AD&D: 1st and 2nd Edition

[Yora]

I often hear that people like the 1st Edition a lot more, while 2nd Edition seems to have a reputation of "meh...".

I only started to look at the 2nd Edition when 3rd Edition was already about to be released, and I don't know anything about te first. How are they different and what makes the 2nd Edition not so good?

[Viktyr Gehrig]

The relative merits of the two editions aside, one of the major causes of the preference for 1e is Gygax partisanship: 2e was designed and launched after Gygax had been forced out of TSR.

As for the differences themselves, 2e is mostly a collection and reorganization of AD&D with more optional rules included; Weapon and Non-Weapon Proficiencies, which had arisen in AD&D supplements, were now core (if optional) rules. AD&D 2e was a much more modular game, and was the first D&D game designed to be adaptable to different settings.

Of course, this was also at the expense of a good deal of flavor. 2e was a simpler, drier text with less of the flourishes that people had come to expect from Gygax's work. It was also a sanitized version of the game, having had elements like random harlot tables, PC Assassins, nudity, and the various demons and devils edited out.

2e also had far, far more supplements published for it than 1e, some of which were of notably poor quality. There was heavy editorial pressure to publish books as fast as humanly possible and playtesting was actually forbidden on company property and time. Unlike 1e, which was a complete game in three books, to really get the most out of 2e you had to own everything.

None of this is intended as a slight against 2e, its fans or its designers. It is still more or less my favorite version of D&D, and it was the version of D&D that offered the greatest variety of character types and was most adaptable to a variety of settings.

[kaomera]

I often hear that people like the 1st Edition a lot more, while 2nd Edition seems to have a reputation of "meh...".
2e came at a time at the end of the ''golden age'' of D&D, when you had both more and more other games on the market and fewer RPGers in general. Also, 2e as a rule-set seems to be fairly widely given a bad comparison to some of the setting material that came out for it, simply because some of that setting material was pretty awesome.

[ken-do-nim]

2E removed a lot of the flavor that was in 1E. For instance ...

The illusionist class was folded into the wizard class. The wizard specialist rules with getting an extra spell for the specialized school don't compare to having a completely individualized spell list, and some other different class rules besides.

The ranger switched archetypes from Aragorn to Robin Hood.

They got rid of the full weapons and armor table, and introduced a new simpler one, and now you see people bonking men in plate armor with quarterstaves.

Psionics completely revamped ... and then revamped again :) I actually really enjoy the point based guessing game of 1E psionic combat.

Bards a starting class I like, but they should have just kept it the way it was done in Dragon magazine. The 2E bard is a weird class that gets 6th level magic-user spells before the magic-user does.

Then there are little things like saying the globe of invulnerability spells are stationary.

Yes of course 2E did some things right. The thief point based system is great. The combat system is coherent. Lots of new cool spells. Weapon handedness explained. I find the skill system unnecessary.

Put me down as somebody who actively plays 1E, and pulls back rules from 2E that are cool.

[MeeposFire]

2E removed a lot of the flavor that was in 1E. For instance ...

The illusionist class was folded into the wizard class. The wizard specialist rules with getting an extra spell for the specialized school don't compare to having a completely individualized spell list, and some other different class rules besides.

The ranger switched archetypes from Aragorn to Robin Hood.

They got rid of the full weapons and armor table, and introduced a new simpler one, and now you see people bonking men in plate armor with quarterstaves.

Psionics completely revamped ... and then revamped again :) I actually really enjoy the point based guessing game of 1E psionic combat.

Bards a starting class I like, but they should have just kept it the way it was done in Dragon magazine. The 2E bard is a weird class that gets 6th level magic-user spells before the magic-user does.

Then there are little things like saying the globe of invulnerability spells are stationary.

Yes of course 2E did some things right. The thief point based system is great. The combat system is coherent. Lots of new cool spells. Weapon handedness explained. I find the skill system unnecessary.

Put me down as somebody who actively plays 1E, and pulls back rules from 2E that are cool.

Oddly I do 2e and pull 1e stuff I like. Granted the differences are really academic at that point. I start with 2e since the 1e game has far too many little minor rules that I don't care for but some things I like. I use things like the monk class (modified of course) but I like to use Thac0 instead of keeping tables around even if they end up the same (math bothers me not).

[Premier]

Here's my answer:

- 1st ed. and early 2nd ed. are so close to each other ruleswise that the minor differences reall don't make or break either. However, later on 2nd ed. moved away from its earlier design decisions with the slew of class and race splatbooks, and even moreso with the Skills & Powers supplements. These, in their time, did introduce some serious differences in the rules and how they played out in practice, rendering it unpalatable to 1st ed. players.

- 2nd ed. published adventure modules were, as a rule with few exceptions, lackluster. (And I'm being more reserved than many critics.) That can really colour your perception of a game. A shame, because they had some nice ideas for settings, but with poor modules they couldn't capitalise on them.

- There are some other points others have mentioned (like Gary's ousting and the related personnel change alienating the fans), but I think these are really more subjective issues and not really actual observations on quality.

[hamlet]

2e also had far, far more supplements published for it than 1e, some of which were of notably poor quality. There was heavy editorial pressure to publish books as fast as humanly possible and playtesting was actually forbidden on company property and time. Unlike 1e, which was a complete game in three books, to really get the most out of 2e you had to own everything.

Absolutely and utterly untrue. AD&D 2nd edition was a complete game within the first three books. The supplements were precisely that, optional supplements. It was only a very few and very late modules/gamebooks that actually incorporated the materials in any of the supplements, and that was mostly in the waning 2.5 days.

[Yora]

As the kind of guy who prefers to play with PHB only, the changes all sound like really good ideas to me.

[ken-do-nim]

Oddly I do 2e and pull 1e stuff I like. Granted the differences are really academic at that point. I start with 2e since the 1e game has far too many little minor rules that I don't care for but some things I like. I use things like the monk class (modified of course) but I like to use Thac0 instead of keeping tables around even if they end up the same (math bothers me not).

That's where I was 10 years ago :smallsmile: Either way, it's AD&D and it's a lot of fun.

[LibraryOgre]

IME, perspective tends to be based on which you started with. I started with 2e, so it tends to be my go-to edition for a lot, though I recognize that there's some truly awesome material for 1e that I bring in... especially adventures.

[Yora]

Of all the things about the older editions, the one that seems the most awful to me are adventures. :smallbiggrin:

I've read a couple of Gygax adventures, and man! Those are really, really, horribly awful!
I suppose the reason anyone claims something different is pure nostalgia.

[Hoddypeak]

Some areas of 2e, like the classes, are notably different. I like the way 2e organized the classes into groups with similar base rules, but the 1e classes had more individual flavor.

Other areas, like the combat rules, have incremental changes from 1e. Areas like initiative were cleared up. Actually, weapon proficiencies are in the 1e PHB; I think they get one whole paragraph.

The main improvement 2e had over 1e was better formatting. The rules are much more clearly organized and presented. Gygax was a great module writer, and he did a much better job of explaining the reasoning behind the rules than any later editions of D&D did, but he was atrocious at actually presenting the rules coherently.

[LibraryOgre]

What makes you think they're awful?

[kaomera]

I've read a couple of Gygax adventures, and man! Those are really, really, horribly awful!
I suppose the reason anyone claims something different is pure nostalgia.
Um, you do realize that's more than a bit insulting, right? The ''pure nostalgia'' part, that is; you're certainly free to have your own opinion of the material, but it's not actually subjectively bad. There's certainly plenty of ''classic'' material that I just don't appreciate, personally, but you have to keep in mind that it's a ''classic'' largely because it met and surpassed the needs and expectations of a decent number of people.

I'd ask: Which modules are you referring to, and what where you expecting them to be / do?

[Viktyr Gehrig]

Absolutely and utterly untrue. AD&D 2nd edition was a complete game within the first three books.

In the same sense that 4e is, I suppose, but less so. You can create characters and play them out of the core, but all of the distinctive features of 2e came from the supplements. Without the campaign settings and the PHBRs and Player's Option, 2e was more like the Hypertext SRD than a real game.

[Randomatic]

In the same sense that 4e is, I suppose, but less so. You can create characters and play them out of the core, but all of the distinctive features of 2e came from the supplements. Without the campaign settings and the PHBRs and Player's Option, 2e was more like the Hypertext SRD than a real game.

If 1e had the same number of supplements that 2e and further editions did, then people could say the exact same thing about it. The core of all of the editions contains around the same amount of material.

[hamlet]

In the same sense that 4e is, I suppose, but less so. You can create characters and play them out of the core, but all of the distinctive features of 2e came from the supplements. Without the campaign settings and the PHBRs and Player's Option, 2e was more like the Hypertext SRD than a real game.

I disagree in entirety.

Not least because EVERY SINGLE THING after the PHB DMG and MM was labeled as entirely optional, which is patently not the case with 4e.

The entirerty of the AD&D 2nd edition game core was contained within the first three published books. The rest of it was optional expansion that at no real time was ever required nor was it the defining quality or distinctive feature of the edition.

[Zombimode]

Of all the things about the older editions, the one that seems the most awful to me are adventures. :smallbiggrin:

I've read a couple of Gygax adventures, and man! Those are really, really, horribly awful!
I suppose the reason anyone claims something different is pure nostalgia.

Oh yes. Crack up "Isle of the Ape". Its hilariously awful. The writing is so full of vitriol. The encounter desing is supposed to challenge a 12-15th level party but fails miserably because the author (no one less then Mr. Gygax himself) seems to grossly misunderstand what an AD&D party of that level is actualy capable of. The "story" is thin and feels uninspired.
The module is good for a laugh if you dont take it seriously.

Or "Mordenkainens Fantastic Adventure" which is more or less a collection of anecdotes from Gygax gaming table.

Honestly, Im a bit suprised on that reception of the 2e modules. Maybe Im just not familiar with the bad one, but I always had the impression that 2e modules are much more polished, had better writing and a more sophisticated artwork. And most importantly they had actualy good stories and varied adventuring locations, while most 1e modules are just dungeon crawls with an token story - or at least thats the impression I got.
Im talking about modules like Four from Cormyr, For Duty and Deity, The Vale of the Mage, the Randal Morn series. I havent seen modules of that quality for 1e.

[Lapak]

In the same sense that 4e is, I suppose, but less so. You can create characters and play them out of the core, but all of the distinctive features of 2e came from the supplements. Without the campaign settings and the PHBRs and Player's Option, 2e was more like the Hypertext SRD than a real game.Yeah, I'm going to have to disagree with you on that one. I played with nothing but the core books for years and it was as complete a game as any. I'm not at all clear on what you think of as the 'distinctive features' of 2e that were missing.

[Hoddypeak]

Honestly, Im a bit suprised on that reception of the 2e modules. Maybe Im just not familiar with the bad one, but I always had the impression that 2e modules are much more polished, had better writing and a more sophisticated artwork. And most importantly they had actualy good stories and varied adventuring locations, while most 1e modules are just dungeon crawls with an token story - or at least thats the impression I got.


Now you've hit on the fundamental shift that occurred in module design once Gygax left TSR. Early modules were just that, locations that could be dropped in to any DM's campaign with only minimal change. They were basically things you could hand a DM and say "here, the work of designing traps and NPC's has been done for you, but you'll have to figure out how it will work best in your story."

Later modules were written as storylines. It's true, they do all the planning for the DM, but if you want to just use part of that module in your campaign, good luck stripping away all the excess.

People who like Gygax's modules usually actually love that they're just a dungeon (and possibly a town) with a bare bones story idea, because they can be run time and again in different ways.

