General RPG DiscussionDiscussion of all RPGs and non-system-specific topics. DM/GM/player issues, settings, etc. Rules discussion belongs in one the forums below.
Honestly, not so much. The big advantage of 4e design is that it explicitly groups nearby rooms together to create one big encounter; something that actually has helped me when converting Castle Zagyg for my 4e campaign.
The idea of "lots of monsters need space" is something that a few 3e designers could pay some attention to. I've seen way too many battles in 5' wide corridors which, for six PCs, is not fun at all.
In AD&D, the idea of monsters needing space to move was occasionally ignored by designers.
Complicating this even further were the differences between games in which people played "Old School" D&D as written, and those who played in a looser more narrative style.
Really.
If I played oD&D as it seems Gary did, I'd
* Play every day
* Have it mostly exploration of a megadungeon I keep adding to
* Have a lot of friends, in groups of 1-8, adventuring together
* Low-level PCs would work in groups, with hirelings (men-at-arms) if necessary
* High-level PCs would work mostly alone, with their henchmen
* Greed and mercenary desires would be the most common motivations.
Yeah, the 4e fans (and designers) telling me that thrill over high magic and the tension created by the peril of save-or-die effects was "wrong" got me down too.
There's a world of difference between contrasting the validity of save or die mechanics from edition to edition and referring dismissively to discussion on an edition to be "mouth noise". You know this.
Discussing and contrasting differences is valid and productive. Being told you're delusional if you feel that 4e has old school flavor is antagonistic.
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Because I feel the trend has been towards less hostile over the last month.
I've been noticing that, too, which is why the rude responses the OP got bothered me. Things had seemed to be moving forward a bit.
Whoa. That's definitely a case of falling befoul my sig admonition "let the rules serve the game".
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And a little history, to see what one of the lead designers of 4e feels about one of the defining modules of "old school": RPGnet : The Inside Scoop on Gaming
Heh. That's curiously correlates to something I said in another forum about different humanoids in the same dungeon that don't help each other akin to living in a "bad neighborhood".
At any rate, I think Melan's analysis of the KotB is much more astute.
Thanks for the links. Enlightening.
__________________ "This game requires no gameboard because the action takes place in your imagination..." - Cover of Dungeons & Dragons Basic Rules Set 1.
The idea of "lots of monsters need space" is something that a few 3e designers could pay some attention to. I've seen way too many battles in 5' wide corridors which, for six PCs, is not fun at all.
In AD&D, the idea of monsters needing space to move was occasionally ignored by designers.
There were some cramped quarters to be sure but there was also exactly some of the opposite going on. Dungeon Module X3: Curse of Xanathon, cracked us up back in the day. A bedroom in the Ducal Palace was 30' x 40' !!! We laughed at that and even drew basketball hoops at each end of the room on the battlemat. I grew up in HOUSE that was 22' x 40' .
Monsters needing space is simply an outgrowth of tailoring combat to fit the grid rather than resolving combat in whatever location it happens to take place in. The sizes of some rooms in classic adventures is too large for what the room was designed for in many cases.
Consider a kobold lair. Kobolds are not big creatures and don't need chambers so huge that an ogre would feel small in them.
Some locations should be nice and big. The main chamber of a temple designed to contain many worshippers might be huge. The high priests meditation chamber does not need to 50' x50' just because a cool fight is likely to happen there.
Designing the environment as if it only exists to be a battleground for boardgame combat makes the whole world feel more like a soundstage and less like an organic location that fits within a world.
Designing the environment as if it only exists to be a battleground for boardgame combat makes the whole world feel more like a soundstage and less like an organic location that fits within a world.
Definitely. However, ignoring the fact that you're running a game can lead to some extremely frustrating combats and player dissatisfaction. You need a happy medium between the two.
I think both the ability to remove the skill system and the advice about Points of Light settings in the DMG mean 4E can be played closer to actual D&D. But you're still going to have that awful combat system to account for and the division of magic spells from actual combat. Of course the latter is an easy enough fix by shortening casting times to 1 action vs. 10 minutes. Plus, I can't for the life of me figure out why they kept Feats. But they're pretty integrated as well (very hard to remove). I bet there are other ways to fix the game, but I haven't really taken a look at it from that angle. It's just too much work for a very low payoff IMO.
__________________ Apparently Reagan never played RPGs ...but he liked to watch.
Spoiler:
Participants in the Pentagon simulations were sometimes of very high rank, including members of Congress and White House insiders as well as senior military officers. The identity of many of the participants remains secret even today. It is a tradition in US simulations (and those run by many other nations) that participants are guaranteed anonymity. The main reason for this is that occasionally they may take on a role or express an opinion that is at odds with their professional or public stance (for example portraying a fundamentalist terrorist or advocating hawkish military action), and thus could harm their reputation or career if their in-game persona became widely known.
