PDA

View Full Version : Was Gygax a good DM?



Pages : [1] 2

Hazzardevil
2012-06-19, 11:37 AM
Now, almost everyone that has played a role playing game has either heard horror story's or been in one, fact. And after listening to a podcast where some people started talking about dungeons and dragons with one of the people saying they had been told that Gygax was a terrible DM who would kill players in the most unfair ways possible. So, was Gygax really a bad DM?

Madara
2012-06-19, 11:44 AM
Well, I suppose we can't exactly answer from our own experience, but what we do know can give us some hints.

Good:

He was very descriptive and creative, I believe having him as DM would have brought the game to life in many ways.

He was innovative. If there was a concept you wanted to play, he probably would make up new material for it, since he made the game you know.

The original source: You have to wonder. It was before optimization, power gaming, Roll play vs roleplay. So, how was he if such things did come up? There were certainly flaws in the game, did he admit to them and try to fix them, or ignore them?

Bad:

It seems a lot of his GMing was about the worldbuilding, also I think he had DMPCs. Rather than focusing on the players, he may have focused on the NPCs.

His inspiration was obvious in the early editions, and I can imagine the players getting sick of running into hundreds of Bilbos and Gandalfs.

His Adventure Modules are DM vs Players. Seriously intense, and I wouldn't get attached to a character if he was DM.

Tyndmyr
2012-06-19, 12:04 PM
I don't mind a worldbuilding focus, or even a certain degree of GM vs players.

However, dude did have an ego(you can sort of tell reading his works from back then), and I've never found a big ego to be a positive trait in a DM.

The DMPCs I wouldn't be a fan of, and I fear that he's to blame for much of the "DM is boss" attitude in roleplaying.

valadil
2012-06-19, 12:05 PM
That's hardly a fair question. Richard Pryor was undeniably a good standup comic, but I find him hard to listen to because he's so bland compared to today's standards. But today's standards wouldn't be what they are if he hadn't paved the way. Gygax may have done things that we call mistakes today, but when he did them nobody knew they were mistakes yet.

Lapak
2012-06-19, 12:10 PM
It seems a lot of his GMing was about the worldbuilding, also I think he had DMPCs. Rather than focusing on the players, he may have focused on the NPCs.

His inspiration was obvious in the early editions, and I can imagine the players getting sick of running into hundreds of Bilbos and Gandalfs.Where do you get this from? Most of the named characters that grew into the early editions of the game were PCs (Mordenkainen was Gygax, but as player rather than DM (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mordenkainen), Melf was one of his kids, Leomund was one of the early players and designers (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lenard_Lakofka), and so on.

Tyndmyr
2012-06-19, 12:12 PM
That's hardly a fair question. Richard Pryor was undeniably a good standup comic, but I find him hard to listen to because he's so bland compared to today's standards. But today's standards wouldn't be what they are if he hadn't paved the way. Gygax may have done things that we call mistakes today, but when he did them nobody knew they were mistakes yet.

This is also very true. Gygax was, for the time, an excellent GM, because he was one of very, very few people exploring the hobby.

We've improved a lot since then, though.

jackattack
2012-06-19, 12:15 PM
Original/early D&D was a very lethal system with a lot of instant kills.

So if you fault a game for that, is it the fault of the DM or the fault of the game designer?

Who, in this case, are the same guy.

NikitaDarkstar
2012-06-19, 12:19 PM
Hard to say, but I can see him being a frustrating DM after a while, but also very interesting if you enjoy detailed worlds.

Stubbazubba
2012-06-19, 12:22 PM
I disagree with valadil; the 70's were not that long ago.

The man made his children cry when they played. That should be a red flag. The stuff he wrote for the game were almost creepy about the players being utterly powerless against the DM whenever there was a disagreement. Given the impression I've got from the modules he created, where characters just died when they tried something, the rules he wrote, where players had no say in what happened to them, and the games he ran, where his will was all that mattered, to the point of his own children in tears, he seemed like an unmitigated egomaniac, and used DMing as a power fantasy. I'd call that a bad DM in the 70's as much as the same traits made bad kings in bygone centuries, the ones that people revolted against. His games were all about him having fun with imaginary power, not the group having fun accomplishing anything.

Maybe he was very descriptive and such, but all that means to me is that he should have been an author, not an actuary-turned-game-designer. My gut tells me his books wouldn't have sold well, since there was actually competition there, as opposed to RPGs, a conveniently empty market.

Augmental
2012-06-19, 12:24 PM
Original/early D&D was a very lethal system with a lot of instant kills.

So if you fault a game for that, is it the fault of the DM or the fault of the game designer?

Who, in this case, are the same guy.

Which means it's Gygax's fault either way.

Grac
2012-06-19, 12:26 PM
We're at a very weird time for the hobby. The creators are dead, we have lots of stories about them, their games, and their players, and the people who had direct contact with their games are growing older. The new generation only has the nonsense being pushed in this thread to explain the early days to them.

I am on the wrong continent, and from the wrong generation to give first hand accounts, however there are forums, interviews, whatever. The fact that the AD&D 1st edition DMG is still suggested as THE best book for anyone who's into GMing in any system shows that its author knew what he was doing. That author was Gygax. The other things that people know him for, his dungeons, are misleading, because they were either ripped from his own campaigns without context, or churned out, or made for tornament play. The latter are infamous as being 'DM v Players' because that's what they were, they were not, however, meant to have a fun story. Compare Keep on the Borderlands, widely loved as an introductory module.

Vorr
2012-06-19, 12:30 PM
Yes.

He was a great DM. Though, of course, it does depend on what you think 'great' is after all. Gary was very Old School, and would not fit in well with many modern new school gamers.

To put it as simply as possible: A good DM is one that provides an interesting, entertaining and fun game for a group of players. Did Gary do that? Yes he did, in spades.

But it's hard to see the 'good' stretched out over the decades. In Ye Olden Days, if a player had a character killed they would just shrug and go on with life and the game. And no one was into 'fair and balanced' back in Ye Old Days, as life is not fair. So Way Back When it was normal for a character to touch an evil idol and loose a level, no save.

The more modern D&D is seen by many as a 'storytelling game'. So the idea is that the characters will tell a story and everything will be fair and balanced, in the players favor, of course. A modern player hates everything about Old School type gaming: the unfairness, the character death, the hardships and so forth.

So it's clear the modern gamer would not think Gary is a good DM after they had a character 'just fall in a pit and die', but all the Old School gamers would think that was just fine.

Hand_of_Vecna
2012-06-19, 12:40 PM
So if you fault a game for that, is it the fault of the DM or the fault of the game designer?

Who, in this case, are the same guy.

I'd say it's largely irrelevant, he designed the game he wanted to run and ran the game he designed. You could point to the idiosyncrasies of the system when defending another DM of the time, but not the Allfather. He was an excellent writer, but very confrontational.

He clearly enjoyed screwing over people through random chance with no real interaction. He also created horrible meta traps that worked counter real world logic because he said so and it screwed players. If people started tapping the area in front of them with ten foot poles he put hair trigger pressure plates that opened pits ten feet behind them.

There was simply no concept of fairness. You know all the ways we like to roll stats or point buy? He preferred 3d6 down the line in a system that didn't reward anything below a 16 and expected something akin to natural selection to kill 90% of characters (and a greater portion of inferior characters) at low levels. Speaking of that he also tossed fresh level 1's into the dungeon making them mooch xp till they became more capable.

He did get better over time, but was defiantly behind the curb so yes, in any era he was a bad DM.

valadil
2012-06-19, 12:43 PM
I disagree with valadil; the 70's were not that long ago.

The man made his children cry when they played. That should be a red flag. The stuff he wrote for the game were almost creepy about the players being utterly powerless against the DM whenever there was a disagreement. Given the impression I've got from the modules he created, where characters just died when they tried something, the rules he wrote, where players had no say in what happened to them, and the games he ran, where his will was all that mattered, to the point of his own children in tears, he seemed like an unmitigated egomaniac, and used DMing as a power fantasy.

As far as fantasy gaming is concerned, the 70's were practically the beginning of time. A lot has been learned since then.

I hadn't heard those particular stories. If true, that's pretty messed up.

OTOH, when I first started playing it was kind of like that. There were arbitrary death traps. Like, the GM would give you two doors to pick from and one was death, with no hints whatsoever. I couldn't play like that anymore, but it was fun at the time. I'm not saying Gygax should have put his kids through that game when it's clear they were miserable, but there are 11 year olds out there (or were when I was 11) who enjoy that sort of thing.

kyoryu
2012-06-19, 12:43 PM
Where do you get this from? Most of the named characters that grew into the early editions of the game were PCs (Mordenkainen was Gygax, but as player rather than DM (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mordenkainen), Melf was one of his kids, Leomund was one of the early players and designers (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lenard_Lakofka), and so on.

This was pretty common in lots of old-school games, where things like character retirement were common.


Original/early D&D was a very lethal system with a lot of instant kills.

So if you fault a game for that, is it the fault of the DM or the fault of the game designer?

Who, in this case, are the same guy.

Old school D&D is what it is. It being lethal wasn't a bug, it was a feature. Now that may not be what people want nowadays, but that's what the game was at that time. And it worked well for *what it was*. I'd suggest reading Luke Crane's playthrough of old-school D&D - it's illuminating. And he's the author of Burning Wheel, which a highly narrative system.



So it's clear the modern gamer would not think Gary is a good DM after they had a character 'just fall in a pit and die', but all the Old School gamers would think that was just fine.

Exactly. And this is why the #1 thing that the new version of D&D needs to do, IMHO, is figure out what game it wants to be, and *design for that*. "Modern" D&D has too much of the old-school design philosophy left in it to be effective at being a storytelling based system.

Tyndmyr
2012-06-19, 12:45 PM
. The fact that the AD&D 1st edition DMG is still suggested as THE best book for anyone who's into GMing in any system shows that its author knew what he was doing. That author was Gygax.

I would honestly never use the AD&D 1st edition as the "best book" among any system. It's very useful from a historical context, but it's not really the pinnacle of game design or GMing advice.

What about it is so good in your opinion?

Dr.Epic
2012-06-19, 12:45 PM
Now, almost everyone that has played a role playing game has either heard horror story's or been in one, fact. And after listening to a podcast where some people started talking about dungeons and dragons with one of the people saying they had been told that Gygax was a terrible DM who would kill players in the most unfair ways possible. So, was Gygax really a bad DM?

Define "unfair." Maybe the people just thought it was unfair. Maybe he was just being really creative with the game and trying to keep the PCs on their toes.

valadil
2012-06-19, 12:49 PM
Which means it's Gygax's fault either way.

But that doesn't imply anything about his GMing. He might be an awesome GM and a poor game designed. IMO a GM who makes a bad game fun is a good GM.

Yora
2012-06-19, 12:51 PM
Did he run games that the players in his group enjoyed? I guess so and that'd probably mean yes.

However personally, I find both his work on settings and modules severely lacking. Are they good at what they do? I don't know as I don't like what they do.

I do recognize that he did a great job as a merketer. From all that I know, he was running the show that became RPGs as we know them.
However, while doing some superficial reading on the early days of D&D and modern RPGs, I discovered that many of the aspects I really care about are actually credited to "that other guy", Dave Arneson. But would that have found an audience without the traction of Gygax Chainmail wargame? I'm not so sure about it and it seems really to have been the synthesis of the two approaches that really got RPGs going.

snoopy13a
2012-06-19, 01:00 PM
I probably wouldn't have enjoyed his games, but that isn't necessarily relevant to whether he was a good DM. What makes a DM "good" is whether she is competent at the style of game she wants to run. Everything else is player opinion.

As an analogy, I hate modern art. So, I would detest the work of a particular modern artist. This doesn't necessarily mean that person is a poor artist.

NichG
2012-06-19, 01:00 PM
This is me hypothesizing now, but I'd guess the harshness and the acceptability of that harshness is somewhat of a consequence of the wargaming roots of tabletop RPGs. Basically, imagine you're playing a game that has just evolved from wargames, where that was all anyone knew. Losing a unit in a wargame is like losing hitpoints in D&D, much less of a big deal, and units are basically interchangeable within their 'type' so its not like you lose a lot of effort or anything. This is mirrored in older editions of D&D: making a new character at 1st level might take 30 minutes to an hour in 1ed D&D depending how used to it you are. The same would be true of making a new 10th level character. Contrasting 3ed, a 1st level character might take 10 minutes but a 10th level character could take several hours, especially if you're trying for something unique and optimized.

So now go to the first tabletop game, where you're now playing 'the adventures of a particular unit'. The idea that those characters would necessarily have a high chance of being the ones you end up with is inconsistent with the wargame roots of "units die because they're the army's hitpoints". Something that arbitrarily kills a character? In the modern sense we'd say "that just killed the player's agency, its like saying their entire army dies!" but back when the idea of player agency wasn't a well-formed thing, it'd be the equivalent of "That lever was coated with acid - take 3hp of damage". A little obnoxious if arbitrary, but nothing to get worked up over.

Then of course the game evolved in different directions due to passing hands, influences of other games that emerged, and an overall change in gaming culture. I don't personally know if Gygax moved with the times or retained his style or what. I'd guess though that Gygax was a very good DM within the context of his style, by which I mean that he likely knew exactly what to do and how to run his style of game (as opposed to a bad DM that runs a game that is contrary to what they're actually trying to accomplish due to not knowing the rules, not understanding players, whatever)

Vorr
2012-06-19, 01:11 PM
{{Scrubbed}}

Anxe
2012-06-19, 01:21 PM
The latest KODT, #188, had a conversation in it between Barbara Blackburn and Ernie Gygax, one of Gary's children. Gary DMed many solo sessions for Ernie when he was growing up. Ernie told the story of one of his characters known only as Erac's Cousin. He had a lot of fun with the character, but there were often random "rocks fall" incidents. He also decided he wanted to play his character on Barsoom, so his dad just teleported him there and had him start jumping around like John Carter.

There were a lot of things that I wouldn't have liked in the way Ernie described Gary's DMing. However, Ernie's opinion of it was clearly positive. As the DM's goal is to make his players happy, I think Gary succeeded.

Lapak
2012-06-19, 01:23 PM
This is mirrored in older editions of D&D: making a new character at 1st level might take 30 minutes to an hour in 1ed D&D depending how used to it you are. The same would be true of making a new 10th level character.Replace "30 minutes" with "3 minutes" for early D&D and you're more on the right track.

3d6 X 6, in order, pick a class, roll a hit die, pick a name, you've still got 2 and a half minutes to pick equipment from a list that all fits on one page (and, if you're a wizard, either pick or roll a couple of entries from a list of less than 20 spells.)

kyoryu
2012-06-19, 01:23 PM
I would honestly never use the AD&D 1st edition as the "best book" among any system. It's very useful from a historical context, but it's not really the pinnacle of game design or GMing advice.

What about it is so good in your opinion?

I mostly use it as a resource of a bunch of interesting charts, random tables, etc. I don't know that I'd base running a game off of it.


making a new character at 1st level might take 30 minutes to an hour in 1ed D&D depending how used to it you are. The same would be true of making a new 10th level character. Contrasting 3ed, a 1st level character might take 10 minutes but a 10th level character could take several hours, especially if you're trying for something unique and optimized.

I seriously doubt that creating a 1st level character in 1e took longer than a 1st level character in 3e.

1e: Roll the dice, pick race/class, buy gear, pick spells if caster, copy a bunch of stuff from charts

3e (as typically played): Point buy (which takes longer than rolling), pick race/class (from more choices), buy gear, pick spells if caster, pick feats.


Something that arbitrarily kills a character? In the modern sense we'd say "that just killed the player's agency, its like saying their entire army dies!" but back when the idea of player agency wasn't a well-formed thing, it'd be the equivalent of "That lever was coated with acid - take 3hp of damage". A little obnoxious if arbitrary, but nothing to get worked up over.

Again, I'd recommend reading Luke Crane's description of playing D&D (Moldvay edition, FWIW - the version I started with, yay?). He describes a pretty enjoyable game that has almost nothing in common with a "modern" game except for a few mechanics.


To a Modern Gamer, almost any character death is unfair. But add to that anything where anything bad happens to a character.

The easy example is that a Modern DM will tip toe around and handwave the idea that any foe with an intelligence over 6 would go for a characters weak spots. Such as their equipment, weapons, magic items, familiars, spellbooks, mounts, pets and such. That is all Unfair(with a big U) to a Modern Gamer. The idea that Archer Alex would loose his bow, and then not be able to play his character or have fun, is unfair.

That's a little unfair (snert) to the Modern Gamer. It's more accurate to say that the fundamental gameplay has changed. It's no longer a dungeon simulator, or a world, it's a story in which the players create the characters. Modern RPGs are really about The Story to the exclusion of everything else, whereas old school games where the story is what happened to the characters.



And to give an Awesome, but Unfair(to some) direct Gary Example:

"Against the Giants (pg7) Any creature standing before the wall and looking at the writhing amorphous form has a 50% chance of going insane.'' Note no save or anything, just roll the dice.

I think this is an excellent example. There are others, too - lots of the "worthless" 1e items were fine within the context of the time - including things like cursed items which generally are avoided now.

To make an analogy: old-school D&D is nethack, modern games are Baldur's Gate.

hamlet
2012-06-19, 01:24 PM
"Against the Giants (pg7) Any creature standing before the wall and looking at the writhing amorphous form has a 50% chance of going insane.'' Note no save or anything, just roll the dice.

Given the inspiration for that particular bit of architecture and the fact that just about everybody at that game would have been familiar with HP Lovecraft, just about every savvy player there would have said immediately "I avert my eyes" and thus eschewed the issue.

kyoryu
2012-06-19, 01:25 PM
BTW, since I've referred to it a few times:

https://plus.google.com/u/0/111266966448135449970/posts/Q8qRhCw7az5

Keep in mind that Luke Crane is the author of Burning Wheel, a game which is pretty antithetical to the core goals of original D&D.

Hiro Protagonest
2012-06-19, 01:31 PM
To a Modern Gamer, almost any character death is unfair. But add to that anything where anything bad happens to a character.

The easy example is that a Modern DM will tip toe around and handwave the idea that any foe with an intelligence over 6 would go for a characters weak spots. Such as their equipment, weapons, magic items, familiars, spellbooks, mounts, pets and such. That is all Unfair(with a big U) to a Modern Gamer. The idea that Archer Alex would loose his bow, and then not be able to play his character or have fun, is unfair.

And to give an Awesome, but Unfair(to some) direct Gary Example:

"Against the Giants (pg7) Any creature standing before the wall and looking at the writhing amorphous form has a 50% chance of going insane.'' Note no save or anything, just roll the dice.

That's inaccurate. And rather offensive to me, personally. A creature without any ranks in knowledge (arcana) or wizard levels shouldn't be attacking the wizard's spellbook. Those that do know probably won't, because it won't have any effect on saving their lives since the wizard can still destroy them with already prepared spells, and in the middle of heated combat, it's better to deal with the thing threatening your life right now. This is assuming that you're not playing 3.5, PF, or 4e, the "modern" editions. If you do, 3.X has many ways to make the wizard not get hit in the first place, and also have many things to protect their book (like, say, stuff it in a Bag of Holding and cast an Alarm on the extradimensional space). I don't think 4e wizards rely on their spellbook for anything other than rituals, and if they do, I'm pretty sure it's only Daily Powers.

Now weapons? That's different. Practically every creature past a certain point has DR/magic. Either the group's low-op, which means the fighter just has a mundane backup weapon, or it's prepared, which means the fighter has a backup +1 Keen Falchion and the wizard or cleric has Greater Magic Weapon prepared.

There is no middle ground. Either the old school style is bad, or it's ineffective. New or casual players who just want to play are punished, experienced or well-read players who take the mechanics of the game seriously can negate everything.

Mono Vertigo
2012-06-19, 01:31 PM
I don't know about D&D, but this thread has convinced me he would have made a great Paranoia GM. Now, the world will never know. :smallfrown:

Augmental
2012-06-19, 01:33 PM
And to give an Awesome, but Unfair(to some) direct Gary Example:

"Against the Giants (pg7) Any creature standing before the wall and looking at the writhing amorphous form has a 50% chance of going insane.'' Note no save or anything, just roll the dice.

No, that's just unfair. Out-of-the-blue death (or may-as-well-be-death) traps like that are one of the worst things a DM can pull.

kyoryu
2012-06-19, 01:35 PM
There is no middle ground. Either the old school style is bad, or it's ineffective. New or casual players who just want to play are punished, experienced or well-read players who take the mechanics of the game seriously can negate everything.

Clearly, a great number of people enjoyed it, and many still do. It may be bad or ineffective for the type of games you prefer, but that's not the same as saying it's "bad" as a blanket statement.

Lapak
2012-06-19, 01:43 PM
No, that's just unfair. Out-of-the-blue death (or may-as-well-be-death) traps like that are one of the worst things a DM can pull.Again, context is important.

On the one hand, early D&D did not have (and would not have for a while) rules to cover a broad base of situations, such as a generic trapfinding. If you wanted to avoid getting caught in something hazardous, the fun/challenge of the game came from learning - as a matter of player skill, not character skill - how to navigate an environment where EVERYTHING is potentially hazardous and come out the other side with treasure and prestige. Don't touch anything directly if you avoid it; don't assume that everything is what it seems to be; don't get into ANY fight if you can avoid it because it may turn out to be something like a catoblepas that can no-save-just-kill you; if you must get into a fight, try to arrange for it to be as unfair as possible in your favor. Save enough strength to get out, once you're in, and so on. And, since D&D did have Lovecraft and HPL-influenced fantasy in its historical references, don't read ancient texts if you value your sanity.

On the other hand, 'insanity' wasn't the 'act randomly' business it is in 3e and beyond. The 1e DMG has a table of specific pseudo-medical maladies (monomania, megalomania, paranoia, and so on) that someone who goes 'Insane' might suffer from. Reading the wall may drive you nuts in that you become obsessed with uncovering its mysteries, or you may end up believing that your party brought you along on this mission as bait, or you may decide that you are the Messiah of the Old Ones and that everyone should support your new mission of converting the Giants rather than killing them. (Unless they are heretics who resist your conversion, in which case kill them.) Insanity wasn't an automatic character-killer, there were ways to cure it, and it could certainly lead to interesting roleplaying.

Vorr
2012-06-19, 02:09 PM
That's offensive to us who don't follow the old school. It's also inaccurate. A creature without any ranks in knowledge (arcana) or wizard levels shouldn't be attacking the wizard's spellbook.

It's not meant to be offensive, it's just different styles. And yours is a common argument ''everyone in the game must be dumb''. Of course the character of a player can know everything, even simple stuff like 'wizard reads book for spells' even if they are not a wizard or have no ranks in any knowledge skill.



Now weapons? That's different. Practically every creature past a certain point has DR/magic. Either the group's low-op, which means the fighter just has a mundane backup weapon, or it's prepared, which means the fighter has a backup +1 Keen Falchion and the wizard or cleric has Greater Magic Weapon prepared.

But, of course, the back up weapon is not as cool and fun as the lost primary one. So it's Unfair to a warrior type to take that away. This gets even worse when the primary weapon is rare, like a spiked chain, so the character won't have a back up one, and won't be able to buy one at the next farm town.


The end point here is: In a Modern Game the characters will have almost all the (non-consumable) stuff they started the game with and then get more bonus loot. An Old School gamer is just luck to have their character alive.

Another example: The Boss fight. In Modern Games the Boss Fight is a big deal, it's the big finish. So it's Unfair for a character to be even slightly below 100% for the boss fight. A modern game will allow a rest so that all spells, abilities and such can be used. After all it would be Unfair for say a barbarian to fight the boss after they had used up all the rage ability they had for that day or the spellcaster to be without their best spells. Now in a Classic Game you did not have boss fights(as video games had not yet infected the game). But towards the end of the night, characters would be forced to fight with little more then rocks and their wits. It's common for a spellcaster to run out of spells in a Classic game(as the character must stay awake and active for 16 game hours a day) and then they have to just stab with a dagger and throw rocks. It's common for the fighter to be in just a loin cloth and have a sharp stick by the end of a grand adventure.


Another direct Gygax Example Dungeonland (pg9) Charldos House-once inside the house shrinks so in a couple rounds anyone inside is crushed. You can't teleport out, only a few spells can effect it(like dispel magic or a wish) otherwise your character just dies.....

Hendel
2012-06-19, 02:50 PM
Having been a DM for over 32 years across systems from AD&D 1st & Basic to Pathfinder, I think that Gary Gygax was a brilliant designer, visionary, and story teller. I never played with him personally so I do not know what he was like as a DM so I think the original posted question is a hard one to answer. I can say that I would give a lot to have been able to have played in a game with him as DM.

Part of this might be a god-complex that some of us have for Mr Gygax as he was so directly involved and instrumental in our youth and formative years. I might be able to say the same thing about the Beatles. They were like gods that walked the earth when I was growing up and I didn't know anyone who didn't feel influenced by them somehow. Today, you look back and acknowledge their role but maybe their fan base is less than say Lady Gaga, etc. I don't know, but Mr Gygax had a lasting influence that still lingers.

Do we all DM like we used to do? No, look at the silly examples in things like Fear of Girls where the DM is a parody of killer DM's of the past. Do I like the new rules systems? Yes, for the most part, but I have often lamented to my groups that I miss the old days. When a DM said, "you touched the artifact and now your are possessed," the player would not like it, but that is what the DM said. Today, I feel like I get too much, "where is that in the rules" or "how is that bad guy able to do that." The codification of the rules helps to make things more consistent but it has also bred a player that questions things more than they may have in the past, in my opinion.

I feel in that way it is harder to DM now than in previous editions because the game has become very tactical and very rule and game mechanic based where in the past it resembled more of the "story teller" types of systems.

Getting back to the original post, I would like to think Gary Gygax was a great DM. I have enjoyed all of his modules and his novels (especially Gord the Rogue). I may just be a nostalgic old fart but that is my two coppers...

Augmental
2012-06-19, 03:37 PM
Another direct Gygax Example Dungeonland (pg9) Charldos House-once inside the house shrinks so in a couple rounds anyone inside is crushed. You can't teleport out, only a few spells can effect it(like dispel magic or a wish) otherwise your character just dies.....

Yet more proof that I would hate playing in any of Gygax's campaigns.


Do we all DM like we used to do? No, look at the silly examples in things like Fear of Girls where the DM is a parody of killer DM's of the past. Do I like the new rules systems? Yes, for the most part, but I have often lamented to my groups that I miss the old days. When a DM said, "you touched the artifact and now your are possessed," the player would not like it, but that is what the DM said. Today, I feel like I get too much, "where is that in the rules" or "how is that bad guy able to do that." The codification of the rules helps to make things more consistent but it has also bred a player that questions things more than they may have in the past, in my opinion.

If a DM killed my character like that, I'd quit his game and never come back.


I feel in that way it is harder to DM now than in previous editions because the game has become very tactical and very rule and game mechanic based where in the past it resembled more of the "story teller" types of systems.

The earliest edition of D&D was also the edition that directly followed wargames.

valadil
2012-06-19, 03:48 PM
If a DM killed my character like that, I'd quit his game and never come back.


That's true today. When all the GMs behaved that way, it didn't seem quite so bad.

Lapak
2012-06-19, 03:52 PM
That's true today. When all the GMs behaved that way, it didn't seem quite so bad.Or, to look at it from the other end: when long-term character survival was viewed as earned rather than expected, and name-level characters were figures of awe, the opportunity to achieve that was viewed as a challenge worth undertaking.

It's genuinely not a question of 'Good DM/Bad DM.' D&D then and now are fundamentally different games with different goals.

Jay R
2012-06-19, 04:00 PM
We can make up guesses, or we can look at data.

I have no direct data in the form of statements from players in the games he DMed. The only remaining data about him as a DM is whether people continued to play in his games.

By all accounts they did stay in his games, long enough for the development of the world and for the characters to grow into legends.

While I really dislike his ego-driven writing style, the only basis I have for an opinion on his abilities as a DM indicate that he was a good one.

Hendel
2012-06-19, 04:33 PM
If a DM killed my character like that, I'd quit his game and never come back.


And that would be your right and I would not question it. I still do not think that would make that a "bad" DM, just not what you like in your DM.

The role of DM is hard as you have to keep all the rules straight plus all of the abilities of the bad guys. The players each generally have one character which they may have optimized to the hilt and they have thought through certain contingencies as well. The DM is a single person trying to challenge a group of players. If the DM has to stop down and explain why everything is happening, I think the players have pushed too far. On the other hand, a DM who is just arbitrary and capricious with no respect for the rules will probably loose players and get the hint.

Again, I would suggest that Gary Gygax was probably not a "bad" DM but that is based on a lot of assumptions on my part. I do like the point that he kept players (not just family members) for a long time. In fact, I believe he played as much as he ran games back in the day. I think he acted as the overall "Grand DM" to keep the world and storylines in motion but his brothers and others ran a lot according to what I have read.

NichG
2012-06-19, 04:47 PM
Replace "30 minutes" with "3 minutes" for early D&D and you're more on the right track.

3d6 X 6, in order, pick a class, roll a hit die, pick a name, you've still got 2 and a half minutes to pick equipment from a list that all fits on one page (and, if you're a wizard, either pick or roll a couple of entries from a list of less than 20 spells.)


I seriously doubt that creating a 1st level character in 1e took longer than a 1st level character in 3e.