Take the example of the D&D module B2, Keep on the Borderlands. Off the top of my head, I can think numerous ways to run that module. It even works for an evil group of PCs who want to use the forces of the Caves of Chaos to storm the Keep. It can do that because there is no defined story, it's just a keep and its surrounding environment, and a whole lot of characters.

On the other topic at hand, core 2e is certainly its own viable and distinct game. It is the game I started with, and it works just fine. It has both improvements on 1e and places where it's not as good as 1e. And just like 1e, and OD&D before it, it has splatbooks that added optional rules. Anyone remember the original Greyhawk supplement, or those books like Unearthed Arcana or Oriental Adventures?

[Yora]

I've read Against the Giants, the Vault of the Drow campaign, and Tomb of Horror.
They all don't have any plots or NPCs. They are justa floorplans with notes what monsters and treasures are in each room. You go in, kill everything inside, take the loot, and you won!

And those are supposedly among the really outstanding "adventures". Though they did call them modules back then.

[hamlet]

I've read Against the Giants, the Vault of the Drow campaign, and Tomb of Horror.
They all don't have any plots or NPCs. They are justa floorplans with notes what monsters and treasures are in each room. You go in, kill everything inside, take the loot, and you won!

And those are supposedly among the really outstanding "adventures". Though they did call them modules back then.

Which is precisely the point. Back in "the day," adventures weren't there to supply you with story or plot. That was the DM's job. They were there to supply you with a series of room and monsters and traps to defeat or be defeated by.

Plus, if you don't actually notice the story threads in the GDQ series, then you just aren't paying attention. It's noted to be, essentially, the first adventure arc well before Pazio and WOTC 'invented' such things.

[Hoddypeak]

I've read Against the Giants, the Vault of the Drow campaign, and Tomb of Horror.
They all don't have any plots or NPCs. They are justa floorplans with notes what monsters and treasures are in each room. You go in, kill everything inside, take the loot, and you won!

Two things. First, you're comparing 1e tournament modules to later story modules. They aren't going to be at all similar because they have different goals. If you want to compare ToH or GDQ to something nearly equivalent, compare it to 4e DnD Encounters.

I'll give you that the ToH is just a floorplan without any NPC's (assuming you don't count the demilich). But no one claims it's the best story module ever written. People claim it's the best character killing dungeon, and that it has ingenious traps. Use it for what it's designed for, as a test of the skill of players to deal with unorthodox traps.

As for saying there are no NPCs in GDQ, I don't know that we're looking at the same set of modules. In G1 alone at a quick glance through the module, I count as important NPC's Nosnra, the unnamed cloud giant and 3 stone giants, the 3 orc leaders and the troglogyte leader. It's true, only 1 has a name, and personalities aren't given for any of them, but the relationships between them are clearly laid out. What more do you need to know what's going on here? That's 9 NPC's in charge of various factions, and from their implied relationships, I can decide as a DM how they will react to different things.

The one thing none of these modules have are very strong rails. They are just sandboxes with characters and relationships, and it's up to the players and the DM to play through it how they will.

[hamlet]

To be fair, the rails at the very beginning of G1 can, if you accept them, be very sharp. "Investigate the Steading or we'll cut off your head."

Of course, any DM worth his dice saw that and wrote his own intro to the module a long time ago.

[Hoddypeak]

True, but those are the tournament rails, which are necessary for starting up a tournament scenario. If the DM used those rails, any players worth their salt would simply take the opportunity to loot the Giants' stronghold, then return home and behead the Duke.

[hamlet]

Precisely. Those openers are there to provide the flimsiest of pretexts as to why a group of PC's is there to adventure, not to provide plot.

Tournament devices that don't require paragraphs of text to bore the players with.

[MeeposFire]

No edition of D&D needs more than the basic books to play unless you want something specific. Just because you have a bunch of optional books does not mean you have to use them. This goes for 4e as well. Everything is "core" but that does not mean you have to use everything or that you need to in fact if you play a Dark Sun game it is standard to omit all divine classes (though your DM could choose to allow them anyway. I had tons of fun just using the DMG, PHB, and MC (monstrous compendium) in 2e and did not need more (however I wanted more since who doesn't).

[Yora]

Though it was a deliberate move to get people to buy more books to put gnomes and druids in other books than the PHB.

[MeeposFire]

Though it was a deliberate move to get people to buy more books to put gnomes and druids in other books than the PHB.

Yes because the number of classes and races in the were totally lackluster :smallsigh: . Gnomes are way down the list of popular races so I doubt that was really a money decision and the druid was delayed because they were still trying to decide on how to handle wild shape.

[Kaervaslol]

In late 2e you play heroes.

In 1e you play adventurers.

I'm currently trying to get my group to play adventurers instead of heroes but their sense of entitlement is strong (I'm a paladin, I should get the holy avenger!/monster should challenge the party but the party must survive/etc).

[LibraryOgre]

In the same sense that 4e is, I suppose, but less so. You can create characters and play them out of the core, but all of the distinctive features of 2e came from the supplements. Without the campaign settings and the PHBRs and Player's Option, 2e was more like the Hypertext SRD than a real game.

Yeah, have to disagree with you. Even after all that came out, we were playing with just the base three and some FR material, but nothing resembling kits, class-building or anything else.

[Yora]

I've been playing 3.5e PHB only for years.
If you don't get players on the idea that they need an obscure race with LA +0 templates, dip three classes, and have to PrCs, they actually never ask about more options.

[MeeposFire]

Players will always use what you give them and that is all you need. Everything else is awesome gravy.

[Beleriphon]

In late 2e you play heroes.

In 1e you play adventurers.

I'm currently trying to get my group to play adventurers instead of heroes but their sense of entitlement is strong (I'm a paladin, I should get the holy avenger!/monster should challenge the party but the party must survive/etc).

I think those are both pretty fair statements. Bear with me though. The paladin should probably get a Holy Avenger at some point, like level 17 some point, by that point I don't think catering to the player's desires for the characters is at all unreasonable. Encounters should be challenging, but not overwhelmingly difficult. That doesn't just mean combat either, if you create any scenario that can't be overcome at all, then that just isn't fair to the players. Every fight should be a reasonable challenge, unless the player do something monunmentally stupid like decide hunting Great Wyrms is a good idea at level 1.

[MeeposFire]

Yea I don't see having tough but winnable encounters as being entitlement. That is what should be expected in any game.

[kaomera]

Yea I don't see having tough but winnable encounters as being entitlement. That is what should be expected in any game.
The ''entitlement'' comes in when players expect any encounter to be ''fair and balanced''... Forcing the PCs into fights they can't win is (usually) bad form, but there's no reason to assume that anything in the game world at any moment has to play by the rules insofar as level of challenge.

[MeeposFire]

The ''entitlement'' comes in when players expect any encounter to be ''fair and balanced''... Forcing the PCs into fights they can't win is (usually) bad form, but there's no reason to assume that anything in the game world at any moment has to play by the rules insofar as level of challenge.

If it isn't balanced then it really isn't an encounter. If you put a great wyrm dragon in front of 1st level heroes and you expect it to fight the heroes directly you are doing a bad job. If you use that same creature and it is an NPC that is fine. If the players are dumb and attack the NPC dragon anyway then it still wasn't really an encounter as you did not design it to be such. If you use that dragon to make the heroes run away then it isn't really an encounter but is instead a way to get the plot moving. Encounters are things that are meant to be overcome so if they cannot be overcome they are actually something else.

[Kenneth]

Yeah, have to disagree with you. Even after all that came out, we were playing with just the base three and some FR material, but nothing resembling kits, class-building or anything else.

THIS.

really the man was probably doing a ton more than you could magien with just the core 3 books


1sta nd 2nd ed leant themselve to more player creativity. you did not have to take the swashbuckler preistge class to be a swasbuckler.. you LIETRALLY descirbed your fighting style as you were playing, so you run up teh stairs jump off the rail to hang on to the chandelier (i think i misspelled that) then swung over to the OTHER set of stiar and contiued fighintg..

what really killed me the most was the dropping of this when later edition came along as they rewuired you to take the PrC/Feat/CLass that allowed a player to do this cool stuff.. it really took me a while to get over the fact that becuase i did not have X ic ouldn't do Y even though I just wanted to roleplay a dshing Errol FLynn style guy.. but NOO.. I had to be the dumb brute who smashed things with my greatsword....

[kaomera]

If it isn't balanced then it really isn't an encounter.
Yeah, if you can define an ''encounter'' that way then I agree with you. But in that case, I'd change my description of ''entitlement'' to: players thinking that they get to decide what's an encounter and what's not. That's just bad play, IMO, but for whatever reason it has seemed in my experience to come along with the newer editions for a lot of players. I don't see why (or even really how) it would be a system problem, but I've seen it happen nonetheless. Maybe (some) players have never really wanted to be challenged, they just want the illusion of challenge, and they just didn't feel that the earlier editions provided that?

That's just one aspect of entitlement, of course. Usually when it crops up for me it's players wanting every option available, all the time. I think in a real sense, newer editions have switched from the fiction mattering by default to it not mattering, at least by default. Ideally you get players who are willing to play the game rather than just the system, but it only takes one to spoil it for everybody.

[Viktyr Gehrig]

I'm not at all clear on what you think of as the 'distinctive features' of 2e that were missing.

The specific features of 2e-- the areas in which it was distinctively better than 1e-- were the development of kits and specialist wizards and priests. Core 2e had all of those tools included but with no indication of how to use them.

Otherwise, 2nd Edition AD&D was just a better organized re-printing of 1st Edition with much of the unique identity filtered out and whitewashed. Everything that 2nd Edition added to the D&D experience came from the supplements. Compare that with the shift from Old D&D to AD&D, or from AD&D to 3.X-- or even, for that matter, from 3.0 to 3.5 and from 3.5 to Pathfinder-- and you're left with the question of why they even published a new edition (aside from corporate politics) and why anyone would have bothered to upgrade from the older books.

Then the supplements started using those tools, and those questions were answered.


And just like 1e, and OD&D before it, it has splatbooks that added optional rules. Anyone remember the original Greyhawk supplement, or those books like Unearthed Arcana or Oriental Adventures?

Absolutely. The point I'm trying to make is that 1e supplements like Oriental Adventures and Unearthed Arcana added new features to the game-- which I loved-- while 2e supplements unlocked features that were built into the core. AD&D 1e was a complete game in three books, while AD&D 2e was more like a game toolkit with extra pieces that you didn't know what to do with until they started releasing add-ons that used them.


Yea I don't see having tough but winnable encounters as being entitlement. That is what should be expected in any game.

See, expecting all of the encounters to be "tough but winnable" is an entitlement; you are expressing the belief that the players are entitled to only having to deal with encounters that meet those criteria. There's nothing wrong with believing that you are entitled to certain things, especially in a social context in which that belief is reinforced, but that entitlement and the social context that reinforces it were not present in older versions of D&D.

Before 3e, you just had encounters. Some encounters were easy and some were impossible to defeat in combat-- and it was the players' job to know which was which. Forcing players into impossible combats is poor DMing, I will absolutely agree, but putting in opponents that the PCs can not kill and letting them choose whether or not to try is fair game.

To compare it to video games for a second, there's an entire genre of video games in which combat encounters are expected to be nigh-impossible and in which the goal is to avoid them. These games are considered fun and challenging and fair by their fans. Likewise, there are games in which the best strategy changes from level to level. Putting 1st level characters in front of a powerful dragon is something like that-- except that with dragons, unlike classed NPCs, it is obvious that combat is not going to be a winning strategy.

