Where Has All the Magic Gone?

Jack7 said:

I can say this much from memory Harl.
It was often very hard to ransack a place because early versions of D&D were dangerous to the characters in ways that later versions never imagined, or sought to entirely mitigate.

And to me that's what bothers me about later versions, though I think later versions also had/have some really positives attributes. But when the game itself is designed in such a way as to hand-hold players, and circumvent character danger, and "balance risk" (when in life do you really get balanced risk) in-game, and prevent you from dying, or getting too out of breath, well, you've missed one of the key elements of what separates Heroes from those who'd rather hire out their risk to more courageous types.

A fantasy game without a Hero willing to risk his head for others against things potentially far more dangerous than he is, (as opposed to just a powered up, bauble painted, self-interested mercenary who won't fight anything or anyone unless he knows the fight is a balanced and fixed one) well - that's like a magic item that's determined by how many pluses it sports rather that what kinda wonder it evokes.

As for what RC was saying about the potential of reward, rather than the assurance of reward, well that also reminds me of the fact that they call it treasure for a reason. It's valuable because you take a real risk to get it, or somebody else takes a real risk to keep it. Or both.

If there were no real risk and cost involved it would be a token, not a treasure - welfare, not wealth. And risk can always go wrong. You can fail. You can lose. Seems a radical idea these days, in-games and outside of them, but there was a day when it was the way things were.

But RCs idea about treasure being potential rather than assured also reminds me of this - Easter Eggs. They're excellent to find, but sometimes, you miss a few. And that's okay.

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You are aware that we are in generic edition war territory here?

Into the breach: Your argument has two commonly made mistakes:
1) The first mistake is assuming balanced encounters do not mean risk to the pcs. The opposite is true:A balanced encounter is one where there is risk but not certainty of the pc's death. And if you played modern editions of D&D you may have made the experience that characters die even in balanced encounters. So there is clearly real risk involved. And I have seen multiple TPKs in 3rd edition, probably more than I have ever seen in the older editions.

2)The second mistake is assuming that later editions only "allow" balanced encounters. All they do is provide tools to create balanced encounters. How to use them is the GM's choice. The 4th edition DMG even states that some encounters should not be balanced. Remember, in any RPG, a GM should design challenges that the Pcs can either defeat of avoid (The operative word is "can" not "will"). So you want to know as a GM if your group can handle 3 Trolls, otherwise you better give them an option to run away or parley. In older editions you just made this assessment by eyeballing rather than using the support provided by the rules.

So you want to know as a GM if your group can handle 3 Trolls, otherwise you better give them an option to run away or parley.

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Why would I as a DM determine if my players fight, parley, or run away?
That's their job. How they react to the world, that's their play, not for me to determine.

That's exactly what I mean by an underlying ideal of balance.
It's so pernicious and deeply infiltrated, it's almost unnoticed as a principle. You don't balance, you give tools of balance, so that you can balance without
balancing and provide the potential for risk without real risk. And black is white and slavery is freedom, and the very best way over the mountaintop is to start swimming now.

I'm saying all this facetiously of course, but in all honesty it ain't my job as DM to tell the players how to act, to balance the world for them, or pre-determine their possible courses of action, or reaction. I don't think for them, I don't worry for them, I'm not their momma. I just provide imaginary scenarios and situations of risk and opportunity. What they do with that, well, they're big enough to handle for themselves.

You don't lay out balanced courses of action for a Hero, because that's their job. Come hell or high water, heroes adapt and overcome.

But as for Edition Wars, I'm not interested in that. Though I reckon it's hard to compare apples and oranges when the rules are, "you shall not speak of the differences between apples and oranges when you seek to compare them." But as for me I'm talking general principles and approaches to gaming, including how the ideas and items of magic are approached, not who is zooming who.

Now if you'll excuse me Harl I'm gonna go watch the Brave and the Bold. Red Tornado tonight. I always liked that guy.

Yak with ya later.

Jack7 said:

Why would I as a DM determine if my players fight, parley, or run away?
That's their job. How they react to the world, that's their play, not for me to determine.

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Sorry, I obviously wasn't clear enough. i am not telling my players to react. But you know how there are encounter setups that give players no choice? For example, if the PCs are clearly unable to handle the Trolls, i cannot set up an ambush where the PCs are attacked without warning and without a way to flee. That's gamemastering 101.

However, if the Trolls are a balanced encounter, then such an ambush can be set up.