1e: Roll the dice, pick race/class, buy gear, pick spells if caster, copy a bunch of stuff from charts


I've played 1ed. An hour is accurate if you do it by the book. Keep in mind the following things:

- Rolling for age, which modifies your stats
- Transcribing all the stuff your stats imply from tables to your character sheet. Looking up and transcribing your saves
- Rolling for backgrounds
- Buying gear by far takes the longest of all of this if you actually bother to track weight and accumulating costs. Its not just 'armor, sword, done', when those three chickens might be all that stand between you and death at the fangs of a pack of hungry wolves.
- Transcribing the To-Hit vs AC chart for all of your weapons.

In my experience, one hour was what it took on average.

hiryuu
2012-06-19, 04:52 PM
Old school or new school, a good GM never says "You didn't tell me you were eating. I was recording your fatigue over here. You have starved to death."

Lapak
2012-06-19, 04:59 PM
I've played 1ed. An hour is accurate if you do it by the book. Keep in mind the following things:

- Rolling for age, which modifies your stats
- Transcribing all the stuff your stats imply from tables to your character sheet. Looking up and transcribing your saves
- Rolling for backgrounds
- Buying gear by far takes the longest of all of this if you actually bother to track weight and accumulating costs. Its not just 'armor, sword, done', when those three chickens might be all that stand between you and death at the fangs of a pack of hungry wolves.
- Transcribing the To-Hit vs AC chart for all of your weapons.

In my experience, one hour was what it took on average.Well, for starters, when I said 'early' I meant 'early', not AD&D - that's why I said pick a class, not a class and race. :smallsmile: OD&D or BECMI, 3 minutes is plenty.

But aside from that, for AD&D:
- why in the world would you transcribe any of those things? There's a reason that DM screens used to have cheat-sheets of relevant tables on both sides. I don't recall anyone transcribing the weapon vs. armor values to their character sheet, even in groups that used that rule.
- backgrounds were most definitely not required, and adds one additional roll if used
- similarly, age didn't modify your stats significantly
- equipment-buying was another thing that sped up significantly with practice. Your first character, sure, an hour is not unreasonable. Your fifth? Your tenth? You'll have a good idea of what you're going to buy before you even touch the book.

kyoryu
2012-06-19, 05:14 PM
Well, for starters, when I said 'early' I meant 'early', not AD&D - that's why I said pick a class, not a class and race. :smallsmile: OD&D or BECMI, 3 minutes is plenty.

But aside from that, for AD&D:
- why in the world would you transcribe any of those things? There's a reason that DM screens used to have cheat-sheets of relevant tables on both sides. I don't recall anyone transcribing the weapon vs. armor values to their character sheet, even in groups that used that rule.
- backgrounds were most definitely not required, and adds one additional roll if used
- similarly, age didn't modify your stats significantly
- equipment-buying was another thing that sped up significantly with practice. Your first character, sure, an hour is not unreasonable. Your fifth? Your tenth? You'll have a good idea of what you're going to buy before you even touch the book.

Yeah, this. My early experiences with D&D were Moldvay and 1eAD&D. It certainly didn't require an hour to create a character in general. And I really don't think that in any scenario it took longer than 3.x.

some guy
2012-06-19, 05:14 PM
We can make up guesses, or we can look at data.

I have no direct data in the form of statements from players in the games he DMed. The only remaining data about him as a DM is whether people continued to play in his games.

By all accounts they did stay in his games, long enough for the development of the world and for the characters to grow into legends.

While I really dislike his ego-driven writing style, the only basis I have for an opinion on his abilities as a DM indicate that he was a good one.

Quoted for most rational post.

Augmental
2012-06-19, 05:24 PM
Old school or new school, a good GM never says "You didn't tell me you were eating. I was recording your fatigue over here. You have starved to death."

This post is truth.

hamlet
2012-06-19, 05:57 PM
Old school or new school, a good GM never says "You didn't tell me you were eating. I was recording your fatigue over here. You have starved to death."

Do you have any evidence that Gary said this? Or are you just relying on the personal image you have in your head and made up?

Frenth Alunril
2012-06-19, 05:57 PM
I don't know about D&D, but this thread has convinced me he would have made a great Paranoia GM. Now, the world will never know. :smallfrown:

A good friend of mine got to sit down with Gygax at a gen con in the 90s. He said it was awesome. They didn't even roll stats, they just say down at the table and Gygax started telling a story. Everyone had a chance to say what they do. One person stood up, one drank some wine, one asks questions, etc. Gygax basically said, "oh, you the drank the wine? The poison caused your throat to constrict and you fall unconscious before you die."

My friend said it was the best game he ever played. He almost survived the whole encounter. He was so excited to talk about it.

I think we all have to remember that every game is different. I would have loved to have had a chance to play with them, just to see what a game could have been like. The old school was different, but, even today, sometimes a great tpk is worth while. My guys still talk about it as a way to spend a weekend when not all the players can attend.

Zarrgon
2012-06-19, 06:42 PM
Old school or new school, a good GM never says "You didn't tell me you were eating. I was recording your fatigue over here. You have starved to death."

That would be a very bad DM, but only if they surprised the players with it. I've seen a game or two where you do keep track of food and water. For example, back in the day, you need to keep track of water and how much you drank in Dark Sun.


Gary was very Old School, and I think you can sum it up nicely by two points:

1.The DM is always right and is above and separate from the players.
2.You don't need to use all the rules, just use what works for your group.
3.There is not such thing as a 'rule question', whatever the DM says happens.


And very few Modern Games are played like that. As they follow the points of:

1.The Dm is 'just' a player.
2.You must use all the rules.
3.The rules are king and everyone must obey them without question.


But, the final answer would be: did Gary run a fun, challenging and entertaining game for his players? YES. So that makes him a good DM.

hiryuu
2012-06-19, 06:53 PM
Do you have any evidence that Gary said this? Or are you just relying on the personal image you have in your head and made up?

My roomate's dad used to game with the guy (as well as some other GMs of the era), and I can't run games for him because he checks his waterskin for traps every fifteen minutes. He checks every bush. If I describe a terrain feature, he suspects it of everything and won't move on until he's poured water on it, poked it with everything in his pack, and then ground it into bits looking for treasure inside (or, as he told me specifically, anything that might kill him in his sleep. That boulder was suspicious.). He described everything he did, from opening his pack to opening his food rations and then to how much of it he was eating.

These are not the things anyone who's played with a sane GM does.

Gygax was a great world-builder, though. Amazing, fantastic world-builder.

Augmental
2012-06-19, 06:55 PM
From what I've seen on this thread, old school D&D is basically I Wanna Be The Adventurer. Would this be an accurate description? If so, I can see why tabletop gaming was unpopular for a while.

Hiro Protagonest
2012-06-19, 06:56 PM
1.The Dm is 'just' a player.
The DM is not just a player. With no DM, there will be no game.

However, his power over the game (not the world, the game) is not more than all the players combined. Because if all the players leave, he has no power.

2.You must use all the rules.
3.The rules are king and everyone must obey them without question.

This... is stereotyping. On the forums, we debate the RAW, because we will not all bow down to one single DM's houserules. If the DM decides that every class without any spellcasting better than the paladin's or ranger's gets pseudo-flight at level 10 to represent their Charles Atlas Superpowers? Good. If the DM decides to scrap magic items and give non-casters bonuses and resistances that scale with level? Okay. If the DM decides that fighters dual wielding large-sized bastard swords are too powerful and adds another -2 penalty to attack rolls with Monkey Grip? Um...

hamlet
2012-06-19, 06:56 PM
My roomate's dad used to game with the guy (as well as some other GMs of the era), and I can't run games for him because he checks his waterskin for traps every fifteen minutes. He checks every bush. If I describe a terrain feature, he suspects it of everything and won't move on until he's poured water on it, poked it with everything in his pack, and then ground it into bits looking for treasure inside (or, as he told me specifically, anything that might kill him in his sleep. That boulder was suspicious.). He described everything he did, from opening his pack to opening his food rations and then to how much of it he was eating.

These are not the things anyone who's played with a sane GM does.


Uh-huh.

Call me skeptical.

You have a paranoid and lunatic player . . . and blame the supposed DM.

Hiro Protagonest
2012-06-19, 06:58 PM
Uh-huh.

Call me skeptical.

You have a paranoid and lunatic player . . . and blame the supposed DM.

You think those problems came out of nowhere? I think his dad's seen one too many Mimics.

Vladislav
2012-06-19, 07:01 PM
And very few Modern Games are played like that. As they follow the points of:

1.The Dm is 'just' a player.
2.You must use all the rules.
3.The rules are king and everyone must obey them without question.
That's why it's so difficult to find a DM nowadays. Who the heck wants to invest weeks in creating a game, just to be told (by people who invested, oh, I don't know, 5% of your effort) that you're 'just a player'?

hiryuu
2012-06-19, 07:07 PM
Uh-huh.

Call me skeptical.

You have a paranoid and lunatic player . . . and blame the supposed DM.

I "blame the supposed DMs" because his actions also tend to come with horror stories.

For more fun, have you ever read Gygax's Up on a Soapbox articles, where he gleefully regales readers with tales about how he humiliated and emasculated players for enjoyment?

Not saying that people can't have fun that way (especially with the way they flipped GMs around in that era, I hear all kinds of hilarious stuff, most notably about the million and one scams that were apparently pulled with magic mouth), just that the style he used tended towards the adversarial.

Did people enjoy themselves? Probably. Which means for them, it was good. The issue is that it's not an easy yes or no question, and Zarrgon has the right of it:


But, the final answer would be: did Gary run a fun, challenging and entertaining game for his players? YES. So that makes him a good DM.

That those players wanted something out of it (instant death traps, scamming and humiliating their fellow wizards, and making fun of and with each other over a pizza) that is different than the way things are often run now is not what's being asked.

Zarrgon
2012-06-19, 07:18 PM
From what I've seen on this thread, old school D&D is basically I Wanna Be The Adventurer. Would this be an accurate description? If so, I can see why tabletop gaming was unpopular for a while.

What do you mean by '' I Wanna Be The Adventurer''?

And you should note that tabletop gaming has always been popular......just enough for it to stay around. D&D is after all almost 40 years old and someone had to be playing all that time so that you can still play it today.

Stubbazubba
2012-06-19, 07:32 PM
1.The Dm is 'just' a player.
2.You must use all the rules.
3.The rules are king and everyone must obey them without question.

Wow, I think your bias is showing here. How many people use the complete 3.5 Grapple rules? Most people accept ad-hoc rulings by DMs without question, because a lot of rules suck. This works because DMs don't have to do that for every ruling.

Someone said something to the effect of 'Old school D&D is a completely different game with different goals.' That I agree with; old school D&D is about the players' ability to guess what's in the DM's head. And the DM is actively encouraged to throw as many curve balls (and curves on his curve balls) in order to stay one step ahead of them. And when you, as a team of players, finally figure out what he's thinking, and are able to get past things and survive, you feel accomplished. That is a totally different kind of game, and not one that I would find very appealing. Also, it's not a game that needs all those rules. And Gygax's games were pretty rules-lite; since his power was unbounded, and could at any point render any choice you made null and void or worse, why did you even have stats for your character? There was absolutely no understanding that they would help you survive in any way. That was one of those new-fangled 'player empowering' notions which is killing the hobby.


One person stood up, one drank some wine, one asks questions, etc. Gygax basically said, "oh, you the drank the wine? The poison caused your throat to constrict and you fall unconscious before you die."

Case-in-point; just imagine yourself as someone who has played for maybe a couple of months, and not very savvy to the way this whole DM owns you thing is supposed to work. They know Gary Gygax is the guy behind it all (who's Dave Arneson?), they sit down excitedly, and dies off-handedly for doing something as mundane as drinking wine. Aren't you having fun yet?! What were all those stats for, again? Way to reward your players for doing anything, Gygax. I assume from then on they only drank from their own flasks, until one of those got mysteriously poisoned, and so then they decided to finish the mission without water, having no clue how long the DM would mercifully let them keep playing until he arbitrarily decided they all died of dehydration. This kind of thing might work as a one-off or a convention game, if you all understood that this is just off-the-wall, fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants stuff, but I'm failing to see the any evidence that this could be anyone's 'best game ever played.'


But, the final answer would be: did Gary run a fun, challenging and entertaining game for his players? YES. So that makes him a good DM.

This is like saying since abused spouses aren't filing for divorce, and many still say they love their abusive spouse, that there's no problem.

hiryuu
2012-06-19, 07:33 PM
What do you mean by '' I Wanna Be The Adventurer''?

I think they mean "I Wanna be the Guy" except on the table and with dice.

Augmental
2012-06-19, 07:38 PM
What do you mean by '' I Wanna Be The Adventurer''?

It's a pun on I Wanna Be The Guy, which is an utterly sadistic platformer full of cheap death traps. If you liked old-school D&D, and you like platformers, then you'll love I Wanna Be The Guy. Google it, you can download it for free.

kyoryu
2012-06-19, 07:40 PM
From what I've seen on this thread, old school D&D is basically I Wanna Be The Adventurer. Would this be an accurate description? If so, I can see why tabletop gaming was unpopular for a while.

Meh. It's more like Nethack.

Rallicus
2012-06-19, 07:41 PM
Most of us can only speculate, and there's no definite answer since what constitutes a good DM is a matter of opinion.

I think he was a good DM, though. Maybe not as far as today's "standards" are concerned, but I'd still be interested in being in his campaigns... even if he wasn't famous.



I feel in that way it is harder to DM now than in previous editions because the game has become very tactical and very rule and game mechanic based where in the past it resembled more of the "story teller" types of systems.


True, but on the flip side, it could be argued that the rules give the players a fair shot to develop their characters and bring more to the story than a generic throw away character playing in a game where the DM has absolute control.

Still, I do like the idea of older editions more. I've been playing 3.x for the majority of my DnD days and it's truly wearing on me. I can't go through a single session without a player referring me to "obscure supplement rules page ---" I have to make my encounters with a "win or die" situation on my mind, because most of my players refuse to submit or run. When their characters die, they get pissed. When I'm a player in a campaign, the DM almost always fudges rolls. It frustrates me to no end, because I never feel like I'm accomplishing anything in DnD.

These are my VTT based online campaigns, though. In real life I was fortunate enough to play with friends who knew little of the rules and never questioned me as a DM. Those were memorable, fun sessions.

I'm picking up some new systems now and we'll see where that goes. I'm also honestly contemplating going to earlier editions of DnD since their play style appeals to me more.

hamlet
2012-06-19, 07:49 PM
I "blame the supposed DMs" because his actions also tend to come with horror stories.

For more fun, have you ever read Gygax's Up on a Soapbox articles, where he gleefully regales readers with tales about how he humiliated and emasculated players for enjoyment?

Not saying that people can't have fun that way (especially with the way they flipped GMs around in that era, I hear all kinds of hilarious stuff, most notably about the million and one scams that were apparently pulled with magic mouth), just that the style he used tended towards the adversarial.

Did people enjoy themselves? Probably. Which means for them, it was good. The issue is that it's not an easy yes or no question, and Zarrgon has the right of it:




No, I don't think those things come out of nowhere, but I do think that such horror stories are vastly inflated over the years and that a great deal of it is just the player projecting his own perceptions, or just flat out being a jerk.

HeadlessMermaid
2012-06-19, 07:53 PM
A good friend of mine got to sit down with Gygax at a gen con in the 90s. He said it was awesome. They didn't even roll stats, they just say down at the table and Gygax started telling a story. Everyone had a chance to say what they do. One person stood up, one drank some wine, one asks questions, etc. Gygax basically said, "oh, you the drank the wine? The poison caused your throat to constrict and you fall unconscious before you die."

My friend said it was the best game he ever played. He almost survived the whole encounter. He was so excited to talk about it..
That's exactly how I had imagined Gygax DMing, and I bet I'd have the exact same reaction with your friend.

Rules, balance, fairness, avoiding unnecessary PC deaths, deep and elaborate stories... all these are great, but the core of any RPG is immersion. All the rest can be found in board games or computer games (or heck, novels). A DM who can truly immerse you in the story gives you something that just can't be replicated in any other way. It's the very essence of roleplaying, the rest is bookkeeping.

Now, I'm a "modern" player, so playing all the time with old school rules/mindset would frustrate me, and playing all the time with old school stories would bore me. But give me a fantastic DM - and as far as immersion goes, I'm pretty sure that Gygax was fantastic - and I'll gladly roll with it.

By the way, I profoundly dislike a lot of things in early D&D, and most are Gygax's fault. :smalltongue: On the other hand, I can nag now, but I have the benefit of 40 years of D&D and collective storytelling to study and be inspired from, and choose what I like and what I don't. He was just improvising.

Hiro Protagonest
2012-06-19, 07:54 PM
This is like saying since abused spouses aren't filing for divorce, and many still say they love their abusive spouse, that there's no problem.

And I think your bias is showing here. You gotta approach a Gygax game differently. Don't go in it expecting to beat down monsters like an awesome hero, founding your own kingdom, and feasting afterwards. You might be able to do that, but don't EXPECT to be able to do that.

Don't trust maps, they might've been fakes sold to you by guys who are making a REAL map for themselves by following the adventurers and watching them trip over deathtraps.

Buy a ten-foot pole for each person, and a bunch of rope.

Have one guy tapping his ten-foot pole in the left wall, one guy on the right wall, one guy on the ground, and one guy prodding the ceiling.

Etc.

Basically, combine the prepared adventurer with Alastor Moody levels of paranoia.

Augmental
2012-06-19, 08:00 PM
Meh. It's more like Nethack.

Which also has a lot of cheap deaths. Are you starving and eat a kobold corpse in desperation? Poison kills you. Too much in your inventory? You fall down the stairs and die. You're new to the game and attack a floating eye, not knowing how dangerous they are? You get paralyzed and a grid bug comes by and kills you because the eye is making sure you stay paralyzed. Both games are full of cheap deaths, and both are VERY hard compared to most modern games. Admittedly, Nethack is an adventure/RPG/roguelike game, while I Wanna Be The Guy is a platformer, but Nethack did draw a fair bit of inspiration from old D&D.

NichG
2012-06-19, 08:23 PM
I think the Nethack example is pretty good, because it highlights something in particular. Nethack is a game with a very strong learning curve, and it doesn't go out of its way to help people along that curve. If you're new to Nethack, it feels impossible, unfair, and quite possibly totally un-fun. If you learn the tricks in Nethack, it no longer feels unfair (and for some people, this is even to the point where it feels too easy so they have to take challenges like winning without ever attacking, winning without ever eating meat, winning without praying to the gods, etc). The game has an internal logic that if you as the player know how to exploit, you can prosper - old school style D&D is the same way.

Nethack is a game that is really bad to come upon without knowing what to expect already, but if you know what to expect it can be quite fun. Going to Nethack while expecting Final Fantasy or Skyrim is going to result in having a bad time.

valadil
2012-06-19, 08:34 PM
they sit down excitedly, and dies off-handedly for doing something as mundane as drinking wine. Aren't you having fun yet?!

So I only played old school with one group. As I mentioned, there were arbitrary death traps and we were okay with that. I think the mentality of what we were playing wasn't really a first person perspective of another person. We didn't have to justify actions or knowledge as being in character. What I mean by that is that if you die for drinking wine, the group collectively learns to test the wine for poison before drinking. It was okay for your second character to know this without having met your first or even having heard of his demise.

It was really just an exercise in paranoia. Come up with safe ways to check for creatively deployed hazards. You wouldn't throw a character with a backstory at a game like this. At most you'd have a picture to accompany the set of stats for your dude. The point isn't to be a stupendous badass by winning all the fights, but to see how far you can get in an impossible challenge.

Manly Man
2012-06-20, 02:55 AM
The earliest editions of Dungeons & Dragons were more for storytelling than anything else. Yes, there were some stats for your characters, but they were mostly for you to determine whether or not you would die at whatever point. If you managed to live long enough to stick around after a hit or two, you had become more than just the meatbags that littered the floors of dungeons the true heroes and adventurers explored, plundered, and ultimately conquered. When you got to the point that your stats actually mattered, it was meant to make you feel like you were an important element to the story, and whether you were to become a pile of dragon crap or not was less certain.

Though I have spent the vast majority of my time playing 3.x, my roots lie in First edition Advanced Dungeons & Dragons. I acknowledge that things are governed by rules, but I do not simply play for the sake of other characters becoming powerful so as to brag about the amount of ass they kick. Nearly every game I've run is more a story to be told than a game to be played. I have included elements of so many flavors of storytelling, whether it be tragedy, comedy, or even romance. If your character dies, so be it. It's part of the story, and as any good soap opera has told us, just because you're dead doesn't mean that you'll stay as such. That would be the premises for another story all its own, the journey of many friends to bring back the one they knew, if only to share another drink and earn a gold piece or two through innovation, ingenuity and utilizing the fact that you are indeed a lucky bastard. Telling such a story is unbelievably fun, and that's the way it was played.

So, were I to have been there, back before Zagyg had been found at the bottom of that ridiculous dungeon below Castle Greyhawk, I would have considered Gygax to be a genius in his methods. If my character died early, it was all part of the story he told, and that one fellow was unimportant, but all that it would mean to me is that the next one was surely to be the character destined for greatness. By the standards of his time, Gygax was a very excellent Dungeon Master, and I would have relished any chance to play with him, whether or not my character was poisoned to death, incinerated by a fiery trap, or became another fine example of why those damned worms are called "purple people-eaters". Were he to try and apply everything he'd done in the earliest stages of the game's development to what's known currently, he'd have been either laughed off or told off, depending on his players, and it's something I recognize as fact. What standards we have nowadays have skewed what Gygax had done for the most part, and so by our current mindset, he'd be a terrible Dungeon Master, but when it was still something that was essentially left to little but one's imagination, he was king. Different times, different standards, to put it in a nutshell.

Kane0
2012-06-20, 03:58 AM
I was never DMd by him, so Ill never know...

That said, he did narrate a quest or two in DDO, which was pretty good. Taking that into account, I would never suggest he would be a *bad* DM.

Knaight
2012-06-20, 04:25 AM
Rules, balance, fairness, avoiding unnecessary PC deaths, deep and elaborate stories... all these are great, but the core of any RPG is immersion. All the rest can be found in board games or computer games (or heck, novels). A DM who can truly immerse you in the story gives you something that just can't be replicated in any other way. It's the very essence of roleplaying, the rest is bookkeeping
That's one perspective, sure. I'd say that immersion can be found elsewhere, and would consider it fairly trivial - whereas truly collaborative emergent storytelling can't be. Immersion certainly isn't the core of all RPGs, given that several are deliberately built against it, and encourage detachment.

As for the thread as a whole - D&D 3.5/4e is not the totality of modern gaming. Making sweeping statements about "modern gaming" that only apply to D&D 3.5/4e is at best hilarious to anyone with experience outside of the D&D 3.5/4e niche.

Balmas
2012-06-20, 04:34 AM
I don't know much about him. I've heard horror stories, though. For example, TvTropes indicates that Tomb of Horrors was a direct revenge on people who said that his modules were getting too easy. This even included advice on how to DM it. One gem was to be said right after the PCs had defeated Acererak's body-double, probably sustaining three or four losses during the entire dungeon, and were fleeing through a collapsing dungeon. At this point, Gygax advised that the DM ask, "Now, was [i]that too hard for you?"

Killer Angel
2012-06-20, 05:06 AM
Most of us can only speculate, and there's no definite answer since what constitutes a good DM is a matter of opinion.


I've played with Gygax once, at a Convention. Cannot speak about him as a DM, but as a player, he was simply fascinating. The adventure was we, watching and listening to him (not a surprise, given its fame and charisma... I'm certain you would have a more objective PoV if you listen someone that knew him personally as a friend).

hamlet
2012-06-20, 07:05 AM
I don't know much about him. I've heard horror stories, though. For example, TvTropes indicates that Tomb of Horrors was a direct revenge on people who said that his modules were getting too easy. This even included advice on how to DM it. One gem was to be said right after the PCs had defeated Acererak's body-double, probably sustaining three or four losses during the entire dungeon, and were fleeing through a collapsing dungeon. At this point, Gygax advised that the DM ask, "Now, was [i]that too hard for you?"

Very often misunderstood.

Tomb of Horrors was not any indication of how play in AD&D was expected to proceed, but was, indeed, Gary making a point that even at high levels, D&D was a challenge to even the strongest PC's.

Augmental
2012-06-20, 08:03 AM
It was really just an exercise in paranoia. Come up with safe ways to check for creatively deployed hazards. You wouldn't throw a character with a backstory at a game like this. At most you'd have a picture to accompany the set of stats for your dude. The point isn't to be a stupendous badass by winning all the fights, but to see how far you can get in an impossible challenge.

So, it's a game that trains you to be paranoid about every little thing, where you can die at any moment, and where backstories are considered a waste of time because your character is inevitably going to die.

Again, I'd like to recommend I Wanna Be The Guy to all you old-school D&D players. It should fit your playstyle perfectly.

ThiagoMartell
2012-06-20, 08:28 AM
We're at a very weird time for the hobby. The creators are dead, we have lots of stories about them, their games, and their players, and the people who had direct contact with their games are growing older. The new generation only has the nonsense being pushed in this thread to explain the early days to them.

I am on the wrong continent, and from the wrong generation to give first hand accounts, however there are forums, interviews, whatever. The fact that the AD&D 1st edition DMG is still suggested as THE best book for anyone who's into GMing in any system shows that its author knew what he was doing. That author was Gygax. The other things that people know him for, his dungeons, are misleading, because they were either ripped from his own campaigns without context, or churned out, or made for tornament play. The latter are infamous as being 'DM v Players' because that's what they were, they were not, however, meant to have a fun story. Compare Keep on the Borderlands, widely loved as an introductory module.

You, sir, are my new favorite person in the playground. You are all shades of awesome.

Kaervaslol
2012-06-20, 08:44 AM
ITT: Speculation and trash talkin.

I know not of how Gygax DMed because I have never played with him. Hell, we can even spend inifite pages discussing what is a good or a bad DM.

What I can say is that after playing the "Against the Giants" is that he was a damn good adventure writer.

Grail
2012-06-20, 08:58 AM
Or, to look at it from the other end: when long-term character survival was viewed as earned rather than expected,

It's quite funny, but I see players as having become worse over the years. They expect that there should be little to no repercussion to their actions, and if you kill off characters or run bleeding edge combats, some players get upset.

I think it all comes down to Gen-Whine.

valadil
2012-06-20, 09:26 AM
So, it's a game that trains you to be paranoid about every little thing, where you can die at any moment, and where backstories are considered a waste of time because your character is inevitably going to die.

Again, I'd like to recommend I Wanna Be The Guy to all you old-school D&D players. It should fit your playstyle perfectly.

Please don't categorize me as an old school player. I have been an old school player and I had fun with it at the time. I've also had plenty of fun with modern D&D systems and feel no need to go back to the "good old days." The point I was trying to make was that that play style worked when it was all you knew. I don't think you could jump straight into it after adjusting to a system that valued player empowerment. But at that time, the style worked.

Also upon further reflection, I think I would categorize Gygax as a great GM. The things he did were mean, but he still made you enjoy them. I don't think just anyone could pull off the shenanigans that he made work. If he made arbitrary irresistible death fun, more power to him. I certainly couldn't pull that off.

Kish
2012-06-20, 09:31 AM
I don't know much about him. I've heard horror stories, though. For example, some random Internet person with the trivial time available to edit TVTropes claims that Tomb of Horrors was a direct revenge on people who said that his modules were getting too easy.
Slight amendment.

(I don't know whether Gary Gygax meant Tomb of Horrors to be revenge, though I doubt it; I do object to the entirely inappropriate implied authority in "TVTropes indicates.")

Tyndmyr
2012-06-20, 09:42 AM
Uh-huh.

Call me skeptical.

You have a paranoid and lunatic player . . . and blame the supposed DM.

If you've ever read or played through adventures that Gygax has written, blaming the DM for this style makes perfect sense.

Seriously, just run the Tomb of Horrors in a modern group one time, and see if they don't start getting just a little more paranoid. Players adapt to the game.


Wow, I think your bias is showing here. How many people use the complete 3.5 Grapple rules?

Why does everyone use the grapple rules as an example of something difficult?

1. Make touch attack.
2. If successful, make a strength attempt opposed by str or dex.
3. While grappling, certain actions are restricted to some degree.
4. Can make grapple check or esc. artist attempt to break out of grapples.

It's pretty easy. Examples are given. I don't think you need to be particularly rules lawyerish to follow them. I admit I somewhat abbreviated them, but you can pick them up in a coupla minutes.

hamlet
2012-06-20, 10:17 AM
If you've ever read or played through adventures that Gygax has written, blaming the DM for this style makes perfect sense.

Seriously, just run the Tomb of Horrors in a modern group one time, and see if they don't start getting just a little more paranoid. Players adapt to the game.


I have played through, and run many of the older modules with Gary's name on them. I find nothing wrong with them.

No, I wouldn't run Tomb of Horrors for "modern"* players seeing as, most likely, they simply would not enjoy it as evidenced by the near fanatic need to not actually understand the point of that module and it's place within the grander scheme of AD&D.

In fact, if you want a better, more accurate picture of AD&D at the time, you'll want to read G1-2-3 and the D series. It is, for all intents and purposes, the first campaign arc modules taking players from mid to high levels and is connected by a loose story which the DM is expected/required to embelish upon and fit to the appropriate circumstances of his world and campaign. It is one of the best and most fondly remembered series of modules in existance and is a far cry from the Tomb of Horrors.