[ken-do-nim]

Oh yes. Crack up "Isle of the Ape". Its hilariously awful. The writing is so full of vitriol. The encounter desing is supposed to challenge a 12-15th level party but fails miserably because the author (no one less then Mr. Gygax himself) seems to grossly misunderstand what an AD&D party of that level is actualy capable of. The "story" is thin and feels uninspired.
The module is good for a laugh if you dont take it seriously.

Or "Mordenkainens Fantastic Adventure" which is more or less a collection of anecdotes from Gygax gaming table.

Honestly, Im a bit suprised on that reception of the 2e modules. Maybe Im just not familiar with the bad one, but I always had the impression that 2e modules are much more polished, had better writing and a more sophisticated artwork. And most importantly they had actualy good stories and varied adventuring locations, while most 1e modules are just dungeon crawls with an token story - or at least thats the impression I got.
Im talking about modules like Four from Cormyr, For Duty and Deity, The Vale of the Mage, the Randal Morn series. I havent seen modules of that quality for 1e.

Of course the deciding factor for a module should not be how it reads but how it plays. I'll grant that Isle of the Ape is probably Gary's least impressive effort, but Mordenkainen's Fantastic Adventure is great.

[Lapak]

The specific features of 2e-- the areas in which it was distinctively better than 1e-- were the development of kits and specialist wizards and priests. Core 2e had all of those tools included but with no indication of how to use them.OK, I see where you're coming from now. I still disagree, but I see where you're coming from. To make an analogy: call it the difference between getting a box of assorted Lego blocks (core 2e) and getting one of the Lego kits that comes with all the pieces you need to build an X-Wing and a design plan for building it (2e supplements.)

I consider the first box a complete set of Legos. You don't. It's a difference of opinion, and has much to do with how much we're each expecting the person who bought it to be required bring to the table in order to have fun. You can still build an X-Wing with the first box, or a Tie fighter, or a dragon; all the pieces you need are there.

And it means that you're not forced to build an X-Wing when you wanted a Millenium Falcon: frankly, a lot of the supplement-based kits and such were terrible. That's actually what I liked about just-core 2e: the tools were all there, and there wasn't an expectation of 'the Complete Book of Elves has the Bladesinger kit, so I should be able to play one!' We could design specialist priests and sub-classes/kits that fit the setting.

[Viktyr Gehrig]

OK, I see where you're coming from now. I still disagree, but I see where you're coming from. To make an analogy: call it the difference between getting a box of assorted Lego blocks (core 2e) and getting one of the Lego kits that comes with all the pieces you need to build an X-Wing and a design plan for building it (2e supplements.)

Exactly. My problem with core-only 2e was that the box of assorted Lego blocks came pre-assembled, with only the briefest and most cursory mentions that it was a Lego set and might theoretically be used to build something different.

To follow your analogy, I would consider the first box to be a more complete set of Legos than the second box, especially if it contained descriptions of the pieces and how they were intended to fit together.


And it means that you're not forced to build an X-Wing when you wanted a Millenium Falcon: frankly, a lot of the supplement-based kits and such were terrible.

Oh, absolutely agreed. I'm not saying that the supplements were great, just that for better or worse they were the defining factor of the 2e experience.

[hamlet]

Oh, absolutely agreed. I'm not saying that the supplements were great, just that for better or worse they were the defining factor of the 2e experience.

A defining factor, sure. To you, perhaps the defining factor.

To me, the biggest defining factor of 2nd edition was that it was a cleaned up and scrubbed up version of AD&D 1e that I have an easier time of adapting and fitting to what I want it to without having to strip out Gygax's voice from the thing. 1st edition is great for Greyhawk, but not so great, sometimes, for other settings. The 2nd edition is that same core engine, but without the Greyhawkian connective tissues in it. Or at least less of them.

[MeeposFire]

The specific features of 2e-- the areas in which it was distinctively better than 1e-- were the development of kits and specialist wizards and priests. Core 2e had all of those tools included but with no indication of how to use them.

Otherwise, 2nd Edition AD&D was just a better organized re-printing of 1st Edition with much of the unique identity filtered out and whitewashed. Everything that 2nd Edition added to the D&D experience came from the supplements. Compare that with the shift from Old D&D to AD&D, or from AD&D to 3.X-- or even, for that matter, from 3.0 to 3.5 and from 3.5 to Pathfinder-- and you're left with the question of why they even published a new edition (aside from corporate politics) and why anyone would have bothered to upgrade from the older books.

Then the supplements started using those tools, and those questions were answered.



Absolutely. The point I'm trying to make is that 1e supplements like Oriental Adventures and Unearthed Arcana added new features to the game-- which I loved-- while 2e supplements unlocked features that were built into the core. AD&D 1e was a complete game in three books, while AD&D 2e was more like a game toolkit with extra pieces that you didn't know what to do with until they started releasing add-ons that used them.



See, expecting all of the encounters to be "tough but winnable" is an entitlement; you are expressing the belief that the players are entitled to only having to deal with encounters that meet those criteria. There's nothing wrong with believing that you are entitled to certain things, especially in a social context in which that belief is reinforced, but that entitlement and the social context that reinforces it were not present in older versions of D&D.

Before 3e, you just had encounters. Some encounters were easy and some were impossible to defeat in combat-- and it was the players' job to know which was which. Forcing players into impossible combats is poor DMing, I will absolutely agree, but putting in opponents that the PCs can not kill and letting them choose whether or not to try is fair game.

To compare it to video games for a second, there's an entire genre of video games in which combat encounters are expected to be nigh-impossible and in which the goal is to avoid them. These games are considered fun and challenging and fair by their fans. Likewise, there are games in which the best strategy changes from level to level. Putting 1st level characters in front of a powerful dragon is something like that-- except that with dragons, unlike classed NPCs, it is obvious that combat is not going to be a winning strategy.

If players choose to fight something that cannot be defeated then you did not design it as an encounter. You handle it like an encounter since that is what we all do but you did not design it as a real encounter. If the players decide to attack the great wyrm dragon then yes they will have no chance and they might die (unless I decide to just shame them by knocking them out depends on the day) but I did not design an encounter to fight the dragon. In fact they are not supposed to. Big difference. Unless you are saying it is good design to have 1st level adventurers fighting great wyrm dragons directly and that was your design goal (notice this is not the players doing something stupid I am saying you want them to fight the non-winnable battle and you give them no way to win).

[Kenneth]

I would like to just point out to Meepo'sfire

that while it might not exist in 3rd and later version of D&D..

non camobat encounters certainly existed in 1st and 2nd edition


and to Viktyr Korimir

I love how 2nd was 'just a box of legos' that gave hints on what you could do with it.. the was the absolute point.. it encoruanged you to be innovative and creative with your character from the same 'blocks' as the other guy and end up with completely different type of character.


1st and 2nd ed were more based on player actions and 3rd ed was more based on character actions.

I enjoyed the more player focused style of game..

after all? just becuase 3rd ed renders an archer (ya know the guy who wants to be robin hood) or teh Iconic Knight ( the guy with a sword, sheild and shiney plate) all but worthless as character is no reason for you as a player to feel that way.

[Kaervaslol]

I think those are both pretty fair statements. Bear with me though. The paladin should probably get a Holy Avenger at some point, like level 17 some point, by that point I don't think catering to the player's desires for the characters is at all unreasonable. Encounters should be challenging, but not overwhelmingly difficult. That doesn't just mean combat either, if you create any scenario that can't be overcome at all, then that just isn't fair to the players. Every fight should be a reasonable challenge, unless the player do something monunmentally stupid like decide hunting Great Wyrms is a good idea at level 1.

I dislike that approach, the foes should have the same resources available to the pcs. Why should they expecto to encounter a "fair" challenge?

If you hold your punches the game loses value and the gameworld becomes unbelievable.

If facing 12 ogres at level one gets you killed, run. Or set up an ambush. Or go hire some mercenaries or do something about it or just ignore it. But don't go in expecting a fair fight just because you are the PCs. You are just another denizen of a fantasy world trying to survive, not a special snowflake.

I will not force the players into any situation, because I'm not a ****, and forcing someone into something sucks.

I'm just a medium between the players and the game world.

[Beleriphon]

I dislike that approach, the foes should have the same resources available to the pcs. Why should they expecto to encounter a "fair" challenge?

Because as the DM you presumably create challenges that are appropriate to the group you have. Its not like you as DM have no control over what happens in a game.

The reason they should encounter fair challenges is an issue of vermilsitude. Why would the group be hired, encouraged, or whatever method you've chosen to get them going to engage in possible deadly combat with something they have no hope of overcoming? Can the PCs bargain with ogres below? Only if the DM decides they can, can the PCs hire mercanires to fight the ogres? Sure, but that presents the question why somebody else hasn't done that already, and only the DM determines there are mercenaries to be hired.


If you hold your punches the game loses value and the gameworld becomes unbelievable.

If facing 12 ogres at level one gets you killed, run. Or set up an ambush. Or go hire some mercenaries or do something about it or just ignore it. But don't go in expecting a fair fight just because you are the PCs. You are just another denizen of a fantasy world trying to survive, not a special snowflake.

Again, as the DM why does it have to be 12 ogres, when it could just as easily be 12 orcs, or 12 kobolds, or 12 half-baked muffin monsters that taste good with walnuts?

The answer is because for a bunch of first level characters the DM doesn't want them to fight the ogres, instead they want them to come up with something else to deal with the ogres, or whatever monster they chose. If you pick a different level appropriate creature you actually end up with more options for the players, since they could fight the monsters or they could come up with something else. Either one of those should be valid options, at least most of the time.

If you prefer a slightly different perspective you can go the reverse to, why bother using 20th level Fighters, Thieves, Mages and Priests to deal with a kobold den? That isn't a level appropriate encounter, its a kobold curb-stomping. As a DM I can't think of any particular reason to use such a scenario, any more then using an monster appropriate for 20th level characters to deal with would be for 1st level character.


I will not force the players into any situation, because I'm not a ****, and forcing someone into something sucks.

I'm just a medium between the players and the game world.

The DM is more than the medium, they act as the arbiter, and more importantly the creator of any given situation. If you insist on the view point the DM has no control over the game world and is just the medium I believe Marshall McLuhan (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marshall_McLuhan)has something to say about that, "The medium is the message".

Incidentally, using ogres on first level characters is effectively forcing them to do something. The characters either 1) don't fight or 2) have the characters die in a fight. Either way you've effectively forced 1) since presumably the players don't want to kill their characters.

[MeeposFire]

I would like to just point out to Meepo'sfire

that while it might not exist in 3rd and later version of D&D..

non camobat encounters certainly existed in 1st and 2nd edition


and to Viktyr Korimir

I love how 2nd was 'just a box of legos' that gave hints on what you could do with it.. the was the absolute point.. it encoruanged you to be innovative and creative with your character from the same 'blocks' as the other guy and end up with completely different type of character.


1st and 2nd ed were more based on player actions and 3rd ed was more based on character actions.

I enjoyed the more player focused style of game..

after all? just becuase 3rd ed renders an archer (ya know the guy who wants to be robin hood) or teh Iconic Knight ( the guy with a sword, sheild and shiney plate) all but worthless as character is no reason for you as a player to feel that way.

I never said that there were not non-combat encounters but in the same vein a non-combat encounter that the players have no real interaction is just as bad as an unwinnable encounter and in that case is actually more of a plot piece. Granted this is due to my opinion that encounters are things that are designed for effective player interaction and resolution and if it lacks that then I don't consider it an encounter.

[Kaervaslol]

Because as the DM you presumably create challenges that are appropriate to the group you have. Its not like you as DM have no control over what happens.

Again, as the DM why does it have to be 12 ogres, when it could jsut has easily be 12 orcs, or 12 kobolds?


So if tribes of ogres are raiding the northern lands, why should they be kobolds? or orcs?