(cut)
...former US president Ronald Reagan was a keen visitor to simulations conducted in the 1980s, but as an observer only. An official explained: "No president should ever disclose his hand, not even in a war game". Para,6
Last edited by howandwhy99; 4th November 2008 at 04:07 AM..
Reason: spelling ugh
Well, gosh. I'm running a 4e game. I'm going to be running a 1e game shortly - the start date is 11/16, and I've been reading the rules & adventure for a week or two. It's the first 1e game I've run in a very long time, but I've worked through the editions from B/X onwards over 25 years or so of play.
I can't say or do anything to convince you that 4e feels more oldschool to me (and evidently more than a few others) than 3e does - once you move past the surges and powers and the like. I can also see why other folks disagree. I'm very disheartened, though, to find that when I say "4e feels oldschool" your response is, "No, you're either fooling yourself or lying."
-O
Except for the fact I didn't say those things. I said some, not all. I also said before that there is a focus on combat in both 1sy edition AD&D and 4th. That may be the biggest connection to there feels. The rest, not so much.
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Originally Posted by Umbran
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Originally Posted by justanobody
The problem is the fighter should not even know, nay no one should; that they are in need of healing.
Ah. You see, I expect many of us hold the opposite opinion. The fighter is a specialist in combat. Hitting and getting hit is what he does for a living. If there's anyone who should know exactly how much he's got left in reserves, it'd be the fighter. Because if he doesn't know that, he can't apply decent tactics, and if he cannot do that, he's dead.
Though, honestly, anyone who gets into a fight regularly - meaning all the PCs in a typical D&D game - ought to have a clue. Heck, in the real world I only put on armor and whack people with sticks occasionally, but I know when I'm getting too wiped out to keep going.
But the fighter should know nothing of HP, damage per attack expressed as a number, etc.
More to the point a fighter would know vital locations to strike to cause the most damage to kill or incapacitate the opponent, but those do not exist in 4th edition.
The character should have no knowledge of his character sheets and stats.
I mean is there some bard, scribe, and minstrels going around? Maybe the scribe is making a business!
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Warriors of the Savage Coast presents the new trading card game presenting famous fighters from the area! Collect them, trade with your friends, and play the game! Cards include vital stats of these famous characters for ease of game play. Be on the look out next season for Wizards of the Savage Coast, and expansion to the game that adds new dynamics and new cards to collect!
No. I don't think scribes are sitting around doing that in their spare time. There is no baseball card that tells a fighter how much relative hit absorption he has and how much average damage he is doing expressed in numbers.
Last edited by justanobody; 4th November 2008 at 04:11 AM..
Damn, evidently my "token" ran out (whatever that is) and I lost my multi-quote response. Oh well, I'm not one to try to re-create the wheel...Anyways, I really like Irda Ranger's response so I'll respond to that:
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Originally Posted by Irda Ranger
Rule-Set vs. Game-Style arguments are like Nature vs. Nurture arguments. You always have both, and they aren't mutually exclusive, but it's the end result you care about.
4E Rules + Old School Style = Different Game than (1E Rules + Old School Style).
You mix different ingredients, you get a different bread. That's just how these things work.
Well said, and I agree to all the above.
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Originally Posted by Irda Ranger
For me I don't think it's possible to get the game I want using 4E rules, even if I play it with Old School Style. And I tried. I tried running B2 using 4E rules and it just wasn't the same. It "worked", in a sense, but it wasn't what I was looking for. For other people it will be good enough, and for others even trying to run B2 with 4E rules is "one step forward, two steps back." As with so many things on the Internet, YMMV.
Well, I am just starting my first 4E campaign, so we'll see how I feel after a few sessions, but my sense is that 4E "corrected" a lot of what I didn't like about 3E--which I liked better than 2E and 1E--and with some of its own tricks added to mix.
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Originally Posted by Irda Ranger
Yes. Here is one attempt. There are others. Arguably Castles & Crusades is very much an attempt at this too, though I am on record disagreeing with certain choices they made.
The main problem with games since OD&D is that the designers weren't content with making the rules that existed easier and more streamlined. They kept adding new twists and complexities as well (e.g., Exceptional Strength, Attacks of Opportunity, Critical Hits, Tumble, etc.), so instead of 25 slightly-unintuitive-but-useable rules you have 300 really well engineered rules. If you just went back to OD&D and converted over what was there to current state of the art without adding any of the additional complexity that came later, I think you'd have what you're looking for.
