed the board and hung it up, as a tribute to a grueling awesome game.

It's not like the people I was talking to, including that group, didn't think about "planned obsolesce" before buying these games. Risk Legacy can be played on the modified board after you've complete the series of games. Gloomhaven offers vinyl stickers that can be removed from the game board. But ultimately, most of us serious board gamers (and these legacy games so far are not targeted at mass market stores) have paid that much money for a game that hasn't seen more than one or two plays, and Pandemic Legacy and Gloomhaven are really fun, so this style of game is gaining some popularity in the community. I expect to see a bloom of games in this style, followed by a great dieback when most of them are crap, as per Sturgeon's law.


----------



## pemerton (May 24, 2017)

Ratskinner said:


> Star Trek and Supers stood out to me as two areas that aren't well-served by traditional rpg mechanics and yet suffered many quixotic attempts at it.



The only sci-fi game I've ever played is Traveller. Pretty trad in some ways (ultra-sim with virtually no metagame mechanics) but different from D&D in a few key ways (no XP, no classes/races, all skill-based, etc). But, in play, not likely to give you many Star Trek moments.

The only Supers game I've ever played is MHRP. At the moment I've got a Wolverine/Iceman/Nightcrawler/War Machine vs Dr Doom and Clan Yashida game on hiatus, and am running a fantasy campaign using a Hackers' Guide-inspired hack. I really enjoy this game - it's pretty light-hearted but I find does a nice job of incorporating inane player hijinks into the resolution.

It's fairly non-trad (and _very_ non-sim) but I don't know how far from traditional RPG mechanics you would rate it.


----------



## Ratskinner (May 24, 2017)

pemerton said:


> The only sci-fi game I've ever played is Traveller. Pretty trad in some ways (ultra-sim with virtually no metagame mechanics) but different from D&D in a few key ways (no XP, no classes/races, all skill-based, etc). But, in play, not likely to give you many Star Trek moments.
> 
> The only Supers game I've ever played is MHRP. At the moment I've got a Wolverine/Iceman/Nightcrawler/War Machine vs Dr Doom and Clan Yashida game on hiatus, and am running a fantasy campaign using a Hackers' Guide-inspired hack. I really enjoy this game - it's pretty light-hearted but I find does a nice job of incorporating inane player hijinks into the resolution.
> 
> It's fairly non-trad (and _very_ non-sim) but I don't know how far from traditional RPG mechanics you would rate it.




I like MHRP. I tend to put it in a (very) similar box as Fate, actually. I think they could both are a little over-rated as "storygames", IMHO, but great fun digging into the narrative space with table creativity.


----------



## Hussar (May 25, 2017)

Ok, I've been cogitating on this for a while now, and I think I'll present my rebuttal to the original argument of this article.  As I understand it, (between this thread and the thread that [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] linked where [MENTION=30518]lewpuls[/MENTION] also posted a similar point) gaming has shifted from games of consequence to games of reward.  Now, I'm going to focus on D&D, since this is an RPG site, to provide three examples of why this is simply not true.  There has been no shift in games, not really.  D&D started out with "game of reward" built right into its DNA.

*AD&D Examples of Game of Reward*

Example 1:  Two characters, A and B, exact same in all ways save that Character A has a 17 in his prime stat and Character B has a 14.  The two characters go through exactly the same adventures, meet exactly the same monsters, play identical campaigns.  At the end of the campaign, Character B is high level and has 300 000 xp.  Congratulations!  Character A has 330 000 xp.  Why?  Because he has a high prime stat.  Despite not doing a single thing to earn that significant xp award, Character A receives a reward for playing that character.

Example 2:  Same two characters, A and B.  This time, identical elves.  Same stats, same everything.  Both proceed in a dungeon and do exactly the same things.  However, in Character B's case, his elven find secret doors 1/6 (for passing by), discovers a secret door leading to a significant treasure trove while the DM in Character A's case rolled a 2 instead of a 1 for the automatic check and thus the treasure was missed.  So, Character B's group gains a significant reward - treasure, XP, possibly magic items - where the player of Character B did absolutely nothing to earn it.  Blind, random chance.  Drop your quarter, pull the level, get your prize.

Example 3:  Two players beginning a new campaign are rolling up their characters.  Player A is on a serious hot streak, six rolls, nothing lower than a 13, fantastic.  Player B is unloved by the dice gods and his highest stat is a 13.  Now, Player A is rewarded in several ways.  Firstly, he can now play any character he wants to play since his rolls are so high.  Additionally, any character he plays will automatically gain XP bonuses, not for doing anything, but, simply for having high stats.  Finally, any character that Player A plays will automatically be more powerful and more effective in the game than anything Player B can play.  What did he do to earn that?  Dice fapped really well?  Do we really consider that earning an award?  

It's not like these three examples are rare, corner cases that will never come up.  These are common, basic elements of the game that are likely to be seen every single session.  So, no, the notion that you had to "earn your award" back in the day just isn't supported by the actual game that was written.  So much of your reward was simple, random chance.  It was the Chutes and Ladders approach to game design where random chance is mistaken for difficulty.

Compare those three examples to how they roll out in a modern RPG.  In every example, it becomes a case of player choice having consequences.  High stats?  Yup, you can do that, but, in doing so, you will have lower stats elsewhere that will cause problems.  Good abilities to notice stuff?  Sure, you can do that, but, it will cost you in other ways.  In every case, it is player choice that carries the consequences, not random chance and, in fact, random chance is often mitigated as much as possible.  We don't die roll characters anymore, we use point buy or standard arrays as the standard method for chargen.  So on and so forth.

The more things change...


----------



## Shayuri (May 25, 2017)

Reading the thread, and using it as a frame to think about my own history gaming (not as long as some of y'all, but not exactly short either), I kind of get the sense that RPGs are working as intended. That is, we have a lot of different experiences because we've been playing different games. I don't think that the experience of consequence or reward is something that arises from a specific system. Not really.

It comes from your GM, and from the pressure of the group's consensus...expressed or silent. I've played a lot of different systems. A lot. But I've only had maybe five or six groups that I regularly play with, and many of them have been very stable over time. What I've observed is that we find a pattern of plot-vs-random, reward-vs-consequence that suits us rather early on...and then just stick with that. I haven't seen 3e to be any more or less forgiving than 4e, or 5e or World of Darkness, or GURPS, or Mutants & Masterminds, or BESM or...etc etc etc. Because it's all just us. We're doing it, not the rules.

I'm reluctant to wade into the whole 'which is better' subdiscussion, because this fits solidly into my idea of a 'hey, you do you' topic. There's nothing innately better about people struggling to survive against a merciless demon-GM and the vicissitudes of cruel dice as compared to people working together to craft a deep and involving story with richly detailed and developed characters who are offered a degree of protection from deletion from the story by plot armor. It's okay to say, 'this story is too good the way it's going to let a bad roll just steal it away from us.' It's also okay to say, 'victory means nothing without blood and sweat and the gnashing of teeth.'

Every game I've ever played finds a balance between those extremes, and I suspect the same is true for other gamers. Where that course is plotted defines our different groups and our different games, and that's a really good thing. Not a thing we should be arguing about, or belittling one another for. It's what makes Story Hours awesome to read...here are games that are _totally different_ than the games I've played. I may never play a game like that, and honestly...I might not even LIKE a game like that. But it's a blast to read about. Or talk about. 

I will say though that if there's a sense that RPGs are moving 'towards' games of reward and 'away' from games of consequence, that sense may arise from the quintessential bugaboo of human perception. All perception is relative.

RPGs developed from wargames. In a wargame, there's rarely a 'story' and the 'characters' are just pieces on a board. They may only have a few stats, and are likely to be functionally identical to any other 'character' of the same type. The players are eyes in the sky, and the emotional commitment is generally to the game as a whole...not to Pawn 18, who's untimely demise was a momentary annoyance in your grand strategy.

RPGs moved the focus. Players went from commanding armies or units to commanding one person. But there was still a sense of remove, I think. The scenarios tended to be 'characters appear at a dungeon from *a town* and go room to room fighting things.' In short, they were still wargames in many cases, just games of tactics rather than of strategy.

The movement away from pure tactical 'encounter sims' towards a more narrative, story-based game IS ongoing, in the same sense that the universe continues to expand in the aftermath of the Big Bang. Those of us who played 1st Edition D&D can see that change. Go back farther though, and find a Warhammer player scoffing at you because you 'need loot to play.' 

The good news is that each iteration of gaming doesn't replace the old. We can each have the game we want. That can't be a bad thing, right? 

So! Good discussion, everyone. Trophies all around? (^_^)


----------



## pemerton (May 25, 2017)

Hussar said:


> Example 2:  Same two characters, A and B.  This time, identical elves.  Same stats, same everything.  Both proceed in a dungeon and do exactly the same things.  However, in Character B's case, his elven find secret doors 1/6 (for passing by), discovers a secret door leading to a significant treasure trove while the DM in Character A's case rolled a 2 instead of a 1 for the automatic check and thus the treasure was missed.  So, Character B's group gains a significant reward - treasure, XP, possibly magic items - where the player of Character B did absolutely nothing to earn it.  Blind, random chance.  Drop your quarter, pull the level, get your prize.



I don't think I agree with this one. If you don't notice it via elf-iness then you spend a charge from your wand of secret door detection, or your wand of metal and mineral detection, or use a detect magic ability of some sort. The default "classic" D&D game assumes a _very_ high degree of commitment to, and actual playing out of, exploratory activity. Hence the fact that around one-quarter of magic swords (some of the most common magic items) have some sort of detection ability which is _only useful in dungeon-scale exploratory RPGing_.

A player who relies just on elf-iness _is_ making a choice, and is gaining a benefit or suffering a (hypothetical) loss on a basis in which that choice plays a significant role.

What I really feel your example does is (i) drive home _how little_ most contemporary RPG play reflects those classic defaults, and (ii) how early in the game's history a significant quantity of players were playing the game in a way which didn't prioritise those defaults. I mean, a really obvious thing is to swap out the inane _detection_ abilities of intelligent swords in favour of something that resonates at least a little bit thematically (eg thinking of swords like Stormbringer, Narsil/Anduril, Excalibur, etc). But once you do that - eg the sword, instead of detecting gems in a 60' R gives a bonus to reaction rolls with NPCs who honour its lineage - then the ability of a player to mitigate his/her sole reliance on elf-iness is lost.

The same thing will happen if a GM thinks "It would make more sense for these goblins to have a wand of fear rather than a wand of detecting random treasure stuff at short distances."

So as soon as people start to take the theme/story elements of the game seriously - which is such an obvious thing to do in this sort of game, and something Gygax himself advocates for in his DMG (p ), then the foundations for classical play as a game of "skill" rather than luck start to erode dramatically.

And to add some more controversy to the above analysis: on the whole the replacement takes the form of "setting/story tourism" of the sort that Lewis Pulsipher was well aware of back in the day, and advocated strongly against.


----------



## pemerton (May 25, 2017)

Shayuri said:


> RPGs developed from wargames. In a wargame, there's rarely a 'story' and the 'characters' are just pieces on a board. They may only have a few stats, and are likely to be functionally identical to any other 'character' of the same type. The players are eyes in the sky, and the emotional commitment is generally to the game as a whole...not to Pawn 18, who's untimely demise was a momentary annoyance in your grand strategy.
> 
> RPGs moved the focus. Players went from commanding armies or units to commanding one person. But there was still a sense of remove, I think. The scenarios tended to be 'characters appear at a dungeon from *a town* and go room to room fighting things.' In short, they were still wargames in many cases, just games of tactics rather than of strategy.
> 
> The movement away from pure tactical 'encounter sims' towards a more narrative, story-based game IS ongoing



I read this as quite consistent with my reply to [MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION] just upthread. It's inherent in the RPG genre that players should develop emotional, author/audience-like attachments to their PCs, and this - I think pretty naturally - changes what they value in play, and hence how their RPGing works.

(My own view it that the difference between classic D&D as an RPG and wargaming is (i) the player takes on an individual role rather than the "eye in the sky" perspective you describe, and (ii) fictional positioning matters to resolution. The latter is what caused endless, often misconceived, debates about whether or not 4e is "really" an RPG, because the way 4e incorporates fictional positioning into resolution is often quite different from a "trad" RPG.)



Shayuri said:


> It comes from your GM, and from the pressure of the group's consensus...expressed or silent. I've played a lot of different systems. A lot. But I've only had maybe five or six groups that I regularly play with, and many of them have been very stable over time. What I've observed is that we find a pattern of plot-vs-random, reward-vs-consequence that suits us rather early on...and then just stick with that. I haven't seen 3e to be any more or less forgiving than 4e, or 5e or World of Darkness, or GURPS, or Mutants & Masterminds, or BESM or...etc etc etc. Because it's all just us. We're doing it, not the rules.
> 
> <sip>
> 
> It's okay to say, 'this story is too good the way it's going to let a bad roll just steal it away from us.' It's also okay to say, 'victory means nothing without blood and sweat and the gnashing of teeth.'



I tend to disagree with this bit, though.

In particular, I think your example of ignoring a "bad roll" shows how significant _system_ is to the sorts of RPGing outcomes we're talking about in this thread.

For instance, if the only way to stop the "story that is too good" from being "stolen away" is to ignore the dice roll, there are (as far as I'm aware) two main approaches.

(1) The GM does it secretly ("fudging"), which has been widely advocated in RPG rulebooks especially since the late 80s/early 90s. This means that now the players are no longer aware of or in control of the resolution processes. I think this pushes the game very strongly in the direction of "setting/story tourism".

(2) The table as a whole decides to do it. This then requires the players to take an "eye in the sky" perspective on whether or not the story is good, which is at odds with one of the very things that (we agree) makes RPGing distinctive and worthwhile.

Hence, if I want to avoid circumstances in which "bad" rolls have the sort of unhappy upshot you describe, I want that built into the system in some fashion. One example: all the systems I'm GMing at the moment use some version of "say 'yes' or roll the dice", which means that the GM never calls for a roll unless the situation involves something being at stake which matters to the player, _as that player has been build and played by its player_. In which case a bad roll _doesn't_ spoil the story; rather, the story is one in which, at the moment of crunch for that PC, things went wrong (this happens to Gandalf multiple times in The Fellowship of the Ring, for instance - first with Saruman, then with Butterbur, then with the Balrog).

"Say 'yes' or roll the dice" works well in conjunction with other techniques, too, like "fail forward" - so that allowing _failure_ as a regular part of play _doesn't_ mean the end of the story. But certain resolution systems (especially but not only sim-oriented ones) are very hard to adapt to "fail forward" adjudication.

So my own view is that, in fact, system matters a lot. (But I also agree with [MENTION=6688937]Ratskinner[/MENTION] that many systems are actually not very different in the relevant respects from D&D. Eg changing the resolution mechanic in D&D from d20 to 2d10 or 3d6, or changing the spread of PC ability scores and the way they're calculated - all of which many people would regard as important system changes - probably won't change anything relevant to whether or not D&D supports alternatives for avoiding bad dice rolls other than my (1) and (2) above.)


----------



## AriochQ (May 25, 2017)

pemerton said:


> (1) The GM does it secretly ("fudging"), which has been widely advocated in RPG rulebooks especially since the late 80s/early 90s. This means that now the players are no longer aware of or in control of the resolution processes. I think this pushes the game very strongly in the direction of "setting/story tourism".
> 
> (2) The table as a whole decides to do it. This then requires the players to take an "eye in the sky" perspective on whether or not the story is good, which is at odds with one of the very things that (we agree) makes RPGing distinctive and worthwhile.




I tend to do both.  I say 'yes' and also roll in the open and let the dice fall where they may.  Any story I have in mind should be affected by both player actions and randomness, otherwise I would just write a book.  I view campaign as 'cooperative story telling' and the twists are what makes it interesting.  Otherwise, it is just railroading.

My early (1978-1985) campaigns were nowhere near as evolved.  They were basically 'break down the door, kill the monster, take the treasure'.  I view the change as both an evolution of my DM'ing style and abilities and the evolution of RPG's in general. Both are steps forward IMHO.  I do not pine for the old days.  The rules were quirky, unbalanced, and inconsistent.

All that being said, if someone still enjoys the 'break/kill/take' adventure, more power to them.  It is just not enjoyable for me to run that type of adventure any longer.


----------



## Hussar (May 25, 2017)

I don't really disagree with you Pem but I'd point out that "switching out" magic items wasn't that easy since you were entirely dependent upon the DM providing them. And, again that was mostly random chance. You had to find an item that did that and you certainly weren't able to decide that on your own. 

Again the reward is mostly randomly determined. There's no awarding for play involved. Yay you pulled the lever and out popped a magic item. 

Which is the point I'm trying to drive home here. Random chance is not award driven play. And random chance describes an awful lot of game design prior to the 90's.


----------



## Maxperson (May 25, 2017)

billd91 said:


> Considering there were plenty of remedies in earlier editions, this argument is really just a matter of degree. Death and damage were entirely undoable in 1e - just a bit more expensive as far as resources and/or time went. So that makes the game mostly a question of pacing. So again the article mainly comes down to a matter of things not being done as the cantankerous old geezer remembers them being done. And why should I care about that?




A lot of it was not completely undoable as a matter of course.  Energy drain had a very limited amount of time until the level loss was permanent, and even if you did get the level restored you still weren't back to where you started.  Not unless you very, very coincidentally got level drained at exactly the amount of XP you needed to place you at the beginning of the level.  Otherwise you forever lost the experience you had already earned towards the next level.  Death was a large risk.  You had to make the survival check.  Failing meant you were dead forever. Even if you succeeded, you checked off one of your raises.  Get raised a number of times equal to your Con and you were done.  No more raises, and that's if you weren't an elf.  If you were an elf you got raised 0 times if you died.  Poof!  Done for.  

The remedies you mention started in 3e, where death and energy drains became a joke.


----------



## Maxperson (May 25, 2017)

Hussar said:


> Funny thing is, Raise Dead in the 1e DMG is EXACTLY the same price as it is in 3e - 5000 gp.
> 
> Note that clerics didn't have to tithe, although paladins were giving up 10%.




That 10% for Paladins was only the immediate tithe.  You are conveniently overlooking this.

"They will never retain wealth, keeping only sufficient treasures to support themselves in a modest manner, pay henchmen, men-at-arms, and servitors, and to construct or maintain a small castle. (Your DM will give details of this as necessary.) Excess is given away, as is the tithe (see 3. below)."


----------



## Shayuri (May 25, 2017)

System is important in terms of what 'tools' it gives the game, I'd say.

Earlier versions of D&D had many ways to inflict 'consequences' on player characters. Later versions had fewer. Whether or not to USE those tools was always up to the GM...and the GM's decision would be influenced by the players wishes.

That's all I meant. You're right in saying I pooh-poohed system a bit hard, then heel-turned and said the systems had been changing. It's a sort of complex organic process, I think...where new systems of game evolve to meet a simultaneously evolving need among gaming groups. The interdependency between what systems a game provides players with, and the kind of games people play with systems is not so easily quantified perhaps.

I mostly remember in my games of 3e...which still had a fair number of 'fail one save and yer out' mechanics intact...we fairly quickly reached a sort of detente in my groups where the players elected not to use stupid-broken mechanics to make characters and the GM elected not to 'overuse' hyperlethal scenarios outside of situations where they felt dramatically appropriate. It wasn't really -discussed- or anything. We just found our respective tolerances through a few tense moments and went along with that.

So even though 3e, as a system, could be played as fairly lethal (albeit perhaps not to the extent 1st and 2nd editions could be), we didn't play it that way. The tools provided to make it that way were voluntarily eschewed...always with the 'unless dramatically appropriate' caveat. What constitutes dramatically appropriate is one of the many places each group varies on.


----------



## Hussar (May 26, 2017)

Maxperson said:


> A lot of it was not completely undoable as a matter of course.  Energy drain had a very limited amount of time until the level loss was permanent, and even if you did get the level restored you still weren't back to where you started.  Not unless you very, very coincidentally got level drained at exactly the amount of XP you needed to place you at the beginning of the level.  Otherwise you forever lost the experience you had already earned towards the next level.  Death was a large risk.  You had to make the survival check.  Failing meant you were dead forever. Even if you succeeded, you checked off one of your raises.  Get raised a number of times equal to your Con and you were done.  No more raises, and that's if you weren't an elf.  If you were an elf you got raised 0 times if you died.  Poof!  Done for.
> 
> The remedies you mention started in 3e, where death and energy drains became a joke.




As [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION] mentions, XP isn't exactly the issue, it's the level.  But, yeah, totally agree, 1e and 2e level drain were brutal.  OTOH, System Survival rolls weren't exactly hard to make.  Even a 9 Con gave you a 70% survival chance, so, it wasn't exactly a hard check.

But, that is precisely my point.  That's just random chance, not difficulty.  The player has no control here.  No decisions to make.  Why did you get to bring your character back?  You got a lucky die roll.  That's not "earning" anything.  It's simply arbitrary roadblocks that have no actual impact on how you play your character.  Since there's nothing I can do to change my chances of coming back, if my character dies and is raised, that's entirely random chance.  Where's the "earning" that is being characterized of earlier game play?


----------



## Hussar (May 26, 2017)

Maxperson said:


> That 10% for Paladins was only the immediate tithe.  You are conveniently overlooking this.
> 
> "They will never retain wealth, keeping only sufficient treasures to support themselves in a modest manner, pay henchmen, men-at-arms, and servitors, and to construct or maintain a small castle. (Your DM will give details of this as necessary.) Excess is given away, as is the tithe (see 3. below)."





Yeah, being limited to 10 magic items was such a strict limitation.    And, exactly how much does it cost to construct a small castle?  More than 5000 gp I'm thinking.


----------



## pemerton (May 26, 2017)

Hussar said:


> being limited to 10 magic items was such a strict limitation.



To me, what this shows is that what Gygax regarded as magic item profligacy and what some contemporary players/posters regard as magic item profligacy are quite different.


----------



## Ratskinner (May 26, 2017)

pemerton said:


> To me, what this shows is that what Gygax regarded as magic item profligacy and what some contemporary players/posters regard as magic item profligacy are quite different.



absolutely

Having played in OSR games recently, 'magic items are the only thing that mechanically differentiates two fighters of similar stats...even dissimilar stats often.

Sent from my LG-TP450 using EN World mobile app


----------



## Maxperson (May 26, 2017)

Hussar said:


> As [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION] mentions, XP isn't exactly the issue, it's the level.  But, yeah, totally agree, 1e and 2e level drain were brutal.  OTOH, System Survival rolls weren't exactly hard to make.  Even a 9 Con gave you a 70% survival chance, so, it wasn't exactly a hard check.




It still got failed, though, and all it took was once.  I lost several characters to that.



> But, that is precisely my point.  That's just random chance, not difficulty.  The player has no control here.  No decisions to make.  Why did you get to bring your character back?  You got a lucky die roll.  That's not "earning" anything.  It's simply arbitrary roadblocks that have no actual impact on how you play your character.  Since there's nothing I can do to change my chances of coming back, if my character dies and is raised, that's entirely random chance.  Where's the "earning" that is being characterized of earlier game play?



I disagree.  While the die roll itself is not difficulty, the existence of that die roll over time makes reaching high levels a challenge, and there is the difficulty.  3e-5e where raises are a dime a dozen caused players to become more reckless with their PCs.  The difficulty in 1e and 2e was planning things out and doing your best to make sure that survival roll and system shock never got rolled in the first place.


----------



## Maxperson (May 26, 2017)

Hussar said:


> Yeah, being limited to 10 magic items was such a strict limitation.    And, exactly how much does it cost to construct a small castle?  More than 5000 gp I'm thinking.



Er, there's a reason why I didn't mention the 10 item limit.  It wasn't much of a limit.  However, that gold for the castle didn't mean much.  The paladin restriction was that you had to give away all but a small amount of money with the exception of coin towards very specific goals.  So what if you had 50,000 to build that castle.  You couldn't use it for anything but the castle, henchmen and the other few things.  If you did, you were in violation of your tenets and lost your abilities.  If you atoned and then kept doing it, most DMs would slap you with a major infraction and you'd cease being a paladin.  You'd basically being telling your god to go do unspeakable things to himself.


----------



## Lanefan (May 26, 2017)

Maxperson said:


> It still got failed, though, and all it took was once.  I lost several characters to that.



Yeah, as have I...but as I mentioned before, there's potential for adventure as well.

Very early in my gaming career, the second character I ever played managed to hang with the party long enough for its de-facto leader to fall in love with him.  My guy then died, and failed his raise*.  Career over, right?

Not so fast, says his lover; and so began an odyssey that's now spanned years of game time and decades (!) of real time, as she did everything she could to get him back including walking into the land of the dead and getting him out by force.  It's a truly bizarre story that wouldn't have happened had he not failed that raise roll.

* - we were low level at the time, but as his death was while in effect acting on behalf of the party as their champion they threw a pile of party resources into getting him back...or trying to.

Lan-"it seems somehow fitting here that the character I brought in to replace this guy was Lanefan"-efan


----------



## Hussar (May 26, 2017)

Maxperson said:


> It still got failed, though, and all it took was once.  I lost several characters to that.
> 
> I disagree.  While the die roll itself is not difficulty, the existence of that die roll over time makes reaching high levels a challenge, and there is the difficulty.  3e-5e where raises are a dime a dozen caused players to become more reckless with their PCs.  The difficulty in 1e and 2e was planning things out and doing your best to make sure that survival roll and system shock never got rolled in the first place.




That's not the point in the context of this thread though.  The difficulty has nothing to do with how you played your character.  You could be the greatest role player in existence or the worst, and your difficulty is identical.

If there has been a change from award to reward based play, which is the point of all this discussion, then shouldn't the player who is really good be awarded his or her raise dead?  What did that terrible player do to earn the same benefits?

I'm not arguing about difficulty.  That's not the point.  The point of this discussion is the idea that in the past players somehow earned the things they got for their character, whereas in modern games, you are rewarded just for participating.  

It's much, much more difficult to win at Roulette than Blackjack.  Your odds of success are considerably lower (at least on a single number bet).  Does that mean that I earn my money at Roulette and not at Blackjack?  To me, the question is pointless.  You aren't earning anything when it's simple luck of the draw (or dice or whatever).  Slot machine mechanics have nothing to do with "earning an award".


----------



## Maxperson (May 26, 2017)

Lanefan said:


> Yeah, as have I...but as I mentioned before, there's potential for adventure as well.
> 
> Very early in my gaming career, the second character I ever played managed to hang with the party long enough for its de-facto leader to fall in love with him.  My guy then died, and failed his raise*.  Career over, right?
> 
> ...




Yeah. That's really cool and a sign of a really good DM.  I was just talking RAW in my posts.  Going outside of RAW to create awesome stories, though, is part and parcel of the game in my opinion.


----------



## Maxperson (May 26, 2017)

Hussar said:


> That's not the point in the context of this thread though.  The difficulty has nothing to do with how you played your character.  You could be the greatest role player in existence or the worst, and your difficulty is identical.




Who's talking about roleplaying.  I'm talking about gameplay.  If you were reckless, you died and the consequences caught up to you........unlike in 3e-5e.  The difficulty I'm mentioning is about the game, not whether you play yourself as a cool prince, or a poor holy man.



> If there has been a change from award to reward based play, which is the point of all this discussion, then shouldn't the player who is really good be awarded his or her raise dead?  What did that terrible player do to earn the same benefits?




Award and reward are synonyms.  There hasn't been a change other than to make the game easier over time.



> I'm not arguing about difficulty.  That's not the point.  The point of this discussion is the idea that in the past players somehow earned the things they got for their character, whereas in modern games, you are rewarded just for participating.




Er, the past players earned them by overcoming a more difficult game than you find now days.  Difficulty is a part of this discussion whether you want to argue about it or not. 



> It's much, much more difficult to win at Roulette than Blackjack.  Your odds of success are considerably lower (at least on a single number bet).  Does that mean that I earn my money at Roulette and not at Blackjack?  To me, the question is pointless.  You aren't earning anything when it's simple luck of the draw (or dice or whatever).  Slot machine mechanics have nothing to do with "earning an award".



False Equivalence.  Increased random chance is not what this is about.  At least not directly.  This isn't about a direct comparison of the raise mechanics of 1e and 2e vs. 3e-5e.  It's about those differences creating a more difficult play environment by forcing early players to approach game play differently or roll up a bunch of characters.

I had easily 10x more PCs die in 1e and 2e than 3e+  That's because the difficulty dropped tremendously.


----------



## prosfilaes (May 26, 2017)

Christopher Helton said:


> The most striking trends in hobby games is the movement from games of consequence to games of reward. Players in hobby games in the past have been expected to earn what they received, but more and more in hobby games we’re seeing games that reward players for participation.




I'm still hoping for an explanation. There's a lot of striking trends in hobby games, but this is a new idea to me. What makes something like Terra Mystica or Scythe a game of reward and something like Napoleon: The Waterloo Campaign, 1815 or Squad Leader a game of consequence?


----------



## prosfilaes (May 27, 2017)

Maxperson said:


> Who's talking about roleplaying.  I'm talking about gameplay.  If you were reckless, you died and the consequences caught up to you........unlike in 3e-5e.




The consequences may or may not catch up to you; that is the essence of greater randomness. And it's simply not true; in the Carrion Crown (PF) game I'm playing in, several characters died before hitting second, and the GM said we were doing better than a previous group he ran, where everyone had lost at least one character at that point. In the Zeitgeist (PF) game I'm running, we've lost several characters, and if I hadn't nerfed a couple things, we'd have lost several more. The GM has way more power over deadliness and consequences than the system.



> Er, the past players earned them by overcoming a more difficult game than you find now days.




Does difficulty dictate having earned something? Does the person who copies out the Encyclopedia for £4 a week earn his money less than someone who correctly predicts a string of horse races for big winnings?


----------



## Maxperson (May 27, 2017)

prosfilaes said:


> The consequences may or may not catch up to you; that is the essence of greater randomness. And it's simply not true; in the Carrion Crown (PF) game I'm playing in, several characters died before hitting second, and the GM said we were doing better than a previous group he ran, where everyone had lost at least one character at that point. In the Zeitgeist (PF) game I'm running, we've lost several characters, and if I hadn't nerfed a couple things, we'd have lost several more. The GM has way more power over deadliness and consequences than the system.




Yes, at super low levels in 3e/PF you can still die and not have the resources to be brought back.  It very rarely happened to me, but I've seen it happen.  That's still nothing compared to what it was like in 1e and 2e.  Did you roll for hit points at 1st level and have some of you start with 1 or 2 hit points.  Did you not get bonuses from your stats until 15+, or did you started getting pluses at 12?