If the PCs decide that the challenge is too much for them, they can ignore it. The norther lands may or may not manage without the help of the PCs, since the fantasy world does not work on the basis that a PC is needed for everything.



The DM is more than the medium, they act as the arbiter, and more importantly the creator of any given situation. If you insist on the view point the DM has no control over the game world and is just the medium I believe Marshall McLuhan (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marshall_McLuhan)has something to say about that, "The medium is the message".

I do not create situations. I create locales, I give them a history/legend and I place them in the game world. I create denizens for those locales as well as treasure. Note that locale =/= dungeon. Locales interact with each other, obviously.

There are places that are more apt for low level characters and they can stick with those, but that neither guarantees "fair" encounters nor safety.

Of course I act as a referee and arbiter, because the rules don't cover everything. What I don't enjoy is forcing the players into a set of pre planned events, granting them plot armour and advantages just because they are PCs.

I do not care for the words or marshall mcluhan, since I do not see them applicable to the context of a GM/player dynamic.

[kaomera]

Because as the DM you presumably create challenges that are appropriate to the group you have. Its not like you as DM have no control over what happens,.
The DM's responsibility is to create challenges (and other stuff) that are appropriate and desirable to everyone at the table (including the DM). The advantage of a sandbox setup is that it gives the players the opportunity to have their PCs go out and get what they want.

Again, as the DM why does it have to be 12 ogres, when it could jsut has easily be 12 orcs, or 12 kobolds?
Because it's not always just as easily orcs or kobolds. You certainly can dispense with some or all of the internal logic (or suitable local equivalent) in the campaign world, but not everyone wants that. So in one game you might expect that the dreaded ogre cave doesn't actually contain any ogres if they'd be too much of a challenge, and in another you might just randomly run into a tribe of them while out wandering in the wilds, or anything in-between.

The only real problem with expecting ''appropriate challenges'' is really a problem with any standard you'd prefer to adhere to - you can start assuming that it's just the way things are to be done and anything else isn't ok.

[Beleriphon]

So if tribes of ogres are raiding the northern lands, why should they be kobolds? or orcs?

If the PCs decide that the challenge is too much for them, they can ignore it. The norther lands may or may not manage without the help of the PCs, since the fantasy world does not work on the basis that a PC is needed for everything.

Why can't they be kobolds or orcs though? Why does it have to be ogres, beyond mere whim of the DM? Couldn't things just involved be orcs, or kobolds, or pseudodragons, or grouches from Grouchland? As DM you get to dictate the logic of the game world, so if you want players to help in Northern Lands but ogres are too much of a challege you can make it orcs instead. If you don't want them to help, or wan to present and overwhelming challenge for them make it ogres.

Now, I'm not saying the players should be intentionally going out ogre hunting at level one, but at the same time if you say here's something going on in place X I think the players should have a reasonable expectation that their characters aren't going to die horribly at place X because its way out of their league.

My main thrust is if you have locations detailed, say a small valley, designed as the sort of starting point of a game why would you include something the characters can't over come in said valley? As DM you can come up with any justification you want for why ogres don't live in Level One Valley.


I do not create situations. I create locales, I give them a history/legend and I place them in the game world. I create denizens for those locales as well as treasure. Note that locale =/= dungeon. Locales interact with each other, obviously.

There are places that are more apt for low level characters and they can stick with those, but that neither guarantees "fair" encounters nor safety.

Situations, locales, encounters what ever name you give them are all the same thing really. You set them up, and then use the rules to run them. Making such "locales" full of things that are going to eat characters up and chew them out seems like a collosal waste since the likeliness of the players choosing to visit them is probably pretty small, why worry about such things to start out if you don't think the players will ever choose to have the characters visit them?

Its prefectly reasonable to present more level appropriate choices, in a mixed bag sandbox.


Of course I act as a referee and arbiter, because the rules don't cover everything. What I don't enjoy is forcing the players into a set of pre planned events, granting them plot armour and advantages just because they are PCs.

I do not care for the words or marshall mcluhan, since I do not see them applicable to the context of a GM/player dynamic.

You've missed the point of McLuhan then. If you are the medium of the game world, then you directly affect how the players view the world. In essence the content you provide as DM is as important as they manner in which you present the content.

Quote The Wiki (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_medium_is_the_message):
"The medium is the message" is a phrase coined by Marshall McLuhan meaning that the form of a medium embeds itself in the message, creating a symbiotic relationship by which the medium influences how the message is perceived.

Effecitvely as DM and claiming neutral medium status you're actually not a neutral medium. No medium is entirely neutral, it always affects the perception of the content. As the DM you create the content, thus your presentation of the content can affect what the players decide to do. The classic example of accidentally emphasizing the wrong bit of descriptive colour in a scene can send the players on all kinds of wild goose chases.


The DM's responsibility is to create challenges (and other stuff) that are appropriate and desirable to everyone at the table (including the DM). The advantage of a sandbox setup is that it gives the players the opportunity to have their PCs go out and get what they want.

Which is all fine and dandy, but if the player choose to explore Kobold Kaves then shouldn't they reasonably expect to have encounters the characters can overcome?

If you have some place called Big Pit O' Dragony Death, then maybe that isn't the best place to have a level appropriate encounter.

I'm not suggesting every encounter be level appropriate, some can be slightly higher or lower, but by and large I think the players are pretty reasonable to expect most encounters are appropriate to their level.

If you have a bunch of players that insist on going to visit the ogre cave at level one what are you going to do? Curbstomp them with an ogre tribe and then have them make new characters? That's one solution, I prefer to modify it so that the cave has one ogre, and maybe a bunch of hobgoblins that have convinced it to protect them. That way you can keep the cave level appropriate and have the players feel like its worth while to try new areas.

You can keep them ogres and discourage the players from choosing such a place, but at that point why bother having gone through the trouble if you didn't intend the players to choose it as a valid location?


Because it's not always just as easily orcs or kobolds. You certainly can dispense with some or all of the internal logic (or suitable local equivalent) in the campaign world, but not everyone wants that. So in one game you might expect that the dreaded ogre cave doesn't actually contain any ogres if they'd be too much of a challenge, and in another you might just randomly run into a tribe of them while out wandering in the wilds, or anything in-between.

My issue isn't so much that the dreaded ogre cave be changed to orcs after the fact (that seems a bit silly, but it doesn't take that much effort to explain it). Rather I'm questioning why it's an ogre cave to start with, what logical reason can it not be an orc cave before the game even starts?


The only real problem with expecting ''appropriate challenges'' is really a problem with any standard you'd prefer to adhere to - you can start assuming that it's just the way things are to be done and anything else isn't ok.

Well, I'm not advocating always having level appropriate encounters absolutely everywhere, but I think by and large its pretty reasonable thing to expect, especially if the players go looking for that sort of ting. This can mean roleplaying as much as anything else. Although, level appropriate for roleplaying usually means the DM accepts and expects that the players can influence the NPCs through roleplaying ideas or appropriate skill use (depending on the game).

Incidentally this one of those things that seems to missing from the AD&D rules, or guidelines if you prefer. How to actually build and an encounter, it just kind of assumes that you'll toss whatever monsters you want in a room and hope for the best.

[Kenneth]

I never said that there were not non-combat encounters but in the same vein a non-combat encounter that the players have no real interaction is just as bad as an unwinnable encounter and in that case is actually more of a plot piece. Granted this is due to my opinion that encounters are things that are designed for effective player interaction and resolution and if it lacks that then I don't consider it an encounter.

No you did not say those words verbatim.. but all of your arguemnts have been to sum them up 'its not an encounter unless its a fair combat encounter'

to which I rebutted that Non Combat encounters exist to which you agreed upon in a back handed way saying that non combat where playes have no interaction is bad..


uhh.. I have no idea who your DM is, or if you are a DM but honestly if you feel that every non cambat en****er does not lead to player interaction with the world. id never want to play at your table.. some of th ebest times to be had in D&D is outside of combat hearing the old grizzzled war vet talk about the orcish horde that came out of the badlands, or going to a remote city and see why they have never asked for help from teh lycanthrope invasion.. oddly enough the ate wolfsbane regularly and were for the nicest way to say it batsh!T crazy..


all encounters are not obstacles to over come, maybe its the old school D&D player in me but honestlt a full half or more of all the enctouner I have ever had were non combat.. maybe you character getting married and coming back out of retirment upon your character's wife's request (while holding your newborn daughter with tears in her eyes becuase she is worried you might not return and that You and you old adventuring buddies are the only ones who can handle what is happening) don't seem very interesting to you. but that is a campaign that i will alwasy cherish.


did I overcome anything there, No. did i get to flex my super awewosme combat musles.. again.. No i did not. was it an en****er , oh yes. at least for me it was.

I am just going to leave it as we have different playstyles and what is good for me might not be good for you and vice versa.. anyways carry on with yours and I shall with mine.

[Zombimode]

Which is all fine and dandy, but if the player choose to explore Kobold Kaves then shouldn't they reasonably expect to have encounters the characters can overcome?

No, why should they? Do they have detailed intelligence reports about the exact type, number, strenghts and weaknesses of the denizens of the cave? Most probably not.

Maybe there just is a bunch of kobolds that are weak enough to be defeated by the characters without to much trouble. But maybe there are really many kobolds, or maybe they are quite crafty and capable of defending themselves. Maybe they have a secret weapon or some fearsome guard animals. Maybe they are led by a much stronger creature. Maybe there are no real kobolds at all, but the cave is really just a cover for an enclave of shapeshifters. The possibilities are endless.
This uncertainy what the characters will encounter and if they are able to overcome the odds creates risk. For the players this risk will create tension.
I dont know about you, but for me tension is one of the cornerstones for an exploring/adventuring experience. I would be bored otherwise.

Also, I am not writing this from an "old-school perspective" or whatever. Crack up your 3.5 DMG, p. 49. The guidelines for encounter dificulty suggest that 5% of all encounters should be of EL = APL +5, which is considered "overpowering".

[MeeposFire]

No you did not say those words verbatim.. but all of your arguemnts have been to sum them up 'its not an encounter unless its a fair combat encounter'

to which I rebutted that Non Combat encounters exist to which you agreed upon in a back handed way saying that non combat where playes have no interaction is bad..


uhh.. I have no idea who your DM is, or if you are a DM but honestly if you feel that every non cambat en****er does not lead to player interaction with the world. id never want to play at your table.. some of th ebest times to be had in D&D is outside of combat hearing the old grizzzled war vet talk about the orcish horde that came out of the badlands, or going to a remote city and see why they have never asked for help from teh lycanthrope invasion.. oddly enough the ate wolfsbane regularly and were for the nicest way to say it batsh!T crazy..


all encounters are not obstacles to over come, maybe its the old school D&D player in me but honestlt a full half or more of all the enctouner I have ever had were non combat.. maybe you character getting married and coming back out of retirment upon your character's wife's request (while holding your newborn daughter with tears in her eyes becuase she is worried you might not return and that You and you old adventuring buddies are the only ones who can handle what is happening) don't seem very interesting to you. but that is a campaign that i will alwasy cherish.


did I overcome anything there, No. did i get to flex my super awewosme combat musles.. again.. No i did not. was it an en****er , oh yes. at least for me it was.

I am just going to leave it as we have different playstyles and what is good for me might not be good for you and vice versa.. anyways carry on with yours and I shall with mine.

Do you actually read what I write? I never said you can not have a non-combat encounter. Here it is in big bold letters so you can not miss it

I USE NON COMBAT ENCOUNTERS ALL THE TIME. I SPENT OVER 4 HOURS IN MY LAST 4E GAME WITH NO COMBATS AT ALL.