*I object slightly to the terminology of "old school" vs. "modern." It makes people who don't indulge in the "modern" style seem like lunatic luddites camped out in the metaphirical bushes afraid of even base technology.

Tyndmyr
2012-06-20, 11:07 AM
I have played through, and run many of the older modules with Gary's name on them. I find nothing wrong with them.

I didn't say "wrong". I said it's a style that encourages paranoia.


No, I wouldn't run Tomb of Horrors for "modern"* players seeing as, most likely, they simply would not enjoy it as evidenced by the near fanatic need to not actually understand the point of that module and it's place within the grander scheme of AD&D.

*shrug* I've done so. Recently got my hands on an original copy of the return to ToH box, so I'll probably run that at some point too.

They are excellent adventures, but they do encourage a paranoid approach to dungeon delving. Other adventures...somewhat less so, but the same basic tendancies still exist. ToH simply makes an excellent example, because it's intentionally on the farther end of the paranoia spectrum.

kyoryu
2012-06-20, 11:36 AM
*I object slightly to the terminology of "old school" vs. "modern." It makes people who don't indulge in the "modern" style seem like lunatic luddites camped out in the metaphirical bushes afraid of even base technology.

Well, I use the terms myself, and I'm more old-school than not. But, I find that the players here are mostly "modern", and react better to that than to calling it the Whiny Entitled And Why Do You Even Bother Rolling Dice Anyway style.

I kid. :smallbiggrin:

On a more serious note, while GNS is a great punching bag (and rightfully so), it's reasonable to say that the difference is between either Gamist or Simulationist games (old-school, arguably Basic was more Gamist, while AD&D was more Simulationist) and an overall shift to Narrativist style games.

It's not even a rules change, really, so much as it is an expectation change.

I'd still say they're both valid styles, you just have to approach them free of expectations born of the other style. Again, read Luke Crane's recap of playing old-school D&D, it's pretty illuminating.

And I Wanna Be The Guy is an unfair comparison. Nethack is a fair comparison.

Stubbazubba
2012-06-20, 12:18 PM
And I think your bias is showing here.

Not really. Taking one data point (people kept going back and playing again) and extrapolating a conclusion about the quality of his games is just really bad logic. He was, you must recall, the only DM in the world at times. Also, he was your dad. Or whatever. There are all kinds of reasons that people played his games, most of which had to do with him keeping the rules from everyone so they had to rely on him giving them everything. My comparison to domestic abuse was more about the logical process by which the conclusion was derived, rather than any actual similarities to Gygax's DMing and abuse, though I do contend that they are there.


You gotta approach a Gygax game differently. Don't go in it expecting to beat down monsters like an awesome hero, founding your own kingdom, and feasting afterwards. You might be able to do that, but don't EXPECT to be able to do that.

I can't expect to interact with the scene in front of me, either. Or go to the bathroom, for that matter. That toilet might be a monster, after all. I can't expect to use a ten-foot-pole to any effect because the DM can just design around it. In fact, I can't expect to do anything, because if the DM has a grudge against me as a player, he is totally protected in changing up the dungeon on the fly to screw me over. Every breath of air my character takes is literally a gift from the DM, because he could just declare me dead without me even interacting at all. And if I object, the rules specifically tell me that the DM's decisions are immutable and I'm being whiny for objecting to being bullied.

And maybe on most good days he didn't, but there's ample evidence that he was, at times, vindictive behind the DM screen. When you design a game which explicitly gives you the power to bully people, and then bully people, protected by your own rules, I say you have issues. That's not a game, at that point, it's abuse. If the rules he wrote gave him such power and impunity, and he was never a complete **** about it, that'd be one thing, but that's not the case.

kyoryu
2012-06-20, 12:32 PM
I can't expect to interact with the scene in front of me, either. Or go to the bathroom, for that matter. That toilet might be a monster, after all. I can't expect to use a ten-foot-pole to any effect because the DM can just design around it. In fact, I can't expect to do anything, because if the DM has a grudge against me as a player, he is totally protected in changing up the dungeon on the fly to screw me over. Every breath of air my character takes is literally a gift from the DM, because he could just declare me dead without me even interacting at all. And if I object, the rules specifically tell me that the DM's decisions are immutable and I'm being whiny for objecting to being bullied.

See, I don't play modern style games. Because all they are is players who have min-maxed to the hilt, DMs that give them whatever goodies they want, and the die results are really just so that players can explain how awesome they are, while they're handheld down a story path that just reinforces what Unique and Special Snowflakes they are.

(Note: I don't actually believe the above, I simply post it as a comparison).

Augmental
2012-06-20, 12:40 PM
See, I don't play modern style games. Because all they are is players who have min-maxed to the hilt, DMs that give them whatever goodies they want, and the die results are really just so that players can explain how awesome they are, while they're handheld down a story path that just reinforces what Unique and Special Snowflakes they are.

(Note: I don't actually believe the above, I simply post it as a comparison).

There's a middle ground between holding the player's hand and making sure their characters never die, and putting death traps everywhere and killing the characters for having the audacity to not spend 30 minutes examining everything for contact poison before touching it - and even then.

Hiro Protagonest
2012-06-20, 12:42 PM
There's a middle ground between holding the player's hand and making sure their characters never die, and putting death traps everywhere and killing the characters for having the audacity to not spend 30 minutes examining everything everywhere.

I think he knows that. See the words in parentheses. I'm also pretty sure his point is that the other guy thinks all old school games have your toilet replaced by a mimic.

Stubbazubba
2012-06-20, 12:54 PM
@kyoryu: :) Touche.

Obviously DM permissiveness is no better than DM impunity. I would argue, though, that there is no game out there which tells a DM that they have to fudge every roll that doesn't go the players' way and distribute exactly the things and story they want, while there is a DMG which hands the DM a rules gun and says 'use this when your players get upitty.'

BTW,

Why does everyone use the grapple rules as an example of something difficult?

1. Make touch attack.
2. If successful, make a strength attempt opposed by str or dex.
3. While grappling, certain actions are restricted to some degree.
4. Can make grapple check or esc. artist attempt to break out of grapples.

Actually, according to p. 156 of the PHB, it's more like

1. Enemy makes AoO
2. Make touch attack
3. If successful, make opposed Grapple check
4. If successful, deal unarmed damage.
5. If you want to hold on, move into enemy's square (another AoO)
6. When you grapple, you're worse at everything, but you'll have to look up just how much you're worse off depending on what you want to do.
7. Many actions require two rolls to accomplish, a successful Grapple check and then another roll.

That's 5 rolls (one of which is opposed) just to start a grapple. Most people don't do those, they have, whether knowingly or unknowingly, house-ruled out some of those extraneous steps. And that's good, because 5 rolls to grab someone is patently ridiculous.


I think he knows that. See the words in parentheses. I'm also pretty sure his point is that the other guy thinks all old school games have your toilet replaced by a mimic.

See, I don't have a problem with having Mimics, so long as the WIS stat I rolled up could theoretically help out if it was high enough. Else why did I pay someone for these rules, if it's all DM fiat anyway? Even in a codified system, the DM can always screw over their players by dropping a Balor on them when they're level 1, but at least at that point you can say, "Hey DM, what gives? Are you going to run a game we can play, or what?" The old-school DM response to this would be to make that player pay for his arrogance. At the very least, the rules would protect said DM in doing so, if not actively encourage it.

And I understand that Gygax probably ran some really interesting games most of the time. That does not absolve him of abusing his power, though, especially when he wrote the rules to let himself do so, not any more than a king who is, on most days, nice enough, and defends his people from their enemies, but then also kills or imprisons any of them who disagree with a policy, proudly waving around the Law which allows him to do so, which he wrote.

Siosilvar
2012-06-20, 01:03 PM
Since I haven't seen anyone bring this up yet, here's a list of Gary's house rules for white box OD&D (admittedly, in 2005, but still):


I found two main sets of Gygaxian house rules. The one that is most frequently discussed in game forums appears to originate from Robert Fisher, who compiled the list after questioning Gygax about a game run in 2005 (someone please correct me if this citation is inaccurate). The rules were:

* Only use the three little books - none of the supplements.
* Ability scores rolled as best 3 out of 4d6. Arrange scores to taste.
* All PCs get 1d6 hp/level. HP rolls are rerolled on a 1.
* Fighters get +1 HP/die. All PCs get +1 HP/die if Con > 14.
* Fighters do +1 damage if Str > 14.
* Dex doesn't affect AC. (It does affect missile attack "to hit" rolls.)
* PCs start at 3rd level.
* PCs are unconscious at 0 hp. They can go as low as level +1 before death. (e.g. a 4th level fighter can be brought as low as -5 hp and just be unconscious.) A healing potion or cure spell restores them immediately.
* 1d6 for surprise. 1=1 round. 2=2 rounds. 3 or more=no surprise.
* PCs must declare actions before initiative. Casters must declare the specific spell being cast.
* 1d6 for initiative. A tie means simultaneous combat.
* A casting caster who loses initiative will lose his spell if hit.
* No training necessary to gain a level.
* To acquire new spells casters must find scrolls, spellbooks, or a friendly higher-level caster.
* Clerics don't need spellbooks. (The original books can be read to imply that they do.)
* Gary IDs most magic items immediately (charging large sums of money when they return to town to rest & recuperate for this service). (This is because the players are anxious to get back into the dungeon & don't want to bother with in-town adventures.) Potions must still be tasted to ID, though. Unusual items require a trip to the striped mage.


The second set of rules comes from a forum posting that Gygax himself made in 2007:

* STR > 14: +1 to hit and +1 to damage if a Fighter
* INT > 14: +1 1st level m-u spell
* WIS > 14: +1 1st level cleric spell
* DEX > 14: +1 to AC, and +1 to move silently
* CON > 14: +1 HP per HD (same as a Fighter class gets, +2 if a Fighter)
* CHA > 14: +1 (positive) on reaction checks
* HPs: Characters are only unconscious at 0 HPs. For each level a character may have a minus HP total equal to the level, so a 1st level PC is dead at -2, a 2nd level at -3, etc.
* When taking damage allow -1 HP per character level (from a GenCon XL report posted by Gygax)
Source (http://cyclopeatron.blogspot.com/2010/03/gary-gygaxs-whitebox-od-house-rules.html). I'm not familiar with OD&D, so I can't say what impact those would have on the game.
1I am reasonably familiar with old-school play (at least on a theoretical basis), so I can say that it's a completely different beast from third edition. Old-school is more about player skill, knowing what you need to do in order to get the treasure out (after all, treasure makes up the vast majority of your experience points) and less about the characters, which are honestly disposable. Quick character generation, lack of any real character skill system, low hit points, and the prevalence of instant death would seem to point to this.

As the game progressed, it started becoming about the characters - you can see hints of this throughout the game. Thieves show up with their skills, Moldvay has damage rules for weapons that aren't just "roll 1d6", AD&D starts to expand skills to everyone with nonweapon proficiencies, poison that isn't just instant death shows up, and you end up with 3e and 4e where all of these things and more are default - skills, feats, powers, healing surges, removal of everything random during chargen, crazy complicated characters that take fifteen minutes or more to generate at level 1. [For the record, 3.5 is my favorite D&D ruleset. I enjoy crazy complicated characters and all the interactions between the different parts of the rules.]

So, was Gygax a good DM? I don't think anyone has been able to honestly answer that question since the 90s. Our expectations are completely different from what they were when he was DMing games. He certainly challenged his players.

Tyndmyr
2012-06-20, 01:05 PM
Actually, according to p. 156 of the PHB, it's more like

1. Enemy makes AoO
2. Make touch attack
3. If successful, make opposed Grapple check
4. If successful, deal unarmed damage.
5. If you want to hold on, move into enemy's square (another AoO)
6. When you grapple, you're worse at everything, but you'll have to look up just how much you're worse off depending on what you want to do.
7. Many actions require two rolls to accomplish, a successful Grapple check and then another roll.

That's 5 rolls (one of which is opposed) just to start a grapple. Most people don't do those, they have, whether knowingly or unknowingly, house-ruled out some of those extraneous steps. And that's good, because 5 rolls to grab someone is patently ridiculous.

In practice, basically everyone initiating a grapple(or disarm, or trip, etc) has the improved x feat that negates the AoO. So, it almost never actually gets rolled. And for 5, that is irrelevant unless there's other folks threatening you, since grappling folks don't threaten.

So, in practice, it's two rolls to grab someone, most of the time. Unarmed damage is something beyond mere grabbing.


I think he knows that. See the words in parentheses. I'm also pretty sure his point is that the other guy thinks all old school games have your toilet replaced by a mimic.

That's perhaps a stretch, but it is notable that you can have a well furnished room in which absolutely everything is a trap or a monster, without bothering to repeat any of them.

Contact poison is extremely old, in terms of D&D, and is definitely a paranoia check.

Illusions/disbelief? Samesies.

Methodological checking of everything is very much a hallmark of more oldschool gaming.

Zorg
2012-06-20, 01:14 PM
I shall link you all to a series of articles (http://blogofholding.com/?series=mornard) about someone who actually played with Gary, describing the games, his style (no maps or minis; he hid behind a filing cabinet) and his encounters and reactions with other, less lethal, playstyles:



Mornard told us about an early D&D tournament game - possibly in the first Gen Con in Parkside in 1978? Gary Gygax was DMing nine tournament teams successively through the same module, and whoever got the furthest in the dungeon would win. You'd expect this to take all day, and so Mike was surprised to see Gary, looking shaken, wandering through the hallways at about 2 PM. Mike bought Gary a beer and asked him what had happened - wasn't he supposed to be DMing right now?

"It's over!" replied a stunned Gary Gygax.

Gary described how the first group had fared. Walking down the first staircase into the dungeon, the first rank of fighters suddenly disappeared through a black wall. There was a quiet whoosh, and a quiet thud. The players conferred, and then they sent the second rank forward, who disappeared too. The rest of the players followed.

The same thing happened to the next tournament team, and the next. Players filed into the unknown, one after another. And they were all killed. The wall was an illusion, and behind it was a pit. Eight out of the nine groups had thrown themselves like lemmings over a cliff; only one group had thought to tap around with a ten foot pole. That group passed the first obstacle, so they won the tournament.

Gary and his players couldn't believe that the tournament players had been so incautious. But, to be fair, none of those tournament groups had played in Gary Gygax's game. They had learned the rules of D&D, but they had no experience of the milieu in which the book was written. Of those nine groups that had learned D&D from a book, only one played sufficiently like Gary's group to survive thirty seconds in his dungeon.


Get it in ya (http://blogofholding.com/?series=mornard).

Jay R
2012-06-20, 01:18 PM
Not really. Taking one data point (people kept going back and playing again) and extrapolating a conclusion about the quality of his games is just really bad logic. He was, you must recall, the only DM in the world at times.

Simply untrue. He was the second DM, not the first. And I never saw an early D&D group that only had one DM.

Besides, if it's no fun to play, and there is only one DM, then you would not play.


I can't expect to interact with the scene in front of me, either. Or go to the bathroom, for that matter. That toilet might be a monster, after all. I can't expect to use a ten-foot-pole to any effect because the DM can just design around it. In fact, I can't expect to do anything, because if the DM has a grudge against me as a player, he is totally protected in changing up the dungeon on the fly to screw me over. Every breath of air my character takes is literally a gift from the DM, because he could just declare me dead without me even interacting at all. And if I object, the rules specifically tell me that the DM's decisions are immutable and I'm being whiny for objecting to being bullied.

And maybe on most good days he didn't, but there's ample evidence that he was, at times, vindictive behind the DM screen. When you design a game which explicitly gives you the power to bully people, and then bully people, protected by your own rules, I say you have issues. That's not a game, at that point, it's abuse. If the rules he wrote gave him such power and impunity, and he was never a complete **** about it, that'd be one thing, but that's not the case.

This description does not match any game I ever played in the seventies. If you think that this is a fair description of D&D at that time, you are simply misinformed. I never felt bullied, although often the DM made a ruling I disagreed with.

Do football players feel "bullied" when a referee makes a wrong decision? No, of course not. That's an integral part of the game. There has to be a decision for the game to continue.

You can say "That's not a game" as often as you like, but that doesn't change the fact that every one of us who played it called it a game. And enjoyed it.

And because we enjoyed it, and bought it, and kept coming back for more, you get to play your game today.

Stubbazubba
2012-06-20, 01:22 PM
In practice, basically everyone initiating a grapple(or disarm, or trip, etc) has the improved x feat that negates the AoO.

Yes, because it's unplayable as-is, if you don't have that feat. That was my point.


So, in practice, it's two rolls to grab someone, most of the time. Unarmed damage is something beyond mere grabbing.

PHB, same page, Step 3 says "Hold. Make an opposed Grapple check as a free action. If you succeed, you and your target are now grappling, and you deal damage to the target as if with an unarmed strike."

So, with a Feat Tax, and no one else threatening you, it's still 3 rolls, one of which is opposed. It's still 4 for any non-Grapplemancer. Either way, this is highly tangential at this point. We both know that Rule 0 is good, it just depends on the dosage.

Tyndmyr
2012-06-20, 01:29 PM
Yes, because it's unplayable as-is, if you don't have that feat. That was my point.

It's not unplayable without it. It's just frequently ill-advised. Taking AoOs makes something notably less attractive...it's not that AoOs are poorly understood.


PHB, same page, Step 3 says "Hold. Make an opposed Grapple check as a free action. If you succeed, you and your target are now grappling, and you deal damage to the target as if with an unarmed strike."

So, with a Feat Tax, and no one else threatening you, it's still 3 rolls, one of which is opposed. It's still 4 for any non-Grapplemancer. Either way, this is highly tangential at this point. We both know that Rule 0 is good, it just depends on the dosage.

Even the most bog standard turn is usually two rolls. Attack, damage. That's a remarkably simple turn...three rolls(or even four, on rare occasions), is not unreasonable.

I play grapple exactly as written. And I hold that rule zero is a relic of sloppy design, and should be minimized to the greatest possible degree.

Fatebreaker
2012-06-20, 01:38 PM
I actually think that the best thing that can be said about Gygax is how irrelevant he is to the modern game.

Think about that for a moment. Really, really think about it. If the roleplaying community, hobby, and industry was virtually unchanged from the 70's, would that be a good thing or a bad thing?

The hobby has come a long way since Gygax. There's real money in it these days, a wider audience, a broader and deeper variety of options. Other folks have stepped up to tweak the core idea of Gygax's D&D -- "Let's play pretend for grownups!" -- and adapted it to fit genres and playstyles which Gygax could never have imagined.

Sure, some folks miss his arbitrary, random, adversarial, and sometimes petty tyrant DMing, or the disposable characters and paranoid players that style produced. But those folks can still play that way! And now, folks who would have walked away at the sight of Gygaxian gaming can sit down and share the hobby and enjoy it.

For the hobby to be successful, to grow and develop and support new ideas and styles and themes, at some point, Gygax was going to stop being important. He may always be remembered as the father of modern roleplaying, but the folks getting into the hobby now aren't looking for what he was peddling. They're playing very different games with very different expectations. What Gygax thought or believed no longer matters.

To me, that's a positive thing. That is, whether he was a good DM or a bad DM, the best thing which can be said for him is that he created a hobby of such potential that, within a generation or two, his own contributions had been surpassed by those he inspired.

Stubbazubba
2012-06-20, 01:43 PM
Do football players feel "bullied" when a referee makes a wrong decision? No, of course not. That's an integral part of the game. There has to be a decision for the game to continue.

Not this again. Referees are enforcers of rules, not the makers of them. They don't get to use Rule 0 at any time. In sports, or in any other game, the rules truly are king, and immutable. But you know what that means? It means the players and coaches and even the fans are all perfectly aware of what can and can't happen in that game, and they know how to interact with those rules. And sometimes coaches demand a review of the call! Sounds like a modern RPG to me. And even then, many teams do feel mistreated by officials they feel are unfair. None of this referee analogy holds up.


And because we enjoyed it, and bought it, and kept coming back for more, you get to play your game today.

Are you serious? Are you gonna make an argument - or even an observation - or just try and guilt me into silence?

@Tyndmyr: I agree that 3 or occasionally 4 rolls is fine, if there's actually a payoff for the extra rolls involved. But you have to pay a Feat to get it down to 3 rolls, and there's no payoff: Improved X Feats are nothing but a patch for broken Grapple rules. The fact that no one Grapples or uses any of those Special Attacks without the feat is evidence that it is a strictly inferior option as-written, meaning that even after you pay the Feat Tax, taking your chances to grapple someone is still a strictly inferior action than just attacking them, in almost every scenario. So why would you waste one of your 6 Feats on making that inferior action palatable in the 1% of cases where it is actually worth it? The grapple rules, the special attacks, and all the feats that ride on them are really bad design.

Tyndmyr
2012-06-20, 01:56 PM
@Tyndmyr: I agree that 3 or occasionally 4 rolls is fine, if there's actually a payoff for the extra rolls involved. But you have to pay a Feat to get it down to 3 rolls, and there's no payoff: Improved X Feats are nothing but a patch for broken Grapple rules. The fact that no one Grapples or uses any of those Special Attacks without the feat is evidence that it is a strictly inferior option as-written, meaning that even after you pay the Feat Tax, taking your chances to grapple someone is still a strictly inferior action than just attacking them, in almost every scenario.

You're attempting to use the "without the feat" to justify the "with the feat" being inferior. That doesn't wash. Grappling without the feat is very rarely worthwhile, because the AoO hurts. With the feat...no AoO. Additionally, you get a +4 bonus. It's HUGE. Without the feat is bad, much like a wizard attacking with a non-proficient greatsword is bad. That doesn't mean that greatswords are a bad idea.


So why would you waste one of your 6 Feats on making that inferior action palatable in the 1% of cases where it is actually worth it? The grapple rules, the special attacks, and all the feats that ride on them are really bad design.

Grappling is a quite effective tactic in a lot more than 1% of cases. It's also frequently taken by fighters, who get a lot more than six feats. If you've got a decent grapple build, you're very, very effective with it.

On the other hand, if you lack the stats/feat to back it up, it's a poor strategy. This is true of a great many things in D&D. You're not going to roll a druid without natural spell and an 8 wisdom, are you?

Stubbazubba
2012-06-20, 02:05 PM
You're attempting to use the "without the feat" to justify the "with the feat" being inferior. That doesn't wash. Grappling without the feat is very rarely worthwhile, because the AoO hurts. With the feat...no AoO. Additionally, you get a +4 bonus. It's HUGE. Without the feat is bad, much like a wizard attacking with a non-proficient greatsword is bad. That doesn't mean that greatswords are a bad idea.

Greatsword proficiency is a Class Feature, it comes for free, quite un-like making Grappling work. There should be no AoO in Grappling, and the Feat should do more than just +'s, but this really a whole 'nother debate.

Tyndmyr
2012-06-20, 02:06 PM
Greatsword proficiency is a Class Feature, it comes for free, quite un-like making Grappling work. There should be no AoO in Grappling, and the Feat should do more than just +'s, but this really a whole 'nother debate.

Improved Grapple is also a class feature. For some classes, like Monk.

Kish
2012-06-20, 02:09 PM
And "enough feats to support fighting styles which other classes aren't supposed to be using" is also a (Fighter) class feature; is "using any exotic weapon" automatically a bad idea?

1337 b4k4
2012-06-20, 02:52 PM
I can't expect to interact with the scene in front of me, either. Or go to the bathroom, for that matter. That toilet might be a monster, after all.

Some days I imagine movie characters as "modern" D&D players:

Player: "Peregrin Took sits down on the edge of the well, waiting for Gandalf to finish reading the tome."

DM: "As you sit on the well, your pack disturbs a skeleton also on the edge. It slowly falls back and down the well, it's metal helmet and armor making loud clanking noises all the way down. After a few moments of hushed silence, you hear a noise like a hoard of angry creatures coming your way."

Player: "No Fair!!!!"

----

DM: "The hall to the temple is old and dusty. Up ahead a break in the wall appears to allow in bright daylight. In the light you can see the remains of another adventurer, who appears to have met a grisly end. Your henchman continues to lead you down the corridor."

Player: "Indiana keeps close to his henchman and continues on."

DM: "As soon as your henchman steps into the light, darts fly out of the light and strike your henchman, poisoning him."

Player: "No fair!!!"

----

Player: "Indiana carefully weights the bag of sand, and prepares to swap the bag with the idol." {rolls dice}

DM: "You successfully swap the idol and bag."

Player: "I leave the alter with the idol."

DM: "As you turn away, you hear a rumbling. Suddenly the bag of sand on the alter drops into the alter, and a large boulder begins rolling out of the ceiling towards you. At the far end of the hall you came from you hear the sound of a massive stone door beginning to slide closed."

Player: "No fair!!!!"

Sometimes not every trap is marked with warning signs and neon cones, nor is every danger known before you go into a room. But that's OK, you're exploring ancient plundered tombs. If getting the gold and treasure were easy and fair, everyone else would do it and adventuring wouldn't be anything special. And I think this is where the difference in mindset (and rules set) comes in. If you're wanting to play a heroic tale of Conan "To crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentation of their women." then no, Gary's DMing and play style would definitely not have been your cup of tea.

On the other hand, were you expecting to play an adventure of danger and surprise, of exploring ancient tombs (emphasis on the exploring part), then quick, unexpected death and flying by the seat of your pants as Gary seemed to would be right up your alley. I haven't read much of the Appendix N material, but it seems clear to me that someone who was familiar with that material would have known very much what to expect in one of Gary's games.



So, it's a game that trains you to be paranoid about every little thing, where you can die at any moment, and where backstories are considered a waste of time because your character is inevitably going to die.

Back stories aren't a waste of time. Back stories are what you wrote during the first 5 levels of play. The classic D&D characters weren't written up from scratch fully formed and stated out. They were played and carved into history by virtue of having survived. Back story is something you spend your game time doing, and I can certainly see the appeal of that mentality.

kyoryu
2012-06-20, 03:01 PM
To be fair, "arbitrariness" isn't really awesome. But a lot of the stuff that I hear *isn't* arbitrary.

The story about the wall in the linked article above, for instance. You hear a whoosh and a thud, and so you assume "hey, it must be safe" and just walk through it? That's insane.

Now, mimic toilets? Yeah, 99.9% of the time, that's bonkers. It's easy for the DM to kill players, he has all the cards. And I've seen posts from deathtrap DMs in 3.x, as well.

The point of old school D&D wasn't to pointless kill players. It was to present challenges that the players could overcome, but have the victory be won by the players, not handed to them on a silver platter. It's a fine line, and I can certainly see how many more "modern" players wouldn't be able to differentiate between the two, as neither aligns well with "modern" playstyles or goals.

Stubbazubba
2012-06-20, 03:54 PM
Improved Grapple is also a class feature. For some classes, like Monk.

So if Monk should be the only ones Grappling, why is it part of the standard combat rules? Power Attack isn't like that, nor is spellcasting or any other number of class features. Why are the Grapple rules in the combat chapter instead of a class feature? To make poor newbies think they are a good idea? A trap option?

@1337 b4k4: Those are all equally applicable as "failed saves." That would give them a chance, but still fail and keep things interesting. No one here is arguing that players shouldn't fail sometimes, that's pure hyperbole. Allowing a save to try and catch the falling bucket in Moria would be a great way to make a character's stats matter, while simultaneously encouraging them to interact with the environment because the rules say you have a chance to overcome it.

Fatebreaker
2012-06-20, 04:40 PM
Some days I imagine movie characters as "modern" D&D players:

Your examples need work. That, and this is probably not a road you want to go down, since it's really easy to start pulling out movie examples of characters who succeed solely because the script/DM wants them to rather than because of their own merits. Still, some commentary, followed by an exciting link that I'll think you'll enjoy!


Player: "Peregrin Took sits down on the edge of the well, waiting for Gandalf to finish reading the tome."

DM: "As you sit on the well, your pack disturbs a skeleton also on the edge. It slowly falls back and down the well, it's metal helmet and armor making loud clanking noises all the way down. After a few moments of hushed silence, you hear a noise like a hoard of angry creatures coming your way."

Player: "No Fair!!!!"

In the films, Pippin actually fiddles with the dead dwarf, causing it to collapse down the well. This could easily be a case of "I search the room" followed by rolls to detect and avoid traps (which fail). In this case, the trap is an alarm. Then goblins happen. The DM narrates the scene based on Pippin's failure (or, perhaps he failed more than anyone else, so triggers it first). Or maybe Pippin's character actually says, "I investigate the dead dwarves," and the DM has already marked down that a failed [whatever] check triggers the fall. Pippin fails the [whatever] check, and goblins happen.

Still, however you interpret the dice/story, Pippin actively triggers this. It is entirely his fault, and the other characters call him on it.

Gandalf: "Fool of a Took! Throw yourself in there next time!" (or something along those lines)


Player: "Indiana carefully weights the bag of sand, and prepares to swap the bag with the idol." {rolls dice}

DM: "You successfully swap the idol and bag."

Player: "I leave the alter with the idol."

DM: "As you turn away, you hear a rumbling. Suddenly the bag of sand on the alter drops into the alter, and a large boulder begins rolling out of the ceiling towards you. At the far end of the hall you came from you hear the sound of a massive stone door beginning to slide closed."

Player: "No fair!!!!"

How is this unfair? Indy recognizes a trap, tries to disarm it, and fails. The DM lets him think he's succeeded long enough to make the dramatic reveal of "hey, look, boulders!" all the better. This is an entirely fair scenario, especially because the whole thing has been one series of traps after another to begin with.