> Does difficulty dictate having earned something? Does the person who copies out the Encyclopedia for £4 a week earn his money less than someone who correctly predicts a string of horse races for big winnings?



Yes.  If you work hard for something, you did more to earn it than if you don't work hard.  If it's more or less just handed to you, you didn't earn it at all.  You did more to earn things the earlier you go in editions.


----------



## prosfilaes (May 27, 2017)

Maxperson said:


> Yes, at super low levels in 3e/PF you can still die and not have the resources to be brought back.  It very rarely happened to me, but I've seen it happen.  That's still nothing compared to what it was like in 1e and 2e.  Did you roll for hit points at 1st level and have some of you start with 1 or 2 hit points.  Did you not get bonuses from your stats until 15+, or did you started getting pluses at 12?




Did you have to fight a 15th level character at first level, like the the Zeitgeist AP for Pathfinder has you do?

Frankly, that doesn't strike me as real difficulty. If you're playing a fighter in D&D, you're going to be standing in front of the mage; and if you have one hitpoint (through no fault of your own), and get hit (because it's not like you can get your AC low enough that's not going to happen), then you died of bad luck. It wasn't a challenge; you just simply rolled poorly.



> Yes.  If you work hard for something, you did more to earn it than if you don't work hard.  If it's more or less just handed to you, you didn't earn it at all.  You did more to earn things the earlier you go in editions.




Reread the question: "Does difficulty dictate having earned something? Does the person who copies out the Encyclopedia for £4 a week earn his money less than someone who correctly predicts a string of horse races for big winnings?" The guy who copies out the Encyclopedia did something anyone with a functioning hand, eye, and the ability to read and write could do. That doesn't mean that copying out the encyclopedia was not hard tedious work or that that £4 a week was just handed to him. The guy who who walked up to the sports book and correctly guessed the next ten races did something difficult, but that doesn't mean he worked hard for it; he could have just randomly guessed.


----------



## Maxperson (May 27, 2017)

prosfilaes said:


> Did you have to fight a 15th level character at first level, like the the Zeitgeist AP for Pathfinder has you do?




No.



> Frankly, that doesn't strike me as real difficulty. If you're playing a fighter in D&D, you're going to be standing in front of the mage; and if you have one hitpoint (through no fault of your own), and get hit (because it's not like you can get your AC low enough that's not going to happen), then you died of bad luck. It wasn't a challenge; you just simply rolled poorly.




That's not real difficulty.  That's incredibly bad adventure writing and no different than the DM saying, "A meteor falls out of the sky and kills you all.".  It has nothing whatsoever to do with what I am talking about.  Real difficult assumes that the encounters are at least somewhere within the guidelines for your level.



> Reread the question: "Does difficulty dictate having earned something? Does the person who copies out the Encyclopedia for £4 a week earn his money less than someone who correctly predicts a string of horse races for big winnings?" The guy who copies out the Encyclopedia did something anyone with a functioning hand, eye, and the ability to read and write could do. That doesn't mean that copying out the encyclopedia was not hard tedious work or that that £4 a week was just handed to him. The guy who who walked up to the sports book and correctly guessed the next ten races did something difficult, but that doesn't mean he worked hard for it; he could have just randomly guessed.



That again has nothing to do with what is being discussed here.  Game difficulty is not based on randomness.  There is a random factor, but it's not like going and just picking numbers and praying that you will win.


----------



## Hussar (May 27, 2017)

Maxperson said:


> Who's talking about roleplaying.  I'm talking about gameplay.  If you were reckless, you died and the consequences caught up to you........unlike in 3e-5e.  The difficulty I'm mentioning is about the game, not whether you play yourself as a cool prince, or a poor holy man.
> 
> 
> 
> Award and reward are synonyms.  There hasn't been a change other than to make the game easier over time.




Actually, no they aren't quite.  Award is for doing something and is recognition for excellence.  Thus, it's an Academy Award, not Academy Reward.  Rewards are given on a regular basis, where you are, essentially, paid for doing your job.  That is the heart of the point that's being made in this thread.




> Er, the past players earned them by overcoming a more difficult game than you find now days.  Difficulty is a part of this discussion whether you want to argue about it or not.
> 
> False Equivalence.  Increased random chance is not what this is about.  At least not directly.  This isn't about a direct comparison of the raise mechanics of 1e and 2e vs. 3e-5e.  It's about those differences creating a more difficult play environment by forcing early players to approach game play differently or roll up a bunch of characters.
> 
> I had easily 10x more PCs die in 1e and 2e than 3e+  That's because the difficulty dropped tremendously.




Meh, the plural of anecdote is not data.  I have killed FAR more PC's in 3e than any other edition I've run.  

The "difficulty" in earlier editions was mostly due to arbitrary random chance.  Poison kills you - meaning that if you survived or died, had virtually nothing to do with what you did or what choices you made, but, simply random chance.  Which is not awarding behavior.  It's gambling.  Not that gambling isn't fun.  There's a billion dollar gambling industry that shows just how fun it is to gamble.

But, you don't actually earn any awards when you gamble.  Dying to random chance, sure, increases difficulty, but, again, we're comparing the idea that you "earned" your awards in early games.  Which, I've already shown, isn't true.


----------



## Maxperson (May 27, 2017)

Hussar said:


> Actually, no they aren't quite.  Award is for doing something and is recognition for excellence.  Thus, it's an Academy Award, not Academy Reward.  Rewards are given on a regular basis, where you are, essentially, paid for doing your job.  That is the heart of the point that's being made in this thread.




Yes quite.  An award is nothing more than a type of reward.  In this case it's a reward for excellence in acting and film making.  And I don't know about you, but once a year for 90 years is a pretty darn regular basis to me.


----------



## prosfilaes (May 27, 2017)

Maxperson said:


> That's not real difficulty.  That's incredibly bad adventure writing and no different than the DM saying, "A meteor falls out of the sky and kills you all.".  It has nothing whatsoever to do with what I am talking about.  Real difficult assumes that the encounters are at least somewhere within the guidelines for your level.




I don't see why. Why is hoping a goblin won't randomly roll to do two points of damage to you and kill you "real difficulty" and being faced with an overwhelming opponent that you can only defeat by through applying the right tools to him (and he was defeatable) not "real difficulty"? Whether it was good or not is independent of whether it was a difficult challenge of the player's skill.



> That again has nothing to do with what is being discussed here.  Game difficulty is not based on randomness.  There is a random factor, but it's not like going and just picking numbers and praying that you will win.




The point remains; do you earn something through hard work, or through skill or luck? "If you work hard for something, you did more to earn it than if you don't work hard." If that's the issue at hand, how easy you can die is not nearly so relevant as how many goblins you have to kill to level up. Hard work is not luck, it's not skill, it's elbow grease. The guy who keeps a complete track of everything that goes on in the game and sends that out to the players and has every spell printed out and ready may easily be the hardest worker in the group, even if his caster keeps ending up standing right in front of the enemy and in the midst of every deadly trap.

You talk about rolling HP at first level, but that's anti-skill. If you want to reward the skilled players and punish the less skilled reliably, then they should all start off the same, or at least in some way fixed by player choices.


----------



## Hussar (May 27, 2017)

Maxperson said:


> Yes quite.  An award is nothing more than a type of reward.  In this case it's a reward for excellence in acting and film making.  And I don't know about you, but once a year for 90 years is a pretty darn regular basis to me.




Sigh.  Look, I'm not going to play dueling definitions with you.  No, they are not the same thing.  Look it up if you don't believe me.  An award is for EXCELLENCE.  A reward is for work done.  Thus, the ENTIRE POINT of this whole thread.  Go back and reread the OP if it's still unclear, this is the language that is used in the OP.  The idea that you earned your awards in the past, but, now, you simply get rewards for participation.

It's going to make it really hard to have a discussion with you if you won't accept the definitions that were set in the first post of this thread.  If you don't like those definitions, fair enough, take that up with someone else.  But, those are the terms that were set at the outset of all this.  I'm simply arguing using the terms as were set by the OP.  Which means you and I cannot actually have a conversation since you are not using the same language that I am.

So, either accept the terms as set by the OP, or stop replying to me and start taking him to task for his apparent lack of understanding of English.


----------



## Lanefan (May 27, 2017)

Maxperson said:


> Yeah. That's really cool and a sign of a really good DM.  I was just talking RAW in my posts.  Going outside of RAW to create awesome stories, though, is part and parcel of the game in my opinion.



My character's lover was another PC, not an NPC.  All the DM had to do was hit the curveballs thrown at him, which he did very well. 

And remember, the RAW in 1e are specifically called out as guidelines by their author...

Lanefan


----------



## Lanefan (May 27, 2017)

[MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION] [MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION]

Er...guys?  There's a forest out there...right behind those trees you're stuck looking at...


----------



## Sunseeker (May 27, 2017)

I'm going to posit: dice to not add challenge.  They simply add randomness.  Luck and randomness are not elements of challenge.  Two identical characters facing identical challenges have equal chance of rolling any given number on a d20.  That's not challenge.  _Difficulty_ may be added via DCs, but the dice still present the same issue, they have not changed, regardless of your level, your HP, your modifiers or anything else.  You stand the same chance of rolling 1-20 at 1st level as you do at 20th level.  A high-stat character may be more likely to overcome a challenge of high difficulty relevant to that stat, but the dice play no part in it.

Dice are simply a vector.  Much in the same way that a pencil does not write an essay, a die does not present a challenge.


----------



## Sunseeker (May 27, 2017)

I'm going to posit: dice to not add challenge.  They simply add randomness.  Luck and randomness are not elements of challenge.  Two identical characters facing identical challenges have equal chance of rolling any given number on a d20.  That's not challenge.  _Difficulty_ may be added via DCs, but the dice still present the same issue, they have not changed, regardless of your level, your HP, your modifiers or anything else.  You stand the same chance of rolling 1-20 at 1st level as you do at 20th level.  A high-stat character may be more likely to overcome a challenge of high difficulty relevant to that stat, but the dice play no part in it.

Dice are simply a vector.  Much in the same way that a pencil does not write an essay, a die does not present a challenge.


----------



## Hussar (May 27, 2017)

shidaku said:


> I'm going to posit: dice to not add challenge.  They simply add randomness.  Luck and randomness are not elements of challenge.  Two identical characters facing identical challenges have equal chance of rolling any given number on a d20.  That's not challenge.  _Difficulty_ may be added via DCs, but the dice still present the same issue, they have not changed, regardless of your level, your HP, your modifiers or anything else.  You stand the same chance of rolling 1-20 at 1st level as you do at 20th level.  A high-stat character may be more likely to overcome a challenge of high difficulty relevant to that stat, but the dice play no part in it.
> 
> Dice are simply a vector.  Much in the same way that a pencil does not write an essay, a die does not present a challenge.




Thank you.  This is what I've been trying, unsuccessfully, to say.


----------



## pemerton (May 27, 2017)

Hussar said:


> If there has been a change from award to reward based play, which is the point of all this discussion, then shouldn't the player who is really good be awarded his or her raise dead?  What did that terrible player do to earn the same benefits?



Gygax did have a couple of things in his DMG that touch on this:

(1) The option, when a player has played with skill and dies to an unlucky roll, for the GM to adjudicate it as something other than death (p 110):

Now and then a player will die through no fault of his own. He or she will have done everything correctly, taken every reasonable precaution, but still the freakish roll of the dice will kill the character. In the long run you should let such things pass as the players will kill more than one opponent with their own freakish rolls at some later time. Yet you do have the right to arbitrate the situation. You can rule that the player, instead of dying, is knocked unconscious, loses a limb, is blinded in one eye or invoke any reasonably severe penalty that still takes into account what the monster has done. It is very demoralizing to the players to lose a cared-for-player character when they have played well. When they have done something stupid or have not taken precautions, then let the dice fall where they may! Again, if you have available ample means of raising characters from
the dead, even death is not too severe; remember, however, the constitution-based limit to resurrections. Yet one die roll that you should NEVER tamper with is the SYSTEM SHOCK ROLL to be raised from the dead. If a character fails that roll, which he or she should make him or herself, he or she is FOREVER DEAD. There MUST be some final death or immortality will take over and again the game will become boring because the player characters will have 9+ lives each!​
(2) The optional rule that a character who dies and is then raised gains 1,000 XP (p 86). Having introduced the rule, he goes on:

As only you can bestow this award, you may also feel free to decline to give it to player characters who were particularly
foolish or stupid in their actions which immediately preceded death, particularly if such characters are not "sadder but wiser" for the happening.​
I know these bits of the book don't fully respond to your points, [MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION] - but they show that Gygax was clearly aware of issues in the neighbourhood and trying to jury-rig together (within the scope of the system that he had invented) rules to deal with some of them.


----------



## pemerton (May 27, 2017)

Maxperson said:


> Did you not get bonuses from your stats until 15+, or did you started getting pluses at 12?



This isn't relevant at all. Stats in Rolemaster go up to 100 (woo-hoo), with bonuses of +25 or more (double woo-hoo), but a 12th level RM PC is more likely to be one-shot killed than nearly any 12th level D&D PC.

The numbers on the PC sheet are just elements in the complex series of calculations that make up the mechanical resolution of action declarations. The size of those numbers might tell us something about how complex the calculations are, but it tells us nothing about how easy or hard it is to succeed at an action declaration.

Here's a more relevant comparison: in AD&D a 1st level fighter rolls a bigger die for hp than an orc does for damage. And the fighter might get a CON bonus, whereas the orc doesn't get a damage bonus. In 3E, though, the orc's damage die might be bigger than the fighter's hit die (d12 vs d10), and the orc gets bonuses to damage on exactly the same scale as the fighter gets bonues to the hit die roll.

If the 3E fighter gets automatic max hp that will make a difference, but that's a separate rule that could easily be used in AD&D as well, and has nothing to do with whether or not the numbers are bigger.


----------



## pemerton (May 27, 2017)

shidaku said:


> I'm going to posit: dice to not add challenge.  They simply add randomness.  Luck and randomness are not elements of challenge.



The contention is that classic D&D play of the Pulsipherian/Gygaxian sort involved _avoiding_ dice rolls by, instead, making your own luck - mostly through clever exploitation of fictional positioning.

Other than the OP,  [MENTION=6688858]Libramarian[/MENTION] is the main proponent of this approach to play in the current thread. Luke Crane describes the phenomenon with clarity and a high degree of anaylitical rigour here. Here are some choice extracts:

I've learned that it's a hard game to run. Not because of prep or rules mastery, but because of the role of the GM as impartial conveyer of really bad news. Since the exploration side of the game is cross between Telephone and Pictionary, I must sit impassive as the players make bad decisions. I want them to win. I want them to solve the puzzles, but if I interfere, I render the whole exercise pointless. . . .

The players' sense of accomplishment is enormous. They went through hell and death to survive long enough to level. They have their own stories about how certain scenarios played out. They developed their own clever strategems to solve the puzzles and defeat the opposition. . . .

This game . . . is built to explore dungeons. As soon it moves away from puzzle-solving and exploration, the experience starts to fray. . . .

This game is hard. It demands focus and discipline beyond even what Burning Wheel asks of you. It is unflinchingly deadly. Between six players, we lost 13 characters in 12 sessions. And that doesn't include archers, men-at-arms and torch-bearers. Such a death toll is unheard of in contemporary games. My girlfriend plays 4e. In 12 months, not a single character has died. These are two different games. And this game does not cater to our modern sensibilities. And that is why we bowed our heads to it. It seemed deceptively simple, and almost friendly. But truly it is a harsh master, laying the lash across our backs as we map, call, fail our saves and get swarmed and killed by kobolds.​
And here is how a player in Luke Crane's Moldvay Basic game describes it, in the same thread:

I just accepted the world for what it is, and accepted that if I want to live, I have to play according to those terms. I had to not be the person who just plows right ahead into any fight that comes at me (okay, maybe I still do that sometimes) and so learning how to work within the constraints of the game itself has become the real pleasure.

Picking up a +2 spear from a dead companion, and learning how to attack with it from a distance without endangering myself. Watching our group strategically burn and firebomb the living hell out of anything that moves before they can get close to us. Chugging invisibility potions to safely scout out caves thick with Bugbears. Setting traps for zombie hordes. Taking out bosses with nary a scratch to any of us. I can feel myself learning a skill set. I can watch our little ragtag band of would-be heroes (or gold-hungry mercenaries, rather) getting better and better at what we do.​
I believe that this playstyle existed, and continues to exist, as a real thing. And I also think that some early versions of the game (with Moldvay Basic probably the high point) were especially adept at supporting it.

But I also think that, of all those people who bought and played original D&D, Moldvay Basic and AD&D, only some fraction (and, over the years from - say - the mid-70s to the mid-80s, a declining fraction) actually used those games to play in this style.

EDIT to add: just for the sake of clarity, the sort of RPGing that Luke Crane and his player are describing is something that I'm not very good at, mostly because - both as player and GM - I lack the patience.

My interest in this thread isn't to defend my favoured style. Nor to defend any claim about the moral failings of younger generations. It's to agree that (i) there are different approaches to RPGing, and (ii) different systems suit different approaches, and (iii) some of these different systems have flourished at different times in the history of RPG publishing.


----------



## Hussar (May 27, 2017)

No one is denying that it existed though.  We know that it existed.  What's being denied is that this was the only way that games were played back in the day and that now we only game to participate, rather than be challenged.

That's the rather point I've been arguing against.


----------



## Lanefan (May 27, 2017)

Hussar said:


> No one is denying that it existed though.  We know that it existed.



It still exists.  Every weekend, round here. 



> What's being denied is that this was the only way that games were played back in the day



Maybe not the only way, but I'd say certainly the primary way.  There have always been outliers.



> and that now we only game to participate, rather than be challenged.



Not quite.  People still game to...well, just game.  The changes I'm noticing have come from the other end, at the design level.  Possibly said changes have been driven by external societal influences (which is what the OP seems to want to say without really saying it) but I more suspect they've been driven internally, by designers listening to player complaints about bad events - death, level loss, item loss, etc. - happening and then removing or mitigating said bad events from the game without looking far enough to realize that it's the bad events that make good events stand out as anything special.

Lanefan


----------



## prosfilaes (May 27, 2017)

Lanefan said:


> Maybe not the only way, but I'd say certainly the primary way.  There have always been outliers.




On what evidence? Even if I were designing a survey, it would be hard to find questions that accurately measured the matter, and to find a representative sample to give the survey to. At this point in time, since there were no such contemporary surveys done, I regard any degree of certainty on this matter to be excessive.



> by designers listening to player complaints about bad events - death, level loss, item loss, etc. - happening and then removing or mitigating said bad events from the game without looking far enough to realize that it's the bad events that make good events stand out as anything special.




I'm sure all the people who play and run D&D 3, 3.5, 4, 5, or Pathfinder over OSR games, as well as the people who designed them, are simply delusional about what's fun. Or maybe they actually find playing one character through a whole campaign fun and find excessive character churn unfun.


----------



## Maxperson (May 27, 2017)

pemerton said:


> This isn't relevant at all. Stats in Rolemaster go up to 100 (woo-hoo), with bonuses of +25 or more (double woo-hoo), but a 12th level RM PC is more likely to be one-shot killed than nearly any 12th level D&D PC.




We are discussing D&D here, not a completely different games.   You're bringing in oranges to a discussion about apples.  The stat differences I mentioned affect game difficulty in D&D.  It's entirely irrelevant if a completely different game is more or less difficult.



> Here's a more relevant comparison: in AD&D a 1st level fighter rolls a bigger die for hp than an orc does for damage. And the fighter might get a CON bonus, whereas the orc doesn't get a damage bonus. In 3E, though, the orc's damage die might be bigger than the fighter's hit die (d12 vs d10), and the orc gets bonuses to damage on exactly the same scale as the fighter gets bonues to the hit die roll.




In first edition your typical fighter probably didn't have a 15+ in Con, so didn't even get a bonus to hit points.  A 14 Con gave no bonus and the average roll of 5 at first level gave you 5 hit points.  Orcs did 1-8 damage, giving it a decent chance to put the fighter down in 1 hit.  That same fighter in 3e had 12 hit points(10 + a 2 bonus for 14 Con) and had to max out damage to even get that fighter to 0, barring a crit.  On the other side of things the 1e orc had 1-8 hit points, averaging 4.  The 1e fighter probably didn't do extra damage(a 15 being +0), but at 1d8 had a greater than 50% chance to kill any orc hit.  The 3e fighter probably had +2 damage due to strength of 15, +1 for using a great sword two handed for +2d6+3 damage.  The 3e orc had 5 hit points giving a 100% chance to kill any orc hit.

Pretty easy to see which one was more difficult.


----------



## Maxperson (May 27, 2017)

Hussar said:


> No one is denying that it existed though.  We know that it existed.  What's being denied is that this was the only way that games were played back in the day and that now we only game to participate, rather than be challenged.
> 
> That's the rather point I've been arguing against.




I don't think people here are generally arguing that the game was played only one way.  Rather we are discussing how the rules affected game play.  I know that I've certainly noticed how the game has become much easier over time.  Human nature plays into this as well.  Give a system that is harder and tweak it to become easier, and the people in general will appreciate the help you are giving them.  Give an easy system and tweak it to become harder, and people in general will be upset that you are punishing them.  It's better to go the first route.


----------



## Sunseeker (May 27, 2017)

pemerton said:


> The contention is that classic D&D play of the Pulsipherian/Gygaxian sort involved _avoiding_ dice rolls by, instead, making your own luck - mostly through clever exploitation of fictional positioning.




That sounds like roleplaying with extra steps, which I think people still do today.


----------



## S'mon (May 27, 2017)

Hussar said:


> As [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION] mentions, XP isn't exactly the issue, it's the level.  But, yeah, totally agree, 1e and 2e level drain were brutal.  OTOH, System Survival rolls weren't exactly hard to make.  Even a 9 Con gave you a 70% survival chance, so, it wasn't exactly a hard check.
> 
> But, that is precisely my point.  That's just random chance, not difficulty.  The player has no control here.  No decisions to make.  Why did you get to bring your character back?  You got a lucky die roll.  That's not "earning" anything.  It's simply arbitrary roadblocks that have no actual impact on how you play your character.  Since there's nothing I can do to change my chances of coming back, if my character dies and is raised, that's entirely random chance.  Where's the "earning" that is being characterized of earlier game play?




Weird. The way I play my pc is certainly greatly affected by whether I am likely to die to random chance, whether I may be Raised, etc. 

The stuff I have no control over greatly affects how I treat stuff I do have control over. And a game with easy random death, no raise etc is indeed experienced as harder than a game where I am unlikely to die/fail to unfortunate random roll. 

When the PCs in my Mystara game charged the Heldannic warbird in the face of its Blight Belcher, they knew or should have known that permanent death was likely. My son lost his first dnd PC, the guy he played from 4th to 17th level over the past 4 years. The decision to risk that took a form of in character and out of character bravery (esp for a 9 year old!). And the fact his death came down to rolling a 2 on a d20 did not negate that.


----------



## S'mon (May 27, 2017)

Hussar said:


> No one is denying that it existed though.  We know that it existed.  What's being denied is that this was the only way that games were played back in the day and that now we only game to participate, rather than be challenged.
> 
> That's the rather point I've been arguing against.




Pulsipher would surely agree. He has been preaching anathema against your kind since the 1970s!


----------



## S'mon (May 27, 2017)

prosfilaes said:


> Did you have to fight a 15th level character at first level, like the the Zeitgeist AP for Pathfinder has you do?
> 
> Frankly, that doesn't strike me as real difficulty. If you're playing a fighter in D&D, you're going to be standing in front of the mage; and if you have one hitpoint (through no fault of your own), and get hit (because it's not like you can get your AC low enough that's not going to happen), then you died of bad luck. It wasn't a challenge; you just simply rolled...




IME skilled play in these games includes being immune to the social expectation that your 2 hp Fighter stand in front of the Wizard.

I am generally skilled at old school play, but weak in this regard. I played a 3 hp Cleric a while back. I was perfectly aware that if the zombies got a swing at me I was dead meat. I was perfectly able to avoid that circumstance  - UNTIL those pesky other players looked at me expecting me to Step On Up. So I did, and died of course.


----------



## Lanefan (May 27, 2017)

Maxperson said:


> In first edition your typical fighter probably didn't have a 15+ in Con, so didn't even get a bonus to hit points.  A 14 Con gave no bonus and the average roll of 5 at first level gave you 5 hit points.  Orcs did 1-8 damage, giving it a decent chance to put the fighter down in 1 hit.  That same fighter in 3e had 12 hit points(10 + a 2 bonus for 14 Con) and had to max out damage to even get that fighter to 0, barring a crit.  On the other side of things the 1e orc had 1-8 hit points, averaging 4.  The 1e fighter probably didn't do extra damage(a 15 being +0), but at 1d8 had a greater than 50% chance to kill any orc hit.  The 3e fighter probably had +2 damage due to strength of 15, +1 for using a great sword two handed for +2d6+3 damage.  The 3e orc had 5 hit points giving a 100% chance to kill any orc hit.
> 
> Pretty easy to see which one was more difficult.



What does the same comparison look like in 4e (to a "real" orc, not a minion) and-or 5e?

Lanefan


----------



## Lanefan (May 27, 2017)

S'mon said:


> Pulsipher ...



While Pulsipher is I assume this guy's real name, every time I see it I think to myself what a great character name it would make for a Cleric - a Human, probably, LN alignment, something of a zealot, and more than capable of handling himself in a fight.  Stats something like S-15 I-10 W-16 D-10 Co-15 Ch-12 (and yes that's the order they should be in, dammit!). 

Lan-"my problem is I never remember these names when I actually roll up a character"-efan


----------



## Hussar (May 27, 2017)

Maxperson said:


> We are discussing D&D here, not a completely different games.   You're bringing in oranges to a discussion about apples.  The stat differences I mentioned affect game difficulty in D&D.  It's entirely irrelevant if a completely different game is more or less difficult.
> 
> 
> 
> ...




Couple of things to note.  

Straight out of the Monster Manual, a 3.5e orc deals 2d4+4 and crits on an 18-20.  While true, he has to roll max damage to drop our fighter, that's presuming one hit.  And, as soon as we get away from 1st level, the 3.5 monsters get a WHOLE lot more dangerous [MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION].  Because 3e monsters are meant to challenge 4 PC's, not one.  Which means that a 3.5e monster, by and large, is capable of dealing 10xCR in damage in a single round.  Not too many PC's average 10 hp/level.

Which is why I point to later era D&D being very deadly.  

OTOH, we've got 5e, which leans heavily on 1e for design, where a single monster isn't meant to be a challenge to a group of PC's, by and large.  Which is generally why you hear all these complaints about 5e not being difficult enough.  It's not difficult enough because it's based on 1e, where difficulty comes from adding a LOT more monsters.

Heck, you want to see the easiest way to show all this?  Take any 1e module.  Straight up convert it to 3e - same monsters and same number of monsters, and then run a 3e group through it at the suggested levels for the 1e module.  It's a death trap.  You will TPK the party every single time.  20 kobolds in a single encounter in a 1e module for 1st level becomes an instant death encounter for any 1st level 3e party.


----------



## pemerton (May 28, 2017)

shidaku said:


> pemerton said:
> 
> 
> 
> ...



I'm not sure what you mean.

I think of clever exploitation of fictional positioning as one (important) aspect of RPGing, but that view is contentious (see, eg, this thread).

And I'm not sure what you have in mind by "extra steps"? Which steps? And additional to what?


----------



## Maxperson (May 28, 2017)

Lanefan said:


> What does the same comparison look like in 4e (to a "real" orc, not a minion) and-or 5e?
> 
> Lanefan




Orcs are not level 1 in 4e.  As a level 3 monster they do 1d12+3 damage.  A 3rd level fighter will have much more than that, so orcs become even less of a threat one on one.  They have 46 hit points and since I never really played 4e, I have no idea what a 3rd level fighter can dish out.

In 5e an orc has 15 hit points and does a d12+3.  Not sure what a first level fighter can dish out in 5e, but hit points wise the fighter can be taken down with one hit at level 1, even if the fighter has a 20 con.

As [MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION] pointed out, the stat block of 3e shows 2d4+4, but doesn't take into account the combat section which says that they are proficient with greataxes and shows them using a greataxe.  The falchion is not all they use.  My error was that I thought it was greatsword, not greataxe, so the damage wasn't 2d6+3, it was 1d12+4(I also was in a hurry and got the two handed damage wrong).


----------



## pemerton (May 28, 2017)

Hussar said:


> No one is denying that it existed though.  We know that it existed.  What's being denied is that this was the only way that games were played back in the day . . .



Agree with that. 



Hussar said:


> . . . and that now we only game to participate, rather than be challenged.



Kind-of agree with that. The "only" makes the claim too strong. But I think a fair bit of contemporary RPGing does focus more on what I have called "setting/story tourism", which is a type of participation.

I think a lot of discussion - and it comes out on these boards as well as in blogs, DM's guides, etc - gets confused because it wants participation/tourism _and_ it wants challenge (these days probably more of a tactical combat challenge by default, rather than square-by-square exploratory challenge), and doesn't begin to tackle the tension involved in having both these things in the same episode of play.



S'mon said:


> a game with easy random death, no raise etc is indeed experienced as harder than a game where I am unlikely to die/fail to unfortunate random roll.



Generally I'm following along with your posts, and [MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION]'s - but just like there are bits of his where I differ, likewise here I only kind-of agree. It depends on "fail", at least in part - overall I think it is more common in contemporary RPGing to have non-death failure conditions, and these don't necessarily make the game easier.

And then there are also non-die-roll-based failures. A game where success in action declarations is pretty likely, and in which the (mechanical and immediate story) consequences of failure are fairly mild, but where the social/"at the table" consequences of failure can be more serious (eg The Dying Earth that Hussar mentioned upthread) might be hard, in a completely different sort of way.

Different games can require a player to "put him-/herself out there", on-the-line as it were, in different ways.

When I think back over my own RPGing experiences, one of the most demanding was a freeform CoC scenario, where each of the PCs was related to a particular NPC who had been taken by dark forces to a bad place. We were going into that place to rescue the NPC. I was playing the mother of the NPC; the kidnapper (another NPC) was my ex-husband. It wasn't the sort of game where there was any risk of PC death - the actual events we went through had been prepared in advance by the scenario authors. But it was demanding, very demanding: in part because at a few key points choices had to be made (about which of the five of us woud bear a cost or get a benefit) and those were _hard_ to make while remaining true to our characters, and our GM did a masterful job of pushing every player to stray true in reaching the final consensus (in effect by playing the angel/devil on one's shoulder); and in part because giving a sincere portrayal of a person wronged by her ex-husband and potentially losing her son is, itself, demanding (especially for someone, like me, not trained as an actor). (In my mind I used the mother of some old school-friends as my starting point for portraying the character.)