The non-combat encounter equivalent to an impossible combat encounter (that you design for some reason that way) is the rail road. The "encounter" is designed so that the players have no shot at influencing the world and essentially everything is determined before the players even interact with whatever you place there. This is similar to the impossible encounter which is also a rail road.

Many of the things you are talking about are fine non-combat encounters (though some aren't necessarily encounters as some are just interactions and don't really deserves a moniker of encounter). You are fixated on that though. There are plenty of ways you can make great non-combat and combat encounters but in each players need to be able to interact effectively with the encounter and be able to effectively deal with the encounter. If not it becomes a plot point and not an encounter though plot points can be useful as well though they should be used sparingly.

And don't give me the "I am an old school gamer" stuff as I started on 1e/2e so I know all about old school gaming.

[Premier]

I think one of the major problems in this thread is that people are still fixated on the "encounter" as a basic unit of the adventure. That very well may be true in WotC D&D (and in quite a number of 2nd ed. modules), but is certainly not the same axiom in old-school design. While there might be individual set pieces, the adventure as a whole is not simply the sum of the encounters.

Let me give you a practical example: in Room 6 there's a big, heavy oak table (as well as a whole bunch of other stuff). While originally intended by the DM as little more than dungeon dressing, this table can become useful to the party in many, many ways. It may be used to barricade the corridor leading to Room 8 when the goblins attack from there. It may be hauled over to Room 25 and stood on, helping the party reach the high-hanging Chandelier of Importance. It may be used to weight a pressure plate in Room 34, preventing a certain trap from rearming itself. It may be used to prop up the descending crushing ceiling in Room 42, giving the thief a few extra rounds to pick the lock (assuming they somehow happened to be carrying it while tripping that trap. In fact, once the party is out of torches thanks to gravely miscalulating their supplies, it may be broken apart with the dwarf's battleaxe, the legs wrapped in oil-doused cloth and used as primitive torches.

The important thing about old-school design is that the "encounter" in Room 6 (whatever it was) was NOT designed with the intention (or even possibility) of the party doing all this with the table in mind; and neither were the "encounters" in all the other rooms. The table was just a thing, the traps and such in the other rooms also just a thing, and, well, if the players get smart and think of a way of using one thing to improve the outcomes with other things, then such arbitrary units as "encounters" should and will not stop that. The DM will not say "but you can't use that table, that was part of a previous encounter and isn't a part of this one".


And it's the same deal with something like a very powerful dragon. "It's overpowered" only makes sense if you think of it as a self-enclosed unit of the adventure (a.k.a. "an encounter") which MUST be tackled in itself, with no recourse to or unplanned resources from other encounters. And according to old-school philosophy, using some resource (in a wide sense of the word) from elsewhere (from a different "encounter") is totally fair game even if the DM has not planned for it. If the party manages to combine the illusionist's spells and a few magical items from three adventures back to disguise themselves as ogres, Charm the ogre chieftain into an alliance, then finally present him with documents forged by the thief that supposedly indicate the dragon intends to attack the tribe... well, the chieftain might just order his tribe to attack the dragon first in a MAD scenario, removing two potential problems for the party. And no, this is not one single encounter planned for by the DM. He's taken at a complete surprise by the party's ingenuity.

And it's possible because the DM did not "intend" the dragon to be an unbeatable encounter, nor did he "intend" the ogres to be a social interaction encounter with the express purpose of killing the dragon. He just put these things into the dungeon, removed the conceptual walls of "here ends one encounter and there begins another", and let it all play out.

[VariaVespasa]

1- Why can't they be kobolds or orcs though? My main thrust is if you have locations detailed, say a small valley, designed as the sort of starting point of a game why would you include something the characters can't over come in said valley?

2- Situations, locales, encounters what ever name you give them are all the same thing really. You set them up, and then use the rules to run them. Making such "locales" full of things that are going to eat characters up and chew them out seems like a collosal waste since the likeliness of the players choosing to visit them is probably pretty small, why worry about such things to start out if you don't think the players will ever choose to have the characters visit them?

3- Its prefectly reasonable to present more level appropriate choices, in a mixed bag sandbox.

4- If you have a bunch of players that insist on going to visit the ogre cave at level one what are you going to do? Curbstomp them with an ogre tribe and then have them make new characters? That's one solution, I prefer to modify it so that the cave has one ogre, and maybe a bunch of hobgoblins that have convinced it to protect them.

5- You can keep them ogres and discourage the players from choosing such a place, but at that point why bother having gone through the trouble if you didn't intend the players to choose it as a valid location?

6- Well, I'm not advocating always having level appropriate encounters absolutely everywhere, but I think by and large its pretty reasonable thing to expect, especially if the players go looking for that sort of ting.

1- They cant be kobolds or orcs (except rarely) because its listed as the OGRES cave. Occasionally players might discover that the kobolds just killed the ogres by doing something unnatural in the water supply and word just hasnt spread yet, or its named the ogres cave because a noteworthy ogre used to live there in the distant past, or maybe the entrance looks like an ogre, but most commonly being called an ogres cave means ogres live there, and only the most casually overheard reference would permit the players to mistake a description for a name.

2- Why put in such a thing if it will munch the players? Isnt it a huge waste of time? Perhaps so the players have to actually play smart and cant just run roughshod over an area? Perhaps to induce wonder etc? Perhaps, and here's an idea, SO THEY HAVE SOMETHING TO DO NEXT LEVEL? People like the Red Hand module- you're suggesting that if people somehow go directly to the thane of tiamat right at the beginning that the dm should decide, oh actually is just a few hobgoblins and a retired minotaur with 1 leg just because theyre early and havent levelled up yet? The idea is laughable.

Why worry about them starting out? Because their existance affects the dynamics of the entire area, whether or not the players go there and the DM cant know what and how till he's designed everything in the area. If he doesnt then he will be continually running into situations where the new thing he just put in should have affected things that came before and now he has to retcon and/or paint himself into smaller and smaller corners as time goes on. The capital of your country affects your entire country, even if you personally have never gone there. The mayor of your city affects you even if you dont even know his name. The corrupt chief of police affects you RIGHT NOW even if you dont have the resources to deal with him and wont for 10 years. Its about realism, and integrity of the setting.

3- Its a mixed bag sandbox- players like to stripmine areas for content. If they do they will, by definition, eventually encounter the bad end of the bag. This too is entirely reasonable, and indeed it would be insulting to the players/characters to constantly suggest that no matter how hard they search they just never ever manage to find that far end of the mixed bag by fudging the encounters so that they never do.

4- Stupidity absolutely should have its price. If they absolutely positively insist on going to the ogres cave, knowing its the ogres cave, then they are imbeciles and deserve what they get. If I tell you thats a scorpion and it will sting you if you bother it, if you then go pick it up and start juggling it you dont get to say its not fair or that you werent stupid when it stings you. Anything else removes all challenge and point to the game. Shall we just install an easy mode button for you to press, press this and ding, youre lvl 20 and a hugely wealthy demigod with custom gear because hey, we know you will never ever encounter anything that does more than consume 1/4 of your resources or anything, no matter what you do? You're asking to not have to think or use any judgement at all, and to be immune to Darwin. No, just... no.

5- See #2- it could just possibly be that its for later, and in the meantime its flavor and a stupidity test?

6- Yeah, actually you pretty much are. Its pretty reasonable to expect a DM to present you with some options that are level-appropriate, but it is NOT reasonable to expect those to be the only options he mentions. He isnt your brain to tell you which ones are a bad idea- its your brains job to figure that out, researching extra info before deciding if necessary. And its the last half of your sentence thats the biggest point here- the players did NOT go looking for a level appropriate thing. Instead they SPECIFICALLY went looking for a level INappropriate thing and knowingly wandered into the ogres cave. If you expect them to succeed in finding something appropriate why would you expect them to fail at finding something inappropriate? The DM has a responsibility to provide reasonable clues that something is inappropriate, but he isnt obliged to put up big neon signs saying Bad Idea. If the players refuse to use their brains or just ignore their brains let them die and reduce the surplus population. Its no fun for the players if they die? Its no fun for the DM to have to cater to lazy entitled idiots either, and he's the one putting in all the work to develop the campaign.

There is a reason why few people liked the auto-levelling enemies in Oblivion and Morrowind and thats EXACTLY what the world youre asking for is like. Never any challenge, never anything easy. Just grinding, sameness. Think about that.

[MeeposFire]

I have no problem with a DM putting down a map and writing "ogre cave" on it. That is fine. It should have Ogres in it and if the players go there they should see them (preferbly the players should know it is the ogre cave before they get there due to rumors or such). What I don't agree with are situations like the players leave town and are set upon by 10 ogres and they are 1st level (and no they did not do anything stupid) and the DM expects them to fight it out. That is dumb. If the DM wants to create an encounter with an ambush of creatures on 1st level character it should be something a 1st level group can handle since you are making something specifically to challenge 1st level heroes. If the players enter the ogre cave then it is different (and requires a different handling).

[VariaVespasa]

Oh yes, agreed. If the players have done their homework and picked an appropriate adventure from the list they have a right to expect encounters to generally be beatable, avoidable, flee-able, or negotiable as long as theyre exercising reasonable caution. But if they dont do their homework or are just wandering around to see whats out there then all bets are off.

[Kaervaslol]

I have no problem with a DM putting down a map and writing "ogre cave" on it. That is fine. It should have Ogres in it and if the players go there they should see them (preferbly the players should know it is the ogre cave before they get there due to rumors or such). What I don't agree with are situations like the players leave town and are set upon by 10 ogres and they are 1st level (and no they did not do anything stupid) and the DM expects them to fight it out. That is dumb. If the DM wants to create an encounter with an ambush of creatures on 1st level character it should be something a 1st level group can handle since you are making something specifically to challenge 1st level heroes. If the players enter the ogre cave then it is different (and requires a different handling).

Yeah, that was the part about not forcing the players into situations and not being a ****.

I do not like making encounters because it seems silly to me to build things using the PCs as the starting point. The world does not revolve around the characters.

I very much work the other way a round, create something cool and interesting and let the players go there, do stuff and surprise me. If they want of course.

There is always opportunity for adventure, but the tension created in not knowing what is out there is a lot more fun than rolling dice in an encounter that presents no real threat to a party of experience players.

[Beleriphon]

1- They cant be kobolds or orcs (except rarely) because its listed as the OGRES cave. Occasionally players might discover that the kobolds just killed the ogres by doing something unnatural in the water supply and word just hasnt spread yet, or its named the ogres cave because a noteworthy ogre used to live there in the distant past, or maybe the entrance looks like an ogre, but most commonly being called an ogres cave means ogres live there, and only the most casually overheard reference would permit the players to mistake a description for a name.[quote]

Why can it be kobolds before the game even starts though? What is it about a game that requires an ogre cave to be in place for first level characters to possibly explore, before the game starts? Can't you just design the setting without the ogre cave to start with?

[quote]2- Why put in such a thing if it will munch the players? Isnt it a huge waste of time? Perhaps so the players have to actually play smart and cant just run roughshod over an area? Perhaps to induce wonder etc? Perhaps, and here's an idea, SO THEY HAVE SOMETHING TO DO NEXT LEVEL? People like the Red Hand module- you're suggesting that if people somehow go directly to the thane of tiamat right at the beginning that the dm should decide, oh actually is just a few hobgoblins and a retired minotaur with 1 leg just because theyre early and havent levelled up yet? The idea is laughable.

There should be now way anybody can reach the Fane of Tiamat at the beginning of that module without knowing that the thing exists by having read the adventure. The way that adventure is strucutred is essentially a series of set pieces that run on a timer.