The balancing guidelines in the DMG is to give the DM an idea of how dangerous an encounter is for the PC party. It doesn't restrict you to only using risk-free encounters. The DM can make harder or easier encounters as he sees fit. But the guidelines let the DM know what he's sending so that he doesn't make a crazy hard encounter when he wants a easy one, or vice versa. The DM can still populate the world with nothing but ancient red dragons in a 1st level game if he wants. Just don't expect the players to be staying in the game for long.

Harlekin, if you can read even the first five pages of the 1e DMG and come away believing there was no design philosophy involved, nothing I (nor, I suspect, anyone else) can say is going to persuade you otherwise. But I find it as mind-boggling a conclusion to draw as if I said the same about the 4e DMG (which I would not).

EDIT: I just re-read the first 5 pages of the 1e DMG before typing the above. This isn't based on memory, or upon idle speculation! Gary is as entertaining to read as ever.

For the record, I think that playing WotC-D&D mechanics with a TSR-D&D philosophy has made 3e a much better game for me than it was following the WotC-D&D philosophy. In the Megadungeon thread, I suggested that the DM simply chuck encounter-and-treasure balancing and let the players worry about deciding what they are capable of tackling.

IMHO, it makes for a better game. YMMV, though.


RC

Harlekin said:

For example, if the PCs are clearly unable to handle the Trolls, i cannot set up an ambush where the PCs are attacked without warning and without a way to flee. That's gamemastering 101.

However, if the Trolls are a balanced encounter, then such an ambush can be set up.

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If the PCs don't use intelligent scouting options to learn what may be encountered in a given area (thief sneaking ahead, interrogating defeated monsters, asking NPCs, clairaudience, clairvoyance, noticing Troll spore in near the vicinity, etc.) and are ambushed by Trolls with no way to flee, their deaths are mostly their own (the players') fault. A TPK in such an instance ought to be a learning for the players.

Raven Crowking said:

For the record, I think that playing WotC-D&D mechanics with a TSR-D&D philosophy has made 3e a much better game for me than it was following the WotC-D&D philosophy. In the Megadungeon thread, I suggested that the DM simply chuck encounter-and-treasure balancing and let the players worry about deciding what they are capable of tackling.

IMHO, it makes for a better game. YMMV, though.
RC

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Not sure about that, I have never seen a game improve by many random deaths. However, I am very willing to believe that it makes for a better game if your players think that you do not balance encounters. Hmmm.

I see Raven et al are still in disbelief with Q's thread even though he answered those "well you're not supposed to find all those treasure".

As for the belief that in 1e that one can "plan" for encounters beforehand, how does that jive with the random encounter table?

AllisterH said:

I see Raven et al are still in disbelief with Q's thread even though he answered those "well you're not supposed to find all those treasure".

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Sure, given that there are some very good, specific reasons why you are very unlikely to do so, and given that his answer amounts to nothing more than "Sure you are", there is no reason to accept his answer.

I began DMing on Christmas Day of 1979, and I have run most of the TSR classics many times, for many different players (due, in a large part, to a four year stint in the US Army) in many states. Not so long ago, I ran KotB using the EN World conversion to 3.5.

IME, despite having played these modules dozens of times with over a hundred different players, no one has ever found all of the treasure in even one of them. The average haul, IME, is approximately 25% of what is available in the adventuring area.

If Q did an analysis that showed the time required to "Greyhawk" the modules he has examined, including the time needed to rest and recover due to the extra encounters "Greyhawking" forces on the players, it would quickly become evident that there is a real unlikelihood of gaining most of the treasures in most modules. It would also show that the tournament modules have the easiest loot to acquire, simply because acquiring said loot is part of the scoring of the tournament, and the characters do not need to be suitable afterwards for an ongoing campaign when designing a tournament. Tournament modules also have, by and large, the most linear maps of the 1e era....largely for the same reason.

If Q's analysis was correct, and I am wrong, I have offered some pretty straightforward criteria to proving me wrong -- square footage x time searching per square foot = X time to Greyhawk the dungeon. Y wandering encounters happen on average within X time, characters must rest after Z encounters, increasing time factor by a minimum of 8 hours. You can figure out exactly how long any adventure would take to Greyhawk and then determine whether or not the PCs would be likely to survive/do so based upon that estimate.

IMHO, of course.

Should a sufficient quantity of any such evidence that demonstrates that Q is correct be offered, I will shift my opinion.


RC

Harlekin said:

Not sure about that, I have never seen a game improve by many random deaths. However, I am very willing to believe that it makes for a better game if your players think that you do not balance encounters. Hmmm.

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The DM making the players responsible for balance =/= many random deaths.

It does potentially mean many non-random deaths until play improves, however.


RC