I guess my bottom line is that there is more than one way to make a RPG require more than just participation, and the likelihood of irreversible PC death is only one of those ways.


----------



## pemerton (May 28, 2017)

Maxperson said:


> We are discussing D&D here, not a completely different games.   You're bringing in oranges to a discussion about apples.  The stat differences I mentioned affect game difficulty in D&D.  It's entirely irrelevant if a completely different game is more or less difficult.



You've completely missed my point. The system maths of 3E is utterly different from 3E. Hence the idea that players have an easier time of it because their PCs have higher stat bonuses makes no sense.

Stat bonuses are higher in Moldvay Basic than in OD&D - does that in-and-of-itself make Moldvay Basic an easier game? Comparing stat bonuses without comparing the whole of the system maths is just silly.



Maxperson said:


> In first edition your typical fighter probably didn't have a 15+ in Con, so didn't even get a bonus to hit points.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> The 1e fighter probably didn't do extra damage (a 15 being +0)



You are positing a 1st ed AD&D fighter with no better than 15 STR and no better than 14 CON. I posit that this is an atypical AD&D fighter.


----------



## S'mon (May 28, 2017)

pemerton said:


> Generally I'm following along with your posts, and [MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION]'s - but just like there are bits of his where I differ, likewise here I only kind-of agree. It depends on "fail", at least in part - overall I think it is more common in contemporary RPGing to have non-death failure conditions, and these don't necessarily make the game easier.
> 
> And then there are also non-die-roll-based failures...




I was just using death as an example of failure. And I was only addressing the case of death/fail 
by random roll, not other causes of failure, because that's what Hussar was talking about. He said that games where random death/fail was likely weren't harder, and I disagreed.  They feel subjectively harder to me.

Hope that helps.


----------



## pemerton (May 28, 2017)

[MENTION=463]S'mon[/MENTION], thanks for the reply.


----------



## Lanefan (May 28, 2017)

Hussar said:


> Heck, you want to see the easiest way to show all this?  Take any 1e module.  Straight up convert it to 3e - same monsters and same number of monsters, and then run a 3e group through it at the suggested levels for the 1e module.  It's a death trap.  You will TPK the party every single time.  20 kobolds in a single encounter in a 1e module for 1st level becomes an instant death encounter for any 1st level 3e party.



20 kobolds would wipe out most 1st level parties in 1e as well assuming the party only had 4 characters a la the typical 3e party.

But - one thing to note is that the expected party size in 1e was about double that of 3e.

As the levels get higher you become more correct - an adventure for levels 5-8 in 1e would probably wipe out levels 5-8 in 3e on a direct conversion.  However, a direct conversion does the 3e characters a disservice in that where 1e effectively has about a 10-level range or so (other than Tomb of Horrors there's not much published for levels beyond about 10) 3e has at least a 15-level range and is designed for 20.  Thus, a 5-8 party in 1e is well over halfway through the range while a 5-8 party in 3e hasn't really got to halfway yet.

3e can be nasty in terms of simply killing characters.  I don't think that's really in dispute.

Where 3e is not as nasty as 1e-2e is in level drains, item loss or damage, spell interruption, and some other things that while they maybe don't kill a character can make its life much less pleasant.  And while 3e is quite good at killing characters, revival is automatic (no resurrection survival roll) if the character (i.e. player) so desires and the funds can be found.

Lan-"4e went back more to relying on monsters having some strength in numbers, and 5e kept going this way"-efan


----------



## Lanefan (May 28, 2017)

pemerton said:


> You've completely missed my point. The system maths of 3E is utterly different from 3E. Hence the idea that players have an easier time of it because their PCs have higher stat bonuses makes no sense.



Uh... [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] - there's something a bit wiggy about that middle sentence there...how can 3e be different from 3e...???



> You are positing a 1st ed AD&D fighter with no better than 15 STR and no better than 14 CON. I posit that this is an atypical AD&D fighter.



Depends on rolling method (any take-'em-in-the-order-rolled method, for example, can easily give numbers like these and far worse) and-or racial adjustment.  A Dwarf or Part-Orc Fighter with Str 15 and Con 14 would be a rather pathetic specimen but those numbers look pretty good on an Elf.  On a Human...I've seen many worse, but 16-15 would probably be a better average.

Lan-"I'm playing a Dwarf War Cleric right now (as in, I just got home from the game) with Str 16, Con 15, and Wis 16 rolled using a much more generous system than the 1e DMG has, so it can happen"-efan


----------



## Libramarian (May 28, 2017)

Hussar said:


> No one is denying that it existed though.  We know that it existed.  What's being denied is that this was the only way that games were played back in the day and that now we only game to participate, rather than be challenged.




You (and [MENTION=93444]shidaku[/MENTION] and [MENTION=40166]prosfilaes[/MENTION]) were in several posts pursuing the claim that classic gamist D&D doesn't exist as an internally consistent and functional way to play.

As I said earlier classic D&D has many interesting analogies with  the game of poker, which I hope you agree has a significant skill  component. The skills stressed can broadly be called risk management and  adaptability. If you turtle, you're jeered by the other players and you  get fewer XPs and magic items. But if you're rash, you bust and have to  start over. You play the hand you're dealt as best you can to tilt the  odds in your favor. This involves a little bit of mathematical  calculation, metagame knowledge, a feel for the fantasy subgenre  informing the game, reading the DM and coolness under pressure. It  certainly feels challenging and some are certainly better at it than  others.

The purpose of randomness in D&D is just as it is in other games, to  present the players with unexpected situations so they have to pay  attention and adapt rather than get into a rut of using the same  strategy over and over. You would be amazed at how closely classic  D&D players _pay attention_.

In my games if I describe the temperature as being unusually  cool in an  area, the players know that's a bad sign that must be considered before  deciding to explore further. In a Tekumel game it could be the smell of  cinnamon. This being more than just flavor text requires a game system  with relatively "unbalanced" monster encounters. Otherwise it doesn't  really matter how the players respond to this clue and an opportunity to  distinguish by player skill is lost.

Random chargen is like being dealt a hand in poker. No one is going to  give you unearned props for being dealt a good hand. The purpose is to  provide an interesting wrinkle to your early game decisions. A player of  mine once commented that they almost don't like rolling a really good  new character, because of the extra pressure to be cautious and keep  them alive.   Similar to someone going "oh crap" when they're dealt a pair of aces.  With a complicated, deterministic chargen system, most gamist players  just look up the good builds online (that's certainly what I do).  Totally boring from a gamist perspective. 

I think usually players who want to reduce randomness really just want a  situation  where if they win, they can act like they've earned it, but  if they  lose, they can blame the DM or adventure designer for setting  them up  for failure by not following the encounter building guidelines  or the treasure by level rules or whatever. This kind of win-win play I  think can fairly be said is to gamism what participationism is to  narrativism.


----------



## Libramarian (May 28, 2017)

pemerton said:


> I guess my bottom line is that there is more than one way to make a RPG require more than just participation, and the likelihood of irreversible PC death is only one of those ways.




I can agree with that.

But I think you were exaggerating earlier as to the gulf between the classic D&D style and typical contemporary D&D play. There's tons of dungeoncrawling in the WotC APs and my sense is most groups play to "beat" them in a basically gamist way.


----------



## pemerton (May 28, 2017)

Libramarian said:


> I think you were exaggerating earlier as to the gulf between the classic D&D style and typical contemporary D&D play. There's tons of dungeoncrawling in the WotC APs and my sense is most groups play to "beat" them in a basically gamist way.



My thoughts on this probably suffer from too much spectating at a distance, but I'll share them anyway - it's a messageboard, right!

I think that there are two salient differences between contemporary AP play and the "classic" style.

(1) The idea of "story" plays a much bigger role now than it once did, which creates pressure towards completion (and hence designing for being able to be completed), which puts pressure on the system - both mechanics and GMing techniques - to reduce lethality vs PCs.

One manifestation of this I remember discussing with [MENTION=463]S'mon[/MENTION] a while ago (and in my memory he agreed with me, but maybe my memory has some bias in it!), is when the tactical challenge becomes something like a suduko - "Given that this is beatable by a standard party, and _we're_ a standard party, what's our optimal resource deployment configuration to beat it" - which I think is pretty different from what Luke Crane describes.

Milestone levelling would be another. Yet another is building in failsafes for clues and other info to make sure the "plot" doesn't become derailed. Some of this will take the form of "success at a cost" (if you need the GM to feed you the clue, you suffer for it or get some weaker version of it), but personally I find "success at a cost" as an alternative to failure (whether classic "blank wall" failure or indie "failing forward") to be a rather insipid device.

(2) The actual process of play, I think, involve less exploration and less exploitation of fictional positioning. So the idea of making one's own luck has less purchase. (Passive perception scores would be just one marker of this, and by no means the most significant.)


As I said, these are an outsiders' views, so maybe wrong in part or in whole. But that's how it looks to me.


----------



## pemerton (May 28, 2017)

Libramarian said:


> You would be amazed at how closely classic  D&D players _pay attention_.
> 
> In my games if I describe the temperature as being unusually  cool in an  area, the players know that's a bad sign that must be considered before  deciding to explore further. In a Tekumel game it could be the smell of  cinnamon. This being more than just flavor text requires a game system  with relatively "unbalanced" monster encounters. Otherwise it doesn't  really matter how the players respond to this clue and an opportunity to  distinguish by player skill is lost.



This prompted three thoughts in me.

The first was to remind me of Luke Crane's rather critical remarks about Expert D&D and AD&D compared to Moldvay Basic. The basic point of his criticism is that, as the "world" gets too big and rich, the capacity of the players to extract meaningful clues out of the GM's narration (eg coldness, the smell of cinnamon, etc) becomes increasingly lessened.

The second was to make me think of all the "silly" D&D monsters - not just the plain silly ones like mimics and ear seekers, but the meta-silly ones like pseudo-undead and gas spores. This sort of set up is just primed for the GM to play those sorts of expectation-thwarting tricks, and yet if they're taken very far at all they disrupt the conventions on which their place as tricks rather than outright abuses depends. The traps which trigger when the square 10' in front is pressed are analogous. Is classic D&D inherently liable to (which is not at all to say "desined to") a spiral into meta-driven instability?

The third was to remind me of why I'm not that good at, and don't really enjoy, this classic playstyle. I don't find it interesting enough to maintain the requisite attention, either as GM or player. (Needless to say that's an observation about me, not remotely a cricitism of the style.)


----------



## S'mon (May 28, 2017)

pemerton said:


> My thoughts on this probably suffer from too much spectating at a distance, but I'll share them anyway - it's a messageboard, right!
> 
> I think that there are two salient differences between contemporary AP play and the "classic" style.
> 
> ...




I would agree with you. 
One big problem with the standard adventure style you see from Paizo etc is that it is set up as tourism plus challenge; where the penalty for failure is death and an early end to potentially a 6 volume £90 Adventure Path. The players are expected to send their PCs through the tour, a kind of richly detailed pre written story, defeating each challenge which comes up. 

When they fail to defeat a challenge the story ends and everyone loses. But if the challenges don't threaten defeat then they feel pointless.

Whereas in classic DnD play the players are free not to engage any particular challenge and defeat is just part of the game and the unfolding narrative - another adventurer group will be delving Greyhawk soon enough.


----------



## Maxperson (May 28, 2017)

pemerton said:


> You've completely missed my point. The system maths of 3E is utterly different from 3E. Hence the idea that players have an easier time of it because their PCs have higher stat bonuses makes no sense.



The math is not utterly different.  It's only somewhat different.  fighters in 1e have their ability to hit an AC get better by one per level.  Fighters in 3e have their ability to hit an AC get better by one per level.  Orcs in 1e have an AC of 6.  Orcs in 3e have an AC of 13(AC 7 in 1e).  Already it's 5% easier to hit an orc in 3e.  

All that's left are stats, hit points and damage.  A 16 strength for both and a 14 con for both, which are reasonable stats to roll in both systems.  4d6 drop the lowest being the same in both systems.  This gives the 3e fighter +3 to hit and damage and the 1e fighter +1 to damage only.  Now the 3e fighter is 20% more likely to hit.  But wait, that's not all!  3e fighters have feats and weapon focus is staple.  Now he's 25% more likely to hit.  

Let's look at hit points and damage next.  The 3e fighter with the 14 con will have 12 hit points.  The 1e fighter with the 14 con will have 1-10 hit points, averaging 5.  The 1e orc will have 1-8 hit points, averaging 4.  The 3e orc will have 2-9 hit points, averaging 5.  The 3e fighter using a greatsword will be doing 2d6+4 damage, which is guaranteed to kill the orc if it has average hit points WITH a minimum damage roll, and will kill a max hit point orc with an average roll.  The 1e fighter has a to roll a 3 better with a two handed sword to kill an orc with average hit points, and will fail to kill an orc with max hit points with an average roll.  

On the flip side of things the 1e orc is far more likely to take out a 1e fighter with a single attack roll.  An average amount of damage from a 1e orc is 40% likely to take out a 1st level 1e fighter.  An average amount of damage from a 3e orc cannot take out the 3e fighter, even if we remove his con bonus.  

One on one, a 1e orc is far more dangerous to the 1e fighter than vice versa.



> You are positing a 1st ed AD&D fighter with no better than 15 STR and no better than 14 CON. I posit that this is an atypical AD&D fighter.



Only if you are cheating.  4d6 drop the lowest is not likely to give stats much better than that.  In fact, it's more likely to give stats worse than those., than better than those, which STILL leaves the 3e fighter with bonuses.


----------



## billd91 (May 28, 2017)

pemerton said:


> My thoughts on this probably suffer from too much spectating at a distance, but I'll share them anyway - it's a messageboard, right!
> 
> I think that there are two salient differences between contemporary AP play and the "classic" style.
> 
> ...




The trends toward less final lethality has been ongoing since well before the APs. And it happens in homegrown campaigns as well as published module campaigns. Players become attached to their PCs - in D&D more than any other RPG I've personally played - and want to keep playing them. Sometimes it's because of their story, but I've noticed since 3e came out, it seems to be because of mechanical concept at least as often. When it started to become en vogue to plan out a build over multiple levels, that also put some pressure on the game to allow that player to actually play out that advancement and that has absolutely nothing to do with story.

I think this may ultimately have a lot more to do with the ultimate conceit of D&D right from the beginning - that this is more than a war game, more than just a game that enables a player to play a single token on a game board, but a game in which the player plays a distinct PC with their own values and agendas. The ability to improve in the first place fosters a sense of connection between the PC and the player whether it's via better gear, wealth, or XPs and levels. All of those encourage a player to play the game longer, to achieve more with their play, and that alone will spark the trend toward being able to keep going with that same character and amass new achievements. Games, particularly casual computer games, have developed that to a pretty sophisticated science.


----------



## Ratskinner (May 28, 2017)

Lanefan said:


> Not quite.  People still game to...well, just game.  The changes I'm noticing have come from the other end, at the design level.  Possibly said changes have been driven by external societal influences (which is what the OP seems to want to say without really saying it) but I more suspect they've been driven internally, by designers listening to player complaints about bad events - death, level loss, item loss, etc. - happening and then removing or mitigating said bad events from the game without looking far enough to realize that it's the bad events that make good events stand out as anything special.
> 
> Lanefan




IME All such "difficulty" factors have lain in the hands of the DM. I have met and played with killer DMs in every edition but 4th (but that could easily be from lack of data in 4e). I also met and played with "story" or "soft" DMs in every edition. For that matter, have played with more than one DM across multiple editions and variants. The things we are discussing all seem to go with the DM, not the system. Occasionally, they will change by campaign, even within the same system.

I submit that it is not a difference in the rules sets, but rather a simple and profound change in the culture/population of players and DMs and what they are looking for in an RPG experience. I don't see anything in 5e that would or could stop me from running an ultra-deathly fantasy Vietnam game. I also don't see many people who would want me to runit that way.




Sent from my LG-TP450 using EN World mobile app


----------



## Hussar (May 28, 2017)

S'mon said:


> I was just using death as an example of failure. And I was only addressing the case of death/fail
> by random roll, not other causes of failure, because that's what Hussar was talking about. He said that games where random death/fail was likely weren't harder, and I disagreed.  They feel subjectively harder to me.
> 
> Hope that helps.




That's not quite what I meant.

Obviously in a game where you have a higher random chance of dying, then the game probably feels harder.  Fair enough.  I'd agree with that.

What I disagree with is the notion from the OP that increased random deaths somehow equates to better play - which is what the OP is saying.  That we've gone from award based play where players are awarded for excellent play, to reward based play where you accrue your benefits simply from participation.  

Random effects can certainly increase difficulty, but, like the "winning the lottery" analogy, doesn't have anything to do with play being somehow inferior (which is what the OP is positing) to how people played in the past.  There are far too many examples of players being rewarded for blind luck to be able to say that previous games "awarded" play.  



Libramarian said:


> You (and [MENTION=93444]shidaku[/MENTION] and [MENTION=40166]prosfilaes[/MENTION]) were in several posts pursuing the claim that classic gamist D&D doesn't exist as an internally consistent and functional way to play.




I won't speak for anyone else, but, if that's the impression I gave, I'm sorry.  That is very much not what I meant.  



> As I said earlier classic D&D has many interesting analogies with  the game of poker, which I hope you agree has a significant skill  component. The skills stressed can broadly be called risk management and  adaptability. If you turtle, you're jeered by the other players and you  get fewer XPs and magic items. But if you're rash, you bust and have to  start over. You play the hand you're dealt as best you can to tilt the  odds in your favor. This involves a little bit of mathematical  calculation, metagame knowledge, a feel for the fantasy subgenre  informing the game, reading the DM and coolness under pressure. It  certainly feels challenging and some are certainly better at it than  others.
> 
> The purpose of randomness in D&D is just as it is in other games, to  present the players with unexpected situations so they have to pay  attention and adapt rather than get into a rut of using the same  strategy over and over. You would be amazed at how closely classic  D&D players _pay attention_.




See, that's the trick.  The purpose of randomness in D&D is to increase difficulty.  Fair enough.  But, since it's random, it cannot be completely accounted for (and sometimes not at all) and players are rewarded or punished for doing nothing.  Remember, the point of this thread isn't to poop on old school play.  I loves me some old school play.  But, the point of this thread was to claim that new games aren't challenging.

Which isn't true.



> In my games if I describe the temperature as being unusually  cool in an  area, the players know that's a bad sign that must be considered before  deciding to explore further. In a Tekumel game it could be the smell of  cinnamon. This being more than just flavor text requires a game system  with relatively "unbalanced" monster encounters. Otherwise it doesn't  really matter how the players respond to this clue and an opportunity to  distinguish by player skill is lost.
> 
> Random chargen is like being dealt a hand in poker. No one is going to  give you unearned props for being dealt a good hand. The purpose is to  provide an interesting wrinkle to your early game decisions. A player of  mine once commented that they almost don't like rolling a really good  new character, because of the extra pressure to be cautious and keep  them alive.   Similar to someone going "oh crap" when they're dealt a pair of aces.  With a complicated, deterministic chargen system, most gamist players  just look up the good builds online (that's certainly what I do).  Totally boring from a gamist perspective.




But, again, remember the context of the thread.  The OP is claiming that players are "earning their awards" in old school play.  What, exactly, did your player do to "earn" that fighter with an 18/54 strength and it's attendant 10% XP bonus?



> I think usually players who want to reduce randomness really just want a  situation  where if they win, they can act like they've earned it, but  if they  lose, they can blame the DM or adventure designer for setting  them up  for failure by not following the encounter building guidelines  or the treasure by level rules or whatever. This kind of win-win play I  think can fairly be said is to gamism what participationism is to  narrativism.




And, now, we get to the heart of things.  The dismissive condescension towards other play styles.  Nice.  Reducing randomness means that you just "act" like you've earned it?  Snort.  I'll tell that to every Chess champion I meet.  The funny thing is, the gamist in me LOATHES random chance.  How is that a test of your skill when random chance sends all your skill wahoonie shaped?  Sorry, but, for me, in a truly gamist game, it's a test of my SKILL, not a test of my dice fapping skills.


----------



## Hussar (May 28, 2017)

Maxperson said:


> The math is not utterly different.  It's only somewhat different.  fighters in 1e have their ability to hit an AC get better by one per level.  Fighters in 3e have their ability to hit an AC get better by one per level.  Orcs in 1e have an AC of 6.  Orcs in 3e have an AC of 13(AC 7 in 1e).  Already it's 5% easier to hit an orc in 3e.
> 
> All that's left are stats, hit points and damage.  A 16 strength for both and a 14 con for both, which are reasonable stats to roll in both systems.  4d6 drop the lowest being the same in both systems.  This gives the 3e fighter +3 to hit and damage and the 1e fighter +1 to damage only.  Now the 3e fighter is 20% more likely to hit.  But wait, that's not all!  3e fighters have feats and weapon focus is staple.  Now he's 25% more likely to hit.
> 
> ...




Funny thing is, you're STILL ignoring a lot of factors.  That 3e PC you are talking about, has at best (since you've given him a 16 strength and 14 Con, a what, 12 Dex?  So, +1 AC to his Scalemail armor of 14 (no shield since you've given him a two handed weapon).  So, he's got a 15 AC.  Mr. Orc has a +4 attack bonus (and crits 15% of the time) meaning he hits 50% of the time for 2d4+4 damage.

Now, our 1e fighter has banded and shield (since you gave him a longsword) and, let's be honest here, likely at least a 14 Dex (since you gimped his Str and Con, 6 shots gives him a pretty decent chance of at least that), giving him an AC of 2.  Mr. Orc has a THAC0 of 19.  He hits on a 17 or better for a d8 damage.

So, 1e orc hits half as often for half as much damage.  While it's true that the 3e fighter likely has more HP, he doesn't have FOUR TIMES as many HP.  True, the 1e orc can drop the fighter in one round.  But, that orc has to get incredibly lucky.  He's got a 20% chance of hitting and he's only got a 50% chance after he hits (presuming our fighter only has average HP).  Our 3e orc is hitting 50% of the time, with a 15% chance of critting.  And, his crit deals 4d4+8 points of damage - more than enough to drop our 1st level 3e fighter.  

IOW, the 3e orc has just about the same chances of one shotting our 3e fighter, and a MUCH greater chance of dropping the fighter over time.

Put it this way.  Over ten rounds of combat, the 1e orc hits twice, pretty much guaranteeing dropping the fighter but only just.  Over the same period of time, the 3e orc hits 5 times, once with a crit - meaning our 3e orc, has effectively hit six times.  Not only killing the fighter but probably killing his buddy too.

So, no, your analysis doesn't really carry a whole lot of weight AFAIC.  You're ignoring all sorts of details, and massaging the situation.


----------



## Lanefan (May 28, 2017)

Ratskinner said:


> IME All such "difficulty" factors have lain in the hands of the DM. I have met and played with killer DMs in every edition but 4th (but that could easily be from lack of data in 4e). I also met and played with "story" or "soft" DMs in every edition. For that matter, have played with more than one DM across multiple editions and variants. The things we are discussing all seem to go with the DM, not the system. Occasionally, they will change by campaign, even within the same system.



I'm not talking about what individual DMs do to the system, whatever edition they might be using.  I'm talking about how the system/edition functions and what it does or doesn't do when run purely stock, by RAW, in the way the designers intended (which can usually be gleaned from their commentary/forewords/etc. in the rulebooks).



> I submit that it is not a difference in the rules sets, but rather a simple and profound change in the culture/population of players and DMs and what they are looking for in an RPG experience.



Where I posit that this change - which I agree has happened - has been driven from the design side rather than the consumer side.  The culture has changed from the top down rather than the bottom up.

Lanefan


----------



## Hussar (May 29, 2017)

Lanefan said:


> I'm not talking about what individual DMs do to the system, whatever edition they might be using.  I'm talking about how the system/edition functions and what it does or doesn't do when run purely stock, by RAW, in the way the designers intended (which can usually be gleaned from their commentary/forewords/etc. in the rulebooks).




Only trick with that is, as far as AD&D goes, is that AD&D is so schizophrenic in how the game was presented.  Was it all Mega-dungeons or heavy plotzy games?  Well, it depends entirely on how someone game into the hobby.  As I said earlier, Dragonlance is pretty much just as old as Greyhawk.  

And, let's be honest, virtually no one runs AD&D by stock, by RAW, in the way the designers intended.  It's nearly impossible to do so.



> Where I posit that this change - which I agree has happened - has been driven from the design side rather than the consumer side.  The culture has changed from the top down rather than the bottom up.
> 
> Lanefan



Whereas I posit that no change has actually happened at all.  All that has happened is that the design side has recognized different consumer sides and instead of telling people how the game "should" be played and trying to enforce play styles onto the hobby, they've largely stepped back and simply presented a system and put it back in the hands of the consumers as to how the game should be played.


----------



## Sunseeker (May 29, 2017)

pemerton said:


> I'm not sure what you mean.
> 
> I think of clever exploitation of fictional positioning as one (important) aspect of RPGing, but that view is contentious (see, eg, this thread).
> 
> And I'm not sure what you have in mind by "extra steps"? Which steps? And additional to what?




To me, "clever exploitation of the fictional positioning" sounds like an over complicated way to say "role playing".  Because the way I've always played and learned to play through multiple editions was to make the most of what you were given in order to come out with the best possible outcome.  Since that by-and-large meant using skills, setting knowledge, gained information to best utilize the terrain, NPCs and overall situation we were in in a complete and whole manner via our character, it sounded a lot like what I consider "role playing".  

That is, something you do _before_ you roll the dice in order to sway the situation in your favor.


----------



## Sunseeker (May 29, 2017)

Libramarian said:


> You (and @_*shidaku*_ and @_*prosfilaes*_) were in several posts pursuing the claim that classic gamist D&D doesn't exist as an internally consistent and functional way to play.




Woah there man I never said that.  I complained initially about the "back in my day" basis for the argument.  I didn't even address what sort of gaming does or does not exist, if it existed in the past or if people who once played like that are still playing like that.  

My only real contribution to the thread was to suggest that the dice themselves are vectors to overcoming challenges, not themselves challenges.


----------



## Hussar (May 29, 2017)

Libramarian said:
			
		

> With a complicated, deterministic chargen system, most gamist players just look up the good builds online (that's certainly what I do). Totally boring from a gamist perspective.




This stuck in my head a bit and I thought I'd pull this out for a bit of extra examination.

How is this not pure gamism?  You are making decisions base on what will give you greater chances of success.  It has nothing to do with the story of the game nor does it try to simulate anything.  It's a purely gamist decision.  Now, you might not like it since it makes the game "easier" than you feel is necessary.  Fair enough.  But, it's no different than someone watching Texas Hold'em tournaments to learn better ways of playing.  Or reading strategy guides to make them a better poker player.

Are you saying that someone who takes the time out of the game to learn how to be a "better player" (in the sense of increasing their odds of success) is somehow an inferior player?  That they aren't "playing right"?  That the only real way of being a better player is making all the mistakes yourself?  I'd argue that while there's nothing wrong with "learning from your mistakes", learning from other people's mistakes is also perfectly valid from a gamist perspective.


----------



## Sunseeker (May 29, 2017)

Hussar said:


> This stuck in my head a bit and I thought I'd pull this out for a bit of extra examination.
> 
> How is this not pure gamism?  You are making decisions base on what will give you greater chances of success.  It has nothing to do with the story of the game nor does it try to simulate anything.  It's a purely gamist decision.  Now, you might not like it since it makes the game "easier" than you feel is necessary.  Fair enough.  But, it's no different than someone watching Texas Hold'em tournaments to learn better ways of playing.  Or reading strategy guides to make them a better poker player.
> 
> Are you saying that someone who takes the time out of the game to learn how to be a "better player" (in the sense of increasing their odds of success) is somehow an inferior player?  That they aren't "playing right"?  That the only real way of being a better player is making all the mistakes yourself?  I'd argue that while there's nothing wrong with "learning from your mistakes", learning from other people's mistakes is also perfectly valid from a gamist perspective.




Personally, I don't see the point in _not_ doing your research on a game before playing.  While people's degree of research into a game may vary from "Does it have the races and classes I like?" to "Does it have a million splat books with a bunch of trap feats?", I really just don't see the point in not "reading up" on a game.  I mean, I wouldn't know how to do a LOT of the cool stuff in D&D if I had never read the CharOp forums.  Sure, _some_ of that is "How to break the game in 3 easy steps."  But some of them are also good advice on what choices may seem good at first glance but are really bad in practice.  A lot of DMs do not allow "retraining" even for noobs, which can lead to players quitting because they're stuck with a character they don't like, "suiciding" so that they can reroll something better, and so on.  A lot of those stressful, un-fun moments of gameplay can be easily avoided with 5-10 minutes of research.

As a long-time MTG player, I _despise_ netdecking, because there's a certain level of arrogance that netdeckers gain from basically not creating something of their own and just playing what "wins".  But at the same time, I can't blame people for wanting to know what is, and what isn't good to play, because lets face it, in more robust RPGs (games with lots of books and splat and 3PP) there's a LOT of bad stuff that _sounds_ cool, but actually isn't.  And that's something I'll advice any player to avoid.


----------



## Lorithen (May 29, 2017)

Lanefan said:


> My character's lover was another PC, not an NPC.  All the DM had to do was hit the curveballs thrown at him, which he did very well.
> 
> Lanefan




That he did.


----------



## Maxperson (May 29, 2017)

Hussar said:


> Funny thing is, you're STILL ignoring a lot of factors.  That 3e PC you are talking about, has at best (since you've given him a 16 strength and 14 Con, a what, 12 Dex?  So, +1 AC to his Scalemail armor of 14 (no shield since you've given him a two handed weapon).  So, he's got a 15 AC.  Mr. Orc has a +4 attack bonus (and crits 15% of the time) meaning he hits 50% of the time for 2d4+4 damage.



1d12+4.  The orc is using a greataxe, not a falchion.  You are still ignoring the combat section.  Crits 5% of the time.



> Now, our 1e fighter has banded and shield (since you gave him a longsword) and, let's be honest here, likely at least a 14 Dex (since you gimped his Str and Con, 6 shots gives him a pretty decent chance of at least that), giving him an AC of 2.  Mr. Orc has a THAC0 of 19.  He hits on a 17 or better for a d8 damage.