What I'm suggesting if the players obliquely decide to vist X then may X can be moved, and replaced with Y, if you find that its not useful or the players really want to explore the cave you never intended them to explore.


Why worry about them starting out? Because their existance affects the dynamics of the entire area, whether or not the players go there and the DM cant know what and how till he's designed everything in the area. If he doesnt then he will be continually running into situations where the new thing he just put in should have affected things that came before and now he has to retcon and/or paint himself into smaller and smaller corners as time goes on. The capital of your country affects your entire country, even if you personally have never gone there. The mayor of your city affects you even if you dont even know his name. The corrupt chief of police affects you RIGHT NOW even if you dont have the resources to deal with him and wont for 10 years. Its about realism, and integrity of the setting.

Seriously? Integrity of the setting? You're assuming that if you do everything up front that it will always make sense. Or that you need to use as much detail as Keep on the Borderlands to start with.

A sandbox setting requires some level of up front design, and I've admitted that having some things that aren't entirely appropriate for the character levels makes sense. But at the same it is a colossal waste of time to fully detail say the ogre cave that is best used for sixth level characters when the characters are first level. At that point I'm not sure I'd even mention the thing, since there's no point in doing that much work up front. If I were so inclined to actually go include such a thing at all I'd throw something together on the spot and run the ogres as are if the player's really insist on that, since I wouldn't expect the players to visit something meant as a non-choice.


3- Its a mixed bag sandbox- players like to stripmine areas for content. If they do they will, by definition, eventually encounter the bad end of the bag. This too is entirely reasonable, and indeed it would be insulting to the players/characters to constantly suggest that no matter how hard they search they just never ever manage to find that far end of the mixed bag by fudging the encounters so that they never do.

Presumably if you manage to go through everything else in a setting then by the time the players reach the "bad end" the characters are a high enough level for it to be reasonably appropriate.


4- Stupidity absolutely should have its price. If they absolutely positively insist on going to the ogres cave, knowing its the ogres cave, then they are imbeciles and deserve what they get. If I tell you thats a scorpion and it will sting you if you bother it, if you then go pick it up and start juggling it you dont get to say its not fair or that you werent stupid when it stings you. Anything else removes all challenge and point to the game. Shall we just install an easy mode button for you to press, press this and ding, youre lvl 20 and a hugely wealthy demigod with custom gear because hey, we know you will never ever encounter anything that does more than consume 1/4 of your resources or anything, no matter what you do? You're asking to not have to think or use any judgement at all, and to be immune to Darwin. No, just... no.

There's no Darwin here, it's a game that presumably doesn't use natural selection to help the players along in their choices. PResumabely part of the game is overcoming challenges. Some of those are going to be harder than others, and again I agree that the players saying they're doing something stupid should get the characters killed. Like attacking the king in his own thrown room. Of course that might also work out depending on how you feel like going with that, and the character could have a fantasic fight scene and a crazy escape sequence.


5- See #2- it could just possibly be that its for later, and in the meantime its flavor and a stupidity test?

6- Yeah, actually you pretty much are. Its pretty reasonable to expect a DM to present you with some options that are level-appropriate, but it is NOT reasonable to expect those to be the only options he mentions.

Yes, as I keep saying. My only point is that at level one I really do think in most games you should be presenting level one appropriate options only. Since other high level options are meant to be non-choices, by presenting level ten options you as DM are basically saying, "Pick the level one option or I'll kill your character".

[Swordguy]

Why can't they be kobolds or orcs though? Why does it have to be ogres, beyond mere whim of the DM? Couldn't things just involved be orcs, or kobolds, or pseudodragons, or grouches from Grouchland?

Because you're playing AD&D (or Basic D&D) and therefore that has certain expectations. One of those things is a particular table used that randominzes what enemies you encounter. So why Ogre? Because the random encounter table said so.

Temperate Plain or Scrub Random Encounter Table (note that this is for ALL levels of adventurers) from Monstrous Compendium Vol 1
2 - Grey Elf
3 - Wyvern (or gold dragon, 10%)
4 - Brown Bear
5 - Large Spider
6 - Jackal (jackalwere, 10%)
7 - Wild Boar
8 - Wild Dog
9 - Wolf
10 - Herd Animal
11 - Nomad (merchant, 10%)
12 - Wild Horse
13 - Nomad or NPC party
14 - Orc
15 - Hobgoblin
16 - Ogre
17 - Poisonous snake or Hill Giant
18 - Pegasus or Troll
19 - DM Special
20 - DM Special

So, out of that list, how many are "appropriate" challenges for, say, a 2nd-level "standard" party? If played in the spirit the game intended it to be, the DM just rolls the dice, and the party can react to what comes up at their discretion. If you're using these tables, like AD&D assumes you are, then it's not necessarily a question of the DM being a big ole' meanie by putting challenges the PCs can't beat in a straight-up fight in front of the group.

[VariaVespasa]

I'll do a full reply later when I have more time (which wont be for 24-36 hours, mind you) but a couple of items at least-

Strip mining- Often players with a free hand in such areas like the Keep will make a point of going off a set distance from their home base, say 10 miles northwest, and just running an actual grid search; 20 miles east, 1 mile south, 20 miles west, 1 mile south, 20 miles east, and so on till they've reached 10 miles southeast, which gives them a very good chance of running into every noteworthy critter or area out there, and not in a predictable order. Several of the groups I've DM'd have done it, and I've done it myself. And sometimes players, being somewhat genre savvy will decide that the obvious, convenient way is almost certainly a bad idea, and will very pointedly bypass it. They may decide after having had the first set encounter in Red Hand and realised that there's an army out there, that the heck with anything else, the main settlement needs to know about this but the roads will almost certainly be watched/interdicted, so we're gonna cut across country, come hell or high water, so that there can be no way in hell that that army will find them in an organised fashion without the sounds of railroad tracks being prominent. "Ok, lets see the map, ok, we're here, the city is there. Lets go from here to here to here, around that, we'll cross that gorge 10 miles south of the bridge using my mountaineering skills and gear and lots of spider climb spells, because that bridge is where the enemy will be if he's anywhere, then across here, over that, and into the city and warn the mayor." And the DM is looking at his map thinking "but that will take them right into army group fours' main camp and then through the fane. ummm...." I've seen players do things like that. I've done them myself more than once. And its really hard to stop unless you have a REALLY good tracklayer for your choo choo train. Sometimes you could, I suppose, move certain things you dont want them to find, but not always.

Sometimes there's a specific reason something is where it is and it cant be moved without making everything before seem silly. Forinstance, a boss whose lair is the center point of the pentagram formed by its minions hideouts because he draws power from being at the focus, and the party has already cleaned out four of the five minions hideouts, and recovered clues from them which the party hasnt spent the time to piece together yet for some reason. How, exactly, are you going to move the boss's lair without invalidating the whole overarching scenario? Or its in a dramatic lair behind the only big waterfall in the area- But the party looked behind the waterfall when they travelled through the area, so what, its suddenly behind the OTHER big waterfall that nobody knew existed even though the party looked at maps and talked to local rangers when they arrived in the area? Thats also part of the integrity of the setting issue you objected to.

I'm assuming that if I do it all up front it will make sense? Er, well, yes, because something designed from a plan and built all at once while everything is fresh in your mind generally has more coherence than something designed and assembled piecemeal over time, especially if its a major campaign arc. Most writers can tell you that. And you do need at least a respectable amount of detail so you can properly prepare the theme and flow of the campaign arc. Some things can be tweaked a little later to meet certain needs (an extra monster here to up the exp just enough for the party to level, removing a magic item there because the party just doesnt have that many hands, etc) but you should have a strong outline for the bones of the arc in place before you begin. You should know that the ogres, being the boss mobs of the area, exist and roughly where, you should know the thane exists and roughly where, etc. As to the details of the keep- its not fully detailed at all. It has what, four encounter locations set up besides the actual caves I think? Bandits, lizardmen, spiders, hermit. Did I forget any? Anything else up there is up to the DM, and many extra threads tying to the area are suggested in the module for the DM to develop on his own- plans of npcs in the keep, where does that blocked cave go, and so on.

Maybe they'll do everything else first and thus be fine for the ogres cave. Just like probably they'll do everything else first and be fine at the thane of tiamat. In which case its a level-appropriate encounter and what was your problem again? But either thats just luck, which happens, or its planning and research, in which case good for them, and they were entirely just strip-mining. They were strip-mining with a plan!

You've admitted some encounters should be harder than others. You've admitted that there should be challenges. You've admitted that the players should be able to die. I regard the ogre cave as an intelligence challenge. Are you smart enough to have have learned about them before ever going out there and thus stay away? Or, having found the cave in your explorations, smart enough to sneak past, or run away, or come up with something devious enough to deal with them even though you are outmatched in direct combat? Perhaps you have sufficiently nasty habits that the kobolds arent the only ones who can do something terrible to the ogres water supply? I once, as a lvl 1 magic user without even a sleep spell to my name, managed to take out a small lair of about 9 (iirc) lizardmen through clever use of traps and woodwork, but I severely risked my ass to do it; they would almost certainly have killed me in one round if theyd ever caught sight of me since I was ac 10 with 5 hp and they had javelins. 1d6 damage, needing a 7 to hit me, or, at best, at long range and in cover a 16. Not good odds for me. Nobody forced me to try it, it was all me deciding to take the risk. But I couldnt have uttered one syllable of complaint if I'd screwed it up or one dice roll had gone against me and I got killed. The DM did his part; he gave me warning that I was heavily outmatched. The rest was on me. And the players should be likewise warned about the ogre cave, or be given a chance to sneak away once they find it if they arent travelling in such away as to preclude not being noticed. And if they are stupid enough to be inevitably noticed, or to attack the place without a really clever plan they too cant complain about the results if it goes bad. Stupidity checks ARE darwinian. Check out the Darwin Awards if youre not clear on that subject.

Presenting higher level options along with the level appropriate ones (and some lower level ones too, if thats possible) is not saying "chose one of the lvl 1 options or I'll kill you". Its saying "Chose a lvl 1 option for your best risk/reward ratio, but if youre feeling lucky you can try the lvl 3 option, and there's a lvl 5 option that you almost certainly dont want, but maybe you want to plan ahead for it later, or go play politiics to get someone else to deal with it while you go do a lvl 1 thing, or some such. Oh, and maybe you'll decide to throw some money at some of the local militia to go deal with the lvl 0 option you dont feel like doing, to build some local reputation and contacts, or maybe a couple of you will go do it later while the wizard is learning new spells after the lvl 1 thing. Or something else". Its not my job to do the players thinking for them, or predefine their choices to only the safe ones as you would have me do. Its their characters, its their choices to make. Its only my job to ensure that, if theyre even remotely paying attention, they have some kind of warning before walking into something way too much for them.

Ok, maybe that was a relatively full reply, but there may still be more I can add later, especially on the subject of the integrity of the setting.

Oh, to be clear, an Encounter is something the players have to take actions to deal with, NOT, as some seem to be thinking, something the players have to fight. The actions they take could be talking to it, hiding till it goes away, running away like schoolgirls, applying their many and diverse skills to it (a 4.0 skill challenge), etc, etc. Combat is merely one option for an Encounter.

[LibraryOgre]

Oh, to be clear, an Encounter is something the players have to take actions to deal with, NOT, as some seem to be thinking, something the players have to fight. The actions they take could be talking to it, hiding till it goes away, running away like schoolgirls, applying their many and diverse skills to it (a 4.0 skill challenge), etc, etc. Combat is merely one option for an Encounter.

Exactly. Not to mention, there's a bunch of things out in the world, and it seems somewhat odd that you completely miss them until you're an appropriate level.