If you want some good "movie characters as modern roleplayers" examples, then check out DM of the Rings (http://www.shamusyoung.com/twentysidedtale/?p=612), which is exactly what it sounds like.

Of course, the problem here is that what's good for a narrative medium like books or film isn't always good for an interactive game...


Back stories aren't a waste of time. Back stories are what you wrote during the first 5 levels of play.

...then it's not a backstory, now is it?


Now, mimic toilets? Yeah, 99.9% of the time, that's bonkers.

Isn't the whole point of mimics and mimic-like creatures to pose as something which your players and/or characters not suspect?

NichG
2012-06-20, 04:55 PM
The whole 'failed saves' thing though goes to one of the big points that separates 3ed from older editions. Namely, whether the challenge to the player is in character design or in the character's actions. 3ed puts a lot of the emphasis on character design - that is actually where 50-80% of the meaningful choices are made. Once you've got your character, there's a bit of a mentality of 'now I'm going to throw my character into a sequence of events and see if I gave him everything he needed to come out the other end'. Thus the insistence that there be a save or mechanic associated with everything that happens, because that means you can plan for it in the character generation phase of the game by making one of your saves unassailable or having a very high Charisma or Wisdom or whatever.

In older editions, almost the entire emphasis of the game was in how you play your character and not what your character is. Thats why random stats down the line was an okay thing to do - it didn't actually influence your practical abilities in play all that much. Take Tomb of Horrors, since it has been brought up. It's a dungeon that is almost equally assailable (or unassailable) to Lv1 characters as it is to Lv15 characters. Aside from a few combat encounters (which can be trivialized or negated due to confined spaces and the like if you're clever), the module is entirely about what actions you choose to take and not the numbers behind them. It almost doesn't matter what your character mechanics are, because once you've decided to rely on them to resolve the situation you're basically taking a very bad gamble.

One of the problems in this thread has been a tendency to villify. The old-school playstyle has been referred to as 'abusive', whereas I'd say that true abusiveness is a bad habit that can emerge from the style, but 'harsh' and 'abusive' are not the same thing. Instead of saying that 'Unfair!' or entitlement characterizes modern games, I'd say that those are the particular bad habits that happen in modern gaming, sort of the equivalent of fudging dice, cheating, or rerolling stats until you got what you wanted in older games. Both styles have people with bad habits, and those negative impressions tend to characterize the style to people who play the opposite, whereas those who play a style focus on the good.

So as far as Gygax's personal style, just based on the links and stories posted in this thread, I'd say that there's lots of somewhat contradictory information. This is someone who, on the one hand, hears a player say 'I'd like to take my character to Barsoom' and bam, is willing to go and run that, and on the other hand has plenty of seemingly arbitrary traps and gotchas in actual play. I can't help but feel that there's a vital missing context to the picture that's being created.

kyoryu
2012-06-20, 05:02 PM
The whole 'failed saves' thing though goes to one of the big points that separates 3ed from older editions. Namely, whether the challenge to the player is in character design or in the character's actions. 3ed puts a lot of the emphasis on character design - that is actually where 50-80% of the meaningful choices are made.

...

In older editions, almost the entire emphasis of the game was in how you play your character and not what your character is. Thats why random stats down the line was an okay thing to do - it didn't actually influence your practical abilities in play all that much. Take Tomb of Horrors, since it has been brought up.

Absolutely. In 3.x, the character creation subgame was given a prominence that it has not had in any edition prior or since. And that's part of why I think 3.x fans hate 4e, as 4e minimizes the importance of the character creation subgame. If you *like* that subgame, you won't like 4e much.

This is a very important distinction, and one that I think is often lost.


...then it's not a backstory, now is it?

By strict definition, no, but it serves the same purpose. Again, 3.x is much more about what you *create*, while other editions are more about what you *do*.


Isn't the whole point of mimics and mimic-like creatures to pose as something which your players and/or characters not suspect?

Context matters. A conspicuously unguarded chest in the middle of a dungeon, especially if there's reason to believe there may be mimics around? Totally fair. The toilet in the local tavern being a mimic? Totally unfair.

Fatebreaker
2012-06-20, 05:37 PM
By strict definition, no, but it serves the same purpose. Again, 3.x is much more about what you *create*, while other editions are more about what you *do*.

Whoa, whoa, don't go pointing that 3.x at me now, buddy. Them's fightin' words where I come from!

Seriously though, games besides 3.x use "backstory" to mean "the story told before the game," which in no way inhibits you from telling the story of what you do during the game. There's not a conflict between the character you create before the game and character you make during game. Neither one precludes the other. But they are very different things.

So let's not call gameplay backstory. That's just silly and misleading.


Context matters. A conspicuously unguarded chest in the middle of a dungeon, especially if there's reason to believe there may be mimics around? Totally fair. The toilet in the local tavern being a mimic? Totally unfair.

I don't believe a the toilet was mentioned as being in a tavern. That said, didn't someone mention a random jug of wine that turned out to be poisoned for no reason? I'd be much more pissed about that than the toilet-mimic.

I mean, seriously. The mimic is a critter whose entire method of attack revolves around looking innocuous. The wine... who ruins good booze?

Hiro Protagonest
2012-06-20, 05:44 PM
I don't believe a the toilet was mentioned as being in a tavern.

So it's in the dungeon? I don't think anyone's stupid enough to use a functioning toilet in the middle of crumbling ruins.

kyoryu
2012-06-20, 05:44 PM
Whoa, whoa, don't go pointing that 3.x at me now, buddy. Them's fightin' words where I come from!

Seriously though, games besides 3.x use "backstory" to mean "the story told before the game," which in no way inhibits you from telling the story of what you do during the game. There's not a conflict between the character you create before the game and character you make during game. Neither one precludes the other. But they are very different things.

So let's not call gameplay backstory. That's just silly and misleading.

I believe it's an Arneson quote, actually.

I still stand by my point, though - 3.x, and some other systems have a heavy focus on character creation, whereas older versions of D&D had a higher focus on defining characters by what they did.

One could argue that in old-school D&D, the game *had* to be about what you did since there was almost no rules support for detailed character creation.


I don't believe a the toilet was mentioned as being in a tavern. That said, didn't someone mention a random jug of wine that turned out to be poisoned for no reason? I'd be much more pissed about that than the toilet-mimic.

I mean, seriously. The mimic is a critter whose entire method of attack revolves around looking innocuous. The wine... who ruins good booze?

With the wine, that could also be totally unfair - or totally fair. Depends on the context, which was my point about the mimic. It could be unfair, it could be totally fair. A toilet in a barracks being a mimic? Not likely.

Fatebreaker
2012-06-20, 06:03 PM
So it's in the dungeon? I don't think anyone's stupid enough to use a functioning toilet in the middle of crumbling ruins.

When you gotta go, you gotta go...


I believe it's an Arneson quote, actually.

I still stand by my point, though - 3.x, and some other systems have a heavy focus on character creation, whereas older versions of D&D had a higher focus on defining characters by what they did.

One could argue that in old-school D&D, the game *had* to be about what you did since there was almost no rules support for detailed character creation.

I disagree with none of this, but it doesn't turn gameplay into backstory.

I write up a backstory for every character I run. Only rarely is the game ever "about" my backstory. Regardless of the system, most of the time it's still about what I do during the game.


With the wine, that could also be totally unfair - or totally fair. Depends on the context, which was my point about the mimic. It could be unfair, it could be totally fair. A toilet in a barracks being a mimic? Not likely.

I believe Stubbazubba's original point was that the arbitrary nature of Gygax's dungeons and traps meant that context became irrelevant. The toilet in the tavern, the barracks, and the dungeon alike were all crapshoots.

...or should I say, crapchutes? *ba-dum-cha!*

Thank you, thank you, I'll be here all week. Remember to tip your waitress!

Gamer Girl
2012-06-20, 06:04 PM
Some days I imagine movie characters as "modern" D&D players

I agree, but add in TV shows too.

You can only have two types of Fiction:

1.Anything goes. Anything can happen at any time, any way, any how. Some based on randomness, some based on planning.

2.Only certain things can happen at certain times. There are very strict guidelines for everything and nothing can ever be left to random chance.

Now of course, just about all movies and Tv shows are type two fiction. Pick any Tv show, no main character will ever randomly get killed off, or even harmed. And nothing can happen in a episode that would end the show. And everyone likes and loves type two fiction, but everyone also just 'forgets and ignores' the fact that nothing bad happens. This is necessary for people to believe and enjoy the story. You have to pretend the characters are 'risking it all', even though you know they are not.

But for some of us RPG can provide type one fiction, where anything can happen. And an RPG is about the only place you can find and do it. And this makes them different and special and unlike anything else. And that was what Gygax gave us: type one anything fiction.

But it's only for some people though. The larger gamer base is all 100% type two fiction. They just want to pretend there is danger, while it's all safe. And that's fine.

IncoherentEssay
2012-06-20, 06:32 PM
I definitely wouldn't like Gygax's DMing style, if those examples are accurate. Too much gotcha DMing, with the pit trap in the darkness being a shining example. It is possible (in some bizarro-verse) that every single one of the adventurers were the silent & stoic type and quiet to a fault, but assuming that every single one of them plummets to their death in absolute silence after loosing their footing in the darkness (remember the thud? no silence effects here) is monumentally cheap.

It also highlights the worst offender of the style, the interface screw.
The characters in the game have full sensory input of their surroundings and can notice things passively, but the players only have what the DM tells them. Making things worse by the "You didn't say you were [avoiding obvious-to-character hazard]" and only sharing information when specifically requested is underhanded. I have no issue with challenging or high-lethality games, but using the fact that is a game against the players (meta-DMing?) is just terrible form.
Although it is possible that all adventurers originally aspired to be horror movie extras, but couldn't pass the observation tests :smalltongue:.

1337 b4k4
2012-06-20, 06:49 PM
Those are all equally applicable as "failed saves." That would give them a chance, but still fail and keep things interesting. No one here is arguing that players shouldn't fail sometimes, that's pure hyperbole. Allowing a save to try and catch the falling bucket in Moria would be a great way to make a character's stats matter, while simultaneously encouraging them to interact with the environment because the rules say you have a chance to overcome it.

Arguably, your chance at a save was when you described your action. If you think about saves in early D&D, and about things that had no save in early D&D you'll find in general (though not always) you got saves against actions others took against you (spells, breath attacks etc) and you didn't get saves against things you chose to do (stare into the abyss, grab the mimic).

Also, given that a lot of traps in early D&D had a x in 6 chance of triggering, you did have a save, just not one attached to your stats. I could buy arguments either way, and usually have a combination of both in my games, but I see nothing wrong with the occasional "that was a bad idea" moments.


Your examples need work. That, and this is probably not a road you want to go down, since it's really easy to start pulling out movie examples of characters who succeed solely because the script/DM wants them to rather than because of their own merits.

Absolutely, they were mostly off the cuff, and honestly more antagonistic than I should have been. Even those of us who enjoy the possibility of character death are guilty of thinking that something "isn't fair" when we have bad luck or make a bad decision.


Still, however you interpret the dice/story, Pippin actively triggers this. It is entirely his fault, and the other characters call him on it.

Gandalf: "Fool of a Took! Throw yourself in there next time!" (or something along those lines)


Even if you interpret it my way, provided that the DM mentioned the skeleton on the well, the player still actively triggered it. Some will call this pixel bitching, but I want my players to be specific. Even something as simple as "I carefully sit on the well" would be enough, but I need something, because as a DM, every time I ask you a specific question, that's giving away information you shouldn't have. If I say "where do you sit on the well" you now know there's something unique about the well. And honestly, I've got enough work to do without having to ask random unimportant questions to throw you off the scent. The same applies to searching. There was much bitching elsewhere about how the playtest rules tell the DM to not allow players to find things if they aren't specific, and use the difference between "I search the room" and "I search the dresser". Honestly, as a DM, if you say "I search the room" and expect to find any hidden things, then you should also expect that you will trigger (or have a chance of triggering) every trap in that room, otherwise, why should I bother with traps?


Of course, the problem here is that what's good for a narrative medium like books or film isn't always good for an interactive game...


And yet is seems a goal of many modern game systems is to bring that book or film to the table. How many DMs these days don't let players die unless the plot demands it? For that matter, how many DMs don't let players get away with something (like what the players did here (http://dreamsinthelichhouse.blogspot.com/2011/07/die-strahd-die.html)) because it would kill one of their precious NPCs before its time?


...then it's not a backstory, now is it?


Only if you think you should start your characters mid way through their epic journey.


So as far as Gygax's personal style, just based on the links and stories posted in this thread, I'd say that there's lots of somewhat contradictory information. This is someone who, on the one hand, hears a player say 'I'd like to take my character to Barsoom' and bam, is willing to go and run that, and on the other hand has plenty of seemingly arbitrary traps and gotchas in actual play.

I don't think they are contradictory. By all accounts Gygax was a very open DM, willing to let you try or do just about anything. But by the same token, he expected you to understand the world you inhabited, and the tropes that influenced the game. The price you paid for being able to do anything, was that anything could also happen to you.


I mean, seriously. The mimic is a critter whose entire method of attack revolves around looking innocuous. The wine... who ruins good booze?

Depends, the wine in the local Tavern? Yeah, unlikely to be poisoned. The wine in the unguarded decanter in the king's feast hall? Depends on how much of a despot the king is doesn't it?


I believe Stubbazubba's original point was that the arbitrary nature of Gygax's dungeons and traps meant that context became irrelevant. The toilet in the tavern, the barracks, and the dungeon alike were all crapshoots.


Except that by all accounts, this wasn't true. If you look at all the module, you see that every trap and trick has some logic behind it, and context to give it meaning. Yes, even Tomb of Horrors, which was designed to purposefully be a death trap. Every big horror story we hear is always completely devoid of context. The poisoned wine for example, all we know is it was at some con and at some point someone drank wine and died.


But for some of us RPG can provide type one fiction, where anything can happen. And an RPG is about the only place you can find and do it. And this makes them different and special and unlike anything else. And that was what Gygax gave us: type one anything fiction.

But it's only for some people though. The larger gamer base is all 100% type two fiction. They just want to pretend there is danger, while it's all safe. And that's fine.

Absolutely, I just bristle at people calling Type 1 fantasy "bad gaming" or "bad DMing" just because they don't like it.


[quote]I definitely wouldn't like Gygax's DMing style, if those examples are accurate. Too much gotcha DMing, with the pit trap in the darkness being a shining example. It is possible (in some bizarro-verse) that every single one of the adventurers were the silent & stoic type and quiet to a fault, but assuming that every single one of them plummets to their death in absolute silence after loosing their footing in the darkness (remember the thud? no silence effects here) is monumentally cheap.

It also highlights the worst offender of the style, the interface screw.
The characters in the game have full sensory input of their surroundings and can notice things passively, but the players only have what the DM tells them. Making things worse by the "You didn't say you were [avoiding obvious-to-character hazard]" and only sharing information when specifically requested is underhanded. I have no issue with challenging or high-lethality games, but using the fact that is a game against the players (meta-DMing?) is just terrible form.

It's not really an interface screw, or really all that arbitrary. Even assuming for the moment that there's no good reason why the characters wouldn't have cried out (and bearing in mind we're getting a 3rd or 4th hand story here), let's go to reality for a moment. You and five of your buddies are traveling through a trapped tomb. You come upon a black "wall" of sorts. Your buddy in the lead tries to press forward, disappears into darkness, and all you hear is a "whoosh thud". You call out and get no response, and he just magically disappeared. Given you've seen that (and only that) and that you know you're in a trapped tomb, do you really plan on just pressing on as if nothing happened?

Augmental
2012-06-20, 07:05 PM
Arguably, your chance at a save was when you described your action. If you think about saves in early D&D, and about things that had no save in early D&D you'll find in general (though not always) you got saves against actions others took against you (spells, breath attacks etc) and you didn't get saves against things you chose to do (stare into the abyss, grab the mimic).

Also, given that a lot of traps in early D&D had a x in 6 chance of triggering, you did have a save, just not one attached to your stats. I could buy arguments either way, and usually have a combination of both in my games, but I see nothing wrong with the occasional "that was a bad idea" moments.

So if you poke a cliff with a stick, you don't get a save against the boulder that was precariously placed on the edge too high up to see?


Even if you interpret it my way, provided that the DM mentioned the skeleton on the well, the player still actively triggered it. Some will call this pixel bitching, but I want my players to be specific. Even something as simple as "I carefully sit on the well" would be enough, but I need something, because as a DM, every time I ask you a specific question, that's giving away information you shouldn't have. If I say "where do you sit on the well" you now know there's something unique about the well. And honestly, I've got enough work to do without having to ask random unimportant questions to throw you off the scent. The same applies to searching. There was much bitching elsewhere about how the playtest rules tell the DM to not allow players to find things if they aren't specific, and use the difference between "I search the room" and "I search the dresser". Honestly, as a DM, if you say "I search the room" and expect to find any hidden things, then you should also expect that you will trigger (or have a chance of triggering) every trap in that room, otherwise, why should I bother with traps?

Because some people might not wish to describe in minute detail every action their character takes?


And yet is seems a goal of many modern game systems is to bring that book or film to the table. How many DMs these days don't let players die unless the plot demands it? For that matter, how many DMs don't let players get away with something (like what the players did here (http://dreamsinthelichhouse.blogspot.com/2011/07/die-strahd-die.html)) because it would kill one of their precious NPCs before its time?

Again, there is a middle ground between never letting PCs die and killing PCs with arbitrary death traps - or, in other words, type one roleplaying and type 2 roleplaying are opposites on a scale, and there's other types in between.


Only if you think you should start your characters mid way through their epic journey.

So games should start from the moment the PCs are born? Because that's when a character's backstory starts.

kyoryu
2012-06-20, 07:18 PM
Again, there is a middle ground between never letting PCs die and killing PCs with arbitrary death traps - or, in other words, type one roleplaying and type 2 roleplaying are opposites on a scale, and there's other types in between.

While I agree with this in principal, there's a fundamental philosophical difference between "if they die, they die" and "PCs should only die for a sufficient plot-related reason."

Either you'll let a PC die in a random encounter, or you won't. And that's not a strawman - there's been a number of posts on this board from DMs saying that they'll only kill PCs if the plot demands it, or with the approval of the player, etc.

And that's fine for a narrative-focused game, btw.


So games should start from the moment the PCs are born? Because that's when a character's backstory starts.

I'd look at this from a slightly different view. The game should start from the point that the PC's story gets interesting. IOW, if it's an interesting backstory, it should be played through.

But again, this still shows a fundamental difference in thought between old-school and modern games. In old school games, PCs weren't anything special by default - they *became* special by their actions. In modern games, PCs are special unique snowflakes that are the Destined Heroes of Destiny. You didn't go to the Dungeons of Dungeony Dungeonness because you were special, you were special because you went to the DDD - and survived. And if you didn't survive, you just weren't that special.

IncoherentEssay
2012-06-20, 07:30 PM
It's not really an interface screw, or really all that arbitrary. Even assuming for the moment that there's no good reason why the characters wouldn't have cried out (and bearing in mind we're getting a 3rd or 4th hand story here), let's go to reality for a moment. You and five of your buddies are traveling through a trapped tomb. You come upon a black "wall" of sorts. Your buddy in the lead tries to press forward, disappears into darkness, and all you hear is a "whoosh thud". You call out and get no response, and he just magically disappeared. Given you've seen that (and only that) and that you know you're in a trapped tomb, do you really plan on just pressing on as if nothing happened?

I wouldn't, but then again i am the overthinking borderline-paranoidically careful type. I also know there's a pit in there :smalltongue:, even if i wouldn't in the game situation. Can't give an accurate estimation because of that.
"Whoosh, thud" is a pretty poor approximation of the noise a fully grown armored humanoid makes when stumbling into a pit, even assuming an ironclad vow of silence. Could also be a portal, those make odd noises. What does the darkness look like? Ordinary absence-of-light darkness? Swirling shadowy fog? Oily black membrane? It's all in the (absence of) details in the description. The DM obviously has a solid mental image of what he's describing, but the players only have a sketchy outline that their imagination fills out for them according to their expectations. A "Don't dawdle or terrible things happen"-attitude and being stingy or (unintentionally?) misleading with descriptions will easily make reasonable people make outwardly foolish choices. Maybe there was even a time limit, something the ingame characters might not have, but that easily makes the players act rashly. Having only a moment to decide on something that the characters could think over for a fair while is a noticable handicap. So is having only a few dozen words at most of the thousand-or-so of the full picture.

I do agree that the players acted rashly and foolishly, but i stand by my opinion that the tpks were cheap and hollow, reliant on the limits of the game.

NichG
2012-06-20, 08:32 PM
"Whoosh, thud" is a pretty poor approximation of the noise a fully grown armored humanoid makes when stumbling into a pit, even assuming an ironclad vow of silence. Could also be a portal, those make odd noises. What does the darkness look like? Ordinary absence-of-light darkness? Swirling shadowy fog? Oily black membrane? It's all in the (absence of) details in the description. The DM obviously has a solid mental image of what he's describing, but the players only have a sketchy outline that their imagination fills out for them according to their expectations.

It's perfectly valid to ask those questions to the DM. I'm not sure why it should be assumed that every single detail that could be relevant is in the initial description.



I do agree that the players acted rashly and foolishly, but i stand by my opinion that the tpks were cheap and hollow, reliant on the limits of the game.

As opposed to being triumphs for the DM? I mean, if we take the anecdote at face value, Gygax was puzzled at the way it went, not prideful over it or anything like that. It goes more towards showing that the baseline assumptions of old-school players and modern players are quite different.

For an old-school player, I'd think you'd refuse to go forward until you've satisfied yourself that it won't kill you. For a modern player, you'll assume it won't kill you unless given evidence (strong evidence it seems) otherwise.

That said, I'm absolutely shocked that eight teams of players would all fail to at least try to investigate what was going on before rushing through. Especially since the devil face with the sphere of annihilation anecdote is so well known. I'm wondering if maybe these were groups of players completely new to tabletop games or if we're again missing a large portion of context.

1337 b4k4
2012-06-20, 08:42 PM
So if you poke a cliff with a stick, you don't get a save against the boulder that was precariously placed on the edge too high up to see?


If you poke a cliff that's unstable enough that poking it at the bottom causes a boulder at the top to fall, then yes. Of course, as always, this relies on communication between the DM and the players. I'm not advocating that the players play "read my mind", but if the DM says "You come up to a cliff that looks like it's made out of crumbled and fallen rocks, every so often small bits of rock fall from up above" and your response is "I hit it with my axe", then frankly you deserve what's coming to you.


Because some people might not wish to describe in minute detail every action their character takes?

Then you don't get a right to complain when you trigger the traps in the room. Seems only fair right? My job as a DM is not to keep you alive. It's not to kill you but it's not to keep you alive. If you say you're searching the room, and you expect to find any hidden objects no matter where in the room, then you should equally expect to find and trigger traps, no matter where in the room.

Of course again, I expect communication between the players and the DM. If there's no communication or cooperation, then you've got bigger problems.


Again, there is a middle ground between never letting PCs die and killing PCs with arbitrary death traps - or, in other words, type one roleplaying and type 2 roleplaying are opposites on a scale, and there's other types in between.

...

So games should start from the moment the PCs are born? Because that's when a character's backstory starts.



kyoryu answered this pretty much the same way I would have.

Augmental
2012-06-20, 09:01 PM
Then you don't get a right to complain when you trigger the traps in the room. Seems only fair right? My job as a DM is not to keep you alive. It's not to kill you but it's not to keep you alive. If you say you're searching the room, and you expect to find any hidden objects no matter where in the room, then you should equally expect to find and trigger traps, no matter where in the room.

Of course again, I expect communication between the players and the DM. If there's no communication or cooperation, then you've got bigger problems.

What if a player said "I search the room, keeping a look out for any sign of traps"? Would you still make them trigger every trap because they didn't list off everything they wanted to check individually?


While I agree with this in principal, there's a fundamental philosophical difference between "if they die, they die" and "PCs should only die for a sufficient plot-related reason."

Either you'll let a PC die in a random encounter, or you won't. And that's not a strawman - there's been a number of posts on this board from DMs saying that they'll only kill PCs if the plot demands it, or with the approval of the player, etc.

And that's fine for a narrative-focused game, btw.

Letting PCs die for whatever reason is closer to the type 1 end of the scale, but not at the extreme end. The extreme end would be trying to kill the PCs by scattering easily missed death traps everywhere.

Fatebreaker
2012-06-20, 09:32 PM
I'd look at this from a slightly different view. The game should start from the point that the PC's story gets interesting. IOW, if it's an interesting backstory, it should be played through.

But again, this still shows a fundamental difference in thought between old-school and modern games. In old school games, PCs weren't anything special by default - they *became* special by their actions. In modern games, PCs are special unique snowflakes that are the Destined Heroes of Destiny. You didn't go to the Dungeons of Dungeony Dungeonness because you were special, you were special because you went to the DDD - and survived. And if you didn't survive, you just weren't that special.

See, but that's a faulty premise right there. Having a backstory doesn't make you special. Heck, I give backstories to some of my NPCs, and y'know what? They're better characters for it, but that doesn't make them special. You can have an interesting backstory which isn't necessarily good game material, because "interesting story" and "interesting to play" are two different things.

Somewhere, y'all are equating "has a backstory" with "thinks he is the Chosen One."


It's not really an interface screw, or really all that arbitrary. Even assuming for the moment that there's no good reason why the characters wouldn't have cried out (and bearing in mind we're getting a 3rd or 4th hand story here), let's go to reality for a moment. You and five of your buddies are traveling through a trapped tomb. You come upon a black "wall" of sorts. Your buddy in the lead tries to press forward, disappears into darkness, and all you hear is a "whoosh thud". You call out and get no response, and he just magically disappeared. Given you've seen that (and only that) and that you know you're in a trapped tomb, do you really plan on just pressing on as if nothing happened?

The simple fact that eight out of nine adventuring parties all fell prey to this thing suggests that somewhere along the line, something went wrong with the description of what was happening. I mean, even if it's only four people per party, that's thirty two folks who fell to their deaths. If it's six, that's forty-eight. So between thirty and fifty people just... walked off a cliff.

One party? Funny story. Two parties? Hilarious! Three? Actually, kinda worrisome. Four? Five? Six? SEVEN? EIGHT?

At some point, this stops being the fault of the players, and starts to raise red flags about the guy running the module.

kyoryu
2012-06-20, 09:34 PM
Letting PCs die for whatever reason is closer to the type 1 end of the scale, but not at the extreme end. The extreme end would be trying to kill the PCs by scattering easily missed death traps everywhere.

Oh, I get what you're saying. I just believe that there are some fundamental assumptions and goals that differ between "type 1" and "type 2", that cause those differences in attitudes about player death.

kyoryu
2012-06-20, 09:44 PM
See, but that's a faulty premise right there. Having a backstory doesn't make you special. Heck, I give backstories to some of my NPCs, and y'know what? They're better characters for it, but that doesn't make them special. You can have an interesting backstory which isn't necessarily good game material, because "interesting story" and "interesting to play" are two different things.

Somewhere, y'all are equating "has a backstory" with "thinks he is the Chosen One."

Only at the extreme cases. But then again, I've seen very few character backstories that are "grew up with both parents. Got bored and went adventuring."

1337 b4k4
2012-06-20, 11:20 PM
What if a player said "I search the room, keeping a look out for any sign of traps"? Would you still make them trigger every trap because they didn't list off everything they wanted to check individually?


The short answer is yes, the long answer is it depends. If the system allows for die roll trap checking, then I would likely allow the player a roll for each trap, with failure meaning they trip the trap.

But clearly you're misunderstanding my point, so let me try again. I have a room, that's 20' x 20', it has a bed, a dresser, a desk and a painting on the wall. Behind the painting is secret compartment with treasure, the compartment is trapped. The top drawer of the dresser also contains treasure and it too is trapped. The desk contains treasure, but is not trapped, and there is nothing in the bed.

What happens to you as a player when you say "I search the room" depends on what you expect to happen. If you expect me to repeat the room description, perhaps in greater detail, then no nothing happens to you. If you expect to find all 3 caches of treasure, then you have a chance of triggering each trap as well. That's only reasonable.

If, instead you say "I search the furniture in the room", you'll only find two treasure caches, and chance triggering one trap.

My point is that the wider you cast your net as a player, the more tricks and treats you will catch. If you want to avoid traps, you either need to be specific, or be careful. Is this really so unreasonable? To me, it seems no different than requiring you to tell me which weapon you use and monster you attack in battle. After all, you don't go into battles saying "I kill my enemies" so why would you think that searching for treasure should have a "Win" button?


Somewhere, y'all are equating "has a backstory" with "thinks he is the Chosen One."

When someone says that "Type I" fantasy means that backstory is a waste of time, I can only assume that they have some sort of "chosen one" backstory they've written or have in mind. Clearly you can have an interesting back story, but unless your already a hero / chosen one / Drizzt clone, then the most interesting part of your character's story is yet to come, and there's no need for you to have a massive backstory that would lead you to think you wasted your time when your character bites the dust.


At some point, this stops being the fault of the players, and starts to raise red flags about the guy running the module.


You'd be surprised what having only played in games where you character can't die no matter how stupid will do to your sense of danger. We all know the stories of blood thirsty players that kill all the King's retinue in the court, knowing that the DM won't have them killed for such insolence. Or heck, just look at some of the online reactions to the 40 kobold room in the playtest. People actually thought you were supposed to run that room as a straight combat, as if your players should go toe to toe with 40 kobolds on their home turf and expect to win.