I actually agree with this, for the most part. This brings out another spectrum of game preference: simple to complex. The complexity-junkies loved 3E, because it enabled all sorts of options, while still resting on a nice core mechanic (2E was equally complex, if not more so, but without the core mechanic that allowed for greater complexity without getting lost in a ton of "Rules & Options"). The "new twists and complexities" aren't inherently wrong, imo, but indicate of a certain style of play.
So every gamer, in my opinion, exists along a spectrum of complexity preference, from OD&D to BECMI to 1E to 2E to 3E. Where does 4E lie? I think between BECMI and 1E (or maybe between 1E and 2E) which is why like it. But, as I said, I would also be open to a hybrid of OD&D's simplicity and improvisational style and 4E's core mechanic and fun gimmicks (I like the Powers system, as well as Defenses, for example, but am not as much into all the complexities of combat and anything that requires miniatures; I like miniatures, I just don't want to NEED them).
As for your last sentence, you're probably right. Of course you could also say the contrary: start with 4E and strip out any unwanted parts and, voila, there it is. I'm going to start with 4E and see how I (we) like it, play the learn-as-we-go game, and see if anything gets in the way. We'll play what we want to play; it might come down to me making my own version of "Basic 4E." We'll see.
Heh. That's curiously correlates to something I said in another forum about different humanoids in the same dungeon that don't help each other akin to living in a "bad neighborhood".
Can you direct me to that discussion? It's very relevant to a dungeon I'm working on.
I believe you can play any game in old school style. I believe you can play old school games in styles that are not old school. I believe I have done both.
But, it works better if the game and the style match.
If you want to play 4e in old school style, I think you have to first understand old school style. My suggestion would be to read the following and then play some sessions using a bona fide old school game.
Anything I type is only my opinion unless explicitly stated otherwise, which should go without saying. Please assume that I've left out a smiley after every sentence. Thank you.
I believe you can play any game in old school style. I believe you can play old school games in styles that are not old school. I believe I have done both.
But, it works better if the game and the style match.
If you want to play 4e in old school style, I think you have to first understand old school style. My suggestion would be to read the following and then play some sessions using a bona fide old school game.
Thats a very good idea. It would be a great test to see if 4E feels like an old school game for a particular group.
As an experiment, run an adventure with an old school system as close to RAW as possible.
Then run an adventure of the same level of a similar type in 4E .
Take notes and compare. Whatever the conclusion it will be the "truth" for that particular group and thats what matters.
I think the key to this discussion is defining what one means by Old School. Is it a general attitude towards the DM-player relationship, or the player-character relationship (e.g., what justanobody believes PCs should "know" about their own abilities)... or is it literally making the game work mechanically like OD&D/1e/BECMI/whatever?
I honestly don't think there's a heck of a lot going on mechanically in 4e that would prevent running it with an Old School attitude. As Henry mentions in the thread Psion linked to above, there are aspects of 4e that are, at least superficially, very 1e-like. Really, ditch Skill Challenges and you've got your basic crawl-through-dungeons, DM-adjudicates-anything-non-combat Old School game. I.e., I don't think there's much you need to add to 4e, just aspects to subtract.
That said, 4e is certainly more overtly tactical than early D&D, so if you don't like that, well, you can get all the previous editions in PDF from DriveThruRPG.
__________________ If knowledge of a game's plot would spoil its experience, it isn't a game.
... A player cannot learn of a game's ending without experiencing it, because a game is not a linear object.
—Mike Mearls
Yeah, the 4e fans (and designers) telling me that thrill over high magic and the tension created by the peril of save-or-die effects was "wrong" got me down too.
If you're referring to a relatively recent SoD discussion that I was part of, I think a more fair characterization of the discussion is this:
Some people: "We don't find SoD fun. We explain why."
A certain other poster (not you): "If you don't like SoD, it's because you're doing it wrong."
There may have been some anti-SoD poster who belittled those who enjoyed SoD, I don't recall. But pages were filled disputing the certain poster's claim (not you) that only people who play the game wrong dislike SoD.
__________________ Iain Fyffe
Original member of the Rouseketeers!
I have played 4E. And just like all other editions of D&D, it is awesome!
no one quotes me in sigs - Crothian
For some reason, this doesn't fill me with rage. I must be interwebbing wrong. - Cadfan
Then run an adventure of the same level of a similar type in 4E .
Take notes and compare. Whatever the conclusion it will be the "truth" for that particular group and thats what matters.
If you're interested, you can visit this thread, which describes my 4E campaign... adventuring through Gary Gygax's "Castle Zagyg" adapted for the system from C&C.
Interesting comment by one of those reading the account: "The players drive the plot, the plot shouldn't drive the players - that's old-school gaming at it's best!"...
Interesting comment by one of those reading the account: "The players drive the plot, the plot shouldn't drive the players - that's old-school gaming at it's best!"...