One thing I keep thinking of is the game, Quest for Glory. Most of the hard monsters venture out at night. Don't want to run into a troll or a mantray? Stay somewhere safe at night. Scared of cheetaurs (hint: You should be)? Don't go out at night.

As you level up, you're more likely to venture into the forbidden places... to go to the ogre cave (which contains a kobold wizard and a VERY scary bear), to the brigands' ambush. You might even while away hours fighting goblins in the Goblin Hole (which starts at 1, then increases the more times you go back to something like 5 in a row).

But if you regularly wander into danger without an accurate idea of your abilities... well, there ain't no save games in D&D.

[Beleriphon]

Oh, to be clear, an Encounter is something the players have to take actions to deal with, NOT, as some seem to be thinking, something the players have to fight. The actions they take could be talking to it, hiding till it goes away, running away like schoolgirls, applying their many and diverse skills to it (a 4.0 skill challenge), etc, etc. Combat is merely one option for an Encounter.

Oh, I know that, its not necessarily a fight. Again, my example was negotiate with the king, or duke, or local bartenders. Whatever doesn't involve a fight. Incidentally, I recognize that AD&D/D&D encounters tend to be either of the wandering sort, or entire location that must be dealt with.

I also think one of the major failings of AD&D really is that it basically has no guidelines for actually designing and building encounters, or even what should be level appropriate so you know what isn't when you decide to include such things. Some are obvious, some are not.

I think that you're also missing my main point, level appropriate can also mean increasing the level of something to better match, and provide an effective challenge, to the players. Your pentagram example might need to increase the difficultly of the encounters for the main boss should the characters for whatever reason be higher level than expected when they finally venture into such a place. Expecting the boss to be level five when the characters are level fifteen doesn't usually make for terribly exciting adventuring. I think that should be equally expected, that challenges are actually challenging for the players.

[MeeposFire]

Creating a combat encounter in AD&D was more art than science sadly. The manual just did not give you enough information to create effective encounters if you wanted to create a challenge for a party of a certain level. You just had to experiment and use your experience.

3e was only slightly better in this regard. It tried to give you a way to figure it out but 3e has such differences in power between players and monsters (even more if you use stock or customized creatures) and between different creatures with the same CR.

Due to ease of use I prefer to DM AD&D (and 4e for that matter) more than 3e even if AD&D has less information.

[Beleriphon]

Creating a combat encounter in AD&D was more art than science sadly. The manual just did not give you enough information to create effective encounters if you wanted to create a challenge for a party of a certain level. You just had to experiment and use your experience.

3e was only slightly better in this regard. It tried to give you a way to figure it out but 3e has such differences in power between players and monsters (even more if you use stock or customized creatures) and between different creatures with the same CR.

Due to ease of use I prefer to DM AD&D (and 4e for that matter) more than 3e even if AD&D has less information.


Oh, I know very well how hard developing AD&D encounters can be. I've had to build many of them, and its always a bit of a nightmare since it really comes down to guess work. I really, really wish that the DMG had something in it regarding that.

I can't stand the fact that AD&D from a design standpoint (and thus the designers) assume that you'd just toss some stuff in a dungeon and hope for the best.

On that topic, does anybody have an good suggestions regarding actually building and designing encounters at any given level. Disregard whether its appropriate for any given group, but rather if you were to design some kind of challenge for the "typical" fifth level group what would you do as far as monsters go and what do you look at? What guidelines would you give to somebody that has never done so before?

[Hoddypeak]

On the topic of no guidelines of enemy strength, I disagree. In 1e, Gygax and his lack of a thesaurus gave all monsters a roman numeral Level from I to IX that indicated relative strength. It's not a great guarantee, but it's a starting point for figuring out how challenging they are. As has also been mentioned, in 1e and 2e, the XP of a monster was also a good way of feeling out its power level. Neither system was perfect, but neither is 3.x's CR system. 4e's levels are probably the best, but that's because that was design goal #1 for that system.

In terms of advice, I'd say once you get beyond a 3rd or 4th level group it gets easier to design, because you can use a broader range of challenges. At low levels, you're stuck with things that will be hard. Use weak enemies, and don't use too many of them.

At 5th level, my advice to a DM would be to use a broad mix. Give them a few really easy encounters, with 3 or 4 low-level enemies. Make a few that are larger groups of low-level enemies. Make a few that are small groups of level equivalent monsters, and one or two encounters that are more powerful than the characters.

[MeeposFire]

On the topic of no guidelines of enemy strength, I disagree. In 1e, Gygax and his lack of a thesaurus gave all monsters a roman numeral Level from I to IX that indicated relative strength. It's not a great guarantee, but it's a starting point for figuring out how challenging they are. As has also been mentioned, in 1e and 2e, the XP of a monster was also a good way of feeling out its power level. Neither system was perfect, but neither is 3.x's CR system. 4e's levels are probably the best, but that's because that was design goal #1 for that system.

In terms of advice, I'd say once you get beyond a 3rd or 4th level group it gets easier to design, because you can use a broader range of challenges. At low levels, you're stuck with things that will be hard. Use weak enemies, and don't use too many of them.

At 5th level, my advice to a DM would be to use a broad mix. Give them a few really easy encounters, with 3 or 4 low-level enemies. Make a few that are larger groups of low-level enemies. Make a few that are small groups of level equivalent monsters, and one or two encounters that are more powerful than the characters.

The amount of XP was a guide but it is a very informal and not very helpful in the long run. For instance what is more dangerous a troll or a wolfwere? Further there is nothing saying that a creature worth this amount of XP is a good challenge for characters around this amount of XP. At what level should wolfweres be a good enemy to plan to fight? Same with trolls. With experience you will start to figure it out but the system does you no favors in figuring it out.

[ken-do-nim]

The amount of XP was a guide but it is a very informal and not very helpful in the long run. For instance what is more dangerous a troll or a wolfwere? Further there is nothing saying that a creature worth this amount of XP is a good challenge for characters around this amount of XP. At what level should wolfweres be a good enemy to plan to fight? Same with trolls. With experience you will start to figure it out but the system does you no favors in figuring it out.

I think the gazillion awesome modules for 1E and Classic make it pretty clear how to design scenarios.

[kaomera]

I think the gazillion awesome modules for 1E and Classic make it pretty clear how to design scenarios.
This, and also I think that the idea of an ''encounter'' as a self-contained unit of challenge is kind of a new thing. There was not, in my experience, an expectation that the PCs where usually going to have much if any say on how long their ''adventuring day'' was going to end up being in 1e, at least.

[MeeposFire]

I think the gazillion awesome modules for 1E and Classic make it pretty clear how to design scenarios.

So in other words experience wow nice to see you agree with me.

[Delwugor]

Started out with AD&D (there was only one so no 1e or 2e descriptors) and kept with it for years. I used to think 2e was a bunch of boring crap designed to sell books instead of having a good time playing. Years later I picked up some 2e material cheaply and ended up incorporating some of it into my our AD&D games. In retrospect 1e was great on feel and flavor, 2e was more organized and reusable but didn't have the same feel.
Today the analogy might be some of the great focused indy games and some of the great generic systems. Indy game generally have a great feel but you don't often use the system for other games (without alot of work). Generic games like True20, Gurps, Hero can be used for many things but the feel can be somewhat bland (without alot of work).

The whole balanced encounters issue is something to consider today, but at least for me it never applied to AD&D. Why? Because frankly we never noticed anything about balance, we just paid attention to the great time we had playing.

[Jarawara]

Why can't they be kobolds or orcs though? Why does it have to be ogres, beyond mere whim of the DM? Couldn't things just involved be orcs, or kobolds, or pseudodragons, or grouches from Grouchland? As DM you get to dictate the logic of the game world, so if you want players to help in Northern Lands but ogres are too much of a challege you can make it orcs instead. If you don't want them to help, or wan to present and overwhelming challenge for them make it ogres.

If you don't mind, I'm going to wade into this discussion, because I had a player ask me that very question once. Actually, more than once.

"Why does it have to be Ogres?", my player asked. "Why can't it have been Orcs or Kobolds?" Well, the answer is... it doesn't. It could just have easily been Orcs or Kobolds. You are right, they can be at the whim of the DM, to be whatever they are.

Now we can get more detailed than that -- for example, if I don't have Kobolds in my world, then it shouldn't be Kobolds. And if Orcs aren't in this region, then it shouldn't be Orcs. But Goblins abound in this neck of the woods, so it could have been Goblins, and thus your question remains valid.

I could also say that this encounter was designed to force you to think of a different way through instead of just fighting. You could just kill the Goblins. Or I could have designed it so that you had to avoid this area. With Goblins you could have smashed your way through, or bullied them out of your way. Or perhaps I had intended you negotiate with them. Well technically, you could have done that with Goblins too. So yeah, I could have just put Goblins in there instead, and let you decide how you wish to deal with them.

"But regardless of what I could have done...", I concluded, "...there is still the fact that there are 12 Ogres in the room. The question is not what I could have done - the question is what are *you* going to do?"

*~*~*

The simple fact is, there is nothing wrong with putting 12 Ogres in a room/chamber/cave/encounter, when the party is 1st level. What is wrong is the party assuming that they can blatently ignore all warning signs and smash down the door and get themselves curbstomped by the Ogres. Not when there are so many other options available.

Some of my fondest memories as a player have been when we were exploring an area and we found monsters/traps/challenges that were simply beyond our ability to deal with. We'd write "Here there be Dragons" on our map, and we'd be careful to avoid that area in the future. I even remember a daily routine of sneaking down a particular hallway every time we'd go through a particular area of the undermines, dashing the last 100 feet to avoid detection from the large tribe of Gnolls that lived in that section.

As a DM, always have other options for the players to take, other directions for the players to go. Give them clues, sources of information, ways to find out what might lie ahead. More importantly, have an open mind for the player's ideas and plans. They might try something to defeat your "undefeatable" encounter, and if it works, the resulting scene will prove to be memorable. For years afterwards, they won't be talking about how they faced down Tiamet and destroyed her with a pyschic blast - they'll be talking about how they came up with a plan to trick and defeat the 12 Ogres at 1st level.

And if not, then they'll be happy, more than eager, to come back here when they are 6th level or so, to finally fight their way past the 12 Ogres and find out what was on the other side.

Or maybe they already found a way around, explored all that they wanted to explore, and they just ignore the Ogres till the end of time. All of evil is defeated in the world at the grand finale of the campaign, except for these 12 Ogres living in some catacomb somewhere. That's perfectly fine too.

The 12 Ogres are simply an obstacle. They presumably represent the "unwinnable fight", but certainly not the "unwinnable encounter". How would *You" deal with that encounter?

*~*~*

But of course... there's always that one group, or that one player, that just ignores all warnings and goes in anyway. Or maybe, simply a weird, comical situation evolves, and the 1st level party finds itself face to face with the 12 Ogres. In my case, it came out this way:

Party knows there are Ogres about. They had heard of the tribe of Ogres that live in these parts. They had seen signs and clues, stolen livestock, tracks. They were all wary, and on guard.

All except the fighter, who's player didn't believe the DM would put Ogres in a 1st level module.

The thief goes up to a large chamberdoor, sniffs twice, noting the foul smell emanating from within. He checks for a lock, but finds none. He listens, noting the sounds of voices within. Low, loud voices, sounding like it came from a large creature, intelligent. And multiple voices.

"I cannot say for sure, but this could be the lair we were warned of---"

Fighter interrupts: "Oh for pete's sake, there's not going to be Ogres in this room. The DM wouldn't pull that on us. Here, I'll prove it." And he proceeds to smash the door open with a mighty kick.