Honestly, it doesn't surprise me that much. I do have to assume we're missing a bit more to this story, but lets face it, players can definitely be stupid.

willpell
2012-06-21, 01:50 AM
I have come to realize that I am essentially the Anti-Gygax; my roleplay paradigm assumes that the DM has a responsibility to give your character a game for his benefit, and thus I am exactly the opposite of the default "everything is trying to kill you and the DM is behind it all" paradigm which early D&D tended to encourage.

I make only a token effort to be realistic and almost none to be fair or consistent, but no way I'm ever going to say that the character you spent four hours building randomly died a lame and unavoidable death because of a die roll and an inflexible rule. I've been accused of "killing the excitement" of my games by hand-holding the players to such an extent, but I'm willing to risk such a consequence rather than engender resentment or crush a fragile spirit; I see the creation of roleplay magic as a roll of the dice, and consider Murphy's Law to be a permanent hex on all dice ever, so I make damn sure that the worst possible consequence is not terribly bad, and then I roll the dice a lot and hope for occasional nigh-miraculous success.

Matthew
2012-06-21, 05:02 AM
I actually think that the best thing that can be said about Gygax is how irrelevant he is to the modern game.

Think about that for a moment. Really, really think about it. If the roleplaying community, hobby, and industry was virtually unchanged from the 70's, would that be a good thing or a bad thing?

The hobby has come a long way since Gygax. There's real money in it these days, a wider audience, a broader and deeper variety of options. Other folks have stepped up to tweak the core idea of Gygax's D&D -- "Let's play pretend for grownups!" -- and adapted it to fit genres and playstyles which Gygax could never have imagined.

By all accounts, there was much more money in the hobby in the eighties than there is now, and probably a wider audience as well. It was the World of Warcraft of its time.

As far as the subject of this thread goes, sure he was a great Dungeon Master, depending on what you define as "great". Just like some people think Lord of the Rings is great and others cannot stand it, so it is with all subjective preferences.

Dire Llama
2012-06-21, 06:23 AM
To make an analogy: old-school D&D is nethack, modern games are Baldur's Gate.

I was going to say something about 'one pixel off and you die' vs 'open-ended sandbox with awesome toys'. Your example was more succinct.



My roomate's dad used to game with the guy (as well as some other GMs of the era), and I can't run games for him because he checks his waterskin for traps every fifteen minutes. [...]
These are not the things anyone who's played with a sane GM does.


"Mimic" in it's various shapes is good, but I always thought "Rust Monster" was the best summary of the old school mind set: "Again we see there is nothing you can possess which I cannot take away."

(I think the progression from specific to general goes "Rust Monster", "Mimic", "DM".
In the game I played there was a cute gecko/lizard/aardvark thing that walks on air and eats the magic out of your items by touching them.)


I "blame the supposed DMs" because his actions also tend to come with horror stories.

For more fun, have you ever read Gygax's Up on a Soapbox articles, where he gleefully regales readers with tales about how he humiliated and emasculated players for enjoyment?


Would those be in Dragon?

"Old school" explains the continued existence of Talisman (whichever edition).
* "I move in ... this direction."
* "OK, you encounter a witch and she turns you into a toad."



Someone said something to the effect of 'Old school D&D is a completely different game with different goals.' That I agree with; old school D&D is about the players' ability to guess what's in the DM's head. And the DM is actively encouraged to throw as many curve balls (and curves on his curve balls) in order to stay one step ahead of them.
[...]
I'm failing to see the any evidence that this could be anyone's 'best game ever played.'




I can't expect to interact with the scene in front of me, either. Or go to the bathroom, for that matter. [...] Every breath of air my character takes is literally a gift from the DM, because he could just declare me dead without me even interacting at all.

There's a cartoon somewhere noting that in a city of 10,000 people, every day three of them are randomly transported to a to a different dimension. "Hey, that's what the table says, nothing to do with me. Yes, I did create the table, what of it?"



I actually think that the best thing that can be said about Gygax is how irrelevant he is to the modern game.

[...]

Sure, some folks miss his arbitrary, random, adversarial, and sometimes petty tyrant DMing, or the disposable characters and paranoid players that style produced. But those folks can still play that way! And now, folks who would have walked away at the sight of Gygaxian gaming can sit down and share the hobby and enjoy it.

[...]

To me, that's a positive thing. That is, whether he was a good DM or a bad DM, the best thing which can be said for him is that he created a hobby of such potential that, within a generation or two, his own contributions had been surpassed by those he inspired.

Pong, we salute you!

1337 b4k4
2012-06-21, 07:16 AM
I make only a token effort to be realistic and almost none to be fair or consistent, but no way I'm ever going to say that the character you spent four hours building randomly died a lame and unavoidable death because of a die roll and an inflexible rule.

Well, yes, if it takes you 4 hours to build a character, then obviously the chance of character death has that much more cost. Personally, I try to avoid games where building a character is a multi hour affair, heck even a half an hour to me is a bit much if you've done it more than once.

Tyndmyr
2012-06-21, 07:40 AM
So if Monk should be the only ones Grappling, why is it part of the standard combat rules? Power Attack isn't like that, nor is spellcasting or any other number of class features. Why are the Grapple rules in the combat chapter instead of a class feature? To make poor newbies think they are a good idea? A trap option?

A great many class features make you better at something anyone can do. Anyone can search for traps, but a rogue is going to be a LOT better at it than the wizard.

Just because you can doesn't mean you should. If all options like that were removed from the game, you'd have no poor choices left at all. A world of bubble wrap, where nothing you do can actually be harmful. That's not what I want from a game.

Everyone being able to grapple, but not everyone being good at it, is remarkably realistic, and adds a tactical choice as well. That's just fine.

willpell
2012-06-21, 07:41 AM
As far as the subject of this thread goes, sure he was a great Dungeon Master, depending on what you define as "great". Just like some people think Lord of the Rings is great and others cannot stand it, so it is with all subjective preferences.

But there's a difference between your subjective preference for an artwork's content and the semi-objective quality of the artist's efforts in creating it (defining DMing as an art is slightly generous but I think most people on a forum like this would agree it's fair). I despised "Nine Princes in Amber" but I couldn't claim with a straight face that it isn't a well-written book; if I'd played in Gygax's campaign I might well have felt about him much as I did about Corwyn by the end of the novel, but I'm not going to pretend Zelazny didn't have serious chops as a writer, regardless of what he chose to write about. The question isn't "would you have fun playing in Gygax's campaign"; it's "did Gygax have the skills necessary to run a campaign which is of high quality in the abstract". He definitely had some of those skills, but I think some of the Charisma- or Wisdom-based ones could maybe have used a few more ranks. :smallwink:

Tyndmyr
2012-06-21, 08:04 AM
Or heck, just look at some of the online reactions to the 40 kobold room in the playtest. People actually thought you were supposed to run that room as a straight combat, as if your players should go toe to toe with 40 kobolds on their home turf and expect to win.

*shrug* My players took that on as a fight. Stealthy recon revealed them, and they utilized the bottlenecks of the door and pit to limit the number engaged at once. They also made sure they were pretty fresh going in. It was a hard fight, but they did come out on top.

It's obviously a challenging fight, and can well be quite unwinnable if you stumble into it poorly. That doesn't make it terrible, though. Some of my players had never played before, and they didn't think to complain about it.

valadil
2012-06-21, 08:44 AM
What if a player said "I search the room, keeping a look out for any sign of traps"? Would you still make them trigger every trap because they didn't list off everything they wanted to check individually?

Mind if I subvert the example a little? What do you do when a player tells you he rolls diplomacy at the guards? Personally, I make the player describe what he's saying to the guards and then let the diplomacy roll happen. So does every GM I've played with. Why should the search skill work any differently than the diplomacy skill?

To answer your question, I wouldn't immediately trigger the traps. I'd just ask the player for more detail. The only way I'd let "search the room" fly is if I was being lazy and didn't really care about the traps in the room. But if I'm trying to make a game where the players care about traps, I'm damn well going to populate the room with objects so the players can react to those objects.

ThiagoMartell
2012-06-21, 08:50 AM
To make an analogy: old-school D&D is nethack, modern games are Baldur's Gate.
Baldur's Gate, that game with insta-kill traps? That game in which you can kill mostly anyone and if you kill certain people you simply can't advice? That game in which plenty of rules stuff (such as the requirements for other people wearing Keldorn's armor) are simply not stated? The game where your main character's backstory is revealed during the game?
The best RPG ever?
I don't think modern gaming is like Baldur's Gate at all. More like Dragon Age.

Zombimode
2012-06-21, 09:20 AM
Baldur's Gate, that game with insta-kill traps? That game in which you can kill mostly anyone and if you kill certain people you simply can't advice? That game in which plenty of rules stuff (such as the requirements for other people wearing Keldorn's armor) are simply not stated? The game where your main character's backstory is revealed during the game?
The best RPG ever?
I don't think modern gaming is like Baldur's Gate at all. More like Dragon Age.

Yeah, citing Baldurs Gate as an example for modern gaming is fishy at best.
If anything Baldurs Gate shows that a simply dichotomy "old school - modern" is very inaccurate. Yes, there was a paradigm shift with BG - it was markedly different from say the Wizardy, Might&Magic and Ultima games. But the genre "evolved" (better: changed) continuously and there are maybe surprisingly almost no games that are "like" BG. When most people speak of "modern" games, they probably mean games starting with Oblivion (which marked a MAJOR paradigms shift in the developments of video games in general, not just RPGs, and its impacts lasts to this very day).

Edit: also, in the whole BG series there are only two unconditional death traps. One is Spellhold, and one in Durlags Tower. There were, of course, traps that killed the character because of doing "enough" damage, or due to failed save.
I'm not aware of any plot-stopping kills (or plot-stopping anything for that matter). Do you have something specific in mind?
Maybe there is something that I can still learn about this game, after all :smallwink:

valadil
2012-06-21, 09:30 AM
Edit: also, in the whole BG series there are only two unconditional death traps. One is Spellhold, and one in Durlags Tower. There were, of course, traps that killed the character because of doing "enough" damage, or due to failed save.


BG is a different beast. You can reload your game. Gygax didn't come with reset button.

Nethack/Angband was a better comparison because unless you were cheating death was permanent.

Zombimode
2012-06-21, 10:09 AM
BG is a different beast. You can reload your game. Gygax didn't come with reset button.

Nethack/Angband was a better comparison because unless you were cheating death was permanent.

Of course. But in a PnP campaign the world keeps going after the death of a character. In both BG and Nethack the world stops if the (main) character dies.
Video games just make a bad comparison to PnP games.

kyoryu
2012-06-21, 10:18 AM
I have come to realize that I am essentially the Anti-Gygax; my roleplay paradigm assumes that the DM has a responsibility to give your character a game for his benefit, and thus I am exactly the opposite of the default "everything is trying to kill you and the DM is behind it all" paradigm which early D&D tended to encourage.

A good old-school DM didn't actually do that. When it came to running the game, a good old-school DM has to be rigorously neutral. Now, in terms of planning the dungeons or whatever there's a certain amount of antagonism simply due to the fact that a cakewalk dungeon isn't much fun.

But in terms of actual play? Let the dice fall where they may. The two biggest reasons I've heard for fudging dice in that thread were "keep the players alive" and "keep my BBEG alive to make it a climactic fight". Both of those show the fundamental nature of modern gameplay - heading towards a predisposed conclusion.

If there's anything that really highlights the difference, that's it. Old-school games didn't have a predetermined conclusion - what happened, happened. "Party death" was no more predetermined than "party success".


I make only a token effort to be realistic and almost none to be fair or consistent, but no way I'm ever going to say that the character you spent four hours building randomly died a lame and unavoidable death because of a die roll and an inflexible rule. I've been accused of "killing the excitement" of my games by hand-holding the players to such an extent, but I'm willing to risk such a consequence rather than engender resentment or crush a fragile spirit; I see the creation of roleplay magic as a roll of the dice, and consider Murphy's Law to be a permanent hex on all dice ever, so I make damn sure that the worst possible consequence is not terribly bad, and then I roll the dice a lot and hope for occasional nigh-miraculous success.

Then you should play a system that is built on those assumptions. That's not a slight in the least, by the way. I completely understand the type of game you're going for, and it's certainly a valid one. It ain't old-school D&D, and I'd argue that even newer editions (with the possible exception of 4e) carry enough baggage from the earlier editions that it's hard to play that style of game in them, even though they support it somewhat better than the early editions.

I'd also argue that in old-school games, deaths aren't the result of random rolls. They're the result of player decisions.


I don't think modern gaming is like Baldur's Gate at all. More like Dragon Age.

That may be more fair, but as others have pointed out, even BG had save points which make a pretty huge difference.

Drolyt
2012-06-21, 10:28 AM
Now, almost everyone that has played a role playing game has either heard horror story's or been in one, fact. And after listening to a podcast where some people started talking about dungeons and dragons with one of the people saying they had been told that Gygax was a terrible DM who would kill players in the most unfair ways possible. So, was Gygax really a bad DM?
Kill players in unfair ways? Yes, I think that is probably true, since there is a style of roleplaying that is very lethal and requires you to hit the reset button often, and it was more popular back then, as evidenced by some of the insane old adventures they've published. I'm not sure if that would make him a bad DM though, if that was the game everyone wanted to play. To be honest I'm not sure how he could have been a bad DM, if his players weren't having fun the game would never have gotten off the ground.

Fatebreaker
2012-06-21, 11:00 AM
Only at the extreme cases. But then again, I've seen very few character backstories that are "grew up with both parents. Got bored and went adventuring."

That, at least, is a backstory. It's not a great backstory, but it is one. Which is more than I can say for "levels one to five are your backstory."


When someone says that "Type I" fantasy means that backstory is a waste of time, I can only assume that they have some sort of "chosen one" backstory they've written or have in mind. Clearly you can have an interesting back story, but unless your already a hero / chosen one / Drizzt clone, then the most interesting part of your character's story is yet to come, and there's no need for you to have a massive backstory that would lead you to think you wasted your time when your character bites the dust.

Why would you assume that "I have a backstory!" means "I believe I'm the Chosen One!"

Why wold you assume that death means "you wasted your time" on a backstory?

Why would you assume that the possibility of interesting things to come somehow invalidates the choices and events which led you to find yourself in front of a dungeon, ready to slay some dragons?

Why would you assume any of this?


You'd be surprised what having only played in games where you character can't die no matter how stupid will do to your sense of danger. We all know the stories of blood thirsty players that kill all the King's retinue in the court, knowing that the DM won't have them killed for such insolence. Or heck, just look at some of the online reactions to the 40 kobold room in the playtest. People actually thought you were supposed to run that room as a straight combat, as if your players should go toe to toe with 40 kobolds on their home turf and expect to win.

Honestly, it doesn't surprise me that much. I do have to assume we're missing a bit more to this story, but lets face it, players can definitely be stupid.

"Players are stupid" can be true. But when either out of nine parties die to the same trap in the same way, we move from "players are stupid" territory to "the common denominator here is this specific DM" territory.

At some point, the consistency of play should tell you that something about how the DM ran the scene was at fault here.


By all accounts, there was much more money in the hobby in the eighties than there is now, and probably a wider audience as well. It was the World of Warcraft of its time.

More money and a wider audience in the 80's?

I'm not really sure why you'd imagine that.

It used to be, you had to go to specialty stores to get roleplaying games. Now, you can waltz into a Barnes & Noble and find a whole section devoted to them. D&D gets a lot of space, but they're not the only ones. The whole social stigma bit has dropped off dramatically. Game designers are able to reach folks who would have shrugged off Gygaxian D&D, and show them a very different sort of game which actually appeals to them.

On the industry side, D&D had some knockoffs, but there's not a lot of successful, older roleplaying games. Today we have White Wolf, AEG, Fantasy Flight, all sorts of big names who publish big games. Even Shadowrun barely qualifies as "the 80's," since it was first published in '89. And the smaller studies and indie publishers are in a much better place in terms of being able to reach their target market/demographic. Companies like Privateer Press, who sell a tabletop wargame, can dip into the roleplaying market, too! Hell, the band Abney Park even published a roleplaying game ("Airship Pirates").

Y'know what makes World of Warcraft really impressive? It has nothing to do with the quality of the game (or lack thereof). It has everything to do with how World of Warcraft really cracked the divide between "people who play MMOs" and "people who don't play MMOs." EverQuest, Ultima Online, however good or bad those games were, they had a limited audience. World of Warcraft went mainstream in a big way.

Gygaxian D&D? Not World of Warcraft. Not by a longshot.


Pong, we salute you!

Hail, Pong!

willpell
2012-06-21, 11:13 AM
You'd be surprised what having only played in games where you character can't die no matter how stupid will do to your sense of danger. We all know the stories of blood thirsty players that kill all the King's retinue in the court, knowing that the DM won't have them killed for such insolence.

Those players are clearly not thinking through all the things worse than being killed which can happen to them. The DM doesn't want to have the campaign end, but he'd love to have the players volunteer to run the Five Years in the Prison of Gratuitous Beatings after the king's retinue finishes cleaning their clocks. And say that if you roleplay through the scenario you'll eventually earn freedom and rewards, but if you don't then you're out of the game, or at least get stuck with a weaker character. There's all sorts of ways you can correct the players' behavior.

kyoryu
2012-06-21, 11:18 AM
That, at least, is a backstory. It's not a great backstory, but it is one. Which is more than I can say for "levels one to five are your backstory."

Sure, it's a backstory. I think we know what "backstory" means, and Arneson quip aside, we understand what it means.

This was an example to contrast the typical "Chosen One" backstory.

Perhaps even Chosen One is a bad term - but at least it's generally, IN MY EXPERIENCE, "Look how unique and special I am!"

My example was to give an example of a non-unique and special snowflake backstory.

My point remains - there's a fundamental shift between "what's interesting about your character is what they do" and "what's interesting about your character is what they were before they started adventuring." Old-school games are very much the former.


Why would you assume that "I have a backstory!" means "I believe I'm the Chosen One!"

Because the vast majority of backstories that we've seen are exactly that, or at least "Look What A Special and Unique Snowflake I Am!"

This may not apply to you and your group - based on your dislike of 3.x, I'm guessing it applies to you at least less than most. So I'm not accusing you of holding this stance, simply explaining the reaction.


Why wold you assume that death means "you wasted your time" on a backstory?

Because we've heard that argument time and time again on these boards?


Why would you assume that the possibility of interesting things to come somehow invalidates the choices and events which led you to find yourself in front of a dungeon, ready to slay some dragons?

It doesn't. The point here is emphasis.

3.x and some other games have a huge emphasis on character building, and actual during hte game play is a secondary concern - a big part of the exercise is building a character that can survive, and then validating that by having them curbstomp everything.


Why would you assume any of this?

Because we've seen examples of it, time and time again?



It used to be, you had to go to specialty stores to get roleplaying games. Now, you can waltz into a Barnes & Noble and find a whole section devoted to them. D&D gets a lot of space, but they're not the only ones. The whole social stigma bit has dropped off dramatically. Game designers are able to reach folks who would have shrugged off Gygaxian D&D, and show them a very different sort of game which actually appeals to them.

I got my Moldvay Basic Set at Walgreen's. My 1e DMG came from Sears, I believe.

Tyndmyr
2012-06-21, 11:48 AM
To be honest I'm not sure how he could have been a bad DM, if his players weren't having fun the game would never have gotten off the ground.

While I'm not against your conclusion, this is not a reasonable way to get there.

I've known many a bad DM to have players. Some would give excuses like "he's the only one that'll do it". Some had never played under anyone else. Yet, this person had a reputation as a terrible DM, and engaged in habits like "someone has to die every session. If nobody dies in a night, I pick one randomly at the end". He's still running a game.

Getting players is dead easy. Having them is not a guarantee of being a quality DM.

1337 b4k4
2012-06-21, 12:44 PM
It's obviously a challenging fight, and can well be quite unwinnable if you stumble into it poorly. That doesn't make it terrible, though. Some of my players had never played before, and they didn't think to complain about it.

I wasn't saying it was terrible. Just that sometimes players come to the table with vastly different expectations, and there appears to be a contingent of players out there who honestly thought the 40 kobold room was meant to be played as a straight, everyone in the same room wall to wall fight. Even your players didn't do that, as you said, they used bottle necks and the pit trap some rooms back to manage and control the battle. Players that come from games where the DM never throws an encounter at them that they can't win, likely wouldn't even think twice about charging head long into the 40 kobold room.


BG is a different beast. You can reload your game. Gygax didn't come with reset button.


Sure he did. By the time your character was high level enough to have represented considerable time investment, there were raise dead spells.


Why would you assume that "I have a backstory!" means "I believe I'm the Chosen One!"


Because as kyoryu says, in my experience, that's what most people are talking about when they talk about their carefully crafted back stories as a reason for why they don't want their character to die.


Why wold you assume that death means "you wasted your time" on a backstory?

Because that very statement is what started this tangent on back stories. To whit: "So, it's a game that trains you to be paranoid about every little thing, where you can die at any moment, and where backstories are considered a waste of time because your character is inevitably going to die."


Why would you assume that the possibility of interesting things to come somehow invalidates the choices and events which led you to find yourself in front of a dungeon, ready to slay some dragons?

It doesn't, until you as a player are more invested in preserving your character's back story, than writing your character's future.


At some point, the consistency of play should tell you that something about how the DM ran the scene was at fault here.

So what part of the described scene can you envision as being the DM's fault here? Seriously, come up with a description of a trap wherein the lead party member disappears into darkness and is never heard from again, and yet the rest of the party reasonably thinks it's OK to just press on as if nothing is wrong. I seriously can't imagine. The only possible scenario I can imagine is that Gygax said "The lead player disappears" and nothing more, and every thing the party sent into that area that wasn't human didn't trigger the trap. Even then, as soon as the next person disappeared, no reasonable person should have kept trying to push forward. I seriously can't think of any possible DM failure that should lead to this. I can certainly think of player failure though, especially when it appears that the party that was successful merely needed a stick and some careful prodding.


And say that if you roleplay through the scenario you'll eventually earn freedom and rewards, but if you don't then you're out of the game, or at least get stuck with a weaker character. There's all sorts of ways you can correct the players' behavior.

What's the mechanical difference between killing a character and telling them "If you don't play this scene right, you're out of the game?"


I've known many a bad DM to have players. Some would give excuses like "he's the only one that'll do it". Some had never played under anyone else. Yet, this person had a reputation as a terrible DM, and engaged in habits like "someone has to die every session. If nobody dies in a night, I pick one randomly at the end". He's still running a game.


I've said it before, this blows my mind. People don't invite back the guy that eats all the food and throws a tantrum every time he misses, so why in the world do players keep going back to the crappy DM. Either straighten out your DM or get a new one.

Tyndmyr
2012-06-21, 01:24 PM
I've said it before, this blows my mind. People don't invite back the guy that eats all the food and throws a tantrum every time he misses, so why in the world do players keep going back to the crappy DM. Either straighten out your DM or get a new one.

I used to have this attitude too. And yeah, it works for me. Jumping ship is definitely a tactic I advocate.

However, there's one big problem with this...DMs are in shorter supply than players are. There are a *lot* of players who want to find a game, but not a ton of DM. So, you've got a power imbalance toward the DM. If you doubt this...go into the pbp section, and post a "looking for players" thread and a "looking for DM" thread, and see which one fills first.

I would fix this by encouraging more people to DM, but a lot of people just don't or won't.

Gamgee
2012-06-21, 01:39 PM
I disagree with valadil; the 70's were not that long ago.

The man made his children cry when they played. That should be a red flag. The stuff he wrote for the game were almost creepy about the players being utterly powerless against the DM whenever there was a disagreement. Given the impression I've got from the modules he created, where characters just died when they tried something, the rules he wrote, where players had no say in what happened to them, and the games he ran, where his will was all that mattered, to the point of his own children in tears, he seemed like an unmitigated egomaniac, and used DMing as a power fantasy. I'd call that a bad DM in the 70's as much as the same traits made bad kings in bygone centuries, the ones that people revolted against. His games were all about him having fun with imaginary power, not the group having fun accomplishing anything.

Maybe he was very descriptive and such, but all that means to me is that he should have been an author, not an actuary-turned-game-designer. My gut tells me his books wouldn't have sold well, since there was actually competition there, as opposed to RPGs, a conveniently empty market.
Ahhhh, comma spam. Sanctity of life, mind, and faith is now gone. :smallfrown:

Augmental
2012-06-21, 01:48 PM
Because as kyoryu says, in my experience, that's what most people are talking about when they talk about their carefully crafted back stories as a reason for why they don't want their character to die.

Or maybe they don't want their character to die because they put effort into giving their character a past, a description, depth...

kyoryu
2012-06-21, 02:31 PM
Or maybe they don't want their character to die because they put effort into giving their character a past, a description, depth...

And thus begins the slide from old-school to modern gaming. You're now basically saying that your character should be immune to death for a certain length of time, or unless certain conditions are met, due to investment made before the first game even happens.

And you know what? That's fine for a narrative-style game, which old-school D&D definitely wasn't. And narrative games are fine. And old-school games are fine. They each do certain things very well.

Wardog
2012-06-21, 03:01 PM
BG is a different beast. You can reload your game. Gygax didn't come with reset button.

Nethack/Angband was a better comparison because unless you were cheating death was permanent.

I remember on the old BG forums, there were a fair few people who considered reloading to be cheating.

And I don't mean in a macho-boast sense, "Oh, I always play 'iron man' style. If I die, I start over. Anything else feels like cheating". This was (as far as I can tell) a genuine assumption that restarting when you died was the expected way to play, and anyone who saved before a big fight and reloaded if they lost was "doing it wrong".

And they were nothing in comparison to the people who criticised anyone who min/maxed their characters' stats.

Augmental
2012-06-21, 04:01 PM
And thus begins the slide from old-school to modern gaming. You're now basically saying that your character should be immune to death for a certain length of time, or unless certain conditions are met, due to investment made before the first game even happens.

And you know what? That's fine for a narrative-style game, which old-school D&D definitely wasn't. And narrative games are fine. And old-school games are fine. They each do certain things very well.

Exactly. Old-school D&D was great at inciting a DM vs. Players mindset and discouraging players from putting fluff on their character sheets, while 3.5 has a wide variety of character options and encourages players to have characters with depth. Or, from a different point of view, old-school D&D was a challenging and exciting game which encouraged players to use ingenuity and creativity to solve the challenges the DM laid out, while 3.5 is a broken and unbalanced mess where most mundane classes are all but useless. Both points of view are valid, I just hold the former.

kyoryu
2012-06-21, 04:12 PM
Exactly. Old-school D&D was great at inciting a DM vs. Players mindset and discouraging players from putting fluff on their character sheets, while 3.5 has a wide variety of character options and encourages players to have characters with depth. Or, from a different point of view, old-school D&D was a challenging and exciting game which encouraged players to use ingenuity and creativity to solve the challenges the DM laid out, while 3.5 is a broken and unbalanced mess where most mundane classes are all but useless. Both points of view are valid, I just hold the former.

Eh, I think that's even a bit of a misconception.

old-school wasn't really player vs. DM, when done right. It was player vs. world, with DM as arbiter. And it didn't discourage "fluff", as is evidenced by the number of people that did exactly that. Characterization was just more defined by what happened to the character and how they reacted rather than character creation.

And even your "strawman" version of 3.5 has a lot of truth in it - mundane classes generally *are* regarded as worthless (Tier 5, Tier 4 at best), and the unbalanced nature of the system is often touted as a strength of the system, especially in comparison to 4e. (Which makes sense, given the emphasis on the character creation subgame in 3.x - that subgame is less important when there are fewer imbalances to take advantage of).

I'm not sure that either game really encourages characters to have depth - 3.x certainly encourages optimization, but that's not the same as depth.

And at any rate, it's not a matter of "this style good, this style bad!" so much as it is a slide from a gamist/simulationist view to more of a narrative view. (yeah, GNS is a crock, I'm using it as shorthand). There's value in both styles of gameplay, one doesn't have to be bad for the other to be good.

------

I think my version of your statement would go like:

Old-school games are primarily about the during-game interaction. As such, they place less emphasis on character generation or even character backstory.

Old-school games also place a high emphasis on earning rewards, rather than simply going through a predetermined path. For the rewards to feel earned, a significant and distinct possibility of failure must exist, often in the form of death, but also in the form of negative experiences for the characters.

With the lack of emphasis on character generation, a greater emphasis is placed on player skill during the actual game. As such, player choices during gameplay matter far more than character skills and statistics.

Old-school games typically have less of an overall "plot", as players are expected to make pivotal decisions during gameplay. As such, player decision-making is shifted towards their decisions during actual gameplay, as this can and will effect the long-term direction of the game.

Modern games typically focus more on creating an ongoing narrative, and their gameplay typically matches this. As the story is often more-or-less set, a higher emphasis is placed on character creation.

The systems in many of these games reflect this with some amount of imbalance in character creation, allowing for player skill at the character creation subgame to have a higher impact on gameplay, at the cost of the impact of player decisions *during* the game. The ability to be successful during an encounter will be more determined by the character stats, and as such, player skill *during* the game is a secondary consideration.

The strong narrative approach frequently means that players will have less agency in terms of the long-term direction of the game, and as such more control and meaning is given to character generation and even advancement.

The overall result is a game that focuses more on being told a story, and continual character advancement. Given this approach, higher levels of backstory are often more common, as they are one of the areas of the game the players can directly impact.