I thought that was New Dirty Hippie Indie School.
__________________ If knowledge of a game's plot would spoil its experience, it isn't a game.
... A player cannot learn of a game's ending without experiencing it, because a game is not a linear object.
—Mike Mearls
Almost: the difference in old-school is that the players drive the plot, but the GM reacts by not pulling punches and just killing off characters on a regular basis. It's the surviving characters the determine the plot, and you only know what it was in retrospect.
--Steve
__________________ Be a rebel...order your coffee in one of these three radical sizes: small, medium or large.
"Sure as I know anything, I know this. I aim to misbehave."
--Capt. Malcolm Reynolds, Serenity
I play 4E, and it's every bit as much Dungeons and Dragons as any other edition, including the one(s) you play. No more, and no less.
I think that "old school" is a completely subjective label. Everyone has different experiences in playing D&D, and it's foolish to claim that there is anything resembling a monolithic expression of the game. From the kids playing tiefling warlocks today to the guys who 34 years ago threw 3d6 in order and chose from fighting man, cleric, and magic-user, the entire point of D&D is that the DM and the players make of the game what they will.
I've been running a number of classic modules in 4e, and am currently working on converting the entire Temple of Elemental Evil. It's been a lot of fun, and it feels old school. On the other hand, I had no compunction about using kenku servants of Iuz in the moathouse, or adding in a summoned demon in the water pool chamber, or replacing Lareth with his agent, a doppelganger who had disguised himself as Burne.
(Lareth and Obmi long since fled for the temple; I did keep Lubash, though. He even kicked in part of a wall as he made his entrance after the green slime at the base of the stairs dropped on the party.)
To me, this is all old school stuff, and my players and I are loving it. I'm sure that, to someone else, messing around with the specifics of the monsters or encounters is some sort of sacrilege to Gary's original work. That doesn't bother me. To me, it doesn't get any more old school than twisting, folding, remolding, and reworking stuff as a DM and gaming group see fit. If anything, mindlessly clinging to classic material as if they are sacred, unalterable texts, goes against everything that AD&D and OD&D have taught me.
I think that, for me, "old school" means:
1. Player choice drives the game.
1a. Really bad player choices lead to TPKs.
1b. Really clever player choices lead to rewards and advantages beyond the norm.
2. There are strains of an almost Lovecraftian incomprehensibility to many gods and demons, a la the chaos temple in Keep on the Borderlands.
3. The forces of evil gather on all sides of the Realms of Man.
That's pretty much it, to me. Rule 1 and its sub-rules are the critical parts of it. Quick, creative thinking is key. Mindlessly attacking is a fool's gambit.
I think that "old school" is a completely subjective label. Everyone has different experiences in playing D&D, and it's foolish to claim that there is anything resembling a monolithic expression of the game. From the kids playing tiefling warlocks today to the guys who 34 years ago threw 3d6 in order and chose from fighting man, cleric, and magic-user, the entire point of D&D is that the DM and the players make of the game what they will.
I've been running a number of classic modules in 4e, and am currently working on converting the entire Temple of Elemental Evil. It's been a lot of fun, and it feels old school. On the other hand, I had no compunction about using kenku servants of Iuz in the moathouse, or adding in a summoned demon in the water pool chamber, or replacing Lareth with his agent, a doppelganger who had disguised himself as Burne.
(Lareth and Obmi long since fled for the temple; I did keep Lubash, though. He even kicked in part of a wall as he made his entrance after the green slime at the base of the stairs dropped on the party.)
To me, this is all old school stuff, and my players and I are loving it. I'm sure that, to someone else, messing around with the specifics of the monsters or encounters is some sort of sacrilege to Gary's original work. That doesn't bother me. To me, it doesn't get any more old school than twisting, folding, remolding, and reworking stuff as a DM and gaming group see fit. If anything, mindlessly clinging to classic material as if they are sacred, unalterable texts, goes against everything that AD&D and OD&D have taught me.
I think that, for me, "old school" means:
1. Player choice drives the game.
1a. Really bad player choices lead to TPKs.
1b. Really clever player choices lead to rewards and advantages beyond the norm.
2. There are strains of an almost Lovecraftian incomprehensibility to many gods and demons, a la the chaos temple in Keep on the Borderlands.
3. The forces of evil gather on all sides of the Realms of Man.
That's pretty much it, to me. Rule 1 and its sub-rules are the critical parts of it. Quick, creative thinking is key. Mindlessly attacking is a fool's gambit.
As far as changing the specifics of encounters goes I do believe most old school modules encourage the DM to make the adventure thier own and to flavor it to suit the individual campaign. It sounds like you are doing exactly that. So in a way you ARE being true to those old ways by obeying those instructions.
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