4th to 5th Edition Converters - What has been your experience?

[Tony Vargas]

What is pixel bitching?

I only recently heard this one for the first time: It's video-game slang. When a game requires you to touch or interact with every little thing on the screen to find a clue (or whatever), with nothing contributing to you chance of finding it beyond the patience to click on every pixel on the screen.

Like many things in videogames, it has its origin in old-school D&D. Y'know, you'd map the entire level before spotting that 'blank spot' and searching the right patch of wall to find the secret door that led to the treasure/next level/whatever. I don't recall a slang term for it, though.

 

[Nibelung]

I only recently heard this one for the first time: It's video-game slang. When a game requires you to touch or interact with every little thing on the screen to find a clue (or whatever), with nothing contributing to you chance of finding it beyond the patience to click on every pixel one the screen.

Oh, I knew this one as Pixel Hunting (Warning: TV Tropes). I thought it could be related somehow, just never heard this specific wording before.

 

[MwaO]

What is pixel bitching?

Basically, essentially 'find the tiny hidden clue which the author thought reasonably obvious, but for whatever reason is not. And have everything come to a screeching halt until solved'

 

[Obryn]

Basically, essentially 'find the tiny hidden clue which the author thought reasonably obvious, but for whatever reason is not. And have everything come to a screeching halt until solved'

This is not, btw, so much a feature of oldschool gaming as it is a questionable DMing style. Which was, to be fair, really *really* common back then. But just like game design has progressed and improved, so too has the art of running games.

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[Jhaelen]

Basically, essentially 'find the tiny hidden clue which the author thought reasonably obvious, but for whatever reason is not. And have everything come to a screeching halt until solved'

Actually, I'm quite sure that most creators of 'classical' modules were explicitly trying to be non-obvious when hiding stuff. But in most cases the hidden stuff wasn't crucial to complete the adventure. It was meant to reward players for being thorough. They were like the 'secrets' in the Doom computer game: Mostly irrelevant, sometimes beneficial, sometimes just hiding easter-eggs or short-cuts. But really fun for players who enjoyed the 'exploration' element of the game.

Of course there were (bad) examples, as well, to wit: 'Tomb of Horrors'. But that's been discussed at length in dedicated threads...

 

[Jhaelen]

Basically, essentially 'find the tiny hidden clue which the author thought reasonably obvious, but for whatever reason is not. And have everything come to a screeching halt until solved'

Actually, I'm quite sure that most creators of 'classical' modules were explicitly trying to be non-obvious when hiding stuff. But in most cases the hidden stuff wasn't crucial to complete the adventure. It was meant to reward players for being thorough. They were like the 'secrets' in the Doom computer game: Mostly irrelevant, sometimes beneficial, sometimes just hiding easter-eggs or short-cuts. But really fun for players who enjoyed the 'exploration' element of the game.

Of course there were (bad) examples, as well, to wit: 'Tomb of Horrors'. But that's been discussed at length in dedicated threads...

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

This is not, btw, so much a feature of oldschool gaming as it is a questionable DMing style. Which was, to be fair, really *really* common back then. But just like game design has progressed and improved, so too has the art of running games.

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Well, imagine 3LBBs OD&D, pre-Greyhawk. The characters, short of a couple divination spells and items, don't have any input. The players are told exactly what they see and what happens when they do something. Now, the DM can make all the elements of the environment totally obvious, and rely purely on puzzle-building. The original sorts of traps worked like this:

DM - As you make your way down the hallway, you notice there are some small holes in the walls ahead at about waist height.
Player - I stop and raise my hand. The dwarf hands me the 10' pole and, standing back from the nearest holes, I slowly begin to probe the flagstones of the floor ahead.
DM - Right, you soon notice that your pole bumps against a fine piece of wire stretched across the way at shin height.

It becomes just procedural, though obviously if the trap is a Rube Goldberg then the players have to dope out which levers to pull or whatever to allow safe passage, etc.

The problem is it is vastly tempting, and almost inevitable, that the DM will add in some twist, like the hole in the ceiling positioned right where you'd stand if you were probing with a 10' pole, but concealed by some moss so that the characters have to go study the ceiling (explicitly of course) or else gotcha! While some DM somewhere NEVER EVER relied on this trick, all the human DMs (including Gygax himself) relied on it heavily and it was considered a standard part of the canon of DMing tricks. A game of that ilk without those tricks very quickly turned stale, there's only so many puzzles the DM can invent.

In any case Greyhawk came along and the whole "player vs character" debate began. So, yeah, in some idealized sense you are correct, but in actuality most of OD&D is about 'pixel bitching' (at least that aspect of it, there's of course RP and other elements to the game).

 

[Obryn]

The problem is it is vastly tempting, and almost inevitable, that the DM will add in some twist, like the hole in the ceiling positioned right where you'd stand if you were probing with a 10' pole, but concealed by some moss so that the characters have to go study the ceiling (explicitly of course) or else gotcha! While some DM somewhere NEVER EVER relied on this trick, all the human DMs (including Gygax himself) relied on it heavily and it was considered a standard part of the canon of DMing tricks. A game of that ilk without those tricks very quickly turned stale, there's only so many puzzles the DM can invent.

In any case Greyhawk came along and the whole "player vs character" debate began. So, yeah, in some idealized sense you are correct, but in actuality most of OD&D is about 'pixel bitching' (at least that aspect of it, there's of course RP and other elements to the game).

I agree that this was usually (heck, almost always!) the way older editions of D&D were played back during the 70's and 80's. I mean, I had a DM who thought he was extremely clever by having a disembodied voice taunt us and waited for us to say, "I look up" to notice the flying dude talking to us. I know it happened, I've experienced it, and I'm sure I did it myself.

However, I disagree that this playstyle is inherent to those gaming systems, or that it's the best way to run these systems now that we know better.

Remember - back in that era, Tomb of Horrors was considered the height of adventure design. It isn't, anymore.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I agree that this was usually (heck, almost always!) the way older editions of D&D were played back during the 70's and 80's. I mean, I had a DM who thought he was extremely clever by having a disembodied voice taunt us and waited for us to say, "I look up" to notice the flying dude talking to us. I know it happened, I've experienced it, and I'm sure I did it myself.

However, I disagree that this playstyle is inherent to those gaming systems, or that it's the best way to run these systems now that we know better.

Remember - back in that era, Tomb of Horrors was considered the height of adventure design. It isn't, anymore.

I'm not saying what I did, liked, or think was good. Nor do I think all old school DMs did it all the time, they did a lot of other things too (I know, I was one of them). But its pretty inevitable that SOME of that sort of "there's something you have to go look for or else" design always creeps in. A good DM telegraphs things and spends most of his time "getting the PCs into a pickle" (that is letting them step in the pickle) and then offering them ways out, at varyingly painful rates, etc.

Given the total lack of any mechanisms or guidance for other play elements though I would say that classic D&D INVITES this sort of thing. It may not mandate it, and it may produce less than ideal play, but its really not until 3e that ANY help is really given, and 4e is really the first D&D with any sort of mechanical support for RP beyond a really basic and hard to use skill system.

 

[pemerton]

back in that era, Tomb of Horrors was considered the height of adventure design. It isn't, anymore.

Careful, you're going to spark another ToH-wars thread!