-----------------

Jay R
2012-06-21, 05:26 PM
And because we enjoyed it, and bought it, and kept coming back for more, you get to play your game today.
Are you serious? Are you gonna make an argument - or even an observation - or just try and guilt me into silence?

No guilt attempted at all. Just a straightforward observation and argument of applied logic. If the game had been as terrible as some here are claiming, then it would not have survived and grown. Since we observe that it did, indeed, survive and grow, we conclude that it wasn't as terrible as some here are claiming.

Knaight
2012-06-21, 05:42 PM
But in terms of actual play? Let the dice fall where they may. The two biggest reasons I've heard for fudging dice in that thread were "keep the players alive" and "keep my BBEG alive to make it a climactic fight". Both of those show the fundamental nature of modern gameplay - heading towards a predisposed conclusion.

If there's anything that really highlights the difference, that's it. Old-school games didn't have a predetermined conclusion - what happened, happened. "Party death" was no more predetermined than "party success".

Most modern games don't have a predisposed conclusion. If anything, that was characteristic of older games, in which the concept of "the GM's plot" wasn't something liable to be ridiculed. The thing about modern games is that many focus on emergent narratives, and frequently give tools to drive said narratives to players, where older games really didn't. The wider dispersion of narrative influence isn't something that encourages a set plot at all.


No guilt attempted at all. Just a straightforward observation and argument of applied logic. If the game had been as terrible as some here are claiming, then it would not have survived and grown. Since we observe that it did, indeed, survive and grow, we conclude that it wasn't as terrible as some here are claiming.
The logic here comes down to this: Things that grow do so because they are good. D&D grew. Therefore, D&D was good. If the first of these is invalid, the whole thing collapses like a stack of cards, and it is absolutely trivial to think of examples of genuinely terrible works that nonetheless have a wide audience. Either that or Eragon, Jersey Shore, and the songs of 3Oh!3 are in fact high quality works given that they are popular.

kyoryu
2012-06-21, 05:51 PM
The logic here comes down to this: Things that grow do so because they are good. D&D grew. Therefore, D&D was good. If the first of these is invalid, the whole thing collapses like a stack of cards, and it is absolutely trivial to think of examples of genuinely terrible works that nonetheless have a wide audience. Either that or Eragorn, Jersey Shore, and the songs of 3Oh!3 are in fact high quality works given that they are popular.

Clearly a large number of people find value in them.

I'm not one of those people, but clearly they're meeting a need that a relatively large number of people have.

You can't really define "good" as an absolute. Only whether something adequately fits a particular need or not.

Augmental
2012-06-21, 06:16 PM
The logic here comes down to this: Things that grow do so because they are good. D&D grew. Therefore, D&D was good. If the first of these is invalid, the whole thing collapses like a stack of cards, and it is absolutely trivial to think of examples of genuinely terrible works that nonetheless have a wide audience. Either that or Eragorn, Jersey Shore, and the songs of 3Oh!3 are in fact high quality works given that they are popular.

Well, what little I read of the first Eragon book was pretty good to me. You meant Eragon and not Eragorn, right?

willpell
2012-06-21, 06:53 PM
I'm not one of those people, but clearly they're meeting a need that a relatively large number of people have.

That, or those people simply buy what the television tells them to buy, watch what their neighbors are watching, and so forth. Many people do things that are not good for them, often simply for lack of any idea what would be better to do, or for similarly spurious reasons. It's rather generous to assume that such things are "meeting a need", as opposed to "happening to be handy" as a result of being heavily marketed and so forth.

kyoryu
2012-06-21, 06:58 PM
That, or those people simply buy what the television tells them to buy, watch what their neighbors are watching, and so forth. Many people do things that are not good for them, often simply for lack of any idea what would be better to do, or for similarly spurious reasons. It's rather generous to assume that such things are "meeting a need", as opposed to "happening to be handy" as a result of being heavily marketed and so forth.

While I understand your point, the fact is that there are a ton of books/shows/movies/musicians out there, and they're not all successful, even given similar exposure.

There's a reason Jersey Shore is as successful as it is. It's obviously meeting some need that a lot of people have, in a way that other options aren't. I have no clue of what that need is, or what people see in it, but there's pretty clearly *something* there.

I'm also fully aware that Jersey Shore meets exactly *zero* needs that I have, nor the needs of any of the people I choose to spend time with.

As a matter of principle, I reject the "people are stupid" explanation, as it's way too easy to use that to dismiss things that I don't like without analyzing them, or understanding what value they may have.

Frenth Alunril
2012-06-21, 07:31 PM
As a matter of principle, I reject the "people are stupid" explanation, as it's way too easy to use that to dismiss things that I don't like without analyzing them, or understanding what value they may have.

The dinosaur had spoken, resume discussion on the veracity of Gygax's awesomeness! He should be at the top of the list just for the spelling of his name!

Kaervaslol
2012-06-21, 07:50 PM
Most modern games don't have a predisposed conclusion. If anything, that was characteristic of older games, in which the concept of "the GM's plot" wasn't something liable to be ridiculed. The thing about modern games is that many focus on emergent narratives, and frequently give tools to drive said narratives to players, where older games really didn't. The wider dispersion of narrative influence isn't something that encourages a set plot at all.

Are we talking about "modern games" or modern editions of D&D?

I fail to see how "the GM plot can't be ridiculuted, therefore older games have a predisposed conclusion". "Emergent narratives" has been there since the beggining, and it is called proactive players, that have an agenda that they want to further and take action to do it. They do not wait to be spoon fed the plot, but go out and do stuff. That generates the story, because the story is what the player does.

Go read the classics: Keep on the Borderlands, G1 to G3, The Hidden Shrine of Tamochan, Against the Cult of the Reptile God.

The vast mayority of them are just a location to be explored, with the "plot" being little more than an excuse to go and explore. There is not predisposed conclusion because there is no story. Again, the story is what the player does, and the role of the DM is to be an arbiter in the interaction between world and player.

He is not there to kill you, he is there to design an interesting scenario to explore. If you drink from a chalice and the thing has poison in it, and you fail your TS and die that is not a killer GM.

That is the interaction of the character with the world.

Endarire
2012-06-21, 07:55 PM
Since this conversation is largely about old and new school and what people want from their gaming experiences, my two and a half cents are as follows:

When I play a tabletop RPG cooperatively with friends, I want to collaborate on making a wonderful world, experiencing fantastic things, and playing a character long-term that I like! I played Paranoia and hated that my character was a pawn and I had no legal right to even know the rules.

I'm part of an online D&D 3.5 solo game now where I expect things to be challenging, maybe Gygaxian, but I also expect survival to be earned. Why do I play this? Because I've mastered the rules and seek further challenge.

In short, if I want an extreme challenge I'll seek one out (http://www.criticswatch.com/reviews/until-we-win-battletoads). Normally, I won't.

Would I play under Gygax if given the chance? Well, I did. Once. It was nowhere near as interesting as I expected. Then again, it was Delera's Tomb in DDO. Were I to do it tabletop style, I'd do it for the experience. I wouldn't expect to live long. (And the incorporeal creatures in DDO made small armies out of my corpses!) One of my friends GMs kinda like him, so at least I'd have some practice.

HeadlessMermaid
2012-06-22, 02:36 AM
There's a hilarious anecdote about Lawrence Olivier (the classical actor) and Dustin Hoffman (the Method actor (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Method_acting)) filming together. They were about to shoot a scene which required them to sweat and pant and be out of breath, because supposedly they had only now stopped running like madmen. So Hoffman, the Method actor, starts jogging around the set, and then running for real, and getting INTO the role, body and soul, because that's the Method, right? Meanwhile, Lawrence Olivier is sitting comfortably on his chair and reading his newspaper. Then the director calls them to the set, and Hoffman, dripping with sweat, asks "But Lawrence, aren't you going to prepare for the scene?". Olivier sprays some water on his face and replies nonchalantly "My dear fellow, I am going to act."
:smalltongue:

The analogy is far from perfect, but making up a background is a bit like method acting. Some people don't need one to play a fleshed out character. More power to them. But for others, the Method works. I know my roleplaying improved spectacularly once I started working on character backgrounds.

So the "unique special snowflake" quip is a bit unfair, I think. Not that there aren't ridiculous backgrounds around. But the main purpose of a background is to help you act - because it's a lot easier to pretend to be someone else when you know who that someone is, and where he comes from.

Craft (Cheese)
2012-06-22, 07:03 AM
He is not there to kill you, he is there to design an interesting scenario to explore. If you drink from a chalice and the thing has poison in it, and you fail your TS and die that is not a killer GM.

That is the interaction of the character with the world.

And yet, the DM is the person who creates the world. What's in the chalice is whatever the DM says is in the chalice. The chalice is only there because the DM said it was.

To put it another way:

"Okay, you arrive in the first room of the dungeon, and your heads all immediately explode, killing you instantly, no save. Unbeknownst to you, an evil wizard put a head-exploding curse on you all before the adventure started. If you had some garlic with you, you could have protected yourself. Totally your fault. Hey, that was the world killing you, not me! I'm just the neutral arbiter. Now roll up new characters. Oh, and if these new characters have any garlic they will be penalized for metagaming."


How can you report the actions and state of a world which doesn't exist until you tell people about it?

Tyndmyr
2012-06-22, 07:22 AM
Clearly a large number of people find value in them.

I'm not one of those people, but clearly they're meeting a need that a relatively large number of people have.

You can't really define "good" as an absolute. Only whether something adequately fits a particular need or not.

I eat at McDonalds sometimes. It's not the best burger place, but it is cheap, and quick. Does that mean that McDonalds is handy? Yes.

It does not mean that their burgers are the best burgers.

Replace McDonalds with D&D, burgers with Gygax, etc, etc.

Matthew
2012-06-22, 07:53 AM
More money and a wider audience in the 80's?

I'm not really sure why you'd imagine that.

It used to be, you had to go to specialty stores to get roleplaying games. Now, you can waltz into a Barnes & Noble and find a whole section devoted to them. D&D gets a lot of space, but they're not the only ones. The whole social stigma bit has dropped off dramatically. Game designers are able to reach folks who would have shrugged off Gygaxian D&D, and show them a very different sort of game which actually appeals to them.

On the industry side, D&D had some knockoffs, but there's not a lot of successful, older roleplaying games. Today we have White Wolf, AEG, Fantasy Flight, all sorts of big names who publish big games. Even Shadowrun barely qualifies as "the 80's," since it was first published in '89. And the smaller studies and indie publishers are in a much better place in terms of being able to reach their target market/demographic. Companies like Privateer Press, who sell a tabletop wargame, can dip into the roleplaying market, too! Hell, the band Abney Park even published a roleplaying game ("Airship Pirates").

Y'know what makes World of Warcraft really impressive? It has nothing to do with the quality of the game (or lack thereof). It has everything to do with how World of Warcraft really cracked the divide between "people who play MMOs" and "people who don't play MMOs." EverQuest, Ultima Online, however good or bad those games were, they had a limited audience. World of Warcraft went mainstream in a big way.

Gygaxian D&D? Not World of Warcraft. Not by a longshot.

As far as I know, it is just a fact of the industry that there was more money in it during the 80s (relatively speaking). According to Joseph Goodman D&D peaked in 1983 and again in 2001. Apparently, in 1981 TSR sales surpassed $20 million (this according to the newspaper article "Lord of the Nerds (http://www.mediafire.com/?22ak4wv5pxzizl3)"). Maybe the industry now does compete with that, I had always understood that not to be the case, but I am no expert.

Tyndmyr
2012-06-22, 07:56 AM
As far as I know, it is just a fact of the industry that there was more money in it during the 80s (relatively speaking). According to Joseph Goodman D&D peaked in 1983 and again in 2001. Apparently, in 1981 TSR sales surpassed $20 million (this according to the newspaper article "Lord of the Nerds (http://www.mediafire.com/?22ak4wv5pxzizl3)"). Maybe the industry now does compete with that, I had always understood that not to be the case, but I am no expert.

Well, those were both eras of decent economic times in general, so it kind of makes sense that peaks happened then.

I'm not sure how overall sales are doing(very hard to estimate, since nobody wants to release their numbers), but pazio was in the #1 slot for a couple of quarters in 2011, so it's reasonable to say that, if nothing else, the market is probably more fractured now.

willpell
2012-06-22, 07:57 AM
I eat at McDonalds sometimes. It's not the best burger place, but it is cheap, and quick. Does that mean that McDonalds is handy? Yes.

It does not mean that their burgers are the best burgers.

Replace McDonalds with D&D, burgers with Gygax, etc, etc.

D&D's Gygax is not the best Gygax? Did he have a sister or something? :smallbiggrin:

Tyndmyr
2012-06-22, 08:00 AM
D&D's Gygax is not the best Gygax? Did he have a sister or something? :smallbiggrin:

I'm sure he has a family...someone must have organized the building of a statue for him(which gives me an unaccountable urge to climb it, and pry the gems out of it's eyes with a dagger).

More importantly, the success of D&D means that people liked D&D. It doesn't necessarily reflect on Gygax's skill as a DM. *lots* of people will see someone DMing something and go "ooh, that's interesting. I bet the campaign would be better if I ran it like this". They might or might not be right, but you can't judge a DM by the system.

Matthew
2012-06-22, 08:12 AM
Well, those were both eras of decent economic times in general, so it kind of makes sense that peaks happened then.

Right, but I think Goodman was saying something more significant than that sales were merely good in those good economic times. Interesting that D&D peaked at the time of the North American video game crash as well.



I'm not sure how overall sales are doing(very hard to estimate, since nobody wants to release their numbers), but pazio was in the #1 slot for a couple of quarters in 2011, so it's reasonable to say that, if nothing else, the market is probably more fractured now.

Tricky, indeed. It is apparently estimated that worldwide about 20 million people have played D&D and 3 million of those by 1981. But it is all estimates and suppositions.



But there's a difference between your subjective preference for an artwork's content and the semi-objective quality of the artist's efforts in creating it (defining DMing as an art is slightly generous but I think most people on a forum like this would agree it's fair). I despised "Nine Princes in Amber" but I couldn't claim with a straight face that it isn't a well-written book; if I'd played in Gygax's campaign I might well have felt about him much as I did about Corwyn by the end of the novel, but I'm not going to pretend Zelazny didn't have serious chops as a writer, regardless of what he chose to write about. The question isn't "would you have fun playing in Gygax's campaign"; it's "did Gygax have the skills necessary to run a campaign which is of high quality in the abstract". He definitely had some of those skills, but I think some of the Charisma- or Wisdom-based ones could maybe have used a few more ranks. :smallwink:

Maybe, but what I am saying is that Gygax sure did have the skills, whether you liked his style or not is analogous to whether you like Lord of the Rings or not. Of course, the "objective" or "semi-objective" criteria you set forward will be subjectively established, that is just the nature of attempting to quantify an art. Nobody is going to convince me that a bit of paper with a dot on it qualifies as art, yet in museums throughout the world such things are indeed hung as art.

Kish
2012-06-22, 09:31 AM
I'm sure he has a family...someone must have organized the building of a statue for him(which gives me an unaccountable urge to climb it, and pry the gems out of it's eyes with a dagger).
It's probably trapped. Don't come crying to me if you get a lungful of poison gas while doing so.

willpell
2012-06-22, 09:38 AM
Nobody is going to convince me that a bit of paper with a dot on it qualifies as art, yet in museums throughout the world such things are indeed hung as art.

That doesn't prove that it is impossible to define art in objective terms; it only proves that museum art directors are fallible. Some may have fallen for a BS line where someone else convinced them something was art; others may have created such a thing for their own purposes, probably having to do either with money as an attempt to impress someone. Very few of them, I suspect, sincerely think the piece in question really is art, but their job doesn't leave them in the position of being able to admit this (from my own job I know all about the ease with which money is used to deny people the option of acknowledging truth). Regardless, it is perfectly conceivable that the entire worldwide art community could sit down and draft a series of precepts explicating the precise definition of art, and it's pretty unlikely that it would take very many iterations of that project before the criteria had been narrowed and codified enough to exclude works of art that a 4-year-old might have created by eating a Fudgicle over the canvas.

Jay R
2012-06-22, 10:01 AM
"Okay, you arrive in the first room of the dungeon, and your heads all immediately explode, killing you instantly, no save. Unbeknownst to you, an evil wizard put a head-exploding curse on you all before the adventure started. If you had some garlic with you, you could have protected yourself. Totally your fault. Hey, that was the world killing you, not me! I'm just the neutral arbiter. Now roll up new characters. Oh, and if these new characters have any garlic they will be penalized for metagaming."

Is the a real example, or did you make it up?

If it's a real example, then I join you in excoriating the DM, and I report that whoever that DM is, his is nothing like any game of D&D I played in the seventies.

If it was made up, then here is the equivalent for modern D&D:

"OK, your first level walk into a long line of kobold, each of whom take of their helmet and let you kill them. They have, but do not use, whatever magic item you want your character to have.
You are now second level, facing a long line of goblins who take off their helmets and let you kill them. They have two more magic items, the ones you want most ...
...
You are now 297th level. All the Gods line up ..."

I think this is an unfair characterization of modern D&D, in exactly the same way that yours is an unfair characterization of seventies D&D.



No guilt attempted at all. Just a straightforward observation and argument of applied logic. If the game had been as terrible as some here are claiming, then it would not have survived and grown. Since we observe that it did, indeed, survive and grow, we conclude that it wasn't as terrible as some here are claiming.

The logic here comes down to this: Things that grow do so because they are good. D&D grew. Therefore, D&D was good. If the first of these is invalid, the whole thing collapses like a stack of cards, and it is absolutely trivial to think of examples of genuinely terrible works that nonetheless have a wide audience. Either that or Eragorn, Jersey Shore, and the songs of 3Oh!3 are in fact high quality works given that they are popular.

Actually, the logic is that, if many people are entertained by it, then it has value, even if it doesn't appeal to me. And yes, I extend that to Eragon, Jersey Shore, any singer I don't particularly like, and the modern all-participants-get-a-trophy approach to D&D.

By contrast, many people here are saying that the game the way they like it is good, and any other way is terrible. That's the point of view I'm disagreeing with. I'm not saying other ways aren't good for the people who enjoy them. I AM saying that the way I enjoy is good for me.

ThiagoMartell
2012-06-22, 10:08 AM
As far as I know, it is just a fact of the industry that there was more money in it during the 80s (relatively speaking). According to Joseph Goodman D&D peaked in 1983 and again in 2001. Apparently, in 1981 TSR sales surpassed $20 million (this according to the newspaper article "Lord of the Nerds (http://www.mediafire.com/?22ak4wv5pxzizl3)"). Maybe the industry now does compete with that, I had always understood that not to be the case, but I am no expert.

There was recently an interview about why Wizards keeps D&D a separate brand from Magic, and they explain a bit on how much money they get from D&D there. It's about 30 milion, barely enough for Hasbro to pull the plug on it. Magic has no such problems, but to keep control over the creative process in both D&D and Magic they had to keep it separate brands. Which nearly killed D&D. And might kill it any moment soon.

Craft (Cheese)
2012-06-22, 10:37 AM
Is the a real example, or did you make it up?

...

I think this is an unfair characterization of modern D&D, in exactly the same way that yours is an unfair characterization of seventies D&D.

I wasn't attempting to characterize seventies D&D (I've never even played it), I was trying to make an argument by Reductio ad Absurdum. If you look at the context I was replying to this:


He is not there to kill you, he is there to design an interesting scenario to explore. If you drink from a chalice and the thing has poison in it, and you fail your TS and die that is not a killer GM.

That is the interaction of the character with the world.

By this logic, the DM didn't kill them with the arbitrary head-exploding curse they couldn't have possibly defended themselves against, the evil wizard did. It was just the players interacting with the world, so there's nothing wrong with what the DM has done.

HeadlessMermaid
2012-06-22, 10:46 AM
That doesn't prove that it is impossible to define art in objective terms; it only proves that museum art directors are fallible.
For the record, I find your definition of art extremely narrow. When you exclude "works of art that a 4-year-old might have created by eating a Fudgicle over the canvas", you basically claim that Jackson Pollock didn't do art at all. Not "his art wasn't good" or "I don't like his art", but "this is NOT art". Do you deny that thousands of people have been genuinely moved and inspired by his work? Forget the museums and the art critics and the art sellers, I'm talking about real people.

It's tricky to define art. For me, it's art if it has the potential to please me aesthetically, to move me, to inspire me, to stir me. And if it actually accomplishes all that, then it's good art - which is of obviously subjective. Others have tried to define art by taking into account the intent of the artist. But no one in his right mind has ever tried to define art objectively by content.

Also, I find your idea that "the entire worldwide art community could sit down and draft a series of precepts explicating the precise definition of art" utterly inconceivable. Seriously? A bunch of artists will sit down and universally agree on anything art-related? What do you think they are, scientists? :smalltongue:

The Glyphstone
2012-06-22, 10:51 AM
Great Modthulhu: Word of fair warning, people; this discussion has evidentally morphed into a debate on the pros and cons of different editions/eras of D&D, and there are already appearances of, let's call it 'excessive hyperbole' in a few places. Remember that putting down or insulting other posters based on their playstyle or preferred edition is Flaming, and please try to keep the issue from going that far.

Burble.

willpell
2012-06-22, 11:06 AM
For the record, I find your definition of art extremely narrow. When you exclude "works of art that a 4-year-old might have created by eating a Fudgicle over the canvas", you basically claim that Jackson Pollock didn't do art at all.

I'm just going to bask in the sheer joy of this statement for a minute. You've made my point better than I ever could have.


Not "his art wasn't good" or "I don't like his art", but "this is NOT art". Do you deny that thousands of people have been genuinely moved and inspired by his work? Forget the museums and the art critics and the art sellers, I'm talking about real people.

I admittedly have only seen a few Jackson Pollock pieces, but as far as I can tell, they are entirely random swirls of paint, and anyone could get falling-down drunk in a Hirschfields and produce much the same result. I'm guessing that anyone who was "moved" by his creations was already on the verge of rolling in that direction anyway, and it just happened to be that particular stimulus that set off the reaction that they were already primed for; a pretty bird or something might well have affected them even more profoundly in the emotional (or neurochemical) state they were in at the time.

If I ever look at a Jackson Pollock and see anything other than shapeless splatter, I'll come back and edit in a retraction. Maybe it's like one of those Magic Eye things, which I can never get to work, and it's just not possible for me to see the genius that others are perceiving. Then again, maybe they're perceiving something that isn't actually there at all, and giving Jackson Pollock credit for what's really their own creativity or imagination or pattern-sensing ability, and the thing they saw wasn't put there by him but was inside them all along. Which might imply that the Pollock had some quality that facilitated bringing that thing out in the viewer, but it's more likely that it's coincidence.

And if that's so, if it a Pollock is indeed just shapeless splatter, then yes, I'm going to go with "it's not art", on the same basis whereby I declare that "wkeharoehfaweofhweaiophdsajlfhklashdfahsdklhfalshd fl" is not "a word". It might fit a technical definition such as "a unique combination of letters", but by any reasonable assessment it utterly fails to "count". Language and art are both forms of communication; if a Pollock cannot convey some sort of a message, even one as simple as "this bowl of fruit looks pretty in this light" or as abstruse as whatever Piccaso was getting at with Cubism (I despise Picasso but I can't claim he isn't an artist, because he actually set out to convey some sort of specific image, which is not true of Pollock as far as I can tell) then it isn't art.

Note that while I will never admit I'm "wrong" on this or any similar issue, my views are constantly evolving, so I welcome attempts to change my perspective by providing me with new information to evaluate. If you disagree with my definition of art, and want to show me evidence of an interpretation you prefer, by all means go ahead. I'm just saying where I'm coming from at the moment, and if I end up somewhere else later, well, that's the whole business of living pretty much.


It's tricky to define art. For me, it's art if it has the potential to please me aesthetically, to move me, to inspire me, to stir me. And if it actually accomplishes all that, then it's good art - which is of obviously subjective. Others have tried to define art by taking into account the intent of the artist. But no one in his right mind has ever tried to define art objectively by content.

I very strongly suspect I'm not the first one to say "that's not art because it's made of X / shaped like Y / etc." and intend for it to be somewhat non-arbitrary. Whether I'm in my right mind is another question of course.


Also, I find your idea that "the entire worldwide art community could sit down and draft a series of precepts explicating the precise definition of art" utterly inconceivable. Seriously? A bunch of artists will sit down and universally agree on anything art-related? What do you think they are, scientists? :smalltongue:

The reason I spoke of iterations is that at first, such an endeavor would almost certainly be a cat-herding process sabotaged by raging egomaniacs and filled with frivolity and pointless contrariness...but eventually, over time, that sort of chaff would be separated from the wheat of serious intellectual achievement, and some degree of structure would gradually be able to emerge, whereby most reasonable people eventually come to agree with a decent common-sense assessment of what is and isn't verifiably true. There would be a lot of false leads and even more frayed nerves involved, but I don't think the endeavor is completely doomed; it would be not unlike the process of editing TVTropes, whereby huge amounts of information is carelessly tossed around and often goes far astray, yet eventually a central core of relatively stable collective consensus does gradually come together. (Actually come to think of it, TVTropes is pretty close to exactly what I suggested, save that it focuses almost exclusively on audiovisual media and thus doesn't encompass the whole of art.)

HeadlessMermaid
2012-06-22, 11:48 AM
@willpell: I fear we'll derail the thread (and it has enough problems already), so I'm putting my reply in spoilers. Just one thing: thank you, you proved my point. :)


I admittedly have only seen a few Jackson Pollock pieces, but as far as I can tell, they are entirely random swirls of paint, and anyone could get falling-down drunk in a Hirschfields and produce much the same result. I'm guessing that anyone who was "moved" by his creations was already on the verge of rolling in that direction anyway, and it just happened to be that particular stimulus that set off the reaction that they were already primed for

So basically, what you're saying is that you don't see anything in it, therefore no one should. And if by any chance they do, why, they must be misled. This is where I start yelling "Dude, your personal taste and your notions about art are not objective and universal truths! They're yours and you should cherish them, but you shouldn't force-feed them to others who happen to have a different view! Bash Pollock all you like, but don't claim that the emotions his work has stirred in so many people are imaginary!"


And if that's so, if it a Pollock is indeed just shapeless splatter, then yes, I'm going to go with "it's not art", on the same basis whereby I declare that "wkeharoehfaweofhweaiophdsajlfhklashdfahsdklhfalshd fl" is not "a word". It might fit a technical definition such as "a unique combination of letters", but by any reasonable assessment it utterly fails to "count".

"Unique combination of letters"? That's not the definition of a word. This is: "the smallest element that may be uttered in isolation with semantic or pragmatic content (with literal or practical meaning)". You're comparing apples and oranges here.


Note that while I will never admit I'm "wrong" on this or any similar issue, my views are constantly evolving, so I welcome attempts to change my perspective by providing me with new information to evaluate. If you disagree with my definition of art, and want to show me evidence of an interpretation you prefer, by all means go ahead. I'm just saying where I'm coming from at the moment, and if I end up somewhere else later, well, that's the whole business of living pretty much.

Ah, my turn to bask in sheer joy. :smallbiggrin:
You just admitted that even the same person may change his mind over time about what is art. And you think that an objective definition, with which everyone in the world must agree, is possible? You proved my point! :)


I very strongly suspect I'm not the first one to say "that's not art because it's made of X / shaped like Y / etc." and intend for it to be somewhat non-arbitrary. Whether I'm in my right mind is another question of course.

No, you're not the first to say it. People say it all the time. "The Order Of The Stick isn't art, it's just stick figures! Photography isn't art, anyone can press a button! Today's pop music isn't art, when I was a teenager they made REAL music! Modern dance isn't art, only classical ballet is!" The difference is that these people rarely assume that an all-encompassing, universally accepted and supposedly objective definition of art is a good idea, or a feasible one. :)

kyoryu
2012-06-22, 12:00 PM
There was recently an interview about why Wizards keeps D&D a separate brand from Magic, and they explain a bit on how much money they get from D&D there. It's about 30 milion, barely enough for Hasbro to pull the plug on it. Magic has no such problems, but to keep control over the creative process in both D&D and Magic they had to keep it separate brands. Which nearly killed D&D. And might kill it any moment soon.

Let's not forget that $20 million was a lot more in '81 than it is in '12.


I wasn't attempting to characterize seventies D&D (I've never even played it), I was trying to make an argument by Reductio ad Absurdum. If you look at the context I was replying to this:

Applying the same logic to modern games means that everyone should be Pun-Pun.

EDIT: To be clear, this is not meant to imply "therefore, 3.x is a bad game." It is meant to imply "therefore, reductio ad absurdum is a poor standard to apply to games which have social feedback mechanisms to prevent the extreme cases."


By this logic, the DM didn't kill them with the arbitrary head-exploding curse they couldn't have possibly defended themselves against, the evil wizard did. It was just the players interacting with the world, so there's nothing wrong with what the DM has done.

Yes, that is arbitrary. However, a lot of everything depends on context. In old-school games, there should have been clues available either environmentally or elsewhere that an intelligent player can use to avoid the badness.

That's why mimics in inns, barring extraordinary circumstances, are unfair. And a DM who did what you did would, indeed, be a bad DM.


Then again, maybe they're perceiving something that isn't actually there at all, and giving Jackson Pollock credit for what's really their own creativity or imagination or pattern-sensing ability, and the thing they saw wasn't put there by him but was inside them all along.