I gave the orc a longsword.  I gave the fighter a two handed sword to match the 3e fighter's greatsword.  Also, banded mail and shield is AC 3, but since gold is rolled randomly, an average roll would leave him unable to afford it.  Most likely he had chain mail and no shield for an AC of 5.  I played tons of fighters and while I occasionally rolled well enough to afford better than chain, chain was what the vast majority of them started with.



> So, 1e orc hits half as often for half as much damage.  While it's true that the 3e fighter likely has more HP, he doesn't have FOUR TIMES as many HP.  True, the 1e orc can drop the fighter in one round.  But, that orc has to get incredibly lucky.  He's got a 20% chance of hitting and he's only got a 50% chance after he hits (presuming our fighter only has average HP).  Our 3e orc is hitting 50% of the time, with a 15% chance of critting.  And, his crit deals 4d4+8 points of damage - more than enough to drop our 1st level 3e fighter.




The 1e orc is hiting that AC of 5 35% of the time and it's far easier for that orc to knock out the fighter who has an average of 5 hit points, than the one with the for sure 12 hit points.



> IOW, the 3e orc has just about the same chances of one shotting our 3e fighter, and a MUCH greater chance of dropping the fighter over time.



Blatantly false.  The 1e orc only has to roll a hair better than average on damage to one shot the 1e fighter.  The 3e orc with the falchion has to roll max damage, and the one with the greataxe has to roll an 8 or better on the d12.



> Put it this way.  Over ten rounds of combat, the 1e orc hits twice, pretty much guaranteeing dropping the fighter but only just.  Over the same period of time, the 3e orc hits 5 times, once with a crit - meaning our 3e orc, has effectively hit six times.  Not only killing the fighter but probably killing his buddy too.




You played a very different 3e than the rest of us.  Combats were over in 1-3 rounds typically, ending in 4-5 if the combat was a slow one.  Meanwhile, that 3e orc was dead by round 2 if it was lucky.  The 3e fighter hits it on an 8 or better and auto kills on a hit.


----------



## Lanefan (May 29, 2017)

shidaku said:


> As a long-time MTG player, I _despise_ netdecking, because there's a certain level of arrogance that netdeckers gain from basically not creating something of their own and just playing what "wins".  But at the same time, I can't blame people for wanting to know what is, and what isn't good to play, because lets face it, in more robust RPGs (games with lots of books and splat and 3PP) there's a LOT of bad stuff that _sounds_ cool, but actually isn't.  And that's something I'll advice any player to avoid.



I think it all depends how seriously one wants to take it.

Take MtG.  There's people who take it uber-seriously, spending days and weeks and months tweaking a deck to the peak of perfection and then losing sleep when it doesn't win every game...and then there's guys like me, who take ten minutes to slap a deck together that looks like fun and just play for the hell of it.

D&D is the same.  What might be "bad stuff" to the serious player could be really cool for the not-so-serious player.  And I'll take cool-but-suboptimal over optimal-but-boring every single time. 

Lan-"once in a rare while I'll stumble onto a winning idea for a MtG deck...then promptly forget what it was by the time I next play"-efan


----------



## Maxperson (May 29, 2017)

Lanefan said:


> I think it all depends how seriously one wants to take it.
> 
> Take MtG.  There's people who take it uber-seriously, spending days and weeks and months tweaking a deck to the peak of perfection and then losing sleep when it doesn't win every game...and then there's guys like me, who take ten minutes to slap a deck together that looks like fun and just play for the hell of it.
> 
> ...




This.  Especially since the large drop in difficulty after 2e made it so that you could be very suboptimal and still do very well.  As far as I'm concerned, so what if your group can kill the monster 1 round sooner than I can.


----------



## prosfilaes (May 29, 2017)

Libramarian said:


> You (and [MENTION=93444]shidaku[/MENTION] and [MENTION=40166]prosfilaes[/MENTION]) were in several posts pursuing the claim that classic gamist D&D doesn't exist as an internally consistent and functional way to play.




That's rather unlikely, considering that rather specific thesis has never been presented above nor are we part of a group that pushes that specific thesis.

D&D of any edition is less internally consistent than many other RPGs, for several reasons; other RPGs started by a look at the preexisting RPGs, which D&D couldn't do, being the mass-market RPG meant that it had to target a wide audience, and the long history of material that can't be just ignored if you want to keep your main audience. And somehow, yet, it is most definitely played in many editions.



> As I said earlier classic D&D has many interesting analogies with  the game of poker, which I hope you agree has a significant skill  component. The skills stressed can broadly be called risk management and  adaptability. If you turtle, you're jeered by the other players and you  get fewer XPs and magic items. ... Random chargen is like being dealt a hand in poker.




I certainly believe you play it that way, and enjoy it. Personally, I don't enjoy poker, and the board games I most enjoy don't have this type of individualized luck, like Power Grid and the 18xx series (which has no randomization at all).



> With a complicated, deterministic chargen system, most gamist players just look up the good builds online (that's certainly what I do).




Or they're the ones putting the good builds online. I suspect that the best players, just like in M:tG, are looking online, but they're analyzing it and rebuilding it and tweaking it to fit their play style and skills.



> The purpose of randomness in D&D is just as it is in other games, to  present the players with unexpected situations so they have to pay  attention and adapt rather than get into a rut of using the same  strategy over and over.




One purpose of randomness in games is to dilute the effect of skill. If if you were Bruce Almighty and flipped a switch to make poker fully a game of skill, the poker tables in Vegas would be empty in a week; all the guppies who draw to an inside straight and annoy the skilled players by lucking out would quickly realize the tables were no place for them, and shortly after the smaller sharks would get eaten by the bigger sharks. Randomness in poker has little to do with varying strategy in poker, since it's a mathematically simple game where good players differ not by how well they know the game, but by how well they know their opponents. Nonrandom games tend to have steeply stratified skill levels, which tend to drive away new players.

Moreover, D&D has a huge advantage in varying strategy, in that you have a human moderator who can provide endless variety. The first levels of Zeitgeist look little like the first levels of Mummy's Mask, and reward different things.



> I think usually players who want to reduce randomness really just want a  situation  where if they win,




I think players who want to reduce randomness often don't box the situation as winning and losing. Certainly D&D is not the game I turn to when I'm interested in winning. And I think the fact that, when you try and analyze why other people do something, your analysis is derogatory towards those people, makes it hard to calmly discuss playing with you.


----------



## Hussar (May 29, 2017)

Maxperson said:


> 1d12+4.  The orc is using a greataxe, not a falchion.  You are still ignoring the combat section.  Crits 5% of the time.




Read the 3.5 SRD - it's a Falchion.  They dropped the Greataxe because of the X3 crit modifier.  



> I gave the orc a longsword.  I gave the fighter a two handed sword to match the 3e fighter's greatsword.  Also, banded mail and shield is AC 3, but since gold is rolled randomly, an average roll would leave him unable to afford it.  Most likely he had chain mail and no shield for an AC of 5.  I played tons of fighters and while I occasionally rolled well enough to afford better than chain, chain was what the vast majority of them started with.




Banded is 90 gp, Chain is 75.  The odds that you can afford chain and not banded are very, very slight.  5d4x10 gp averages over 100 gp (120 to be exact).  Most likely, the fighter has banded.



> The 1e orc is hiting that AC of 5 35% of the time and it's far easier for that orc to knock out the fighter who has an average of 5 hit points, than the one with the for sure 12 hit points.




Yuppers.  Only thing is, that fighter almost guaranteed has an AC of 2.  Considering you gave him a 16 for Str, many gamers would simply put something else in Str and get that 16 in Dex for a -2 AC bonus, giving him a 1 AC.  Now our orc hits 10% of the time.


> Blatantly false.  The 1e orc only has to roll a hair better than average on damage to one shot the 1e fighter.  The 3e orc with the falchion has to roll max damage, and the one with the greataxe has to roll an 8 or better on the d12.




Only when you insist on ignoring what's actually in the game.  Our 3e orc with a falchion has a 15% chance of dealing a crit - which will pretty much automatically drop the fighter with a decent chance of outright killing him.  IOW, our 3e orc has a better chance of dropping the fighter.  Even with a greataxe, his chances of outright killing the fighter are only 5% less.  3d12+12 damage will obliterate any 1st level fighter.



> You played a very different 3e than the rest of us.  Combats were over in 1-3 rounds typically, ending in 4-5 if the combat was a slow one.  Meanwhile, that 3e orc was dead by round 2 if it was lucky.  The 3e fighter hits it on an 8 or better and auto kills on a hit.




Let's be honest here.  In any edition, fighter vs orc, smart money is on the fighter.  The 1e orc only hits about 20% of the time and needs (typically) two hits to drop the fighter.  Meanwhile, our 1e fighter (ignoring Unearthed Arcana which dramatically ups the fighter's damage output, never minding what 2e did), hits about 45% of the time and drops the orc a bit better than 50%.  The idea that a single orc is likely to drop that fighter isn't very realistic.


----------



## Hussar (May 29, 2017)

Look, at the end of the day, the argument over the "sweet spot" of lethality in gaming is as old as gaming.  This exact argument has been hashed and rehashed in the pages of Dragon and whatnot since the 1970's.  This is not anything new.

The thing is, the sweet spot is going to vary greatly depending on the play styles and preferences of a given table.  If you want to do really old school style gaming, where you have the Town at X and the Dungeon at Y and your weekly play consists of forays into that dungeon, then, yup, you want high lethality.  It's part and parcel to what makes that type of game fun.  

Only problem is, that's not the only game in town and that was recognized, again, virtually from day 1.  In a Hexploration game (which is about as old school as you can get), there becomes very pragmatic issues regarding lethality.  In a Mega-Dungeon game, when your PC dies, your group heads back to town, and you get a new PC.  No problems, it's fairly plausible.  However, in a hexploration game, where you're in the middle of the Isle of Dread, it becomes a bit implausible when the fifth stranger you've met, just happens to be yet another wandering PC who joins your group to replace your latest casualty.  It makes that game less fun for the participants if death is frequent and random.

Never minding that more plotzy games have been part of the hobby since very early.  I loved playing the old James Bond 007 RPG.  Tons of fun.  But, it makes zero sense to play that as an old style meat grinder.  Completely doesn't fit with the tone or genre and makes the game very unfun.  Thus, in the 007 game, you have Action Points (Bond Points?  It's been a long time, I forget the exact term) where you, as the player, have a great deal of narrative control over the game.  And this came out in about 1983, so, I'm thinking it counts as pretty "old school".

Rolling back to fantasy, there's also the issue of fantasy genre expectations.  Fantasy fiction really doesn't fit (at least of the time) with the idea of a revolving door of dead characters.  It's not until pretty recently with George R.R. Martin and others where you see fantasy fiction with strings of dead characters.  Going back to Tolkien (I hate Godwinning this thread), of the original Fellowship, there's only one death.  That's it.  Rolling even further back to the pulps, your main characters almost never die.  Sure, various red-shirt side characters pop up and get ganked, but, the main guys?  Nope, they suffer and then keep right on rolling.  ((Of course, this makes a lot more sense when you realize that those serial pulp authors wanted to keep making money, so, killing their main bread winner was just NOT going to happen)).  

But, when you look at D&D's wargaming roots, frequent death makes perfect sense.  No one cares when their three meeple on the Ukraine in Risk get munched.  You pick up the pieces, and put them right back on the board next round.  Given that all the pieces are identical, who cares if you lose one?  However, that wargaming root ran smack dab into the impulse for theatricalism that is part and parcel to the hobby as well.  Lots of people play RPG's to create a story.  Which means that revolving door PC's don't work very well.  

I don't think I'm saying anything controversial here.  Which is why I've had a real problem wrapping my head around the notion that this is something new.  That there's been some sort of change in the way D&D has been played since virtually day one.  Every single one of the issues we've talked about here can be found in the first twenty or thirty issues of The Dragon.  This is not a new thing.


----------



## Sunseeker (May 29, 2017)

Lanefan said:


> I think it all depends how seriously one wants to take it.
> 
> Take MtG.  There's people who take it uber-seriously, spending days and weeks and months tweaking a deck to the peak of perfection and then losing sleep when it doesn't win every game...and then there's guys like me, who take ten minutes to slap a deck together that looks like fun and just play for the hell of it.
> 
> ...




But it really isn't that cut and dry.  Like, for example I love fighters but by-the-book, fighters are pretty dry.  They hit things with a stick and then do it again.  So I went through some CharOp boards to find out "What can I do with a fighter to make my gameplay more interesting?" And I found several guides on how to do some slick stuff (like charge, knockback, and so forth).  I had no idea that this form of playing a fighter even existed.  To put that back into MTG terms, these are cards I didn't even own, much less even knew were part of the game.

In a robust game like _most_ editions of D&D and MTG its really not hard to be _good_ and creative at the same time.  It's more like one of those 2-dimensional grids where "creative" is up and down and "effective at the table" is left and right.  For example I'm running a very OP Cleric in a game, she's _very_ op and of course, a little downtime and I can completely switch out all my spells and I know which ones are the "best spells" but for the most part I choose spells that I find interesting, thematic, and flavorful.  Sometimes I _can't_ break the world even when I need to for no other reason than I don't want to.

And I think it's important to remember that breaking the game is not something that automatically happens when you create a powerful character.  It's _always_ a choice you make as part of play.

Lastly though I would say that being creative doesn't come from the game.  That comes from the player.  Without the imagination of the player to detail in the appearance, attitude, hopes, dreams, fears, desires and general taste in clothing, it doesn't matter which feats you take or how many classes you dip into.  _That_ is where the creativity of a character really happens.


----------



## pemerton (May 29, 2017)

Hussar said:


> Libramarian said:
> 
> 
> 
> ...



I took the claim at face value - that, in the context of D&D, "winning" by faithfully implementing a strategy you read about online is _boring_.

In the context of the "classic" playstyle, I would relate this back to the importance of fictional positioning. The more that resolution depends solely on engaging the fictional positioning (eg surfing unhinged doors down the frictionless corridor in White Plume Mountain), then the less significant "build" becomes and hence the more the gamist "pressure point" becomes not pre-reading and pre-learning but cleverness in the moment with respect to the fiction (hence, also, the reason that reading the module  - _let alone_ someone else's play report about it - is, in effect, cheating).



Hussar said:


> The OP is claiming that players are "earning their awards" in old school play.  What, exactly, did your player do to "earn" that fighter with an 18/54 strength and it's attendant 10% XP bonus?



My take on the XP bonus for good prime requisites is that it is meant to enforce a modest degree of genre fidelity (stronger characters are more likely to be turned into fighters). Once you have AD&D-style allocation of stats rather than stats rolled in order, this function becomes largely redundant (because if you want to play a MU you can stick you good stat into INT, and if you _really_ want to play a strong wizard what's the harm?) and probably the rule should be dropped - an early case of D&D cargo cult-ism about rules, where the rule lingers on even though its rationale has faded.



Hussar said:


> more plotzy games have been part of the hobby since very early.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> ...



It's not new. The OP knows it's not new, because - as [MENTION=463]S'mon[/MENTION] has pointed out - he was advocating against that sort of "story" play back in the late 70s and early 80s.

I think the OP is making a claim about _trends_ - that _more_ contemporary gaming has the "participationary" rather than "challenge" focus. I don't know enough about contemporary games to have a view. I barely know enough about contemporary RPGing to have a view about the little niche of gaming. But - following on from my recent exchanges in this thread with [MENTION=6688858]Libramarian[/MENTION] and [MENTION=463]S'mon[/MENTION] - I would tentatively assert that one feature of 5e might be argued to be a rather low degree of lethality (comparable, let's say, to 4e, and not, say, to Moldvay Basic) packaged in such a way as to make the game _feel_ more like the classic experience than 4e is ever going to (for instance, by packing that non-lethality into targeted class abilities like Spare the Dying, Revivify, etc rather than making it overt in each PC via the Second Wind/other healing surge/death-and-dying rules).

Which probably makes it better suited for the AP-type experience of a combo of "tourism" and "challenge" than 3E/PF, which has the continual rocket-tag threat of high lethality. Clever design by WotC.


----------



## Lanefan (May 29, 2017)

shidaku said:


> But it really isn't that cut and dry.  Like, for example I love fighters but by-the-book, fighters are pretty dry.  They hit things with a stick and then do it again.



Which, when combined with a personality and some creative flair, is quite enough for some people.  


> So I went through some CharOp boards to find out "What can I do with a fighter to make my gameplay more interesting?" And I found several guides on how to do some slick stuff (like charge, knockback, and so forth).  I had no idea that this form of playing a fighter even existed.  To put that back into MTG terms, these are cards I didn't even own, much less even knew were part of the game.



And the bright side is, in D&D you don't have to break the bank to get your mitts on some of those "cards". 

For some players (of whom I suspect you might be one) differences between characters need to be reflected in the mechanics somehow in order to be relevant, or interesting.  For me, however, it's really not that important whether my fighter and your fighter are - under the hood - using exactly the same game mechanics; I'm more interested in the personalities and what they lead to in play.

An analogy might be two cars.  One is a basic rock-solid reliable 4-door sedan.  The other is a flashy bunch of chrome and sheet metal that you can see coming a mile away and that turns heads on every street.  Yet under the hood of each car is found exactly the same engine, same moving parts, and same chassis.



> In a robust game like _most_ editions of D&D and MTG its really not hard to be _good_ and creative at the same time.  It's more like one of those 2-dimensional grids where "creative" is up and down and "effective at the table" is left and right.



OK, fair enough.  It still comes down to preference, however, which part of the grid you're going to prioritize.  For some, effective takes priority - go right on the grid then see how far up you can dial the creative side.  For others, like me, it's go top-creative first then see if there's any rightward movement to be had into the realm of effective; and not care too much if there isn't any.



> Lastly though I would say that being creative doesn't come from the game.  That comes from the player.  Without the imagination of the player to detail in the appearance, attitude, hopes, dreams, fears, desires and general taste in clothing, it doesn't matter which feats you take or how many classes you dip into.  _That_ is where the creativity of a character really happens.



I completely agree with this when it comes to the run of play that happens at the table.  However some parts of the creative side do come from the game mechanics in games 3e and later during character generation, when it comes to determining one's "build", if you're trying to make the mechanics line up with the character/personality concept.

Lan-"going to the top on the creative side is good, going slightly over the top is even better"-efan


----------



## Hussar (May 29, 2017)

Y'know, [MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION], there's another point to remember here.  We've been going back and forth about 1st level characters, but, there's a great deal more to the game than one single level.  Let's take our fighters and make them 3rd level.  Now, a 3rd level 1e fighter has 15 HP, Plate and Shield (that's pretty much given and it's not unreasonable for our 3rd level fighter to have a +1 shield either) giving him an AC of -1.  Now, that fighter is pretty much invulnerable to the orc.  The orc needs a 20 to hit and has to hit at least twice for max damage to knock the fighter down - a 1 in 6400 chance of that orc being able to defeat that fighter.

The 3e fighter, has a worth by the book of 800 gp.  So, Half plate is the best he can do - no Dex bonus, so he's got an AC of 17 (no shield remember, you insisted on a 2-h weapon.  He has 28 HP on average (12+6x2+2x2)  Our 3e orc, with a +4 attack bonus, hits on a 13 or better and has a crit range of 3d12+12 damage.  So, our orc is hitting 40% of the time with a 5% crit chance.  Meaning he's got a 2% chance of critting our fighter and instantly killing him (with a 1 better than average damage roll).

So, our 3e orc has about a 3000 times better chance of killing our fighter than the 1e orc.


----------



## Lanefan (May 29, 2017)

Hussar said:


> Y'know, [MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION], there's another point to remember here.  We've been going back and forth about 1st level characters, but, there's a great deal more to the game than one single level.  Let's take our fighters and make them 3rd level.  Now, a 3rd level 1e fighter has 15 HP, Plate and Shield (that's pretty much given and it's not unreasonable for our 3rd level fighter to have a +1 shield either) giving him an AC of -1.



Er.....how are you getting -1 out of straight plate and shield +1?

Plate gives AC 3.  A shield gives 1 on top of that (by RAW; though many tables make it 2), and the shield's +1 gives another pip...which - again by RAW - gets you down to an AC of 1, not -1.

Which means the orc, while still having a hard go of it to hit you, can do so on less than a nat. 20.

That said: if our intrepid knight happens to have dex 16, thus giving 2 more points of AC, your -1 suddenly makes sense.

Lanefan


----------



## S'mon (May 29, 2017)

Hussar said:


> Only problem is, that's not the only game in town and that was recognized, again, virtually from day 1.  In a Hexploration game (which is about as old school as you can get), there becomes very pragmatic issues regarding lethality.  In a Mega-Dungeon game, when your PC dies, your group heads back to town, and you get a new PC.  No problems, it's fairly plausible.  However, in a hexploration game, where you're in the middle of the Isle of Dread, it becomes a bit implausible when the fifth stranger you've met, just happens to be yet another wandering PC who joins your group to replace your latest casualty.  It makes that game less fun for the participants if death is frequent and random.




The traditional real-world and Classic-D&D approach to large scale wilderness exploration was to have a party of at least 30, and often 100+. Only in the 20th century did people start to think it was wise to go into the Darkest Amazon in single-figure groups. I recall when my son Bill explored the Isle of Dread playing Mentzer Expert D&D, he had around 120 knights, men at arms, and a couple Clerics and Magic-Users with his main M-U PC - and lost around half of the Ftr-1s. On this more realistic approach, old school lethality is not a problem. If a PC dies you just promote a promising NPC from the entourage.


----------



## S'mon (May 29, 2017)

pemerton said:


> My take on the XP bonus for good prime requisites is that it is meant to enforce a modest degree of genre fidelity (stronger characters are more likely to be turned into fighters). Once you have AD&D-style allocation of stats rather than stats rolled in order, this function becomes largely redundant (because if you want to play a MU you can stick you good stat into INT, and if you _really_ want to play a strong wizard what's the harm?) and probably the rule should be dropped - an early case of D&D cargo cult-ism about rules, where the rule lingers on even though its rationale has faded.




Letting players assign rolled stats was one of the stupidest ever design decisions IMNSHO.  If you are going to allow allocation, you absolutely need to be using point buy or an array. Conversely, rolling in 
order has much to commend it, creating (birthing?) organic-feeling characters who often seem 
to have a sort of life of their own that point buy/array/roll-then-assign does not provide.


----------



## S'mon (May 29, 2017)

pemerton said:


> Which probably makes it better suited for the AP-type experience of a combo of "tourism" and "challenge" than 3E/PF, which has the continual rocket-tag threat of high lethality. Clever design by WotC.




Yes, IME 5e is much better designed for AP play than is Pathfinder. With Pathfinder/3e, either PCs are at constant risk of random death, or the players 'win' the build pre-game and consistently trivialise encounters.
5e is much more like 4e in that players feel challenged by the battles, but random lethality is low.

5e is I think better than 4e for Paizo style APs in that it is a more balanced approach to the 
social/exploration/combat pillars, whereas 4e is poor at exploration, decent at social if you don't 
get tied up in 'social skill challenges' (3e/PF poor at social for AP play since as written the 
social skills & magic can easily change NPC behaviour far off the AP rails).  5e combat also 
faster than 4e combat, which is good for linear play - linear strings of fights get very grindy in 4e.


----------



## S'mon (May 29, 2017)

Hussar said:


> So, our 3e orc has about a 3000 times better chance of killing our fighter than the 1e orc.




Your 1e numbers aren't quite right, but yes, losing 3rd level PCs to random mooks is a major feature of 3e/PF! 

My 23 hp Cleric-3 went into the final battle of the adventure vs the BBEG, but before she could do 
anything a mook attacked her with a battleaxe, critted for x3, rolled well and killed her instantly.


----------



## pemerton (May 29, 2017)

S'mon said:


> 5e combat also faster than 4e combat, which is good for linear play - linear strings of fights get very grindy in 4e.



I've never tried that but find it very easy to believe!



S'mon said:


> 4e is <snippage> decent at social if you don't get tied up in 'social skill challenges'



But with this you're just trying to bait me!


----------



## S'mon (May 29, 2017)

pemerton said:


> I've never tried that but find it very easy to believe!
> 
> But with this you're just trying to bait me!




My final 4e Loudwater adventure I adapted Assault on Nightworm Fortress to be Shar's Orcus-occupied Pillars of Night. Even cutting out most of the 30 encounters it definitely got grindy. Looking at blog http://frloudwater.blogspot.co.uk/ looks like we played it sessions 95-103, or 9 sessions, covering levels (end of) 26 through level 29. The way high level 4e is, that will also have meant 9 battles. Definitely grindy.

In terms of social interaction, 5e has a very light skill system that resembles 4e without the skill challenges more than it does 3e. I have found it to be a good system in play which does not get in the way of roleplayed interaction, but provides reasonable support - I can call for Persuasion, Deception or Intimidate check if I'm unsure of NPC reaction. I don't experience the 3e issue of all the CHA 8 half-orc PCs hiding behind the Bard 'Face' character with +20 Diplomacy. For one thing, Backgrounds can be leveraged to ensure different PCs are the best to take the lead in different situations. 

However 5e does lack the sophistication of Basic/Expert - no Reaction Table, NPC Loyalty system, Retainer CHA limit or formalised recruitment system, no NPC followers for high level PCs. In terms of supporting social play it beats 4e in various ways - eg it is *much* more practical to have NPCs accompanying PCs in 5e than 4e - but not to the heady heights of 1981 Moldvay/Cook/Marsh.


----------



## Maxperson (May 29, 2017)

Hussar said:


> Read the 3.5 SRD - it's a Falchion.  They dropped the Greataxe because of the X3 crit modifier.




Read the 3.5 Monster Manual.  The greataxe is there in the combat section and picture.  It wasn't dropped.  They can have either.  Hell, it's in the freaking SRD as well.  You need to read better.



> Banded is 90 gp, Chain is 75.  The odds that you can afford chain and not banded are very, very slight.  5d4x10 gp averages over 100 gp (120 to be exact).  Most likely, the fighter has banded.




Wrong.  When you add in 30 gold for the two handed sword and then actual supplies, which easily totaled 30-60 gold, depending on what you wanted, that extra 15 gold was critical.  90 for banded and 30 for a two handed sword was 120 gold.  The average gold roll for a fighter was 120 gold.  Sure, you could get those two things, but then you starved, had no backup weapon, or any other supplies.  



> Yuppers.  Only thing is, that fighter almost guaranteed has an AC of 2.  Considering you gave him a 16 for Str, many gamers would simply put something else in Str and get that 16 in Dex for a -2 AC bonus, giving him a 1 AC.  Now our orc hits 10% of the time.



IF you were allowed to place stats(not all rolling types allowed it) and IF you actually rolled that well, and IF the player enjoyed the concept of a weak fighter and be able to use the HEAVY armor and weapon you are giving him, and IF he didn't want extra hit points and survival chances from the 16, and IF he didn't want extra survivability from the save bonus wisdom gave.

If after all of that he chose the armor you are talking about, he still doesn't have a 2 AC.  You don't get a 2 AC without a shield and he has a two handed sword.



> Only when you insist on ignoring what's actually in the game.  Our 3e orc with a falchion has a 15% chance of dealing a crit - which will pretty much automatically drop the fighter with a decent chance of outright killing him.  IOW, our 3e orc has a better chance of dropping the fighter.  Even with a greataxe, his chances of outright killing the fighter are only 5% less.  3d12+12 damage will obliterate any 1st level fighter.



The crit is a non-starter.  The orc probably doesn't survive long enough to crit with an axe, dying in 1 round, 2 if it is lucky.  And 4d4+8 still obliterates the fighter.  The most likely outcome is that the fighter kills it before it ever crits, and if the fighter has improved initiative, which most took, probably before the orc even gets to swing.



> Let's be honest here.  In any edition, fighter vs orc, smart money is on the fighter.  The 1e orc only hits about 20% of the time and needs (typically) two hits to drop the fighter.



Barely typical.  The average first level fighter had 5-6 hit points.  Average roll + no con bonus.  The orc did 4-5 points average on a hit.  The 5's match up fairly well.




> Meanwhile, our 1e fighter (ignoring Unearthed Arcana which dramatically ups the fighter's damage output, never minding what 2e did), hits about 45% of the time and drops the orc a bit better than 50%.  The idea that a single orc is likely to drop that fighter isn't very realistic.



First, the Unearthed Arcanas for both editions should be ignored, since they comprised optional rules only.  If we include those, we also have to include house rules and that's not productive.  Second, It's about difficulty, not whether one fighter would win and the other lose.  Yes, both probably win.  Yes, the 3e fighter has a much easier time of it.  The 1e fighter is going to miss more and actually has to roll for damage.  The 3e fighter hits much more often and auto smashes the orc.


----------



## Maxperson (May 29, 2017)

Hussar said:


> Y'know, [MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION], there's another point to remember here.  We've been going back and forth about 1st level characters, but, there's a great deal more to the game than one single level.  Let's take our fighters and make them 3rd level.  Now, a 3rd level 1e fighter has 15 HP, Plate and Shield (that's pretty much given and it's not unreasonable for our 3rd level fighter to have a +1 shield either) giving him an AC of -1.  Now, that fighter is pretty much invulnerable to the orc.  The orc needs a 20 to hit and has to hit at least twice for max damage to knock the fighter down - a 1 in 6400 chance of that orc being able to defeat that fighter.




If we're going 3rd level, we're not fighting a single orc anymore, either.  We've moved on to ogres or some other creature befitting 3rd level PCs.  



> The 3e fighter, has a worth by the book of 800 gp.  So, Half plate is the best he can do - no Dex bonus, so he's got an AC of 17 (no shield remember, you insisted on a 2-h weapon.  He has 28 HP on average (12+6x2+2x2)  Our 3e orc, with a +4 attack bonus, hits on a 13 or better and has a crit range of 3d12+12 damage.  So, our orc is hitting 40% of the time with a 5% crit chance.  Meaning he's got a 2% chance of critting our fighter and instantly killing him (with a 1 better than average damage roll).
> 
> So, our 3e orc has about a 3000 times better chance of killing our fighter than the 1e orc.



Hey, why stop there.  Let's make them 10th level and facing a kobold!

PS by 3rd level you've usually faced and beaten someone in plate, so you are wearing plate.  The wealth by level was a guideline only for creation of PCs from scratch, and usually left that PC behind anyone who actually played to that level.  Those guidelines, like many 3e rules(CR I'm looking at you!), were borked.