"The room beyond is lit by torchlight, revealing several tall, misshapen figures, with foul faces and a foul stench to them. One is eating a leg of mutton, another with a plate of something... indescribably awful on it. Three are in cots, two more wrestle for fun. One seems to be quoting Ogrish poetry from a book. You find yourself wishing you hadn't taken Ogre as a secondary language. There are more standing near the back of the huge chamber, you cannot tell how many in total they are.

At your loud entrance, several stop what they are doing, turning to stare at you. Many seem surprised. The Ogre eating the mutton furrows his brow, takes a swig of whatever draught he has in his cup, and seems to wait to see what your first actions are before responding."

The color drained from the fighter's face, standing in the doorway feeling very small. The rest of the party peered over his shoulders in shock and abject fear.

And what do you think happened next?

*~*

The question is not "Why does it have to be 12 Ogres".

The question is "Why do the 12 Ogres absolutely need to curbstomp the party?"

[LibraryOgre]

The question is not "Why does it have to be 12 Ogres".

The question is "Why do the 12 Ogres absolutely need to curbstomp the party?"

And, very often, the answer is "Because the party made them."

"Let me get this straight... you MOON the ogres?"
"Yeah!"
"Ok, he rolls to strike..."

[Kenneth]

wow.. I am soo confused..

it was from 1st/2nd ed to kobolds vs ogres vs the party


someboy please explain what happened to me and what exactl;y this whole debate about koblds vs ogres is becuase its too much for me

[Telok]

someboy please explain what happened to me and what exactl;y this whole debate about koblds vs ogres is becuase its too much for me

Somebody objected to the style of the current edition of WotC that implies that everything the PCs meet is either an appropriate challenge to fight or an unstatted NPC that can't be fought.

Someone else objected to the possibility of an "unfair" fight. Example: 1st level characters versus twelve 4HD ogres. This person thought that the DM needs change the ogres into kobolds for the PCs to kill.

Personally, I think that if the players choose to kick in the door of a known ogre lair at first level then they fully deserve the ogre club enema. Of course ogres also keep and use (and sometimes eat) slaves, so it does not need to be the end of the adventure.

[LibraryOgre]

Somebody objected to the style of the current edition of WotC that implies that everything the PCs meet is either an appropriate challenge to fight or an unstatted NPC that can't be fought.

Someone else objected to the possibility of an "unfair" fight. Example: 1st level characters versus twelve 4HD ogres. This person thought that the DM needs change the ogres into kobolds for the PCs to kill.

Personally, I think that if the players choose to kick in the door of a known ogre lair at first level then they fully deserve the ogre club enema. Of course ogres also keep and use (and sometimes eat) slaves, so it does not need to be the end of the adventure.

I'd go a step further and say if you kick in the door of an unknown ogre lair, not having bothered to do any research to figure out what is behind door #1, you fully deserve the ogre club enema that is bound to come your way.

It is possible for a DM to abuse this. He can give you no clue there's ogres there, even though you're looking for them. But, then, he could also have the bandits be led by a 10th level fighter, or a raksasha, or a dragon who was shapechanged. The possible ways a DM can screw players are pretty near infinite... I find, far more often, players screw themselves by leaping before they look.

[Armoury99]

I find, far more often, players screw themselves by leaping before they look.

Amen, brother! And don't we just love them for it? :smallbiggrin:

OK here's my two copper pieces: 3rd and 4th edition both give you a toolbox for creating balanced encouters, and say that the majority of encounters your PCs have should be in that range - which means a DM has less chance to accidentally put those ogres behind that 1st level door. Obviously a good thing, but it means that to a certain extent if they want to have the party have a survivable encounter with those ogres, the DM (and players,obviously) have to think outside the box.

In 1st edition definitely and 2nd edition to a lesser extend than first, the general rule instead was that behind the door "could be anything, baby!" This definitely made the DM's encounter design and on the fly random table improv. to be "out the box" a lot more (pretty much the standard, in fact) but obviously it was correspondingly harder to get the balance "perfect" for edge of seat, white knuckle combat... but running away and other creative PC response to "overwhelming" encounters was a BIG part of 1e and 2e -- and I think most fans of earlier versions really like that aspect.

I know I do... on both sides of the screen :smallcool:

[Thialfi]

I'd go a step further and say if you kick in the door of an unknown ogre lair, not having bothered to do any research to figure out what is behind door #1, you fully deserve the ogre club enema that is bound to come your way.

It is possible for a DM to abuse this. He can give you no clue there's ogres there, even though you're looking for them. But, then, he could also have the bandits be led by a 10th level fighter, or a raksasha, or a dragon who was shapechanged. The possible ways a DM can screw players are pretty near infinite... I find, far more often, players screw themselves by leaping before they look.


My problem with this is what plausible research could a party that can't handle ogres do to find out there are ogres behind that door and why would the ogres put up with allowing them to do said reseach?

I would much rather fudge my encounters from a number and power perspective then act as if my monsters didn't have a brain in their head. If players are capturing underlings for information, doing extensive scouting, or casting divinations to find out what is behind a door, there better be a darn good reason why the ogres don't know and don't come out to investigate and prepare surprises for the players.


Oh, and I hate those damn wandering encounter charts for AD&D. If you use them without fudging encounters, Poseidon himself would never set foot on a boat.

[Lapak]

My problem with this is what plausible research could a party that can't handle ogres do to find out there are ogres behind that door and why would the ogres put up with allowing them to do said reseach?

I would much rather fudge my encounters from a number and power perspective then act as if my monsters didn't have a brain in their head. If players are capturing underlings for information, doing extensive scouting, or casting divinations to find out what is behind a door, there better be a darn good reason why the ogres don't know and don't come out to investigate and prepare surprises for the players.I imagine he was thinking more along the lines of 'ask the local villagers what threats exist in the nearby hills,' 'stop and listen at doors before kicking them in,' 'capture the occasional enemy and question them about their friends and enemies,' that kind of thing.

[LibraryOgre]

I imagine he was thinking more along the lines of 'ask the local villagers what threats exist in the nearby hills,' 'stop and listen at doors before kicking them in,' 'capture the occasional enemy and question them about their friends and enemies,' that kind of thing.

More or less. I'd also include "Search for tracks", "ask the DM about the local environment", "send the thief ahead to skulk about" ("Burglar, do your burgling!") and "hide and watch" as appropriate.

In the Caves of Chaos, I had a party pull back, leaving the ranger to watch the scene for a while. He got up a tree and spent most of the evening watching, learning where the goblins, hobgoblins, bugbears, gnolls, orcs and kobolds lived, as well as the ogre. They knew, from watching, that three caves were avoided by everyone, but didn't know why; they actually made one of THOSE their goal, so they could maybe have someplace to rest closer in.

[kaomera]

One really odd (maybe?) thing I've noticed is that the newer editions seem to have a lot more options for players to ''protect themselves'' from bad DMs, or at least mechanics that get used that way by most players. This seems to me both silly and counterproductive. Silly because, really, there is no protection from a bas DM other than not playing in their games. If the DM is really out to screw you, you're going to get the screw in the end. And it's counterproductive because it can easily cripple the attempts of a good DM to create a fun / exciting game. I'm not even talking about subverting challenges; certainly you can optimize your character to the point that nothing level-appropriate is really going to phase them, but the real issue is that you often end up with a character with no real story.

There is also the idea that your character has to be maximally optimized for a given skill check (or etc.) in order to be at all competent in that field. This just seems really bogus to me - there should be an assumption that the PCs are all just generally pretty cool. Failure should not be used as an excuse to make the character look like a dunce, a klutz, or inept... (If the character is actually supposed to be bad at something that's a different story, of course.) I did occasionally see this in 1e, but I found it was definitely a good reason to get away from that DM's game ASAP.

1e, at least IME, relied a lot more on the threat (at least) of the ''nuclear option'' - either the players or the DM just quitting the game. I understand why that's not really a desirable outcome, and social coercion can muck the whole thing up... But at least for me and the people I was playing with it worked the vast majority of the time. I think the one big thing I can see that might cause a problem with this idea currently is that I'm seeing far fewer players who are willing to take up the role of DM (even if only as an emergency measure).

One thing as far as encounter balance in 1e goes - I would note that the encounter really wasn't as much of a standardized unit. There where plenty of instances where a single encounter would be split up, with divide and conquer tactics, or several encounters would get strung together... And there was much more incentive to try and do as much damage as possible before breaking off the attack to rest, heal, and resupply. So very often if you ran into 12 ogres (and where on your toes / playing like PCs) you could actually not end up fighting all of them at once, and it became more an issue of how much you thought you could afford to bite off at once...

[VariaVespasa]

More or less. I'd also include "Search for tracks", "ask the DM about the local environment", "send the thief ahead to skulk about" ("Burglar, do your burgling!") and "hide and watch" as appropriate.

In the Caves of Chaos, I had a party pull back, leaving the ranger to watch the scene for a while. He got up a tree and spent most of the evening watching, learning where the goblins, hobgoblins, bugbears, gnolls, orcs and kobolds lived, as well as the ogre. They knew, from watching, that three caves were avoided by everyone, but didn't know why; they actually made one of THOSE their goal, so they could maybe have someplace to rest closer in.

Its amazing how many groups arent willing to do that- just sit and watch for a while, or leave a scout to do it. They either just wander in immediately, or the scout thinks scouting means trying to sneak in and ninja the whole place solo rather than just quietly gathering information.

Extras for gathering info- talk to the bartenders, village leaders (mayor, head priest, militia commander etc), pay attention to the pile of large prey bones outside the cave etc.

[Jay R]

Getting back to the subject, which was differences between 1e and 2e (yes, it really was – go back and check). One difference is that players of 1e (and OD&D) came into it from adventure movies and books, and thought of D&D as simulation. The game of D&D was attractive because it let us do what we had previously only watched movie characters do. We knew that there were situations that you simply cannot get out of, and the solution was to avoid them. Three or four musketeers don't just assault the Cardinal's palace. Captain Blood doesn’t take on the British fleet. Frodo and Sam sneak into Mordor and try to avoid all orcs.

Later gamers came into it as a game in itself, as much a part of the culture as those movies and books. They assumed a game would be "fair", and the game changed to meet its audience's expectations.

And why wouldn’t it? Modern movies and books are written to meet modern expectations. My parents prefer the Gene Kelly Three Musketeers, with its color and 40s Hollywood simplicity. I prefer the accuracy of the Michael York version, and modern moviemakers seem to believe today’s audience want a Three Musketeers movie with a flying ship, and a Cardinal who would try to be king,

A couple of years ago, in an old version (OD&D, in fact), I ran a party of first-levels on a quest that took them through a forest that had both an evil high priest and a high-level witch. No, the party had no chance against either in a straight-up fight, which is why they didn't initiate a straight-up fight. They eventually discovered that the two hated each other, and offered to help the witch against the EHP.

Later on, they found a room with a dragon in it, and ran away, down a corridor it wouldn't fit through. Then they came back later with a powerful magic item and defeated it.) They negotiated a deal with a group of pirates, and outsmarted a djinn. (They also fought all the orcs, carrion crawlers, beetles, and other low-level threats they met.)

That’s how old D&D plays. Is it “better? Who knows? I prefer it, but modern audiences might not.

My parents prefer Swing, I prefer the Beatles, and today’s listening audience prefers today’s music. Similarly, my parents had no role-playing game, I prefer the styles of the seventies and eighties, and modern players like modern style.

For me to complain about modern styles of gaming would feel like my parents complaining about Rock’n’Roll. They're different, and we all have our own tastes.

[MeeposFire]

Your adventure situation isn't unusual now. In fact I have seen very similar situations in current published adventures for 4e D&D.