But that's *all* art. All of it. This is not a pipe - it's our brain interpreting splashes of paint on a canvas and pattern-matching them into a pipe in our heads. A lot of modern art intends to either play with that boundary and that pattern sensing ability, or to play with pattern, color, and shape divorced from realistic form. The argument that pattern, shape, and color divorced from form makes no sense is pretty much equivalent to what Lewis Carrol was lambasting in Alice in Wonderland - math without real things to tie it to. And Lewis Carrol was *wrong*. Flat-out wrong. Almost everything in our modern world would be impossible without the very math that he was skewering as useless.


And if that's so, if it a Pollock is indeed just shapeless splatter, then yes, I'm going to go with "it's not art", on the same basis whereby I declare that "wkeharoehfaweofhweaiophdsajlfhklashdfahsdklhfalshd fl" is not "a word". It might fit a technical definition such as "a unique combination of letters", but by any reasonable assessment it utterly fails to "count".

By "any" reasonable assessment? And as you said earlier, this just shows the stupidity of museum directors?

Seriously, listen to yourself. You're flat-out saying that pretty much the whole of the world of art, including people that are far more educated and have far more experience than yourself, are not only wrong but stupid.

Look, I'll be the first to admit that there's a tendency of people to not call the Emperor's new clothes, and to say that something is deep and important when, really, they just don't understand. But what you're essentially saying is "people that like things I don't are stupid."


Language and art are both forms of communication; if a Pollock cannot convey some sort of a message, even one as simple as "this bowl of fruit looks pretty in this light" or as abstruse as whatever Piccaso was getting at with Cubism (I despise Picasso but I can't claim he isn't an artist, because he actually set out to convey some sort of specific image, which is not true of Pollock as far as I can tell) then it isn't art.

I cannot read French. If I read a book in French, I would not understand it. Does that mean that French novels cannot be art?


The reason I spoke of iterations is that at first, such an endeavor would almost certainly be a cat-herding process sabotaged by raging egomaniacs and filled with frivolity and pointless contrariness...but eventually, over time, that sort of chaff would be separated from the wheat of serious intellectual achievement, and some degree of structure would gradually be able to emerge, whereby most reasonable people eventually come to agree with a decent common-sense assessment of what is and isn't verifiably true. There would be a lot of false leads and even more frayed nerves involved, but I don't think the endeavor is completely doomed; it would be not unlike the process of editing TVTropes, whereby huge amounts of information is carelessly tossed around and often goes far astray, yet eventually a central core of relatively stable collective consensus does gradually come together. (Actually come to think of it, TVTropes is pretty close to exactly what I suggested, save that it focuses almost exclusively on audiovisual media and thus doesn't encompass the whole of art.)

Any such process would come up with a different definition based upon who was in the group. If you include six-year-olds, for instance, you'll get a different definition of art than if you don't.

And the experts in the field do pretty much exactly what you're describing, and guess what? They seem to think that Jackson Pollock is art.

Stubbazubba
2012-06-22, 12:20 PM
No guilt attempted at all. Just a straightforward observation and argument of applied logic. If the game had been as terrible as some here are claiming, then it would not have survived and grown. Since we observe that it did, indeed, survive and grow, we conclude that it wasn't as terrible as some here are claiming.

1) This isn't what we were talking about when I said what you quoted.

2) The game of D&D varied so much from table to table that it's impossible to see the growth it enjoyed and point back to one man's DMing style and say that his games were what made it take off.

This inductive reasoning is missing a lot:

Someone posted that article about how flabber-gasted Gygax was that people at a competition had no idea how to play his game. So clearly 8/9 groups didn't play D&D as Gygax intended. From that admittedly small sample size, one must draw the conclusion that Gygaxian DMing did not characterize the game, even in the 70s. Therefore, the success that D&D enjoyed which propelled both it and its genre into what it is today did not come from Gygaxian DMing, but from something else.

Again, I'm not saying that Old School play is illegitimate (if done right it's very, very good), I'm just saying that Gygax himself was prone to abusing the power he gave himself, and frequently didn't give players a fair chance of success, and IMO this makes him a bad DM. On the other hand, I'd say that a player who refuses to go along with a reasonable DM call for whatever reason is also "bad." That has nothing to do with playstyle, it has to do with interpersonal dynamics. When either the DM or a player is being unfair or unreasonable, that's ruining my play experience, and I will not condone it just because one's the DM or one's the player; neither is inherently more entitled to have their way.

Tyndmyr
2012-06-22, 12:36 PM
While I agree with your point, I'd like to point out that 8-9 groups is not a particularly small sample size. That's probably about 40 players, and since it's a convention, odds are they came from rather a lot of different areas and groups. Given the size of the gaming community in the 70s, that's actually a pretty decent sample set.

Informational loss is a frequent cause of these things. "woosh, thud" might be a reasonable way you summarize falling into a pit, but it's really, really short on detail. It could also be the sound of wind blowing you through a door. Or a teleporter. Or whatever, really. The lack of detail can result in people drawing entirely different conclusions than what the DM feels is obvious.

As has been pointed out, a scream and clattering armor falling down would have been much more accurate, and would have likely resulted in at least a good amount of the players suspecting a trap of some sort.

1337 b4k4
2012-06-22, 03:35 PM
For the record, I tracked down the source of the 9 teams in the dungeon story. Mike Mornard (who played in Gygax's original game). Per his description:

"Oh, and in case it’s not clear, there were 9 referees, one for each team. So it’s NOT a case of somebody describing something badly."

So I stand by my original statement that playing in non lethal games can vastly change your world view of the game, and cause "stupid players" moments.

Incidentally that story (and more) about D&D, Gygax and early gaming can be found here and are very interesting. It's clear from reading Gygax was not the malicious serial killer DM some envision. Nor was he a fluffy bunny, excepting perhaps the one with nasty sharp teeth:

http://blogofholding.com/?series=mornard

Matthew
2012-06-22, 08:26 PM
That doesn't prove that it is impossible to define art in objective terms; it only proves that museum art directors are fallible. Some may have fallen for a BS line where someone else convinced them something was art; others may have created such a thing for their own purposes, probably having to do either with money as an attempt to impress someone. Very few of them, I suspect, sincerely think the piece in question really is art, but their job doesn't leave them in the position of being able to admit this (from my own job I know all about the ease with which money is used to deny people the option of acknowledging truth). Regardless, it is perfectly conceivable that the entire worldwide art community could sit down and draft a series of precepts explicating the precise definition of art, and it's pretty unlikely that it would take very many iterations of that project before the criteria had been narrowed and codified enough to exclude works of art that a 4-year-old might have created by eating a Fudgicle over the canvas.

I am not arguing it is impossible to define art in objective terms. Anyone can come up with criteria that can then be used to measure art objectively. Establishing truly objective criteria is pretty much impossible, on the other hand; the best we can do is come up with criteria acceptable to a perceived majority or authority. One man's art is another man's crap, beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and all that.

Regardless, the bottom line is that we can come up with criteria for determining whether an individual is a good or bad game master, and then try and determine whether it is acceptable to a majority or just reflective of our own preferences. Chances are, we will not agree between ourselves, except in the most general terms, as to what qualifies an individual as a good game master, and very likely that will apply to Gygax, which will bring us back to whether we like his "style".

As much as we would like to think so, there is no one "standard" of good within the gaming community. We do not all agree on the best rules of the Dungeons & Dragons adventure game generally (for example), never mind how individual games ought to be run. The best we can do is say things like "did everybody have fun?".

Zarrgon
2012-06-22, 09:28 PM
Again, I'm not saying that Old School play is illegitimate (if done right it's very, very good), I'm just saying that Gygax himself was prone to abusing the power he gave himself, and frequently didn't give players a fair chance of success, and IMO this makes him a bad DM. On the other hand, I'd say that a player who refuses to go along with a reasonable DM call for whatever reason is also "bad." That has nothing to do with playstyle, it has to do with interpersonal dynamics. When either the DM or a player is being unfair or unreasonable, that's ruining my play experience, and I will not condone it just because one's the DM or one's the player; neither is inherently more entitled to have their way.


It kinda goes back to what people think is 'fair'. Just look at what some people think is fair:

1)''You turn the corner and see death and die instantly!''
2)''Oh the vampire misses you again dear, wow, what luck you've had tonight!''
3)"Yup, I walked up to a dragon and full attacked it and it just stood there and I killez it! My character is now officially a dragonslayer!"

Roland St. Jude
2012-06-23, 11:03 PM
Sheriff of Moddingham: About a dozen posts were removed from this thread for being alternatively, rules complaints and vigilante modding. Please refrain from calling other people out on their behavior or complaining about the Forum Rules or moderation. Please try to keep this thread on topic.

Kaervaslol
2012-06-25, 08:40 PM
And yet, the DM is the person who creates the world. What's in the chalice is whatever the DM says is in the chalice. The chalice is only there because the DM said it was.

To put it another way:

"Okay, you arrive in the first room of the dungeon, and your heads all immediately explode, killing you instantly, no save. Unbeknownst to you, an evil wizard put a head-exploding curse on you all before the adventure started. If you had some garlic with you, you could have protected yourself. Totally your fault. Hey, that was the world killing you, not me! I'm just the neutral arbiter. Now roll up new characters. Oh, and if these new characters have any garlic they will be penalized for metagaming."


How can you report the actions and state of a world which doesn't exist until you tell people about it?


That is the answer, an hyperbole that will most likely never happen? Seriously, anyone in their right mind would walk away from a DM like that.

Now I could say "Hey let's cover everything in pool noodles, the world is not safe! players can die!!!11!!!! Let's balance all encounters to provide a feel of danger but no actual threat whatsoever!!!" to go in accord with the hyperbole, but that would get us nowhere.

Again, killer things are part of worldbuilding. Drinking from a chalice in a tavern and dying because of poison that came from nowhere, that is bad DMing.

Going into a dungeon, and drinking from a chalice inside a hostile enviroment, failing a saving throw and dying as the result, that is not a bad DM, that is a bad player.

The same as contact poison, traps of various kinds, situations where fighting head on only leads to dead, terrain hazards, etc. Those are things that are natural occurance in a fantasy world of danger and is a character falls pray to any of them that is not a killer DM, that is a dangerous world worth of exploring.

VanBuren
2012-06-25, 09:41 PM
Only at the extreme cases. But then again, I've seen very few character backstories that are "grew up with both parents. Got bored and went adventuring."

It's funny that you should mention this, because that's pretty much the background I gave my Warblade. Oh sure, I threw in a little bit about how he'd gone from simple peasant to being able to use maneuvers, and he was a bit of a Blood Knight. But yeah, that's pretty much it.

Marlowe
2012-06-26, 11:16 AM
I have written many backstories, but this is my favourite: Portia's backstory is probably going to emerge gradually, possibly after counselling sessions which she won't even bother to attend. She's a woman of mystery and she likes it that way. She gives everyone else the feeling they'd prefer it if she stayed mysterious as well.

This, on the other hand, left me feeling a little silly afterwards:She doesn't have a name. Never has. From the moment she slipped out from between her mother's legs red-eyed and chalk-faced and coughing out a tiny gobbet of red, she was just That Thing. That Thing, and later Girl.

She always preferred Girl, if anyone had asked her.

It was a testament to the basic decency of the villagers that an unnaturally quiet albino babe could have survived infancy. Maybe the "unnaturally quiet" thing helped a little there. She grew up fast, even a little taller and stronger than was normal amongst the village girls. She played with the other children enough that her colour gradually became a detail rather than a blemish. She spoke easily enough that her quietness became a trait rather than a flaw.

Still, she never made good friends. And when the time came when the old man called Keeper, who looked after the shrine to the Honoured Dead, came to town her the first time in many years, and asked for an apprentice, she was an easy choice to send away with him.

She learned many things, tending the Shrine. The ways of burial. Under earth and rock. Amid flame. On the slow deep water that ran to the sea (or so Keeper said), on the red-stained beaks and claws of the hosts of the air. People are never the same, the Keeper would say; and so they need to pass on in different ways.

She gained a new name: Little Keeper. If at any point she had occasion to think about this in a critical light, she might have concluded that her fellow villages were not the most imaginative bunch, in life or in death.

And in death she knew them. The Keeper had told her, stay in this place too long and you start hearing them. It did not take her long.

She heard them in the patter of the rain. In the wind's howl. In the rustle of leaves and branches and in the thunder of the storm. She could feel their touch in the rain, in the push of the gale, and in the thick embrace of the fog. Although she disapproved of that last one and asked them to stop.

The dead very seldom answer back. And when they do, they don't say much that is interesting. They also seldom do as they are asked or told. It has occurred to Little Keeper that something should be done about this.

One dawn, Little Keeper rose as normal. She swept the floor of the shrine and stoked the red embers of the flame back to life. Then she walked into Keeper's squalid chamber to bring him his breakfast. As was normal. She found him on the floor, which was not.

"Girl", he said. "Girl. Yes, I know it's not your name. Don't look at me like that".

Little Keeper stopped looking at him like that.

"It's been too long for me here, Girl. I'm going. Put me on the flames when I'm done. Then one other thing-"he coughed explosively. Little Keeper politely listened.

"Then leave this place. Little Keeper. It's not for you. It's helped you but it's not for you. You're tough and smart--if maybe a little clumsy. And I know you can grasp things I never could. There's a power in you, girl. A power that deserves more than an Adept's post." He broke off and took a breath like a rasping of wood along a saw-blade. "My old soldierin' gear. Take that. I know you can use it. Then leave. Make friends. Find things to do. Places to go. Places that aren't here, amid the bones and ash. I never wanted this place for me, and I'll never rest if it takes you too"

"Please, Girl. The flame. Then that".

And then he died. His breakfast got cold.

She did as she was told, and watched his fire until it had died in greasy smoke. Then she took his ashes and spread them where they were needful. then she took his gear, as requested, and went out onto the field of bones.

"I am no longer Little Keeper", she said aloud. "Nor Keeper either. I will be Walker, until a better name comes. I am sorry to leave you fine ladies and gentlemen, but I am informed there are better things I can be doing, and I am going to find out what they are."

She listened for a few moments.

"No, I won't miss you either", she said.

And then Walker got.

kyoryu
2012-06-26, 11:46 AM
It's funny that you should mention this, because that's pretty much the background I gave my Warblade. Oh sure, I threw in a little bit about how he'd gone from simple peasant to being able to use maneuvers, and he was a bit of a Blood Knight. But yeah, that's pretty much it.

Most "backstories" I do are more like vignettes, to get an idea of the character's personality. So yeah, I'm fully aware that people *can* write backstories that aren't about their Unique Snowflake Destined Hero of Destiny. And backstories that don't do that can be really useful tools.

But the more emphasis I see people put on concepts like "Hey, I don't want my character to die because I"ll lose the work on my backstory", the more likely it seems that they will come up with a USDHoD.

Menteith
2012-06-26, 11:57 AM
Most "backstories" I do are more like vignettes, to get an idea of the character's personality. So yeah, I'm fully aware that people *can* write backstories that aren't about their Unique Snowflake Destined Hero of Destiny. And backstories that don't do that can be really useful tools.

But the more emphasis I see people put on concepts like "Hey, I don't want my character to die because I"ll lose the work on my backstory", the more likely it seems that they will come up with a USDHoD.

I don't generally write down a backstory unless I'm being asked to by someone. I generally use tools (like this one (http://www.gather.com/viewArticle.action?articleId=281474976908598)) when I'm having a hard time forming a character in my mind, but I'd much rather express who a character is during an actual session, rather than at home. I've had characters drastically change based on group dynamic from what I'd suppose they'd be like, and an epic written up beforehand seems really confining, both for me and for a DM/Storyteller to work it into a narrative smoothly.

HeadlessMermaid
2012-06-26, 12:16 PM
Hey, I have a question. Does 2nd Edition count as old-school, and close enough to the Gygaxian style to get an idea what it was all about? Or had D&D, by then, already diverged from the early days, and become a different animal?

Tyndmyr
2012-06-26, 12:24 PM
Hey, I have a question. Does 2nd Edition count as old-school, and close enough to the Gygaxian style to get an idea what it was all about? Or had D&D, by then, already diverged from the early days, and become a different animal?

Realistically, it depends a lot on the group.

kyoryu
2012-06-26, 12:26 PM
Hey, I have a question. Does 2nd Edition count as old-school, and close enough to the Gygaxian style to get an idea what it was all about? Or had D&D, by then, already diverged from the early days, and become a different animal?

I think it's more about the group you played with than the rules. I could do a relatively Gygaxian game in 4e if I wanted, though people might defenestrate me for it :smallbiggrin:

hamlet
2012-06-26, 12:30 PM
Hey, I have a question. Does 2nd Edition count as old-school, and close enough to the Gygaxian style to get an idea what it was all about? Or had D&D, by then, already diverged from the early days, and become a different animal?

Depends on how you use the tools given.

It can be, but it was also the age of the greatest campaign settings and story campaigns going, which was largely antithical to Gygax's thinking.

hamlet
2012-06-26, 12:33 PM
*grumble grumble gripe*

Stupid server errors.

*grumble mumble*

ThiagoMartell
2012-06-26, 02:18 PM
I think it's more about the group you played with than the rules. I could do a relatively Gygaxian game in 4e if I wanted, though people might defenestrate me for it :smallbiggrin:

Unless you ignore most of the rules, I doubt that.

Tyndmyr
2012-06-26, 02:22 PM
Unless you ignore most of the rules, I doubt that.

You would seriously have to work on that, yeah.

The 3.5 ToH update is...probably the *most* Gygaxian of 3.5 stuff, and frankly, the most dangerous stuff in there is stuff that isn't especially tied to the rules.

kyoryu
2012-06-26, 03:08 PM
You would seriously have to work on that, yeah.

The 3.5 ToH update is...probably the *most* Gygaxian of 3.5 stuff, and frankly, the most dangerous stuff in there is stuff that isn't especially tied to the rules.

Certain aspects wouldn't be very Gygaxian - 1st level characters aren't as fragile as they were in OD&D/Basic/1e, ferinstance. I'm just sayin' that the feel of "old-school" is more about the metagame than the combat mechanics.

Hoddypeak
2012-06-26, 03:40 PM
I believe it was a post on the Dragonsfoot message boards where Gygax said he felt that he was only a moderately good DM, and that he had played under DMs he felt were better than himself. If I recall correctly, he said his strength in DM'ing was primarily in improvisation.

One thing that seems to be getting mixed up here is that the DM has two jobs that occur at two different times.

The first job is to prepare the game world, which involves making the dungeons, primary NPCs, etc., and is usually done before the game takes place. This is where the mimic toilets and poisoned wine cannisters and other traps and tricks are placed in the dungeon. Random tables are created if the DM likes that sort of thing. And this is where it is the DM's job to screw over the players, or, under the alternate view, make the game world an interesting place to play. In the caricature of the old-school style, the DM prepares something to challenge the players, and has no obligation to set challenges appropriate to the characters abilities. In the modern style caricature it should challenge the characters abilities, but the players solution method should be obvious. I think Gygax had a strength for this and it is shown in his better published modules like the GD series.

The second job is what the DM does during the game, assuming adequate prep time, and involves actually running the game. This means giving descriptions of the area, providing information to the players, and FAIRLY adjudicating how the players' descriptions of their characters actions interact with the prepared world. Here, the DM should not be antagonistic towards the players, and in the old-school methodology the term used in place of DM is referee, to show that. I don't think anyone who hasn't played with Gygax can comment with certainty on this part, because it only shows up in game. However, we can surmise from his long running campaigns and friendships with his players that they didn't feel he was too unfair.

To make a challenging game (note the game can be fun without be challenging, ie in a narrativist game), DMs absolutely have to be antagonistic (either towards players or characters) in the first part of their job. To make the game fun, DMs have to be fair in the second part, or the players perceive the DM changing the rules on them.

kyoryu
2012-06-26, 03:54 PM
The first job is to prepare the game world...

The second job is what the DM does during the game...


I totally agree with this (was thinking about making a post regarding this), and feel that there's a third job, which is to play the role of the adversaries in the game. This is a "during the game" job, but is the most adversarial aspect of the DM job.


To make a challenging game (note the game can be fun without be challenging, ie in a narrativist game), DMs absolutely have to be antagonistic (either towards players or characters) in the first part of their job. To make the game fun, DMs have to be fair in the second part, or the players perceive the DM changing the rules on them.

Actually, I slightly disagree here. I think the "first job" is actually more pro-player than anything. The goal is for the players to enjoy themselves, and so the DM should present scenarios that the players can overcome, given ingenuity. Killing characters is easy, and a killer DM will win by default.

I also think that these separations are more necessary for old-school games than new ones.

HeadlessMermaid
2012-06-26, 09:58 PM
Realistically, it depends a lot on the group.
Fair enough. Let me give you a small summary then, and you can tell me if it fits.

1) Backgrounds: From non-existent to rudimentary. "A Cleric raised in a monastery, left to see the world". "A Thief who steals." "Goblins raided my village, I'm out for revenge." Or, the DM might ask "what do you wanna play?", you would say "a Fighter!", and he'd say "OK, you're a city guard, and you just arrested the Thief."

2) Set-up: You found yourself in front of a dungeon for no immediately apparent reason, and walked in. Occasionally, a quest-giver in the tavern would point you there. Anything more complicated was considered "an elaborate prologue". Geas (or the threat thereof) was a popular way to force the players to go that-a-way.

3) Etiquette: Rigid separation of IC and OOC. If you said "anyone want a pizza?" without warning that you're talking OOC, the DM assumed that your character actually said that, and proceeded with inventing hilarious responses from the NPCs, or dispensing XP penalties. That was part of the game. Also, the DMG and the MM were closely guarded, and you weren't supposed to peek.

4) Character personalities: People might have a vague idea about it, as in "I want to play a daredevil", or "I want to play an evil genius", or "I want to bash heads". But no one thought too much about it, or considered how the character ended up that way. So without other guidelines, most reverted to playing a fantasy version of themselves, adapted to the character's race/class/alignment combo. Occasionally, they played a terribly cliched stereotype instead, but that might have just been inexperience.

5) Roleplaying: It happened a lot during interaction among the PCs, it was an integral part of the game (and loads of fun), it even got you XPs. But in front of NPCs, players would usually see interaction as an encounter that can be "won", not as a social situation that can be roleplayed. A large chunk of "what would my character do?" was determined by "what would my alignment do?".

6) Mechanics: Hah, here's the funny thing, I never read the 2e DMG, so I've no idea when the DM winged it on the spot and when he followed an actual rule. Often, he'd just narrate a plausible result for whatever the PCs thought to try. That might cause some strife occasionally (as in, "you're favoring this player over me!"), but most of the time, it was intended to be fair and make things exciting. Either way, no one ever complained "hey, you improvised that, it's not a rule", because the rules weren't common knowledge anyway, and the DM was God. Meanwhile, player ingenuity and common sense was much more important than player build and stats.

7) PC deaths: They happened. Surviving a dungeon was a big deal. Traps could be deadly, encounters could be impossible. However, while caution and common sense (and a bit of luck) was certainly needed, paranoia wasn't. No one felt the need to check his own fork for traps before every meal. :smalltongue:

8) Goals: The main goal wasn't to kill stuff, because stuff could easily kill you instead. It was to get treasure. I believe that was derived from the rules, because that's how you got most of your XPs (correct me if I'm wrong). Hence, the game consisted basically of Exploration. You explored the dungeon, the forest, that weird plane you got sucked in. You searched the place, you avoided traps, you defeated some creatures, you ran away from others, and with luck, you emerged much richer than before. That seemed to be the sole motivation for the players, and what most adventures boiled down to. There were also a few secondary goals, also XP-related (I think): don't talk OOC when IC, and take care that your actions don't shift your alignment.

Final note: Hamlet mentioned "greater campaign settings" as a shift from the old paradigm. I remember people talking about Forgotten Realms back then, and being all excited about Elminster and Drizzzzzzzt and Cormyr and Mystra. I must have played in a FR campaign or two, but I wasn't impressed. Possibly because the DM had to do ridiculous amounts of railroading to get us on track (I think our cleric was actually Geased by Elminster at some point....), and a lot of awkward info-dumping and exposition. If he'd handled it better, it would have lasted long enough to make a difference, I think.

Jarawara
2012-06-26, 11:58 PM
Quote: "Final note: Hamlet mentioned "greater campaign settings" as a shift from the old paradigm."


Yeah, I don't see the difference either. Greyhawk and Blackmoor were great campaign settings. Greyhawk was far better than Forgotten Realms ever was. (And Forgotten Realms wasn't exactly a latecomer either, Ed Greenwood was producing that quite early on.)

I don't see what shift Hamlet was referring to.

HeadlessMermaid
2012-06-27, 12:15 AM
Actually, I don't know if hamlet was referring to Forgotten Realms or Greyhawk or Blackmoor, or possibly something else.

I mentioned FR because it happened to be my first experience of a setting with a geography and history and cultures and all that. Until then, the world was completely generic.

hamlet
2012-06-27, 08:15 AM
Quote: "Final note: Hamlet mentioned "greater campaign settings" as a shift from the old paradigm."


Yeah, I don't see the difference either. Greyhawk and Blackmoor were great campaign settings. Greyhawk was far better than Forgotten Realms ever was. (And Forgotten Realms wasn't exactly a latecomer either, Ed Greenwood was producing that quite early on.)

I don't see what shift Hamlet was referring to.

I'm not referring to the existance of campaign settings in general. Indeed, they are almost as old as the game itself, sometimes older in curious ways.

I'm talking about how the nature and expectations of the campaign setting changed.

Originally, they were just places, frameworks, in which the DM could plunk his campaign and dungeons and move on. Greyhawk is, in my experience, often criticized for being "boring" or "too generic" which, in my opinion, misses the point of what it aimed at. It wasn't there to tell a compelling story or to provide anything other than a shared frame of reference and a very loose framework upon which the DM was expected to build. Heck, Gary was himself quoted at one point wondering why in the world people would want copies of his Greyhawk campaign: he expected that everybody would jump on making their own worlds to play in and couldn't understand what they wanted with his.

By the time 2nd edition hit full stride, though, campaign settings really started to change in what we expected them to provide. Dragonlance is a great example of that, as is the later Forgotten Realms stuff. Instead of just a shared reference point, they are also expected to provide plot/meta-plot, compelling stories, and details details details. Instead of the broad strokes of Greyhawk, which a lot of people found absolutely perfect, people started demanding literal street by street details of the campaign world so that they were able to run it, which is an alien concept to the people who were handed a general outline and told to fill in their own details. On top of that, the campaign setting was not just a box and then that's it: it changed into something that was constantly evolving, growing, "progressing" and moving on. Forgotten realms kept moving along at such a pace that, by the latest incarnations, it's first version, the original grey box for 1st edition, is all but unrecognizable in some ways.

It is not a value judgement, it's merely a change in paradigm in how these things functioned. Nowadays, it'd probably be difficult to sell modern gamers the original version of Greyhawk, and then tell them that "no, there won't be any more supplements to detail every fine point, that's really your job you schlub!". At the same time, folks who grew up in an old school mind set look at the new (newer) and just hate the fact that that first bit they buy is suddenly "out of date" with the publication of each new expansion and what they knew and loved about it keeps changing and morphing and transmutating until they can't recognize it anymore. It actually has a name in some quarters: Forgotten Realms Syndrome.

On top of that, Weiss and Hickman really brought about a revolutionary change withe their additions to the AD&D line. Especially Dragonlance, but to a certain extent, Ravenloft as well. It was these modules that introduced the idea, which was previously quite foreign and, indeed, somewhat anathema, that the modules and the game as a whole needed a "plot." It was a story with a beginning, middle, and an end. That was something wholly new and, to this day, wholly alien to a great many players. But those players are simply not catered to by WOTC, which is fine until they create a version of the game that you cannot play without the all mighty plot.

It should be noted though, that the plot in the Dragonlance modules was exceptionally poorly handled in some ways and really left a majorly bad taste in a lot of mouths. Most especially the explicit advice in the modules that told DM's that when one of the pre-gen characters died "before their time" that they were required to be brought back by any and all means neccessary in order to make the story work. That, to a great many folks, is wholly loathsome advise and was really a major break with established operating procedure of DM's prior. It's up to you to decide whether it was for good, ill, or nothing at all.

That, is what I'm talking about when I reference "The Age of the Great Campaign Settings." Nothing sinister, or anything like that. Just the marked change in expectations and such that were exemplified within the published campaign materials themselves. Players started demanding different things, and the published campaign settings reflected those new demands.

Personally, I think that WOTC would do an astonishingly good thing, while they're in the reprint business, to reprint the original World of Greyhawk boxed set (probbably as a book instead of as a boxed set since those aren't the best idea anymore) as it was with the original text and then just get their hands off the darn thing. It's a great setting, and it would definately go well with their reprint of the 3 core AD&D books as well. Generate a lot of good will, too.

Synovia
2012-06-27, 08:45 AM
Or, to look at it from the other end: when long-term character survival was viewed as earned rather than expected, and name-level characters were figures of awe, the opportunity to achieve that was viewed as a challenge worth undertaking..

You're not earning anything when the DM is just killing players on a whim. You survive because he said you could.

hamlet
2012-06-27, 09:08 AM
You're not earning anything when the DM is just killing players on a whim. You survive because he said you could.

You're assuming the DM is killing on a whim.

Lapak
2012-06-27, 09:15 AM
You're not earning anything when the DM is just killing players on a whim. You survive because he said you could.You're right, but that's not the situation we're discussing. There is a gap bigger than the Grand Canyon between 'creating a scenario in which character death is possible (or even likely) and not fudging to prevent it when it happens' and 'killing characters on a whim.'