----------



## billd91 (May 29, 2017)

Maxperson said:


> Read the 3.5 Monster Manual.  The greataxe is there in the combat section and picture.  It wasn't dropped.  They can have either.  Hell, it's in the freaking SRD as well.  You need to read better.




You're making it clear you don't understand Hussar's point. They changed the greataxe to the falchion in the default stat block deliberately to reduce the x3 crit modifier. The reason this is significant is because of the way they wrote adventures. For creatures that appeared in the Monster Manual, they just included a reference to the stat block which assumed the orcs were wielding the falchions, not the greataxes. They did it to dial back on the damage spike threat of the orcs in their adventures because x3 is a bit harsh for 1st or even 2nd level PCs.

Pointing out other options in the orc write up is ultimately pointless for making your argument. Of course you can equip the orcs any way you like, that's obvious, but those aren't the orcs appearing in the adventures by default.


----------



## Maxperson (May 29, 2017)

billd91 said:


> You're making it clear you don't understand Hussar's point. They changed the greataxe to the falchion in the default stat block deliberately to reduce the x3 crit modifier. The reason this is significant is because of the way they wrote adventures. For creatures that appeared in the Monster Manual, they just included a reference to the stat block which assumed the orcs were wielding the falchions, not the greataxes. They did it to dial back on the damage spike threat of the orcs in their adventures because x3 is a bit harsh for 1st or even 2nd level PCs.




I see, so comprehension is the issue you two are having.  The 3.5 combat section for orcs includes greataxes.  That makes it crystal clear that the rule is that they use falchions AND greataxes.  They changed nothing.  What is in the stat block is NOT a rule.


----------



## cmad1977 (May 29, 2017)

I had to walk my characters uphill BOTH ways in the rain to get to the Temple of Elemental Evil. 


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk


----------



## Manbearcat (May 29, 2017)

I'm wondering if this thesis is the "casuals versus hardcores" in MMORPGs situation.  One side expects newly designed content to be a litmus test that must be struggled and strived through in order to derive any obstacle-conquering-satisfaction, which in-turn will have the lovely byproduct of delineating class or stratifying the culture.  The other side isn't interested in cultural stratification so they aren't interested in principles of design that push toward it.

I'm also wondering if this were about physical sport, if the implication would map to reward-based games being akin casual forays onto the basketball court with several disparately equipped and minimally (at best) invested participants.  This would, in turn, produce a game where having a laugh, a bit of a sweat, and only very incidental/peripheral (at best) moments of something resembling "competition" would be the point.

Comparatively, you've got your Sunday game with a bunch of "weekend warriors" who want to test themselves in the crucible of tribal conflict in order to struggle, strive, and (hopefully) derive satisfaction in conquering difficult obstacles and (again) stratify your little micro-culture.  At worst, even when conquered you've still tested yourself.


Is that the underlying psychology?


----------



## Arilyn (May 29, 2017)

Hussar said:


> Look, at the end of the day, the argument over the "sweet spot" of lethality in gaming is as old as gaming.  This exact argument has been hashed and rehashed in the pages of Dragon and whatnot since the 1970's.  This is not anything new.
> 
> The thing is, the sweet spot is going to vary greatly depending on the play styles and preferences of a given table.  If you want to do really old school style gaming, where you have the Town at X and the Dungeon at Y and your weekly play consists of forays into that dungeon, then, yup, you want high lethality.  It's part and parcel to what makes that type of game fun.
> 
> ...




Exactly. Some of the very first players of original D&D were making more story oriented campaigns, and squabbling with the players who preferred it to be more gamey with dead characters littering the landscape.  You have hit the nail right on the head. Nothing has changed.


----------



## S'mon (May 29, 2017)

Manbearcat said:


> I'm wondering if this thesis is the "casuals versus hardcores" in MMORPGs situation.  One side expects newly designed content to be a litmus test that must be struggled and strived through in order to derive any obstacle-conquering-satisfaction, which in-turn will have the lovely byproduct of delineating class or stratifying the culture.  The other side isn't interested in cultural stratification so they aren't interested in principles of design that push toward it.
> 
> I'm also wondering if this were about physical sport, if the implication would map to reward-based games being akin casual forays onto the basketball court with several disparately equipped and minimally (at best) invested participants.  This would, in turn, produce a game where having a laugh, a bit of a sweat, and only very incidental/peripheral (at best) moments of something resembling "competition" would be the point.
> 
> ...




I don't think so exactly, because a status-oriented player doesn't really get to lord it over other players at the game table, unlike in an MMORPG or basketball court.  I can have powergamers and casuals at my D&D table, but it's the one who brings the home made cookies who has established her superior status. 

I think powergamers do it much more for personal satisfaction.

Conversely people who engage in Internet message board demonstrations of min-max charbuild abilities I think are seeking a kind of status, akin to the MMORPG powergamer.


----------



## pemerton (May 30, 2017)

[MENTION=6696971]Manbearcat[/MENTION], [MENTION=463]S'mon[/MENTION]

I don't know the MMO scene and so won't venture there.

I don't know sports very well either, but I don't think that comparison quite fits this case: a group of casual basketballers knows that what they are doing only gets its logic from some more "serious" version of the same activity (ie competitive basketball). Music is similar: my guitar playing is pretty ordinary, and I'm never going to be any sort of serious performer, but I think about the meaning and quality of what I'm doing when I play my guitar using the same framework that I use to think seriously about real musicians.

Whereas the "participationist"/"tourism" RPGing is intended by those who do it, I think, to have a meaning and value and so on that is _different_ from classic dungeon-crawling.


----------



## Hussar (May 30, 2017)

pemerton said:


> /snip
> 
> Whereas the "participationist"/"tourism" RPGing is intended by those who do it, I think, to have a meaning and value and so on that is _different_ from classic dungeon-crawling.




Sorry, but, do you mean "by those who use it" not do it?  

But, if I'm understanding things correctly, isn't this just another way of poo pooing other people's playstyle?  "You're not a real gamer, you are just a 'participationist.'"  It never stops baffling me why gamers seem to have this need to draw lines around their version of the hobby and declare anything outside of that line as "something else".  It produces absolutely nothing positive.  You like playing a certain way?  FAN-FUGGIN-TASTIC!  Be proud of the way you game.  Evangelize it.  Convince me that I'll have a better time doing it your way that I am right now.  

But, get up on a soapbox and declare that we've strayed from the one true path?  Go soak your head.


----------



## billd91 (May 30, 2017)

pemerton said:


> [MENTION=6696971]Manbearcat[/MENTION], [MENTION=463]S'mon[/MENTION]
> 
> I don't know the MMO scene and so won't venture there.
> 
> ...




Whereas nothing. I think this is another case of overthinking and postulating some kind of difference existing between gamers as if we're some kind of special subculture without seeing that the same thing exists within every hobby. Every hobby has hardcores that look down on wannabes, oddballs that scoff at conformists. Every hobby has people in various wings of the hobby putting different meaning and value to the things they're doing compared to someone else in another wing. You don't think blues musicians impart different meanings and values to their craft from punks, or concert pianists from rappers? You don't think Woody Guthrie considered music to have different meaning and value from Metallica? I'd bet you can find any number of musicians who approach their craft with meanings and values every bit as different from each other as "participationist" RPGers from classic dungeon crawling.


----------



## prosfilaes (May 30, 2017)

Maxperson said:


> PS by 3rd level you've usually faced and beaten someone in plate, so you are wearing plate.  The wealth by level was a guideline only for creation of PCs from scratch, and usually left that PC behind anyone who actually played to that level.  Those guidelines, like many 3e rules(CR I'm looking at you!), were borked.




"Usually"? What evidence for this is there? I quickly looked at Rise of the Runelords and Curse of the Crimson Throne, and the best either of them had by the end of the first book (half way to 5th level) was one +1 breastplate. Whether or not you get a plate mail, and not just plate mail but plate mail you can use, seems heavily dependent on what type of adventures you're running and whether or not your DM wants you to have plate mail or not.


----------



## Hussar (May 30, 2017)

And let's not forget that [MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION] is actually mistaken. The wealth by level table is not for making higher level characters. It's a means to keep game balance. 

Typically when people talk about how CR is borked, they have two things in common. Die rolled characters with much higher than standard stats and much higher wealth by level. And usually both.


----------



## S'mon (May 30, 2017)

prosfilaes said:


> "Usually"? What evidence for this is there? I quickly looked at Rise of the Runelords and Curse of the Crimson Throne, and the best either of them had by the end of the first book (half way to 5th level) was one +1 breastplate. Whether or not you get a plate mail, and not just plate mail but plate mail you can use, seems heavily dependent on what type of adventures you're running and whether or not your DM wants you to have plate mail or not.




Also I wouldn't let a PC just put on random non-magical platemail, it'd almost always need refitting at least.


----------



## Maxperson (May 30, 2017)

Hussar said:


> And let's not forget that @_*Maxperson*_ is actually mistaken. The wealth by level table is not for making higher level characters. It's a means to keep game balance.




Game balance?  In 3e?  Hahahahahaha!  Wealth by level is as broken as CR is.  So is game balance.



> Typically when people talk about how CR is borked, they have two things in common. Die rolled characters with much higher than standard stats and much higher wealth by level. And usually both.




Typically, it's because game balance between classes is horrible.  Add in horrible prestige class balance and it gets even worse.  A creature in 3e is supposed to be a match for 4 PCs.  Which 4 classes?  4 wizards?  4 fighters?  A fighter, a ranger, a cleric and a rogue?  A monk, a fighter, a wizard and a scout?  3 rogues and a monk?  A beguiler, a spellthief, a scout and a warblade? CR can't work with the class mix of 3e.  Period.


----------



## Tony Vargas (May 30, 2017)

Hussar said:


> Typically when people talk about how CR is borked, they have two things in common. Die rolled characters with much higher than standard stats and much higher wealth by level. And usually both.



 Dont forget shorter than recommended adventuring days...


----------



## The Crimson Binome (May 30, 2017)

Manbearcat said:


> I'm also wondering if this were about physical sport, if the implication would map to reward-based games being akin casual forays onto the basketball court with several disparately equipped and minimally (at best) invested participants.  This would, in turn, produce a game where having a laugh, a bit of a sweat, and only very incidental/peripheral (at best) moments of something resembling "competition" would be the point.



If you want to take this analogy and run with it, then it's less the difference between professional basketball and a casual game for fun, and more the difference between either of those two and the sort of participation-trophy extreme where nobody is allowed to fail because they might feel bad (whether or not that's a real thing, it's an example for illustration).

It's not that the competition is slack because neither team is really invested too much, and more that one side is deliberately throwing the game by giving the other side so many get-out-of-jail-free cards that the conclusion is foregone.

Edit: I'm not saying that it's actually gone that far, but the analogy is better. It's a matter of perspective. How many extra lives do they need to give you, before winning becomes inevitable? Everyone is going to see that line in a different place. I probably could have beaten Super Mario Bros. when I was 8, if I'd had a hundred lives; but probably not if I'd only had ten lives.


----------



## prosfilaes (May 30, 2017)

Maxperson said:


> Typically, it's because game balance between classes is horrible.  Add in horrible prestige class balance and it gets even worse.  A creature in 3e is supposed to be a match for 4 PCs.  Which 4 classes?  4 wizards?  4 fighters?  A fighter, a ranger, a cleric and a rogue?  A monk, a fighter, a wizard and a scout?  3 rogues and a monk?  A beguiler, a spellthief, a scout and a warblade? CR can't work with the class mix of 3e.  Period.




So "usually" the party will find plate mail, but the CR system is broken because it doesn't handle the case of 4 wizards or 4 fighters. Right.

When A4 says "An adventure for character levels 4-7", does that mean all parties of levels 4 through 7? CR means the exact same thing, just on a smaller scale. It's a tool to give a DM some direction, not constrain them or let them ignore the real properties of the party. Even as a tool for XP, there's no change from other editions; for certain parties, certain monsters will be trivial XP or incredibly hard XP.


----------



## pemerton (May 30, 2017)

Hussar said:


> if I'm understanding things correctly, isn't this just another way of poo pooing other people's playstyle?



No. It's a way of trying to get a handle on it.

The rationale for playing Dragonlance is pretty different from the rationale for playing (say) Castle Amber.

Or, to move beyond D&D, the rationale for playing CoC is pretty different from the rationale for playing T&T. Sure, both involve declaring actions for your 3-to-18-statted player character, but beyond that the similarities start to end.

Apart from anything else, part of enjoying CoC is playing out your PC's descent into madness. Whereas in T&T going mad is a loss-condition.

No doubt there are individual RPGers who have drifted these games away from their defaults (and so play CoC to "beat the dungeon" and play T&T to explore the life and times of their delvers) but the basic gist of the games, as written and as played in acccordance with tehir default orienations, is pretty discernible and pretty different.



Hussar said:


> It never stops baffling me why gamers seem to have this need to draw lines around their version of the hobby and declare anything outside of that line as "something else".



What baffles me is the recurrent assumption that every RPGer is trying to do the same thing - roughly, play some sort of cross between Tomb of Horrors and Dead Gods. From this follows the assumption that differences in system don't make any difference to play experience, and that there is some single skill called "GMing" which is portable from Molvay Basic to DitV to Rise of the Runelords.

That assumption was false in the late 70s (as Lewise Pulsipher was aware of in his writings then) and is still false today.



billd91 said:


> Every hobby has hardcores that look down on wannabes, oddballs that scoff at conformists.



The difference between T&T and CoC has nothing to do with "hardcore" vs "wannabe". Or the difference between Moldvay Basic and 4e. If you try and play 4e using your Moldvay Basic premises and procedures (exploration, 10' poles, avoiding roles whenever possible, etc) your game will just break down. And vice versa - if you try and play Moldvay Basic using your 4e premises and procedures (bold engagement with situations, assumptions about the importance of PC mechanical abilities to action resolution, etc), you'll just lose.

They're different games that happen to be RPGs. Something like the way in which chess and backgammon are different games that happen to be boardgames.



Hussar said:


> get up on a soapbox and declare that we've strayed from the one true path? Go soak your head.



The only people doing that are those who want to put a ban on talking about different ways of RPGing, by insisting (aginst all the evidence) that all RPGers are really doing the same thing.


----------



## Lanefan (May 30, 2017)

pemerton said:


> The difference between T&T and CoC has nothing to do with "hardcore" vs "wannabe". Or the difference between Moldvay Basic and 4e. If you try and play 4e using your Moldvay Basic premises and procedures (exploration, 10' poles, avoiding roles whenever possible, etc) your game will just break down. And vice versa - if you try and play Moldvay Basic using your 4e premises and procedures (bold engagement with situations, assumptions about the importance of PC mechanical abilities to action resolution, etc), you'll just lose.
> 
> They're different games that happen to be RPGs. Something like the way in which chess and backgammon are different games that happen to be boardgames.



Not quite.

Your chess-backgammon analogy holds up when comparing D&D with CoC or T&T or whatever other system you like.  They're different games that happen to be RPGs.  And that's fine.

But it utterly fails when comparing Basic to 4e, because at that point (despite what some might think) you're comparing D&D with D&D.  In that light, I *should* be able to take my Basic or 1e premises and procedures and port them forward to any subsequent editon, because at least in theory it's the same bloody game.

Now if you're trying to say that 4e (or 5e?) isn't D&D as D&D was defined before their existence...well, let's not open that can o' worms, shall we?

Lanefan


----------



## prosfilaes (May 31, 2017)

Lanefan said:


> But it utterly fails when comparing Basic to 4e, because at that point (despite what some might think) you're comparing D&D with D&D.  In that light, I *should* be able to take my Basic or 1e premises and procedures and port them forward to any subsequent editon, because at least in theory it's the same bloody game.




In whose theory? By what definition of "the same bloody game"? Virtually all major games have a large number of variations. There's dozens of variants on the game of checkers. There's huge historical differences on chess, and most best-selling board games have all sorts of varying expansions, which often demand that you use different strategies or even play the game completely different ways. WOTC owns the name D&D, and like Coca-Cola, Superman, and Microsoft Windows, there will be variations between versions and over time that you may not like and that aren't compatible with the way you want to do things.


----------



## Maxperson (May 31, 2017)

prosfilaes said:


> So "usually" the party will find plate mail, but the CR system is broken because it doesn't handle the case of 4 wizards or 4 fighters. Right.




So you really think 4 fighters is equal to 4 wizards?  Wow.  Nice!



> When A4 says "An adventure for character levels 4-7", does that mean all parties of levels 4 through 7? CR means the exact same thing, just on a smaller scale. It's a tool to give a DM some direction, not constrain them or let them ignore the real properties of the party. Even as a tool for XP, there's no change from other editions; for certain parties, certain monsters will be trivial XP or incredibly hard XP.



Correct, and 4-7th level fails to work properly for all level 4-7 groups.  Some combinations of 4th level groups will find it too hard.  Some combinations of level 6 and 7 groups will cakewalk through it.  It's not quite as borked at CR, but is is borked.


----------



## Hussar (May 31, 2017)

Maxperson said:


> So you really think 4 fighters is equal to 4 wizards?  Wow.  Nice!
> 
> Correct, and 4-7th level fails to work properly for all level 4-7 groups.  Some combinations of 4th level groups will find it too hard.  Some combinations of level 6 and 7 groups will cakewalk through it.  It's not quite as borked at CR, but is is borked.




But, you're ignoring the actual definition of CR which is 4 PC's, Fighter, Cleric, Wizard, Rogue.  Yuppers, when you ignore the baseline presumptions, the system doesn't work as well.  That's pretty obvious on its face.  This is the same in any edition.  My very first group of Basic D&D characters was five Magic Users.  They died.  Quickly.  As in we didn't even complete a single session with that group, let alone level or anything else.    ((Eaten by stirges as I recall))  Does that mean that game balance is borked?  Nope, it means that we created a party with some pretty obvious weaknesses, did nothing to shore up those weaknesses and resulted in a TPK.  I.e. the system perfectly predicted what would happen.

Same as your 4 fighter or 4 wizard groups.  The system TELLS you that this group is not balanced and will have some serious problems.  Sure, that 4 wizard group at high levels will be death on toast.  Until they run into an area of effect spell that deals serious damage.  Then they all die.  

It's pretty obvious on the face of it that if you ignore all the baseline assumptions, that are clearly stated beforehand, any predictive model will fail.  What's your point?


----------



## Maxperson (May 31, 2017)

Hussar said:


> But, you're ignoring the actual definition of CR which is 4 PC's, Fighter, Cleric, Wizard, Rogue.  Yuppers, when you ignore the baseline presumptions, the system doesn't work as well.




This is the direct quote.

"Challenge Rating 

This shows the average level of a party of adventurers for which one creature would make an encounter of moderate difficulty."

There is absolutely nothing about specific class mix in there.  Stop fabricating things.


----------



## Hussar (May 31, 2017)

Maxperson said:


> This is the direct quote.
> 
> "Challenge Rating
> 
> ...




Ok.  So the entire notion of a baseline party is a complete fabrication.  Sure.  You win.


----------



## Maxperson (May 31, 2017)

Hussar said:


> Ok.  So the entire notion of a baseline party is a complete fabrication.  Sure.  You win.




Challenge Rating is specifically 4 PCs.  It doesn't care about party composition and goes out of its way to talk about classes in general.  It's built for 4 PCs of that level.  Period.  That's what it says.  

Any idea of specific class composition of a party with regard to CR is your invention.


----------



## Hussar (May 31, 2017)

Maxperson said:


> Challenge Rating is specifically 4 PCs.  It doesn't care about party composition and goes out of its way to talk about classes in general.  It's built for 4 PCs of that level.  Period.  That's what it says.
> 
> Any idea of specific class composition of a party with regard to CR is your invention.




Hey, I said you were right.  The CR system obviously did not work for you and just as obviously, that's because the system is flawed.


----------



## billd91 (May 31, 2017)

Maxperson said:


> This is the direct quote.
> 
> "Challenge Rating
> 
> ...





He's not. You just need to read beyond a few isolated one liners. Note page 50 of the 3.5 DMG. There are a number of factors listed that will tend to make encounters more difficult - lack of wizards, rogues, clerics, and fighter-types are all noted. By implication, the default CR is based on a well-rounded party that includes a cleric, wizard, fighter, and rogue (or their reasonable equivalents).


----------



## pemerton (May 31, 2017)

Lanefan said:


> Your chess-backgammon analogy holds up when comparing D&D with CoC or T&T or whatever other system you like.  They're different games that happen to be RPGs.  And that's fine.
> 
> But it utterly fails when comparing Basic to 4e, because at that point (despite what some might think) you're comparing D&D with D&D.  In that light, I *should* be able to take my Basic or 1e premises and procedures and port them forward to any subsequent editon, because at least in theory it's the same bloody game.



I don't know what you think the force of the "should" is, or where that force comes from.

I'm just reporting the facts. If you try and use the Moldvay Basic mechanics to play a 4e-style game it will suck. And vice versa. You might think this is an unhappy fact, but it's a fact.



prosfilaes said:


> WOTC owns the name D&D, and like Coca-Cola, Superman, and Microsoft Windows, there will be variations between versions and over time that you may not like and that aren't compatible with the way you want to do things.



Trade marking, variations etc is certainly part of it.

But let's just look at some basics: who would look at a game with point-buy stats, intricate PC builds, XP primarily as a pacing device and certainly not something that has to be _earned_ through clever play, and a skill system that feeds into a skill challenge resolution framework - just to pick some salient features of 4e - and think that it would deliver anything like the same experience as Moldvay Basic does? The only way that could be possible would be if Moldvay Basic did a really _bad_ job of delivering classic dungeoncrawling play - which obviously it doesn't!


----------



## Hussar (May 31, 2017)

billd91 said:


> He's not. You just need to read beyond a few isolated one liners. Note page 50 of the 3.5 DMG. There are a number of factors listed that will tend to make encounters more difficult - lack of wizards, rogues, clerics, and fighter-types are all noted. By implication, the default CR is based on a well-rounded party that includes a cleric, wizard, fighter, and rogue (or their reasonable equivalents).




Shhhhh.  I know and you know.  Let's just leave it at that.  Cherry picking quotes to give you the right answer is the best way to win an Internet discussion after all.


----------



## Hussar (May 31, 2017)

pemerton said:


> /snip
> 
> But let's just look at some basics: who would look at a game with point-buy stats, intricate PC builds, XP primarily as a pacing device and certainly not something that has to be _earned_ through clever play, and a skill system that feeds into a skill challenge resolution framework - just to pick some salient features of 4e - and think that it would deliver anything like the same experience as Moldvay Basic does? The only way that could be possible would be if Moldvay Basic did a really _bad_ job of delivering classic dungeoncrawling play - which obviously it doesn't!




And, let's be fair, this is true for EVERY edition of D&D.  3e plays quite differently than 1e.  It has to.  It's a much more intricate game with a whole lot more bells and whistles.  In the days before skills, the experience at the table of trying to find a secret door was very, very different than afterwards.  3e, in many ways, is a reaction to the issue of pixel-bitching that could be (not had to be, but could be) a problem in earlier edition play.  Instead of the players trying to "outthink" the DM, you simply roll your die and find that trap.

Never minding the vast gulf between how 2e presented the game and how 1e presents the game.  2e is far, far more story focused and centered around what was considered role playing of the time.  1e is much more heavily grounded in more traditional style games where you have pretty clear win/loss conditions.  Although, to be fair, that line is awfully blurry.

But, even though 1e and 2e were mostly compatible, 2e characters were FAR more powerful than their 1e counterparts.  To the point where you could run 1e modules a couple of levels higher for a 2e group.  If the module said for levels 5-7, a 4th level 2e group could likely succeed.  

While there are obvious points of shared DNA between editions, they ARE different games.  Heck, I always point to the character sheet.  Hand a 2e player a 3e character sheet and he won't even know what it is.  Nothing will make sense.  Hand that same 2e player a 4e character sheet and he's even more out to sea.  Even a 5e character isn't really anything like a 1e character.  Again, sure, there are shared elements, but, let's be honest here, these are not the same games.


----------



## Maxperson (May 31, 2017)

Hussar said:


> Hey, I said you were right.  The CR system obviously did not work for you and just as obviously, that's because the system is flawed.




There's always one.  In all the years I was on the D&D forum and here, you are the first person I've seen claim that CR worked.  LOL


----------



## Maxperson (May 31, 2017)

billd91 said:


> He's not. You just need to read beyond a few isolated one liners. Note page 50 of the 3.5 DMG. There are a number of factors listed that will tend to make encounters more difficult - lack of wizards, rogues, clerics, and fighter-types are all noted. By implication, the default CR is based on a well-rounded party that includes a cleric, wizard, fighter, and rogue (or their reasonable equivalents).




Except that a well rounded party will find itself losing to like CR creatures, where a non-well rounded party will toast that encounter, and vice versa.  CR is horribly broken in 3e.


----------



## prosfilaes (May 31, 2017)

Maxperson said:


> If we're going 3rd level, we're not fighting a single orc anymore, either.  We've moved on to ogres or some other creature befitting 3rd level PCs.




In other words, an orc is about CR 1 and ogres are CR 3. Huh. What were you saying about CRs can't work?


----------



## Maxperson (May 31, 2017)

prosfilaes said:


> In other words, an orc is about CR 1 and ogres are CR 3. Huh. What were you saying about CRs can't work?




That it's utterly broken.  There's a reason I chose an ogre that a fighter might actually be able to beat 1 on 1, rather than a different CR 3 creature that would destroy the fighter.


----------



## pemerton (May 31, 2017)

Hussar said:


> 3e plays quite differently than 1e.



Absolutely. 3E, overall, has more in common with 4e than AD&D on the PC-build side. (Perhaps not on the resolution side.)



Hussar said:


> Never minding the vast gulf between how 2e presented the game and how 1e presents the game. 2e is far, far more story focused and centered around what was considered role playing of the time.



It's hard for me to dispassionate about either of the editions (2nd ed AD&D and 3E) you've mentioned!, but I'll confine myself to this: 2nd ed takes the AD&D mechanics, tweaks them rather slightly, and then asserts that you can use them to run a story-oriented game - _provided only that_ the GM is prepared to ignore or override the mechanics basically at any point.

In my view, nuff said.


----------



## billd91 (May 31, 2017)

Maxperson said:


> Except that a well rounded party will find itself losing to like CR creatures, where a non-well rounded party will toast that encounter, and vice versa.  CR is horribly broken in 3e.




That just tells me there's lots of variation in the way the game plays out. And given the number of choices players have for building their characters, the options available for them in play, and the variability of the dice rolls - duh. That said, I found CR a reasonably useful starting point and not horribly broken at all.


----------



## billd91 (May 31, 2017)

Hussar said:


> And, let's be fair, this is true for EVERY edition of D&D.  3e plays quite differently than 1e.  It has to.  It's a much more intricate game with a whole lot more bells and whistles.  In the days before skills, the experience at the table of trying to find a secret door was very, very different than afterwards.  3e, in many ways, is a reaction to the issue of pixel-bitching that could be (not had to be, but could be) a problem in earlier edition play.  Instead of the players trying to "outthink" the DM, you simply roll your die and find that trap.




3e doesn't have to play all that differently from 1e. The success a lot of us have had running 1e modules with 3e rules underscores that quite well. And I think you're inventing more differences, by the rules, than you realize. In both editions, characters searched for secret doors fundamentally the same way - they pick a spot to search and roll for it. The dice may be different (as are the odds) but process isn't all that different. Same with searching for traps. A lot of people went the pixel-bitching route in 1e, but there was also the die rolling method. And for my money, picking a place to search for secret doors and rolling 1 in 6 isn't really a different process from picking a spot to search and rolling a d20 and adding my search score for a DC 20. In 3e you could still try to outthink the DM and pick the most suitable places and methods for your searches.


----------



## Jhaelen (May 31, 2017)

Maxperson said:


> In all the years I was on the D&D forum and here, you are the first person I've seen claim that CR worked.  LOL



Now brace yourself: CR worked for me, too!
I suppose, everyone who disagrees with you regarding CR is on your ignore list


----------



## Hussar (May 31, 2017)

billd91 said:


> 3e doesn't have to play all that differently from 1e. The success a lot of us have had running 1e modules with 3e rules underscores that quite well. And I think you're inventing more differences, by the rules, than you realize. In both editions, characters searched for secret doors fundamentally the same way - they pick a spot to search and roll for it. The dice may be different (as are the odds) but process isn't all that different. Same with searching for traps. A lot of people went the pixel-bitching route in 1e, but there was also the die rolling method. And for my money, picking a place to search for secret doors and rolling 1 in 6 isn't really a different process from picking a spot to search and rolling a d20 and adding my search score for a DC 20. In 3e you could still try to outthink the DM and pick the most suitable places and methods for your searches.




Well, don't get too lost in the examples.  

I've seen you talk about running 1e modules in 3e and I have to admit, I've never had any luck doing it.  I had to rewrite pretty much the entire module.  The monster numbers were always wrong - if you did a 1:1 conversion, the 1e module would obliterate a 3e party.  OTOH, the 3e characters just had so many more options outside of combat that 1e never had that it just made the modules very difficult to run for me.

I could do more "inspired by" adventures no problem.  But, straight up running 1e modules in 3e just never worked for me.

But, my basic point still stands.  Hand a 1e player a 3e character sheet and he cannot actually play.  He cannot read that character sheet.  Nothing would make sense.  Not that the learning curve is that hard, it isn't.  Just that the basic mechanics of the game are all quite different.  I have a difficult time with claims of "the game is very close" when you cannot actually play a different version of the game without relearning most of the rules.

Isn't the whole OSR movement, which started in 3e, predicated on the idea that no, 3e is NOT the same as older versions of D&D?  Thunderfoot is a pretty big forum whose basic premise is that 3e is not the same as 1e.  It's not like I'm pulling this out of thin air.


----------



## Maxperson (May 31, 2017)

billd91 said:


> That just tells me there's lots of variation in the way the game plays out. And given the number of choices players have for building their characters, the options available for them in play, and the variability of the dice rolls - duh. That said, I found CR a reasonably useful starting point and not horribly broken at all.




There is a lot of variation.  That's why CR is broken.  CR says that it works with a party of 4.  It doesn't.  If it doesn't work as intended, it's broken.  Is it a starting point?  Sure.  I've found that if I take the party level, look at everything of that CR plus all CRs 2-3 higher and lower, then compare the abilities of the monsters to the party, I can gauge an encounter properly.  CR only gives me the broad range, though.  I can't actually use it to make an encounter as it is intended to be used.  Only by comparing abilities to the party mix can I figure out if an encounter will be easy, hard or moderate.