The first can be great fun for an entire group, provided that everyone goes in with the same expectations and the DM is ruling impartially in both directions. The second is generally only fun for the DM.

LeshLush
2012-06-27, 10:08 AM
It seems to me like a lot of this discussion boils down to the difference between The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly and The Outlaw Josie Wales. Both are darn good Westerns, and both star Clint Eastwood.

Clint's character in Ugly has no name. He is, in fact, referred to as "The Man with No Name." Or sometimes Blondie by people trying to get his attention. We don't know anything about except what he does over the course of the film, yet audiences often feel that he is one of the most compelling characters in the history of Westerns. Plus that smug look he makes when the noose is around his neck is awesome.

As a counter example, The Outlaw Josie Wales stars Clint Eastwood as Josie Wales. Wales has all kinds of backstory. His wife was raped and murdered by Union soldiers, which caused him to join the Rebel army, and his need for vengeance is what prevented him from stopping fighting after General Lee surrendered. Now he fights as a guerrilla.

These movies are very different, but they're both fantastic.

kyoryu
2012-06-27, 10:32 AM
Dragonlance is a great example of that, as is the later Forgotten Realms stuff. Instead of just a shared reference point, they are also expected to provide plot/meta-plot, compelling stories, and details details details.

I've often marked DragonLance as the shift from old-school to modern games.

Jarawara
2012-06-27, 10:36 AM
Lot's of detailed stuff.

Thank you hamlet - now I understand what you're saying, and yes, I agree.

While I like the innovation of Dragonlance, as it brought something new to the game, I would not want all campaign worlds be in that format. I prefer variety, I prefer campaigns that can be modified, I prefer generic settings. (And besides all that, I wrote my own anyway.) Too many of the modern campaign settings seem to try to provide their own story, which limits them.

I also like campaign worlds that are large enough to run multiple campaigns in them in such a way that each campaign can feel entirely different from each other. You can run a second campaign in Dragonlance, but I bet it's going to include Dragons, Draconians, and some rivalry of gods. Been there, done that. Generic and/or expansive worlds allow for the next game to be entirely different from campaign to campaign.

The question here, I guess, would be: Does old-school gaming lead to variety, or does it lead to similarity from game to game? I would think that the rise of the original campaign worlds leads to more sameness from game to game, as it is now expected to have continuity within the game world. (Contrast that to a game that's not even placed into a 'world'... each week the DM is free to just make up whatever came to mind.)

However, each campaign in Greyhawk or Blackmoor was pretty much unencumbered by previous campaigns. If you wanted to run a war between Elves and Orcs in one campaign, and then plunge the world into darkness with a Vampiric invasion in the next, it won't be going against the 'theme' of the world. Though the next campaign of hunting down the slavers might have some additional vampires flying around as vestiges of the previous campaign, if you wanted to show continuity.

Tossing in an invasion of Vampires into Dragonlance seems out of place. And while it would work in Ravenloft, it would seem... redundent. And the slaver campaign in Ravenloft only fits if Strahd himself ran the slaver operation.

*~*

Of course, the very fact that I am discussing 'vampire invasion campaigns' or 'slaver campaigns' means that I was running *modern* games even back in the days of old school gaming. Maybe it really hasn't change that much after all.

ThiagoMartell
2012-06-27, 11:04 AM
Eberron seems to mix the best of both old school and new settings, then.
It's unique and detailed, but there is no metaplot. The novels are even officially non-canon.

Jay R
2012-06-27, 12:10 PM
I think it's more about the group you played with than the rules. I could do a relatively Gygaxian game in 4e if I wanted, though people might defenestrate me for it :smallbiggrin:Unless you ignore most of the rules, I doubt that.

Well, of course. Ignoring any rule that gets in the way of the DM's game plan is at the heart of running a Gygaxian game.

Synovia
2012-06-27, 12:27 PM
You're assuming the DM is killing on a whim.

From reading Gygax's stuff, I'm convinced he was.


There's a pretty clear line between designing an obstacle to kill players, and designing an obstacle thats a dangerous challenge to players. I'm pretty sure Gygax either didn't realize that, or completely disagreed.

When 8/9 parties are killed by the first obstacle in your dungeon, you're the problem. Not the players.

hamlet
2012-06-27, 12:39 PM
From reading Gygax's stuff, I'm convinced he was.


There's a pretty clear line between designing an obstacle to kill players, and designing an obstacle thats a dangerous challenge to players. I'm pretty sure Gygax either didn't realize that, or completely disagreed.

When 8/9 parties are killed by the first obstacle in your dungeon, you're the problem. Not the players.

Good of you to at least give him the benefit of the doubt of blatant and crippling ignorance.

Did it not occur to you that there really were 8 out of 9 parties worth of truly bad players?

Synovia
2012-06-27, 12:51 PM
Good of you to at least give him the benefit of the doubt of blatant and crippling ignorance.

Did it not occur to you that there really were 8 out of 9 parties worth of truly bad players?

What is more likely? Close to 90% of the players are playing the game wrong, or the GM is doing a poor job?

Blaming the players here is like Ford blaming a customer for their cars flipping over and exploding.

hamlet
2012-06-27, 01:03 PM
What is more likely? Close to 90% of the players are playing the game wrong, or the GM is doing a poor job?

Blaming the players here is like Ford blaming a customer for their cars flipping over and exploding.

Actually, it's quite easy to blame the players in this instance since there's an entire generation of players that have been trained to think that their characters won't be killed, that it's the characters being tested and not the players as well, and that A&D is an unfair horrible death trap game and it sucks.

Synovia
2012-06-27, 01:05 PM
Actually, it's quite easy to blame the players in this instance since there's an entire generation of players that have been trained to think that their characters won't be killed, that it's the characters being tested and not the players as well, and that A&D is an unfair horrible death trap game and it sucks.

Yeah, but this isn't a present day event. This was 20 years ago.

If you think a dungeon that kills 90% of its parties ON THE FIRST OBSTACLE is good design/good DMing, we're just going to have to disagree.

And I'm a DM who has no compunctions against killing characters.

kyoryu
2012-06-27, 01:18 PM
Of course, the very fact that I am discussing 'vampire invasion campaigns' or 'slaver campaigns' means that I was running *modern* games even back in the days of old school gaming. Maybe it really hasn't change that much after all.

Not really, IMHO. The difference is that with the "vampire invasion game", maybe the vampire invasion would end, and then something else would happen within the world.


Yeah, but this isn't a present day event. This was 20 years ago.

If you think a dungeon that kills 90% of its parties ON THE FIRST OBSTACLE is good design/good DMing, we're just going to have to disagree.

As a general rule, I'd agree. In this case, there was a mysterious black wall, the players had no information on what happened in it, no confirmation that the first people to go survived, and they continued anyway.

I don't really think you can put that entirely on the dungeon design - but it's certainly something you can chalk up to a differing set of assumptions between the designer and the players.

hamlet
2012-06-27, 01:22 PM
Yeah, but this isn't a present day event. This was 20 years ago.

If you think a dungeon that kills 90% of its parties ON THE FIRST OBSTACLE is good design/good DMing, we're just going to have to disagree.

And I'm a DM who has no compunctions against killing characters.

I didn't see a date on the original description of the event.

But even so, even if it was 20 years ago, stupidity is not limited to time frame.

Based on the event as describe, it takes a really special kind of stupid to do what these players did. Repeatedly.

If, upon receiving the description from the DM that your comrades walked into the darkness, vanished from sight, and you heard a "whoosh thump!", your first reaction isn't getting out the 10 foot pole to probe ahead, casting a light spell, lighting a torch, getting down on your hands and knees to crawl slowly ahead and investigate the floor by touch, casting an augry, sending in a torch carrier, or anything like that . . . in fact, if your raction is to just follow them in, then yeah, you really are stupid and a bad player.

And yes, I do believe that it's possible to get that many bad players into one place quite easily. I see it all the time. I've run "Old School" type pickups now and again at the local game store, and it's mind boggling to watch the players kill themselves even on published and well known death traps. I got seven of them in a row with the Green Goblin Face in the Tomb itself. That one is probably the most well known trap in all of D&D for crying out loud! And these were not people who had never played before. They'd been 3.x players for years and sat down just for the fun of it.

So, yes, it is entirely plausible to me, perhaps even likely, that that many bad players can be gotten together in one place at one time and do that badly all together.

Tyndmyr
2012-06-27, 01:55 PM
Good of you to at least give him the benefit of the doubt of blatant and crippling ignorance.

Did it not occur to you that there really were 8 out of 9 parties worth of truly bad players?

That's statistically quite unlikely. Fully half of players are above average.

It's reasonable to assume that some of them probably were bad players, but others were probably perfectly normal ones. The question then becomes, what makes so many people choose the identical course of action.

Was time a major criteria? If the winning condition is "makes it furthest in set time", then caution has a notable cost. Seeing that this is at a tournament, this might be a small part of the issue.

Realistically, though, it's quite reasonable to assume that whoever built the module was working off different assumptions than the players.

Edit: Yes, I've killed multiple people in a row on that trap in the tomb of horrors. It's also one of the most lethal traps found in the most lethal dungeon made, and even so, I've never had 32 out of 36 people leap into it.

hamlet
2012-06-27, 02:02 PM
Realistically, though, it's quite reasonable to assume that whoever built the module was working off different assumptions than the players.


That's my assumption as well. No, I don't think they were all stupid, though they certainly acted stupid at the time, and certainly it's possible that time was a major consideration, but really, I have to wonder at how 8 out of 10 of them didn't take some time to think about it and investigate what is, actually, a fairly easy to detect and circumvent trap in a situation that is blatantly obviously not all that meets the eye.

Tyndmyr
2012-06-27, 02:10 PM
That's my assumption as well. No, I don't think they were all stupid, though they certainly acted stupid at the time, and certainly it's possible that time was a major consideration, but really, I have to wonder at how 8 out of 10 of them didn't take some time to think about it and investigate what is, actually, a fairly easy to detect and circumvent trap in a situation that is blatantly obviously not all that meets the eye.

Well, a lot depends on the description of what happens. If it's "you hear a scream of your buddy fading away and a clattering of armor, followed by a distant thud beneath you"...that's legit. And you won't have 80-90% of people walking to their death. If, on the other hand, the DM just turned to the next person and said "OK, what do you do?"...that could end badly.

I'd be curious what was written down for this in the module, and what the DMs running it actually said.

hamlet
2012-06-27, 02:12 PM
Well, a lot depends on the description of what happens. If it's "you hear a scream of your buddy fading away and a clattering of armor, followed by a distant thud beneath you"...that's legit. And you won't have 80-90% of people walking to their death. If, on the other hand, the DM just turned to the next person and said "OK, what do you do?"...that could end badly.

I'd be curious what was written down for this in the module, and what the DMs running it actually said.

1) It was stated that players heard a "whoosh thump" when their comrades dissapered into the darkness. Yeah, not a scream, but still enough to make you not take it for granted.

2) Gygax was the GM in all cases as I understand it.

Tyndmyr
2012-06-27, 02:19 PM
1) It was stated that players heard a "whoosh thump" when their comrades dissapered into the darkness. Yeah, not a scream, but still enough to make you not take it for granted.

2) Gygax was the GM in all cases as I understand it.

That sounds like a poor description. People could easily assume some sort of teleporation effect or a monster lying in wait(and thus a need to follow).

It's not the worst description ever, and in a group where "woosh, thump" is routinely used to describe falling damage, it'll get people to the right conclusion(or at least close enough), but in a group where substantially more detail is given, it's a puzzle.

hamlet
2012-06-27, 02:37 PM
That sounds like a poor description. People could easily assume some sort of teleporation effect or a monster lying in wait(and thus a need to follow).

It's not the worst description ever, and in a group where "woosh, thump" is routinely used to describe falling damage, it'll get people to the right conclusion(or at least close enough), but in a group where substantially more detail is given, it's a puzzle.

It's enough of a clue for me, and this is the first I've heard of the situation.

Might not have guess pit trap in the darkness, but it's blatant that something's up. Especially in a game where the stated goal is "survive the longest to win." It's obvious that it's a trap and they just walked in even if "whoosh thump" isn't the greatest of descriptions, it's enough to let you know something's up and precautions need to be taken.

EDIT: Hell, the simple fact that there's a wall of darkness there is enough for me. I wouldn't just walk in. I'd be probing ahead with a ten foot pole and be extremely careful. Incautious dungeon explorers deserve what they get.

Tyndmyr
2012-06-27, 02:47 PM
It's enough of a clue for me, and this is the first I've heard of the situation.

Might not have guess pit trap in the darkness, but it's blatant that something's up. Especially in a game where the stated goal is "survive the longest to win." It's obvious that it's a trap and they just walked in even if "whoosh thump" isn't the greatest of descriptions, it's enough to let you know something's up and precautions need to be taken.

EDIT: Hell, the simple fact that there's a wall of darkness there is enough for me. I wouldn't just walk in. I'd be probing ahead with a ten foot pole and be extremely careful. Incautious dungeon explorers deserve what they get.

*shrug* I wouldn't even walk into a wall of darkness, true. However, I have been described as "paranoid" for scrying on everything, and using ladders to transit dungeons without ever touching the floor.

For the average guy...they'll happily walk into darkness.

hamlet
2012-06-27, 02:49 PM
*shrug* I wouldn't even walk into a wall of darkness, true. However, I have been described as "paranoid" for scrying on everything, and using ladders to transit dungeons without ever touching the floor.

For the average guy...they'll happily walk into darkness.

The average adventurer is not an average guy in mind set or ability. That's kind of the point in some regards. They're paranoid to a certain extent, and with good reason.

Jarawara
2012-06-27, 02:50 PM
1) It was stated that players heard a "whoosh thump" when their comrades dissapered into the darkness. Yeah, not a scream, but still enough to make you not take it for granted.

2) Gygax was the GM in all cases as I understand it.

It was later clarified that Gygax ran the tournament, overseeing the event. Nine separate DM's ran nine separate groups, each using some form of "whoosh, thump". No way to tell how much minor variance there might have been between groups, or if any of the DM's gave any further indication of the PC's falling. Nor do I know if the module itself gives instruction as to what the DM is supposed to say to describe the sound of the PC's falling.


Edit, at hamlet: It was not "survive the longest", it was "get the farthest", which usually had a time limit attached (at least that's how most of the tournament modules worked). So there was at least some motivation to get into the place quickly and not waste time. Still, most every tournament module I know had a trap set on the front door, so anyone with tournament experience should have known to at do at least some kind of check.

hamlet
2012-06-27, 03:00 PM
It was later clarified that Gygax ran the tournament, overseeing the event. Nine separate DM's ran nine separate groups, each using some form of "whoosh, thump". No way to tell how much minor variance there might have been between groups, or if any of the DM's gave any further indication of the PC's falling. Nor do I know if the module itself gives instruction as to what the DM is supposed to say to describe the sound of the PC's falling.

That just further goes to show that Gygax is not a killer DM if it happened similarly at that many tables with probable variations.




Edit, at hamlet: It was not "survive the longest", it was "get the farthest", which usually had a time limit attached (at least that's how most of the tournament modules worked). So there was at least some motivation to get into the place quickly and not waste time. Still, most every tournament module I know had a trap set on the front door, so anyone with tournament experience should have known to at do at least some kind of check.

Indeed. As far as I can tell, based on fourth hand anecdotal evidence, this is really an example of just plain old foolishness and unthoughtfullness on the part of the players. I can think of no other explanation except that they managed to get 30+ morons together in the same room all at the same time, and that's just uncharitable.

ThiagoMartell
2012-06-27, 03:14 PM
Edit, at hamlet: It was not "survive the longest", it was "get the farthest", which usually had a time limit attached (at least that's how most of the tournament modules worked). So there was at least some motivation to get into the place quickly and not waste time. Still, most every tournament module I know had a trap set on the front door, so anyone with tournament experience should have known to at do at least some kind of check.
Wasn't this the first tournament? I don't think people would have any experience, then.

Tyndmyr
2012-06-27, 03:16 PM
Wasn't this the first tournament? I don't think people would have any experience, then.

I don't know if it was the first tournament, but it was certainly an early tournament. I would not be at all surprised if many of the players lacked tournament experience.

huttj509
2012-06-27, 03:16 PM
That just further goes to show that Gygax is not a killer DM if it happened similarly at that many tables with probable variations.


He's been known to write the occasional killer module though. :-)


And hey, 50% of players are above average (actually above median, or above 50th percentile, 50% above average assumes the dataset isn't unbalanced), but 99% of us have done some really boneheaded things in our time (If you're told your character needs to do a HALO jump from a plane, ask what that is and don't just assume you should open the parachute when clear of the plane).

hamlet
2012-06-27, 03:20 PM
He's been known to write the occasional killer module though. :-)

To prove a point, which is oft forgotten even though it's written down in the intro to the freakin' module in question.




And hey, 50% of players are above average (actually above median, or above 50th percentile, 50% above average assumes the dataset isn't unbalanced), but 99% of us have done some really boneheaded things in our time (If you're told your character needs to do a HALO jump from a plane, ask what that is and don't just assume you should open the parachute when clear of the plane).

Oh yeah, we all do. Sometimes, one simple misstep, one foot out of place, and it's new character sheet time. I'm notorious in my group for nearly getting the entire party killed because, when pressed by the DM to make a decision, I had my character accidentally step backward instead of forward (and thus the silence spell centered on me got all the PC spellcasters in it). The resultant chaos nearly destroyed everybody.

ThiagoMartell
2012-06-27, 03:24 PM
Oh yeah, we all do. Sometimes, one simple misstep, one foot out of place, and it's new character sheet time. I'm notorious in my group for nearly getting the entire party killed because, when pressed by the DM to make a decision, I had my character accidentally step backward instead of forward (and thus the silence spell centered on me got all the PC spellcasters in it). The resultant chaos nearly destroyed everybody.
Once one of my players cast darkness on a guy that was running away. This was 3.5, so since the guy was simply running away, the spell worked like a buff on him. The miss chance even cancelled a critical hit.

hamlet
2012-06-27, 03:28 PM
Once one of my players cast darkness on a guy that was running away. This was 3.5, so since the guy was simply running away, the spell worked like a buff on him. The miss chance even cancelled a critical hit.

Had a player who we were getting into old school gaming and had read in the book that casting light/darkness on the eyes of a creature effectively blinded them. She wanted to try it to blind the heavy hitter (a sivak draconian as I recal) in the melee and thus give the fighters a better shot at living through the day.

Problem is, she drops continual darkness on the creatures eyes turning the entire combat into a game of blind man's bluff.

To be fair, it was a ridiculously fun event in that game and is well remembered to this day. Plus, it got well role played out when the party started shouting after the combat wondering what in the world the character was thinking, and nobody broke character. It was just great what resulted from one bonehedaed move.

Synovia
2012-06-28, 09:22 AM
1) It was stated that players heard a "whoosh thump" when their comrades dissapered into the darkness. Yeah, not a scream, but still enough to make you not take it for granted.

2) Gygax was the GM in all cases as I understand it.

Whoosh-Thump could be anything. There's no reason to assume its a trap at that point.

People in armor falling into a pit trap to die is going to make a TON of noise. Its bad dming if he doesn't indicate that there's screaming/clanking/etc. (or its bad module writing)

Synovia
2012-06-28, 09:24 AM
It's enough of a clue for me, and this is the first I've heard of the situation.

Might not have guess pit trap in the darkness, but it's blatant that something's up. Especially in a game where the stated goal is "survive the longest to win." It's obvious that it's a trap and they just walked in even if "whoosh thump" isn't the greatest of descriptions, it's enough to let you know something's up and precautions need to be taken.

EDIT: Hell, the simple fact that there's a wall of darkness there is enough for me. I wouldn't just walk in. I'd be probing ahead with a ten foot pole and be extremely careful. Incautious dungeon explorers deserve what they get.

Right, but you're looking at this from the perspective of KNOWING its a pit trap, IE, completely in hindsight.

Stubbazubba
2012-06-28, 09:40 AM
I agree with Synovia: "Whoosh-thump" would probably be a falling sack of flour in my head before it was people scraping over a ledge, falling to the ground far below. For that latter scenario I would expect to hear some scraping of metal on stone (unless they're jumping in with two feet, one foot was on solid ground, and so that leg would have hit the edge before sliding/bouncing into the pit), maybe a cry of surprise, and, most importantly, we're talking about at least a 20-30 foot drop (otherwise someone might have survived, I would hope) so I would expect the thump to sound distant. Falling bodies do not go "Whoosh" anyway. "Whoosh-thump" is woefully inaccurate to describe what really happened, and only makes sense as a pit trap in hindsight. I get the idea the module-writer wanted to keep it ambiguous, to increase the tension for the players, and not let their test work when in all reality, it should have given them a much better idea of what was there than it did. While that would work for his own game group, it didn't work for the people who otherwise knew the rules of the game, but didn't know what the DM was thinking, which is how you win said game.

hamlet
2012-06-28, 09:54 AM
Whoosh-Thump could be anything. There's no reason to assume its a trap at that point.

People in armor falling into a pit trap to die is going to make a TON of noise. Its bad dming if he doesn't indicate that there's screaming/clanking/etc. (or its bad module writing)

Yeah. "Whoosh thump" could be anything.

But, given the context, there's a LOT of reason to suspect a trap.

Even if it's not a trap, what possible reason do you have for just walking into the darkness without lookin?


Stubbazubba: You're overanalyzing and pre-conceiving.

Tyndmyr
2012-06-28, 10:06 AM
Yeah. "Whoosh thump" could be anything.

But, given the context, there's a LOT of reason to suspect a trap.

Even if it's not a trap, what possible reason do you have for just walking into the darkness without lookin?


Stubbazubba: You're overanalyzing and pre-conceiving.

Keep in mind that a *lot* of early modules had "generic circumstance x" that a scenario would revolve around, and would basically be un-negateable. Darkness was not uncommon.

It was also not unheard of for encounters to punish slowness in some fashion. So, while caution is easy to claim in retrospect, walking into darkness, while obviously risky, is not always a bad call.

hamlet
2012-06-28, 10:10 AM
Keep in mind that a *lot* of early modules had "generic circumstance x" that a scenario would revolve around, and would basically be un-negateable. Darkness was not uncommon.

It was also not unheard of for encounters to punish slowness in some fashion. So, while caution is easy to claim in retrospect, walking into darkness, while obviously risky, is not always a bad call.

It is, actually, a bad call. Even when time is a consideration because a mitigating factor of a 10 foot pole takes an extra . . . 10 seconds? Minute, tops.

Would have saved a lot of grief.

Tyndmyr
2012-06-28, 10:36 AM
It is, actually, a bad call. Even when time is a consideration because a mitigating factor of a 10 foot pole takes an extra . . . 10 seconds? Minute, tops.

Would have saved a lot of grief.

It probably takes that long out of game, and at least a round in game. If your buddy is now, say, fighting something by himself, spending rounds checking is really bad for him. And spending time checking is bad on RL time if nothing's there.

Sure, in retrospect, you know that there IS a trap. They obviously did not.

kyoryu
2012-06-28, 11:00 AM
Whoosh-Thump could be anything. There's no reason to assume its a trap at that point.

Correct. THere's also no reason to assume it's *not* a trap.

Hence my point about differing expectations. Clearly the players had the expectation "the DM won't kill me without huge warning signs screaming 'it's a trap!'". The designer of the scenarios, and the DMs that ran it, clearly had different expectations.

hamlet
2012-06-28, 11:59 AM
It probably takes that long out of game, and at least a round in game. If your buddy is now, say, fighting something by himself, spending rounds checking is really bad for him. And spending time checking is bad on RL time if nothing's there.

Sure, in retrospect, you know that there IS a trap. They obviously did not.

Actually, one of the very first thing they teach first responders (paramedics, police, fire department) is not to rush in if you don't know. Cause then there are two hurt people where there was only one before.

Same holds true for adventurers.

Tyndmyr
2012-06-28, 12:07 PM
Actually, one of the very first thing they teach first responders (paramedics, police, fire department) is not to rush in if you don't know. Cause then there are two hurt people where there was only one before.

Same holds true for adventurers.

Adventuring in D&D has fairly little in common with real life.

hamlet
2012-06-28, 12:09 PM
Adventuring in D&D has fairly little in common with real life.

But advice from one can carry across to another, as it does here.

By rushing in without knowing what was going on and what they were getting into, the PC's died. Simple as that.

If they had expended a bit of the time resource, moments, yeah, somebody else may have died, or been injured slightly more, but the remainder of the party stood a dramatically better chance of avoiding the problem.

kyoryu
2012-06-28, 12:26 PM
There's also a fundamental difference in what people want.

Some people want to be the triumphant heroes, that go in and conquer everything. They expect (and usually get) the game set up this way. For them, the game is as much about "look how cool I am" as anything else. Traps like this take away their fun, as they can't be in full-on Rambo mode.

Others want to go in, and want the ego boost of persevering despite ample opportunity to fail. They want to feel that danger is at every turn, and survive despite it. Traps like this are fun for them, as they let that type of player go into full-on Ripley mode.

To put it into video game terms, it's the difference between an action game, and survival horror.

1337 b4k4
2012-06-28, 01:07 PM
I agree with Synovia: "Whoosh-thump" would probably be a falling sack of flour in my head before it was people scraping over a ledge, falling to the ground far below. For that latter scenario I would expect to hear some scraping of metal on stone (unless they're jumping in with two feet, one foot was on solid ground, and so that leg would have hit the edge before sliding/bouncing into the pit), maybe a cry of surprise, and, most importantly, we're talking about at least a 20-30 foot drop (otherwise someone might have survived, I would hope) so I would expect the thump to sound distant. Falling bodies do not go "Whoosh" anyway. "Whoosh-thump" is woefully inaccurate to describe what really happened, and only makes sense as a pit trap in hindsight.

All this arguing ignores the larger point that these players continued on as if nothing had happened. Let's run with you falling sack of flour, your first rank vanishes into the darkness with a whoosh thump. You can't see or hear from your first rank, and you think "falling sack of flour trap". Under what scenario does it make sense to just keep sending men to their deaths without stopping to figure out where the flour sack came from and how to avoid getting hit yourself?

Ultimately, no matter what the players thought it was, there's no excuse for them to have continued on without further investigation.

Synovia
2012-06-28, 01:12 PM
Correct. THere's also no reason to assume it's *not* a trap.

Hence my point about differing expectations. Clearly the players had the expectation "the DM won't kill me without huge warning signs screaming 'it's a trap!'". The designer of the scenarios, and the DMs that ran it, clearly had different expectations.

Right, but if its a trap, like the above guy said where its something dropping on the player's head, the 10 foot pole isn't going to save you anything.

Whoosh-thump is just a terrible description. People don't make any whooshing noises as they fall away from you, and a man hitting the ground in armor is going to make a ton of clanging noises, as well as some yelling in surprise.

Synovia
2012-06-28, 01:15 PM
All this arguing ignores the larger point that these players continued on as if nothing had happened. Let's run with you falling sack of flour, your first rank vanishes into the darkness with a whoosh thump. You can't see or hear from your first rank, and you think "falling sack of flour trap". Under what scenario does it make sense to just keep sending men to their deaths without stopping to figure out where the flour sack came from and how to avoid getting hit yourself?

Ultimately, no matter what the players thought it was, there's no excuse for them to have continued on without further investigation.

Right, but lets say the assumption is "Portal to elsewhere" instead of falling flour. How do you test that? Sticking a 10 foot pole in tells you literally nothing different between a portal and a pit trap, especially when the best description your going to get is "whoosh-thump"

hamlet
2012-06-28, 01:20 PM
Right, but lets say the assumption is "Portal to elsewhere" instead of falling flour. How do you test that? Sticking a 10 foot pole in tells you literally nothing different between a portal and a pit trap, especially when the best description your going to get is "whoosh-thump"

So, because you cannnot take precautions against all possibilities, you take precautions against none of them?

Yeah, that's real logical.

Kish
2012-06-28, 01:21 PM
Right, but lets say the assumption is
See, that's exactly where the players went wrong. They assumed.

The purpose of sticking a ten-foot-pole into the darkness ahead of you is not to support an assumption, whether that assumption is "portal" or "trap." It's to find out what's in the darkness...without walking right into it. If the pole determines there is no floor there, if the pole comes out dripping green slime, if the pole gets bitten in half by a grue, if the pole and its wielder get sucked through a portal as soon as the pole enters the darkness, if a bag of flour falls on the pole, you've discovered something worth knowing.

Lapak
2012-06-28, 01:25 PM
Right, but lets say the assumption is "Portal to elsewhere" instead of falling flour. How do you test that? Sticking a 10 foot pole in tells you literally nothing different between a portal and a pit trap, especially when the best description your going to get is "whoosh-thump"Since it's been established that this was several different people running it, I think assuming that 'woosh-thump' was the be-all and end-all of description, even after asking for clarification, isn't quite fair. Even if it was:

If I poke with a ten-foot pole, I can at least find that there's a void. Is it a portal? Or a pit? Or what? It actually doesn't matter, because I now know enough to say 'hey, tie a rope to me and anchor yourselves - I'm going to poke my head through the wall of darkness and see what's over there.' That would be enough to avert disaster in this case. (And is another example of where real-life tactics can be applied; roping people together is a time-tested tactic in climbing and caving.)

And honestly, both of those tactics could and should be used BEFORE woosh-thump even comes into play. I wouldn't want to go poking into total darkness without some precautions even if no one had disappeared into it yet!