----------



## Maxperson (May 31, 2017)

Jhaelen said:


> Now brace yourself: CR worked for me, too!
> I suppose, everyone who disagrees with you regarding CR is on your ignore list




Nobody is on my ignore list.  First, I think everyone whether they disagree with me or not, has something good to say at some point.  Some more often than others fore sure, though.  Second, I'm not a bully.  The block mechanic of this site forces the one you block to also block you, against their will.  That's bullying and I won't ever do that.


----------



## S'mon (May 31, 2017)

pemerton said:


> there is some single skill called "GMing" which is portable from Molvay Basic to DitV to Rise of the Runelords.




My lewt _Moldvay Basic _skillz are certainly transferable to my current 
_Rise of the Runelords_ game. 

That said, I started off by running RoTR in 1e AD&D and after a great (edit) 15 sessions of sandboxing and largely ignoring The Plot, the group TPK'd against the end-of-book-1 BBEG. Which necessitated rebooting the entire campaign. So I guess you have a good point - in a Moldvayesque dungeoncrawl sandbox a TPK is not a big issue, in plot-heavy Paizo AP it's a disaster.


----------



## S'mon (May 31, 2017)

Lanefan said:


> In that light, I *should* be able to take my Basic or 1e premises and procedures and port them forward to any subsequent editon, because at least in theory it's the same bloody game.#




I hope we are mature enough now to accept without ire that Moldvay Basic D&D and 4e D&D, while both 
potentially great games for what they are each trying to do, are not the same game.


----------



## pemerton (May 31, 2017)

S'mon said:


> I hope we are mature enough now to accept without ire that Moldvay Basic D&D and 4e D&D, while both
> potentially great games for what they are each trying to do, are not the same game.



I remember posting, back around (say) 2009/10, that I felt 4e let me realise the sort of adventure promised in the Foreword to Moldvay Basic (mysterious hermits gifting swords, freeing the land from the dragon tyrant, etc).

Implicit in that was that Moldvay Basic _doesn't_ realise that promise.

That's not a criticism of Moldvay Basic (except perhaps that its foreword is a bit misleading). They're different games for different purposes. That's a good thing!


----------



## Lanefan (Jun 1, 2017)

Maxperson said:


> So you really think 4 fighters is equal to 4 wizards?  Wow.  Nice!
> 
> Correct, and 4-7th level fails to work properly for all level 4-7 groups.  Some combinations of 4th level groups will find it too hard.  Some combinations of level 6 and 7 groups will cakewalk through it.  It's not quite as borked at CR, but is is borked.



In many of the classic modules, once you dug in a bit it would clarify the level suggestions along the lines of, say, "this adventure is intended for 4th to 7th level characters with a total of roughly 25-30 levels preferably including at least one Cleric" - or something like that.

Even then, the level suggestions are merely a guideline - sometimes more accurate than others. 

Lan-"and keep in mind that CR, also, is just a guideline"-efan


----------



## Lanefan (Jun 1, 2017)

Hussar said:


> I've seen you talk about running 1e modules in 3e and I have to admit, I've never had any luck doing it.  I had to rewrite pretty much the entire module.  The monster numbers were always wrong - if you did a 1:1 conversion, the 1e module would obliterate a 3e party.  OTOH, the 3e characters just had so many more options outside of combat that 1e never had that it just made the modules very difficult to run for me.
> 
> I could do more "inspired by" adventures no problem.  But, straight up running 1e modules in 3e just never worked for me.



Just anecdotal, I realize; but in the 3e game I played in we were put through a few 1e modules (or parts thereof) and it all seemed to work fine.  I've no idea how much tweaking the DM had to do behind the scenes, but the end result was quite familiar (I'd been through at least one of the modules before).



> Isn't the whole OSR movement, which started in 3e, predicated on the idea that no, 3e is NOT the same as older versions of D&D?  Thunderfoot is a pretty big forum whose basic premise is that 3e is not the same as 1e.  It's not like I'm pulling this out of thin air.



I see the OSR movement as more of a reaction to 4e, and also to Pathfinder which kinda takes 3e even further out to sea.

Lan-"Castle Amber in 3e - a wonderful example of high risk, high reward adventuring"-efan


----------



## Hussar (Jun 1, 2017)

Lanefan said:


> Just anecdotal, I realize; but in the 3e game I played in we were put through a few 1e modules (or parts thereof) and it all seemed to work fine.  I've no idea how much tweaking the DM had to do behind the scenes, but the end result was quite familiar (I'd been through at least one of the modules before).
> 
> I see the OSR movement as more of a reaction to 4e, and also to Pathfinder which kinda takes 3e even further out to sea.
> 
> Lan-"Castle Amber in 3e - a wonderful example of high risk, high reward adventuring"-efan




Really?  When Thunderfoot won't even let you mention 3e?  OSR predates 4e by quite a few years.  OSRIC was published two years before 4e.  And I believe there were earlier versions than that.  I do know that OSR has been a thing long before 4e.


----------



## Shasarak (Jun 1, 2017)

Hussar said:


> While there are obvious points of shared DNA between editions, they ARE different games.  Heck, I always point to the character sheet.  Hand a 2e player a 3e character sheet and he won't even know what it is.  Nothing will make sense.  Hand that same 2e player a 4e character sheet and he's even more out to sea.  Even a 5e character isn't really anything like a 1e character.  Again, sure, there are shared elements, but, let's be honest here, these are not the same games.




I have to see what kind of character sheets you have been using over the years.  Sure a few saves changed here and there but nothing making sense?  Hmm.


----------



## Shasarak (Jun 1, 2017)

S'mon said:


> Letting players assign rolled stats was one of the stupidest ever design decisions IMNSHO.  If you are going to allow allocation, you absolutely need to be using point buy or an array. Conversely, rolling in
> order has much to commend it, creating (birthing?) organic-feeling characters who often seem
> to have a sort of life of their own that point buy/array/roll-then-assign does not provide.




I have nothing against rolling in order to create characters.

After all I must have rolled thousands of them when I was playing the old Gold box SSI games.


----------



## Jacob Marley (Jun 1, 2017)

Hussar said:


> Isn't the whole OSR movement, which started in 3e, predicated on the idea that no, 3e is NOT the same as older versions of D&D?  Thunderfoot is a pretty big forum whose basic premise is that 3e is not the same as 1e.  It's not like I'm pulling this out of thin air.






Hussar said:


> Really?  When Thunderfoot won't even let you mention 3e?  OSR predates 4e by quite a few years.  OSRIC was published two years before 4e.  And I believe there were earlier versions than that.  I do know that OSR has been a thing long before 4e.




Thunderfoot? Do you mean Dragonsfoot?


----------



## Maxperson (Jun 1, 2017)

Lanefan said:


> In many of the classic modules, once you dug in a bit it would clarify the level suggestions along the lines of, say, "this adventure is intended for 4th to 7th level characters with a total of roughly 25-30 levels preferably including at least one Cleric" - or something like that.
> 
> Even then, the level suggestions are merely a guideline - sometimes more accurate than others.
> 
> Lan-"and keep in mind that CR, also, is just a guideline"-efan




Yeah.  1e and 2e were much looser with the guidelines, though.  I found them to be much more flexible than 3e.  I had to force flexibility into 3e when I ran it.


----------



## Hussar (Jun 1, 2017)

Jacob Marley said:


> Thunderfoot? Do you mean Dragonsfoot?




Yup. Thanks. Typing in haste.


----------



## Hussar (Jun 1, 2017)

Shasarak said:


> I have to see what kind of character sheets you have been using over the years.  Sure a few saves changed here and there but nothing making sense?  Hmm.




Your character has a 16 strength and is using a two handed weapon. You are a 2e player sitting at a 3e table with only 2e knowledge. 

What is your hit and damage bonus?

You are a 2e player and your fighter meets an ogre. You charge in since a 2e fighter would obliterate the ogre. Much to you surprise, not only does the ogre shrug off your damage but he kills your pc in a single round despite you having 16 hp. 

You sit at the 3e table. You have about ten encounters and ding a level. It took you maybe six hours of play. 

On and on and on.


----------



## Shasarak (Jun 1, 2017)

Hussar said:


> Your character has a 16 strength and is using a two handed weapon. You are a 2e player sitting at a 3e table with only 2e knowledge.
> 
> What is your hit and damage bonus?




Attack and damage are written on your character sheet.



> You are a 2e player and your fighter meets an ogre. You charge in since a 2e fighter would obliterate the ogre. Much to you surprise, not only does the ogre shrug off your damage but he kills your pc in a single round despite you having 16 hp.




Does not sound like a 2e player to run in against an unknown enemy like that especially if you only have 16 hp.

But what was the problem with the character sheet in this example?



> You sit at the 3e table. You have about ten encounters and ding a level. It took you maybe six hours of play.
> 
> On and on and on.




Again does not really sound like a problem with the character sheet to me.  

But how about sitting at a 2e table where you, through a convoluted and intricate plan, manage to lure a Dragon out of its lair to attack a nearby town (on a lake) leaving you with all of its treasure and ding a level taking you maybe six hours of play?


----------



## Hussar (Jun 1, 2017)

Shasarak said:


> Attack and damage are written on your character sheet.
> 
> 
> 
> ...




Sorry, wrong game.  2e, no XP for gold.  And the xp for that dragon won't ding you a level.  Nice try though.

As far as the hit and damage bonus being written on your sheet - again, it doesn't MEAN anything to you.  You have an AC of 16 (wait, what?) and the bad guy has an AC of 20 (again, wait, what?).  Your 16 strength gains you a +3 to hit (wait, what kind of munchkin game is this?) while you have a +4 to damage for some reason.

Oh, and you now have these skill things - no explanation for them or how many you got, or what the numbers actually mean.  And, hey, you have Power Attack - what's that?  What's your Base Attack Bonus?  Oh, and you can no longer be a fighter/thief at 1st level.  That doesn't exist as a thing anymore.  But, good news, you are no longer limited in levels in any class...

People have internalized the changes between editions to the point where they don't see the changes anymore.  They forget just how huge the change in 3e really was.  It completely rewrote the game from the ground up.  Virtually nothing in 2e actually exists in 3e.  Classes, mechanics, everything was changed.  

Well, how can you completely rewrite a game and then say that nothing changed?


----------



## Shasarak (Jun 2, 2017)

Hussar said:


> Sorry, wrong game.  2e, no XP for gold.  And the xp for that dragon won't ding you a level.  Nice try though.




No XP for gold?  You can play that way, I guess.



> As far as the hit and damage bonus being written on your sheet - again, it doesn't MEAN anything to you.  You have an AC of 16 (wait, what?) and the bad guy has an AC of 20 (again, wait, what?).  Your 16 strength gains you a +3 to hit (wait, what kind of munchkin game is this?) while you have a +4 to damage for some reason.




What kind of story game were you playing where a +3 to hit is considered a munchkin game?  Oh, I forgot, no XP for Gold so you just talked to everything.  Sure why not.



> Oh, and you now have these skill things - no explanation for them or how many you got, or what the numbers actually mean.  And, hey, you have Power Attack - what's that?  What's your Base Attack Bonus?  Oh, and you can no longer be a fighter/thief at 1st level.  That doesn't exist as a thing anymore.  But, good news, you are no longer limited in levels in any class...




So what are these Skill things that look just like Proficiencies?  What is this AC supposed to be?  What is this Fireball spell supposed to do?  Wow this is so confusing for me even though it says that children 11 and up can understand.  



> People have internalized the changes between editions to the point where they don't see the changes anymore.  They forget just how huge the change in 3e really was.  It completely rewrote the game from the ground up.  Virtually nothing in 2e actually exists in 3e.  Classes, mechanics, everything was changed.
> 
> Well, how can you completely rewrite a game and then say that nothing changed?




That is just marketing talk.  If you believe the marketing talk then of course it is not going to make sense.


----------



## Hussar (Jun 2, 2017)

Shasarak said:


> No XP for gold?  You can play that way, I guess.




Well, considering that's how 2e is played, I'd say that I certainly can play that way.  1e had XP for gold, meaning that level advancement in 1e was pretty fast.  2e slowed advancement WAY down.  



> What kind of story game were you playing where a +3 to hit is considered a munchkin game?  Oh, I forgot, no XP for Gold so you just talked to everything.  Sure why not.




In 2e, a 16 Str gained you a +1 to damage and that's it.  Now, I've got a +3 to hit and +4 to damage for exactly the same score.



> So what are these Skill things that look just like Proficiencies?  What is this AC supposed to be?  What is this Fireball spell supposed to do?  Wow this is so confusing for me even though it says that children 11 and up can understand.




Skills work very, very differently than Proficiencies (which were an optional rule in 2e).  Firstly, all those thief abilities that 2e had squared off for thieves, are now available to everyone.  Secondly, there was no DC calculation in 2e.  Your chance of success was purely based on your stat.  Having a +6 Concentration skill is meaningless in 2e.  +6 to what?  

Look, I'm not saying that no one can learn.  Obviously the learning curve isn't all that steep.  Fair enough.  But, pretending that 3e is completely unchanged from 2e is ignoring an awful lot of the game.  3e rewrote virtually every aspect of the game.  Monsters are completely different between editions.  Spells work completely differently.  The initiative system is completely different.  The skill system was new.  Feats were unheard of.  Every class got reworked.  Game balance got reworked.  

These really are different games.  



> That is just marketing talk.  If you believe the marketing talk then of course it is not going to make sense.




Yeah, I guess all those Dragonsfoot folks and OSR folks are just completely out to lunch and have no idea what they're talking about.


----------



## Shasarak (Jun 2, 2017)

Hussar said:


> Well, considering that's how 2e is played, I'd say that I certainly can play that way.  1e had XP for gold, meaning that level advancement in 1e was pretty fast.  2e slowed advancement WAY down.




You are right that not everyone used every rule when playing 2e.  One of the more common ones was not using level limits and I am sure there are plenty of other examples.



> In 2e, a 16 Str gained you a +1 to damage and that's it.  Now, I've got a +3 to hit and +4 to damage for exactly the same score.




You are correct and 3e also opened up bonuses for high Con to everyone not just Fighters as well.  But again all of that is written on the Character Sheet so you do not have to remember what your bonus is for having a 16 Str.



> Skills work very, very differently than Proficiencies (which were an optional rule in 2e).  Firstly, all those thief abilities that 2e had squared off for thieves, are now available to everyone.  Secondly, there was no DC calculation in 2e.  Your chance of success was purely based on your stat.  Having a +6 Concentration skill is meaningless in 2e.  +6 to what?




+6 to Concentration is +6 to your Concentration roll the same way that +3 to Riding, Land based was +3 to your Riding, Land based roll.  And as for opening up thief abilities, well are we really expected to believe that only Thieves have a chance to climb something?  What to try and move silently?  Well you are not a Thief so tough luck?  

I have seen some people saying that before Thieves were introduced as a class that everyone could try and climb and sneak so maybe in this case 3e was just changing back to the original way that it used to be.



> Look, I'm not saying that no one can learn.  Obviously the learning curve isn't all that steep.  Fair enough.  But, pretending that 3e is completely unchanged from 2e is ignoring an awful lot of the game.  3e rewrote virtually every aspect of the game.  Monsters are completely different between editions.  Spells work completely differently.  The initiative system is completely different.  The skill system was new.  Feats were unheard of.  Every class got reworked.  Game balance got reworked.
> 
> These really are different games.




I am not saying that they are not different games.  Obviously it is not like changing from 3e to 3.5 or 4e to Essentials.  I am just saying that the changes to the character sheets were nowhere as drastic as you claim.  AC is still Armour Class just going up instead of down.  Attack bonus is still doing the same thing as THAC0 just going up instead of down.  Longswords are still doing 1d8 damage + Str and Fireballs are still Fireballing.  



> Yeah, I guess all those Dragonsfoot folks and OSR folks are just completely out to lunch and have no idea what they're talking about.




I dont really know any Dragonsfoot folks to be able to comment.


----------



## Libramarian (Jun 2, 2017)

pemerton said:


> My thoughts on this probably suffer from too much spectating at a distance, but I'll share them anyway - it's a messageboard, right!
> 
> I think that there are two salient differences between contemporary AP play and the "classic" style.
> 
> ...



I remember that thread. It's this one right? Quite an interesting discussion there; I recommend a perusal to anyone still following this thread. I basically agree with your analysis of the differences between APing and the classic style of play but I don't think I'm as concerned as you are about whether gamist APing sacrifices what is distinctive about RPGing. I would give a different answer as to why the classic style is superior as a means for pursuing the gamist creative agenda ( I quite like my post here).

I advocate a return to the classic style because I think most D&D groups are basically gamist and they would enjoy it more than the AP style (the other dominant style; Pemertonian scene-framing in my estimation is extremely niche). I think the bottleneck in uptake is not modern gamers' love of prepackaged story and dice-based exploration (I'm tending recently to think these are smokescreens by the relative minority of modern gamers who want the gamist experience but refuse to Step On Up to get it). It's just a lack of support from the game in terms of the tools and techniques needed to run it. Many modern DMs are not even aware of the concept of random encounters, much less why it's important for the DM to recuse themselves from the responsibility of putting encounters together on the fly.

We need to go back to the dungeon and expand slowly and carefully from there (so I say )



pemerton said:


> The second was to make me think of all the "silly" D&D monsters - not just the plain silly ones like mimics and ear seekers, but the meta-silly ones like pseudo-undead and gas spores. This sort of set up is just primed for the GM to play those sorts of expectation-thwarting tricks, and yet if they're taken very far at all they disrupt the conventions on which their place as tricks rather than outright abuses depends. The traps which trigger when the square 10' in front is pressed are analogous. Is classic D&D inherently liable to (which is not at all to say "desined to") a spiral into meta-driven instability?




It's an interesting question. I don't much like those expectation-thwarting monsters. I would say yes to very conservative, hidebound classic D&D, but no to OSR D&D. One of the most exciting things about the OSR is the enthusiasm for making up new monsters, spells, magic items, and settings -- more generally the belief that logical analysis of the game will not only allow one to run it better and have more fun with it, but to expand the game while preserving the appeal without resorting to self-referential tricks.



Hussar said:


> And, now, we get to the heart of things. The dismissive condescension towards other play styles. Nice. Reducing randomness means that you just "act" like you've earned it? Snort. I'll tell that to every Chess champion I meet. The funny thing is, the gamist in me LOATHES random chance. How is that a test of your skill when random chance sends all your skill wahoonie shaped? Sorry, but, for me, in a truly gamist game, it's a test of my SKILL, not a test of my dice fapping skills.




I haven't played much chess but I know that getting very good at it requires a ton of brute memorization of opening sequences. Kind of like making a 3e or 4e character offline. I don't find that very compelling but I guess to some degree its a matter of taste. 



Hussar said:


> This stuck in my head a bit and I thought I'd pull this out for a bit of extra examination.
> 
> How is this not pure gamism? You are making decisions base on what will give you greater chances of success. It has nothing to do with the story of the game nor does it try to simulate anything. It's a purely gamist decision. Now, you might not like it since it makes the game "easier" than you feel is necessary. Fair enough. But, it's no different than someone watching Texas Hold'em tournaments to learn better ways of playing. Or reading strategy guides to make them a better poker player.
> 
> Are you saying that someone who takes the time out of the game to learn how to be a "better player" (in the sense of increasing their odds of success) is somehow an inferior player? That they aren't "playing right"? That the only real way of being a better player is making all the mistakes yourself? I'd argue that while there's nothing wrong with "learning from your mistakes", learning from other people's mistakes is also perfectly valid from a gamist perspective.




To me whether an exchange of play is gamist doesn't depend simply on the intentions of the participants but on whether it pursues the gamist creative agenda: the players putting their ideas on the line for judgement in front of an audience, risking at least a small amount of recognition or esteem. Grabbing a build someone else made doesn't involve sufficient personal risk.

This focus on the social dynamic at the table rather than the player's intention allows me to say for example, that I also consider it good play to be fairly sanguine in the face of a random death.


----------



## Libramarian (Jun 2, 2017)

Hussar said:


> And, let's be honest, virtually no one runs AD&D by stock, by RAW, in the way the designers intended.  It's nearly impossible to do so.




Totally is possible to run AD&D btb.


----------



## Lanefan (Jun 2, 2017)

Shasarak said:


> No XP for gold?  You can play that way, I guess.



1e had xp for gp.  2e took it out.  Many 1e groups took it out as well.

That said, it's possible you're both right when comparing 2e to 3e, as 2e evolved quite a bit during its run and by the end - with all the options and so forth - kinda wasn't as far from 3e as you might think.

Someone looking at a character sheet from 1991-era 2e would find it quite different than from 1998-era splat-soaked 2e; that same 1998-era sheet wouldn't be all that far adrift from a 2000-era 3e sheet as other than being different organized and named much of the same info would be there.  Sort of.

Lanefan


----------



## Hussar (Jun 2, 2017)

Libramarian said:


> Totally is possible to run AD&D btb.




Thank you for that.  I needed the laugh.  If that's your combat system in a flowchart (actually, EIGHT flowcharts) form I'm fairly confident in saying that the vast majority of people playing AD&D didn't follow the rules.    But, I gotta admit, that's a pretty darn comprehensive set of charts there.  I think the author might do Powerpoint slides for the Pentagon.


----------



## prosfilaes (Jun 2, 2017)

Libramarian said:


> I advocate a return to the classic style because I think most D&D groups are basically gamist and they would enjoy it more than the AP style (the other dominant style; Pemertonian scene-framing in my estimation is extremely niche). I think the bottleneck in uptake is not modern gamers' love of prepackaged story and dice-based exploration (I'm tending recently to think these are smokescreens by the relative minority of modern gamers who want the gamist experience but refuse to Step On Up to get it). It's just a lack of support from the game in terms of the tools and techniques needed to run it. Many modern DMs are not even aware of the concept of random encounters, much less why it's important for the DM to recuse themselves from the responsibility of putting encounters together on the fly.




"I think most D&D groups would enjoy playing the way I play more than the way the market has gone" is somehow not persuasive. In my experience, there are a lot of players who played 1E who now play Pathfinder; I know of one group that has existed for 25 years, with some members having started ten years before that, that plays Pathfinder. Also in my experience, the responses of players to character deaths has not encouraged me to run my game in a way that increases the number of PC fatalities.

Hard numbers, especially about what people "would enjoy playing" are going to be very hard to come up with. I'm satisfied that those that want Labyrinth Lords and OSRIC and friends can get them, and those of us who want Pathfinder or 5E can get them, with pemerton being the one stuck with the bag of an OOP game. (Sorry.) Perhaps some of us wouldn't be running or playing the games we are in an optimal world; there's a long list of games I'd rather be running than Pathfinder I'm running. But TORG or InSpectres or Farflung are less similar, not more similar to your playing style. If I really want to do a dungeon crawl, I've got Gloomhaven coming.

As for random encounters... I'l l let the Order of the Stick (Vaarsuvius) speak for me: "Each party has one (and only one) encounter because random encounters are tedious, and a waste of everyone's valuable time. So no matter how long the journey, you only have one random encounter before everyone gets bored and moves on to the main plot."


----------



## Shasarak (Jun 2, 2017)

Lanefan said:


> 1e had xp for gp.  2e took it out.  Many 1e groups took it out as well.




2e did not actually take it out but you guys had me wondering for a second there!


----------



## The Crimson Binome (Jun 2, 2017)

Shasarak said:


> 2e did not actually take it out but you guys had me wondering for a second there!



They made it optional, where I suppose it was probably assumed in earlier editions. They also had the individual class awards, where it xp-for-gp was on the Thief chart, and if you combined the two then Thieves earned 2xp per gp.


----------



## Lanefan (Jun 2, 2017)

Saelorn said:


> They made it optional, where I suppose it was probably assumed in earlier editions.



It was baked in to 1e, to the point where each magic item on the list had two values: a gp value and an xp value.  That said, I've never yet encountered a group - even back in the day - that used xp for gp.

Not sure about 0e or B/X.  I never realized xp for gp was even optional in 2e.

Lan-"if gp got me xp as well I'd be even greedier than I am now, if such a thing is possible"-efan


----------



## Jacob Marley (Jun 2, 2017)

Lanefan said:


> It was baked in to 1e, to the point where each magic item on the list had two values: a gp value and an xp value.  That said, I've never yet encountered a group - even back in the day - that used xp for gp.




My group used XP for GP. Of course, we were also inspired to play D&D by stories of Robin Hood, The Three Musketeers, and buccaneers and buried gold (Thanks Lego Castle and Pirates sets!) more so than monster slaying. XP for GP felt natural to those types of stories.


----------



## Shasarak (Jun 3, 2017)

Lanefan said:


> It was baked in to 1e, to the point where each magic item on the list had two values: a gp value and an xp value.  That said, I've never yet encountered a group - even back in the day - that used xp for gp.




It was not until 3e that I encountered a group who did not use xp for gp but that just meant that I got the xp for defeating them rather then for their stuff.


----------



## pemerton (Jun 3, 2017)

Libramarian said:


> I remember that thread.



Thanks for the links - I just re-read bits of it.



Libramarian said:


> I advocate a return to the classic style because I think most D&D groups are basically gamist and they would enjoy it more than the AP style (the other dominant style; Pemertonian scene-framing in my estimation is extremely niche). I think the bottleneck in uptake is not modern gamers' love of prepackaged story and dice-based exploration (I'm tending recently to think these are smokescreens by the relative minority of modern gamers who want the gamist experience but refuse to Step On Up to get it). It's just a lack of support from the game in terms of the tools and techniques needed to run it.



Interesting conjecture, including the "smokescreen" part of it. I'm surprised you've only got one response!

I think you're right about interest in my preferred approach being modest, though I'm always a bit puzzled by that because a lot of RPGers claim to really be into "story", and I think it's the most reliable way of generating "story" without railroading.



prosfilaes said:


> pemerton being the one stuck with the bag of an OOP game. (Sorry.)



Don't worry about me - if I want to keep runing 4e, I've got plenty of material plus the ability to make more of my own if necessary!

In print/out-of-print is not a very signficant consideration in my RPGing.


----------



## Hussar (Jun 3, 2017)

Heh, I'm in the same boat as [MENTION=89537]Jacob Marley[/MENTION] - we used xp for gold all the way through 1e, but, I never met a group that did so in 2e.  The baseline rules were no xp for gold.  To be honest, I didn't even realize it was an option in 2e.  Buried somewhere in the DMG I assume?

I do remember classes had individual xp bonuses and that rogues who stole gold could earn xp that way, but, AFAIK, that was it.


----------



## billd91 (Jun 3, 2017)

Hussar said:


> Heh, I'm in the same boat as [MENTION=89537]Jacob Marley[/MENTION] - we used xp for gold all the way through 1e, but, I never met a group that did so in 2e.  The baseline rules were no xp for gold.  To be honest, I didn't even realize it was an option in 2e.  Buried somewhere in the DMG I assume?
> 
> I do remember classes had individual xp bonuses and that rogues who stole gold could earn xp that way, but, AFAIK, that was it.




Since it was right in the middle of the XP section of the DMG, I'd hardly call that "buried". In fact, it's right between the info on calculating the XP award for defeating monsters and class-based XP awards for their specific deeds.

A lot of people didn't award gold for XP in 2e the same reason people disregarded that rule in 1e, it didn't make sense to them to reward treasure a second time - for the cash value and the XP value. And the fact that it was demoted to optional in 2e probably even took out the relatively sticklers who did award XP for gold in 1e.


----------



## Manbearcat (Jun 3, 2017)

S'mon said:


> I don't think so exactly, because a status-oriented player doesn't really get to lord it over other players at the game table, unlike in an MMORPG or basketball court.  I can have powergamers and casuals at my D&D table, but it's the one who brings the home made cookies who has established her superior status.
> 
> I think powergamers do it much more for personal satisfaction.
> 
> Conversely people who engage in Internet message board demonstrations of min-max charbuild abilities I think are seeking a kind of status, akin to the MMORPG powergamer.






pemerton said:


> [MENTION=6696971]Manbearcat[/MENTION], [MENTION=463]S'mon[/MENTION]
> 
> I don't know the MMO scene and so won't venture there.
> 
> ...






Saelorn said:


> If you want to take this analogy and run with it, then it's less the difference between professional basketball and a casual game for fun, and more the difference between either of those two and the sort of participation-trophy extreme where nobody is allowed to fail because they might feel bad (whether or not that's a real thing, it's an example for illustration).
> 
> It's not that the competition is slack because neither team is really invested too much, and more that one side is deliberately throwing the game by giving the other side so many get-out-of-jail-free cards that the conclusion is foregone.
> 
> Edit: I'm not saying that it's actually gone that far, but the analogy is better. It's a matter of perspective. How many extra lives do they need to give you, before winning becomes inevitable? Everyone is going to see that line in a different place. I probably could have beaten Super Mario Bros. when I was 8, if I'd had a hundred lives; but probably not if I'd only had ten lives.




This is going to be a quick (possibly incoherent) ramble, so fair warning.

There are a lot of familiar refrains in the lead article, but here are two I honed in on (in trying to tease out precisely what the premise was and what the lamentation resembled):



> Classic games involve conflict. Many so-called games nowadays do not involve conflict, and there are role-playing "games" that are storytelling exercises without much opposition.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> I’m a senior citizen, in my roots a wargamer, and I prefer games of consequence. But that's not where the world is headed.




While I don't agree that "the world (of games) is headed" here, I certainly understand the lament.  When once the market was significantly dominated by this perspective, there is now a deep diversity in the CRPG market, the MMORPG market, the TTRPG market, the boardgaming market, and the physical activity market.  Various zeitgeists pop up now and again and gather some short-term steam (from revolutionary to retro), but the market-space doesn't seem to be contracting in such a way to preclude "challenge/consequence-based" games (if anything, I would say that the boardgame market and several CRPGs have become *more *difficult, *more *punitive).  Its just that overall expansion and progress (of ideas, of clarity, of delivery upon formula, of nuance, of paradigm) necessitates that each individual market niche has more competition for attention (and maybe prospective casual buyers).  

Whether the marketplace can handle that, I'll leave for someone else to decide (I know there is an opinion that the marketplace isn't robust enough to handle dilution/competition...maybe that is where Kickstarter saves the day).  I was mainly just focusing on the psychology of what might animate someone to lament lack of conflict/consequence in their gaming (which seemed to harken to the two competing psychologies that underwrite the "casuals vs hardcores" refrain).

One last (unrelated) thing.

I definitely don't agree that the modern (non OSR) TTRPG market lacks conflict and consequence.  That tells me that the author doesn't have the exposure necessary to take up a position.  

1)  The PBtA games mostly have default of hard-mode.  
1a)  Apocalypse World and Blades in the Dark are "hard games".  They very, very rarely end well for PCs and the game is not a "happy one".
1b)  Dungeon World is trivially drifted from Big Damn Heroes to murderhobos fumbling in the dark.  It can be done with the default game or by using a "Darkest Dungeon" hack out there which is very solid and well-integrated into the PBtA engine.

2)  Torchbearer is most definitely ultra-gritty hard-mode.  It is WAY more difficult than Moldvay Basic and considerably more than the Expert/Companion set that follows as the game advances.

3)  4e and Strike! are both so well-engineered that if a group sits down and wants to drift either to brutally difficult setting, they can do so just by changing default expectations and turning a few knobs.


----------



## Maxperson (Jun 3, 2017)

Shasarak said:


> It was not until 3e that I encountered a group who did not use xp for gp but that just meant that I got the xp for defeating them rather then for their stuff.




My experience is the same as [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION].  We experimented a couple times with XP for gold, but it made the game too easy and we dropped it.  I never encountered any others who played that way.  They all knew the rules said that you got it for gold, but no one I encountered followed that rule.


----------



## Hussar (Jun 3, 2017)

It's always funny to me when people's personal experience equates to "a lot of people" based on nothing more than a tiny, tiny slice of a sample size, pretty much universally "people I know".  I have no idea how many people used XP for gold in 1e.  I know that I did and so did everyone I played with.  But, beyond that?  I can't really make any extrapolations.  

And it's also funny how "We must discuss the game as written" becomes "We must discuss the game the way I played" whenever people happen not to play the way the game is written.


----------



## Libramarian (Jun 5, 2017)

prosfilaes said:


> If I really want to do a dungeon crawl, I've got Gloomhaven coming.



Interesting that you mention Gloomhaven--apparently this is critically acclaimed and selling like hotcakes right now. Reading the description it sounds extremely similar to classic sandbox D&D.


----------



## Shasarak (Jun 6, 2017)

Hussar said:


> And it's also funny how "We must discuss the game as written" becomes "We must discuss the game the way I played" whenever people happen not to play the way the game is written.




If you have read the way the game is written then it becomes obvious that you have to discuss the game the way I (You) played.


----------



## Hussar (Jun 6, 2017)

Shasarak said:


> If you have read the way the game is written then it becomes obvious that you have to discuss the game the way I (You) played.




Yuppers.  You used an optional rule that wasn't assumed as part of the core game.  No worries.  It's not like you were playing wrong.  

Where you go wrong is the idea that everyone played the way you did and trying to extrapolate your personal experience into some sort of universal.  I have no idea how common it was to play with XP for gold in 2e.  To me, one of the major changes from 1e to 2e was the rejection of xp for gold, which massively slowed down advancement in 2e. 

To me, the change of the importance of gold really highlights how each edition is a different game.  For example:

1e - Gold is the primary source of XP in the system.  Looking at the modules, you generally got FAR more xp for gold than you could for killing everything.  To the point where probably about 75% (give or take) of the xp of a character was gold.  Then, that gold was taken away, largely, by the training rules.  The point of play was to amass cash - killing stuff was largely incidental.  Plus there was the presumption of things like hirelings and henchmen which was a major source of the power of a party, all of which cost gold.

2e - Gold is largely useless.  You aren't supposed to buy magic items in the game and, beyond buying your Full Plate armor, there really wasn't much you could do with gold.  It just kind of sat there.  To the point where, in the games I ran or played in at the time, gold wasn't particularly even awarded as treasure.  Beyond a certain point, gold just wasn't all that needed.

3e - Gold again is a HUGE deal.  So much so that we get the wealth by level charts which are meant as a balancing tool in the game.  You can buy or make magic items which has an enormous impact on how the game is played and run.  Things like healing wands and the Magic Christmas Tree are all outgrowths of tying character power to the wealth of the character.  Amassing gold is a very large motivator for PC's in 3e.

4e - Gold is scaled back.  It's assumed that you will have certain goodies by certain levels, so, the "reward" isn't really much of a reward at all.  You're level X, so, you have equipment Y.  So much so that you can completely remove plussed items and gold and go with Inherent Bonuses and the game works perfectly fine.  It really doesn't matter how much gold you accrue.  

5e - Gold, like in 2e, has pretty much no purpose.  You're not supposed to buy magic items - at least the system doesn't assume that you can, and, outside of down time activities, gold doesn't really do anything.  For example, we played through most of Curse of Strahd recently, and by 8th level, the group total cash might be a couple of thousand gold.  It simply doesn't matter.

You can run this same sort of charted examples for just about anything between editions and it's not too hard to see that each edition has some pretty deep changes.  Fighters go from 1 attack per round with minimal bonuses, to 3/2 (+1 to hit/+2 to damage) in 2e, to BAB and iterative attacks, back to 1 attack per round but now with additional riders, then to 1 attack per round increasing at certain levels.  Just something as basic as how does a basic plain jane fighter swing his sword has changed between editions.


----------



## Hussar (Jun 6, 2017)

Y'know, for S&G's, I dug out my 2e DMG to find the rule for awarding XP for gold.  I was right, it is bloody buried in the text.  I had to read it three times just to find it and this is the sum total of what we get:



> As an option, the DM can award XP for the cash value of non-magical treasures. One XP can be given per gold piece found. However, overuse of this option can increase the tendency to give out too much treasure in the campaign.




Hardly a ringing endorsement of the idea that xp should be given for gold.  And, certainly the implication here is that you shouldn't be always using this.


----------



## Ratskinner (Jun 6, 2017)

pemerton said:


> Interesting conjecture, including the "smokescreen" part of it. I'm surprised you've only got one response!
> 
> I think you're right about interest in my preferred approach being modest, though I'm always a bit puzzled by that because a lot of RPGers claim to really be into "story", and I think it's the most reliable way of generating "story" without railroading.




I tried to quote [MENTION=6688858]Libramarian[/MENTION] here as well, but somehow it appears to not be working. I actually tend to agree a bit with him about playing D&D closer to its classic style. I just don't think its core engine is well suited to much else. (I'm not even sure how well-suited it is to that purpose, but...). I should also note that I'll use "D&D" in this post to refer to all of its close kin and variants, including Pathfinder and the OSR, generally.

I think there are several factors going on when it comes to the low adoption rates of story games by traditional rpgers, despite continued insistence on "story" being important to them. The most important/prominent, IME/O, is that D&D is already here, most potential players are familiar with it, and it works in a way that is relatively concrete and easy to grasp. Even though it functions poorly for almost every use it is put to....it still limps along and groups just wince and bear with it over the rough spots. The simple familiarity that so very many players have with D&D simply overwhelms all its shortcomings. It is the dominant game in this marketspace, and it will remain so for the foreseeable future.

In contrast to the OP, I actually believe that maintenance of this dominance has been the driving force in D&D's design decisions. Streamlining mechanics, simplifying modifiers and subsystems, all of it just cutting away the rough spots that make it difficult to adopt and stay with. Of course, there have been missteps here and there, but for the most part, that has been the trend AFAICT. I firmly believe that even 4e, IMO the biggest misstep, was simply a matter of poorly chosen presentation that too blatantly jerked away from traditional phrasings. Sales weren't the problem, as much as it is often cited in these arguments. The big problem with 4e was that it split the community. The edition war actually threatened to splinter that D&D Dominance. In the long run, that would spell doom for D&D in a way that slow sales never threaten to do.

If I put out a sign at me FLGS advertising a startup group for _any_ edition of D&D, I could be playing it next week. Establishing a group based on a different system is nearly impossible by comparison. I have tried many times, with many different systems. The store even sold out of Fate Accelerated, ordered Fate Core, sold out of that and stocks claims to regularly sell sets of Fate Dice...but whoever bought those things isn't responding to my ads. (Why? I dunno. Are they all just system-collectors like me?) 

Now, I suppose that may be different in different markets or at different stores. Presumably larger markets could support more fringe groups. However, I've noticed that there is a big difference between the online communities for the "fringe" games and the online communities for D&D. Namely, D&D communities tend to presume that most play is occurring in-person, while the tendency for the others is to presume either convention one-shot or online play. This seems to be reflected in the "looking for group" areas as well. I suspect that most _Gumshoe_, _Fate_, _The Quiet Year_, _Apocalypse World_, etc. players just have no other option, if they actually want to play the game. By contrast, I suspect most OSR play happens at table-top amongst players or groups that have been gaming for some time. (And note the distress caused by people claiming or questioning whether _Dungeon World_ is and Old-School game.)

I do think there are other factors. For example, I think many folks are either unwilling or unable to discern or admit what their own preferences are. I've observed people tell me one thing and then act at-table in manners totally contrary to their claim. So, some of those people telling Pemerton that they are in it for the story are lying/wrong about themselves. Quite likely, most folks don't examine their play or enjoyment enough to know. Of course, that task is made harder by a game that is often fudged at table, or played with a raft of houserules. Most story-centric games put players in a position of much greater authorship than they have in D&D, and that can leave a game running flat. Too much authorial power takes away the visceral experience of tension that is part of the entertainment process.

Additionally, I think that the state of design for story-centric or narrative-centric games is not nearly so advanced as we might hope. I think its getting better, and lately folks have made solid strides, but I don't think its nearly as refined as commonly available war, skirmish, or board games are. For instance, early editions of D&D show much more of their its wargame roots, and they show through even today. Later rpgs don't show nearly so much wargame-derived content. Similarly, most story-centric games today cling fairly close to their D&D/rpg ancestors (one character per player except for one "GM" player, a heavy focus on action/adventure/combat, etc.) Many story games rely (perhaps overmuch on) extremely abstract mechanics, shifting resolution to the players at table. That puts players onto hazier ground an into less-sure positions than games with more concrete mechanics, and not all players are comfortable with that. I think what people are looking for in a story game is one that has a story emerging "naturally" as an artifact of play, but one that can still surprise them as play progresses. 

I could go on, but this is a long post already and its late here. As always, just my $.02.


----------



## Shasarak (Jun 6, 2017)

Hussar said:


> Y'know, for S&G's, I dug out my 2e DMG to find the rule for awarding XP for gold.  I was right, it is bloody buried in the text.  I had to read it three times just to find it and this is the sum total of what we get:
> 
> 
> 
> Hardly a ringing endorsement of the idea that xp should be given for gold.  And, certainly the implication here is that you shouldn't be always using this.




How many times do they need to say it?

Besides, if you actually read the experience entry you will find it lets the DM give as much experience as they want to.


----------



## pemerton (Jun 7, 2017)

Ratskinner said:


> the distress caused by people claiming or questioning whether Dungeon World is and Old-School game.



Can you elaborate? My knowledge of debates about DW is pretty poor. Speaking purely for myself, I wouldn't see DW (or Torchbearer, for that matter) as an old-school game, but I'm not really an old-school guy and so my judgement on these things mightn't carry much weight.

(Obviously Torchbearer in particular is meant to produce something like an old-school experience, but I don't think that makes it an old-school game. An imperfect analogy: whatever, exactly, Pulp Fiction is, it's not a remake of a film like The Maltese Falcon or The Big Sleep.)



Ratskinner said:


> I think many folks are either unwilling or unable to discern or admit what their own preferences are. I've observed people tell me one thing and then act at-table in manners totally contrary to their claim. So, some of those people telling Pemerton that they are in it for the story are lying/wrong about themselves. Quite likely, most folks don't examine their play or enjoyment enough to know.



This is plausible to me, although somewhat tricky to affirm in the messageboard context because it is obviously rather invidious to point to any particular poster and suggest that they suffer from this sort of lack of self-knowledge.



Ratskinner said:


> Of course, that task is made harder by a game that is often fudged at table, or played with a raft of houserules. Most story-centric games put players in a position of much greater authorship than they have in D&D, and that can leave a game running flat. Too much authorial power takes away the visceral experience of tension that is part of the entertainment process.
> 
> Additionally, I think that the state of design for story-centric or narrative-centric games is not nearly so advanced as we might hope. I think its getting better, and lately folks have made solid strides, but I don't think its nearly as refined as commonly available war, skirmish, or board games are. For instance, early editions of D&D show much more of their its wargame roots, and they show through even today. Later rpgs don't show nearly so much wargame-derived content. Similarly, most story-centric games today cling fairly close to their D&D/rpg ancestors (one character per player except for one "GM" player, a heavy focus on action/adventure/combat, etc.) Many story games rely (perhaps overmuch on) extremely abstract mechanics, shifting resolution to the players at table. That puts players onto hazier ground an into less-sure positions than games with more concrete mechanics, and not all players are comfortable with that. I think what people are looking for in a story game is one that has a story emerging "naturally" as an artifact of play, but one that can still surprise them as play progresses.



There's a lot going on here. I'll post some thoughts that were provoked in me.

Oversimplifying very much, and drawing only on my own experience/reading of a finite set of games none of which is wildly radical, I would divide mechanics into (roughly) two sorts: mechanics that reflect or express the ingame process, and mechanics that abstractly frame the action and leave the ingame details to be filled in. Games like Classic Traveller, RQ, RM, Burning Wheel; the 3E skill system, at least for "physical" skills; movement in most editions of D&D; etc, are all examples of the former. Games like HeroWars/Quest, Marvel Heroic RP; Tunnels & Trolls melee; 4e attack resolution; the AD&D 1-minute combat round; etc, are instances of the latter.

(D&D melee attack actions outside of 4e are an interesting case because, when read on paper they look like an instance of the latter, but many D&D players seem to treat them as an instance of the former. I think this is quite significant in the reception of RQ/RM-ish games _and_ of 4e by the core D&D audience.)

I don't see this mechanical divide as itself being particularly significant for whether a game is "predictable" to the players. The first sort of mechanic is highly vulnerable to disputes breaking out over the precise fictional positioning of various characters and the relevance to this of resolution (and it's interesting to look at how a game like BW tries to maintain this sort of approach to resolution while using other incentives - in particular, that for a PC to advance requires not always using the largest possible dice pool - to ameliorate the tendency to fiction-lawyering). The second sort of mechanic is vulnerable to an excess of abstraction which means no one really knows what is going on in the fiction - at it's worst, the game ceases to be an RPG at all and becomes just a board/tactical game.

I don't see this mechanical divide as being particularly significant, either, for whether a game supports wargaming/"gamist" play or whether it supports "story"-oriented play. That depends on the techniques and expectations that are set up around the mechanics eg By whom, and according to what principles, and influenced in what way by the mechanical system, is fictional content introduced into the game? How is failure narrated? Who gets to choose what happens next? Etc.

I agree with you that "what people are looking for in a story game is one that has a story emerging 'naturally' as an artifact of play, but one that can still surprise them as play progresses." Maybe I'm just more optimistic than you that games - ie combinations of mechanics and techniques - that will support this actually exist. My optimisim is grounded in the fact that I believe I have played in, and am playing in, such games.

As to your comment about subject-matter (combat, adventure, etc): this is one context in which I think that mechanics matter as much as broader techniques and expectation. In particular, I'm a strong believer that if you want a game to involve story about stuff other than fighting and jumping, you need mechanics for stuff other than fighting and jumping. For me, this was part of the appeal of RM and is part of the appeal of BW. I played a BW session on the weekend. My PC is a holy warrior type, and he has as a companion a fire-mage type. The checks made over the course of the session included social checks (my two characters had an argument about how to proceed on their travels, and then - when exploring a crypt beneath a ruined fortress of my order - we encountered a knight who had ben cursed to guard the crypt even in death, and I debated with him what was the right thing to do in the interests of the order), cooking, lore/knowledge/perception-type checks (to learn stuff about the ruined fortress and the order), ritual and prayer checks (including to life the curse on the knight); but the closet thing to a combat check was a failed attempt by my companion to use her TK-ish spell to pull the knight's axe from his hands.

That could happen in 4e, but I think would put more weight on the GM to make the skill challenges work (and skill challenges can't resolve an argument between two player characters), and there isn't the breadth of skills to bring out characterisation in quite the same way as in BW (which distinguishes between skill in Persuasion, Command and Ugly Truth - all of which came up in our session) or RM.

It couldn't happen in T&T or Moldvay Basic or Gygax's AD&D, and I don't think 5e makes it all that easy.

And a final conjecture about this: even for those who like "story", non-combat/adventure stuff requires being a bit more personal/intimate in revealing one's character - _especially_ in a classic one-character-per-player set up. That can be challenging.


----------



## Ratskinner (Jun 7, 2017)

pemerton said:


> Can you elaborate? My knowledge of debates about DW is pretty poor. Speaking purely for myself, I wouldn't see DW (or Torchbearer, for that matter) as an old-school game, but I'm not really an old-school guy and so my judgement on these things mightn't carry much weight.
> 
> (Obviously Torchbearer in particular is meant to produce something like an old-school experience, but I don't think that makes it an old-school game. An imperfect analogy: whatever, exactly, Pulp Fiction is, it's not a remake of a film like The Maltese Falcon or The Big Sleep.)




Basically, (and this was a few years ago) some folks pointed out that DW could sometimes feel more like an Old-School game at-table than some of the ostensibly OSR games that were in print and favored by the community. That begged the question (in there minds, anyway) about whether the mechanics where the actually important part of the Old-School experience, or whether it was the whole Fantasy Vietnam experience being sited by the OP of this thread. I saw this on a couple of boards, both Old School and general rpg. No real resolution was reached and people just sorta went into their corners to play OSRIC when it was done, AFAICT. 



pemerton said:


> This is plausible to me, although somewhat tricky to affirm in the messageboard context because it is obviously rather invidious to point to any particular poster and suggest that they suffer from this sort of lack of self-knowledge.




I agree, and such are the limitations of e-communication. Its not particularly easier, IME, to point out inconsistencies face-to-face, I might add. 



pemerton said:


> There's a lot going on here. I'll post some thoughts that were provoked in me.
> 
> Oversimplifying very much, and drawing only on my own experience/reading of a finite set of games none of which is wildly radical, I would divide mechanics into (roughly) two sorts: mechanics that reflect or express the ingame process, and mechanics that abstractly frame the action and leave the ingame details to be filled in. Games like Classic Traveller, RQ, RM, Burning Wheel; the 3E skill system, at least for "physical" skills; movement in most editions of D&D; etc, are all examples of the former. Games like HeroWars/Quest, Marvel Heroic RP; Tunnels & Trolls melee; 4e attack resolution; the AD&D 1-minute combat round; etc, are instances of the latter.
> 
> ...




Given that Hit Points and Apocalypse Engine "Clocks" function basically the same way (the abstract category), I take your point. However, I've noted that many (advertised) story games seem to leave things in the realm of abstract mechanics, sometimes having precious little "concrete" mechanics at all. I believe that that "excess of abstraction" can leave players uncomfortable engaging in an argument at all and just shutting down mentally/socially retreating from the game. At that point, the game is "lost" to the player (or vice versa) because they are "not getting it."

Now, people can obviously make abstract mechanics work, but I think concrete mechanics can help "ground" players in the fiction. How much is "necessary" is variable by individual, of course.

I would point out, additionally, that the conversation has already drifted back to a traditional rpg framework. I don't feel obligated to think that a good "story game" necessarily needs to ride on an rpg chassis. In fact, I would say that having such a base is making the creative jobs of game designers harder, because it is so very easy to fall back on that familiar structure. I could imagine a game that functions like _The Quiet Year_ where players turns are driven by cards drawn, possibly spawning questions for the whole table to answer that inform the direction of the "scene" associated with that player's turn. 



pemerton said:


> I agree with you that "what people are looking for in a story game is one that has a story emerging 'naturally' as an artifact of play, but one that can still surprise them as play progresses." Maybe I'm just more optimistic than you that games - ie combinations of mechanics and techniques - that will support this actually exist. My optimisim is grounded in the fact that I believe I have played in, and am playing in, such games.




I think they are starting to get made, or rather, they are getting better. My sort-of blanket evaluation is that they have a tendency to require a lot more GM/player -- policing?, engagement?, herding?, restraint? of play than tactical play would require.



pemerton said:


> As to your comment about subject-matter (combat, adventure, etc): this is one context in which I think that mechanics matter as much as broader techniques and expectation. In particular, I'm a strong believer that if you want a game to involve story about stuff other than fighting and jumping, you need mechanics for stuff other than fighting and jumping. <snippage>
> 
> That could happen in 4e, but I think would put more weight on the GM to make the skill challenges work (and skill challenges can't resolve an argument between two player characters), and there isn't the breadth of skills to bring out characterisation in quite the same way as in BW (which distinguishes between skill in Persuasion, Command and Ugly Truth - all of which came up in our session) or RM.
> 
> It couldn't happen in T&T or Moldvay Basic or Gygax's AD&D, and I don't think 5e makes it all that easy.




Total agreement here. I think one of the not-so-subtle realizations in story mechanics has been that more specificity is good. The tough part about that WRT traditional rpgs, is the diversity of story types require vastly different events/skills/twists. I mean, events that you would expect to see in a murder investigation story aren't the same as you'd expect to see in a heroic journey. So, in a traditional rpg context, where both are (at least theoretically) acceptable story arcs, how do you include them both? I don't think that that's an impossible design task, but I think its still waiting to be done. I'm not sure that the rpg audience would be willing to pay for supplement supporting a family of plot options in the same way that its willing to spend money on current options. Plus, I gotta figure that combat needs to be subsumed under the broader story "wrapper" mechanics somehow, and that seems like a big leap for most traditional rpgs.



pemerton said:


> And a final conjecture about this: even for those who like "story", non-combat/adventure stuff requires being a bit more personal/intimate in revealing one's character - _especially_ in a classic one-character-per-player set up. That can be challenging.




I agree and think this is another reason that I would advocate letting rpgs be rpgs and take story-centric games in another direction. 

Edit: I would also add that I think explicit mechanics can alleviate a lot of that discomfort.


----------



## Manbearcat (Jun 7, 2017)

Ratskinner said:


> Given that Hit Points and Apocalypse Engine "Clocks" function basically the same way (the abstract category), I take your point. However, I've noted that many (advertised) story games seem to leave things in the realm of abstract mechanics, sometimes having precious little "concrete" mechanics at all. I believe that that "excess of abstraction" can leave players uncomfortable engaging in an argument at all and just shutting down mentally/socially retreating from the game. At that point, the game is "lost" to the player (or vice versa) because they are "not getting it."
> 
> Now, people can obviously make abstract mechanics work, but I think concrete mechanics can help "ground" players in the fiction. How much is "necessary" is variable by individual, of course.




Just want to comment on this portion of the conversation.

Blades in the Dark has produced many great advances in the Powered By the Apocalypse tree of games.  Relevant to the point directly above, one of the best is codified *Position*.  Whereas in typical PBtA games, this is handled in the course of conversation or merely extrapolated from the relevant fiction (which is, of course, integrated with the game's premise, agenda, and play principles), BitD systemitizes a procedure of firming up the implications of the fictional positioning.  Through the establishment of the situation as Controlled/Risky/Desperate, players not only achieve a better grip on the prospects for varying action declarations on their "menu", but also the potential rewards/fallout post-resolution and where the action might snowball to as a result.

This might seem a subtle thing, but for players (whose mental frameworks need the explicit "abstraction contraction", let us call it) who may have the trouble you're expressing above its a nice assist (and doesn't add to the GM's cognitive workload nor negatively affect table handling time in any intrusive way).


----------



## Lanefan (Jun 7, 2017)

Ratskinner said:


> I would also add that I think explicit mechanics can alleviate a lot of that discomfort.



Assuming, of course, that one finds comfort in mechanics.

One of the things I didn't like about 3e was its there's-a-rule-for-everything ethos, particularly for combat; and from what I can tell 4e wasn't any better.  Here, you want to take the rule-for-everything idea and expand it to all the non-combat stuff as well, which only makes it worse. 

Lan-"guidelines, not rules; rulings, not rules"-efan


----------



## Ratskinner (Jun 7, 2017)

Manbearcat said:


> Just want to comment on this portion of the conversation.
> 
> Blades in the Dark has produced many great advances in the Powered By the Apocalypse tree of games.




Totally agree, and although I haven't had the opportunity to play/run BitD, I highly approve of its advancements and hope to see it in action soon.


----------



## Ratskinner (Jun 7, 2017)

Lanefan said:


> Assuming, of course, that one finds comfort in mechanics.
> 
> One of the things I didn't like about 3e was its there's-a-rule-for-everything ethos, particularly for combat; and from what I can tell 4e wasn't any better.  Here, you want to take the rule-for-everything idea and expand it to all the non-combat stuff as well, which only makes it worse.
> 
> Lan-"guidelines, not rules; rulings, not rules"-efan




In this case, I was referring specifically to the idea that if the mechanics specify something like "Reveal a secret about your (PCs) parents." or "You have an unusual fear of a newly introduced NPC. Explain why." That is might make it more comfortable to a player than if they have to generate such things ex nihilo at the table.


----------



## pemerton (Jun 7, 2017)

Ratskinner said:


> the conversation has already drifted back to a traditional rpg framework



Yes. I'm talking about what I know, and as I posted that's nothing very radical.

But I also think the RPG idea of "I am playing my person - my _me_ - in this fictional situation" has a genuine degree of power to it. So there's a _reason_ to try and make this work from the story point of view.



Ratskinner said:


> many (advertised) story games seem to leave things in the realm of abstract mechanics, sometimes having precious little "concrete" mechanics at all. I believe that that "excess of abstraction" can leave players uncomfortable engaging in an argument at all and just shutting down mentally/socially retreating from the game. At that point, the game is "lost" to the player (or vice versa) because they are "not getting it."
> 
> Now, people can obviously make abstract mechanics work, but I think concrete mechanics can help "ground" players in the fiction. How much is "necessary" is variable by individual, of course.



Can you link this to a concrete example? For instance, putting to one side whether MHRP really counts as any sort of "story game", would you put it on the _potentially overly abstract_ side of the line?



Ratskinner said:


> I think explicit mechanics can alleviate a lot of that discomfort.





Ratskinner said:


> I was referring specifically to the idea that if the mechanics specify something like "Reveal a secret about your (PCs) parents." or "You have an unusual fear of a newly introduced NPC. Explain why." That is might make it more comfortable to a player than if they have to generate such things ex nihilo at the table.



This is interesting.

BW doesn't have these sorts of mechanics: the rules for Beliefs, Instincts etc are "write some interesting ones, and riff off other people's" - which is close to your ex nihilo scenario, though at prep time rather than in play. MHRP does have something closer to the sort of mechanic you mention, though, because eg a character might get XP for identifying an opponent as an old foe or an old friend. So the structured milestones create a framework for the players to drive the story in certain ways.

I think I find that that MHRP approach creates a lighter, more "frothy" and slightly wacky game; whereas the BW approach - at least at it's best - can be more intense and push the player harder. (Eg because there's no framework to fall back on, the justification is that _I thought this made for a good Belief_. So the player's artistic (?) judgement is on the line.)

(I hope that the above comments make sense and that I haven't misconstrued your point.)



Ratskinner said:


> My sort-of blanket evaluation is that they [ie "story games"] have a tendency to require a lot more GM/player -- policing?, engagement?, herding?, restraint? of play than tactical play would require.



Policing of what?

I don't think I've found this, but I'm working of a narrow experience base and may not be fully following your point!



Ratskinner said:


> I think one of the not-so-subtle realizations in story mechanics has been that more specificity is good. The tough part about that WRT traditional rpgs, is the diversity of story types require vastly different events/skills/twists. I mean, events that you would expect to see in a murder investigation story aren't the same as you'd expect to see in a heroic journey. So, in a traditional rpg context, where both are (at least theoretically) acceptable story arcs, how do you include them both? I don't think that that's an impossible design task, but I think its still waiting to be done. I'm not sure that the rpg audience would be willing to pay for supplement supporting a family of plot options in the same way that its willing to spend money on current options. Plus, I gotta figure that combat needs to be subsumed under the broader story "wrapper" mechanics somehow, and that seems like a big leap for most traditional rpgs.



You've taken this thought further than I had in my mind when I posted. I was thinking of much more banal stuff like, if you want the cooking of a meal to be a big deal in the game, then you need a mechanical framework that can make that happen. In BW this is via the mechanics for "linked tests" - a type of augment - so if your cooking stuffs up you make your friends sick/hungry and they get a downstream penalty, but if you cook well then everyone gets an appropriate buff; and in the session I mentioned I spent metagame resources to boost my cooking dice pool in an attempt to get the buff (I didn't get the buff but didn't cause a penalty either). This can't happen in a system where there is no resolution system for cooking, no way to make it matter (eg penalties/buffs flowing from it), no way for the player to _show_ that it matters (eg spending metagame resources on it), etc.

But if I'm understanding you properly, you're not talking just about mechanical elements that can make some subject matter of endeavour _actually count_ - like cooking, or mending (something that also came up in my BW session), or similar "mundane" things. You're talking about resolution frameworks for establishing consequences that drive things in particular ways (eg murder mystery vs questing journey).

In the systems I run this is all put onto the GM's shoulders - the GM is expected to be able to frame scenes and narrate consequences in a way that is appropriate to the demands of genre, character, situation, etc (be that mystery or quest) using rather generic mechanics (eg the BW system for resolving checks) and rather generic techniques (eg "fail forward", "say 'yes' or roll the dice", etc). Is this part of what you have in mind when you talk about the need for GM "policing" - that when the GM's tools are the sorts of "generic" tools I've described, then s/he has to make affirmative judgement calls abut the unfolding shape of the fiction in a way that isn't the case in a tactical game?


----------



## Ratskinner (Jun 8, 2017)

I might slice and dice your post here a bit, because you kinda came at one thing through the back door talking about another.



pemerton said:


> Yes. I'm talking about what I know, and as I posted that's nothing very radical.
> 
> But I also think the RPG idea of "I am playing my person - my _me_ - in this fictional situation" has a genuine degree of power to it. So there's a _reason_ to try and make this work from the story point of view.




No accusation intended. 

I agree that there is a power there, but also a weakness WRT telling a story. Often, making a good/interesting story involves loss on the part of the protagonist. Most traditional rpgs have no mechanism rewarding a player for a substantive loss by their character. Reward mechanisms, like XP/leveling, are based solely on "winning" whatever goals the character has, and apply to the character and player as well. Contrast this with _Fiasco_, in which you the player can "win" by having your character suffer the most during the course of the game. (Although if you do win in this fashion, your character walks away winning as well.) This puts a player's immediate interests at odds with the character's immediate interests in a way that allows for plotlines that D&D would have great difficulty creating. 



pemerton said:


> Can you link this to a concrete example? For instance, putting to one side whether MHRP really counts as any sort of "story game", would you put it on the _potentially overly abstract_ side of the line?




That's a good question. Personally, I don't think so. Almost everything that I can think of in MHRP is tied directly to fiction. If you have an Asset, it has a fictional meaning/purpose/representation. I really like that about MHRP, and I feel like it shares a lot of DNA with FATE in this regard. However, they both also share one in-game "currency" that is potentially problematic this way. I have watched a very few Old-Schoolers have great difficulty utilizing a "generic" currency like Fate Points or Hero(?) Points. However, I consider that an outlier case possibly driven by obstinancy. I have never observed any young or new players having difficulty with the idea.

One example that comes to mind is _Fiasco_. So...on my turn, I'm going to get a black or white die, depending on if things went badly or well for my character, but otherwise me and some other guys are just gonna improv this out. 



pemerton said:


> This is interesting.
> 
> BW doesn't have these sorts of mechanics: the rules for Beliefs, Instincts etc are "write some interesting ones, and riff off other people's" - which is close to your ex nihilo scenario, though at prep time rather than in play. MHRP does have something closer to the sort of mechanic you mention, though, because eg a character might get XP for identifying an opponent as an old foe or an old friend. So the structured milestones create a framework for the players to drive the story in certain ways.





pemerton said:


> Policing of what?
> 
> I don't think I've found this, but I'm working of a narrow experience base and may not be fully following your point!





pemerton said:


> In the systems I run this is all put onto the GM's shoulders - the GM is expected to be able to frame scenes and narrate consequences in a way that is appropriate to the demands of genre, character, situation, etc (be that mystery or quest) using rather generic mechanics (eg the BW system for resolving checks) and rather generic techniques (eg "fail forward", "say 'yes' or roll the dice", etc). Is this part of what you have in mind when you talk about the need for GM "policing" - that when the GM's tools are the sorts of "generic" tools I've described, then s/he has to make affirmative judgement calls abut the unfolding shape of the fiction in a way that isn't the case in a tactical game?




Yes. This is exactly what I was getting at, although I was struggling to find the correct words. Did a character _actually_ address his belief? Who judges? How do you decide? Basically, a lot of narrative "adjudication" work gets off-loaded onto the participants. (Not that that can't be successful.) I agree with you that it puts players at more emotional risk, which, I feel might be another barrier to participation. Conversely, I suspect that some of the reason some people enjoy playing racially aggressive Dwarves or Elves, or pedantic and zealous paladins is that the existing material provides expectations that give them cover to explore their own feelings about these (or similar) odious personality traits. If you bring something similar to a Fate game as a list of aspects then that's all on you, good or ill. You don't get to pass it off on some other author. (Unless, of course, you're playing in an established setting.)



pemerton said:


> I think I find that that MHRP approach creates a lighter, more "frothy" and slightly wacky game; whereas the BW approach - at least at it's best - can be more intense and push the player harder. (Eg because there's no framework to fall back on, the justification is that _I thought this made for a good Belief_. So the player's artistic (?) judgement is on the line.)




IME, non-sim/narrative supers games all seem to have this problem to some degree. I dunno why. _Capes_ has an almost irresistible tendency to silly with the supers. Yet when I switched to Fantasy...we went hours without whacky. I haven't noticed any particular tendency of the systems themselves to create this kind of atmosphere. Obviously, YMMV quite a bit.



pemerton said:


> You've taken this thought further than I had in my mind when I posted. I was thinking of much more banal stuff like, if you want the cooking of a meal to be a big deal in the game, then you need a mechanical framework that can make that happen. In BW this is via the mechanics for "linked tests" - a type of augment - so if your cooking stuffs up you make your friends sick/hungry and they get a downstream penalty, but if you cook well then everyone gets an appropriate buff; and in the session I mentioned I spent metagame resources to boost my cooking dice pool in an attempt to get the buff (I didn't get the buff but didn't cause a penalty either). This can't happen in a system where there is no resolution system for cooking, no way to make it matter (eg penalties/buffs flowing from it), no way for the player to _show_ that it matters (eg spending metagame resources on it), etc.
> 
> But if I'm understanding you properly, you're not talking just about mechanical elements that can make some subject matter of endeavour _actually count_ - like cooking, or mending (something that also came up in my BW session), or similar "mundane" things. You're talking about resolution frameworks for establishing consequences that drive things in particular ways (eg murder mystery vs questing journey).




Correct. I've seen several Apocalypse Engine games do this with marginal-but-substantive success, although they tend to be even more successful at recreating the atmosphere of a particular genre. One of the things I like about _Blades in the Dark_ is that it frames all that resolution in a way that repeatedly "brings the story home". That is, sessions narratives are structured around a "score" for you and your band of miscreants. You start by choosing an opportunity, you work through it, then you recover/advance your position, etc. Want a longer session, do two scores. You can certainly have larger/longer plotlines (especially for your crew as a group), but even their operations are codified in what appears to me to be a substantial manner

I have a decent collection of story/fiction-first games, some from the Forge, some not. As I think you hit upon elsewhere, control of narrative power is often the actual crux of play. ("Sure, the Death Star is gonna get blown up, but _how_, and _who_ gets to decide?") Many of the games rely on currencies of one type or another, and a few are AFAICT completely playable as token&dice games that you could ignore the fiction with. I think that's when you've got a problem. Mechanics being so divorced from the fiction as to make any connection spurious and only an artifact of direct effort put forth by the participants.* It can turn a game into some kind of weird improv session. I think they've shifted away from that, but often not entirely. 

*To be fair, I don't think it was totally unjustified, from a design point of view. Faced with the problem of supporting _any_ sort of story the players might want...naturally you try to create a universal adapter. However, that offload is (I believe) what makes it difficult to create that sort surprise or resolution tension we expect from entertainment. If the mechanics generate such results, then then can come at something more of a surprise.

anyway, that's probably enough for now.


----------



## Ratskinner (Jun 8, 2017)

I might slice and dice your post here a bit, because you kinda came at one thing through the back door talking about another.



pemerton said:


> Yes. I'm talking about what I know, and as I posted that's nothing very radical.
> 
> But I also think the RPG idea of "I am playing my person - my _me_ - in this fictional situation" has a genuine degree of power to it. So there's a _reason_ to try and make this work from the story point of view.




No accusation intended. 

I agree that there is a power there, but also a weakness WRT telling a story. Often, making a good/interesting story involves loss on the part of the protagonist. Most traditional rpgs have no mechanism rewarding a player for a substantive loss by their character. Reward mechanisms, like XP/leveling, are based solely on "winning" whatever goals the character has, and apply to the character and player as well. Contrast this with _Fiasco_, in which you the player can "win" by having your character suffer the most during the course of the game. (Although if you do win in this fashion, your character walks away winning as well.) This puts a player's immediate interests at odds with the character's immediate interests in a way that allows for plotlines that D&D would have great difficulty creating. 



pemerton said:


> Can you link this to a concrete example? For instance, putting to one side whether MHRP really counts as any sort of "story game", would you put it on the _potentially overly abstract_ side of the line?




That's a good question. Personally, I don't think so. Almost everything that I can think of in MHRP is tied directly to fiction. If you have an Asset, it has a fictional meaning/purpose/representation. I really like that about MHRP, and I feel like it shares a lot of DNA with FATE in this regard. However, they both also share one in-game "currency" that is potentially problematic this way. I have watched a very few Old-Schoolers have great difficulty utilizing a "generic" currency like Fate Points or Hero(?) Points. However, I consider that an outlier case possibly driven by obstinancy. I have never observed any young or new players having difficulty with the idea.

One example that comes to mind is _Fiasco_. So...on my turn, I'm going to get a black or white die, depending on if things went badly or well for my character, but otherwise me and some other guys are just gonna improv this out. 



pemerton said:


> This is interesting.
> 
> BW doesn't have these sorts of mechanics: the rules for Beliefs, Instincts etc are "write some interesting ones, and riff off other people's" - which is close to your ex nihilo scenario, though at prep time rather than in play. MHRP does have something closer to the sort of mechanic you mention, though, because eg a character might get XP for identifying an opponent as an old foe or an old friend. So the structured milestones create a framework for the players to drive the story in certain ways.





pemerton said:


> Policing of what?
> 
> I don't think I've found this, but I'm working of a narrow experience base and may not be fully following your point!





pemerton said:


> In the systems I run this is all put onto the GM's shoulders - the GM is expected to be able to frame scenes and narrate consequences in a way that is appropriate to the demands of genre, character, situation, etc (be that mystery or quest) using rather generic mechanics (eg the BW system for resolving checks) and rather generic techniques (eg "fail forward", "say 'yes' or roll the dice", etc). Is this part of what you have in mind when you talk about the need for GM "policing" - that when the GM's tools are the sorts of "generic" tools I've described, then s/he has to make affirmative judgement calls abut the unfolding shape of the fiction in a way that isn't the case in a tactical game?




Yes. This is exactly what I was getting at, although I was struggling to find the correct words. Did a character _actually_ address his belief? Who judges? How do you decide? Basically, a lot of narrative "adjudication" work gets off-loaded onto the participants. (Not that that can't be successful.) I agree with you that it puts players at more emotional risk, which, I feel might be another barrier to participation. Conversely, I suspect that some of the reason some people enjoy playing racially aggressive Dwarves or Elves, or pedantic and zealous paladins is that the existing material provides expectations that give them cover to explore their own feelings about these (or similar) odious personality traits. If you bring something similar to a Fate game as a list of aspects then that's all on you, good or ill. You don't get to pass it off on some other author. (Unless, of course, you're playing in an established setting.)



pemerton said:


> I think I find that that MHRP approach creates a lighter, more "frothy" and slightly wacky game; whereas the BW approach - at least at it's best - can be more intense and push the player harder. (Eg because there's no framework to fall back on, the justification is that _I thought this made for a good Belief_. So the player's artistic (?) judgement is on the line.)




IME, non-sim/narrative supers games all seem to have this problem to some degree. I dunno why. _Capes_ has an almost irresistible tendency to silly with the supers. Yet when I switched to Fantasy...we went hours without whacky. I haven't noticed any particular tendency of the systems themselves to create this kind of atmosphere. Obviously, YMMV quite a bit.



pemerton said:


> You've taken this thought further than I had in my mind when I posted. I was thinking of much more banal stuff like, if you want the cooking of a meal to be a big deal in the game, then you need a mechanical framework that can make that happen. In BW this is via the mechanics for "linked tests" - a type of augment - so if your cooking stuffs up you make your friends sick/hungry and they get a downstream penalty, but if you cook well then everyone gets an appropriate buff; and in the session I mentioned I spent metagame resources to boost my cooking dice pool in an attempt to get the buff (I didn't get the buff but didn't cause a penalty either). This can't happen in a system where there is no resolution system for cooking, no way to make it matter (eg penalties/buffs flowing from it), no way for the player to _show_ that it matters (eg spending metagame resources on it), etc.
> 
> But if I'm understanding you properly, you're not talking just about mechanical elements that can make some subject matter of endeavour _actually count_ - like cooking, or mending (something that also came up in my BW session), or similar "mundane" things. You're talking about resolution frameworks for establishing consequences that drive things in particular ways (eg murder mystery vs questing journey).




Correct. I've seen several Apocalypse Engine games do this with marginal-but-substantive success, although they tend to be even more successful at recreating the atmosphere of a particular genre. One of the things I like about _Blades in the Dark_ is that it frames all that resolution in a way that repeatedly "brings the story home". That is, sessions narratives are structured around a "score" for you and your band of miscreants. You start by choosing an opportunity, you work through it, then you recover/advance your position, etc. Want a longer session, do two scores. You can certainly have larger/longer plotlines (especially for your crew as a group), but even their operations are codified in what appears to me to be a substantial manner

I have a decent collection of story/fiction-first games, some from the Forge, some not. As I think you hit upon elsewhere, control of narrative power is often the actual crux of play. ("Sure, the Death Star is gonna get blown up, but _how_, and _who_ gets to decide?") Many of the games rely on currencies of one type or another, and a few are AFAICT completely playable as token&dice games that you could ignore the fiction with. I think that's when you've got a problem. Mechanics being so divorced from the fiction as to make any connection spurious and only an artifact of direct effort put forth by the participants.* It can turn a game into some kind of weird improv session. I think they've shifted away from that, but often not entirely. 

*To be fair, I don't think it was totally unjustified, from a design point of view. Faced with the problem of supporting _any_ sort of story the players might want...naturally you try to create a universal adapter. However, that offload is (I believe) what makes it difficult to create that sort surprise or resolution tension we expect from entertainment. If the mechanics generate such results, then then can come at something more of a surprise.

anyway, that's probably enough for now.


----------



## pemerton (Jun 8, 2017)

[MENTION=6688937]Ratskinner[/MENTION], there's a lot in your post, this is just picking up on the bits where I thought I had something to contribute.



Ratskinner said:


> Often, making a good/interesting story involves loss on the part of the protagonist. Most traditional rpgs have no mechanism rewarding a player for a substantive loss by their character. Reward mechanisms, like XP/leveling, are based solely on "winning" whatever goals the character has, and apply to the character and player as well. Contrast this with _Fiasco_, in which you the player can "win" by having your character suffer the most during the course of the game. (Although if you do win in this fashion, your character walks away winning as well.) This puts a player's immediate interests at odds with the character's immediate interests in a way that allows for plotlines that D&D would have great difficulty creating.



I know _of_ Fiasco but don't know it.

Of the systems I do know (again, nothing very radical) I like BW the best in this respect: advancing your PC _requires_ confronting challenges that you will almost certainly lose (unless you deploy a lot of metagame resources _and_ get lucky). So loss on the part of the protagonists is a recurring, sometimes near-constant, feature of the game.

I agree that D&D has a very hard time with this, as (i) there is no reason not to try and win, and (ii) the penalty for loss is often PC death.



Ratskinner said:


> IME, non-sim/narrative supers games all seem to have this problem to some degree. I dunno why. _Capes_ has an almost irresistible tendency to silly with the supers. Yet when I switched to Fantasy...we went hours without whacky.



My fantasy Cortex/MHRP isn't comedic, but it's is more light-hearted than typical D&D. I think in part because the system encourages the player to take the situation and run with it - there is no sober planning or worrying about consequences.

I find it rather liberating in this respect!



Ratskinner said:


> I suspect that some of the reason some people enjoy playing racially aggressive Dwarves or Elves, or pedantic and zealous paladins is that the existing material provides expectations that give them cover to explore their own feelings about these (or similar) odious personality traits. If you bring something similar to a Fate game as a list of aspects then that's all on you, good or ill. You don't get to pass it off on some other author.



Interesting point.

Because I've never done much system=story RPGing (even as simple a one as classic alignment) in a way that lets the player blame the author, I feel that I haven't seen a lot of what you describe. My players have tended to have to take responsibility for their PCs. But I'm aware that the phenomenon exists.



Ratskinner said:


> I have a decent collection of story/fiction-first games, some from the Forge, some not. As I think you hit upon elsewhere, control of narrative power is often the actual crux of play. ("Sure, the Death Star is gonna get blown up, but _how_, and _who_ gets to decide?") Many of the games rely on currencies of one type or another, and a few are AFAICT completely playable as token&dice games that you could ignore the fiction with. I think that's when you've got a problem. Mechanics being so divorced from the fiction as to make any connection spurious and only an artifact of direct effort put forth by the participants.



Vincent Baker wrote about this a while ago, contrasting IIEE _with teeth_ with IIEE that relies upon the participants to do the work of linking resolution to fiction (he contrasted his designs of DitV with In a Wicked Age).

Oddly enough, I think that 4e skill challenges have more "teeth" (in Baker's sense) than BW Duel of Wits, which _can_ become just a dice game if the players don't inject their fiction into it. (Whereas a move in a skill challenge can't be adjudicated, at least if the canonical procedure is being followed, until located in the fiction.)

Of course, classic D&D combat can suffer from this problem badly: dice are rolled, hits taken, but who knows _what_ is going on in the fiction! - it's all just numbers.



Ratskinner said:


> Faced with the problem of supporting _any_ sort of story the players might want...naturally you try to create a universal adapter. However, that offload is (I believe) what makes it difficult to create that sort surprise or resolution tension we expect from entertainment. If the mechanics generate such results, then then can come at something more of a surprise.



I feel that the issue of _surprise_ can be divorced from the issue of _teeth for IIEE_ - but I'm not sure I'm going to be able to articulate it clearly. It's more a gut feel, based on play experiences with 4e skills and BW.

But - as per my earlier post - it shifts a _big_ load onto the GM to be able to narrate consequences. The system won't, in itself, carry that load, though it can help (I'm thinking of the DW list of "GM moves", and a less canonical equivalent in the BW Adventure Burner advising the GM about options for narrating failure).


----------



## pemerton (Jun 8, 2017)

Also [MENTION=6688937]Ratskinner[/MENTION], double post => double XP. A strategy for level gain!


----------



## The Crimson Binome (Jun 8, 2017)

Ratskinner said:


> I agree that there is a power there, but also a weakness WRT telling a story. Often, making a good/interesting story involves loss on the part of the protagonist. Most traditional rpgs have no mechanism rewarding a player for a substantive loss by their character. Reward mechanisms, like XP/leveling, are based solely on "winning" whatever goals the character has, and apply to the character and player as well. Contrast this with _Fiasco_, in which you the player can "win" by having your character suffer the most during the course of the game. (Although if you do win in this fashion, your character walks away winning as well.) This puts a player's immediate interests at odds with the character's immediate interests in a way that allows for plotlines that D&D would have great difficulty creating.



That's why it's hard to categorize something like D&D or GURPS as the same type of game as FATE or Fiasco. From a role-playing perspective, the story is just how you refer to the events that happen as a result of your role-playing. When you're playing a traditional RPG, you're not _trying_ to tell a story; you just worry about playing your character, and whatever happens is what happens. If it's not dramatically satisfying - if it wouldn't make a good/interesting story for someone else to read about - then that's not terribly important.


----------



## aramis erak (Jun 9, 2017)

Jhaelen said:


> Now brace yourself: CR worked for me, too!
> I suppose, everyone who disagrees with you regarding CR is on your ignore list




CR worked reasonably well for me in 3.0 through about level 8...

The CR system in 5E worked well right up to level 10.


----------



## Ratskinner (Jun 9, 2017)

Saelorn said:


> That's why it's hard to categorize something like D&D or GURPS as the same type of game as FATE or Fiasco. From a role-playing perspective, the story is just how you refer to the events that happen as a result of your role-playing. When you're playing a traditional RPG, you're not _trying_ to tell a story; you just worry about playing your character, and whatever happens is what happens. If it's not dramatically satisfying - if it wouldn't make a good/interesting story for someone else to read about - then that's not terribly important.




I tend to agree about there being a distinct difference, but I do make finer distinctions. For example, I don't categorize Fate and Fiasco together, because Fate still has mechanics that define a character distinctly from a story, and most players still affect the world most directly through the actions of a single character. I tend to think of Role-Playing games in terms of "Generations", WRT Story Games:

1st Gen: Games that do not acknowledge narrative causality/story concerns mechanically. Most mechanics are concrete (have direct representation in the fiction), those that are not tend to be abstract for the purpose of simplifying a complex system that would be difficult or tedious to calculate at table. Examples: Old-School D&D, GURPS, most Gumshoe games, tons of games from the 80's and 90's, Fudge straddled the line between 1st and 2nd gen, depending on how groups used Fudge Points (IME).

2nd Gen: Games that have some mechanical recognition of story or narrative concerns, but still maintain a traditional "core" of resolution mechanics that are the "bread and butter" of the system. The most moderate versions of these represent 1st gen games with some kind of story motivator bolted-on (some kind of action, hero, or plot points or perhaps some kind of XP system for roleplaying a weakness). The more extreme sorta blend into third generation games, dropping almost all detail from what are otherwise concrete mechanics and relying more heavily on narrative justification and impetus. Examples: 4e (moderate), 5e (barely), 
any version or derivative of D&D with various add-ons like the _Sweet 20 Experience System_, Burning Wheel (slightly less moderate), Fate & MHRP (more extreme), Some Apocalypse Engine games (Dungeon World, Apocalypse World itself arguably).  

3rd Gen: Games that tend to work without directly mechanically representing the fictional "physics" or "reality" and mechanically focus almost entirely on some level of narrative causality. There are many obscure examples from the Forge that verge on Story Games.  Examples: Some Apocalypse Engine games (Uncharted Worlds, Worlds in Peril, Fellowship), Fiasco, Capes (obscure and possibly a Story game), Archipelago. 

Story Games: Mechanics are almost entirely abstract from the fiction, AND(!) players are not attached to a particular character for their action within the fiction space. Examples: Once Upon a Time, Universalis (an early shot, but doesn't have mechanical closure for plot threads), Baron Munchausen(? -haven't actually played it), some improv and wiki games. 

First gen games tend to provoke a lot of fudging and/or rail-roading by GMs who really want to be running a second or third gen game. Second or third gen games tend to drive some hardcore folks nuts because they often feel at a loss to deal with mechanics that aren't actually "in" the fiction, or don't want to be authoring events from outside their character's actions. Many second gen games and even some third gen games aren't really good at "closing" plotlines, even if the mechanics reflect and awareness of them. You can see this with some weird corner-case mechanics (luck, some magic, hit-on-a-miss, come and get it) that do or don't drive folks nuts. 

Anyway, that's my current $.02 on the subject.


----------



## Ratskinner (Jun 9, 2017)

pemerton said:


> [MENTION=6688937]Ratskinner[/MENTION], there's a lot in your post, this is just picking up on the bits where I thought I had something to contribute.




I do tend to ramble.




pemerton said:


> My fantasy Cortex/MHRP isn't comedic, but it's is more light-hearted than typical D&D. I think in part because the system encourages the player to take the situation and run with it - there is no sober planning or worrying about consequences.
> 
> I find it rather liberating in this respect!




I've come to appreciate that kind of speed in a game as well. People worry about how long it takes to resolve things...but I see my group spending far more time planning things that they really shouldn't have time to do. (Although the difference between Real Life and having a GM tell you stuff must be allowed for.)




pemerton said:


> Interesting point.
> 
> Because I've never done much system=story RPGing (even as simple a one as classic alignment) in a way that lets the player blame the author, I feel that I haven't seen a lot of what you describe. My players have tended to have to take responsibility for their PCs. But I'm aware that the phenomenon exists.




Its weird to me how the same "alignment argument" which actually just boil down to "are racist ideas _real_ in this fictional world" are still happening. My group just had one a year or two ago...with players who have been playing for decades, no less. IMO, it sorta shows up the fundamental problem with idea of absolute/objective morality.



pemerton said:


> Vincent Baker wrote about this a while ago, contrasting IIEE _with teeth_ with IIEE that relies upon the participants to do the work of linking resolution to fiction (he contrasted his designs of DitV with In a Wicked Age).
> 
> Oddly enough, I think that 4e skill challenges have more "teeth" (in Baker's sense) than BW Duel of Wits, which _can_ become just a dice game if the players don't inject their fiction into it. (Whereas a move in a skill challenge can't be adjudicated, at least if the canonical procedure is followed, until located in the fiction.)
> 
> Of course, classic D&D combat can suffer from this problem badly: dice are rolled, hits taken, but who knows _what_ is going on in the fiction! - it's all just numbers.




Yup. HP ::shakes fist:: Make it an accounting game. Trying to play TotM doesn't really help any, IME. I'd like to see a system (for story-first gaming) where players look at a fight and decide what resources to devote, the GM puts some kind of risk or challenge dice into play...roll accordingly, and the mechanics kick out "things that happened" during the fight (or phase of the fight). Make it swift and move along. Maybe you could even do something like the end of Fiasco where you narrate what the die represents as you dispose of it.



pemerton said:


> I feel that the issue of _surprise_ can be divorced from the issue of _teeth for IIEE_ - but I'm not sure I'm going to be able to articulate it clearly. It's more a gut feel, based on play experiences with 4e skills and BW.
> 
> But - as per my earlier post - it shifts a _big_ load onto the GM to be able to narrate consequences. The system won't, in itself, carry that load, though it can help (I'm thinking of the DW list of "GM moves", and a less canonical equivalent in the BW Adventure Burner advising the GM about options for narrating failure).




I think so. 

Imagine a monster defined by something like tags in DW, instead of a tag like _messy_ we have a list of "bad stuff"  that the system kicks out on a trigger. The GM would only be "on the spot" for all that when homebrewing something new. 

Harder, perhaps for social situations


----------



## pemerton (Jun 10, 2017)

Ratskinner said:


> Imagine a monster defined by something like tags in DW, instead of a tag like _messy_ we have a list of "bad stuff"  that the system kicks out on a trigger. The GM would only be "on the spot" for all that when homebrewing something new.
> 
> Harder, perhaps for social situations



I remember a thread on [the Forge? RPG.net?] where someone was complaining about this for BW Duel of Wits - that the rules talk about the need for a compromise but don't "kick out" the actual content of the  compromise.

Also, in your "generations" of games, how does something like T&T's very abstract melee mechanics fit in?


----------



## Ratskinner (Jun 11, 2017)

pemerton said:


> I remember a thread on [the Forge? RPG.net?] where someone was complaining about this for BW Duel of Wits - that the rules talk about the need for a compromise but don't "kick out" the actual content of the  compromise.
> 
> Also, in your "generations" of games, how does something like T&T's very abstract melee mechanics fit in?




I'm not familiar enough with T&T to know.


----------



## aramis erak (Jun 12, 2017)

Ratskinner said:


> I'm not familiar enough with T&T to know.




T&T Combat in  nutshell:
Everyone is presumed to hit. Go straight on to rolling damage.
Total all the damages on each side; 
Find the difference in side totals
Lower total divides the difference amongst themselves evenly; fractions are divvied out as whole points one apiece until gone.
Subtract armor from damage assigned to you. 
Reduce current Con by that amount.
Repeat.

resolution is at the engagement level, and is side total vs side total. So rather abstract.


----------



## Ratskinner (Jun 13, 2017)

aramis erak said:


> T&T Combat in  nutshell:
> Everyone is presumed to hit. Go straight on to rolling damage.
> Total all the damages on each side;
> Find the difference in side totals
> ...




From that description, it depends on the sources of the damage dice, the rest sounds like a rather abstract 1st Gen game. If the mechanics all directly represent or reflect physical traits, abilities, or actions in the fiction, then its 1st gen.  If dice are sourced from abstract things like motivations, or some kind of hero points, then it probably leans into 2nd Gen.


----------



## aramis erak (Jun 13, 2017)

Ratskinner said:


> From that description, it depends on the sources of the damage dice, the rest sounds like a rather abstract 1st Gen game. If the mechanics all directly represent or reflect physical traits, abilities, or actions in the fiction, then its 1st gen.  If dice are sourced from abstract things like motivations, or some kind of hero points, then it probably leans into 2nd Gen.




It's not all physical. Dice by weapon, adds by +1 per point over 12, –1 per point under 9, for each of Strength, Dexterity, and Luck. 

If it's not "1st gen", your categorization is totally F*f, as its 1975 publication date and post-GenCon 1974 writing date put it as one of the first 5 RPGs in print.


----------



## Lanefan (Jun 13, 2017)

aramis erak said:


> It's not all physical. Dice by weapon, adds by +1 per point over 12, –1 per point under 9, for each of Strength, Dexterity, and Luck.
> 
> If it's not "1st gen", your categorization is totally F*f, as its 1975 publication date and post-GenCon 1974 writing date put it as one of the first 5 RPGs in print.



Sounds more like it might be an example of "0th gen" along with OD&D.


----------



## aramis erak (Jun 13, 2017)

Lanefan said:


> Sounds more like it might be an example of "0th gen" along with OD&D.




Perhaps; it's much less a wargame than is D&D.

For some groups, a melee is just one big fight for all in scene characters and monsters.
For others, a single fight scene is a collection of multiple melees. The latter tend to use tokens or minis to mark who is where.

In practice, it's not that simple.

Step 1: declarations
step 2: any needed saves, including missile to-hits and spell casting saves (for over-level spells)
Step 3: melee rolls and missile damage rolls.
Step 4: totals
Step 5: allocate damage
Step 6: reduce damage by armor
Step 7: apply damage

Steps 1 & 2 make it very much unlike D&D in practice.
Why? Because in the rules since 4th ed, perhaps before (I've not seen prior to 4th), the example allow pulling various stunts which potentially increase damage rolls, or change how damage will be allocated, or include/exclude various PC's/NPCs from the combat. 
Failed SRs not only fail to accomplish whatever, but also do damage to the guy attempting it.

D&D doesn't strongly encourage wild creativity; T&T does. D&D, if anything, encourages wargame mode.

Other elements of T&T are in fact explicitly reactions to LBB/LWB D&D: 

Luck instead of Wisdom
Spell level is the level of the character required to cast without rolling a save.
No difference between wizards/clerics.
No alignments.
Attribute multipliers rather than additive modifiers for species
Alternate terms: Type instead of Class, Kindred instead of Race
Type is about magic use almost exclusively: Warrior = no magic, Rogue = untrained/semi-trained caster, Wizard = trained caster. (D&D class in LWB/LBB D&D is source of magic: None, Gods, Training)
Experience increases level, level increases attributes directly and casting capability. (D&D level increases HP and To Hit, as well as casting for Wiz/Cler; the D&D rogue wasn't out yet. It also increases saves.)
Saves always on luck* (LBB/LWB D&D saves based upon class and level, with small attribute mods) In 5th and later, saves on other attributes explicitly allowed for adjudication of skilled efforts.


----------



## Ratskinner (Jun 13, 2017)

aramis erak said:


> It's not all physical. Dice by weapon, adds by +1 per point over 12, –1 per point under 9, for each of Strength, Dexterity, and Luck.
> 
> If it's not "1st gen", your categorization is totally F*f, as its 1975 publication date and post-GenCon 1974 writing date put it as one of the first 5 RPGs in print.



The generations are not necessarily temporal. I'm given to understand that there was a very early Arthurian game that featured some heavily narrative mechanics. (the name eludes me and I never played it back in the day.) Nonetheless, the description still sounds 1st gen. "Luck" is the only thing I've heard so far that might be questionable.

Also, keep in mind that this is just how I personally view the development of narrative or story centric mechanics in rpgs. I'm not suggesting that everyone adopt this or even that its the most important "trend" in rpg history.

Sent from my LG-TP450 using EN World mobile app


----------

